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Fall 2017 JENNY SLATE ’04 THE LANDLINE ACTRESS GOES TO HER ROOM PATRICIA KITCHER THIS YEAR’S GREAT TEACHER ON THE VALUE OF THE CORE Columbia THE BIG “C” HOW DID IT GET College THERE, ANYWAY? Today After a turn as Aaron Burr — and a moment in the hot seat — STAR Brandon Victor Dixon ’03 continues to dazzle on and POWER off Broadway 12 save the date! REUNION 2018 THURSDAY, MAY 31 – SATURDAY, JUNE 2 If your class year ends in 3 or 8, save the date for Reunion 2018, a chance to reconnect with classmates and friends on campus and throughout New York City. college.columbia.edu/alumni/reunion2018 Columbia Contents College CCT Today VOLUME 45 NUMBER 1 FALL 2017 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Alexis Boncy SOA’11 EXECUTIVE EDITOR Lisa Palladino DEPUTY EDITOR Jill C. Shomer ASSOCIATE EDITOR 12 18 24 Anne-Ryan Heatwole JRN’09 FORUM EDITOR Rose Kernochan BC’82 ART DIRECTOR features Eson Chan 12 Published quarterly by the Columbia College Office of Alumni Affairs and Development Star Power for alumni, students, faculty, parents and friends of Columbia College. After a turn as Aaron Burr — and a moment in ASSOCIATE DEAN, the hot seat — Brandon Victor Dixon ’03 COLUMBIA COLLEGE ALUMNI RELATIONS continues to dazzle on and off Broadway. AND COMMUNICATIONS Bernice Tsai ’96 By Yelena Shuster ’09 18 ADDRESS ALL CORRESPONDENCE TO: Columbia College Today Columbia Alumni Center First, Aid 622 W. 113th St., MC 4530, 4th Fl. New York, NY 10025 Margaret Traub ’88 experiences “the best and worst humanity 212-851-7852 has to offer, side by side,” doing on-the-ground disaster relief. EMAIL [email protected] By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian ’08, JRN’11 WEB college.columbia.edu/cct 24 ISSN 0572-7820 Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect Core Values official positions of Columbia College or Columbia University. This year’s Great Teacher, Patricia Kitcher, on the © 2017 Columbia College Today enduring importance of Contemporary Civilization. All rights reserved. By Jill C. Shomer Cover: Photograph by Jörg Meyer Contents departments alumninews 3 Within the Family 34 Message from CCAA President Making Class Notes even more noteworthy. Michael Behringer ’89 By Alexis Boncy SOA’11 Greetings from the alumni association’s newest president. 4 Message from Dean James J. Valentini Every College experience is an opportunity for 35 Alumni in the News students’ personal development. 36 Lions 5 Around the Quads Julie Jacobs Menin ’89; Kenneth Wray ’77, GSAPP’91; Jonathan S. Lavine ’88 to receive the Ian Rapoport ’02 2017 Alexander Hamilton Medal. 40 Bookshelf 9 Roar, Lion, Roar Worth It: Your Life, Your Money, Your Terms Coach Al Bagnoli cautiously optimistic going into by Amanda Steinberg ’99 his third season; the origin story of the Big “C.” 42 Class Notes 28 Columbia Forum: About the House Alumni Sons and Daughters; Just Married! Actress Jenny Slate ’04 and her father welcome readers into their (haunted!) family home. 84 Obituaries Wm. Theodore de Bary ’41, GSAS’53; Norman Dorsen ’50 Like Columbia College Alumni 88 Alumni Corner facebook.com/alumnicc After a father declares the College “off limits,” the View Columbia College Alumni photos son attends — and writes an award-winning poem. instagram.com/alumniofcolumbiacollege By Jeffrey Harrison ’80 Follow @Columbia_CCAA Join the Columbia College Alumni network LION’S DEN | SEPTEMBER 14 college.columbia.edu/alumni/linkedin “The Voice had broken ground as a place where people of color, LGBTs Get “The Latest” at CCT Online CCT and the counterculture were welcome to take center stage and address important sociopolitical topics as TAKE FIVE | SEPTEMBER 8 seen through a personal lens.” “I roomed on the top floor of — Michael Musto ’76, from WHERE ARE THEY NOW? | SEPTEMBER 18 “Village Voice Print Edition, RIP” Furnald Hall with two other would-be Naval Reserve officers. “When I build a house for someone, it’s That experience became an early going to withstand whatever took down chapter of The Caine Mutiny.” their old house.” — Herman Wouk ’34 — Jon Ross ’83, founder of MicroAid International, a post-disaster recovery organization college.columbia.edu/cct JÖRG MEYER Within the Family Making Class Notes More Noteworthy f all the lessons that come from editing Columbia College Today, the most inviolable is that when an issue arrives, most readers’ first stop will be Class Notes. That com- Opendium of personal news and anecdotes is the best-read part of our magazine; alumni tell us so in letters and conversation, and our surveys confirm it. The section sounds a veritable clarion call: Come see what your friends and classmates have done lately. Through the years I’ve surveyed quite a few alumni magazines, and I have no doubt that CCT features one of the largest — quite possibly, the largest — Class Notes section. It accounts for about half of our pages, 77 columns from 1941 to 2017, a whopping 46,000 words per issue. The constraints are few. Class Notes writers are allotted a healthy word count per column (1,500, though admittedly, some of our stalwart correspondents would like to have more) and a democratic approach to inclusion. They are the place to share what’s happening in your life, in your own words, with your class. And not just your class, because the fact is, most readers skip through the years, stop- ping when they see a name they recognize or a tidbit catches the eye. Serendipity is part of the fun. There are reports of job changes and graduations; kudos of all kinds; marriage and birth announce- we’ve pondered for some time, and one answer is: more photos. Yes, ments; outpourings of familial pride; accounts of hobbies, travel and we’ve always printed them in our Class Notes pages, but we know the retirement; bids to join Reunion Committees and dispatches from number doesn’t nearly reflect all your snap-happy habits. Starting this the event itself. Memories and jokes are freely traded, as are a few issue, we aim to change that — to publish more of your photos, so tall tales. Deaths are mourned. On occasion, poetry is written. that Class Notes reflects more fully the community that you are today, Actually, the section as a whole is a kind of poetry — the story of and so that it feels as alive with images as it does with voices. so many lives, marked by a common bond, unfolding in countless Please, consider this your call: Send pictures. We’ll showcase ways that are familiar and yet each their own. The everyday is made them throughout the section and, for our Lion weddings, in our extraordinary by our attention to these details, and our resolution to new Just Married! section (page 78). As with written Class Notes, write them down. the constraints are few: for a Class Notes photo, at least two alumni Looking ahead, however, Class Notes faces a challenge as we must be present; for a wedding photo, one member of the couple march deeper into the Digital Age. Flip through the section and must be a College alum; and we need a little something about what you can see it: Starting in the 1990s, the columns get progressively you’re doing and who’s with you for the caption. shorter. There are exceptions, but the trend is unmistakable. It makes Meanwhile, led by the section’s superintendent, CCT Associate sense considering the way we communicate today, in bits and bursts Editor Anne-Ryan Heatwole JRN’09, we’ll continue to seek ways on social media platforms like Facebook. Millennials especially are to evolve Class Notes. And while we’re on the subject, a thank you in the habit of sharing there and on Instagram, Twitter and Snap- is in order for our class correspondents — for all their service and chat, and quite possibly somewhere else by the time you read this. dedication, and for rising to the challenge of changing with us. To write a letter or email with personal updates is far from their Finally, if you haven’t sent a Class Note in a while — or ever — default setting. I hope you’ll do so (college.columbia.edu/cct/contact-us). Your With each year, we’ve also morphed into an increasingly visual classmates want to hear from you, and so do we. lot. Most everyone has a smartphone camera in their pocket. Shoot and post — as the saying goes, a picture tells a thousand words. And those of us scrolling through our feeds have come to crave that visual connection. So how can Class Notes continue to be a place for all our alumni to Alexis Boncy SOA’11 share their news, however they prefer to communicate? It’s a question Editor-in-Chief Fall 2017 CCT 3 Message from the Dean A Time for Growth and Development n this issue, Patricia Kitcher, the Roberta and William Campbell Professor of the Humani- ties and the Carnoy Family Program Chair Ifor Contemporary Civilization, talks about the continued relevance of Contemporary Civilization in today’s world. Kitcher says that the Core Curriculum is not only about developing knowledge and understanding con- cepts like justice, fairness and responsibility, but also about learning to think through complex issues and to approach problems in imaginative ways. As she says: “It helps to approach a problem as Aristotle would, or think about a problem as Mill would, because now you have a way to be in the world thinking about things. Reading a lot of very insightful people, you can under- stand a lot of what’s going on.” Our role at Columbia College is to prepare students to succeed in the world of today and in the world far into the future — a future that neither we, nor they, can know or imagine.