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features Labor, Interrupted

jim harrison jim 21 page 39 Why cesarean births and other surgical procedures have become more prevalent, and fnding the right balance of care departments by Nell Lake 2 Cambridge 02138 Communications from our readers 27 Writers and Artists at Harvard What is required to identify, admit, and nurture 8 Right Now The warming Arctic leaks mercury, a soda the future “makers of culture” association with violence, a by Helen Vendler social-science map of changing American attitudes

12 Montage 30 Vita: Alexandre A documentary about Dumas outsized ambitions, Brief life of the soldier who inspired Eisenhower as nuclear The Count of Monte Cristo: 1762-1806 michael cavanagh and kevin montague kevin and cavanagh michael bluffer, manikins on wire, up on the (New York City) page 19 by Tom Reiss roofs, vegan cooking unbound, geometric sculptor, and more 3 Reclaiming Childhood 20A New England Regional Section 2 A public-health scholar determines how best to A calendar of seasonal campus events, meaningful gift-giving, and downtown help child soldiers, genocide survivors, refugees, stu rosner French fare and others—the world’s most traumatized youths page 21 55 The Alumni by Elizabeth Gudrais Poker promoter, Aloian honorands 39 John Harvard’s Journal 60 The College Pump A stele scanned, investigating cheating, a business A bell by bequest scholar studies Chinese cities, the Corporation’s 80 Treasure reformed ranks, a downsized endowment, edX A hospital says “hello” with a medical museum courses in the cloud, topping off Tozzer, Faculty of Arts and Sciences status, transatlantic football (the 61 Crimson Classiﬁeds radio broadcast), the Undergraduate unsettled, On the cover: Badal, age 8, at home an international statistician for Graduate School in the train station in Jaipur, India, where he collects used bottles. dean, formidable football offense, and atall Olympic Photograph by Peter Pereira basketball talent roland sárkány roland sárkány

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Editor: John S. Rosenberg Senior Editor: Jean Martin Managing Editor: Jonathan S. Shaw Cambridge  Deputy Editor: Craig Lambert Assistant Editor-Online: Laura Levis Free will, clients and competitions, climate change Assistant Editor: Nell Porter Brown Art Director: Jennifer Carling Production and New Media Manager: Mark Felton Associate Web Developer: American Competitiveness given over to financial markets. False re- Stephen Geinosky Four key points were made in “Can wards encourage unethical behavior. America Compete?” (September-October, Fourth, as a society “we somehow tol- Berta Greenwald Ledecky page 26): First, we have “an incoherent, com- erate persistent high unemployment, 30 Undergraduate Fellows plex corporate tax code....” For instance, years of stagnating wages and growing Cherone Duggan, Kathryn Reed taxing “carried interest” as capital rather wage inequality, two decades of declining Contributing Editors than as labor income should be reversed. job satisfaction and loss of pension and John T. Bethell, John de Cuevas, Adam Second, labor savings of as much as retirement benefits….” The view of share- Goodheart, Jim Harrison, Courtney 100 to 1 virtually mandated production holder value as corporations’ primary ob- Humphries, Christopher S. Johnson, outsourcing, but side-by-side engineer- jective is dominant. Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, ing went along with it, leaving the U.S. I suggest we also consider that the “Great Christopher Reed, Stu Rosner, Deborah Smullyan, Mark Steele inexpert in many of the very technologies Recession” was a financial debacle for which it had invented. “Making things” requires proper responsibility has not been assigned Editorial and Business Office preserving “innovative capability over nor conditions ameliorated. Fundamental 7 Ware Street time.” campaign finance restrictions can bring a Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 Third, the “evaluation and compensa- virtual stop to political warfare where today Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 tion of managers and investors” has been any “loss” is childishly taken as defeat. With Website: www.harvardmagazine.com Reader services: 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499 Harvard Magazine Inc. Explore More President: Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57,

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2 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 120933_LuxBondGreen.indd 1 7/31/12 11:24 AM Letters The Harvard Chair! the government’s help, high unemployment and social discontent can be treated. Finally, who but the business schools send their best and brightest into a finance industry that constitutes a largely uncre- Publisher: Irina Kuksin ative 14 percent of our GNP and which currently views dollars as the be-all and Director of Circulation and Fundraising Felecia Carter end-all of life on this planet? Alan O. Dann ’55 Director of Advertising Brattleboro, Vt. Robert D. Fitta A Coop Exclusive! Used by generations of Harvard New England Advertising Manager students and alumni. Available in all School and I showed this compilation of interviews to Abigail Williamson House Shields. friends from across the political spectrum, Designer and Integrated Marketing 50 Purchase Reg. $645/Member Price $580 and most of them were enraged. That sug- Manager: Jennifer Beaumont Choose crimson or black seat cushion. Classified Advertising Manager 50 gests your experts must be onto something. Reg. $55/Member Price $49 Gretchen Bostr0m S+H $60 within the continental US Only one quibble: in the interest of appear- Each chair sale supports the Harvard Alumni Association. ing objective, said experts dance around the Gift Processor and Office Manager question of why our politics are dysfunc- Robert Bonotto k tional. This feeds the myth that blame for the current polarization is equally shared. Ivy League Magazine Network Enamel Cufflinks Not so. “Politics as war” today is the fault of Associate Publisher, Sales the right. I know, because I was excommuni- Lawrence J. Brittan, Tel. 631-754-4264 cated from local Republican party activities New England and Mid-Atlantic for repeatedly objecting to our increasing ex- Advertising Sales tremism. As all of your experts say or imply, Robert D. Fitta, Tel. 617-496-6631 a sustainable economy needs both planting New York Advertising Sales and harvesting to work. The GOP has been Beth Bernstein, Tel. 908-654-5050 “Veritas” Harvard University Enamel Cufflinks with taken over by those who only want to har- Mary Anne MacLean, Tel. 631-367-1988 crest and chain back. Choose Harvard College or vest, without any further thought to planting. Travel Advertising Sales Harvard Business School. Made in England. Charles Hsu ’79 Northeast Media Inc., Tel. 203-255-8800 50 Purchase Reg. $75/Member Price $67 Shanghai Detroit Advertising Sales Linda Donaldson k Tel. 248-933-3376 I wonder if the cover photo was chosen Southwest Advertising Sales Harvard Extra for some hidden meaning? Yes, of course, the Daniel Kellner, Tel. 972-529-9687 Large Tote Bag first vehicle in line is a 1959 Ford Galaxie 500 West Coast Advertising Sales four-door hardtop. But the second and third Virtus Media Sales, Tel. 310-478-3833 & Harvard Pillow cars in line are 1959 Edsels!! Note the center bump on the raised hood and the grille tex- Board of Incorporators ture of the second car through the first car’s This magazine, at first called the Harvard Bulletin, was founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was char- back window. Note the open passenger door tered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s on the third vehicle…it has an Edsel exterior governance. The membership is as follows: Stephen J. bodyside molding. Bailey, AMP ’94; Jeffrey S. Behrens ’89, William I. Ben- nett ’62, M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. 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4 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters

even psychology but predominantly neu- around the statue, rejoining into a single verify that the process Lambert describes has roscience. The article (“Two Steps to Free path behind it. James apparently used to been replaced with a more interactive one. Will,” September-October, page 9) doesn’t walk the same route, and is said to have re- Bill Liskamm, M. Arch. ’56 even mention neuroscience or consider any marked that the choice of whether to take San Rafael, Calif. of its findings from the past 20 years. This the right or the left path around the statue is probably a tendentious omission by the was the only case of pure free will he was Construction and Climate author to make his argument more persua- aware of. That suggests that he felt that de- We were interested to see House renewal sive. It actually makes it less so. The other terminism was operational in most cases, but discussed (“Designating Dunster,” Septem- sleight-of-hand sophistry here is a facile that a totally inconsequential choice might ber-October, page 65), but disappointed to juxtaposition of Darwinian evolution and be considered “free.” The last time I was in see no reference to the William James’s understanding of its in- Cambridge I was saddened to see that the impending risk of sea- teraction with genetics. Quite misleading. path had been rerouted, and that now there level rise. Some Hous- Visit harvardmagazine. James died in 1910; the modern synthesis of was only one way to get around the statue. A es are only 9 or 10 feet com/extras to read Darwinism and Mendelian genetics didn’t marvelous historical site had been destroyed! above current mean sea additional letters to the editor take place until 1942. Barbara R. (Berman) Bergmann, Ph.D. ’58 level and are protected Mark Belson, A.M. ’78 Washington, D.C. by a Charles River dam only 12.5 feet tall. Overland Park, Kan. Tides as high as 12 feet and storm surges of up Design Competitions, Clients to an additional five feet already place devel- The explanation of William James’s un- Had Craig Lambert done some research be- opment along the Charles at occasional risk. derstanding of free will given in your article fore writing about the shortcomings of ar- Endowed with scientists at the forefront invokes a “first chance, then choice” explana- chitectural competitions (“Architecture in in anticipating global sea rise and its effects tion which does little to clarify the matter for Concert,” September-October, page 46), he upon Cambridge, Harvard should apply this me. I had heard a different account of James’s would have learned that current competi- insight to reduce risk to its facilities and op- thinking on this subject. A path I took in my tions include interactions between the ar- erations. Upgrading should be accompanied days as a student through the Cambridge chitect and client. Having led more than 60 by studies of rising water vulnerabilities Common used to lead to the statue of Abra- competitions throughout the United States and mitigation approaches. Harvard should ham Lincoln. It split into two paths going and abroad during the past 20 years, I can implement smart designs in areas it controls,

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Harvard Magazine 5 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters

but some actions will require metro-wide and graduate levels, I told my students they “Cheating” it may be, but the professors cooperation that Harvard should spearhead. could bring anything they thought might help should be ashamed of the situation. Responsible stewardship requires broad- into the exam, but it wouldn’t help. My exam Richard S. Greeley, S.B. ’49 ening this effort to all possibly endangered would require them to think, not just regurgi- St. Davids, Pa. Harvard facilities, and Harvard should build tate what I had told them in class. Of course, major new developments only at locations I proctored the exam myself. If anyone had Global (Harvard) Limits safely removed from sea-level rise. copied, the similar exam papers would have From Drew Faust’s “Toward a Global Strat- Arthur L. Boright ’61 revealed the lack of independent thought. In egy for Harvard” (September-October, page Harstine Island, Wash. that case, expulsion at least for a year might 75): which five countries don’t have alumni? Charles Alan Boright ’68 be appropriate. Viveca Gardiner ’88 Middlesex, Vt. Also, I would have thought that a take- Brooklyn, N.Y. Nathan Shenk-Boright ’03 home exam should have encouraged coop- Olympia, Wash. eration and sharing of thoughts. If 125 more Editor’s note: As of 2010, says the president’s or less identical exam papers were turned office, Djibouti, East Timor, Gabon, Palau, and Cheating Investigation in, then I would say the students are send- Tuvalu were the only five lacking an alum. I am shocked and saddened to read of ing a message of disdain to their professors. cheating by a large number of students at Amplifications Harvard (see page 40)! But after reading that speak up, please The appointment of Paul Guyer ’69, Ph.D. it involved a class about Congress, I am less Harvard Magazine welcomes letters ’74, as the inaugural Nelson professor of hu- surprised. Perhaps the students are merely on its contents. Please write to “Let- manities and philosophy at Brown, reported emulating their elected officials. ters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, in Brevia ( July-August, page 53), inadver- John Hutchinson ’69, M.D. ’73 Cambridge 02138, send comments by e- tently omitted his Harvard degrees. Seattle mail to yourturn@harvard.edu, use our Book reviewer Andrea Louise Campbell website, www.harvardmagazine.com, ’88 suffered a typographical error in her by- I blame the professors who must have given or fax us at 617-495-0324. Letters may line (September-October, page 22). She was an exam that could lead to cheating by their be edited to fit the available space. identified correctly in the author note on students. When I taught at the undergraduate page 24; our apologies.

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6 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 I Choose Harvard...

Asami Ishimaru ’79, MBA ’83

As a private equity investor, to establish a Dean’s Innovation “ Collaboration is Asami Ishimaru ’79, MBA ’83 Fund to bolster forward- about the mind, of New York City is always on thinking teaching and research the lookout for emerging at SEAS. “Dean Murray is but space matters.” companies that use innovative building a world-class engi- Stephanie (Formica) technology to solve problems. neering school,” notes Ishimaru, connaughton ’87 So after she heard Cherry A. who concentrated in economics, Murray, dean of Harvard’s lived in Currier House, and School of Engineering and went on to Harvard Business Applied Sciences (SEAS), School and a career in finance. speak about the School’s “For SEAS to be relevant, it mission to promote innovation has to evolve continuously. and instill technology literacy That requires substantial among students, she decided resources and leadership.”

To read more, please visit www.alumni.harvard.edu/stories/ishimaru

“ To evolve continuously ...

requires substantial Stephanie (Formica) Connaughton ’87

resources and Whether she’s designing name Pierce Hall 301 (seen leadership.” shaving products, yoga mats, above) as the Connaughton or home interiors, Stephanie Room, a new flexible aSami iShimaru ’79, mBa ’83 (Formica) Connaughton ’87 classroom that promotes loves the collaborative process. teamwork through multiple “Innovation involves bringing whiteboards and movable together different talents and tables. “Collaboration is about B u I ldI ng upon I nnovAt I on perspectives to create new the mind, but space matters,” things,” she says. “It’s great to says Connaughton, a former help build that at Harvard.” economics concentrator from Support the To mark her recent 25th Eliot House who lives in Reunion, she created the Brookline, Mass., and has Stephanie F. Connaughton spent many years in consumer- Innovation Fund to support product development. “Pierce design-related teaching and 301 hit a chord because it research in Harvard’s School reminded me of the team alumni.harvard.edu/give of Engineering and Applied dynamic that I love.” Sciences (SEAS). Her gift will Photos: connaughton: F.a. Formica; classroom: kris snibbe; ishimaru: courtesy oF asami ishimaru To read more, please visit www.alumni.harvard.edu/stories/connaughton

121144_AAD_full.indd 1 10/3/12 1:47 PM Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

effluvium unleashed he could then examine how that deposition was affected by changes in global emissions patterns—rising levels in Asia, An Arctic falling levels in the United States and Eu- rope—and by the melting of the Arctic sea ice, which receives and re-emits the mer- Mercury Meltdown cury into the atmosphere, keeping it from further dissemination in the water. “But, as often occurs in science,” Jacob says, “seren- hen people think of mer- Geos-CHEM, which measures atmospher- dipity took over.” cury, says Daniel Jacob, ic transportation. “What I was expecting When he and research teams from the they tend to think of the was to find that atmospheric deposition Harvard School of Engineering and Ap- W element in its silvery, fluid was the dominant source of mercury to plied Sciences and Harvard School of state—the stuff to avoid if a thermometer the Arctic,” says Jacob. With that finding, Public Health started analyzing their breaks. “It’s a fascinating metal in data, they found something that it is liquid at room tempera- the emissions theory could ture, but it is present in the atmo- not explain: mercury levels in sphere as an elemental gas,” says the Arctic peaked in the sum- the Vasco McCoy Family profes- mer, when the transportation sor of atmospheric chemistry and of emissions pollution was low, environmental engineering. “It’s but fell off during the winter, really amazing.” despite a concurrent annual Amazing, but potentially very emissions-pollution peak. dangerous. At high levels, mer- The hidden element? Their cury is a toxin that can impair study, published in a recent neurological development in chil- issue of the journal Nature Geo- dren and affect the adult nervous science, found that the major system. Jacob has been studying Arctic mercury source wasn’t the movement of atmospheric the atmosphere, but the Arctic mercury for the last decade or so, Ocean itself. and has been particularly inter- That body of water, Jacob ested in how and why it shows says, receives 10 percent of all up at elevated levels in the Arc- global river discharge, thanks tic—in both the atmosphere and in large part to three massive the food cycle. Conventional wis- Siberian rivers: the Lena, the dom, he says, was that emissions Yenisei, and the Ob. Jacob’s from coal combustion and mining team theorizes that the rivers in North America, Europe, and— carry mercury to the Arctic increasingly—Asia were drifting Ocean from myriad sources, over the Arctic and depositing including Siberian mines and the mercury via precipitation. the erosion of other polluted A few years ago, he began test- land masses—and because the ing that theory using a complex ocean is relatively shallow, the 3-D computer model called the mercury-laden river waters

8 November - December 2012 Illustration by Doug Boehm Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now

have a greater influence on its smaller vol- lation is not necessarily a recent phenom- tic who rely on the fish as a food source. ume of water. enon, and we can’t really blame increas- What’s next, Jacob says, is to chart Arctic Climate change is another culprit. An ing pollution from China—which is what mercury’s course. He and his team will use unfrozen Arctic Ocean lashing at the coast people wanted to do. It seems to be really their study results to plot how the accu- and eroding mercury-rich land masses old mercury, and it’s coming from really old mulation has changed during the past 30 means more of the element entering the human activity”—such as mining—“that is years and use that data to predict what water, especially in summer. The effect of a century old, maybe older.” challenges Arctic inhabitants might face in rising temperatures in Siberia eventually When that mercury enters the marine a warmer future. vdan morrell affects the Arctic, as well: “As the perma- ecosystem, it can accumulate in fish in frost thaws, mercury in the soil gets re- concentrations as much as a million times daniel jacob e-mail: leased into the river system,” Jacob ex- higher than the element’s oceanic or at- [email protected] plains. “From a policy standpoint,” he adds, mospheric levels—posing a serious risk to daniel jacob website: “the message is that the mercury accumu- indigenous human populations in the Arc- http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu

soft-Drink stir? Soda and Violence

lready implicated in the people found these results very sur- obesity and diabetes epidemics, prising, Hemenway reports: “When soda may be linked to violence in you think about the causes of violence, A young people, new research sug- soft drinks are not on the map of vari- gests. In a study of 1,878 students at Boston ables that you tend to look at.” public high schools, heavy soda drinkers His findings recall the 1979 “Twinkie were much more prone to violent behavior defense” mounted in the trial that fol- than other teens. lowed the murder of gay-rights activ- That finding came about by accident. ist Harvey Milk; the defense attorney While seeking to document the incidence persuaded the jury to render a verdict of violent behavior among the high-school of voluntary manslaughter in part by students, professor of health policy David arguing that his client’s recent switch Hemenway, who directs the Harvard In- from a healthy diet to one high in junk jury Control Research Center at Harvard food and soft drinks contributed to School of Public Health, agreed to incorpo- mental-health issues that led to the rate unrelated (or so he thought) questions killing. The argument may have been about nutrition at a colleague’s request. prescient in its recognition that what Analyzing the survey, he found surpris- people put into their mouths influ- ing correlations. Heavy consumers of non- ences how they feel and, consequently,

diet soft drinks—students who had drunk behave. But whether this is the case I mages I mages/Dreamstime monkey business five or more cans in the week preceding with soda is not yet clear. Solnick ’86, M.P.H. ’90, now of the Univer- the survey—were more likely to have be- The researchers have since tested the cor- sity of Vermont, plan to perform a similar haved violently toward peers (57 percent, relation, with similar results, in three other analysis with objective sources such as po- versus 39 percent of respondents who datasets: one surveying more than 5,000 ado- lice records and school-discipline records. drank less soda); to have behaved violently lescents in California, one of nearly 3,000 five- Instead of relying on youths’ self-reporting, toward another child in their own families year-olds of low socioeconomic status born such a study could examine whether youths (42 percent, versus 27 percent); to have in major U.S. cities (the question about guns who drink more soda are more likely to be behaved violently in a dating relationship and knives was omitted in this case), and one suspended for fighting or arrested. (26 percent, versus 16 percent); and to have of more than 16,000 students in public, pri- Other studies have linked soda con- carried a gun or a knife during the past vate, and parochial high schools across the sumption with depression and suicidal year (40 percent, versus 27 percent). The United States. (Hemenway has not investigat- behavior, but Hemenway is not aware of strength of the effect was on par with the ed the relationship between soft drinks and anyone else studying the correlation with correlation (well known among research- violence in adults. Although violent crimes violent behavior. One further avenue for ers) between these behaviors and alcohol committed by adults tend to make headlines, research is elucidating the underlying and tobacco use; in some cases, the corre- he says, teenagers behave in physically aggres- mechanism. It could be that a third vari- lation with soda was stronger. sive ways far more often than adults do.) able, such as the quality of parenting, Even within the scientific community, Next, Hemenway and his colleague, Sara influences both soda consumption and

Harvard Magazine 9 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now

aggressive behavior. (The researchers at- maybe those who drink soda in place of effects that build over time—meaning it tempted to control for socioeconomic healthier food miss out on nutrients that may be safer just to stick with water. status and the quality of parenting; when promote a calmer demeanor. velizabeth gudrais they did, the correlation remained strong.) One public-policy implication is appar- If there is a cause-effect relationship, the ent already: colleges may want to think david hemenway e-mail: researchers speculate that excess caffeine twice about promoting soft drinks as a [email protected] and sugar (along with the subsequent safe alternative to alcohol. Although soda harvard injury control research center blood-sugar crash) may leave soda drink- doesn’t share alcohol’s acute, motor-skill- website: ers irritable and prone to aggression; or impairing effect, it may have emotional www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc

american attitudes it has Harvard roots—it is the brainchild of professor of sociology emeritus James Davis, who was the principal investigator until 2009—and continuing connections: Mapping Cultural Change Geisinger professor of sociology Peter V. Marsden has been co-principal investigator since 1997. he U.S. Census gathers a wealth (barred due to concern over separation In each successive wave, the survey con- of demographic data, providing a of church and state)—or simply does not: firms some popular reports of social cur- basic sketch of the American pop- sexual behavior, racial stereotypes, and rents (there are more women in the work- T ulation. But since 1972, the General attitudes about issues, including gay mar- force, but they still earn less than men Social Survey (GSS) has been filling in the riage, immigration, and much more. It even do) and contradicts others. For example, outlines of that sketch in living color. includes a vocabulary test to track trends the GSS finds that reports of Americans’ The GSS asks about subjects the cen- in Americans’ verbal knowledge. Among increasing isolation (such as offered in sus cannot—such as religious affiliation the findings: while the rate of “permis- Malkin professor of public policy Robert sive disposition toward premarital Putnam’s Bowling Alone) don’t get it quite sex” has remained steady among right: Americans do spend less time with Americans since 1980, support for their neighbors than they did 40 years ago, gay marriage rose from 12 percent in but the frequency with which they see 1988 to 47 percent in 2010. friends and relatives has grown, and the With funding from the National overall frequency of social interaction has Science Foundation, a survey team

remained relatively steady. mages fans out across the United States ev- The survey sometimes highlights a turn- ery two years, gathering data from ing point when a trend begins to change

3,000 Americans during face-to-face course. One example: Americans’ open- yttle/Corbis I mindedness—measured by . L gauging their level of tolerance mages, c for free speech when they don’t agree with the viewpoint of the speaker—has risen steadily for mages/Corbis I

most of the survey term, but d I len that trend may be reversing. B (The survey tests views from kelley/ across the political spectrum: it includes questions about riel S

whether atheists and homo- mages, A sexuals, as well as racists and militarists, should be allowed to interviews in their homes. (The project’s make speeches in public venues or college home base is an opinion research center classrooms, or to express their views in y Huffanker/Corbis I at the University of Chicago.) In its 40 books offered at the local library.) Ameri- d an years, the GSS has informed tens of thou- cans’ increasing educational attainment sands of research studies; its freely avail- was responsible for a large part of the rise able data have been used by hundreds of in tolerance, and now that educational thousands of students each year, and have gains are leveling off, tolerance may be fol- kwise from S top left:

become a crucial source of information lowing suit, Davis writes in Social Trends c

on Americans’ lifestyles and views. And in American Life, a new volume (edited by Clo

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now

Marsden) that anthologizes important GSS findings. Trust in institutions, on the other hand, may be rising. For almost college every type—the media, the government, large corporations, and organized reli- prep gion—the survey shows that Americans born in the 1960s or later are more trusting than their baby-boomer predecessors. Harvard Another interesting change: cultural differences among Americans don’t map along regional lines as closely as they once did. Instead, says Marsden, when seeking to predict sociodemographic factors, or opinions on issues such as immigration and gay marriage, “It matters a whole lot more whether you’re in a city or a suburb than whether you’re in the Midwest or the South.” The GSS chronicles change, but also produces sobering reminders of areas where change has come slowly. In the new book, Du Bois professor of the social sciences Law- rence Bobo and colleagues tally the progress Every summer a vibrant community of high made in Americans’ attitudes about race: school sophomores, juniors, and seniors so few people felt that white people should participates in Harvard’s selective Secondary have the “first chance” at a job opening, or that black children and white children School Program. Students live on campus, should attend separate schools, that these take classes with college students, and build a questions were dropped from the survey (in foundation for a bright academic future. 1973 and 1985, respectively). Even so, posi- • Undergraduate credit tive attitudes have been slower to develop, as measured by white respondents’ per- • Students from around the world ception of how intelligent or hardworking • College prep through workshops, a college people of other races are, or by how com- fair, and talks by Harvard students and monly respondents report having friends of admissions staff another race. “Very few whites embrace Af- rican Americans on an emotional level,” the scholars conclude. This, they argue, is the new form of prejudice: subtle rather than Secondary School Program institutional, but nevertheless holding the country back from becoming a truly “postracial” society. Despite its wide range, the GSS doesn’t cover every facet of contemporary life. A www.summer.harvard.edu/ssp panel of advisers suggests updates and new questions for each wave; Marsden sees attitudes about the environment It’s not too late to as one possible area for expansion. But become a doctor by and large, he says, the survey’s great- The Harvard Magazine Bryn Mawr College’s prestigious est strength is its consistency: “We can Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program look at attitude change over a 40-year will help you realize your dreams. • For women and men changing career direction period because we ask the exact same • Over 98 percent acceptance rate into medical question about the same topic each holiday school time.” velizabeth gudrais • Early acceptance programs at a large selection of medical schools gift guide • Supportive, individual academic and peter marsden e-mail: premedical advising [email protected] Bryn Mawr College gss website: Canwyll House | Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 Turn to page 65. 610-526-7350 www3.norc.org/GSS+Website [email protected] www.brynmawr.edu/postbac/

Harvard Magazine 11 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage Art, books, diverse creations

14 Bluffer-in-Chief 15 Arts Imbalance 16 Off the Shelf 17 Vegan Hedonism 19 “Absolutely Beautiful” 20 Chapter and Verse

homes. And film director Lauren Greenfield ’87 was there to capture their financial downfall, from Jack- ie Siegel’s $1-million clothing-budget zenith to the family’s stuck-in- coach-class nadir. The drama of Greenfield’s recent documentary, The Queen of Versailles, first gripped audiences at the 2012 Sundance Film David and Jackie Festival in Jan- Siegel relaxing at uary. Screened home in The Queen of Versailles on the opening night, the film won her an award for best director and has since become one of The Queen of Versailles the most-watched documentaries of the year, prompting speculationthat it could A documentary film turns a lens on the “1 percenters.” earn an Oscar nomination. (The DVD is to be released in mid November.) “It was by laura levis the same [old] story about the Ameri- can dream, but really about the flaws as n certain ways, David and Jackie Sie- sprawling, 90,000-square-foot mansion much as the virtues of that dream, as well gel were just trying to live the American in Orlando, Florida, modeled after the as about the mistakes that were made Dream: succeed at business, own a big French palace of Versailles, complete with because of the economic crisis,” Green- I house, enjoy the spoils of their labor. But a bowling alley and roller-skating rink, a field says. “Jackie and David’s story, even after achieving those dreams, they found wing for the children, 10 kitchens, and $5 though it was extreme, was kind of sym- themselves wanting more—much, much million of marble. bolic of the mistakes we all made on dif- more. But when the U.S. economic bubble ferent levels.” Their 26,000-square-foot house was burst, the Siegels, who were so wealthy In one scene, a nanny asks Jackie—a simply not enough. Happiness could be they seemed untouchable, turned out to be former beauty queen from a small town, found, the couple thought, only by build- no different from the tens of thousands of who’s 30 years David’s junior—if one large, ing the largest house in all of America: a families who lost their far-humbler dream cavernous room in Versailles is a future

12 November - December 2012 Photograph courtesy of Magnolia Pictures/Lauren Greenfield Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 TRIUMPHS OF THE FOUNDERS AND OBAMA AND AMERICA’S BIOLUMINESCENCE EXPERIENCE FINANCE POLITICAL FUTURE Living Lights, The Men of the How Hamilton, Gallatin, and THEDA SKOCPOL Lights for Living Harvard Grant Study Other Immigrants Forged a THÉRÈSE WILSON AND GEORGE E. VAILLANT New Economy J. WOODLAND THOMAS K. MCCRAW HASTINGS from harvard faculty and harvard from Harvard Press

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS THE TRIBUNAL RECOGNIZING A WORLD CONNECTING The Political Power of Responses to John Brown and PUBLIC VALUE 1870–1945 Weak Interests the Harpers Ferry Raid MARK H. MOORE EMILY S. ROSENBERG GUNNAR TRUMBULL EDITED BY JOHN STAUFFER VOLUME EDITOR AND ZOE TRODD AKIRA IRIYE AND JÜRGEN OSTERHAMMEL SERIES EDITORS

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DICKINSON THE HEART OF POETRY AND THE HIS MAJESTY’S WHAT IS MENTAL Selected Poems and WILLIAM JAMES POLICE OPPONENT ILLNESS? Commentaries EDITED BY Communication Networks in Subhas Chandra Bose and RICHARD J. MCNALLY HELEN VENDLER ROBERT RICHARDSON Eighteenth-Century Paris India’s Struggle against ROBERT DARNTON Empire PERFORMED BY SUGATA BOSE HÉLÈNE DELAVAULT AND CLAUDE PAVY | HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS JOIN OUR MAILING LIST: WWW.HUP.HARVARD.EDU | BLOG: HARVARDPRESS.TYPEPAD.COM | TEL: 800.405.1619

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bedroom. “No, that’s my closet!” Jackie President Dwight Eisen- exclaims, her eyes wide, grinning as if she o p e n b o o k hower remains a vague almost can’t believe her good fortune. Later figure (genial, a golfer) in in the film, after the family arrives in an public memory, a cipher airport after having flown coach (a first for Bluffer-in-Chief between the feisty Harry the children), Jackie walks up to a rental- Truman and the glamorous car counter and asks the clerk earnestly, John F. Kennedy. Focusing “What is my driver’s name?” New York Times on the ultimate issue—the threat of nuclear war—Evan Thomas ’73 finds in Ike film critic A.O. Scott ’87 wrote in his re- tactical brilliance and, where needed, ruthless efficacy. From the introduction to view, “Schadenfreude and disgust may be his new book, Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World (Little, unavoidable, but to withhold all sympathy Brown, $29.99): from the Siegels is to deny their humanity and shortchange your own. Marvel at the Eisenhower was an expert at bridge, had commanded a conquering army in ornate frame, mock the vulgarity of the im- an activity now associated in the Ameri- a world war ended only by the use of ages if you want, but let’s not kid ourselves. can mind with middle-aged or elderly two atomic bombs. Though he posed as If this film is a portrait, it is also a mirror.” people sitting around a table staring at a poor farm boy, he was a scholar who Greenfield became interested in the cards. For Eisenhower, who played as had closely read Clausewitz’s treatise lives of the 1 percenters as an undergradu- much as possible, the game was a relax- On War, and took to heart its basic, if ate, where she studied photography under ing way of doing what he did all day: read- overlooked, message: that small wars Barbara Norfleet, Ph.D. ’51, then a lecturer ing minds, weighing and curator of still pho- options (his own tography at the Carpenter and others), think- Center for the Visual Arts, ing ahead, and con- who had produced a book cealing his inten- called All the Right People, tions. Eisenhower, about the WASPs of the who generally radi- Northeast. “Part of what ated warm sinceri- drove her [Norfleet] to ty and whose emo- make that book was that tions were easy to in the archives there were read, was actually very few photos of rich a great bluffer, and people,” Greenfield says. not just at cards. “The photos that existed… Eisenhower’s ba- were only commissioned sic policy through- portraits by the subjects out his presidency themselves, or society pic- was known as Mas- tures which didn’t have sive Retaliation. It any context because they was, in essence, a threat to use nuclear Ike, in a photo likely taken in the late weren’t natural moments. For me, when I weapons against Communist aggression 1940s when he was Army Chief of Staff, started the Queen of Versailles, it was a little playing bridge with General Alfred wherever and whenever it might occur. Gruenther bit similar. We see so much of the life of Even in his most private councils, Eisen- the affluent as these packaged, manipu- hower remained vague about what he can become big wars, and that a nation lated reality-TV shows, or advertising. I might or might not do in crisis. His clos- fighting for survival will stop at nothing. wanted to do a real-life look at this fam- est adviser, General Andrew Goodpas- Eisenhower managed, by cleverness, in- ily, particularly because Jackie and David ter, guessed Ike would never use nuclear direction, subtlety, and downright de- had this other quality—a down-to-earth weapons, but others weren’t so sure, and viousness—and by embracing the very American quality. They came from humble Eisenhower wasn’t about to tell them. weapon he could never use—to safe- origins and were a rags-to-riches story.” Indeed, Eisenhower sometimes sound- guard his country and possibly the rest of Greenfield met Jackie Siegel by chance ed as if he regarded nuclear weapons as mankind from annihilation. As the United at a Hollywood party and immediately fell conventional weapons—“like bullets,” States and the Soviet Union created the for the couple’s tale. (The filmmaker had he once said. Other times he seemed power to end the world in the 1950s, the asked if she could photograph Siegel’s os- determined to rid the world of their genial old soldier with a weakened heart tentatious metallic purse; the image even- scourge.…Eisenhower’s mission, which contrived to keep the peace. He did so in tually became one of Time magazine’s “Pho- he achieved after he extricated America his own distinctive way. He was honor- tos of the Year,” illustrating the “high life” from the Korean War in 1953, was to able but occasionally opaque, outwardly and “gilded age” of America). But that was avoid any war. As a general, Eisenhower amiable but inwardly seething. in 2007, when David Siegel’s company— the largest privately owned time-share

14 November - December 2012 Photograph courtesy of the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

company in the world— in Coconut Creek, Florida, had netted him a billion and has had her photo- Increase dollars. When Greenfield graphs published in The

began filming in 2009, she owit New York Times, Vanity Fair, Your ROI didn’t expect her little The New Yorker, and National (Return On Ivy)

movie (she and her hus- oxanne L

R Geographic—got to know band, Frank Evers ’87, fi- her subjects intimately, nanced the film, calling it practically moving in with “a labor of love”) about the them as she filmed up to biggest McMansion ever 12 hours a day. She and built would even be seen Jackie became friends. But in theaters. But as the Sie- Greenfield admits she was

gels’ fortunes plummeted courtesy of Magnolia Pictures/ appalled by their inability unexpectedly before her Director Lauren Greenfield to control their spending, camera’s lens, Greenfield even when everything knew her film would have a far wider appointed to impending disaster. The tipping peal. point was David’s refusal to sell his other Greenfield—a photographer and film- obsession, a $600-million, high-end time- maker who has captured youth culture share complex on the Las Vegas strip that You’ve reaped the bene ts of through projects like HBO’s THIN, a docu- he’d personally financed through loans. By investing in an Ivy League mentary about an eating disorder center 2010, the time-share market had dried up education. Now let your business reap the bene ts of advertising in the Ivy League Arts Imbalance Magazine Network. Join the list of automotive, This past summer, a temporary art installation titled Arts Imbalance brightened travel, nancial, and corporate the days of many in downtown Boston. On July 1, a dozen volunteers, working from advertisers who use the ILMN a small boat on the water and a scissor lift on land, strung a 300-foot-long yellow to reach the most af uent, tightrope across the city’s Fort Point Channel, anchoring the ends to the Summer in uential, and educated Street and Congress Street bridges. A pair of life-size, aluminum, sheet-metal fig- audience in print. ures—modeled on a classic wooden artist’s manikin—coun- terbalanced each other above and below the rope. They were To advertise, call Larry Brittan, coated in refractive dichroic film, which transmits certain Associate Publisher, wavelengths of light but reflects others, treating observers at 631-754-4264. to prismatic displays of reflected sunlight. Now and again the figures moved in reaction to the wind. The installation was the work of Peter Agoos ’75, a multimedia artist who has trained in stage design, sculpture, graphic design, and film

INVESTING IN AMERICA IS A VOTE (http://agoos.com). “I’ve lived here for more than 30 years andOF CONFIDENCE. IN YOURSELF. walked over those bridges thousands of times,” says Agoos,

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in 1923, and beyond. The family was climber) offers lessons on attracting the remarkable from the outset: Mam- right people and engaging them in your Off the Shelf out, freed, was painted by Charles organization: how Google, for instance, Willson Peale. goes about making sure it gets “Googley” Recent books with Harvard connections employees. Good Counsel: Meeting the Legal Needs of Nonprofits,by The Guardian Poplar, by Chase N. Pe- Up on the Roof: New York’s Hidden Lesley Rosenthal ’86, J.D. ’89 (Wiley, terson ’52, M.D. ’56 (University of Utah Skyline Spaces, by Alex MacLean ’69, $80). How big was the legal staff of the Press, $39.95). The past University of M.Arch. ’73 (Princeton Architectural Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Utah president’s memoir recalls his own Press, $50). The aerial photographer when the author (now vice president and journey from that state to Harvard, back documents how the (literally) upper class general counsel) joined it? “Oh, around home, and then again to Cambridge as lives, on green terraces, around pools, or five-foot-five,” she says. Joking aside, this director of undergraduate admissions simply through the equipment that keeps is a useful guide for nonprofits’ leaders, and then vice president for alumni affairs them cool and hydrated. board members, volunteers, and lawyers. and development in the late 1960s and early 1970s—an era of tumult, change, The Founders and Finance, by Thomas Always Looking: Essays on Art, by John and reaching out to new constituencies. K. McCraw, Straus professor of business Updike ’54, Litt.D. ’92 (Knopf, $45). The history emeritus (Harvard, $35). During an third collection (sadly, posthumous) of Howard’s Gift: Uncommon Wisdom election debate about America’s economy, the prolific author’s exemplary critical to Inspire Your Life’s Work, by Eric C. a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian revisits essays and reviews, including his 2008 Sinoway, M.P.A. ’05 (St. Martin’s, $24.99). first principles, examining the Revolutionary Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities: an The author puts into print lessons about War-era financial crises and the solutions overview of his take on the Americanness planning and taking charge of your life crafted by Alexander Hamilton, Albert of American art. from his cherished mentor, Sarofim- Gallatin, and others (immigrants all), in time Rock professor of business administra- to enable the Louisiana Purchase and to pay Loaded Words, by Marjorie Garber, Ke- tion emeritus Howard H. Stevenson, the the costs of the War of 1812. nan professor of English and of visual and guiding light of entrepreneurship studies environmental studies (Fordham University at the Business School. Open Access, by Peter Suber (MIT, Press, $26 paper). Essays on language—rich $12.95 paper). A succinct guide to digi- in surprises because they are not neces- My Husband and My Wives: A Gay tal dissemination of work free of charge sarily about the words you expect. As the Man’s Odyssey, by Charles Rowan Beye, and of copyright or licensing restrictions author notes in the introduction, “Would Ph.D. ’60 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26). (more appealing for scholars publishing you like to take a walk?” means different A retired classics professor (Stanford, Bos- in journals than, say, for authors or film- things if addressed to “(a) your dog, (b) a ton University, City University of New makers who earn a living through their hothead in a bar, or (c) the person to whom York) recounts an erotic and emotional life creative work). By the director of the you are about to propose marriage.” that includes homosexual experiences as a Harvard Open Access Project. youth, marriage to two women (producing Triumphs of Experience, by George E. four children), and a subsequent, late-life, The Tale of the Heike, translated by Vaillant, professor of same-sex marriage. Royall Tyler ’57 (Viking, $50). An immense psychiatry (Harvard, translation of the twelfth-century Japanese $27.95). A seventy- Citizen Soldier: A Life epic about the tyranny of Taira no Kiyo- fifth-year harvesting of Harry S. Truman, mori (1118-81) and the destruction of his of the Harvard Grant by Aida D. Donald, extended family. A companion to Tyler’s Study, the longitudi- RI ’74 (Basic Books, masterly translation of the earlier classic, nal examination of a $25.99). A brisk, psy- The Tale of Genji (see his Vita, “Murasaki cohort of 268 College chologically informed Shikibu: Brief life of a legendary novelist,” men. Growth, it hap- portrait of the presi- May-June 2002, page 32). pily turns out, is not dent who reshaped the arrested with age. postwar United States. From Slave Ship to Harvard, by James Donald was editor in H. Johnston (Fordham University Press, Building a Magnetic chief of Harvard Uni- $29.95). A history of an African-American Culture, by Kevin A. versity Press. family, from Yarrow Mamout’s enslaved ar- Sheridan, M.B.A. ’88 On high: The Alden,

rival in North America in 1752, proceed- L ean (McGraw-Hill, $28). A 225 Central Park ing through Robert Turner Ford’s debut at human-resources con- West, in Manhattan, lex Mac

(residentially segregated) Harvard College sultant (and mountain A from Up on the Roof

16 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

because so many buyers had overextend- money to buy big buildings and I thought ill will: at a recent premiere of the film in ed themselves on their unit mortgages. “I it would go on forever, and when they took Tampa, David and Jackie rented out two wasn’t rooting for David to keep the tower, away the money I was like, ‘Whoa.’ theaters and showed up in a party bus to because I think it was a valuable lesson “In that sense there is a happy ending, watch the movie with all of their friends), learned, in terms of the overreach,” she because you see what’s really important she still says she wouldn’t have changed says. “I think that’s the power [of the mov- to them,” Greenfield continues. “For us as anything. “I was extremely lucky because ie]. David speaks the morality tale at the viewers, it gives us a chance to think about they opened their doors wide when things end when he says, ‘We what’s important, what our values are, and were great, but they kept those doors open need to learn to live what is enough.” equally wide when things got tough,” she Visit harvardmag.com/ within our means, we Although David Siegel is now suing explains. “Jackie would often say, ‘Our story extras to watch a clip need to get back to re- Greenfield for defamation (Greenfield in- is like so many other people’s, but on a big- from the film. ality. I was using cheap sists the lawsuit is more about money than ger level and with bigger proportions.’” Vegan Hedonism Plant-based pleasure with spirit and sizzle by betsy block

ne sentence—one word, really—in the book Eating Animals by O Jonathan Safran Foer changed John Schlimm’s life. When Schlimm, Ed.M. ’02, read about “unloved” Thanksgiving turkeys, “something shifted,” he remembers. “I stopped, highlighted the word ‘unloved,’ underlined it, circled it. It mm chli

was a light-bulb moment for me.” b S His life, he says, “took on a whole new h: Bar and wonderful direction.” Not as a cook- p book author—he’d already written seven, including The Ultimate Beer hotogra

Lover’s Cookbook. Not as a teacher—he’d uthor p already taught at a local university. In- oth; A stead, that one word transformed him from the guy who had helped at his y Beadle R

brother’s meat-processing business— Am skinning deer, cutting meat, and the Straub John Schlimm, his vegan cookbooks, making sausage—into someone family, which and Presto Pesto No-Bake Lasagna who wouldn’t eat or wear animal runs one of the For Schlimm, food is all about flavor products. The son of a small-town country’s oldest and enjoyment. Vegan hedonism? Isn’t Pennsylvania butcher, Schlimm, breweries. He that a contradiction? Not with Schlimm’s who grew up in hunting country, wrote one of his recipes, filled with spices, fruits, nuts, became a vegan. That moment also first titles,The wines, and other alcoholic spirits. He calls inspired him to write two vegan Straub Beer Cook- his cookbooks “parties between covers.” cookbooks, The Tipsy Vegan (2011) book, in partner- Consider “Bruschetta on a Bender,” which and Grilling Vegan Style (2012); anoth- ship with the combines fragrant fresh thyme and oreg- er, The Cheesy Vegan, is on the way. brewery, and ano with a couple of dashes of vermouth. How did someone who never The Tipsy Vegan, “Baked & Loaded Acorn Squash” contains went to culinary school or worked in a unsurprisingly, includes some sort of al- rich fall flavors like cinnamon and nutmeg, restaurant become a cookbook author? cohol in every recipe. He also has a team warmed up by a hit of Calvados. Manda- Schlimm explains that he’s the son of two of people who help him develop and test rin oranges, water chestnuts, and ginger fantastic cooks as well as a member of recipes. dot his “Wild Rice Under the Influence,” a

Harvard Magazine 17 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

recipe kicked up in flavor by rum. chapter, “Supper Un- stores and, just like In Grilling Vegan Style, he offers a buffet of der the Stars,” col- my big-city pals, find barbecue sauces for vegetables, tofu, sei- lects 11 dinner-entrée the majority of the in- tan, and tempeh, including “King Wasabi” recipes, such as his gredients needed for with ginger, soy sauce and rum and sweet “Starry Night Tart the recipes, making and smoky “Pineapple Does the Teriyaki.” with Grilled Egg- this an easy and acces- There’s a “Grilled Picnic Pizza,” a “Presto plant, Zucchini, and sible way of eating.” Pesto No-Bake Lasagna,” seven ways to Plum Tomatoes.” For Schlimm, it’s grill potatoes, and 10 variations on tapas. “Taking out the easy to make food Schlimm runs through burgers, kebabs, meat and dairy is the sing without meat, oth desserts, and happy-hour options. One most obvious part” of dairy, or eggs. “I use Baked & Loaded Acorn Squash writing vegan recipes, fresh ingredients and y Beadle R

Schlimm notes, but Am have a blast play- there’s much more: Bruschetta on a Bender ing with spices and “Common, refined sugar is not vegan, as herbs, just as you would with meaty, it’s created using animal bone char, and dairy recipes. After all, when you think some breads, mustards, chocolate, mayon- about it, meat alone and dairy alone don’t naise, broth, Worcestershire sauce, and really have much flavor. It’s the other in- other common products are not vegan.” gredients, like the spices and herbs, the He therefore includes “pantry sections” in fruits and vegetables—not to mention his books to explain these fine details and the shot of whiskey, tequila, or vodka— point readers toward plant-based substi- that add the real magic and pop to a tutes. dish!” “I also strive to make my vegan cook- Still, aspiring to live a vegan life can oth books as small-town-friendly as possible,” be a challenge. Schlimm recalls a dinner he says, “meaning that my family, friends, party where his friend’s sister announced y Beadle R

Am and neighbors can go to our local grocery she had made a special meatless casserole

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18 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 CORN-27564 Ivy 4.563x4.75 2 col_No2-9-20-12.indd 1 7/17/12 4:17 PM just for him. It contained lots of vegetables—and cheese. “It was a huge moment “Absolutely Beautiful” for me,” he says. “I knew I could say, ‘I’m vegan, I won’t eat that,’ or I could eat a The geometer-sculptor little and then encourage everyone else to try some, too. So that’s what I did, and ev- orton C. Bradley Jr. ’33, G ’40, Bertrand Russell). The strands of formal- eryone there agreed that it was delicious had family ties, extending back ist aesthetics, of the Bauhaus at Harvard, of even without the meat.” To Schlimm— to great-grandfather Theophilus music and mathematics and still other influ- who wants everyone to start “thinking M Wylie, to Indiana Uni- a little vegan”—it was a victory because, versity. But the campus community until that night, most of the hunter types where he spent nearly all of his life he was dining with had never tried a meat- was Cambridge, not Bloomington. less meal. The Harvard where he was educat- Through a series ed had since the 1870s featured pi- of fortunate events, oneering studies in experimental Schlimm once ended Visit harvardmag. psychology and the physiology of up sitting beside Jona- com/extras for vegan perception (stemming from Wil- than Safran Foer on holiday party recipes. liam James and Hugo Münster-

Ellen DeGeneres’s television talk show. berg) and the fine arts (Charles ontague By then, thanks to Foer and that “un- Eliot Norton), and in ensuing de- loved” Thanksgiving turkey, Schlimm cades the flowering of logic in phi- was a changed man. At one point, he losophy (in the persons of Josiah looked into the camera and spoke what Royce and the towering figures, he believes will be the most perfect sen- then still in the other Cambridge,

tence of his life: “No living being, human of Alfred North Whitehead and m kevin and cavanagh m ichael or animal, should ever go through this Firebird, 1971: Morton Bradley’s life unloved.” first successful sculpture 3005 Lang HarvMag NovDec_Layout 1 9/25/12 5:55 PM Page 1

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Harvard Magazine 19 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

ences, are teased out in the essay, “Morton and then in open wire Bradley: An American Formalist,” by Lynn structures. Gamwell, who is also responsible for the vol- Gamwell places the work ume Color and Form: The Geometric Sculptures of in the context of the Swiss Morton C. Bradley Jr. (Indiana University Art Constructivists, French Museum/Indiana University Press, $30). Optical art, and American Bradley (1912-2004) bequeathed his sus- algorithmic art developed pended geometric sculptures and associat- by Ellsworth Kelly and Sol ed studies to IU—hence the origins of this LeWitt. Bradley’s sculp- publication. He for years worked in the Fogg ture, she says, “embodies Art Museum’s conservation department, the mathematical structure and published a manual for conservators, of nature and the beauty of The Treatment of Pictures (1950), that is still in pure mathematics. As such, use. Bradley began making lithograph prints his work presents us with a

of geometric forms in 1948, and progressively classical ideal that is as ap- ontague developed his own system of colors. In the pealing today as when Plato 1960s, he applied them to three-dimensional wrote in the fourth century works, exacting in their geometry and use b.c.: ‘I do not mean by beauty of color principles, initially in solid planes of form such beauty as that Lochness, 1980 of animals or pictures…but

straight lines and m kevin and cavanagh m ichael circles, and the plain and solid fig- Papillon, 2001 ures that are formed out of them by turning-lathes and rules and mea- ugly, brute-force proof. Scientists like my- sures of angles; for these I affirm to self study mathematical patterns that are be not only relatively beautiful like embodied in the natural world, and these other things, but they are eternally structures also have aesthetic qualities, such and absolutely beautiful.” as the symmetrical pattern of flowing elec- Or as Harvard’s Eric Heller, trons or the dynamism of an ocean wave.” Lawrence professor of chemis- Calling Bradley a “pio- try and professor of physics (see neer in visualizing math- ontague “Quantum Art,” January-February ematical patterns,” Hell- Visit harvardmag. 2001, page 36), notes in a foreword, er writes, “This beautiful com/extras to view “Mathematicians ‘see’ patterns of book is a tribute to an art- additional images of Bradley’s sculpture. numbers and geometric forms in ist who made mathemati- the mind’s eye. One mathematical patterns visible, and, in looking at his cal object is elegant and beauti- colorful, symmetrical sculptures, we better

ichael cavanagh and kevin m kevin and cavanagh m ichael ful, while another might be an appreciate abstract ideas.” c hapter & verse Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

Jack Holt seeks the source of “The most tion of “Profession,” by Isaac Asimov. Pub- perb fungus secretly devouring the earth difficult part of attaining perfection is lished in the July 1957 issue of Astounding and the air.’…I went down to look more finding something to do for an encore” Science Fiction, it was subsequently reprint- closely at it and found that it was a dis- (regularly credited online to “Author un- ed in the author’s 1959 collection Nine To- carded fish-tin with a red label. Was it the known”). morrows: Tales of the Near Future. Barrie less beautiful for my discovery?” Bell add- Greene was first to provide a link to one ed, “I therefore infer that the trope of the Arnold Rosenberg hopes for leads to of the many online copies of the text. red beautiful-trash item was common in the origin of the aphorism “You like be- the period and not just to be found in the cause of; you love in spite of.” Pointers “red Coke can in the snow” (July- Beat poets of San Francisco.” are welcome. August). Dorrie Bell noted, from Ngaio Marsh’s Clutch of Constables (1969): “I re- Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter Programming day (September-Octo- member that on a walk…I looked into and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware ber). A tip from E.J. Barnes led (courtesy a dell and saw, deep down, an astonish- Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to of Google and Wikipedia) to the identifica- ing spot of scarlet. I thought: ‘Ah! A su- [email protected].

20 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section

“An Irish Celebration of the Winter Sol- stice” tells the story of immigrants travel- Extracurriculars ing to America in 1907. Sanders Theatre. Seasonal Harvard Square’s dance The Game, #129 Holiday Happenings http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/dance www.gocrimson.com/sports/fball/index www.harvardsquare.com 617-495-8683 epertory theater • November 17 at Harvard Stadium. 617-491-3434 Harvard Dance Center, 60 Garden Street. Harvard Glee Club • November 1-30 • November 29 - December 1 at 8 p.m. http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice The annual celebration offers concerts, Compositions by artist-in-residence John merican R 617-496-2222 historic tours, and exhibitions. See web- Jasperse, director of his own company in • November 16 at 8 p.m. site for details. New York City. Harvard-Yale Football Concert at Sanders • November 24, 5-6:30 p.m. The annual Hol- Theatre. iday Tree Lighting at the Charles Hotel. theater Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Music, food, and a cameo by Santa Claus. American Repertory Theater or the visual arts; and the A Choral Society • December 8, 1-2 p.m. Everybody Loves www.americanrepertorytheater.org

http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice Latkes Party. Free potato pancakes, along 617-547-8300 (box office) enter f 617-496-2222 with holiday music and storytelling. 617-495-2668 (general number) • November 30 at 8 p.m. Brattle Square. Loeb Drama Center arpenter C • December 1 at 3 p.m. Memorial Church 64 Brattle Street “Christmas in Cambridge” concert. First Christmas Carol Services • December 5 through January 20 (2013) Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden Street. www.memorialchurch.harvard.edu Pippin. A novel staging of the 1972 musi- Harvard Ceramics Program 617-495-5508 cal that poses the question: live an ordi- or astrophysics; C Holiday Show and Sale • December 16, 5 p.m.; December 17, 8 p.m. nary life or aim for a flash of singular glory? http://www.ofa.fas.harvard.edu/ceramics Christmas Eve service at 11 p.m. Club Oberon 617-495-8680; 219 Western Avenue, Allston The Christmas Revels www.cluboberon.com • December 6, 3-8 p.m. http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice 617-496-8004; 2 Arrow Street. • December 7-9, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. 617-496-2222 • November 4 at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. This annual event showcases works by www.revels.org/calendar/the christmas Boom Boom’s Bow. An interactive jazz - - harvardt to right: center f dozens of Greater Boston artists, from be- revels; 617-972-8300 romp for the whole family. For ages 3 to 10 f • ginners to professionals. December 14-27 (and their adult caregivers). From le Left to right: Art from the lecture “Strange Planetary Vistas from Kepler,” at the Center for Astrophysics; Man in the Sola Hat (c. 1985), by Sooni Taraporevala ’79, at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts; actress Patina Miller in Pippin, at the American Repertory Theater.

Harvard Magazine 20A Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section

Document1Document1 11/20/03 11/20/03 11:51 11:51 AM AM Page Page 1 1 Document1 11/20/03 11:51 AM Page 1 lifecare living is as good as it looks. At Brookhaven program ceramics harvard Brookhaven at Lexington offers an abundance of opportunities for Platters, mugs, vases, and whimsical intellectual growth, artistic expression and personal wellness. Our residents wall hangings—the annual Harvard share your commitment to live a vibrant lifestyle in a lovely community. Ceramics Program holiday sale has Call today to set up an appointment for a tour! it all—and more. A Full-Service Lifecare Retirement Community • November 5 www.brookhavenatlexington.org The Last Butch Standing features the (781) 863-9660 • (800) 283-1114 comedienne Lea DeLaria’s take on being “a bad ass dyke daddy in the post-Ellen” era. For those 18 years and older only. • December 14 at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Winterbloom. Four women singer-song- ASSISTEDASSISTEDLIVINGLIVINGRETIREMENTRETIREMENTCOMMUNITYCOMMUNITY writers share their cultural traditions ASSISTED LIVING RETIREMENT COMMUNITY Retirement Community through stories and songs (in Hebrew, Ti- Here’sAssisted what Living people are Here’sHere’s Memorywhat what people peopleCare are are betan, and German) with a holiday theme. sayingsayingsaying about about about us. us. us. Co-sponsored with Club Passim. What Do Harvard Alumni music Have in Common? • November 2 at 8 p.m. Cadbury Commons Ballet classes: http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice age 3 through teen, 617-496-2222 An Uncommon Senior Residence “Harvard Jazz Heroes” honors Eric Jack- adult and pointe. son, Steve Schwartz, and Fred Taylor, with The Harvard alumni who the Harvard Jazz Bands. Name:Name:MiltonMilton R. R. Places available in classes: Occupation:choseOccupation: CadburyName:PostalPostal Supervisor,Milton CommonsSupervisor, R. Retired Retired Lowell Hall. Occupation: Postal Supervisor, Retired Hobbies:Hobbies:Reading,Reading, Walking, Walking, Exercising Exercising www.freshpondballet.com • November 4 at 4 p.m. mayHobbies: haveReading, retired Walking, from Exercising Lifestyle:Lifestyle:Independent,Independent, Active Active http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice work,ChoiceChoiceLifestyle: ofbut Senior/Assisted of notIndependent,Senior/Assisted from life. Living: Active Living: The differenceChoiceCadbury ofCadbury Senior/Assisted is Commons people–those Commons Living: 617-496-2222. Cadbury Commons “Bands of the Beanpot” features the Har- “Therewho“There is alive is stable a stable here and and gentle and gentle atmosphere the atmosphere Nina Alonso, Director, FPB of “There helpof help isand a and stable empathy empathy and throughout gentle throughout atmosphere the the vard Wind Ensemble, among other groups. of help and empathy throughout the 1798a Mass Ave community.staffcommunity. that I feel Iserves feelassured assured thatthem. thatI am I Ourpartam part of of Fenway Center, Northeastern University. others’community.others’ lives, lives, as I theyfeel as theyareassured ofare mine. ofthat mine. For I am Formyself, part myself, of programs will engage your Cambridge, MA 02140 • I feelothers’I feel that lives, that Cadbury as Cadbury they Commonsare Commonsof mine. provides For provides myself, a a November 9 at 8 p.m. wellI interests,well feeltrained trained that and Cadbury andcaringour caring professionalgroup Commons group of people of provides people who who a 617.491.5865 http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice arewell interestedare trained interested in and my in caring welfare.”my welfare.” group of people who arestaff interested is sensitive in my welfare.” to your needs. 617-496-2222 CallCall (617) (617) 868-0575 868-0575 to arrange to arrange a personal a personal The Chiara String Quartet performs tour,CallCalltour, (617) or(617) visit or 868-0575 visit868-0575 www.cadburycommons.com www.cadburycommons.com to arrangeto arrange a personal a personal tour, tour, or visit www.cadburycommons.com works by Mozart, Dvo˘rák, and Witold WhereWhereor visitThe www.cadburycommons.comThe Emphasis Emphasis Is On Is OnLiving Living Where The Emphasis Is On Living Lutosławski. Sponsored by the Harvard 66 Sherman6666 Sherman Sherman Street, Street, Street, Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge, 66 Sherman Street, Cambridge, EQUAL EQUAL MA 02140◆ ◆ (617) 868-0575 HOUSING HOUSING Music Department. John Knowles Paine MAMA 02140 02140 (617)• (617)868-0575 868-0575 OPPTYEQUALOPPTY ◆ HOUSING MA 02140 (617) 868-0575 OPPTY

20B November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 R R R ond eosinddo ndes idesid m m men en en t t t m m m i i i a a a a a a l l l H H H

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Concert Hall (behind the Science Center The Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus and the realist filmmaker. The artist often uses in Harvard’s North Yard) Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra perform exaggerated sounds, animates odd objects • December 1 at 8 p.m. Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem. through clay animation techniques, and http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice uses food in unusual ways. 617-496-2222 Nature and science “Music of German Composers” played by The Arnold Arboretum exhibitions & Events the Harvard Wind Ensemble. www.arboretum.harvard.edu; 617-384-5209 Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Lowell Hall. • November 15, 6:30-8:30 p.m. www.ves.fas.harvard.edu; 617-495-3251 Sanders Theatre • November 17, 9-11 a.m. • Through December 20 http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice Understanding Mosses. Curatorial fel- Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India. Pho- 617-496-2222 low Stephanie Stuber examines the bio- tographs by Sooni Taraporevala ’79 offers • November 1-18 logical and anatomical wonders of na- a rare look at the Parsis, whose ancestors www.hrgsp.org; 617-938-9761 ture’s luxurious green carpeting. sailed from Iran to India in a.d. 936. The Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sul- • November 29, 7-8:30 p.m. • November 1 through December 20. livan Players offer The Mikado: or, The Town Audio Ecology: Acoustic Signals in In- • November 15 at 6 p.m., artist reception. of Titipu. sects, with Harvard biology professor Christian Boltanski: 6 Septembres is a • December 1 at 8 p.m. Brian D. Farrell. mélange of projected archival newscasts, The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra pres- The Harvard-Smithsonian Center headlines, and images from events that ents Britten’s Four Sea Interludes. for Astrophysics occurred on each of the artist’s birthdays • December 8 at 8 p.m. www.cfa.harvard.edu/events/mon.html from 1944 through 2004. http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice 617-495-7461; 60 Garden Street Harvard Art Museums 617-496-2222 Observatory Night lectures at 7:30 p.m., fol- www.harvardartmuseums.org lowed by stargazing, if weather permits. 617-495-9400 Photojournalist Tim Laman talks at the • November 15 • December 4 at 6-8 p.m. Harvard Museum of Natural History “Strange Planetary Vistas from Kepler” ArtisTalk: Katharina Sieverding. The about his successful mission to capture on film all 39 known species of birds of with Hubble fellow Josh Carter. ground-breaking Czech-born German paradise in the wild. • December 6 artist explores her own work with Ly- Special viewing event: “Winter Sky Won- nette Roth, Daimler-Benz associate cura- ders,” hosted by CFA docent John Sheff. tor at the Busch-Reisinger Museum. • December 5 at 3:30 p.m. film A discussion on “People Everyday: The The Harvard Film Archive Vantage of Kerry James Marshall” (see http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa below), with Weyerhaeuser curator of f natural history 617-495-4700 prints Susan Dackerman and Marcyliena Visit the website for a complete listing of Morgan, professor of African and African festivals and showtimes. American studies and executive director • November 16 of Harvard’s Hiphop Archive. The Photographic Memory of Ross McEl- • Through December 29 aman/harvard museum o

im L wee. The Harvard professor filmed his Recent Acquisitions, Part III: Kerry T return to the Brittany coast, James Marshall highlights the artist’s where he lived, worked, and 12-panel, large-scale woodcut print, Un- loved in 1972, in an effort to titled (1998/2007), which explores society’s better understand his twenty- embedded legacy of racism. something son, Adrian. Both Peabody Museum of Archaeology McElwees will be on hand to and Ethnology discuss the project. www.peabody.harvard.edu; 617-496-1027 • December 7-10 • November 28 at 6 p.m. Jafar Panahi. Showcases the “Apocalypse Soon? How the World Ends work of the imprisoned Irani- (or Doesn’t) in Religions of the World,” an filmmaker, includingThis Is with David Carrasco, Rudenstine profes- Not a Film, which was smuggled sor for the study of Latin America. out of that country in 2011. Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street • December 14-17 Harvard Museum of Natural History Jan Svankmajer. Screenings www.hmnh.harvard.edu of works by this Czech sur- 617-495-3045

20D November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section

Schlesinger Library ticles and writers who are honoring them. www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/schlesinger- • Continuing: “Siting Julia: Julia Child library; 617-495-8647 Centenary Exhibition” traces her prodi- 10 Garden Street, Radcliffe Yard gious life and career through the library’s • November 13 extensive collection of Child’s papers and “Travelers in Hiding: Telling a Story of other items. Central Americans in Mexico,” by Alma Guillermoprieto, RI ’07, looks at the 2010 Events listings also appear in the Univer- murders of 72 migrants traveling to the sity Gazette, accessible via this magazine’s northern border by bus, and at those ar- website, www.harvardmagazine.com. harvard art museums art harvard Deutschland, by photographer Katharina Sieverding, who discusses her work at the Harvard Art Museums

• November 19 at 6 p.m. “Birds of Paradise: Exploring a Wonder of the World,” a lecture and book signing with National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman, Ph.D. ’94, the first person to photograph (during 18 expeditions across New Guinea) all 39 species of this diverse bird in the wild. The Semitic Museum www.fas.harvard.edu/~semitic 617-495-4631 • Continuing: The Houses of Ancient Is- rael: Domestic, Royal, Divine features a full-scale replica of an Iron Age (ca. 1200- 586 b.c.e.) village abode.

Lectures Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University www.radcliffe.edu; 617-496-8600 • December 3 at 5 p.m. “Hormonally Active Pollutants: What Are They, What Can They Do, and How Do We Know They Are Out There?” by Joan Ruderman, Nelson professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School. Fay House, 10 Garden Street • December 10 at 4:15 p.m. Novelist Margot Livesey, RI ’13, delivers the Julia S. Phelps Annual Lecture in Art and Humanities. Topic to be announced. Radcliffe Gymnasium, 10 Garden Street

Harvard Magazine 20E Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 explorations

The Best of Bestowing

The “gifts you can keep unwrapping” • by Nell Porter Brown

juvenating activities. “Christmas had become something to endure as much as it has become something to enjoy,” he wrote. “The people we were talking to wanted so much more out of Christmas: more music, more companionship, more contemplation, more time outdoors, more love. And they realized that to get it, they needed less of some other things: not so many gifts, not so many obligatory parties, not so much hus- tle.” In the interest of understanding more about what gifts are actually meaningful, and why, we asked several professors a simple question: What is the best gift you have ever given? As Lewis Hyde, an associate of the Hu- long with festive food and iety. Some people resent feeling obligated manities Center, writes in The Gift, the family gatherings, the holidays to participate in structured giving, dislike focus here is not on those given “in spite bring the inevitable social ritu- holiday celebrations, lack the time to shop, or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of A als of gift-giving. Some enjoy the or are simply put off by the collective con- servility or obligation” but on “the gift art of finding or making the perfect pres- sumerist frenzy. we long for, the gift that, when it comes, ents, and wrapping them with elaborate Bill McKibben ’82 speaks to some of speaks commandingly to the soul and ir- bright bows. But for many others, gifting these concerns in his 1998 Hundred Dol- resistibly moves us.” is an onerous, thankless task, often involv- lar Holiday, which resonates all the more ing purchases for people barely known. And today. The book chronicles efforts by his Assistant professor of philosophy Rus- even for close friends and family, the ques- local church to rediscover the true joys of sell Jones does not particularly care about tion arises: What is a suitable, meaningful Christmas (and any special occasion can getting or giving presents or, in general, gift? Quickly followed by: Is it affordable? be substituted here) by limiting spend- about celebrating birthdays, holidays, or Financial pressures only increase the anx- ing and making room for other, more re- anniversaries: “I just never got overly ex-

20F November - December 2012 Illustration by James Steinberg Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Vice President 1730 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, MA 02138 617 245-4044

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gifting the shell was also kept intact. “To feel the love of people whom we love The significance of the gift, Hyde continues, is also connected to a story Neruda is a fire that feeds our life.” tells in the essay “Childhood and Poetry” that is “related to his own mythology cited about this stuff.” The single exception friends had helped arrange a meeting with about what it is to be an artist.” (Hyde came about a decade ago, when he bought the poet at the Algonquin Hotel. ends The Gift with Neruda’s tale.) In it, a clear glass vase and some flowers for his “Neruda was a collector, collected sev- Neruda is a boy in rural Chile standing by girlfriend, Emily. “It wasn’t particularly ex- eral things,” Hyde begins. “The two I knew a small hole in a fence when the hand of travagant, it cost maybe $40 or $60,” he re- about were ship’s figureheads and sea- a boy appears, placing a small white toy calls, “but I gave it to her with the promise shells.” The day of their meeting, Neruda sheep on the edge of the hole. The boy runs that I would refill it.” had been out walking in New York City away before there is any contact, but the The couple are now married. The vase and had found an antique shop where he gesture prompts Neruda to run to his own sits in a prominent place on a living-room bought a figurehead. “He had it there in house and pick out an adored treasure, a table. “I asked her, and she didn’t quite re- the hotel, in his suite, where there was a pinecone, and put it in the hole for the boy. member, whether I had said I would fill it living room with wingback chairs. The fig- “To feel the love of people whom we love regularly, in which case I have not fulfilled ure was sitting in one of these chairs and is a fire that feeds our life,” Neruda writes. my promise,” Russell says. “But if I said I Pablo was in another and I was in a third,” “But to feel the affection that comes from would fill it often, then I have done that.” Hyde recalls. “The figurehead had a bag those whom we do not know, from those The flowers tend to come at times of ac- over her head. I always imagined that the unknown to us, who are watching over cord, but not necessarily to make up for shop keeper had asked, ‘Would you like a our sleep and solitude, over our dangers disagreements. Always he brings them bag?’ When we sat down, Pablo said, ‘We and weaknesses—that is something still home and hands them to her to put in the must take that off,’ and in some strange greater and more beautiful because it wid- vase with some water. They are the gift way that wooden woman joined our con- ens out the boundaries of our being, and that keeps on giving—“although imper- versation.” unites all living things...Just as I once left fectly,” he says, smiling. A symbol of the Hyde took a cloth bag out of his pocket the pinecone by the fence, I have since left couple’s continuing commitment. “They that held his own gift to Neruda: a fossil my words on the door of so many people remind us that we are still here together, seashell, a pyritized spiriferid brachiopod. who were unknown to me, people in pris- all these years later.” His uncle had given it to him as a boy “be- on, or hunted, or alone.” Hyde, an essayist, poet, and translator, cause he knew it would intrigue me,” Hyde is a former director of undergraduate cre- adds. “You can hold it in your fist and it is Giving money and things away, even to ative writing at Harvard and now teaches covered in fool’s gold. They are not partic- strangers, has the capacity to make us art- English at Kenyon College. The best mod- ularly rare, but they are striking. I always ists. But it also can make us feel happier, ac- ern gift exchanges are those that are of in- thought it was so special.” Neruda imme- cording to research by Michael Norton, trinsic value, he says, “where the gift somehow recognizes the re- The worst gifts are those that “seem to be a discharge cipient—it is a sign that ‘I know who you are and am thinking of obligation: there is no intimacy involved.” about you.’ It’s about actually seeing who the other person is.” One rea- diately recognized the shell and took out a associate professor of business administra- son so many gifts are “irritating,” Hyde book on the subject and showed his guest tion at Harvard Business School. “You see adds, is that most do not indicate that the more specimens. “I think he was tickled,” this phrase a lot, ‘Money can’t buy happi- giver “did any reflection around who you Hyde says. “Then he gave me a phono- ness,’” Norton said in a 2011 TEDx lecture. are.” The worst gifts are those that “seem graph recording of him reading some of his “In fact, it is wrong.” Norton has a doctor- to be a discharge of obligation: there is no poems. There was an exchange.” ate in psychology and studies consumer be- intimacy involved.” As an emerging poet and writer, Hyde havior. People who win the lottery tend to Hyde’s own best gift was handed over in felt grateful to artists who gave of them- spend all the money and then go into debt, a hotel room in 1966. That year the Chil- selves, of their creative, artistic gifts. he reported, or their families and friends ean poet Pablo Neruda had been allowed “Neruda was one of the poets who had ask for money, which spoils their social to enter the United States for the Inter- affected me in precisely this way. His relationships. Norton and his fellow re- national PEN conference. He also read at powers to say things I had not been able searchers found that “People who spend the 92nd Street Y, an event that Hyde, then to say myself led me to feel a sort of spiri- money on other people [instead of them- only 21, traveled from the Midwest to hear. tual debt,” Hyde explains. “So this is a selves] were happier,” he told the TED audi- He had translated one of Neruda’s books, little, concrete gift but it was an expres- ence. “The specific way you spend on other and, in an effort to get it published, Hyde’s sion of enormous gratitude.” The chain of people isn’t nearly as important as the fact

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that you spend on other people…You can do husband after graduate school, when they Paulsell. “She would take the stiff card- small, trivial things and yet still get the ben- were both working so hard that they rare- board that came home from the cleaners efit of doing this.” Moreover, this was true ly saw each other during the week. With in my dad’s button-down shirts and write across the nations studied, including the his thirtieth birthday looming, she nixed a words on them and we used them like U.S., Canada, and Uganda: “Giving money party in favor of an experience: as a third- flashcards.” Her father was a historian of away makes you happier than keeping it for generation Greek-American, he had al- Christianity and specialized in the monas- yourself.” (Norton and coauthor Elizabeth ways dreamed of visiting his grandparents’ tic tradition, including prayerful reading. Dunn discuss the many ways people misun- homeland. Recognizing his deep desire, Paulsell often sat with him in the backyard derstand how to wring joy from every dollar but knowing that “he could not see how to reading psalms out loud: they discussed in their forthcoming Happy Money: The Science make that possible,” Gay secretly took on what they meant as he copied lines that of Spending, due out this spring.) planning the logistics and soon presented struck him as important into a notebook, Various members of the University com- him with a bag. Inside was a copy of Rob- one of his lifelong practices. munity are finding creative ways to act on ert Fagles’s translation of The Odyssey, a At her first Christmas back from col- Norton’s findings. “The best gifts I have phrasebook to supplement her husband’s lege, her mother gave her the first volume ever given,” says Nir Eyal, associate pro- school-level Greek vocabulary—and air- of Virginia Woolf’s letters. “I remember fessor in global health and social medicine plane tickets. unwrapping it and going upstairs into the at Harvard Medical School, “are to people Throughout the trip, “he got out his bedroom and being under blankets the I do not know.” He and his wife, English phrasebook and tried conversations with whole day reading,” Paulsell says. She still professor Leah Price, are part of the inter- people, and there were lots of stories reads, teaches—and writes—about Woolf; national group www.givingwhatwecan. org, whose members pledge to give 10 “Giving money away makes you happier percent or more of their pretax income to cost-effective global health and poverty than keeping it for yourself.” causes. “We give not in order to feel sat- isfied, although recent research suggests about his grandparents living in different her book on the author and religion is due that giving can give you greater happi- places we visited,” Gay says. “It was an ex- to the publisher this spring. “My parents ness,” Eyal says. “But the gift is about the perience that connected him on a visceral kind of gave me my life, which ended up other person.” level with his cultural heritage, with who being in school with a lot of reading and He serves on the steering committee of he is,” she explains. “And for me, being a writing. It was a very great gift that I have the campus-wide Program in Ethics and spectator and watching that happen, was tried to pass on to my daughter, who is a Health and is also the faculty adviser for a terrific.” They also ended up taking what musician and has a lot of interests and new undergraduate-run group called Har- turned into a strenuous trip on buses a lot more choices than I did as a kid, in vard High Impact Philanthropy (http:// and ferries to obtain holy water that his terms of technology and how to spend her harvardhip.org) that supports donations mother (a breast-cancer survivor) had re- time.” to global-health and poverty causes and quested “from a particular rural church on One book Paulsell recommended that also encourages the 10 percent pledge. a particular island off Athens,” she adds, her daughter fell in love with was Dorothy Guest speakers at their events have in- “and then traveling all the way back to Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness. “I cluded Kolokotrones University Professor Michigan to give it to her. ” would be so thrilled if my daughter felt Paul Farmer, of Partners In Health, Rachel Gifts among generations are especially that Day, an example of how you can take Glennerster, of MIT’s Poverty Action Lab, resonant, perhaps because they signal the your life and do something radical with and Jeffrey Sachs, of the Earth Institute reality that someday the gift, or its mem- it, opened up all kinds of life questions at Columbia University. “I think we do ory, will remain even though the people for her, like the ones Day poses: How can not realize how rich we are,” Eyal asserts. engaged in the exchange have gone. Steph- we create a society in which it is easier for “We compare ourselves to others like us anie Paulsell, Houghton professor of the people to be good? What kind of differ- and think we are relatively middle class or practice of ministry studies at Harvard ence can one person make?” Her daughter even poorer. You would be surprised if you Divinity School, points as an example to may not devour books the way her mother looked at what you have even when you the greatest, and most intangible, gift she has, but she does appreciate them—and give away 10 percent. You would hardly ever received—appreciation for the power the spirit of delving into life’s deeper ques- miss it and you could save thousands from of books and reading “to unlock, enlarge, tions. “I want to give her the richness, life-threatening diseases.” and open up the world, and your place in comfort, community, and conversation Realizing the dreams of one’s nearest it” —which she is now attempting to pass that go with a life drenched with books,” and dearest is also a profound gift. Pro- on to her 15-year-old daughter. Paulsell says. “There is something about fessor of government and of African and “I grew up sitting next to my mother, encountering ideas about how to live life African American studies Claudine Gay having her read to me, and she taught me through reading that make it a lifelong gift says her best gift was a surprise for her to read very early on by doing that,” says you can keep unwrapping.”

20J November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 hospitals, according to the Boston Redevel- Boston Hospitals opment Authority. The clinical care provided by these in- Curing disease, improving lives • by scott p. edwards stitutions is widely recognized. For more than 20 years, U.S. News & World Report has published a list of the top hospitals in the oston is a mecca of medicine, corridor, houses many leading biotechnology United States, and Mass General and BWH home to some of the most presti- companies, providing both the brainpower regularly appear on its “honor roll.” In its gious hospitals and medical schools, and the cutting-edge research and product 2011 installment, Mass General was rated B physicians and medical scientists in development necessary for quality care. the number-two hospital in the country— the world. Since the momentous day in 1846 Boston proper is also home to more its highest ranking ever—and ranked na- when William Morton, a local dentist, for than 20 hospitals—from giants like Mass tionally in 16 adult and four pediatric spe- the first time publicly demonstrated the General, Boston Children’s Hospital, and cialties. BWH, eighth on the honor roll, was use of inhaled ether as a surgical anesthetic Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) to ranked nationally in 12 adult categories, in Massachusetts General Hospital’s now- specialty institutions such as Arbour Hos- while Children’s was rated the best pediat- famous Ether Dome, the city has seen many pital for psychiatric care and Jewish Me- ric hospital in the country. The Dana-Far- medical firsts, including the first fertiliza- morial Hospital for long-term care. Dozens ber Cancer Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess tion of an ovum in a test tube and the first of smaller community and specialty hospi- Medical Center (BIDMC), Massachusetts successful human-organ transplant. Today it tals lie within miles of the city’s limits. In Eye and Ear Infirmary, and Spaulding Reha- ranks as a preeminent center for healthcare all, these hospitals produce billions of dol- bilitation Hospital also received top rank- and research. The city and its environs are lars in revenue each year, contributing to ings in medical specialty categories. home to top colleges and universities, and the local, state, and regional economies. In But Boston hospitals derive their repu- eastern Massachusetts, inside the Route 495 fact, 13 of Boston’s 50 largest employers are tation as well from the quality of their

Opening Fall, 2012

Harvard Magazine 20K Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section

scientific research, as is evident in one and supports the necessary clinical trials cology and professor of pediatrics, directs metric that determines research strength: for new therapies. Dana-Farber, for exam- the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at National Institutes of Health (NIH) fund- ple, runs one of the largest cancer clinical- Children’s. His contributions include two ing. Mass General (with $343.8 million in trial programs in the country. Boston has Science Magazine “Top Ten Breakthroughs” NIH grants), BWH, Dana-Farber, BIDMC, become the place where many other scien- in stem-cell biology that have provided and Children’s were the top five recipients tists come to learn. insight into improved therapies for many of NIH research dollars. That funding en- Among the luminaries of Boston re- diseases (see “Stem-cell Science,” July- ables fruitful collaboration between ba- search, two hospital-based scientists August 2004, page 36). He is also an inter- sic scientists and clinical researchers that stand out. George Daley, professor of bio- national advocate for responsible, ethical helps generate new ideas in basic research logical chemistry and molecular pharma- oversight of human stem-cell research. At BWH’s Center for Neurologic Diseases, Coates professor of neurologic diseases Dennis Selkoe’s work focuses on trans- lating lab discoveries on the causes and mechanisms of Alzheimer’s into thera- peutic approaches (see “Diagnosing De- mentia,” May-June 2000, page 18). His contributions include identifying the neu- rofibrillary tangles that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s and their relationship to the tau protein, another key component of the disease. The sheer physical presence of the city’s hospitals, which continue to add beds and update their technology, underlines their clinical and scientific importance. At the heart of Mass General, for example, the new 530,000-square-foot Lunder Build- ing provides 28 procedure and operating rooms, enhancing services in specialties such as neurology, neurosurgery, radia- INVEST IN tion oncology, and emergency medicine. Gift annuities provide you with guaranteed, ﬁ xed income for Dana-Farber’s Yawkey Center for Can- LONGER, life. Contact us to learn more: cer Care houses adult treatment centers Mary Moran Perry and an expanded clinical research center [email protected] to support complex, early-stage clinical HEALTHIER 1-800-922-1782 studies, among other facilities. BWH’s 350,000-square-foot Shapiro Cardiovas- LIVES cular Center offers sophisticated imaging equipment, dedicated endovascular and Harvard Medical School neuroscientists Rachel Wilson, PhD, electrophysiology procedure rooms, and 16 a MacArthur Genius Award recipient, and Bernardo Sabatini, operating rooms that offer minimally inva- MD, PhD, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, sive and image-guided technology, as well are unraveling complex neurodegenerative disorders like as robotic surgery. Children’s has plans to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. expand its main building by enlarging the emergency department, increasing radiol- JOIN THEM IN MAKING AN IMPACT FOR THE GREATER ogy capacity, and providing additional in- GOOD WITH A CHARITABLE GIFT ANNUITY. patient rooms to meet the future needs of specific subspecialties. These and other, smaller, building projects offer further evidence that even as the Try our free online gift calculator at http://hms.harvard.edu/calculator. healthcare landscape changes, Boston hospitals’ commitment to quality medical care and research to improve patients’ lives and cure disease remains firm. •

20L November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 HARVARD SQUARE BUSINESS ASSOCIATION ADVERTISING SECTION 9/25/12 9:24 AM

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row of empty as expected, but was nothing unusual. We colored-glass did fall in love with the perfectly crispy vases. Noth- thin French fries, however, spiced with ing lends much nuanced Espelette pepper powder (from character, al- the Basque region) and accompanied by a though all is yummy pimento aïoli ($7). certainly hand- The fries, beet salad, and the duck en- somely “high trée ($31) were clear standouts. A generous end.” Perhaps portion of juicy seared duck breast came the sense of re- with soft triangles of house-made potato straint came gnocchi and nicely salted sautéed spin- more from the ach, all in a lavender-enhanced jus (just the crowd the night right arid sweetness) with a sprinkling of we were there: toasted hazelnuts and pea tendrils on top. nice enough, The tagliatelle ($26) was served in a small, but a bit buttoned-up. Some deep bowl that looked as if it were meant might have benefited from for a child well-enough behaved to land

f bistro du midi another glass of excellent a fancy dinner with her parents. It had a wine chosen from the 26- handful of mussels in the shell, some cala- page, hardbound list. mari, and a small amount of chopped-up courtesy o If a more lively, casual sea beans: green stalks with a briny flavor mood is desired post-shop- that looked like a cross between leggy ping or matinées, eat at the seaweed and asparagus. The dish had too bar or café on the first floor, much fat (cream or butter), a dearth of sea- once home to the Boston fa- food, and was not worth the price. vorite Biba. The café is open Here it must also be added that we all day with a very good found the waitress pushy. She pointedly menu of its own: the classic asked if we’d like more side dishes after hose looking for reliably good, croque-monsieur ($13), for example, and we’d already ordered two starters, two rich French food in a tasteful mi- the not-to-be-missed French fries (more entrées, the fries, and the special Grand lieu would do well to dine at Bis- on those later). The full restaurant menu is Marnier soufflé she had recommended. T tro du Midi this winter. The well- also available at the bar after 5 p.m. The check was also put on the table be- designed lighting is a combination of low Upstairs, the delicious, fresh salad of fore we’d even started dessert, with a gra- and sparkling—flattering and festive. And marinated golden and red beets (tender tuitous, “But take your time.” (The many diners facing the large windows on one wall bites) started off the night with balls of busmen, by contrast, were relaxed and are treated to pretty views of trees and the tangy Vermont goat cheese and frisée, friendly.) Public Garden. all dressed in a light lemon vinaigrette The soufflé ($10) was more like a cus- Try to sit near the fireplace: it warms ($12). We spread the cheese on spongy tard than a cake, but expertly made, as was what can, despite the luminance and comfy white bread that came in a small bucket, the citrusy sauce: both predictably deli- upholstered chairs, feel like an impersonal along with foot-long rosemary-laced cious. Bistro du Midi is a fine dining spot, space. Cream-colored walls prevail, ac- breadsticks. The cros- no doubt. It was our fault cented by innocuous art and, in one spot, a tini with Kalamata olive Bistro du Midi for anticipating some- Ambient lighting and comfy chairs star in tapenade and artichoke 272 Boylston Street, Boston thing more au courant. the second-floor dining room. dips ($9) tasted good, 617-426-7878 v n.p.b. www.bistrodumidi.com 20P November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Labor, Interrupted Cesareans, “cascading interventions,” and finding a balance of sensible care by Nell Lake

n May 2003 came the joyous birth of Prairie Cummings Resch, Birth and the actions surrounding it—medical and otherwise— first child of Zoe Cummings Resch ’92. All had gone according evoke strong emotions. The discussion is often framed ideologically to plan: Resch lay down on a surgical table. An anesthesiologist as a matter of nature versus technology and which side knows best, inserted an analgesic into her spine, and she became impervious or in stark political and economic terms as a contest of power and to pain below her waist. The obstetrician pressed a No. 10 blade money. The issue of C-sections, in particular, is much contested. into Resch’s lower abdomen, and made a six-inch horizontal It’s useful to see cesareans’ ascendance as a result of the ways cut. The doctor divided the skin, stanched blood, and, reach- doctors, patients, and hospitals perceive and react to risk—and of ing Resch’s large abdominal muscle, parted it. He slipped his knife how medicine has developed in this context. Understanding such Ithrough the opening, and cut into the peritoneum, the thin mem- interactive reasons, and responding thoughtfully to them, experts brane that lines the abdominal cavity. He sliced into Resch’s uterus. say, could help reduce the procedure’s use. A medical resident reached in and pulled Prairie out feet first; this baby was in breech position, upside down in the womb. n 1985, amid increasing disparity among nations in the number of Resch felt “a lot of rough pushing and pulling,” a “painless suc- cesarean births, the World Health Organization (WHO) set out tion sensation,” as if her body were “a tar pit the baby was wrest- Ito determine an optimal rate. After reviewing the percentage of ed from.” She heard the doctor say to the resident: “Hold her up pregnancies with complications best resolved by C-section, WHO by the hips,” and Resch peered down. She saw her daughter for announced that a cesarean rate of 15 percent was ideal—about one- the first time, wet and squirming. Prairie wailed. Resch’s husband half the current U.S. rate. The 15 percent rate, WHO reasoned, held the baby next to Resch’s cheek. Resch felt “overwhelmed by would optimally prevent childbirth injuries and deaths, but many emotions”—“joy, awe, anxiety, relief, surprise.” She gave thanks women and babies would avoid unnecessary and potentially harm- for her healthy baby, and for modern obstetrical care. ful surgery. WHO has since modified this specific recommendation, In the next six years, Resch would have two more babies—each stating in 2009 that “the optimum rate is unknown,” but that “both by C-section, despite uncomplicated pregnancies. She says she very low and very high rates of cesarean section can be dangerous.” doesn’t regret any of these surgeries: she has three healthy chil- Most U.S. experts—whether high-risk obstetricians or home- dren and each surgery “went well.” But her story and those of a birth midwives—agree that the U.S. rate is higher than medically number of other women shed light on why one-third of Ameri- necessary and acknowledge that many women are undergoing ma- can babies now enter the world via the knife, in operating rooms, jor surgery for avoidable reasons. Jeffrey Ecker, M.D. ’88, professor ringed by technicians. In 1970, only 5 percent of American chil- of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology, is a high-risk dren were born this way. obstetrician at Massachusetts General Hospital and director of his Obstetrics in modern America is a contentious subject in general. department’s quality and safety program. A few years ago, working

Photograph by Matt Scherf/iStock Images Harvard Magazine 21 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, he compared C-section rates among the One-third of American babies now enter the world commonwealth’s hospitals. The study, like similar ones in other states, found great disparities: via the knife, in operating rooms, ringed by techni- Massachusetts hospitals showed as much as a threefold variation in frequency of cesareans. cians. In 1970, only 5 percent were born this way. These disparate rates, Ecker says, “can’t all be optimal,” and, he adds, it’s “certainly very difficult to demonstrate that emergency C-section, which confirmed her fears: Houck did have higher cesarean rates are associated with better outcomes.” placental abruption. “Potentially,” Houck says, “before we had Demographic changes and shifts in maternal health may have modern medicine, somebody in my position would have died, and contributed to the rise in the use of C-sections in recent decades. the baby would have died.” Pregnant women, overall, have become older and heavier, and older, Many cesareans happen, though, for reasons more complex. heavier women undergo more C-sections. But such factors don’t ac- During her first pregnancy, Zoe Resch had hoped and prepared count for all the differences shown in Ecker’s study, which sought for natural childbirth; with her husband, she had attended natu- to control for them by looking only at pregnancies that had pro- ral birthing classes, learned breathing exercises, practiced with a gressed well: in which fetuses had reached full term, were normal birthing ball—and written up a “birth plan” that included trying weights, and in which labor had begun spontaneously (i.e., doctors to go without pain relief and, generally, avoiding as many medical had found no reason to induce labor early). Even among these cases, interventions as possible. She was low-risk: 32 years old, without hospitals varied significantly in the frequency of C-sections. diabetes, high blood pressure, or other medical problems that Such disparities matter because cesareans are expensive—on increase risks in pregnancy and labor. Then, toward the end of average, a cesarean costs about $20,000, a vaginal birth about her uneventful pregnancy, her obstetrician discovered the baby’s $11,500—and also carry significant risks. When compared with breech presentation. Several times in the next weeks, the physi- vaginal birth, cesarean delivery increases low-risk women’s cian attempted an “external version”—using her hands and push- chances of certain rare but potentially life-threatening problems, ing carefully on Resch’s abdomen, she tried to turn Prairie head such as hemorrhage, blood clots, and bowel obstruction. More down. But Resch felt only her daughter’s fierce kicks in response, frequent risks include bladder damage, infection, and enduring and heard the baby’s heart on a monitor, thumping faster. Prairie, pain. Women who’ve delivered by C-section face greater likeli- Resch says, “was having none of it.” The baby remained head up, hood of future complications in pregnancy, including uterine rup- hind end lodged in her mother’s pelvis. ture or conditions in which the placenta covers the opening to Though rare—about 3 percent of babies end up in breech posi- the cervix (placenta previa), adheres abnormally to the uterine tion—upside-down birth complicates delivery. Breech babies are wall (placenta accreta), or separates from it (placenta abruption). more likely to get stuck during birth and, Ecker says, there is a 1 These women are also less likely to breast-feed, and may be at percent to 3 percent chance of injury to the baby during a vaginal greater risk for depression and post-traumatic stress. delivery with an experienced provider. Because there’s a calcu- Babies face risks, too: they may be cut, or asphyxiate if the lable risk, and C-sections are available, doctors have come to shy medical team has difficulty pulling them out. Those born by away from vaginal breech deliveries. The year before Prairie was cesarean are more likely to experience respiratory distress and, born, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecolo- later, to have asthma; controlled studies have found increased gists (ACOG) formally recommended scheduled cesareans for rates of obesity among American babies born this way. The fetus breeches. Resch remembers no discussion with her doctor about of a mother who’s already had one cesarean also seems to be at the possibility of a vaginal delivery for Prairie. increased risk because it faces greater danger when growing in a But in 2006, after Prairie’s birth, ACOG revised its position, uterus with a surgical scar. stating that a clinician with sufficient experience and support Proponents of more-natural birth argue, too, that vaginal birth might appropriately assist in vaginal breech deliveries. Yet such facilitates quicker, perhaps better, bonding with newborns. Ba- experienced obstetricians are ever harder to find. In a dynamic bies born vaginally receive a coating of immune-boosting mi- that is repeated in other medical care, doctors perform cesareans, crobes, and their intestines are more likely to have early coloniza- in part, because they aren’t trained to favor or perform less-inva- tion with beneficial bacteria—protections that babies delivered sive techniques. With inadequate training and experience, liabili- surgically miss out on. A bacterial deficit in babies’ guts, some ties and patients’ risk increase. Thus, few hospitals even offer the scientists speculate, may even be the factor that accounts for the option of vaginal breech delivery. “It’s like all practice in medi- higher obesity rates among those born by cesarean. cine,” Ecker says. “What you become used to becomes the standard. And what hasn’t been done becomes more difficult to offer.” C-section likely saved the life of Alexandra Houck ’87, a family practitioner with Harvard University Health Services. erceptions of risk—on the part of mothers, doctors, and A Late in her first pregnancy, Houck developed vaginal bleed- hospital administrators—explain much of the dynamic that ing. At first her obstetrician hoped the blood was a sign of early Phas raised the C-section rate, Ecker says. Risk perception and labor. But when the doctor saw the extent of the flow, she feared tolerance help determine professional standards of care, influence that Houck’s placenta had separated from the uterine wall—a hospital protocols, mold the media’s telling of stories, and even influ- placental abruption, which can cut blood flow to the baby, and ence laws. All these forces interact in complex ways. Talking about cause hemorrhaging in the mother. The physician ordered an the cesarean rate, therefore, is different from talking about, attending,

22 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Zoe Resch with her children (clockwise from left) Prairie (9), Silas (7), and Calder (3) in their family vegetable garden in Vermont

or—in the case of the mother herself—living a particular pregnancy with your first child, you were researching adverse childbirth out- and labor. Saying that a certain percentage of C-sections are unneces- comes as part of your job. This was Mello’s situation in 2008. Ce- sary is fairly simple. But weighing risks and knowing whether sur- sarean “wasn’t what I was hoping for,” she says. But after 27 hours gery is necessary in a particular case—or even whether a surgery was of labor, she says, her situation was one “that was very common necessary in retrospect—is much more complex, and fraught with in the catastrophic injury cases” she’d been studying: “prolonged emotion. The obstetrician sees C-sections as generally safe, and if the second-stage labor [the “pushing” stage] and fetal distress.” She outcome he or she wants to avoid is dire, even devastating—such as was not “about to start arguing” with her provider “about appro- a baby’s becoming stuck and deprived of oxygen, which could lead priate course of action.” She was wheeled to the operating room. to cerebral palsy—why wait to find out what will happen, however unlikely that outcome may be? “No one gets sued for doing a C-section,” obstetricians The legal climate reinforces this dynamic. “No one gets sued for doing a famously say. They do get sued for not intervening. C-section,” obstetricians famously say. They do get sued, Ecker says, for not intervening. Michelle Mello, For Mello’s second pregnancy, her obstetrician “laid out all the professor of law and public health at Harvard’s School of Public risks,” and the researcher found herself weighing the dangers in Health, studies malpractice law and medical injury. Her study of typically human ways—by looking not just at data, but at “the states with limitations on doctors’ liability found that they have anecdotes that weigh on you,” she recalls. “We know that people lower C-section rates. But the finding was not “huge,” she says. evaluate risk not just on their understanding of statistical infor- She believes that such studies “may not entirely capture the ef- mation, but on ‘what happened to my friend,’ or ‘what happened fect of liability pressure on C-section rates” because they “don’t to my sister,’” She and her husband “came in with a few of those compare to a world where there is no liability fear.” [stories], too.” She chose a scheduled cesarean. Doctors, Mello says, tend to overestimate their liability risk: “Re- Ecker, the high-risk obstetrician, says that his patients, too, are gardless of whether, from a scholarly perspective, they’re in a ‘low influenced by tales—the tragedy on television, the co-worker’s risk’ or ‘high risk’ environment, they all feel like they’re at high risk.” near-miss, the warning online. Patients often focus, Ecker says, on Skewed perception of risk, she says, drives defensive decisions. the numerator (the very rare cases) rather than the denominator Obstetric patients, of course, also have trouble with risk per- (the great majority for whom everything goes well). ception. Again, the difficulty arises in part because the worst outcomes—like cerebral palsy and infants’ deaths—although rare, are ccording to the U.S. Department of Health and Human distressing and easily remembered, and so shape patients’ deci- Services, 85 percent of American pregnancies achieve full sions. Imagine the challenge of risk perception if, when pregnant Aterm without complications. That’s a figure that many mid-

Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 23 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Jeffrey Ecker in a birthing room at Massachusetts General Hospital

wives—who in 2011 attended 11 percent of births, mostly as staff this investment, more likely to help women give birth vaginally. in hospitals—believe Americans often lose sight of. They say that In some parts of the world, of course, childbirth risks stem simply seeing pregnancy and birth as normal, rather than a priori from causes that apply less in developed economies. In Haiti, for as a medical problem, would help lower the C-section rate. Cara example, where women’s underlying health and access to care is Osborne, S.D. ’07, a certified nurse midwife and professor at the poor, the lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is one in 40. “That’s Eleanor Mann School of Nursing at the University of Arkansas, totally unacceptable,” says Osborne, who trains Haitians as lay believes that “an atmosphere of fear” surrounding childbirth midwives. In Haiti and other poor countries, Osborne and other drives C-sections. Midwives see birth, she says, as a well-evolved, experts say, women need access to more interventions, including physiologically sound process that, with the right support, usu- C-sections, but in the United States, she adds, “we are making ally turns out fine. (Otherwise, she says, the human species the risk [of childbirth] higher than it needs to be by interfering wouldn’t have a population problem.) Of course childbirth is “an with the physiologic process.” Generally, she says, “if we could let inherently risky endeavor,” she says. “But we’ve somehow gotten nature take its course, we would be in a much better position. But to a place where we’ve lost trust in physiology.” that’s just not the prevailing culture.” Midwives’ training, Osborne says, focuses on optimizing the To illustrate the difference in midwives’ point of view, Singer tells chances of vaginal birth throughout prenatal care and labor. Mid- of meeting an anesthesiologist who had never collaborated with a wives usually spend more time with laboring women than obste- midwife. He asked about her work. “In a nutshell,” Singer said to tricians do, and studies have shown that even passive, nonmedical him, “we don’t see birth as a disaster waiting to happen.” “But,” the support during labor leads to better birth outcomes. Midwives anesthesiologist replied, “birth is a disaster waiting to happen.” are also far more tolerant of slow labors, and are therefore less likely to determine “failure to progress” (when a provider decides Cker says that his study of Massachusetts hospitals found that labor is proceeding too slowly to be safe) or “obstructed that those with “midwives practicing at them seemed to have labor” (caused by a mismatch, of position or size, between the Elower C-section rates.” But, he asks rhetorically, “is that be- baby’s head and mother’s pelvis)—among the more commonly cause somehow midwives attract a population that’s at lower stated reasons for proceeding to cesareans, says Janet Singer ’84. A risk? Or is it because midwives and their style of care permeate an midwife who teaches medical students and residents at Women institution?” It’s difficult, he says, to tease out the answer. & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island in Providence, Singer adds What is clear is that initial cesareans drive subsequent ones. A that “failure to progress” is perhaps the most-preventable reason woman who has had a cesarean has a 90 percent chance of giving for cesareans. In the twentieth century, diagnoses of failure to birth by C-section again. Because the procedure increases a wom- progress rose along with the C-section rate: from 3.8 percent in an’s statistical risk of complications in future pregnancies and la- 1970 to 11.6 percent in 1989 to 16.1 percent by 1995, according to a bors, doctors are more inclined to schedule C-sections or arrange 2000 study in Obstetrics and Gynecology. emergency surgery at the first sign of trouble. Zoe Resch decided, Generally, Singer says, midwives are more “invested” in vagi- in her second pregnancy, to try for a “VBAC”—a vaginal birth af- nal deliveries by virtue of training and mind-set—and because of ter cesarean. But because she’d had a C-section, her doctor, “just

24 November - December 2012 Photograph above by Stu Rosner; photograph at right by Beth Hall Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 as a matter of routine,” she says, scheduled a cesarean for Resch’s due date, One clue may lie in “cascading interventions”—medical in case plans for vaginal birth went awry. Meanwhile, Resch had learned that she was carrying a large (statis- actions that lead to other medical actions that evolve tically more difficult to deliver) baby. By the end of her pregnancy, she felt into more invasive steps, including C-sections. exhausted by pre-labor contractions, even as she cared for her toddler at home. She hadn’t gone into the risks of third cesareans—although some hospitals do allow active labor, but drove to the hospital on the day of her scheduled trials of labor in certain cases. C-section. Once at the hospital, with no pressure from her doctor, Resch says, she opted to go ahead with the scheduled surgery. ecause subsequent C-sections are so common, Ecker and “Trial of labor”—attempting a vaginal birth after a prior C- others say that minimizing unnecessary first cesareans is section—has become rare, and successful ones—VBACs—even Bcrucial to reducing the rate overall. Massachusetts hospitals rarer. “We know from studies that what increases your chances that have higher VBAC rates, Ecker says, also have lower rates of of having a VBAC are things like not having epidural anesthesia, first C-sections. “So it argues,” he says, “that there’s something and being up and moving about, and having continuous labor in the [hospital’s] culture or process of care that’s making a dif- support,” Cara Osborne says. “But because, in many practitioners’ ference.” Again, “figuring out what that is,” he says, “is really dif- minds, the trial of labor is unlikely to work, they’re setting up for ficult.” a surgical scenario.” Hospitals may encourage or even require a One clue may lie in what some experts call “cascading inter- woman to use epidural anesthesia during labor, she explains, “be- ventions”—medical actions that lead to other medical actions cause they want to have it on board if she has a C-section.” In that evolve into more invasive steps, including C-sections. Induc- addition, hospitals usually require continuous fetal monitoring ing labor, for example—in which a provider tries to stimulate a in the form of wires attached to the laboring woman’s abdomen, pregnant woman’s contractions through synthetic hormones or which restricts mobility. As Osborne points out, “The things that by stripping part of the membrane from her uterine wall—has would help someone have a successful VBAC are often things that been found to increase the likelihood of cesareans in first-time are not offered to her, because the assumption is that this is liable mothers. to end in another C-section.” Continuous electronic fetal monitoring (CFM), which tracks a Once Resch had had two C-sections, giving birth vaginally to baby’s heart rate throughout labor, is also associated with higher her third baby was not an option at her hospital. Studies have cesarean rates. “It was hypothesized,” Ecker explains, “that [CFM, shown that the risks of vaginal birth after two C-sections exceed developed in the late 1960s] would reduce rates of cerebral palsy.”

Cara Osborne, a certified midwife and professor, in a classroom (with medical training dummies) at the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Based on this hypothesis, the technology became widely used. In the first pregnancy. Afterward the doctor had said, “You go home and great majority of U.S. hospitals, CFM is standard care; a 2005 study take care of your knitting. I’ll take care of the baby.” found that 87 percent of laboring American women were attached The pregnancy, it happens, miscarried. By 1970, for her pregnan- to monitors most or all of the time. Meanwhile, Ecker adds, stud- cy with Zoe, Cummings had found a new obstetrician who she felt ies found that CFM had not reduced the incidence of cerebral palsy. would be more respectful. Having agency herself seemed “so much But CFM did seem to increase C-section rates, he says: doctors were more sensible.” She insisted on giving birth without anesthesia. “seeing these wiggles and squiggles”—changes in fetal heart rate— She wanted Zoe’s father allowed in the room with her, and was “that they weren’t seeing before.” They would get nervous and con- determined to breast-feed after delivery. She prevailed in all cases. clude, “We’ve got to do something about it. Let’s do a C-section.” Meanwhile, the medical profession has increasingly sought to Now that physicians are coming to understand the process, the standardize care. Hospitals have come to require procedures that solution is not, Ecker says, to avoid monitoring altogether. Lis- minimize the worst outcomes and can be easily regulated. Cer- tening intermittently with a handheld device catches problems tain procedures, such as forceps deliveries, have waned because without producing phantom ones. Nevertheless, he notes that they are difficult to teach and perform. CFM has become estab- “there are a bunch of reasons why [continuous monitoring] isn’t lished for overseeing and regulating care. And cesareans have in- going away. It’s built into the structure of the care we provide.” creased because in some cases they were essential for preventing This “structure of care”—the patterned way in which obstetrics the worst outcomes, because they followed other interventions, happens—builds in more common interventions that may lead to were relatively easy to teach and perform, and were unlikely to others. Professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biol- provoke lawsuits. ogy Ellice Lieberman led a crucial study in 2005 that showed that “A balance needs to be reached,” says pediatrician Ana Langer, epidural use increased the likelihood of an abnormally positioned professor of the practice of public health and coordinator of the baby at the time of delivery. Doctors already knew that the anes- dean’s Special Initiative in Women and Health—“that will allow thetic made fever in labor more likely and tended to prolong la- women to have normal deliveries with as little intervention as pos- bors, and knew that women with babies in an abnormal position sible, and at the same time will be ready to address any unexpected called “occiput posterior” were more likely to receive an epidural. emergencies.” She, Ecker, Osborne, Singer, Lieberman—all agree Lieberman’s study showed that “it’s not that women are coming in that reaching such a balance is in part a matter of public and profes- and getting epidurals because their baby’s in an abnormal position,” sional education. Says Langer, “Doctors, women, and families should she says. Rather, babies were in occiput posterior position, in some know that an unnecessary C-section does involve increased risk.” cases, because of the epidural (as yet, no one knows why). The Ecker believes that obstetrics needs to move ever closer to “ev- study found the position four times as often in women who used idence-based medicine”—the study of risks and benefits, and the epidurals as in those who didn’t—but no significant difference in application of this knowledge to medical decisions, professional frequency of abnormal position before the women had chosen the standards, and training. Doctors and institutions should help pa- anesthesia. The treatment engendered the medical situation. tients understand risks and the tests, during pregnancy and labor, Abnormal position often leads to a diagnosis of “failure to that measure them. Whenever appropriate, he says, physicians progress,” which leads to some form of operative delivery—ce- and patients should avoid interventions and prevent that “cas- sarean or the use of vacuum and/or forceps. As with breech deliv- cade.” For example, he says, doctors and hospitals should encour- eries, doctors usually choose C-section. Use of forceps or vacuum age trials of labor after cesareans. is less invasive, but has its own risks. And once again, obstetri- He also declares his respect for midwifery: “If you have a low-risk cians have become less familiar with using these procedures as population” of pregnant women, he says, a “great model” might be C-sections have become the norm. “to have midwives providing uncomplicated prenatal care and doing all the uncomplicated deliveries,” while a few doctors focus fter rising steadily for years, in 2011 the U.S. C-section on problems and perform C-sections. Mount Auburn Hospital in rate remained virtually unchanged from 2010. Perhaps it has Cambridge has elements of such a model: an active midwife prac- Astabilized, or is even about to head down. Such a dip hap- tice attends 38 percent of labors and deliveries. The hospital’s overall pened once before: between 1990 and 1996, amid concern about cesarean rate in 2012 was 21 percent, the midwives’ 18 percent. In a unnecessary C-sections, cesarean surgeries in the United States small but growing program, its midwives also help teach Harvard declined by a few percentage points. Then the rate rose again. Medical School students, who witness normal, uncomplicated In the early to mid twentieth century, doctors sought, and births—a rare and valuable experience in an education that focuses pregnant women demanded, more interventions in childbirth— on what could go wrong, says HMS lecturer Phyllis Gorman, co- to relieve pain and prevent injury and death. Partly as a result, by director of Mount Auburn’s midwifery service. the 1960s women commonly labored alone, confined to hospital In the broadest sense, attaining an optimal C-section rate may beds and under sedation. Forceps deliveries, labor inductions, be a matter of finding a middle ground between two approaches and episiotomies (incisions of the tissue near the vagina)—al- to birth and risk—between vigilance toward the “disaster wait- though not C-sections—were standard. ing to happen” and support for the “physiologically sound pro- With the new feminism of the 1970s, women began demanding cess.” That way, surgery happens when necessary, but is avoided more natural births, in which they felt they had more control and in the many cases when it’s not. were treated with more respect. They wanted “empowering” and “empowered” experiences. In the late 1960s, Zoe Resch’s mother, Nell Lake’s narrative nonfiction book about people caring for aging and ill fam- Mimi Zoet Cummings ’63, had visited an obstetrician early in her ily members is forthcoming from Scribner.

26 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Writers and Artists How to welcome and nurture the at Harvard poets and painters of the future by Helen Vendler

nyone who has seen application tigone—and the crises folders knows the talents of our of consciousness they potential undergraduates, as embody—have been felt well as the difficulties over- long after the culture that come by many of them. And gave them birth has dis- anyone who teaches our undergraduates, appeared. Gandhi’s phil- Aas I have done for over 30 years, knows osophical conception of the delight of encountering them. Each of nonviolent resistance has us has responded warmly to many sorts penetrated far beyond his of undergraduates: I’ve encountered the own country and beyond top Eagle Scout in the country, a violinist his own century. Music who is now part of a young professional makes nothing happen, quartet, a student who backpacked solo either, in the world of through Tierra del Fuego, and other memo- reportable events (which rable writers, pre-meds, theater devotees, is the media world); Lampoon contributors on their way to Hol- but the permanence of lywood, and more. They have come from Beethoven in revolution- both private and public schools and from ary consciousness has foreign countries. not been shaken. We We hear from all sides about “leader- would know less of New ship,” “service,” “scientific passion,” and England without Emily various other desirable qualities that bring Dickinson’s “seeing New about change in the world. The fields that Englandly,” as she put it. receive the most media attention (eco- Books are still consider- nomics, biology, technology, political theory, psychology) oc- ing Lincoln’s speeches—the Gettysburg Address, the Second In- cupy the public mind more than fields—perhaps more influential augural—long after the events that prompted them vanished into in the long run—in the humanities: poetry, philosophy, foreign the past. Nobody would remember the siege of Troy if Homer had languages, drama. W.H. Auden famously said—after seeing the not sung it, or Guernica if Picasso had not painted it. The Harlem Spanish Civil War—that “poetry makes nothing happen.” And Renaissance would not have occurred as it did without the stimu- it doesn’t, when the “something” desired is the end of hostilities, lus of Alain Locke, Harvard’s first black Rhodes Scholar. Modern a government coup, an airlift, or an election victory. But those philosophy of mind would not exist as it does without the rigors “somethings” are narrowly conceived. The cultural resonance of of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, nor would our idea of the characters of Greek epic and tragedy—Achilles, Oedipus, An women’s rights have taken the shape it has without Woolf’s claim • • • • • • for a room of her own. Porter University Professor Helen Vendler, the preeminent poetry critic, has served on the We are eager to harbor the next Homer, the next faculty’s undergraduate admissions committee. Given contemporary admissions processes Kant, or the next Dickinson. There is no reason why and pressures, she recalls “wondering how well T.S. Eliot (who had to do a preparatory year we shouldn’t expect such a student to spend his or at Milton Academy before he could risk admittance, and whose mother was in consultation her university years with us. Emerson did; Wallace with Harvard and Milton officials before deciding what to do with him after he finished high Stevens did; Robert Frost did; Frank O’Hara and John school in St. Louis) would have fared, or Wallace Stevens (admitted as a special student to Ashbery and Fairfield Porter and Adrienne Rich did; do only three years’ study), or E.E. Cummings (admittedly, a faculty child).” Accordingly, and had universities harbored women in residence she proposed that alumni interviewers receive some guidance on how to understand, attract, when Dickinson came of age, she might have been glad and evaluate applicants whose creative talents might otherwise be overlooked, and wrote to be here. She and Woolf could be the writers they this essay, subsequently posted on the Office of Admissions website (here slightly revised and were because their fathers had extensive private librar- updated at the magazine’s request). ies; women without such resources were deprived of

Illustrations by Roland Sárkány Harvard Magazine 27 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 which they will discover themselves prize creativity, originality, and intensity above academic performance; they value introspec- tion above extroversion, insight above rote learning. Such unusual students may be, in the long run, the graduates of whom we will be most proud. Do we have room for the reflective introvert as well as for the future leader? Will we enjoy the student who manages to do respectably but not brilliantly in all her subjects but one—but at that one surpasses all her companions? Will we welcome eagerly the person who has in high school been completely uninterested in public service or sports—but who may be the next Wallace Stevens? Can we preach the doctrine of excellence in an art; the doctrine of intellectual absorption in a single field of study; even the doctrine of unsociability; even the doctrine of indifference to money? (Wittgenstein, who was rich, gave all his money away as a distraction; Emily Dickinson, who was rich, appears not to have spent money, personally, on anything except for an occasional dress, and paper and ink.) Can frugality seem the chance to be all they could be. Universities are the principal as desirable to our undergraduates as affluence—provided it is a educators, now, of men and women alike, and they produce the frugality that nonetheless allows them enough leisure to think and makers of culture. Makers of culture last longer in public memory write? Can we preach a doctrine of vocation in lieu of the doctrine than members of Parliament, representatives, and senators; they of competitiveness and worldly achievement? modify the mind of their century more, in general, than elected These are crucial questions for Harvard. But there are also other officials. They make the reputation of a country. Michelangelo questions we need to ask ourselves: Do we value mostly students outlasts the Medici and the popes in our idea of Italy; and, as one who resemble us in talent and personality and choice of interests? French poet said, “le buste/ Survit à la cité”: art outlives the cities Do we remind ourselves to ask, before conversing with a student that gave it birth. with artistic or creative interests, what sort of questions will reveal In the future, will the United States be remembered with admi- the next T.S. Eliot? (Do we ever ask, “Who is the poet you have most ration? Will we be thanked for our stock market and its investors? enjoyed reading?” Eliot would have had an interesting answer to For our wars and their consequences? For our depletion of natural that.) Do we ask students who have done well in English which as- resources? For our failure at criminal rehabilitation? Certainly not. pects of the English language or a foreign language they have enjoyed Future cultures will be grateful to us for many aspects of scientific learning about, or what books they have read that most touched discovery, and for our progress (such as it has been) toward more them? Do we ask students who have won prizes in art whether humane laws. We can be proud of our graduates who have gone they ever go to museums? Do we ask in which medium they have out in the world as devoted investigators of the natural world, or felt themselves freest? Do we inquire whether students have art- as just judges, or as ministers to the marginalized. But science, the ists (writers, composers, sculptors) in their families? Do we ask an law, and even ethics are fields in motion, constantly surpassing introverted student what issues most oc- themselves. To future generations our medicine will seem primi- cupy his mind, or suggest something tive, our laws backward, even our ethical convictions narrow. (justice and injustice in her high “I tried each thing; only some were immortal and free,” school) for her to discuss? wrote our graduate John Ashbery. He decided on the Will we believe a recom- immortal and free things, art and thought, and be- mendation saying, “This came a writer who revolutionized the transcription student is the most of consciousness in contemporary poetry. Most gifted writer I have art, past or present, does not have the stamina to ever taught,” when endure; but many of our graduates, like the ones the student exhibits, mentioned above, have produced a level of art on his transcript, above the transient. The critical question for us Cs in chemistry is not whether we are admitting a large number and mathematics, of future doctors and scientists and lawyers and and has absolutely businessmen (even future philanthropists): we no high-school are. The question is whether we can attract as record of group many as possible of the future Emersons and activity? Can we Dickinsons. How would we identify them? What see ourselves admit- should we ask them in interviews? How would ting such a student we make them want to come to us? (which may entail The truth is that many future poets, novelists, and not admitting someone screenwriters are not likely to be straight-A students, else, who may have been either in high school or in college. The arts through a valedictorian)?

28 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 President Drew Faust’s expenses. Perhaps money could be found new initiative in the arts to pay for recruiting trips in the early [released in late 2008] fall for representatives of humanities or- will make Harvard an im- ganizations. Perhaps we can find a way mensely attractive place to convey to our juniors that there are to students with artistic places to go other than Wall Street, and talent of any sort. It re- great satisfaction to be found when they mains for us to identify follow their own passions, rather than a them when they apply— passion for a high salary. But if we are to to make sure they can do be believed when we inform them of such well enough to gain a de- opportunities, we need, I think, to mute gree, yes, but not to expect our praise for achievement and leadership them to be well-rounded, at least to the extent that we utter equal or to become leaders. Some praise for inner happiness, reflectiveness, people in the arts do of and creativity; and we need to invent course become leaders ways in which our humanities students (they conduct as well as are actively recruited for jobs suited to sing, or establish public- their talents and desires. service organizations to With a larger supply of the sort of increase literacy, or work creativity that yields books and arts, for the reinstatement of fellow-students whose creativity leans the arts in schools). But toward scientific experimentation or one can’t quite picture mathematical speculation will ben- Baudelaire pursuing pub- efit not only from seeing an alternative lic service, or Mozart style of life and thought but also from spending time perfecting the sort of intellectual conversation na- his mathematics. We need to be deeply attracted to the one-sided as tive to writers, composers, painters. America will, in the end, be well as the many-sided. Some day the world will be glad we were grateful to us for giving her original philosophers, critics, and art- hospitable to future artists. Of course most of them will not end up ists; and we can let the world see that just as we prize physicians as Yo-Yo Ma or Adrienne Rich; but they will be the people who keep and scientists and lawyers and judges and economists, we also are the arts alive in our culture. “To have great poets,” as Whitman said, proud of our future novelists, poets, composers, and critics, who, “there must be great audiences too.” The matrix of culture will be- although they must follow a rather lonely and highly individual come impoverished if there are not enough gifted artists and think- path, are indispensable contributors to our nation’s history and ers produced: and since universities are the main nurseries for all the reputation. professions, they cannot neglect the professions of art and reflection. And four years at Harvard can certainly nurture an artist as a Helen Vendler is the author, most recently, of Last Looks, Last Books: Ste- more narrowly conceived conservatory education cannot. Great vens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill and Dickinson: Selected Po- writers and artists have often been deeply (if eccentrically) ems and Commentaries. learned: they have been bilingual or trilingual, or have had a consuming interest in another art (as Whitman loved vocal music, as Michelangelo wrote sonnets). At Harvard, young writers and artists will encounter not only the riches of the course catalog but also numerous others like themselves; such encounters are a prerequisite for the creation of self-confidence in an art. It is no accident that many of our writers have come out of our literary magazines—the Advocate, Persephone, the Gamut, the Harvard Book Review—places where they could find a collective home. Student drama productions, choruses, and orchestras offer comparable homes for the talented. We need such activities and the reflective students who will enable them. Once we have admitted our potential philosophers, writers, and composers, how will we prepare them for their passage into the wider society? Our excellent students are intensely recruited by business and finance in the fall of their senior year—sometimes even earlier than that. Humanities organizations (foundations, schools, government bureaus) do not have the resources to fly students around the world, or even around the United States, for interviews, nor do their budgets allow for recruiters and their travel

Harvard Magazine 29 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Vita Alexandre Dumas Brief life of the soldier who inspired The Count of Monte Cristo: 1762-1806 by tom reiss

e was the son of a black slave and a renegade French aris- overthrowing their own rulers, the French revolutionaries had de- tocrat, born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) when the is- clared a “war of liberation” on all their neighbors.) And though the Hland was the center of the world sugar trade. The boy’s un- Austrians nicknamed him der schwarze Teufel—“the Black Devil”— cle was a rich, hard-working planter who dealt sugar and slaves out he was an angel to victims of oppression, no matter their side: in of a little cove on the north coast called Monte Cristo—but his fa- the midst of the Revolution’s bloody chaos, he pushed back against ther, Antoine, neither rich nor hard-working, was the eldest son. In those committing terror, earning the mocking nickname “Mr. Hu- 1775, Antoine sailed to France to claim the family inheritance, pawn- manity” and narrowly escaping the guillotine himself. ing his black son into slavery to buy passage. Only after securing his Dumas’s incredible ascendancy as a black man through the white title and inheritance did he send for the boy, who arrived on French ranks of the French army reflected a key turning point in the his- soil late in 1776, listed in the ship’s records as “slave Alexandre.” tory of slavery and race relations as forgotten as Dumas himself: a At 16, he moved with his father, now a marquis, to Paris, where single decade when revolutionary France ended slavery and initiat- he was educated in classical philosophy, equestrianism, and ed the integration of its army, its government, and even its schools. swordsmanship. But at 24, he decided to set off on his own: join- General Dumas was “a living emblem of the new equality,” wrote ing the dragoons at the lowest rank, he was stationed in a remote a nineteenth-century French historian—but his career’s tragic un- garrison town where he specialized in fighting duels. The year raveling reflected the unraveling of that progress as well. was 1786. When the French Revolution erupted three years later, The agent of destruction for both was his fellow general, Napo- the cause of liberty, equality, and fraternity gave him his chance. leon, who at first praised Dumas as a Roman hero for his battlefield As a German-Austrian army marched on Paris in 1792 to reimpose feats but came to loathe him for his independence and revolutionary the monarchy, he made a name for himself by capturing a large en- values. The two men clashed in 1798, during the invasion of Egypt— emy patrol without firing a shot. He got his first officer’s commis- where the Egyptians mistook the towering Dumas for the leader of sion at the head of a band of fellow black swordsmen, revolution- the French forces. Then, while Dumas languished for two years in aries called the Legion of Americans, or simply la Légion Noire. In an enemy dungeon, Napoleon made himself dictator and dismantled the meantime, he had met his true love, an innkeeper’s daughter, France’s postracial experiment, imposing cruel race laws in France, while riding in to rescue her town from brigands. reinstituting slavery in the colonies, and sending an invasion force to If all this sounds a bit like the plot of a nineteenth-century nov- Saint-Domingue with orders to kill or capture any black who wore el, that’s because the life of Thomas-Alexandre Davy de la Pail- an officer’s uniform. He went to equally extraordinary lengths to leterie—who took his slave mother’s surname when he enlisted, bury the memory of Alex Dumas, thundering, “I forbid you to ever becoming simply “Alexandre (Alex) Dumas”—inspired some of speak to me of that man!” when former comrades tried to intervene the most popular novels ever written. His son, the Dumas we all on behalf of the general and his family, who were living in near-des- know, echoed the dizzying rise and tragic downfall of his own titution. Barely five years after his return to France, Dumas died at father in The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Known 43 of stomach cancer, likely an aftereffect of his for acts of reckless daring in and out of battle, Alex Dumas was poisoning while imprisoned. every bit as gallant and extraordinary as D’Artagnan and his com- Dumas’s son, the future novelist, would take Visit harvardmag.com/ rades rolled into one. But it was his betrayal and imprisonment in a marvelous sort of revenge, infusing his father’s extras to view a dungeon on the coast of Naples, poisoned to the point of death life and spirit into fictional characters who have other images of General Dumas. by faceless enemies, that inspired his son’s most powerful story. been embraced the world over. Yet while every The true story of Alex Dumas was itself ruthlessly suppressed generation has heaped glory on the name Alexandre Dumas, the by his greatest enemy—and remained buried for 200 years. In fact, great general has remained forgotten. The only statue of him—in a Dumas became not merely a great soldier of the French Revolution country awash in marble generals—was erected in Paris more than but also the highest-ranking black leader in a modern white society a hundred years after his death, and then destroyed by the Nazis. before our own time—by the age of 32 he was appointed command- er-in-chief of the French army in the Alps, the equivalent of a four- Tom Reiss ’86 is the author of a new biography of General Dumas, The Black star general. The young general from the tropics led 53,000 men in Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte fierce glacier fighting against the best alpine troops in the world Cristo (Crown). His biographical pieces have also appeared in The New and captured the mountain range for France. (Not content with Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications.

30 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 É A. VAQUERO / CM34/HUILE SUR MAROUFLé PAPIER SUR CARTON/ 32,5 X 25 CM/ BAYONNE, MUSéE (C) BONNAT-HELLEU / CLICH ATTRIBUé A LOUIS GAUFFIER/ PORTRAIT D’UN CHASSEUR DANS UN PAYSAGE DIT PORTRAIT D’ALEXANDRE DUMAS PÈRE

Portrait of a Hunter in a Landscape, attributed to Louis Gauffier (1762-1801), Harvard Magazine 31 Reprintedis said to be from a portrait Harvard of General Dumas. Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Reclaiming Childhood Theresa Betancourt studies the world’s most neglected and traumatized youths. Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 by Elizabeth Gudrais

t the train station in Jaipur, India, a ragtag group of boys and men squat on the tracks, hunched over piles of empty water bottles. A load of these bottles, picked up after they are discarded on train cars, might earn a collector 100 rupees ($2) at day’s end when they are traded in for recy- cling—or, more likely, refilling by a street vendor who will claim they are factory-sealed. During downtime between trains, the boys and men pass around a rag Asoaked in Liquid Paper, getting high on the fumes. When a train rumbles into the station, they start to move. The smallest of them, Badal, is also the fastest. He runs alongside the train, keeping pace so that before it has fully come to a halt, he has grabbed a handrail and hoisted himself into the car. As passengers gather belong- ings and make their way to the exits, he dodges and weaves among them, scooping bottles from the floor and dropping them into the plastic bag slung over his back. Badal is eight years old. Worldliness lines his face, in stark contrast to his young features. He collects bottles not because he would rather do this than go to school, but because it buys food for his family. At the end of the day, he will sleep on the sidewalk under a railroad bridge with his mother and siblings. It is easy to see Badal as a pitiful and needy figure—but Theresa Betan- court, S.D. ’03, associate professor of child health and human rights at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), suggests that a different viewpoint would lead to more effective strategies for helping disadvantaged children. Betancourt seeks a wholesale shift in the language used by aid organizations and the philanthropic community, so that Badal might be seen as a resourceful figure, acting in ways that are understandable given his family’s limited prospects for economic success and education, and his own emotional and developmental needs. Collecting bottles, hanging out with older men, taking drugs to blunt emotional pain: viewing these as survival strategies acknowledges that all humans have the same needs. Instead of merely bandaging poverty’s symptoms (“These people act in ways we can’t understand, therefore we’ll never change their behavior”), Betancourt focuses on poverty’s causes (“These people are just like you and me, and will make healthier choices if presented with a better set of alternatives”). As the director of the Program on Children and Global Adversity at Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, Betancourt studies the effectiveness of interventions that aim to help children from Asia and Africa to Boston. She works with former child soldiers, AIDS orphans, refugees, and children growing up on construction sites, as well as those in the Jaipur train station. The common thread is documenting survival strategies: studying how some children and families manage to channel their resourcefulness in a positive direction, and consid- ering how to open up those salubrious paths to more people. Her work takes aim at some of the biggest structural problems in international aid. Some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) do great work, but can’t scale it up for wider impact; others continue programs that haven’t been proven to work. Some major donors demand evidence of efficacy, but that evidence doesn’t yet exist; others fund programs without it. International aid follows a crisis but dries up soon after, ignoring the enduring fallout, or focuses chiefly on infrastructure projects (roads and bridges) or physiological needs (alleviating hunger and preventing malaria) when mental-health and social services might be just as important in en- Photographs of India by Peter Pereira

Harvard Magazine 33 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 abling a country’s next generation to succeed economically. tional, Betancourt’s partner organization in Jaipur. The center’s di- Betancourt operates one country at a time, one community at rector, Lata Singh, noticed that Ishwar was among the more respon- a time, and ultimately, one person at a time: one of her guiding sible of the children, looking out for the younger ones. She saw that principles is tailoring therapies by identifying the specific needs he was intelligent and sensitive, and that he yearned for a different of her study populations, and of smaller groups within them. But life, so she gave him a job making daily runs to pick up meals donat- through her research, her scholarly articles, and the relationships ed by a nearby hotel and performing other tasks around the center. she builds, she seeks to demonstrate models for governments, Ishwar got clean and even went home briefly, but was soon NGOs, funding organizations, and communities to work together back in Jaipur, living with the other runaways who had become in coordinated ways that ultimately improve children’s lives. his family. Singh hopes to help him get a job driving an auto-rick- shaw or working at a Hindi-language call center, but first he will Ishwar can’t say exactly how old he is—he thinks about 18. need treatment for medical and psychological problems caused He’s also not sure how old he was when he ran away from home— by his drug use. 10 or 12, he says. His mother died when he was one and a half. She By some measures, Ishwar’s is a success story—but it also indi- was cooking lunch one day and her sari caught fire; she burned to cates how fragile that success can be, and how difficult to make death before his eyes. the transition to a different life after years on the street. Most of Ishwar’s father remarried. The boy and his stepmother often the children who come to the drop-in center spend their days bickered. Eventually, Ishwar’s father told him, “Since you can’t get begging, selling soap, or collecting bottles, like Ishwar and Badal. along, it’s better that you go.” Singh has learned that escorting the truant children to school, or The boy hopped a train not knowing where it was going, and even pressuring them to go, doesn’t work. They just end up not ended up living on the station platform in Jaipur, selling soap and coming back to the center, and thus not benefiting from its ser- performing menial tasks for a bit of money. He became addicted vices: food, clothing, tutoring, and attention from caring adults. to correction fluid, headache balm, and eventually heroin. The center’s collaboration with Betancourt is new—the parties He became a regular at the drop-in center run by FXB Interna- are just beginning to discuss how they might work together—but they hope their work might Previous spread: Housing for workers help reveal what factors helped at a construction site in Gurgaon, near Ishwar fare better than his Delhi. These pages: At the train station in Jaipur, collecting empty water bottles peers, in that he holds down a fetches about 100 rupees ($2) a day. At steady job and still has a sense right, young bottle collectors board of hope for the future. Ulti- a train as it enters the station; below, eight-year-old Badal inside a train car; mately, the findings would be below right, the collectors bide their used to identify effective ways time between trains. Opposite, families make their homes on a sidewalk adjacent to the train station, and survive by begging. Far right, Ishwar ministers to other runaway youths at a drop-in center in Jaipur, as his own future hangs in the balance.

34 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 to help younger children like Badal move toward productive, hap- qualities: intelligence, determination. But external factors—fam- py, and healthy lives, against dire odds. ily and community, differing wartime experiences—also influence their trajectories. Betancourt has sought to clarify the various fac- One of Betancourt’s earliest research projects was in Sierra tors to determine how best to help youths recover from the trauma Leone, working with youths who served as child soldiers in the of war. country’s decade-long civil war. These children were taken from In her quest to bring greater awareness to children’s needs, Be- their homes by rebel groups and ordered to commit violent acts. tancourt recognized the power of a straightforward construct that Some were forced to take drugs to deaden their inhibition to kill- is easily summed up and remembered. She looked to the success ing; some were forced to kill or maim their own relatives. of the GOBI model, developed by UNICEF in the early 1980s for After the war ended in 2002, they went home, aided by NGOs improving maternal and child health: growth monitoring (to identify that provided counseling and helped them get back to their fami- malnourished children and supplement their diet), oral rehydration lies. Reintegration was not easy: neighbors, and sometimes even (a cheap, simple way to balance the electrolytes of a child suffer- their own families, distrusted them. People wondered whether ing from diarrhea in order to prevent death—developed by senior they were irreparably damaged and condemned to a violent future. lecturer on international health Richard Cash and colleagues), Betancourt began studying a group of more than 500 former child breastfeeding (to help strengthen children’s immune systems); and soldiers and other war-affected youth (such as those who suffered immunization. The campaign led to significant declines in infant and deaths in the family) just after the war’s end. Here, as in Jaipur, she child mortality in many places, but as Betancourt and colleagues wanted to understand why some children have reintegrated suc- wrote in a journal article, “Promoting the health and development cessfully while others have had a harder time. “In our sample,” she of children requires more than just keeping them alive.” notes, “we have a young man who’s in jail because he killed his girl- Betancourt devised her own model, SAFE, to reflect the notion friend in a fit of rage, and we have a young woman who’s finished that children have rights beyond mere survival: safety and freedom medical school.” Part of the explanation, of course, lies in personal from harm; access to basic physiological needs such as food, shel- ter, and medical care; family or connection to other attachment figures; andeducation and economic security. This framework has already been used by other researchers in Haiti and Lesotho, as well as in her own projects in India, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, northern Uganda, and with a Somali Bantu refugee population in Bos- ton (see “Far from Home,” page 38). SAFE isn’t just a scorecard, Betancourt specifies: “It’s about in- terrelatedness.” Insecurity in any of these four domains threatens security in the others. “Kids need attachment figures,” she says. “If they’re not finding it from their immedi- ate family, they’re going to find it some- where”—as with the Jaipur runaways who act as each other’s family. Children without solid attachment figures are at risk of being recruited into child labor or sex work, or conscripted as child soldiers, so strong is their need for an adult who takes an interest in them; but should they take one of these paths, they’re missing out on education, and their very safety is at risk. Betancourt notes that in many plac-

Harvard Magazine 35 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 es where governments fall short and international aid has dried and inhibits healing. Betancourt’s team is currently testing the up—such as Sierra Leone—NGOs pick up the slack, but are not “Youth Readiness Intervention,” a group therapy they designed as effective as they could be. “They see one need and they work to for the most persistently troubled war-affected youth in post- meet that need,” she says. “They see that kids are hungry, and they conflict Sierra Leone. The therapy aims to improve these youths’ offer food. They see that kids need healthcare, so they open a free skills at relating to others, understanding how their experiences clinic. But nobody pays attention to how these different needs are might affect their relationships, managing their anger, and coping interrelated or how organizations with different types of expertise with difficult emotions. might work together to bring the same child greater benefit.” With local adaptation, Betancourt’s methods can be applied In each setting, SAFE becomes a lens for understanding chil- worldwide. One recent survey estimates that 300,000 children are dren’s needs and moving toward meeting them. In Sierra Leone, currently serving in government forces or armed rebel or militia for instance, Betancourt’s team interviewed children and families groups. Just since 2001, child soldiers have been conscripted for con- about wartime and postwar experiences: How supportive were flicts in Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory family members after children returned home? Did domestic fac- Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Somalia, tors (abuse in the home, death of a parent) hamper recovery? How and northern Uganda, as well as Sierra Leone and Rwanda. supportive was the community? The researchers documented cases of mental-health problems such as depression and anxiety. They Since Rwanda’s 1994 genocide (in which up to one million evaluated youths’ confidence, their facility with “prosocial behav- people died, compared to 50,000 in Sierra Leone’s civil war), the ior” such as making friends and helping others, and their levels of country has emphasized communal healing. But the HIV epi- aggression and hostility. demic, combined with an already-high number of orphans from By revealing different groups’ specific needs, these analytical the genocide, has led to an extraordinary number of child-headed methods provide data for customized interventions. For instance, households. Here, Betancourt works with children affected by youths who demonstrate anger problems and continued deficits HIV—not necessarily infected, but with a family member who is in prosocial behavior might receive something beyond the routine HIV-positive or has died of AIDS. package of reintegration services. In villages where stigma lingers, Broadly speaking, HIV-affected children in Rwanda face many NGOs might hold community workshops designed to probe and of the same issues as former child soldiers in Sierra Leone: anxiety, unseat this stigma, which compounds mental-health challenges depression, conduct problems in school. If they are siblings’ care- takers, their future prospects are often diminished because they have left school to work. Their health may be in danger, too: adolescent girls might engage in sex for money and run the risk of contracting HIV themselves. The genocide’s aftermath—the loss of a parent or other family member, witnessing violence,

At left, Betancourt with young friends Binta and Christopher in Koidu Town, Kono District, Sierra Leone. Below, she engages Sierra Leonean children in a count- ing game. At right, a war-affected girl in Rwanda cares for her younger sibling. Far right, Betancourt with graduates of an FXB International program in Rwanda that has helped families reach economic self-suffi- ciency by starting businesses.

Photographs courtesy of Teresa Betancourt Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Like former child soldiers in Sierra Leone, HIV- topic, she says, “you might as well be finished right there.” affected Rwandan children face anxiety, depression, In Rwanda, as elsewhere, Betancourt didn’t stop at documenting the problem: results from several rounds of inter- endangered health, and diminished prospects. views informed a response. Rather than start from scratch, her team adapted a well-tested, effective therapy that she or lingering bitterness among neighbors—can compound HIV’s believed could translate readily for use in Rwanda. Developed at emotional strain on families. Harvard by Monks professor of child psychiatry William Beards Betancourt’s work in Rwanda exemplifies the “mixed-methods” lee, the “Family Talk” intervention is designed to mitigate the ef- research in which she specializes, blending the qualitative and fect of a parent’s depression on a child. With HIV, as with depres- quantitative. In an initial round of interviews with adults in the sion, the child might not understand the parent’s illness; parents communities chosen for the study, the researchers kept their ques- want to know what they can do to minimize the illness’s impact tions open-ended, simply asking what problems children faced. on their children; and families might need help learning how to Analyzing the themes that emerged, they settled on five broad communicate openly about the illness. phenomena that capture the emotional impact of coping with HIV Betancourt’s “Family Strengthening Intervention” incorpo- in the family. In the next round of interviews, they asked what rates education about HIV (addressing common misconcep- qualities help children and families cope; in a third round, they tions) and training in parenting skills tailored to Rwandan cul- sought more detail about each quality. ture and views. Recognizing the limited capacity of the country’s Naturally, these concepts did not map neatly to Western con- medical and public-health sectors, the intervention trains fami- ceptions of mental health, or even to English translations of Kin- lies to rely on their own resources, rather than depend on ses- yarwanda terms. Children said to have kwihangana (perseverance) sions with a counselor. Facilitators lead families in discussing played with others instead of isolating themselves and engaged in the future and in identifying family strengths, to help them move prayer, in addition to working hard in spite of personal problems beyond a negative focus defined solely by HIV. This intervention and resisting becoming discouraged. Kurera neza (good parenting) is currently being tested with 20 families; if the mental-health included the concept of parenting “for the country.” outcomes are favorable, it will be tested with 80 more. These painstaking research practices are necessary, Betancourt By the time this wider study produces results next year, it will says, if findings are to be culturally sensitive: “We need to know have been six years since the Rwanda project began. These endeav- how people here think about child mental-health problems. If we ors require patience: without evaluation, an intervention’s impact show up in Rwanda, interested in child mental health, and we try will never be known—nor does it follow that because a therapy to start with Western words and concepts—if we go with the inter- works in one setting, it will have the same effects everywhere. preter to a village and say, ‘Tell me about child mental-health prob- “The big development funders spend large quantities of money on lems’—there’s a good chance the interpreter is going to say, ‘She’s programs that may not have a strong evidence base,” Betancourt interested in learning about madness in children.’” So taboo is that says, “and then you have the National Institutes of Health very carefully, systematically building an evidence base—but the two of them are not communicating.” With the right evidence, these two groups might begin to speak a common language.

Betancourt became interested in public health after receiving her bachelor’s degree in psychology (with a minor in international studies) from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.

Harvard Magazine 37 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 in working with African populations and war refugees. Far From Home Betancourt and her colleagues engaged teachers and administrators in Lynn to help them understand not only the antu tribal people were brought to Somalia from other cultural differences involved (refugee parents weren’t accus- African countries as slaves in the nineteenth century. After tomed, for example, to speaking directly to teachers about Bemancipation, with few options for formal employment, their children’s education) but also the challenges specific this minority group adopted a subsistence lifestyle, settling in to the Somali Bantu experience (such as parents’ lack of lit- remote river valleys without schools or access to healthcare. eracy, and mental-health issues stemming from exposure to The group, which constituted at least 5 percent (and by some violence, being uprooted, and then living in camps for years). estimates, much more) of Somalia’s population, didn’t have even The goal was collaborative, rather than antagonistic, rela- one representative in the national government. When the civil tionships with the parents. war began in 1991, Somali Bantu communities were defenseless Later, Betancourt saw an opportunity to try locally an inter- as armed groups from both sides of the conflict started coming vention similar to those she’d developed for use in Sierra Leone to their communities, raping, pillaging, and killing under the and Rwanda. Aweis Hussein, a Somali Bantu teacher’s aide and pretense that the villagers had helped the other side. interpreter whom Betancourt knew from her work in the Lynn Tens of thousands of Somali Bantus ended up in refugee camps public schools, had helped found Shanbaro, an organization in Kenya. Returning to Somalia, where they suffered from dis- for the Boston-area Somali Bantu refugee community. Work- crimination and where outbreaks of violence persisted (and still ing with Hussein and other community leaders, Betancourt do), was not a good option. By the time the United States agreed conducted interviews to assess both children’s needs and any to accept 13,000 Somali Bantu refugees for resettlement, most of factors that seemed to mitigate the effects of the adversity they them had been living in the camps for more than a decade. experienced as refugees; she hopes to design and test a family- In 2006, Theresa Betancourt and colleagues at the Boston Medi- strengthening intervention adapted to the Somali Bantu cul- cal Center (BMC) received a request for help from the public ture and needs. In the meantime, graduate student Stephanie schools in Lynn, Massachusetts, home to a Somali Bantu refugee Loo has already won funding to lead a Somali Bantu girls’ em- community. The refu- powerment group and Betancourt’s interviews have resulted gee children were hav- in a community needs assessment that can be used to apply ing behavioral problems, for further grant aid. Rita Falzarano, development coordinator and the school system for the nonprofit Chelsea Collaborative, an umbrella organiza- was having trouble com- tion that includes Shanbaro, notes another benefit: Hussein municating with their and four other Somali Bantu community members worked side parents. They sought out by side with Harvard researchers, receiving training in social- the BMC team, who were science research methods to help carry out the study. known for their expertise With most so-called research partnerships, says Falzarano, researchers gather the data they need “and that Zahara Haji (foreground) and Amina is the last you hear from them.” The partner- Abdullahi, research assistants in Betan- court’s project with the Somali Bantu ship with Betancourt “is a true partnership,” refugee community in Boston, during a she says: “It benefits the community as well as presentation at Chelsea City Hall the researcher.”

Working as a school mental-health specialist in Oregon, she be- no paved roads, and there are stray dogs in the streets, it feels came determined to get to the root of her young clients’ troubles. like home to me.” “It’s a public-health adage,” she says. “You see people drowning As a girl, she observed the problems that resulted when a people in a river and you’re pulling them out and saving them, but then accustomed to living off the land rapidly ad- eventually you say—wait a minute, let’s go upstream and find out opted a different way of life: high crime rates, why they’re falling in.” rampant alcoholism, child neglect. Even then, Visit harvardmag.com/ But the seeds were planted earlier, during her childhood in she recalls, “the question of resilience always extras for a Q&A with Bethel, Alaska, then a city of 3,000 accessible only by air and came back to me. These kids weren’t just on a Betancourt, and learn water, with a majority-Yup’ik population. There were no paved deterministic path. If people in the community more about her family, career, and work. roads. Betancourt’s home had no plumbing; the family show- stepped in, or if kids got an opportunity, even ered at the high school or the fire station (her father was the fire a child from a terrible background managed to make it out OK.” chief). Stray dogs roamed the streets. Still, she says, “I thought it In 1998, Betancourt entered a doctoral program at HSPH; an was great. We were outside all the time, playing with our friends interest in refugee issues also led her to spend time abroad work- and building things out of snow, ice skating, playing hockey.” ing for the United Nations (in 1999) and consulting for the In- She believes this early experience instilled respect for other ternational Rescue Committee (from 2002 to the present). Again cultures—and prepared her to work in the developing world: she observed resilience among children—in Albania, Russia, and “When I work in Africa, and there’s no plumbing, and there are Ethiopia, where she helped design edu- (please turn to page 78)

38 November - December 2012 Photograph courtesy of Teresa Betancourt Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JohnJohn Harvard’s Journal

Studying the Stele On a campus with few public works of art, the monumental Chinese stele—17 feet tall, weighing in at 27 tons—would seem hard to miss. Yet it has been sadly neglected in the shadows along the western flank of the massive Widener Library. Its identifying sign is missing, its black paint is long gone, and even its inscription is in danger of disappearing as the marble corrodes. (Although covered in winter, the stone is deteriorating.) At risk is a significant history—Chinese and Harvardian. The stele itself, dating to c. 1820, stood in the Yuan Ming Yuan (the

The Peabody Museum’s Alexandre A. Tokovinine, a lecturer on anthropology and research associate, is shown at work within a protective tent during the scanning of the Chinese stele—conducted at night for optimal results.

In this Issue

47 Harvard Portrait 53 Brevia 48 Learning’s Leading Edges 55 Meta-journalism 50 The Libraries’ Rocky Transition 56 The Undergraduate 51 Focus on the Future 58 Sports 51 Yesterday’s News 60 Alumni 52 Decanal Duo 64 The College Pump

Photograph by LesJim HarrisonVants Aerial Photos/courtesy of Harvard Art Museums Harvard Magazine 39 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

Old Summer Palace), in northwestern Bei- of our countries, intellectual progress and liams ’78, M.B.A. ’82, jing, until the complex was destroyed in attainments may be further enhanced.” But the executive director 1860, during the Second Opium War. It came there were interruptions: China was about of the Harvard Center Visit harvardmag.com/ extras to view scans and to Harvard in 1936, a Tercentenary gift from to suffer a catastropic invasion by Japan, Shanghai, began cham- additional images of Chinese alumni, who had a new inscription internal collapse, and the endgame of the pioning the cause some the stele. carved, expressing their admiration for the brutal civil war that resulted in the victory years ago, when he was University and appreciation for their ed- of the Communist Party. (Times continue president of the Harvard Club of the Repub- ucation. By then, there were nearly 1,000 to change; today, China sends more interna- lic of China. As a first step, this September, Chinese alumni, the text notes; according tional students to the University than any the center and the Harvard China Fund—in to a contemporary translation, its donors other country.) concert with the Peabody Museum of Ar- expressed the “fervent hope” that “in the In past decades, a Straus Center conser- chaeology and Ethnology—arranged for the coming centuries the sons of Harvard will vator, faculty members, and even a gradu- stele to be documented in virtual form via continue to lead their communities and that ate student have sought a better fate for the high-definition, three-dimensional scan- through the merging of the civilization[s] monument. In their wake, Jeffrey R. Wil- ning—the project shown under way here.

Investigating Academic briefing, Harris explained that a teaching fellow observed problematic material Misconduct while grading exams and raised the issue On August 30—just before fall classes with the course professor; the professor began on September 4—Harvard College then reviewed the exams and brought the announced that it was investigating alle- issue to the attention of the board in May, gations that “nearly half the students” in prompting a comprehensive investigation. a spring 2012 course “may have inappropri- According to the section on “academic ately collaborated on answers, or plagia- dishonesty” in the Harvard College Handbook rized their classmates’ responses, on the for Students, “Students must…comply with final exam….” Given the potentially serious the policy on collaboration established for violation of academic norms on an unprec- each course, as set forth in the course syl- edented scale, the statement was accompa- labus or on the course website.…Collabo- nied by e-mailed messages from Faculty of ration in the completion of examinations ffice Arts and Sciences (FAS) dean Michael D. is always prohibited.” Punishment for vio- ews O Smith to the faculty, and from dean of un- lations, if any are determined by the board,

dergraduate education Jay M. Harris to the may be as severe as the requirement that a n/Harvard N l student body. (Read their letters at http:// student withdraw from the College for up harvardmag.com/misconduct-12.) to a year. Jay Harris According to the announcement, an Harris noted that the examination ex- rose Linco initial investigation by the College’s Ad- plicitly prohibited collaboration among proceed individually, student by student, ministrative Board (the committee that students. Many College classes encour- and that none had been adjudicated as of interprets and applies FAS rules to un- age students to work together on assign- the announcement. The evidence, he said, dergraduates, and so serves as FAS’s chief ments and problem sets (the Office of includes “answers that look quite alike to disciplinary organization) “touched off a Undergraduate Education sets out how answers that appear to have been lifted comprehensive review” of the more than faculty members may specify that sort of in their entirety”; the pattern appears to 250 take-home final exams submitted. collaboration in a course syllabus), but show “clusters of students who seem to That review resulted in cases before the Ad Harris said this course did “not to my have collaborated,” not any single, unified Board “involving nearly half the students knowledge” permit such efforts on earlier effort. Given the seriousness and scope of in the class.” (Dean Smith and President student work. the issue, he said, the College would, at Drew Faust are ex officio members.) In a He observed that board investigations the end of the board’s proceedings (which he characterized as “tak[ing] the time it takes” to investigate, given the numbers), In this Issue disclose their outcome in the aggregate. The College declined to identify the 41 Harvard Portrait 48 The Undergraduate course or professor. Student identities are 43 The Corporation, Complete 49 Brevia protected legally, but Harris said under- 44 The Endowment Eases 52 Sports graduates from all four class years were 44 Classroom in the Cloud 55 Alumni involved, —meaning some had graduated. 46 Revitalizing Tozzer 59 The View from Mass Hall The timing of the disclosure appeared 46 A Victory—and a Campaign 60 The College Pump to reflect several factors. First, Harris 47 Yesterday’s News said, a “critical value” was at stake. In the

40 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 College statement, Dean Smith said academic integrity “goes to the heart of our harvard portrait educational mission. Academic dishonesty cannot and will not be tolerated at Harvard.” President Faust stated, “These allegations, if proven, represent totally unacceptable behavior that betrays the trust upon which intellectual inquiry at Harvard depends.…[T]he scope of the allegations suggests that there is work to be done to ensure that every student at Harvard understands and embraces the values that are fundamental to its community of scholars.” Second, it came at the beginning of the academic year, when standards and expectations were being communicated, and practical steps could be taken. In his e-mail, Smith asked faculty members to review each syllabus “right now” to ensure that the policy on student collaboration was clearly stated; to discuss it with each class; and to convene with peers and departmental directors of undergraduate studies on measures to “foster a culture of honesty and integrity in our classes and learning assessments.” Harris said he was at pains to “start a conversation on this” within the community at large, building on work concerning academic integrity begun by his office two years ago (see below). Finally, with so many students facing investigation, the news would have spread anyway. Meg Rithmire The disclosure sparked news coverage worldwide—much of it informed by the Assistant professor of business administration Meg Rithmire, Ph.D. ’11, spent the morn- Crimson’s thorough, enterprising legwork. ing of October 5 shepherding Chinese scholars around campus. That afternoon, she got Later that day, the paper reported that the married. “I’ve never envisioned having a wedding,” she says of her civil ceremony. “I can’t course was Government 1310, “Introduction imagine caring about wearing a white dress.” Dinner at a Chinese restaurant with her new to Congress,” taught by assistant professor husband, John David Hampton ’00, and their families, followed. “My life is about research of government Matthew B. Platt. Its arti- and teaching that encourages people here to think about China in a dynamic way,” she cle was accompanied by a reproduction of says. “It’s still a foreign place. I don’t want people to be afraid of China.” In high school, she the April 26, 2012, instructions for the take- read Ha Jin’s Waiting, a bleak book about a man seeking a divorce amid the Cultural home final examination, with a highlight- Revolution. The Atlanta teenager was captured by “the couple’s inefficacy and the impact ed passage explicitly stating that “students a culture has on individuals.” She went on to earn dual degrees in Chinese and interna- may not discuss the exam with others.” tional studies at Emory University, along with a master’s and a doctorate in political science. As the confidential Ad Board reviews Now at the Business School, she is writing a book on the commodification of land in proceeded, several strands of discussion China and helps teach a spring favorite: “Business, Government, and the International emerged. Economy,” crafting the section on the “success” of the planned city of Chongquin. “Is it • Some students said they were not real growth? Debt-financed? Or a propaganda bid on behalf of political leaders?” she asks. surprised by the allegations, and rumors The school wants more intrepid thinkers—and Asian experts.“You can’t be a wallflower circulated that the undergraduates in- here,” she says. “I have M.B.A.s who are basically my age [30]. They think I’m a big China volved included members of varsity ath- nerd.” Happily, she says, the HBS culture “is not as stodgy as people think.” Professors must letic teams, or various social organizations, teach in full suits. But on a Friday, Rithmire sports grasshopper-green silk pants and an allegedly attracted by the course’s unde- Egyptian-style gold necklace. “I do own pearls,” she admits. “But it’s just not me.” manding reputation, structure (four take-

Photograph by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 41 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

home exams), and relatively easy grading. (if any are proven) from permissible joint even possible for half the students in a large The Crimson reported that athletes who work, casual conversations, or reliance on class to come under suspicion? For sched- were subject to investigation might vol- common sources (complicated by the tim- uling reasons, the FAS in 2010 instituted untarily withdraw from the College before ing issues—before versus during the eight- a procedure reversing the historic default their sports began, to preserve a year of eli- day period for the take-home exam—and that courses conclude with sit-down, in- gibility. Several reports identified at least likely less than definitive evidence). class final exams—was that educationally three varsity athletes who may have done When he announced the investigation, warranted, and are the terms and condi- so. Head football coach Tim Murphy spent Harris said that about two years before, tions of take-home finals regulated clearly part of his first postgame news conference given “a feeling that the landscape had and applied consistently? of the season addressing the issue (see shifted,” especially as technological tools Fundamental questions like these— “Powering Through,” page 52). had altered “how people think of intel- about the educational value of collabora- • Another theme was the nature of col- lectual property,” he had begun studying tive learning, proper pedagogy, and the laboration and student understanding of attitudes and behaviors on campus. The nature of academic assessment—lie far the rules of academic conduct. The Gov College Committee on Academic Integrity, outside the Administrative Board pro- 1310 exam, while prohibiting discussion which he chairs—including faculty mem- ceeedings. with others, also explicitly said it was bers, undergraduates, resident deans, and In his August 30 briefing, before these “open book, open note, open Internet, etc.” administrators—engaged the Internation- broader speculations unspooled, Dean Students regularly form study groups and, al Center for Academic Integrity to create Harris said of the formal misconduct in- as the handbook language suggests, are an assessment of academic integrity like vestigation, “It’s a teaching opportunity. often encouraged to collaborate in various those it has conducted elsewhere. Student, One we’d rather not have.” ways (excluding examinations). Teach- teaching-fellow, and faculty surveys were ing fellows hold common question-and- disseminated in February 2011. But that Near term, that teaching opportunity answer sessions. Meanwhile, professors October, the Crimson reported that Harris has seemingly been circumscribed by the circulate and post more lecture notes and disclosed that the response rate was too Administrative Board process: the require- videos online, giving students identical low to yield meaningful responses: 27 per- ment that more than 100 time-consuming, sources on which to draw. More gener- cent among students, and heavily weight- individual cases be handled confidentially. ally, the rise of Internet-assisted research ed toward freshmen, who had spent only Harvard College dean Evelynn Ham- has made it easier to make honest mis- one semester in the College at the time. monds, who chairs the board, decided takes of attribution—or plagiarize. The • Most broadly, the investigation against teaching a planned course this Ad Board thus faces the exacting task of prompted questions about undergraduate semester, in part because of the investiga- sorting out cases of outright copying or teaching. What expectations about their tion. President Faust omitted any mention plagiarism and impermissible collaboration courses do professor signal? How was it of the issue in two of her formal beginning-of-term communications: the first Morning Prayers in Memorial Church, on September 4 (she focused on the newly ap- News from Our Website pointed Pusey Minister, Jonathan L. Wal- ton); and her customary annual message to Harvardmagazine.com brings you continuous coverage of University and alumni the community at the outset of a new aca- news. Log on to find these stories and more: demic year (see http://harvardmag.com/ message 12). On the afternoon of Septem- Aung San Suu Kyi Speaks at the Kennedy School - ber 4, at the celebratory Freshman Convo- The Burmese activist discusses the basics of a cation—before an audience obviously not democratic practice. involved in whatever may have gone awry harvardmag.com/san-suu-kyi-12 last spring—she touched on the stakes, quoting a sentence from Dean Harris’s e- Chetty and Warf Win MacArthur Grants mail (“Without integrity, there can be no The Harvard economist and neurosurgeon are among 23 genuine achievement”) and adding her new fellows. harvardmag.com/macarthur-12 own gloss (“That is what each of us owes to Harvard, but, far more importantly, it is The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife what each of us owes to ourselves”). A papyrus fragment interpreted by Hollis professor The Crimson apart, formal community of divinity Karen L. King quotes Jesus speaking of conversation was strikingly absent. Nei- “my wife.” ther administrators nor faculty members harvardmag.com/gospel-12 convened public discussions of academic integrity with students—and students don’t appear to have organized such ses- stay connected - harvardmagazine.com sions, either. The latter point matters, because last academic year the academic-

42 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 integrity committee focused on “studying honor codes and other mechanisms” to “reinforce the culture of academic integrity,” Harris said. Effective honor codes The Corporation, have historically emanated from students themselves—and must, if they are to suc- Complete ceed. Now, his committee’s work will obviously proceed in a heightened context, as The announcement on September 23 it aims to make concrete recommenda- that Jessica Tuchman Mathews ’67 and The- tions for FAS deliberation and action this odore V. Wells Jr., J.D.-M.B.A. ’76, have been year. According to the College announce- elected members of the University’s senior ment, the committee has been “assess- governing board, effective January 1, is an ing the practices of peer institutions on a important milestone in effecting the chang- range of actions, from the adoption of new es in Harvard governance unveiled in late ethics policies to the introduction of an 2010 (see “The Corporation’s 360-Year Jessica honor code.” Princeton and Stanford have Tune-Up,” January-February 2011, page 43). Tuchman student-focused and -administered honor Their election completes the Corporation’s Mathews codes and enforcement mechanisms. The planned expansion from seven fellows to Stanford Honor Code, for example, “is an 13—intended to broaden the senior board’s expertise; enable it to establish per- undertaking of the students, individually manent committees focused on its most important fiduciary duties (including gov- and collectively: that they will not give or ernance, finances, capital planning and budgeting, and alumni affairs and develop- receive aid in examinations; that they will ment); and make it possible for the fellows to focus on matters of greatest not give or receive unpermitted aid in class strategic importance to Harvard. work, in the preparation of reports, or in Tuchman, who earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology at California Institute of Tech- any other work that is to be used by the in- nology, was a Radcliffe College trustee from 1992 to 1996. Since 1997, she has served structor as the basis of grading; that they as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; earlier, she worked will do their share and take an active part at the National Security Council, the U.S. Department of State, and the Council on in seeing to it that others as well as them- Foreign Relations. She said, “I’m thrilled to be coming home to Harvard. The world selves uphold the spirit and letter of the of education is globalizing, with consequences as profound as those for government Honor Code.” and business. Having spent more than a decade building a global think tank, I look Harris noted that honor codes work by forward to helping think through this great University’s international role and con- “suffusing the culture of the place,” and tributing all I can to the full range of the Corporation’s work.” that educational and other efforts might Wells, a graduate and former trustee of the College of the Holy Cross, is partner ensure academic integrity even absent a and co-chair of the litigation department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison formal code and process for administering LLP. He is widely known for high-stakes white-collar criminal-defense cases and cor- it. (A Crimson editorial endorsed an exami- porate practice. He served as national treasurer for Senator Bill Bradley’s 2000 nation honor code in February 2011, during presidential campaign and is co-chairman emeritus of the board of the NAACP Legal the academic-integrity survey.) To that Defense Fund. Wells said, “Education opens minds and expands opportunities, and end, he said, his committee was examining nothing matters more to me. I greatly look forward to serving a university that has what more might be done to emphasize helped shape my own outlook and aspiration s, and to supporting the work of people academic integrity during freshman orien- across Harvard whose ideas and efforts do so much to better the world.” tation, in teaching students about proper Welcoming these new colleagues, Senior Fellow Robert D. Reischauer ’63 and citations, and so on. “Integrity training has President Drew Faust said in a statement: been lacking,” he said. “Jessica Mathews is a widely admired figure Formal steps toward making academic in the international-affairs domain, with a integrity an overriding priority have now career that has combined excellence in non- begun with the College announcement, profit leadership with experience in govern- Smith’s letter to faculty members, and ment, policy, science, environmental affairs, Harris’s own letter to students. Among and journalism. Ted Wells is an extraordi- other actions taken: narily accomplished lawyer renowned for his • An Ad Board staff member has been wise counsel, his powers of analysis and per- “tasked with building awareness among suasion, and his devotion to education and faculty and students about Harvard’s aca- the public interest. Harvard will be fortunate demic-integrity policies.” to have the benefit of their service.” • Harvard will engage the International Theodore V. For a full report, see http://harvard- Center for Academic Integrity and other Wells mag.com/board-12. outside experts as the College initiates a

Harvard Magazine 43 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal “campuswide discussion about this issue.” agenda for FAS to consider teaching prac- Classroom in the Cloud • College officials will engage House tices and communications about expecta- masters and resident deans to convene on- tions and academic values; he then turned Even as David J. Malan enjoyed the news versations on academic integrity—appar- the floor over to Harris, who is the point that Computer Science 50, “Introduction to ently after the Ad Board acts. person on the whole cluster of issues, for Computer Science,” was the second-larg- • Harris met with directors of un- a more detailed outline of research and est College course this fall, with 691 under- dergraduate studies to promote clear potential FAS actions during the year. For graduates, he was contemplating a “class- language in each course syllabus and in a full report on their remarks, see http:// room” much vaster than Sanders Theatre. course assignments regarding collabora- harvardmag.com/cheating-12. By mid September, well before the October tion and other issues of academic integrity. In his August letter to students, Harris 15 launch of CS50x, the all-online version University-wide responses remain unspec- said that, beyond familiarizing themselves (cs50.net/x), some 53,000 students had en- ified at press time. with Harvard’s pertinent rules (and the rolled worldwide. The nonprofit Harvard- Faust, Smith, and Harris put these steps respective measures Smith has asked fac- MIT learning venture edX, created last May in context at the first FAS meeting of the ulty members to take in clarifying their (see “Harvard, Extended,” July-August, page year, on October 2. Faust outlined general own course practices), “More is neces- 46), has begun by offering seven free, open- principles of academic conduct, and urged sary.…We must all work together to build access, noncredit “massive open online caution in commenting while the Ad Board a community that fully embraces the ethos courses”—MOOCs as they are known—in deliberates. Smith reviewed the board’s of integrity that is the foundation of all its first fall. pedagogical role, and outlined a broader learning and discovery.” It is not a traditional semester. Much as edX courses relocate the learning location to wherever student and computer may The Endowment Eases be, set class hours dissolve as well. Two advanced computer courses offered by Berkeley (a third edX partner, announced Harvard’s endowment was valued at $30.7 billion last June 30, the end of fiscal in late July) run from late September to year 2012—a decline of $1.3 billion (4.1 percent) from the prior year. That result, late October and mid November, respec- released September 26 in Harvard Management Company’s (HMC) annual report, tively. And those tens of thousands of reflects an investment return of -0.05 percent on endowment and related assets, students learning with senior lecturer on following the robust return of 21.4 percent in fiscal 2011. The decline in the endow- computer science Malan have until next ment’s value reflects the investment return (essentially nil); minus distribution of April 15 to complete their work. endowment funds to support University operations and for other purposes (perhaps More than most of his peers, Malan is $1.5 billion; the exact sum will be reported in late October); plus gifts received. En- already skilled in extending his teach- dowment distributions account for about one-third of Harvard’s annual revenues. ing virtually—with online lecture videos, Domestic equities yielded a return of 9.65 percent, but international stocks declined sections, PDFs of handouts, discussion sharply, producing an overall return of -6.66 percent for public equities—about one- sets and quizzes, and a Google discussion third of the invested assets. Private equities and absolute-return assets (principally group. Comp Sci 50 existed in an online hedge funds)—together, about 30 percent of assets—yielded slightly positive returns. version before edX, for whoever wished to Fixed-income holdings (about 10 percent of the total) yielded 7.95 percent. Real assets follow along (see cs50.tv) and for far-flung were mixed, with strong gains in real estate, positive returns in natural resources Extension School audiences, so the transi- (timber- and farmland), and significant losses in the commodities portfolio. tion to the edX platform did not require a Peer institutions’ results demonstrated the important interplay of endowment wholly new approach to pedagogy. That investment returns, spending, and gifts from capital cam- paigns. At Yale, a 4.7 percent investment return for fiscal Harvard Management Company 2012 nearly offset distributions of about $1 billion, so the 2012 Investment Performance endowment declined only marginally during the year, from $19.4 billion to $19.3 billion. Stanford’s investments earned Asset Class HMC Return Benchmark difference only 1 percent, but the endowment rose 3.2 percent in Return value, to $17 billion, as a surge of campaign gifts apparently more than offset nearly $900 million in spending. Public equities (6.66)% (9.05)% 2.39% HMC president and CEO Jane L. Mendillo cautioned Private equity 1.99 4.04 (2.05) that “at a time of unusual turbulence with significant mac- Absolute return* 0.81 (1.15) 1.96 roeconomic issues facings regions around the world… Real assets** 3.23 1.55 1.68 future returns may be uncertain,” but expressed confi- Fixed income 7.95 7.85 0.10 dence in a strategy of focusing on highly diversified invest- Total endowment (0.05) (1.03) 0.98 ments and “long-term value creation.” *Includes high-yield bonds For a detailed report on Harvard’s endowment perfor- **Includes real estate, commodities, and natural resources mance, see http://harvardmag.com/endowment-12.

44 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 seems true for the other initial offerings, too—all are quantitative or scientific in nature, including the MIT circuitry course that served as the prototype last year. But edX’s aspirations span the breadth of learning, and it aims to take technologi- cally distributed education well beyond where Malan and other computer-literate teachers have already arrived. Its offices, in fact, are not on MIT’s campus (the president, Anant Agarwal, is professor of electrical engineering and computer science there), but in a Kendall Square office building, surrounded by technology enterprises and budding new ventures. Although a nonprofit, edX is much more start-up than academic department or fac- David J. Malan in Sanders ulty meeting. From its inception, the staff Theatre, teaching the

had grown to about 35 by mid Septem- office news h arvard wildly popular Computer ber—“zero to 60 in six months,” Agarwal Science 50

said—including an engineering team for c h ase/jon the technological platform; a content team Having taught the prototype MITx as scrolling script directly in front of the to edit course videos (with content-expert course, Agarwal has already learned that viewer. Agarwal also found that deadlines fellows to assist faculty members); a chief online teaching is “quite a bit different” “mattered a lot”: like their peers in class- scientist; a director of university partner- from the classroom and adapting a course rooms, students did assignments just be- ships (more are in the offing, he suggest- “is a lot of work.” He outlined dividing lec- fore they were due. Discussions and peer ed); and with recruiting under way for tures into “sequences” of five- to 10-minute interactions “scaled nicely” online; as stu- marketing and communications person- videos, interleaved with exercises so students asked questions and others weighed nel. Computers are set up at simple tables dents can demonstrate their understand- in, they could electronically “upvote” and chairs in open spaces that can be raping. (In a talk preceding the installation problems to be addressed. (The extent to idly reconfigured, khakis and open shirts of MIT’s new president on September 21, which students helped each other learn are in fashion, and a rainbow of Post-its Agarwal spoke about “gamifying learning” was “absolutely astounding,” he said.) counts down days-to-live for each course. by providing instant feedback and offering In the evolving edX platform, such tools All this reflects fundamental differences “karma points” for helping others in the now can be deployed beside each unit of between online and classroom education. course.) Tutorials become sidebar videos the curriculum and can link to an overall The three-dozen edX staff, and participat- by teaching fellows. His course had a “vir- course discussion forum; Malan is using ing faculty members, could potentially reach tual lab,” with students manipulating elec- this technology in CS50x, and, in a simi- hundreds of thousands of students this fall. trical components on an online “bench” lar way, matching College students with Course delivery is relatively cheap (The New and testing the result with virtual tools. Comp Sci 50 teaching fellows who can York Times reported that edX uses Amazon’s Computer-generated homework was help them with specific queries. cloud computing services to deliver content machine-graded. (“Essays and free-form These online developments, Agarwal to enrollees), and marketing to students is answers are not a solved problem” yet, he said, all support a learning experience essentially free, via social media. said—posing challenges for humanities with the “same as on-campus” rigor. In courses, and prompting fact, of the 155,000 students enrolled in the Anant Agarwal, searches for peer-grading first iteration of his circuits course online, electrical engineer and other solutions.) less than 5 percent completed all the work. and computer scientist, now edX Students resonated to Many lacked the necessary background. president, at the “tablet handwriting” in edX aims to maintain that level of rigor. start-up’s offices the videos, Agarwal said— It is rolling out courses relatively deliber- in Kendall Square a more personal feel than ately; the for-profit Coursera, in contrast, viewing typeset text. For has repeatedly announced new partner- CS50x, Malan has prepared ships, now with 33 institutions, and has tutorials (a teaching fellow posted some 200 courses. Stanford, a talking about binary num- Coursera participant, is also deploying bers, for instance) in which two other online platforms, a multipath the instructor writes on approach overseen by a new vice-provos- a tablet; the strokes, cap- tial office for online learning.

courtesy of edx of courtesy tured wirelessly, appear Agarwal said edX’s focus is on “high-

Harvard Magazine 45 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

quality learning” on two levels: “dra- board members are a mix of scholars and will “debut when ready”; there is no matically increasing access to learning administrators: deans Michael D. Smith rush to “port existing courses on to the to students worldwide, while reinvent- (Faculty of Arts and Sciences) and Kath- Web,” a different goal from improving ing campus learning” simultaneously—a leen McCartney (Graduate School of Edu- teaching and learning across the board. blended model for improvements in vir- cation), provost Alan Garber, and execu- Cross-fertilization is already evident in tual and real classes. The Harvard person- tive vice president Katie Lapp. the two versions of Malan’s introductory nel overseeing that hybrid mission as edX As Malan put it, Harvardx courses course. CS50x, he said, will “enable as many people as possible online to feel a part of this shared experience”—it even encourages virtual students to meet to Revitalizing Tozzer share their programming projects, much as Comp Sci 50 students do in the popu- The Tozzer Library building on Divin- liam James Hall, which will be Tozzer’s lar programming-and-pizza “hackathon” ity Avenue adjacent to the Peabody Mu- temporary home during the construction, events and term-end fair on campus. Yet seum will undergo a major reconstruc- expected to begin with site preparation in significant differences will remain. On- tion during the next year and a half as December and January. Most of the re- line students’ programs can be machine- part of a $20-million Faculty of Arts and maining books were moved to the Har- evaluated for correctness (whether their Sciences project to consolidate the an- vard Depository, where they are readily code is “buggy”) and style (what Malan thropology department. Most social an- accessible for recall through the online called “aesthetics”), but not subjectively thropologists are now housed at the far HOLLIS catalog. Once the new library for their design (a qualitative evaluation end of the street in William James Hall space is complete, about 54,000 volumes requiring human judgment). And staffing (the towering home of the psychology will be held on two floors. Librarians is at a different level entirely: the campus and sociology departments as well). The anticipate that having the anthropology teaching cohort for Comp Sci 50 this se- renovation will unite the archaeologists faculty housed on the three floors above mester numbers 108, including teaching in the Peabody with the anthropologists, will revitalize the library. fellows and course assistants—larger, who will relocate to an enlarged and re- FAS project manager John Hollister Malan noted, than many class enroll- vitalized Tozzer in the spring of 2014. says the existing building will be stripped ments. The real and virtual courses, he The idea, championed by both former back to its structural steel and rebuilt said, will be “similar but not identical dean of the social sciences Stephen Koss- to a LEED gold standard, with sustain- experiences.” lyn and current dean Peter Marsden, is to able heating and cooling systems; 10,000 As for Agarwal, his new post was suf- strengthen the sub-disciplines within the square feet will be added to the exist- ficiently “exciting” to lure him away from department by bringing them together. ing 24,800. (The building was originally running MIT’s largest laboratory. He has In accord with larger discussions about designed to accommodate an additional been involved in five previous start-ups, the changing role of academic libraries, story.) The design by Kennedy and Violich but edX, he said, is “the first one that can the project reconceives the library as a Architects includes a façade of brick and really change the world.” series of collaborative spaces, rather than copper designed to echo the neighboring primarily as book storage. In preparation, Peabody Museum; adds an entrance onto 155,000 books were moved from Tozzer, the rear courtyard; and incorporates an one of the world’s largest anthropology atrium that extends to the fourth story, A Victory—and research libraries. Some 28,000 volumes with shared pedagogical and social gather- a Campaign were relocated to the first floor of Wil- ing space on the second floor. Dean Michael D. Smith’s annual report Tozzer Library, today for fiscal year 2012—previewed with Facul- ty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) colleagues at their October 2 meeting and published two days later—declares victory and outlines a future campaign. The retrospective victory note concerns the faculty’s finances: after projecting large deficits in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and sharp decline in the value of the endowment, FAS, as planned, achieved a balanced budget in its “unrestricted Core operations”: the faculty, the Gradate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), and the College. But unplanned activities— prominently, launching edX (see page 44)

Harvarad magazine/jc Harvarad and beginning construction for the House

46 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 renewal program—resulted in a $9.7-million deficit on the same basis. For all FAS activities—including athletics, the library Yesterday’s News and museums, School of Engineering and From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine Applied Sciences, etc.—the unrestricted deficit was $34.9 million; the consolidated result, including all funds, was $20.5 mil- 1912 Noting that the $50,000 main- mally Republican majority” since Wood- lion of red ink, covered by the use of re- tenance fund necessary for a new mu- row Wilson beat a split G.O.P. in 1912. serve funds. (All figures are on an FAS sic building to replace Holden Chapel is The faculty members who are polled go management-reporting basis, not in accor- $15,000 short, the editors remind read- for Eisenhower, 379-298. dance with generally accepted accounting ers that “ a healthy and useful university principles.) is forever uncovering new needs….” 1967 The Program for Science in Having largely slain the financial drag- Harvard College gets under way; one on, Smith looks toward the next campaign: 1927 Economics surpasses English as goal is a $14-million science center north the University’s forthcoming fundraising a concentration choice for the first time, of the Yard. drive. Although the report says little about with more than 400 freshmen entering the campaign or FAS’s substantive goals, it the field. 1982 MIT pranksters disrupt The suggests two priorities. Game with a balloon that erupts from Smith emphasizes House renewal (as 1937 Courtesy of NBC and the BBC, the earth and inflates in front of the does Dean Evelynn Hammonds in the the Harvard Club of London hosts a live Crimson bench—but Harvard wins 45-7. Harvard College section). In her October broadcast of The Game, including Har- 2 presentation, Leslie Kirwan, dean for ad- vard and Yale cheers transmitted back 1992 Harvard has “locked the doors ministration and finance, made clear what to the teams in the Harvard stadium. and [thrown] away the keys” for the Yard financing that multiyear project, forecast (Harvard won, 13-6.) dorms, the editors report. The installation to cost at least $1 billion, will require; she of card-reading devices there will likely be cited endowment funds, philanthropy, 1947 Professors attempting to sepa- extended to the Houses to crack down FAS reserves, cash from operations, and rate “the sheep from the goats” (as the on crime, despite occasional glitches—a long-term debt, both “incremental and editors remark)—by locking classroom door held open too long for a good-night nonincremental.” The latter has not been doors at exactly seven minutes past the kiss summons a University police car to invoked since the University became much hour—run afoul of the Cambridge fire investigate. more cautious about debt in the wake of department, which notifies lecturers that its 2008 problems, when it had to borrow obstructing emergency exits is illegal. $2.5 billion. There is also a section devoted to edX— 1952 In a straw poll of undergrad- an element in FAS’s plans to invest in uates, loser Adlai Stevenson never- teaching and in ap- theless gets the largest slice of plying technology to “Harvard’s nor- education, both in the classroom and for online, distance learners. Other highlights: • Ebbing humanities and social sciences, rising sciences. During the past decade, the number of undergraduate arts and humanities concentrators peaked at 1,104 in 2003-2004, and has declined steadily, to 823 last year—down 25 percent. The social sciences are down, too—off 16 percent since peaking at 2,695

Illustration by Mark Steele Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

in 2005-2006. In contrast, the sciences have tions in total), and a 19 percent increase in • Sustainability. For buildings that ex- attracted 29 percent more undergraduates offers of admission. Underrepresented mi- isted in fiscal 2006, greenhouse-gas emis- since a low point of 989 in 2002-2003, and norities made up 7 percent of the entering sions declined by 27.6 percent through last concentrators in the rejuvenated School class, the highest figure in GSAS history. year. Energy use declined by 21 percent, of Engineering and Applied Sciences have • Alcohol policy. Rakesh Khurana, master and water use by 31 percent. Calculated nearly doubled in number since 2004-2005, of Cabot House, led a review of campus al- at current utility rates, those savings rep- to last year’s 563. That reflects a rebound cohol policy. Recommendations will come resent avoided utility costs of $6.6 million from depressed computer-sciences en- to the faculty at its next meeting. annually. For all FAS facilities, including rollment after the dot-com bust at the • The PDF Ph.D. As of March 2012, all new spaces, the reduction was 10 percent beginning of last decade, followed by re- dissertations have been submitted elec- through the end of fiscal 2012. newed excitement about social media, and tronically, as PDFs, for degree completion, • Continued financial caution. Kirwan’s re- emerging fields such as bioengineering. binding, and archiving. port emphasized the relatively restrained (Elsewhere, the report notes student en- • An aging faculty. Following more internal prospects for the endowment (see page thusiasm for summer research programs promotions to tenure and restraint on fac- 44), distributions from which make up 48 with faculty members in the sciences, so- ulty growth since 2008-2009, the average percent of FAS operating revenues, and the cial sciences, and business-related topics; age of the tenured faculty increased from 55 rising risks to federally sponsored research there is no analogous arts and humanities to 57 during the past decade. This shift oc- funding. The latter now accounts for 18 program.) curred despite successful initiation of re- percent of revenues, and has been a bright • GSAS diversity. Continued emphasis on tirement incentives (retirements increased financial spot for FAS in recent years. On recruiting resulted in applications from from an average of 6 annually to 15 last to the campaign. 676 candidates from underrepresented year), and the prior period of rapid expan- Read more about the FAS annual report minority groups (among 12,397 applica- sion in the faculty ranks overall. at http://harvardmag.com/fas-report-12.

the undergraduate Massachusetts and I turn inside the airport, where no one waits for me to arrive. Still, I am not unhappy to be traveling alone. As I wait in line at the check-in counter, Unsettled Arrivals my shoulders are weighted by the bags I must check; my mind leads me to the mountains of home. I realize I shouldn’t expect by kathryn c. reed this going to feel the same, though I face the same uncertainties as before. Even now I am tempted to return to Western Mass., did don’t need music, Kit. I need the ucation about HIV may have also been a not pack my bag until hours ago. Do I enjoy sound of silence,” Dad says. He says “si- thought. Someone produced a travel book this, the being out of my comfort zone? Or lence” in a way that I can’t write. The and we passed around 200 pages of East- do I enjoy the looking back, the return, the “i” is long, the end is fast, sharp. The ern Africa, searching for the 50 that held all sensation of “I did that”? “I word is crisp, but it is not italic. “Silence, Tanzania had to tell. Inevitably, it was the I board a plane to Zurich, where I sleep Kit,” Dad says, is what he wants. Yet it is photos that consumed us longest, no matter on the floor for six hours, waking only to his unwritable words that fill our drive to the country they were from. make sure my flight’s gate is still closed. Boston Logan. Some of my companions raised con- In Ethiopia, 12 fill a plane meant for 100 It is June and I am returning to Tanza- cerns—none of us understood the process and, though there are two stops before we nia to work with a nongovernmental orga- of arrival, really; not one had a Tanzanian reach our destination, no one new gets on nization called Support for International phone; had anyone looked up the exchange board. Ethiopians must not believe in can- Change. Again, I will live in a rural village, rate for dollars and shillings before, at home? celing flights, I think, or balancing weight. I run an awareness campaign for HIV and There was too much unknown to be wor- sleep, thankful for the open seat I have cho- AIDS. It is my second visit to a country that ried and so I stuck to thoughts of animals, sen from first class. no longer feels foreign, my first return to a children, heat, African sun. I was excited At 2 a.m., our plane lands in Arusha, place with all of the discomforts I do not for the going; the fears of fellow students Tanzania. (“Straight down,” Noah, my find at home. seemed to dispel my own. taxi driver will tell me. “It was as if you A year ago, at the outset of my first trip, It is now June again and I am returning to fell from the sky.”) And my first thought five other Harvard students met me at the Tanzania as dad drops me at terminal E. This on the tarmac is that I had forgotten the gate, where visions of African game land summer, I am a coordinator for the volun- smell. Food, dirt, body odor, smoke—all filled my head. As we lay across chairs meant teer program, Tanzanian shillings already in are there the moment I step out. Not quite for sitting—for nine hours in Istanbul, wait- my bag. A hug, a kiss on the cheek—“Sorry, the village, but not at all dissimilar. I imaging for our flight—we talked of playing with Kit. I don’t think I’m supposed to park here ine my fellow passengers—the Brits, the the children and seeing the elephants; ed- long.” His truck heads back toward western Germans, the uninitiated—covering their

48 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 “Research Misconduct” 10. The institutions cited the “profound The Office of Research Integrity in the importance of assembling a diverse stu- U.S. Department of Health and Human Brevia dent body—including racial diversity— Services has concluded that former pro- for their educational missions.” For a fessor of psychology Marc Hauser “en- detailed account of litigation over these gaged in research misconduct.” The agen- issues, a report on the current brief, and cy’s finding, based on its texts of briefs, see http:// investigation and a prior harvardmag.com/amicus-12. one by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, comes On Other Campuses after FAS in 2010 found Yale president Rick Levin him “solely responsible” announced on August 30 for “eight instances of that he would step down at scientific misconduct.” the end of the academic year, Hauser resigned in 2011. bringing to a close a 20-year The federal findings run—the longest among include fabrication of current Ivy League presi- data, falsified coding of dents and among leaders of research, and false de- the member institutions of scriptions of methodol- the Association of American ogy, among other issues. Universities.…Shirley Tilgh- According to the federal man, president of Prince report, Hauser “neither ton since 2001, announced admits nor denies com- in September that she, too, mitting research miscon- would step down next duct” but “accepts” that the investigatory Graduate School Dean: Jones June.…Cornell and MIT have modified agency “has found evidence of research professor of statistics Xiao-Li Meng, their financial-aid policies. Cornell now Ph.D. ’90—a member of the faculty misconduct.” He has en- since 2001 and chair of his department restricts “no-loan” aid packages to fami- tered into a voluntary since 2004—has been appointed dean lies whose income is $60,000 or less; pre-

/Harvard news office news /Harvard settlement governing any of the Graduate School of Arts and viously, the ceiling was $75,000; between ll federally funded research Sciences. He succeeds Allan M. those levels, aid offerings now include a Brandt, who relinquished the position he may undertake during last Febuary to address health issues. $2,500 annual loan component, scaling up

h e mitc h anie the next three years. For Meng has been recognized as a faculty to $5,000 (previously $3,000) for families

step a full report, and the text champion for improving teaching and with incomes from $75,000 to $120,000. Marc Hauser learning, a priority of rising impor- of the federal findings, tance for the Faculty of Arts and MIT moved to a uniform “self-help” level see http://harvardmag.com/hauser-12. Sciences and Harvard generally. A of $6,000 for aid packages at all incomes, graduate of Fudan University, in to be met through work-study assign- Primate Research Reforms Shanghai, he is also engaged in, and a ments, outside scholarships, or loans; potent symbol of, the University’s In the wake of violations of federal rules global reach. For a full report, see previously, the obligation for families for care of animals used in research— http://harvardmag.com/meng-12. with incomes under $75,000 was slightly including several monkey deaths (see less than $3,000. “Animal Research Reforms,” May-June, and the primate center had been put on page 45)—Harvard Medical School probation in June by the Association for Nota Bene dean Jeffrey S. Flier has accepted and is Assessment and Accreditation of Labo- rotc’s return. Now that Reserve Of- implementing an outside review panel’s ratory Animal Care International, the ficers’ Training Corps programs are for- recommendations for changes in staff- principal accrediting organization for mally recognized by Harvard (navy and ing, procedures, and policies at the New animal-research institutions. army offices opened last academic year), England Primate Research Center and Army ROTC cadets began calisthenics elsewhere across HMS operations. The Longhorn Legal Brief training at University facilities on Sep- actions include appointment of an at- In mid August, the University, joined by tember 10—the first time such activity tending veterinarian and biosafety officer several other institutions, filed an amicus was sanctioned on campus in 41 years. at NEPRC; staff training and career de- brief in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, An introductory military-science class velopment; and staffing to bring NEPRC the latest legal case concerning consid- began later that week. needs and issues to the attention of se- eration of race in higher-education ad- nior HMS management. In mid Septem- missions; oral argument before the U.S. Tips litigation. The Harvard Club of ber, the Boston Globe reported that HMS Supreme Court is scheduled for October Boston reached a $4-million settlement

Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office Harvard Magazine 49 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

University Professor: Applied itor general of Texas, a Tea Party-backed mathematician and theoretical challenger, secured the Republican nomi- economist Eric S. Maskin ’72, Ph.D. ’76, who shared the Nobel Prize in nation, and all but certain election, to a 2007 (with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger U.S. Senate seat from that state. And a B. Myerson, Ph.D. ’76), has been front-page New York Times story on July named Adams University Professor, 15 described the role of former Overseer Harvard’s highest faculty rank. He succeeds Christoph Wolff, a musi- Penny Pritzker ’81 as a leading Obama cologist and and scholar of Bach and fundraiser in 2008 and her lessened in- Mozart, who has retired. Maskin volvement in this campaign. taught at MIT and at Harvard (from 1985 to 2000) before relocating to the Institute for Advanced Study, in Miscellany. Behavioral economist Al- Princeton, New Jersey. He returned vin E. Roth, and economics professors to the faculty this past January. The Susan C. Athey and Guido W. Imbens Graduate School of Arts and Sciences conferred its Centennial Medal on (the latter are husband and wife) all re- Maskin in 2010. located from Harvard to Stanford during the summer. Also on the road: number pointed Harvard’s vice provost for theorist Sophie Morel, the only woman research, effective October 15. He full professor in the mathematics de- oversees interdisciplinary research, re- partment, who came to Harvard from search administration and policy, and the Institute for Advanced Study, is now research funding. Mc- at Princeton.…Cecilia Rouse ’86, Ph.D. Cullough, a materials ’92, a professor of the economics of edu-

scientist, succeeds niversity cation at Princeton, has been appointed

with waitstaff over tips collected as part professor of pathology U on dean of that universi- ll of a surcharge on food and beverage bills, David Korn, who led e ty’s Woodrow Wilson the Boston Globe reported in September; efforts to overhaul Uni- School of Public and arnegie M arnegie the funds collected had not been dis- versity financial con- C International Affairs. bursed to employees, as required by flict-of-interest policies. Richard She served on President Massachusetts law. The employees were McCullough Barack Obama’s Coun-

represented by Shannon Liss-Riordan Extension executive. Michael Shinagel cil of Economic Advis- universityprinceton ’90, J.D. ’96. On September 20, she filed a is stepping down as dean of the Divi- ers from 2009 to 2011.… Cecilia Rouse class-action lawsuit against the Harvard sion of Continuing Education (Harvard MIT’s past president, Susan Hockfield, Faculty Club, maintaining that staff Extension School, Har- is serving as a visiting professor at the there had also been illegally deprived of vard Summer School, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Cen- funds that club patrons paid, expecting Institute for Learning in ter for Science and International Affairs. them to be disbursed to servers as tips. Retirement, and other Also at the Kennedy School: Michael Ig- operations) at the end natieff. He was Carr professor of human Rugby rises. The athletics department of the academic year. He rights policy from 2000 to 2006 before

has announced that women’s rugby, jeff pike has led the organization returning to his native Canada, where a club sport since 1982, will become a Michael since 1975, and was also he was elected to parliament and led the Shinagel varsity sport in the 2013-2014 academic master of Quincy House. Liberal Party. He is now a half-time pro- year—bringing to 42 the number of var- The Faculty of Arts and Sciences will fessor of practice.…Paul Andrew, for- sity programs for men and women (21 conduct a national search for a successor. merly of the Weber Shandwick public each). The National Collegiate Athlet- relations firm, has been appointed Har- ics Association has identified women’s Political principals. Several Harvard- vard’s assistant vice president for com- rugby as an emerging sport, signaling its affiliated people played prominent roles munications, effective October 1. His potential as a recognized intercollegiate in the national political news this sum- previous clients included Harvard Busi- program. Harvard’s will be the first Ivy mer—alongside President Barack H. ness School and edX, the Harvard-MIT League varsity program. For more on the Obama, J.D. ’91, and Republican chal- online-education enterprise launched program’s history at Harvard, see http:// lenger Mitt Romney, M.B.A. ’74, J.D. last spring.…Caesars Entertainment is harvardmag.com/rugby-12. ’75. Thomas Stemberg ’71, M.B.A. ’73, a pursuing a license for a Boston-area ca- founder of the Staples office-supplies re- sino development with Suffolk Downs, Research leader. Richard McCullough, tail chain and now a venture capitalist, the racetrack on the East Boston-Revere vice president for research at Carnegie spoke at the Republican convention in line; Harvard Corporation member Jo- Mellon—where he formerly chaired the Tampa on Romney’s behalf. Rafael Ed- seph J. O’Donnell ’67, M.B.A. ’71, is a chemistry department—has been ap- ward (“Ted”) Cruz, J.D. ’95, former solic- Suffolk Downs principal owner.

50 November - December 2012 Photograph by Rose Lincoln/Harvard News Office Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 noses, not yet knowing that there is a able—daily, even—task. Still, I pressed the steering wheel—at 70 mph, remembering sweetness to the sweat and the burn. For power button and hid the device in my bag, how to drive—I thought of Windsor, Mas- the first time, the going feels like a return. thought of the single-function Nokia that, sachusetts, population 875—rural, home. for the past three months, had been my own. Reaching Sturbridge, driving back to Cam- This past August, I was returning to With a capacity of 100 messages, the phone’s bridge, I crossed right, over two lanes: five Cambridge. There were two and a half days greatest demand had been the inbox’s per- minutes of anxiety just to slow down. Cars at home, in Western Massachusetts (one, petual tendency to fill. It vibrated just as of- accelerated around me, with greater urgency unpacking; another, packing again), two ten, but with greetings rather than tasks to than I about arriving where they needed to and a half days with the place I felt I could be done. go. I increased the volume of my Bongo Flava, not leave before. Harvard was not where I I pulled out of the gas-station parking lot, sang louder to words I did not know. I was wanted to be going, despite what I may have appreciated the 25 mph section of road. Al- still in tune with the rhythm of the country said. My mind remained in Tanzanian vil- though I have never seen a police car in Wil- I had left, not ready for the pulse of the music lages, with the sound of the maize grinders liamsburg, it has never struck me as odd that the radio promised to play. I knew Harvard at 6 p.m. and the feeling of dust in my hair. the inhabitants obey a speed limit like that. would soon feel familiar, that I would adjust I sang Bongo Flava (Tanzanian pop music) to the pace of before. But though this con- downloaded for the drive back to school— There is a moment on the Mass. Pike— solation relieved uncertainties, I nonetheless and this time my mother was the one asking near Sturbridge—where two lanes be- wanted to maintain the travel, neither arriv- for silence from the first floor. come four. The mountains no longer rise up ing nor letting go. I didn’t check my e-mail before I left for around you; vehicles are forced into the de- It is a two-and-a-half-hour trip to Cam- school, waited until the cheap gas station pository of two significant arteries, a tempo bridge from Windsor, depending on the in Williamsburg before I even looked. My that seems faster than before. Cars from I-84 state of construction and desired num- phone had vibrated every five minutes along pass on the right, those from I-90 accelerate ber of back roads. My hometown is 98.86 the way and finally I decided to turn it off. on the left; eventually, a form of settling oc- percent white, or so the last census has But out of guilt, or habit, I opened the brows- curs. It is in this openness that I feel most shown. The open spaces of country lyr- er and lingered in the parking lot, waiting claustrophobic, where the trees have given ics actually hold meaning and running 10 minutes for small-town Internet to load. way to rest areas and poles. The lost views of into neighbors will leave you talking for Three hundred forty-nine messages on the elevation, though, are inconsequential—at 20 minutes, despite having places to go. screen, 90 or so that required reply. During this pace, your eyes must be constantly on It never takes longer than three hours to the semester, I knew, such was a manage- the road. Forcing my hands to loosen on the drive to Cambridge from Windsor, yet the bass of the pop music emanating from the tollbooth to Boston left me feeling that the distance between home and Tanzania is much less significant than the 131 miles between Harvard and home.

One night, in my final week in Tanzania, I return late from visiting another village. We have walked eight hours today to deliver flipcharts, markers, tape to a group, and check on progress while we are there. Shaba, age eight— one of the six children who live in the house next to ours—is cooking dinner beside the goats, sheep, chick- ens that settle by the door. The pot on the

Illustration by Josée Bisaillon Harvard Magazine 51 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

fire holds ugali, a thick cornmeal that re- Shaba nods. cannot be seen. I eat meat in the village, take quires nearly constant stirring as it is pre- Shaba, unaweza kuona nini hapa? “What can a bucket shower with heated water, change pared. Shaba places his wooden spoon on you see here?” I ask. The food is almost done. into clothing washed by the mama hired to the ground (beside the goats, sheep, chick- Vitu hivi, tu. “Only these things.” He ges- do our chores. White, female, American, I ens) anyway, and runs to give me a hug be- tures with his hands. face the discomfort of someone who will fore remembering to greet me as an elder. Na ukienda mwezini, utaona nini? “And if you never wholly quite belong, especially when Hatujacheza leo. “We haven’t played today,” go to the moon?” entering my privileged life within our gated he says to me in Swahili. Kila kitu. “Every thing.” walls next door. Even within a place, I think, Najua lakini leo nilitembea sana. Sasa, nimechoka I smile, returning the spoon to his hands. perspective is transitory; there is a coming lakini tunaweza kuongea kidogo. “I know, but to- Tomorrow, we will play in the dust of the and going, a process of becoming removed. day I walked a lot. Now I am tired, but we village, sit in the shade when the winter sun And I will forget this unease when I re- can talk a bit.” grows hot. Tonight, I am tired and dinner turn to Harvard, where I will balance the Shaba sits, wiping the spoon on dusty waits, inside. I enter our home next door, notion of being tangential once more—the pants. I ask if he knows why I enjoy be- through the gate that we keep locked. Sha- feeling of being deposited—until a form ing outside at night. He does not. It is 70 ba and his siblings rarely visit us there; we of settling occurs. I’ve realized that I can’t degrees—winter, cold—and Shaba would have only windows through which we can think of who I truly am at either place, re- rather be inside with the warmth. see them play. ally; perspective on one from the other has Kwa sababa napenda kuangalia nyota hapa. “Be- There aren’t any mountains to climb up, always seemed impossible to discern. It’s cause,” I explain, “here, I love to look at the to see from in Bwawani, the village where only when grounded in home and the moun- stars.” we stay. “Hot, dusty, bad roads, no water,” tains, or the air between here and there— Shaba looks up; the pot boils over. I ask if is how a motorcycle driver in town will de- that’s when I think of Tanzania and Har- he knows that a man has been to the moon. scribe it as I sit behind him, en route to the vard, these places that I love, to which I am He does not. office one day. It’s difficult to see farther always anxious to return. Tumeenda pale? “We have gone there?” I take than the closest farm in Bwawani, though the spoon and stir. By the fire, Shaba cannot people don’t tend to move much beyond Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow stop staring at the moon. that, anyway. Kathryn C. Reed ’13 has yet to learn the words to Tumeenda pale. Ungeweza, ungeenda? “We have. But I have been beyond the farms outside the Bongo Flava songs she sings, perhaps louder If you could, would you? our windows, know what lies there even if it than her roommate prefers.

sports seemed upbeat and resolute. “Any adversity that comes your way, you put your head down, you bite down, and you grind through it,” said senior tailback Treavor Powering Through Scales. “We’ve had that mentality as a team. It’s something you train for in the off-season. Distractions, adversity, what- Bite down. Grind it out. And score profusely. ever you want to call it, we power through it, and I’m proud of that.” Scales had just rushed for 173 yards, a he buzz at the first postgame ing. “We are not able to talk about the kids career high, in a season-opening game press conference wasn’t about who aren’t here,” said Murphy, tacitly con- that was hard-fought, tense, and in its the 66-yard breakaway that had firming that some members of his 119-man way historic. The Crimson had not faced a locked up the football team’s squad hadn’t dressed for the game. West Coast squad since a 44-0 mismatch T28-13 win over the University of San Diego, “I’ll say this,” Murphy added. “Harvard at Stanford in 1949, and no team from the or about the 99-yard kick return that was kids aren’t good kids, they’re great kids— western half of the country had ever set nullified by a penalty, or about Harvard’s but they don’t walk on water. And I think foot in Harvard Stadium. chances of repeating as Ivy League cham- it’s important, as parents and educators, The Crimson offense took three quar- pions. With writers from The New York Times that we reinforce that crucial life lesson, ters to get untracked, but erupted for and The Associated Press on hand for a game that inappropriate behavior won’t be tol- 21 fourth-quarter points in a show of they wouldn’t otherwise have covered, the erated. Because down the road, later in life, strength reminiscent of last year’s Ivy College’s investigation of “academic miscon- those consequences can be terminal. They League championship team, which scored duct” (see page 40) was Topic A. can cost you a marriage. They can cost you a school-record 37.4 points per game. San “I know the question everyone wants a career. But I’ve never seen greater charac- Diego took a 13-7 lead late in the third pe- to ask,” said head coach Tim Murphy. He ter kids than we have here. Amazing kids.” riod, but Harvard got a jolt of fresh energy spoke guardedly, citing privacy regula- The Times headline read, Harvard Wins when Seitu Smith II ’15 returned a USD tions, but did state that all of his offensive Opener, But Scandal Spoils Mood. Yet the play- kickoff for a 99-yard touchdown. His run and defensive starters were in good stand- ers who spoke at the press conference was called back because of an illegal block,

52 November - December 2012 www.gocrimson.com Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 but the offense then mounted a 94-yard tory over Brown. He went on to establish down, setting USD re- drive—sustained by the running of Scales himself as the most prolific backup quar- cords for pass attempts and senior quarterback Colton Chapple— terback in Crimson annals, passing for 12 (63) and completions Visit http:// harvardmag.com/ to take a 14-13 lead. touchdowns in 13 quarters of play and be- (38). Not since the 2003 about/email to sign up After that came two bonus touchdowns coming the first Harvard passer to throw season had an opposing for weekly post-game by Scales, whom Murphy praised as “a for at least four touchdowns in consecu- passer enjoyed a 350- reports in your inbox. complete running back, arguably the best tive games. But Winters returned at mid- yard day against Har- in the league.” The first was a one-yard season, and his understudy went back to vard, but Mills’s outing was made less en- slant, completing an 82-yard drive. The taking snaps for the place-kicking team. joyable by a Crimson defense that registered second was a 66-yard burst that caught Now Chapple’s the boss. Three games into 14 pass breakups, seven quarterback sacks, San Diego’s defenders off guard with less the current season, his won-lost record as and an interception. than a minute and a half to play. “Colton a starter was 9-1. Best foot forward: Harvard hasn’t lost came into the huddle,” Scales explained af- Preseason polls made a Harvard a heavy an opening game at the Stadium since the terward, “and said, ‘Guys, one first down favorite to retain the Ivy trophy. With an 2000 season, and has won 12 of its last 14 and we got the game.’ I said, ‘No, we’re upwardly mobile quarterback, a clutch of Ivy openers. scoring a touchdown.’ And sure enough, nimble receivers, a hefty and experienced Twilight zone: The Brown game’s un- the offensive line did a great job—[a hole] line, and an all-Ivy tailback to power usual 4:30 p.m. starting time was dictated opened up like the Red Sea, and I had no through it, the Crimson offense may hold by TV scheduling. NBC Sports Network choice, I was obligated to get to that end the key to another championship season. telecast the game nationally, but only af- zone.” ter airing the Cornell-Yale contest. The Scales got to the end zone no fewer than Tidbits: “They’re as good a team as we first half was played in sunlight, though four times at Brown the next weekend, as play, very tough, extremely well-coached, four temporary lighting banks were Harvard outslugged the Bears, 45-31, in a and nothing came easy,” said coach Mur- switched on before the kickoff.…Treav- televised evening game. Again the Crimson phy after the San Diego opener. The Tore- or Scales’s four touchdowns at Brown offense scored 21 fourth-quarter points, ros, who had already played two games, are were the most for a Harvard back since pulling away from a resilient Brown squad the defending co-champions of the Pioneer 2003, when Clifton Dawson ’07 had four that had matched Harvard drive-for-drive Football League, a 10-team conference with against Lafayette. The all-time Harvard for much of the game. Displaying a bal- constituents in California, the Midwest, record for rushing touchdowns is five, anced attack, Harvard ran the ball 37 times and the East. The PFL and the Ivy League set by fullback Tom Ossman ’52 in the and used 40 pass plays. Scales picked up are the only NCAA Division I conferences 1951 Brown game. 136 yards rushing, including breakaway whose members do not grant athletic schol- Front-loading: Harvard scored 49 of its touchdown runs of 41 and 20 yards in the arships.…Harvard is slated to open the 2013 52 points in the Holy Cross game before final quarter, and Chapple excelled, com- season at San Diego’s Torero Stadium, but halftime, setting a new school record for pleting 30 of 40 passes for 351 yards and USD then goes off the schedule. first-half scoring. The previous record of a touchdown. His most striking throws Hot hand: Torero quarterback Mason 41 was set at Columbia in 2005.…Reserves were a 30-yard scoring pass to Seitu Smith, Mills, a strong-armed passer and agile played the second half against Holy who made a dazzling over-the-shoulder scrambler, threw for 354 yards and a touch- Cross. grab at the goal line, and a 35-yarder to wide receiver Andrew Berg ’14, whose leaping catch set up a six-yard touchdown carry by Chapple himself. Chapple had thrown two scoring passes against San Diego, missing out on a third when a 15-yard attempt was picked off in the end zone. He continued to raise his game in the season’s third contest, passing for four touchdowns and running for another in a 52-3 rout of Holy Cross. In a rain-drenched night game at the Stadium, Chapple saw only two quarters of action, but completed 13 of 18 passes for 260 yards. As a junior, Chapple stepped in for the injured Collier Winters ’11 (’12) and threw for two touchdowns in last year’s 24-7 vic-

Tailback Treavor Scales scored four touchdowns in a 45-31 slugfest at Brown. His offensive line, said Scales, opened holes “as wide as an 18-wheeler.”

Photograph courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications Harvard Magazine 53 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

On a roll: The Holy Cross victory gave out at Yale Bowl—Harvard’s tenth victory of events came last summer, when the Eli Harvard a 12-game winning streak, the lon- in 11 meetings with the Blue—third-year captain-elect had to vacate his post after gest of any NCAA Football Championship coach Tom Williams resigned, admitting allegedly punching another student. So Subdivision team. Crimson teams hadn’t to misstatements in his résumé. Yale then the Blue is captainless in its 140th season met defeat since the opening game of the raided the enemy camp and hired Tony of football—“and maybe that is fitting,” 2011 season—a 30-22 loss at Holy Cross. Reno, Harvard’s special teams coordina- opined a Yale Daily News editorial, since In case you missed it: Yale’s football tor, to succeed Williams, whereupon Reno “each and every player shares the burden program is, let’s say, in a state of flux. A lured three more assistant coaches from of reminding Yale what a noble thing foot- month after last November’s 45-7 blow- Cambridge to New Haven. A further turn ball can be.” v“cleat”

Dunking from Feaster ’98, who led the nation in scoring the age of 18 or 19, that approximate an as a senior and had a long WNBA career. American high-school diploma: they’re Olympian Heights “Temi has that kind of potential,” Delaney- normally followed by three years of college Smith says, “and maybe more.” and a bachelor’s degree). When it became Basketball’s Temi Fagbenle— Because Fagbenle took her British O- clear that Fagbenle wouldn’t be allowed from London to Lavietes level exams (at age 15) before coming to to play intercollegiate games, and she Blair, the National Collegiate Athletic wanted to try out for the British national Association determined that she was the team instead, Delaney-Smith switched her here are not many basketball equivalent of a high-school graduate and to a program to prepare for an Olympic courts in London, nor do English so had played three “postgraduate” years run. Nevertheless, Fagbenle practiced as schools compete in the sport. at Blair. The NCAA therefore ruled that a freshman with the Crimson (“I showed There were just a few outdoor she had to sit out a season before playing them no mercy in practice,” she says), Tcourts on London playgrounds, and even college games. though she didn’t travel with the team. fewer indoor venues, when Temi Fagbenle Harvard appealed the ruling multiple “Practicing with her makes you work hard- ’15 was growing up. But having found the times to no avail. (In Great Britain, it’s er,” Delaney-Smith says. “Yet there’s a limit game at the advanced age of 14, Fagbenle actually the A-level exams, taken around to that because she dominates so much— made her way to the Haringey there is no one comparable Angels, one of a score of bas- Olympian and Harvard sophomore Temi to Temi in the Ivy League.” Fagbenle at Lavietes Pavilion, where ketball clubs in the city. The women’s basketball Ivy championship Fagbenle is one of the Angels are the powerhouse banners hang in profusion most athletic women ever of that lot, perennial national to play for Harvard, and champions in the under-14, -16, her versatility is impres- and -18 girls’ categories. sive. “She’s fast in the open Fagbenle ranks high in that court, has great back-to- host of Angels; she made the the-basket moves, and a 2012 British Olympic team and beautiful finishing touch,” played in all five of its con- Delaney-Smith says. “Usu- tests at this summer’s London ally people of her size Games. This season, as a Har- don’t have speed or perim- vard sophomore, she will play eter skills, but she is good for the first time in the Ivy away from the hoop, and League, making her only the has been working on her second Ivy Leaguer to have three-point shot. She’s a played Olympic women’s bas- great shot blocker and is ketball. (Brown’s Martina Jer- smart defensively.” For her ant played for Canada at the part, Fagbenle says, “I love 1996 Atlanta Games.) defense—it’s what gives me A six-foot, four-inch for- joy. When you have a total ward, Fagbenle brought her team effort on defense, it skills stateside to Blair Acad- feels so different from any- emy in New Jersey a few years thing else. Everyone com- ago. Head basketball coach municating, moving, work- Kathy Delaney-Smith, now being hard, each player on the ginning her thirty-first year at same page. Then when that Harvard, ranks her among the ball is denied—maybe a top players she has coached— block or a steal—that’s the including people like Allison best feeling ever. Those spe-

54 November - December 2012 Photograph by Stu Rosner Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

cial moments are rare, but totally worth it.” At the London Olympics, Fagbenle The rising star comes from a Nige- attempts a steal rian family; father Tunde is a newspaper from French player journalist and mother Buki is earning an Elodie Godin. herbal medicine degree. Fagbenle has 11 sibs and half-sibs—nine brothers and two she led Blair to the Mid- sisters, ranging from five to 43 years of age. Atlantic Prep League

She is the ninth child in her “sporty” fam- and state prep-school ress ily, and third tallest, after her six-foot-nine championships, and was and six-foot-seven brothers. (Her parents, named a McDonald’s ssociated P ssociated at six-feet, two inches and five feet, eight, All-American. In the A

are not formidably tall.) Born in Baltimore, spring she found time / rupa es K es she grew up mostly in London and has to win state champion- l ar

dual citizenship. ships in the high jump, Ch Tennis was Fagbenle’s first love (she still javelin, shot put, and discus. She also per- Nonetheless, “We did our country proud,“ plays) and she dreamed of playing profes- formed in two musicals and “enjoyed them Fagbenle says. “We played with guts in ev- sionally, but by age 13, “it wasn’t flowing,” thoroughly,” Fagbenle declares. ery game and played hard till the buzzer.” she says. She switched to basketball at Culture shock is now a thing of the The Crimson hope that her considerable 14, and wears uniform number 14 to com- past; Fagbenle’s current problems involve skills will help them break out of a rut of memorate that. It was awkward. “You’re more practical matters like finding a pair second-place Ivy finishes: Harvard’s last rubbish when you first start a sport,” she of jeans to fit her frame. (She does have title, shared with Cornell and Dartmouth, notes. “I was like a baby deer on the court. one pair, bought years ago.) She prefers came in 2007-’08, and for the last three sea- I had poor balance and my shots weren’t skirts and dresses, but even there, length sons the Crimson have come in second to dropping.” Yet at six feet, three inches, is a problem, as a dress for a five-foot, two- Princeton; the Tigers she had already been dubbed the “tallest inch woman, she says, “is a shirt for me! have dropped only one 13-year-old girl in London.” She also bene- Shopping is a nightmare!” of 42 Ivy games since Visit harvardmag.com/ fited from top-notch coaching at Haringey This year’s Olympic experience is un- the 2009-10 season. But extras for a video of and helped the club to national titles. likely to be her last. The popularity of Harvard returns several Temi Fagbenle ’15 demonstrating one of Her coaches had some contacts at Ameri- women’s basketball has only begun to strong players to com- her on-court moves. can prep schools; Fagbenle chose Blair be- grow in the United Kingdom; unlike plement their Olympi- cause “it had the prettiest pictures.” She France, Australia, or Russia, England has an, including high-scoring, six-foot forward thought high school in the States would “be not yet become a women’s-hoops power. Victoria Lippert ’13. If Fagbenle can bol- a breeze—I got that idea from movies.” In- Though the English national team had ster the Crimson’s results the way Allison stead, she experienced heavy culture shock a solid pre-Olympic run, besting highly Feaster did, the competition had best brace and “crashed and burned the first year.” But rated teams from France and the Czech itself: beginning with Feaster’s sophomore she soon adapted and began to love school Republic, they may have peaked too early; year, Harvard ran off three straight Ivy while excelling at basketball: as a senior they lost all five of their London contests. League titles. vcraig lambert

alumni “The Busiest Man in Poker” Bernard Lee calls, raises, deals, and explains the booming card game.

n 2003, when a complete amateur at PokerStars—and Lee and thousands of skills for more than a year, he wept with joy. named Chris Moneymaker won the other nonprofessional players had the same That summer, when his wife, family physi- $2.5-million first prize at the World thought: “If he can do it, I can do it!” The cian Kathryn (Higashi) Lee ’92, drove him Series of Poker (WSOP), the game’s poker boom was born. to the airport to attend the WSOP’s Main Ihighest-profile event, Bernard Lee ’92 had Lee got his own chance to compete at Event in Las Vegas, she asked, “If you cash already been playing poker with buddies WSOP in 2005, qualifying on a night when [win prize money], do you want me to in his hometown of Wayland, Massachu- he returned from tennis practice and played throw a party?” Lee’s reply: “If I win six fig- setts, for a long time. Moneymaker had online from 11 P.M. until 5:00 A.M. Having ures, then we party.” Kathryn relaxed; with earned his WSOP seat by playing online read books and worked hard to improve his 5,619 entrants who had each bought $10,000

www.alumni.harvard.edu Harvard Magazine 55 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

in chips to enter, the chance of such a large the official spokesperson for the Foxwoods assistant to then-Quincy House master Mi- payout was highly unlikely. Resort Casino’s Poker Room from 2010 to chael Shinagel. (All House affiliates may par- Or so she thought. Lee began the tour- 2011. And he teaches poker at the WSOP ticipate in intramurals.) ney with one of his best first days ever, and Academy. In other words, Lee embodies his It was at Harvard that Lee cut his teeth by day two was one of the top hundred epithet: “the busiest man in poker.” as a poker player in a weekly Quincy players (in chips amassed) of the 2,000 House game with one- and five-dollar remaining entrants; nearly two-thirds of Now ranked 235th of the 300 players on chips where “winning $500 was a really those who’d entered had gone broke after the Global Poker Index, a weekly rating of good night.” His friend Abe Wickelgren their first day of play. Lee had made $35,000 the game’s top players worldwide, Lee di- ’91, J.D. ’94, Ph.D. ’99, the game’s organizer by day three, and the following day he was vides his time about equally between his and one of the best players, became a men- among the 58 survivors all assured of at various media commitments and playing tor. “I’m a very observant person,” Lee least $145,000 in prize money. “You might in tournaments. “I have a pretty competi- says. He watched Wickelgren and even- want to get that party list ready,” he told tive personality,” he says. “Everything I’ve tually they took a road trip to Foxwoods his wife. He also called his boss at Boston done has led to this moment.” In his youth for Lee’s first casino action. “Bernie had Scientific, where he was a senior marketing he played soccer, basketball, and tennis, and great discipline,” Wickelgren recalls. “Not manager. (“I didn’t expect to get this deep now competes in an adult tennis league and having it is the downfall of a lot of poker in the tournament, so I didn’t take enough golfs; in college he may have played in the players: there’s a tendency to want to be days off from work,” he explains.) “Every most intramural poker contests ever, helped involved too much, to want to always be single person here is following you online,” by three post-collegiate years as a resident involved in the hand. Bernie had the disci- came the reply. “We can’t pline to fold a hand and sit get any work done.” on the sidelines. He also Lee’s father, brother, could think about things college roommate DooJin analytically and not let Kim ’92, two co-workers, his emotions get involved. and some poker pals flew He was very interested in to Las Vegas to see him improving—Bernie read finish thirteenth overall, poker books and got bet- winning $400,000. (The top ter when he was not actu- prize, won by Joe Hachem, ally playing.” was $7.5 million.) If not for A “picture memory” a 1-in-10 chance of a dealt helps Lee remember cards card that didn’t fall Lee’s that have been played; way, he would have gone he’s also aware of a vast even further. But the event range of odds of cards be- changed his life. ing dealt. “When you start The PokerStars online out, all you do is worry card room, which now has about getting good cards,” nearly 50 million registered he explains. “The bet- players worldwide, invited ter you get, the more it’s Lee to write a blog about situational—you’re play- his experience; he responding the player as much as ed with 25 single-spaced playing the cards. This pages that ran as a 10-part game is very psychologi- series on the website. ESPN cal.” For example, though produced and aired two there’s no obligation to profiles of him.The Boston show one’s cards after a Herald asked him to write hand, sometimes Lee will a Sunday poker column, show what he held after which he did and has con- winning a bluff to “desta- tinued since 2005, alongside bilize” an opponent. “The columns for ESPN.com and best time to get informa- CardPlayer Magazine. Since tion about another player 2009, he has co-hosted Bernard Lee at the card is when you’re not in the ESPN Inside Deal, a weekly table, with a picture of his hand,” he says. “After I’ve online poker show; he has children beside him, as folded a hand, I’ll intently also hosted The Bernard Lee usual watch how the other play- Poker Show on AM radio for ers bet, notice their pat- the last five years and was terns, see if there are any

56 November - December 2012 Photograph by Stu Rosner Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 A COLORADO FAMILY GETAWAY: WINTER IN THE WEST MAR 16–23, 2013 • Educational presentations • Lectures with Olympic athletes • Dogsledding & horseback riding • Snowshoeing & cross-country skiing • Square dancing & real cowboys HARVARDTRAVELERSFOR OFALL TRIPSAGES FAMILYADVENTURES TRAVEL THE WORLD WITH FELLOW ALUMNI AND HARVARD STUDY LEADERS

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‘tells’ that give them away. The next time He’s come a long way since his father Thanksgiving and Christmas. “I’d watch I go up against that player, I’ll know more. scolded him as a boy for declaring a full them arguing with each other—‘How You can tell players aren’t really serious if house when he actually had four of a kind could you make that play?’ ” he recalls. “I they check out of the game once they’ve (thanks to a wild card)—as his dad vocif- thought that was being a man. I learned folded their own hand.” Big winnings erously declared. (In serious poker, there early on that it was not about luck.” come, of course, from opponents who are no wild cards, which vastly change Lee grew up in a Korean family in stay in the game until losing out at the probabilities.) Lee often sat at the top of Westchester County, north of New York end. “You need someone who has a good the stairs and listened when his dad played City, attended the Horace Mann School in enough hand to be second best,” Lee says. poker with friends and family members at Riverdale, New York, and studied classical piano at Juilliard on Saturday morn- ings, eventually winning a piano contest. He entered Brown on an eight-year college/medical-school program, but eventually transferred to Harvard, where he concentrated in biology. After college, he found that he loved business and took an M.B.A. at Babson; he worked at Boston Scientific, a medical-device company, until 2007. After Lee’s great run at the WSOP in 2005, he was well positioned to take part in the poker boom then in progress. On- From left: line play had taken off, and ESPN began Abiola Laniyonu, broadcasting games using a “hole cam” Laura Hinton, that allowed spectators to see the play- Meghan Smith, and Matthew Chuchul ers’ cards. The World Poker Tour became the most-watched show on the Travel Chan- nel. (Some of the poker explosion, says Aloian Award Winners Lee, began with the 1998 filmRounders, about the underground world of high- stakes poker, which starred his classmate In honor of the David and Mimi Aloian Hinton, of Alameda, California, co- Matt Damon ’92.) Memorial Scholarships’ twenty-fifth an- chairs her House committee and is a “It’s ridiculous that I can do this for a niversary, the Harvard Alumni Associa- founding team member of the Cabot living,” he says. “I think about this game tion (HAA) has chosen four undergradu- Café, which serves hundreds of students, all the time and I love it. I was a fan of the ates to receive the award this year tutors, and faculty members a week, fos- world’s top poker stars and now they are (instead of the usual two). Recipients have tering a dynamic atmosphere of intellec- my friends.” He launched his Full House demonstrated solid leadership in contrib- tual and social conversation. Charity Program in 2011, donating $500 to uting to the quality of life in the Houses, Laniyonu, of Derwood, Maryland, it each time he draws a full house, with traits embodied by the Aloians, who led helped modernize the Lowell House li- a minimum $20,000 annual commitment; Quincy House from 1981 to 1986. David brary by creating custom software to Vermont’s Cabot Cheese is the primary Aloian ’49 was also executive director of analyze its more than 10,000 volumes so sponsor. Last year the charity supported the HAA. This year’s scholars, Matthew users may cross-reference their books work on autism and provided Christmas Chuchul ’13, of Pforzheimer House, against other Harvard holdings. A former packages for children whose families Laura Hinton ’13, of Cabot House, secretary of the House Committee, he were devastated by storms in Hartford, Abiola Laniyonu ’13, of Lowell House, now serves the community through an Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachu- and Meghan Joy Smith ’13, of Leverett at-large leadership position created spe- setts. House, were honored on September 27. cifically for him. And though his kids don’t yet know Chuchul, of New Hyde Park, New York, Smith, of Campbell River, British Co- how to play poker (they do play Uno, a co-chairs his House committee. Last year, lumbia, has helped raise awareness of Crazy Eights-type game, and sometimes noting a void in “Pfoho’s” history, he mental-health issues and helped change even beat their father at it), Lee is known teamed up with the Harvard College student culture by normalizing asking for as a family man on the circuit. He places Women’s Center to launch the “Radcliffe help with them. She has worked closely a photo of his children on the table and Revolution”—a photographic retrospec- with student mental-health liaisons and is kisses it before each session of play. “If I’m tive and evening of alumnae recollections a drug and alcohol peer adviser. In addi- nervous, I can look down at my son and of the transition to gender-mixed hous- tion, she is the captain of Leverett’s intra- daughter,” he says. “It reminds me that if ing—which drew more than 100 people. mural crew women’s B boat. I’m knocked out, I go home to them—how bad can this be?” vcraig lambert

58 November - December 2012 Photograph by Rose Lincoln/Harvard News Office Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 The View from Mass Hall

Slow Dancing

ast spring, in the midst of Harvard’s 375th birthday and 20th annual ARTS FIRST celebration, my office sponsored Slow Dancing, an extraordinary video installation by David Michalek that transformed the façade of Widener Library into a moving work of art projected Lonto three large screens. Using a high speed, high definition camera, the artist created portraits of dancers in action, their five-second flashes of choreography each slowed to span ten minutes. For ten nights in late April, hundreds of spectators gathered in chairs, on the grass, under the trees of Tercentenary Theatre to watch the triptych for minutes or hours as every motion and every muscle of the 43 dancers was made visible. Movements I had watched in performances over many years now appeared completely new, as if I was seeing each gesture and each leap for the first time. The change of speed meant altered vision and transformed understanding. Even the dancers themselves were surprised to see what their movements actually involved. I think of universities as institutions with a distinctive, perhaps Such a shift of perception and meaning is, of course, fundamen- unique mission in relation to the resource of time. We are charged tal to great art. But, as I watched busy passersby making their way with thinking about the long term, with reaching beyond the stran- through the heart of our campus slow to a stop, I found myself glehold of the present—both to grapple with how we are shaped thinking about the lessons of Slow Dancing in a broader context. by the past and to anticipate a future beyond the next quarter or They became, for me, a kind of metaphor for an important dimen- the next election. Knowledge and speed are often inversely cor- sion of what we do at Harvard, and for universities more generally, related. If, as has been so often remarked, journalism is “the first for their commitments and their purposes: we see anew when we rough draft of history,” scholarship digs deeper, to learn more, to slow down to look, to observe, and to reflect. understand more completely and more accurately, to take time for This is no simple task in a world that regards speed as an almost drafts two, three, and beyond in an attempt to approach what we unalloyed good—faster results, faster communication, faster trades, might call Veritas, rather than simply to meet a deadline. Realizing ek (2012) l a

h faster travel, faster time to market, faster time to degree. Much of the promise of stem cells, the possibilities of genomics, or the po- ic this drive is legitimate. Time is indeed a resource that we must tential of renewable energy will require more than a year or two of avid M avid not waste. But sometimes not wasting time entails making better research. Eureka moments in these and other fields build on founda- and fuller use of it. Slow Dancing reminds us of what we lose when tions, precedents, and contexts that extend far beyond the moment. we fail to take time and make time. There is so much we can miss, Learning, too, happens over time; it is cumulative, incremental. A ontage by D ontage by so much we cannot see, so much we fail to understand if we don’t student in the College enters, as is inscribed over Dexter Gate, “to oto M

Ph regard time itself as an opportunity. grow in wisdom” over a four year experience, not to accumulate as many facts as possible in the shortest period of time. In a season of gratitude and with a New Year fast approaching, let us celebrate what Slow Danc- ing represents as a valued pathway to insight, as a context for reflection. Let us make time to consider the course and the meaning of our lives as members of the University community. And let us think of Harvard as a place that continually enables us to see differently and see afresh as we commit ourselves to taking the time to look.

Sincerely,

Harvard Magazine 59 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 The College Pump Ipso Facto!

Massachusetts, Guinea, Italy, Germany, and low and tutor of the College, he had received Holland. His half-brother came to Massa- £20 from the Pennoyer bequest in 1694. And chusetts in 1635, but soon moved on to New so it came to pass. Netherland and Connecticut. When Wil- liam came to make his will, his five children had all died. After generous legacies to his half-brother and to other relations, he made Illegitimum non carborundum. Ocean- “Your wooden arm you hold outstretched a series of philanthropic bequests. One of ographer Allan R. Robinson ’54, Ph.D. ’59, to shake with passers-by.” these was to support two scholarships and had a profound understanding of the Gulf two fellowships at Harvard, with preference Stream, which earned him respect in learned eer through railings on Me- for any descendants of his half-brother. An- circles worldwide, according to an account morial Drive at Leverett House’s other was for a free school in Pulham St. of his career written last year by colleagues McKinlock Hall and you will see Mary. Both legacies were funded by rents for the minutes of the Faculty of Arts and between two arched windows a from farms he owned in the village. Though Sciences after the death of the McKay pro- Pbell hanging in a small timber bell-frame Harvard sold its farm in 1903, Pennoyer fessor of geophysical fluid dynamics emeri- about 15 feet above ground. Insinuate your- scholarships are still awarded.” tus. Members of the Harvard Band came to self into the Leverett courtyard, and you will Thompson learned how the bell came his memorial service and burst into song. discover that it is a bell of rather modest to Harvard from a letter written by a for- As an undergraduate, Robinson played size, about a foot across at bottom. It has no mer Pennoyer scholar, Grant Palmer Pen- baritone horn with the Band. “During Com- ropes with which to ring it, no doubt a frus- noyer, A.B. 1915, M.D. ’19. His eldest daugh- mencement week in 1953,” wrote his col- tration to the undergraduates in the House. ter, Virginia, who was working for the State leagues, “Allan and his friends Edward Up- Across the front of the mount, “Pennoyer” Department in London in 1945, visited the ton [’53, G ’55] and Charles Lipson [’54, M.D. is carved into the wood in script. What is Pennoyer school in Pulham St. Mary and ’58] decided to write a set of nonsense Latin this all about? you ask yourself. revealed her identity. They made a big fuss verses for ‘Ten Thousand Men of Harvard.’” Roger Thompson, professor of Ameri- over her, her father wrote, but when they They incorporated in their text the Band’s can history at the University of East An- offered her a bell, she motto, “Illegitimum non glia, Norwich, Norfolk, England, answers only smiled. She did carborundum,” loosely your question in a dispatch to this maga- tell her father about it, translated as “Don’t let zine. The bell was given to Harvard in 1945 and he wrote the head the bastards grind you by the village of Pulham St. Mary, near Diss, of the school to say down.” At Robinson’s ser- Norfolk, where it had hung in the tower of that he would be device the Band belted out: their school since 1790 but had recently been lighted to accept the Illegitimum non carbo- removed because the belfry had rotted. Un- bell. He thought the rundum; like the case of certain Russian bells, no one most suitable place Domine salvum fac. will be asking for this bell back because the for it would be Har- Illegitimum non carbo- school was closed in 1988. vard and suggested it rundum; What links Harvard and Pulham St. Mary go to Leverett House Domine salvum fac. is that name, Pennoyer. “William Pennoy- because John Leverett, The Pennoyer Gaudeamus igutur! er (1603-1671) was a London merchant who A.B. 1680, S.T.B. ’92, schoolhouse bell, Veritas non sequitur? grew rich during and after the English Civil president from 1708 from Pulham St. Mary in England, Illegitimum non carbo- War (1642-1646),” Thompson writes. “He to 1724, had been an now at Leverett rundum—ipso facto! traded all over the known world, to India, early Pennoyer bene- House Madagascar, The Levant, Barbados, Virginia, ficiary. As a young fel- vprimus v

60 November - December 2012 Photograph by Jim Harrison Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746

Reclaiming Childhood (continued from page 38) multigenerational study of the impact of war in Africa. Betancourt believes her “long-term relationships” in the coun- cation programs for use in refugee camps. Her eventual disserta- tries where she works help her navigate foreign cultures as peo- tion explored the role social support played in the mental health ple begin to trust her and her team members. Ties with partner of youths displaced by the conflict in Chechnya. organizations, such as FXB in Jaipur and Partners In Health in She cites the influence on her work of two Harvard Medical Rwanda, are also crucial. Though her India projects are new, she School researchers: Margarita Alegria, who has questioned the intends them to be equally enduring. “Once I commit to a place,” cultural validity of applying commonly used mental-health as- she says, “I tend to stay committed for a long time.” sessment and services models to minority populations, and Felton Earls, whose long-term study of Chicago youths examined the con- Office buildings and residential towers under construction sequences of violence, tracking a broad range of measures: physical are a hallmark of Indian cities today. In fact, these sites are homes health, social connection, educational and vocational achievement. already: next to each unfinished skyscraper, low-ceilinged, ram- Remembering these lessons, Betancourt has resisted the tempta- shackle lean-tos of corrugated tin make up a workers’ village. tions to apply Western models elsewhere without adapting them India has an estimated 40 million migrant construction workers; and to stop at the sort of cross-sectional study (one-time data col- most of them have families in tow. lection, with no follow-up) that dominates research in the devel- Children who live on construction sites typically do not at- oping world. In countries that lack basic infrastructure and gov- tend school. They may not speak the local language of instruc- ernment data collection, the challenge of keeping track of study tion, and may also be several years behind because of frequent subjects year after year becomes even harder. But, she says, “How moves or a lack of schooling in their native villages. Families do can we ever look at resilience if we keep looking at a single snap- not usually stay on one construction site more than a few months: shot in time?” She has now been following the same children from when laborers who specialize in pouring foundations are finished, Sierra Leone for more than a decade; a newly obtained grant will they move to a new project, replaced by those who will erect the allow her to follow them as they start their own families—the first building, then by stone masons—and so on. What’s more, enroll- ing children in school means taking time away from work. Even locating the nearest school in an unfamiliar area can be daunting. Mobile Crèches, a Delhi-based NGO with which Betan- court is collaborating, assists parents with enrollment and daily transportation to school for their children. It operates daycare centers on construction sites, offering tutoring, meals, clothing, and medical care, and even negotiating breastfeeding breaks for female construction workers. At a site in Gurgaon, half a dozen 20-story buildings rise into the fog. Here, in the birthplace of the overseas call center and the first hub of customer-service outsourcing to In- dia, Mobile Crèches operates a center serving 60 children— only a fraction of those living here. (Multiple construction companies commonly work on the same site; understand- ably, the companies that pay for crèches allow only their

At a childcare center on a construction site in Gurgaon, near Delhi, children of construction workers receive more than just supervision: the center, operated by the NGO Mobile Crèches, provides education, food, and healthcare.

78 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 own employees’ children to attend.) The other children Despite the UN Convention on the Rights of spend their days cooking, procuring water, or caring for younger siblings. They play unsupervised amid heavy ma- the Child, Betancourt says, “Time and again, we fail chinery and piles of rusty rebar, with background noise of to do just the very basic things.” clanking metal and buzzing generators. The crèche, tucked away in a metal-fenced courtyard, is a sible for one organization to serve the entire target population. A cheerful oasis in this landscape of gray and brown. In an open-air construction worker might earn 150 rupees ($3) a day—not much classroom on the terrace, the older children are at work on an as- more than Badal makes collecting bottles in the Jaipur train sta- signment to write an illustrated story using the Hindi words for tion. Minimum-wage laws exist, but “the law is flouted every- clouds, stars, and fair. Inside, the three-to-five-year-olds sing along where,” says Mobile Crèches executive director Mridula Bajaj. with a boombox, eagerly miming the motions to a song about Any construction site with a certain number of female workers of hygiene: combing hair, brushing teeth, washing hands. A sched- reproductive age is required by law to have a crèche, but few do. ule for the under-three group, posted on the wall, includes time Mobile Crèches pressures the government to enforce laws and blocks for playing with toys, tickling, and hugs. raises awareness about unenforced laws that affect families and More broadly than the concrete services it offers—food, educa- children. “They don’t know that they can advocate for their children tion, healthcare—Mobile Crèches aims to provide “a place where to have the right to education,” says Betancourt. “They don’t know children reclaim their childhood.” This focus on child develop- that India has an integrated child-development scheme where their ment beyond physiological needs drew Betancourt’s interest. A zero-to-three-year-olds should be able to go to an early childhood student (Ashkon Shaahinfar, M.P.H. ’11, now a clinical fellow in center. They don’t know that India has ratified the UN Convention pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital) proposed using on the Rights of the Child, and all that it stipulates.” the SAFE framework to examine the NGO’s work as his thesis That convention, which she calls “the gold standard,” entitles project; he and Betancourt wrote the first articles explaining how children to healthcare, education, security in SAFE applies here and conducted interviews with government food and housing, and protection from all forms officials, NGO workers, academics, and parents to study the im- of violence and exploitation—yet in many of Visit harvardmag. pact of growing up on a construction site. the countries that have signed and ratified the com/extras to view Betancourt’s team is working to create a “SAFE Child Impact convention, the majority of children lack at additional images of Betancourt’s work. Assessment,” modeled after environmental impact assessments— least one of these. “Time and time again,” says a sort of “report card” that might be used to tally just how child- Betancourt, “we fail to do just the very basic things.” friendly a company is. She says she has had “very interesting con- She would like to see a world where children not only survive, versations” with India’s Ministry of Women and Children about but thrive. In India, she wants children’s rights to be part of the con- drafting legislation to require such assessments before new proj- versation. In Sierra Leone and Rwanda, she seeks to make the case ects break ground. She wonders, “Under the rubric of corporate that children still need help long after crisis aid has dried up. Such social responsibility, could we make this like going green, so it’s a measures, she points out, affect not just individual children, but en- good thing, an exciting thing, to be child-friendly?” tire nations, as they could mean the difference between a generation Beyond operating 36 childcare centers, Mobile Crèches is an ad- that finds gainful employment and one mired in psychological prob- vocacy organization. Betancourt is equally excited to be engaged lems. “We have lovely laws on the books,” she says. “But to just sign on this front: the need is so vast that it would be virtually impos- them and not uphold them is a very crass exercise.”

Former associate editor Elizabeth Gudrais ’01 now lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Her reporting in India was supported by an anonymous donation for international news coverage.

Harvard Magazine 79 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Treasure Copper-clad Hello Putting a warm face on an intimidating proposition

ing’s chief designer was Jane Weinzapfel of the Boston architectural firm Leers Weinzapel. Ascend through the second-floor portrait gal lery and meeting space to the roof garden, designed by James A. Heroux of Brown Sardina. It is com pletely charming and— would you believe?—se rene. Museum director Peter K. Johnson, M.Arch. ’76, helps tend the garden. Perhaps best of assachusetts Gen all about this gem eral Hospital is a con of a building is the glomeration of tow copper cladding. ering, mostly gray Brought in in sheets Mstructures with its main entrance off and cut and fitted busy Cambridge Street in Boston at by workers, it has the foot of Beacon Hill. “Its numerous the look of hand buildings look as if they’re jammed craft. Gleaming at together around some invisible cen first, it will slowly ter,” writes Robert Campbell ’58, attain a green pa M.Arch. ’67, architecture critic for tina, in dialogue The Boston Globe, “like the members of with rooftops on a football team in a huddle with their Beacon Hill. backsides to the rest of the world.” In 1811 Boston But now there’s a welcoming build had doctors who ing at the very front of the hospital made house calls, campus. It is a treasure of a new mu but had no hospi seum, open to the public free of charge. first demonstrate publicly the blessings of tal. Founding fathers James Jackson, A.B. Pedestrians hurrying by the Paul S. Rus ether, to a serviceable incubator fashioned 1796, M.D. 1809, LL.D. ’54, and John Collins sell, MD Museum of Medical History and out of old Toyota parts by a team from the Warren, A.B. 1797, M.D. 1819, persuaded a Innovation can scarcely avoid looking in hospital working in a poverty-stricken part group of local citizens to fund construc the windows of the all- of the world. This clever glass frontage coax tion of a hospital especially for care of the glass first floor at exhib es one inside the tiny building. There one poor. A group of today’s donors, to celebrate its ranging from alarming finds interactive panels exploring the fron MGH’s bicentennial, raised the money for Visit harvardmag.com/ extras to see more antique surgical instru tiers of surgery or neuroscience and videos this museum to mark past landmarks in pa images of the museum ments, to the equip of caregivers speaking of patients they have tient care and to point to what may be com and the rooftop garden. ment used at MGH to treated—and sometimes lost. The build ing, a museum of past and future. vc.r.

80 November - December 2012 Photographs ©Anton Grassl/Esto Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746