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PAGE 30 CONTENTS

FEATURES

12 UPPER WEST SIDE STORIES The little-known tale of two Columbia teachers and the classes that inspired J.D. Salinger, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, and a generation of American writers By Paul Hond

18 BULLET POINTS Anger. Fear. Frustration. Hope? A year in the life of a reporter on the front lines of America’s gun-violence epidemic. By Jennifer Mascia ’07JRN

24 CORE CURRICULUM What deep-sea sediment can tell us about climate change By David J. Craig and Jackie Roche

30 LEAP OF FAITH Dancer Michael Novak ’09GS has been cast in the role of a lifetime — Paul Taylor’s successor By Rebecca Shapiro

36 THE SCIENCE OF HEALTHY AGING A Q&A with Linda P. Fried on the secrets to living a longer, healthier, and happier life By David J. Craig

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY JASU HU CREATIVE / LASPATA DECARO / LASPATA CREATIVE

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 1

4.18_Contents.indd 1 11/15/18 1:06 PM COLUMBIA CONTENTS MAGAZINE DEPARTMENTS Executive Vice President, 3 University Development & Alumni Relations FEEDBACK Amelia Alverson

Deputy Vice President for Strategic Communications 6 Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS COLLEGE WALK They Shall Be Rereleased \ The Short List \ The Forum Sets Sail \ Through the Future, Editor in Chief Sally Lee Darkly \ In Memoriam LBB Art Director 40 Len Small

EXPLORATIONS Managing Editor New smart helmet could spot concussions in Rebecca Shapiro PAGE real time \ What fi sh can teach us about our 36 Senior Editors powers of perception \ New fl ight routes save David J. Craig, Paul Hond time but damage health \ The hunt for the Copy Chief fi rst exomoon may be over \ What do retail Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN workers want? Just a little respect \ Can AI Associate Digital Director defeat the dreaded tsetse fl y? \ More crop per Julia Joy drop \ Turning dross into gold \ Study Hall Editorial Assistants 46 Emily Margaret Jordan, Cassidy Sattler NETWORK Around the World in 100 Restaurants \ Senior Director for Strategic Communications Under the Rainbow \ Ask an Alum: Opera Tracy Quinn ’14SPS for All \ Laser Focus \ Shop Smarter \ Director for Marketing Research 4 Alumni Podcasts Guaranteed to Make You Linda Ury Greenberg Feel Smarter \ Extra Credit \ Newsmakers PAGE 46 52 BULLETIN University news and views

56 BOOKS Subscriptions: Heartland, by Sarah Smarsh \ So Far So Good, Address and subscription assistance [email protected] by Ursula K. Le Guin \ Your Duck Is My Duck, by Deborah Eisenberg \ Lost Children To update your address online, visit Archive, by Valeria Luiselli \ Plus, Neil alumni.columbia.edu/directory, or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). deGrasse Tyson discusses Accessory to War FROM TOP: ANDREW FRENCH, PAUL GRINBERG, CLAIRE MERCHLINSKY Advertising: 64 [email protected] PAGE FINALS 62 Letters to the editor: Take a quiz on Columbia’s Nobel [email protected]

Prize winners Columbia Magazine is published for alumni and friends of Columbia by the FOLLOW US Offi ce of Alumni and Development.

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4.18_Contents.indd 2 11/15/18 1:06 PM FEEDBACK

THREE CHEERS

THE VOTES ARE IN 2) voter fraud is reduced by of fringe elements who, at Your recent issue was Your Fall 2018 cover story periodically purging voter present, have a dispropor- transcendent. I very (“Ballot Breakdown”) poses rolls; 3) it is not “hard for tionate e ect on the out- much appreciate the the question, “Is the US elec- people to vote”; and 4) there come. Such a measure would quality of the writing. toral system coming apart is an unprecedented abun- have a salutary e ect at all Agnes Kelly at the seams?” The answer dance of information readily levels of government, but it ’54GSAS, ’93SW is no. The founders of our available about candidates is obviously too sensible to Kingston, NY government were amazingly and the issues. The allega- be considered. wise, informed of history, tion that our voting system Bruce Hyland ’66BUS and prescient. Their creation is somehow racially or Califon, NJ I’m truly impressed of the Electoral College was ethnically rigged is tiresome with Columbia brilliant, contrary to Ester nonsense. How did Obama Your cover story says that Magazine. The stories Fuchs’s claim. get elected twice? in the Electoral College, are well-thought-out, Our federal republic is a Jim O’Brien ’66CC “electors … pledge to cast the writing is both union of sovereign states Maitland, FL their ballots for their party’s that voluntarily joined candidate.” Actually, only fun and professional, together. Most have small Ester Fuchs says that to about half the states purport and it’s surprisingly populations compared to abolish the Electoral College to bind their electors in good-looking! California, Texas, Florida, would take a constitutional one way or another. Nor Judith Newman and New York. If the Elec- amendment. But the prob- is it clear under the only ’84GSAS toral College did not exist, lem can be remedied more Supreme Court case to con- New York, NY a person might become simply than that. All that is sider the issue, Ray v. Blair, president just by campaign- required is for each state to that these restrictions are The last two issues ing in the major population agree to assign its electoral constitutional. Moreover, centers, ignoring at least votes to the winner of the Congress has always counted have been extremely half the states. This would national popular vote. Some the votes of so-called faith- good. Keep it up. disenfranchise tens of mil- states have already agreed to less electors that have been Robert F. Mallon ’63PS lions, undoubtedly leading do this, so it is not impos- certifi ed by states, as it did Ridge, NY to the unraveling of the sible to imagine the plan in January 2017 when a United States of America. succeeding (not every state small but signifi cant number And contrary to the would have to participate for of electors did not vote for message of your article: the change to be e ective). their party’s candidate. 1) voter-ID laws are perfectly Another option would be William Josephson reasonable to ensure that to make voting compulsory, ’55LAW only legitimate citizens vote; thus diluting the impact Brooklyn, NY

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The real problem is not the AMERICAN HERO Electoral College itself; the I enjoyed reading your arti- problem is the winner-take- cle on Pindaros Roy Vagelos all system that prevails in all (Fall 2018). It is an inspiring but two states. If every state story about a man who came were to allocate its electoral from humble beginnings votes proportionally, follow- and accomplished much ing the popular vote in that through hard work, dedi- state, the fi nal outcome cation, and education. For LION’S PEN would be much less likely to all his achievements, he has I want to congratulate you on the article by Julia Rothman di er from the national not forgotten his roots and (“In the Lion’s Den,” Fall 2018). It is a charming story with popular vote. This can be is now giving back to others wonderful illustrations. Please extend to Ms. Rothman my accomplished without less fortunate so they too can sincere appreciation of her work. touching the Constitution. reach their potential. It is not an easy solution This story is indeed the Quinn Peeper ’90PS New Orleans, LA either, but it is one that is story of America, where worth a try in our present immigrants and their PASSING THE BAR desperate circumstances. descendants have made this I was lucky it took o , with Alan Hu man ’85GSAS country what it is. Given the I enrolled in Columbia the fi rst customers being New York, NY political chaos at this time, College in the fall of 1965, professors who used the ten this story is even more rele- having grown up in a small or so of us for small parties. Your outstanding article vant. Perhaps a copy should logging community in rural My sophomore year I was says that North Carolina be sent to the current occu- Oregon and having never asked to head the agency, took advantage of the pant of the White House. He been to New York. My high- which I did through the rest Supreme Court’s 2013 and his administration need school education had not of my time at the College decision invalidating part some enlightenment. prepared me for the rigors and then at Columbia Law. of the Voting Rights Act of John G. Scandalios ’57CC of Columbia, and both it The agency grew to over 1965 to curtail Black voting Raleigh, NC and New York were more 125 students, bartending rights. The article suggests than a bit overwhelming. My at private parties, mainly that because of the voting As a retired academic in the father worked in a sawmill on weekends, all over the restrictions North Carolina fi eld of tropical medicine, I — we also had a small dairy city. To fi nd new student subsequently passed, Don- was delighted by Paul Hond’s farm — so when he asked bartenders, we started an ald Trump won the state splendid article about Roy me, “Just how in hell are you early version of the bartend- that Barack Obama had won Vagelos, a man I have long going to pay for this?,” new ing course described in your eight years earlier. admired. My admiration resources had to be discov- article. I am heartened to see However, the article soared after learning so ered. My answer was to start that today’s course is a little neglects to mention that much more about him. Columbia Student Bartend- more enlightened, with at Obama lost the state to Mitt Barnett L. Cline ’58CC ing Agency (“School Spirits,” least some education on the Romney in 2012 and that Blanco, TX College Walk, Fall 2018). sane use of alcohol. North Carolina had voted for Republican presidential KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS candidates for most of the CODE SCHOOL CODE SCHOOL previous fi fty years. I think BC Barnard College NRS School of Nursing there may have been other BUS Graduate School of Business OPT School of Optometry factors involved in Obama’s CC Columbia College PH Mailman School of Public Health DM College of Dental Medicine PHRM School of Pharmaceutical Sciences 2008 election win. If you ask GS School of General Studies PS Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons GSAPP me, a major factor was that Graduate School of Architecture, SEAS Fu Foundation School of Engineering and LEN SMALL / COLUMBIA MAGAZINE George W. Bush, the worst Planning, and Preservation Applied Science GSAS Graduate School of Arts and Sciences SIPA School of International and Public Affairs president in US history, had HON (Honorary degree) SOA School of the Arts cast a pall over every Repub- JRN Graduate School of Journalism SPS School of Professional Studies JTS Jewish Theological Seminary SW School of Social Work lican candidate. KC King’s College TC Teachers College Art Scherr ’72GSAS LAW School of Law UTS Union Theological Seminary LS Brooklyn, NY School of Library Service

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4.18_Feedback_F.indd 4 11/13/18 3:37 PM The agency provided me the surname coming from a elected on November 8, FAMILY CIRCLE with several great advan- John Donne poem that was 1932, and was inaugurated I was delighted to receive the tages. First and foremost, among Trilling’s favorites. on March 4, 1933. He didn’t Fall 2018 edition. It made me I earned enough to pay the And while it is only conjec- fl y again until January 1943, think. I cut out and mailed half of my tuition, room, and ture on my part, I can’t help when he did indeed become the article about April Tam board (plus fl ights back home but associate aspects of the the fi rst sitting president Smith (“Innovators with for the summer) not covered mountains’ signifi cance in to fl y in an airplane — to a Impact”) to my twenty-seven- by scholarships and loans. Kubrick’s The Shining with meeting in Casablanca with year-old granddaughter. I cut Second, although I struggled Kafka’s The Castle and Mann’s Winston Churchill. Other- out and mailed the article a bit with the forty hours a The Magic Mountain. wise he traveled by train, about P. Roy Vagelos to my week that I put into manag- Jack Eisenberg ’62CC ship, or auto. Given his fi fty-one-year-old daughter; ing the agency and tending Baltimore, MD inability to walk because her husband, who graduated bar, it most certainly helped of the polio he contracted from Columbia Business me focus on my studies for FIRST IN FLIGHT in 1921, getting on and o School; and my grandson, the rest of my time. Third, I I always enjoy reading the airplane would have who is in his last year at got to know the out-of-the- Columbia Magazine and been challenging; out of the Washington University. classroom lives of many was intrigued by your Finals public view, he was probably For fi fty-fi ve years I’ve been professors and got to see quiz on famous Columbia carried up and down the happy to receive magazines parts of the city that I would dropouts (Fall 2018). How- steps. In summer 1918, as from Columbia, but other never have otherwise visited. than reading about members For instance, Professor of my class and those a few Zbigniew Brzezinski asked years before and after, that me to bartend at numerous was it. Bravo! dinner parties at his home Doug Anderson ’63CC over the years, introducing New York, NY me to an incredible array of scholars and diplomats I have lived long enough to from the UN and elsewhere. witness the decline or demise Fourth, it gave me the chance of many a good magazine. to work in a non-classroom I no longer subscribe to setting with lots of other Smithsonian or Time. The students, who were fun, only subscription I still have bright, and energizing. And is to National Geographic. fi fth (no pun intended), I thoroughly enjoyed the it showed me that I most last issue of Columbia Maga- defi nitely wanted to become zine. Keep up the good work. a lawyer and not a bartender Lucian Dressel ’65BUS (or sawmill worker). Carrollton, IL Ed Harnden Franklin D. Roosevelt, on his way to accept the nomination for president ’69CC, ’72LAW at the 1932 Democratic Convention, peers out of a Ford Tri-Motor plane. Portland, OR QUESTIONS? ever, there is a slight error in assistant secretary of the INFLUENCING question 6, which states that Navy, he did take a brief COMMENTS? KUBRICK in 1932, Franklin Delano fl ight in a seaplane while on While hanging out at Colum- Roosevelt became the fi rst a visit to France to inspect WE WELCOME THEM ALL! bia, Stanley Kubrick audited sitting president to fl y in naval facilities there. E-MAIL US AT: Lionel Trilling’s modern- an airplane. In 1932, FDR Deborah Gardner [email protected] literature course (“Kubrick’s wasn’t yet president. He fl ew ’70BC, ’79GSAS OR WRITE TO US: Columbia,” College Walk, Fall to the Democratic National Brooklyn, NY Columbia Magazine 2018). That infl uenced him Convention in Chicago to Columbia Alumni Center enough that he named Dr. accept the nomination in The author is historian and 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 New York, NY 10025 Strangelove’s only fully sane early July 1932 (the fi rst curator at Roosevelt House Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity. KEN LAROCK / US AIR FORCE / US KEN LAROCK character Lionel Mandrake, candidate to do this), was at Hunter College.

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NOTES FROM 116TH STREET AND BEYOND

The Last Waltz, 1978. THEY SHALL BE RERELEASED Film series honors SOA professor Ira Deutchman

hen Columbia film professors panel talks and screenings of The Brother Rob King and Jack Lechner from Another Planet; Sex, Lies, and Wwere putting together the Videotape; the Oscar-winning documentary program for “NY Indie Guy: Harlan County, USA; and more. On the sev- Ira Deutchman and the Rise of Independent enth night, Deutchman and King sat onstage Film,” they had to make some hard choices. and discussed the thing we call “independent After all, Deutchman, who has taught at film.” Deutchman, engaging and encyclope- Columbia since 1987, was the cofounder dic, slammed the term as meaningless (he of Cinecom and Fine Line Features, and a prefers “specialty film,” which suggests mov- leading distributor, marketer, and producer ies made for niche audiences). He traced the of more than 150 movies, including A Room rise of the genre to the 1960s, when Holly- with a View, My Own Private Idaho, The wood mediocrity coincided with a generation Player, Short Cuts, and Hoop Dreams. In the of young cineastes like Spielberg, Coppola, end, King and Lechner winnowed the list to and Scorsese, who absorbed foreign films and seventeen films, a cross section of Deutchma- began making arty, low-budget movies. nalia that was shown over nine days this fall in The series ended on a Sunday night. King, the 153-seat Katharina Otto-Bernstein Screen- in choosing a finale, had wanted something ing Room in the Lenfest Center for the Arts. uplifting and powerful. He knew that Deutch- The retrospective kicked o with A Woman man had worked on two of the greatest rock Under the Influence, the 1974 feature by documentaries ever made: Stop Making MOVIESTORE COLLECTION / SHUTTERSTOCK indie-film poster boy John Cassavetes, who Sense, Jonathan Demme’s 1984 Talking Heads recruited Deutchman, then a senior at North- concert film; and The Last Waltz, Martin western, to promote the film in the Midwest. Scorsese’s chronicle of the 1976 farewell tour Deutchman hosted a campus screening and of the Band. To really go out with a bang, moderated a talk with Cassavetes and actor sonically and emotionally, King felt, it had to Peter Falk. It was his first gig in the business. be The Last Waltz. With “NY Indie Guy,” Deutchman was the Deutchman introduced the film and told one in the spotlight. Film lovers came for the packed house how he got involved with it.

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4.18_CW-F.indd 6 11/14/18 3:54 PM In the early 1980s, he said, Deutchman recalled. “Robbie he was working for United was not happy. We played the Artists Classics, searching the movie several times. No mat- studio’s library for old titles ter how many adjustments THE SHORT LIST that — with a good marketing were made, he simply wasn’t Miller Theatre hook — could be dusted o happy with how it sounded. LISTEN continues to investigate and rereleased into repertory Finally I called Scorsese and the quintessentially American art form in cinemas. Deutchman success- told him what was going on, its latest jazz series. Saxophonist Rudresh fully revived a few UA movies and he said he’d be right over. Mahanthappa performs with his Indo-jazz that had fared poorly in their “A taxi pulled up in front fusion trio on February 9, and bassist Linda original releases, like Cutter’s of the Sutton Theater, and May Han Oh takes the stage with her quintet Way (originally Cutter and there’s Marty. He came in, we on March 2. millertheatre.com Bone) and Scorsese’s New put in reel one, he listened York, New York. for a couple of minutes, then The Columbia One day in 1982, Deutch- said, ‘Turn it up.’ The Dolby VENTURE Alumni man got a call from a booker. technician turned it up. Association’sAssociation’s Alumni Travel Study The Sutton Theater, at Third Marty listened again, then he ProgramProgram combines vacation and and 57th, had a one-week yelled, ‘Turn it up!’ The tech- eeducationducation tthroughhrough gguideduided eexpedi-xpedi- hole and needed a fi lm. The nician turned it up again. tions,tions, ooftenften wwithith CColumbiaolumbia ffaculty.aculty. booker mentioned that the Marty listened and said, ‘It’s UpcomingUpcoming ttripsrips iincludenclude ““WondersWonders Sutton had just installed perfect,’ and he left.” ooff tthehe GGalápagos”alápagos” iinn FFebruary,ebruary, a brand-new Dolby sound The screening was a smash, ““SailingSailing tthehe WWindwardindward IIslands”slands” iinn system. Deutchman’s fi rst and Deutchman heeded MMarch,arch, aandnd ““RiverRiver LLifeife aalonglong tthehe DDutchutch thought was The Last Waltz, the lesson. He advised the WWaterways”aterways” iinn AApril.pril. alumni.columbia.edu which he had seen repeatedly Lenfest audience that The /research-learn/travel-study-trips when it came out in 1978. The Last Waltz would be played hook was clear: come cele- at “concert volume,” making The magical world brate the Sutton’s new Dolby full use of the new screen- BROWSE of the Ziegfeld system with The Last Waltz! ing room’s advanced audio Follies comes to life at Florenz Ziegfeld & An invitation-only screen- system. The lights went Joseph Urban: Transforming Broadway, ing was planned, which down, and the screen fi lled an exhibition of drawings, set models, photos, Robbie Robertson, the Band’s with the opening title, which and other memorabilia from the collection of guitarist and main song- says, in white letters against famed set designer Urban. Through February 15 writer, would attend. The a black background, “this at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library in day of the screening, there film should be played Butler Library. library.columbia.edu/events was a sound check. “I spent loud!” The moviegoers, the entire day at the Sutton bathed in an aural and visual Audit world-class with Robbie Robertson and glow, stayed pinned to their LEARN courses in the arts and a Dolby technician who seats until the end. sciences, with major discounts offered to was tweaking the system,” — Paul Hond those age sixty-fi ve and older. Applications for the spring 2019 semester are open until January 5. sps.columbia.edu/auditing

A forty-two-foot-long pixelated SEE landscape, hand-printed with woodblocks, covers the walls of the Miller Theatre lobby in Recode II: La Dorada, from Dominican-American artist Joiri Minaya. The installation, created in partnership with the Wallach Gallery, questions the idealization of tropical places. Through June 28. wallach.columbia.edu/exhibitions COURTESY OF IRA DEUTCHMAN OF IRA COURTESY Ira Deutchman /joiri-minaya-redecode-ii-la-dorada

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together science, art, and community — The Forum Sets Sail it’s huge,” said the architect. “You know, I’m Italian. I get romantic.” A new building makes a splash in Manhattanville Guests arrived mid-afternoon, enter- ing the Forum’s glass-enclosed public t’s a miracle,” said architect Renzo cross-cultural partnerships that the space. They milled amid the white Piano ’14HON to dignitaries Forum promises to foster. “The build- tables and red-orange chairs, snacked “I and guests at the opening of the ing,” he said, “is about society.” on pastries from the Forum’s café, and Forum, a three-story structure of The Forum (the name was inspired checked e-mail using the Forum’s free glass, steel, and concrete on Columbia’s by the open-air social and cultural hub public Wi-Fi. Then they rode the eleva- Manhattanville campus. “It’s not a small of ancient Rome) is triangular in shape, tors, whose motors and pulleys, like the miracle. It’s a big miracle.” Speaking in one sharp gray vertex looming prow-like pipes running along the high ceilings, the Forum’s 437-seat auditorium this over the corner of Broadway and 125th are exposed, evoking transparency and past September, Piano was referring not Street. As the symbolic entranceway to industry and reinforcing Piano’s notion only to the conclusion of a process that a campus without gates or walls, the of Manhattanville as a “factory of ideas.” began when President Lee C. Bollinger Forum joins the Lenfest Center for the In the auditorium, Bollinger, whom arrived at Columbia in 2002 and iden- Arts and the Jerome L. Greene Science Piano called the “driving force” behind tified seventeen acres in West Harlem Center to complete the trio of Renzo Manhattanville, was, like the archi- as the ideal site for Columbia’s expan- Piano Building Workshop structures tect, enjoying the peculiar sensation of sion, but also to the cross-disciplinary, in Manhattanville. “When you put standing inside a fully realized idea. The Forum, he said, is his favorite Manhat- tanville building, “because it stands for something I cherish and believe in. Its name, its identity, and its function within the University — all connote the mind at work, freedom of thought and speech, dia- logue and debate, listening and speaking.” The Forum is home to two new University initiatives, Bollinger said: Columbia World Projects (CWP), which connects academic work with influen- tial outside partners to solve real-world problems, and the Obama Foundation Scholars program, in which a dozen up-and-coming global leaders spend the academic year immersed in projects, including collaborations with CWP. Confessing to a late-in-life passion for large seagoing vessels, Bollinger said he also loved the Forum “because it feels like a ship.” He quoted from Moby-Dick — specifically, Ishmael’s musings on the metaphysical magnetism of the sea and its eects on the dwellers of Manhat- tan, where “right and left, the streets take you waterward.” Melville wrote FRANK OUDEMAN / COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY that “meditation and water are wedded forever,” and that water embodies “the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.” With the arrival of the Forum, a short walk from West Harlem Piers Park and the gleam of the Hudson River, “we lean further toward the

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4.18_CW-F.indd 8 11/14/18 3:54 PM water,” Bollinger said, “and the key to it all.” Mary McGee, executive rough director of the Forum, wear- ing an orange jacket that the Future, complemented the palette of tangerines and marigolds Darkly adorning the Piano interiors, touted the Forum’s mission Martin Rees, as a civic and intellectual British Astronomer center. She challenged the Royal, reads the University to “live up to its 2050 tea leaves promise” of a campus that breaks down academic and social barriers and ensures “access to Columbia’s ure, it wouldn’t be all butterflies climate.” (The audience was rooting resources for the community and rainbows, but who could resist for Plan A.) that it inhabits.” Shearing Sir Martin Rees, Lord Rees Rees then speculated on the future After the speeches, Renzo of Ludlow, the bushy-browed for- ethical conundrums in fields like genetic Piano stepped outside. The mer master of Trinity College, Cambridge, engineering, where uneven standards sound of drums rumbled and current British Astronomer Royal, could result in untold depravities. “I worry in the near distance. Piano, prognosticate about our planet in 2050? that whatever regulations are imposed on dressed in a blue jacket and Alexander Halliday, the director of Colum- prudential grounds or ethical grounds can- cream khakis, gray hair bia’s Earth Institute, had invited Rees to not be enforced worldwide any more than ru ed by the maritime give a public talk based on his new book, drug laws can or tax laws can,” he said. breeze, walked west toward On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. “And that’s a nightmare.” Similarly, Rees the propulsive, blood-quick- As two of the UK’s leading scientists, Rees foresees conflicts as robots take over legal ening beat and the Lenfest and Halliday go way back. Now it was time work, medical diagnostics, even surgery. Center for the Arts. There, to look ahead. How “human” will robots become, and on the Lenfest plaza, he saw Rees often has to explain that he is an what obligations would we have to them? the source of the vibrations: astronomer, not an astrologer. Still, he told As an astrophysicist, Rees looks to the the Marching Cobras, a New the audience in Pulitzer Hall, “even with a heavens for comfort. Ultimately, he thinks, York–based drum line and cloudy crystal ball, there are some things we our future lies in space, with private com- dance troupe. The architect can predict.” To wit: the world will get more panies leading manned voyages to Mars stood at the perimeter and crowded, and the world will get warmer. and, someday, to one of the hypothetically watched as the Cobras aligned Naturally, this will require adjustments. habitable planets in our galaxy. And while in single file and marched, To feed ten billion people, Rees said, we’ll it is a “delusion to think that space oers drumming and dancing, have to cut our beef intake, since raising an escape from Earth’s problems,” we along 125th Street, the cattle consumes huge amounts of water should “cheer on these brave space adven- Forum’s hypotenuse, before and energy. “We must realize that insects turers, because they will have a critical role streaming into the building. are highly nutritious, and they can be in spearheading the post-human future” The guests looked up from made palatable.” Though bugs and genet- in which people, merging with machines, their refreshments and con- ically modified crops will bolster the food could evolve into a new species with pow- versations as the drummers supply, the doubling of Africa’s population ers that we “can’t even imagine.” christened the space with due to increased life expectancy will be, And this could solve that most vexing percussive bursts and rolls Rees said, a major challenge. problem: a sun that, in 4.5 billion years, — the Forum’s answer to a On the climate front, Rees pushed for an will die. “Humans could jump-start a champagne bottle smashed international program to hasten research diaspora whereby ever-more-complex across the bow. and development on all forms of clean intelligence spreads through the galaxy,” As Bollinger said in his energy and make it aordable globally. Rees said, now peering well beyond the remarks: “This ship is ready Failing that, “there will be pressure for twenty-second century. “There is plenty of for navigation.” a Plan B,” which could mean “injecting time,” he mused, “for that to happen.”

AP PHOTO / LEFTERIS PITARAKIS AP PHOTO — Paul Hond aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the — Paul Hond

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4.18_CW-F.indd 9 11/14/18 3:54 PM COLLEGE WALK IN MEMORIAM LBB Poets pay tribute to poetry professor Lucie Brock-Broido

poetry, an image arose of a at Johns Hopkins and with hours-long, freewheeling flowing-maned, red-lipped, Stanley Kunitz — “my prophet- phone conversations he’d smoky-voiced, ca einated, teacher,” she called him — have with her, in which, night-stalking, feline-loving, at Columbia, and became at some point, invariably, People-reading, prank-pulling a teacher herself, first at Brock-Broido would ask mother figure, vampire, Harvard, then at the School Donnelly to guess what she and sorceress. of the Arts starting in 1993. was eating. “It was always “Hearing her voice tonight She published four books of some form of pretzel or is fortifying; it’s heartbreak- poetry in her lifetime. Her experimental cracker,” Don- ing,” said Tracy K. Smith last book, Stay, Illusion, was nelly said. Sometimes it was ’97SOA, US poet laureate a finalist for the National an apple and Donnelly had to and Brock-Broido’s former Book Award in 2013, which guess which kind. “I feel like student. “But there’s some- was the year she received I’m still on the phone with thing so eternal. How Columbia’s Presidential Lucie Brock-Broido,” he said, could she know all those Teaching Award. Lasky “and I’m never hanging up.” things?” Smith’s voice remembered her fearless- “She would sweep into pellbinding. Mes- shook. “This small, thin ness as a poet and a teacher: a classroom or a crowded, merizing. Singular. woman contains universes.” “‘Don’t hold back,’ she told noisy restaurant with this SGenerous. Empathic. Brock-Broido was born her students. ‘Put it all in heightened existence,” said Beguiling. Feral. in Pittsburgh in 1956. She there. Give yourself away.’” poet Emily Fragos ’96SOA. These were some of the embraced poetry at thirteen, Timothy Donnelly “Everything was heightened words poets used to describe she once said, “because I felt ’98SOA, the new head of about her.” Fragos recalled Lucie Brock-Broido ’82SOA, I couldn’t live properly in the poetry division, spoke having dinner with Brock- head of the poetry division the real world.” She studied of Brock-Broido’s “appetite Broido in a restaurant and at the School of the Arts, with Richard Howard ’51CC for gorgeousness” and of the listening to her read her who died on March 6 at age poem “A Lion in Winter,” sixty-one. The poets assem- about her beloved Maine bled at Miller Theatre in A LION IN WINTER coon cat, William, her “male October to honor one of their muse,” who was dying. “She tribe and, in e ect, to grapple As long as the lions are rampant, I will stay surrendered completely to with a line from her poem With him. the poem. She sank into it “Infinite Riches in the Small- As long as the clouded leopards the way a musician sinks into est Room”: “What if I were a piece of music. You hear gone and the wind still reeks Surround the clouded bed with their gold & cirrus feelings; that’s all that’s left.” of hyacinth, what then.” Air, I will be there too. I was reading Fragos, her voice quavering, “Losing Lucie has been addressed her friend. “Lucie, brutal, upending, cold, and When the winter shooed- I will love you, I will miss stately,” poetry professor Away the fall and whitely lit the oil lamps of early you, for the rest of my life. Dorothea Lasky told the And you saved my life. I’m so gathering of family, friends, Dark. The night was turret-shaped in childhood, glad I said that to you before faculty, and students. “Death A bunch of mint and mane and swale. you left us.” Fragos then is mean, but losing Lucie prepared to read “A Lion in this unending season has What will I be when he is husk Winter,” from Brock-Broido’s been meaner.” To himself, 2004 book Trouble in Mind. In an evening of trembling Some flax or ghost of lynx in later winter light. “I don’t know if I can get KAREN MEYERS voices, colorful anecdotes, through this — I really don’t,” laughter, and powerful — Lucie Brock-Broido Fragos said, but she did. recitations of Brock-Broido’s — Paul Hond

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4.18_CW-F.indd 11 11/14/18 3:55 PM 4.18_FEATURE_Salinger_F2.indd 12 11/13/18 3:33 PM UPPER WEST The lile-known tale of two Columbia teachers and the classes that inspired J. D. Salinger, Truman Capote, SIDE Carson McCullers, and a generation of American writers STORIES By Paul Hond Illustrations by Ma Rota

ON A MONDAY EVENING in the spring of 1939, Whit debut works by William Saroyan, Nelson Algren, Conrad Burnett, a lanky thirty-nine-year-old writing teacher, Aiken, Kay Boyle, John Cheever, Wallace Stegner, and walked into room 505 in what is now Dodge Hall car- Carson McCullers — an eye-popping list that would rying a volume by Faulkner. His students were already soon include Norman Mailer, Jean Staord, Richard seated and eager to begin. Burnett, a writer and editor Wright, Joseph Heller ’50GSAS, Truman Capote, and who’d been teaching this course for two years, often Tennessee Williams. read aloud to his class. He knew Bill Faulkner, having But little did Burnett know, in the spring of 1939, that published a few of his stories. the writer who would become Story’s most fabled dis- Burnett had never set out to be an educator, but with covery was seated in the back row of room 505. writing courses popping up around the country, working He was twenty years old, tall and dark-eyed, a Park professionals like him were in high demand. The Iowa Avenue kid who had flunked out of NYU and Pennsyl- Writers’ Workshop, the country’s first creative-writing vania’s Ursinus College. His name was Jerry, and he was program, had been founded just three years earlier, and by all accounts a disappointment to his father, a pros- while Columbia was decades away from establishing perous Manhattan meat-and-cheese importer. Many of its own graduate writing program, it oered classes in Burnett’s students would have crawled over broken glass short fiction and poetry through University Extension, to get into Story, but Jerry, slouching in a haze of cig- soon to be the School of General Studies. Columbia’s arette smoke, gave no such hints. When Burnett talked course in short-story writing was one of the oldest in about what made a good story, or read aloud from one, the country, dating to 1911. or decried “bunk” in fiction and praised honesty, Jerry Burnett was something of a hot ticket on the aca- would just sit there, staring out the window, with its view demic circuit. In 1931, he and his wife, Martha Foley, of the Low Library dome. He didn’t seem to be listening, had founded Story magazine, which they still ran, and and, strangest of all, he didn’t hand in a single story. their acumen for spotting new talent had made their But Jerome David Salinger wanted to be a writer — in hundred-page monthly a must-read for the big New fact, he was a writer, albeit an unpublished one with York publishers. In its first few years, Story had featured rejection slips from all the best magazines.

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4.18_FEATURE_Salinger_F2.indd 13 11/13/18 3:33 PM “There’s no question that the young Salinger had “A blond young man on the other side of the desk looked literary ambitions,” says Thomas Beller ’92SOA, author at me and I looked back at him. The Smart Set, then of the biographical memoir J. D. Salinger: The Escape edited by Mencken and Nathan, was mentioned. He Artist. “But in the space of this opportunity to impress wrote short stories for it. I told him what I thought of his teacher, he whi s. No, it’s worse than that: he doesn’t Mencken. He told me what he thought of Mencken. We even take a swing.” didn’t agree about Mencken at all.” Salinger, having produced exactly nothing in the Burnett — laconic, introverted, not prone to laugh- spring of ’39, signed up again for Burnett’s class in ter, and no socialist — was her opposite. But he, too, the fall. Beller thinks Burnett’s una ected manner dreamed of literary laurels. They fell in love and moved appealed to the pretense-averse Salinger. “Burnett to New York, where they worked on the big dailies, and was an entrepreneur, a badass, an editor, and he did in 1927 they sailed for Paris, getting jobs at the Herald the class for the same reasons anyone would: it felt Tribune. It was the Jazz Age Paris of Ernest Hemingway good to have some a liation with Columbia, and the and Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach, owner of Shake- money wasn’t bad.” He was not, in other words, overly speare and Company bookstore. Foley met everyone. invested. “His demeanor in the classroom was: ‘This She loved the city, but when Burnett got a better-pay- is what I am. This is what I do. I’ll ing job in Vienna, she followed him. try to be useful to you, and if you In the Austrian capital they worked get something out of it, great, but as correspondents for the New York I’m not going to kill myself if you Sun, mingled at the Café Louvre, don’t,’” says Beller. “I think that was That’s when Foley got and wrote and submitted fi ction. liberating to Salinger.” Then Edward O’Brien, editor of the Midway through the fall semester, an idea: what if she annual Best American Short Stories Salinger wrote a letter to his teacher anthology, sent Burnett a letter say- to apologize for his anemic showing. and Burne started ing that one of his stories had been “It was very self-lacerating,” says selected for the 1930 edition. Foley Beller, who visited the Story archive their own magazine — was ecstatic: Whit would now get at Princeton to review Salinger’s let- his stories published everywhere! ters. (In 1987, a federal appeals-court one devoted solely to But her optimism was doused by the decision in Salinger v. Random realization that there were, after all, House, Inc., upheld Salinger’s right the short story? only a small number of literary mag- to keep his personal correspondence azines. Even the “slicks” — popular private, and the letter has not been magazines like the Saturday Eve- published.) “This letter, to me, is the ning Post, Collier’s, and the Ladies’ Big Bang of Salinger’s career. It’s not Home Journal that were printed on unusual for a student to say to a professor, aloud, ‘I let glossy paper, unlike the “pulps” — were cutting back you down.’ What’s unusual in this case is that it took on fi ction. That’s when Foley got an idea: what if she the form of a very elaborate and articulate letter which and Burnett started their own magazine — one devoted contained Freudian language about complexes and the solely to the short story? ego, saying how he’s been all tangled up and he’s sorry No such beast existed, and Burnett was skeptical. and he’s going to do better. They had neither the money nor the equipment to “Then, immediately after this cathartic confession, print the thing. But there was a mimeograph machine Jerry Salinger cracks open like an egg, and J. D. Salin- at the foreign correspondents’ club in town that could ger comes out. He bursts forth with three stories, bang- handle a small print run. Burnett came around. Using bang-bang, and hands them to Burnett.” their own stories and those written by friends, Foley and Burnett produced 167 copies of Story for the inaugural WHIT BURNETT AND MARTHA FOLEY met in 1925, on the edition in April 1931. They also had a son that fruitful copy desk at the San Francisco Journal. Foley, who year — David Burnett ’52CC. would have her own colorful teaching career at Colum- Though Story paid just twenty-fi ve dollars for a man- bia, was born in Boston in 1897. A barricade-pushing uscript at a time when the slicks were paying F. Scott su ragist and socialist, she dropped out of Boston Uni- Fitzgerald $4,000, the Story in-basket was overfl owing. versity to be a writer. To make a living, she turned to In the magazine’s fi rst two years, eleven of its titles were newspapers, stepping bravely into the hostile stag envi- collected in Best American Short Stories. That feat ronment of 1920s newsrooms. Burnett was a reporter drew the attention of Bennett Cerf 1919CC, 1920JRN and editor, and Foley later recalled their meeting: cofounder of Random House. Cerf and his partners, see-

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4.18_FEATURE_Salinger_F2.indd 14 11/13/18 3:33 PM ing Story as a gold mine for new talent, put up money short stories in Whit Burnett’s group at Columbia. He and brought the magazine to the company’s building on published my first piece in his magazine, story. Been East 57th Street. Within a few years, Burnett and Foley writing ever since, hitting some of the bigger magazines, would both be teaching at Columbia. most of the little ones. Am still writing whenever I can find the time and an unoccupied foxhole.” ONE OF THE STORIES that Jerry Salinger handed in to In a letter dated April 14, 1944, Burnett oered to pub- Whit Burnett in the fall of 1939 was “The Young Folks.” lish a collection of Salinger’s stories with Story’s eight- Set in a house filled with college kids, cigarettes, and year-old book-publishing oshoot, Story Press. Salin- Daddy’s Scotch, it captures in a simple, dialogue-driven ger was overjoyed. But by the time he returned home narrative the stumbling longing of swing-era youth. The in 1946, things had changed. Story Press’s partners, the Salinger fizz — the hard-boiled wit, the knowing obser- deeper-pocketed Lippincott Company, had nixed the vation, the Fitzgeraldian vividness — is in first bloom, book idea, and it was Burnett’s unhappy task to break the as are the rhythms of the idiomatic, accented chitchat news to Salinger. The young writer did not take it well. that Salinger practically invented. Burnett liked “The “He could not seem to get it through his head that Young Folks” and paid Salinger twenty-five dollars to it wasn’t Burnett’s fault,” says Beller. “Soon after that, publish it in the March/April Salinger published ‘A Perfect 1940 issue of Story. Day for Bananafish’ in the There can be few moments New Yorker.” In that story, in a writer’s life comparable Seymour Glass, a thirty-one- to getting that first bite from a year-old combat veteran and publisher. Salinger was super- former child genius (he entered charged. He wrote a shrewdly Columbia at age fifteen), is triumphal letter to Burnett, vacationing in Florida. After which the New York Times playing in the ocean with a quoted in 1988: four-year-old girl, Seymour “I’m twenty one, New York returns to his hotel room, takes born, and I can draw a rejec- out a pistol, and shoots himself tion slip with both hands tied in the head. behind me,” the letter said. “With that story, everything “Writing has been important that came before in Salinger’s to me since I was seventeen. career was essentially excom- I could show you a lot of nice municated,” says Beller. “He faces I’ve stepped on to illus- renounced all the stories he was trate the point. Now that you’ve ready to publish with Burnett accepted the story I’ll tell everyone to waste no pity on and Lippincott so that the ocial record of his career the unpublished short story writer, that his ego can would begin with these bombshell stories in the New cope with people and circumstance, that he is his own Yorker. ‘Perfect Day’ was a huge deal. ‘Uncle Wiggily worst enemy. Oh, I’ll be wisdom itself.” in Connecticut’ was a huge deal. When a Salinger story In 1941, Salinger sold “Slight Rebellion O Madison” came out in the New Yorker it was like Beyoncé drop- to the New Yorker. But the story, which introduced a ping a single. And then, in 1951, came The Catcher in character named Holden Morrissey Caulfield, wouldn’t the Rye. Meanwhile, Whit Burnett was on the wrong come out until five years later, after the war. By then, side of this divide.” Salinger was no longer the same man. Drafted in 1942 and shipped to Europe in January 1944, he was part of FOR MARTHA FOLEY, Burnett’s most significant student the D-day landing and was among the first Americans to was not Salinger. It was Hallie Southgate Abbett, whose enter the just-liberated concentration camps of Dachau. story “Eighteenth Summer” appeared in the March/ Afterward he checked himself into the hospital for what April 1941 issue. Abbett and Burnett became roman- would now be called PTSD. But through all this he kept tically involved, which prompted a quick and painful writing. He published stories in Collier’s and the Satur- divorce. Burnett then married Abbett, who became his day Evening Post, and he sent more than sixty letters editing partner on Story. to Whit Burnett. In 1944, Story ran Salinger’s “Once a It was a brutal blow for Foley, but 1941 also brought Week Won’t Kill You,” for which Salinger, in his author’s other changes. Edward O’Brien died in London, and bio, wrote, “I’m twenty-five, was born in New York, am Foley was called upon to finish editing the year’s Best now in Germany with the Army … Studied and wrote American Short Stories. It was a job she did assid-

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4.18_FEATURE_Salinger_F2.indd 15 11/13/18 3:33 PM uously and lovingly for the next thirty-seven years. 2009. “Carson [McCullers] had been her student, and In her role as “the Saint Peter guarding the gates to a Martha would drag her in to talk to the class. Carson was short story writer’s heaven,” as she once called O’Brien, sort of shy, so she would drag in Tennessee Williams. At she would help shape and reshape American fiction, some point Arthur Miller wandered in — who could showcasing newcomers like Saul Bellow, Bernard Mal- have more riches than that?” amud ’42GSAS, Flannery O’Connor, Delmore Schwartz, The Texas writer John Graves ’48GSAS, author of the Eudora Welty ’82HON, Stanley Elkin, Thomas Pynchon, memoir Goodbye to a River, once said that he modeled Joyce Carol Oates, Donald Barthelme, and many more. his own teaching on Foley’s. “She didn’t really teach much. She just talked, and we had to turn in one thousand words a week.” Manuscripts were placed anonymously in a folder in the library, and students had to read them before the next session. Sometimes the author could be identified through the prose. There were “a lot of antipathies in those classes,” Graves said, “but it was highly stimulating.” Foley taught her Columbia course until 1966. By then, she had a coeditor for Best Amer- ican Short Stories: her son. David Burnett had been edi- tor, in Paris, of an expatriate literary journal, New-Story, which introduced James Bald- win and Terry Southern to American audiences, and in 1958 he joined his mother in scouring the printscape for the pick of the year’s crop. One of their selections for 1965 was “The Application” from Trans- atlantic Review, written by twenty-six-year-old Jay Neu- geboren ’59CC. “Martha read all the stories herself — every short story pub- lished in every magazine and literary quarterly,” says Neuge- boren, who edited Foley’s post- In 1945, Foley began teaching her own workshop at humous memoir, The Story of Story Magazine. “She read Columbia (Burnett’s class ended in 1943). Among Foley’s stories every day until her death.” students was Truman Capote, who, in his unfinished novel Answered Prayers, has the narrator describe NEUGEBOREN MET FOLEY in 1974, when he was writer-in- meeting his wife “at Columbia University, where I had residence at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. enrolled in a creative-writing class taught by Martha He’d heard that Foley was now living in nearby Foley, one of the founder/editors of the old magazine Northampton and that she had fallen upon hard times. Story.” The actor Anthony Perkins took the class. So David Burnett had died in 1971 from complications did Barbara Probst Solomon ’60GS, who wrote her following a drug overdose, and Foley, despondent, had first novel, The Beat of Life, in Foley’s workshop. Foley nearly drunk herself to death. Heartbroken, with little was “absolutely incredible with her 1920s lorgnette and money and few possessions, she had left New York and cigarette holder,” Probst Solomon told an interviewer in found a furnished apartment in western Massachusetts.

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4.18_FEATURE_Salinger_F2.indd 16 11/13/18 3:33 PM Neugeboren called her, and the two became friends. ing thirty-three years of Story magazine. Salinger, in a Stories were what kept her going. “She was full of stunning turn, obliged. There could hardly be a greater energy, had a good sense of humor, and she lived and testament to Salinger’s a ection for his old mentor. breathed short stories,” Neugeboren says. “She loved But, as biographer Kenneth Slawenski recounts in J. D. writers and loved to talk about writers. But she could Salinger: A Life, Whit rejected the piece, feeling that barely talk about herself and was forever pissed at Whit. it was too much about him and the class, and too little I would say bitter. She didn’t talk about it a lot.” about Story. Neugeboren brought his kids to visit — Foley always had That would have seemed to be the end of it. Burnett chocolates on hand — and invited her to speak to his writing died in 1973 of a heart attack. But two years later, Hal- class at UMass. Foley came alive in the classroom, telling lie Burnett brought out a book that she and Whit had stories about Hemingway and Faulkner and Mencken and been developing called Fiction Writer’s Handbook. Joyce and Sherwood Anderson and Dorothy Parker. Salinger, who had not published anything in a decade, “My students were gaga,” Neugeboren says. “Once, I and despite Burnett’s earlier rebu , permitted the 1964 asked Martha to conduct a class. I gave her the students’ essay to be used as the book’s epilogue, under the title stories, and she was well-prepared. She discussed what “A Salute to Whit Burnett.” It began: she liked about the stories, not what the problems were. “Back in 1939, when I was twenty, I was a student That was her way. Students loved it. And Martha loved for a time in one of the present editors’ — Whit being around young people.” Burnett’s — short-story course, up at Columbia. A good and instruc- WHEN FOLEY DIED in September tive and profi table year for me, 1977, Neugeboren took the lead in Foley discussed what on all counts, let me briefl y say. settling her a airs, including going Mr. Burnett simply and very through her papers, which were she liked about the knowledgeably conducted a short- in storage in Mystic, Connecticut. story course, never mugwumped Among the remnants: an unpub- stories, not what over one. Whatever personal rea- lished novel, a draft of a book on sons he may have had for being writing, and lots of material for her the problems were. there, at all, he plainly had no unfi nished memoir. intentions of using fi ction, short The memoir, Neugeboren saw, That was her way. or long, as a leg up for himself in the was a remarkable cultural record, academic or quarterly-magazine written by an unsung heroine of hierarchies. He usually showed American letters. Someone had up for class late, praises on him, to rescue it, and fate could not have supplied a bet- and contrived to slip out early — I often have my ter steward. Neugeboren meticulously assembled doubts whether any good and conscientious short- and edited the manuscript and wrote the foreword story-course conductor can humanly do more. and afterword. Norton published The Story of Story Except that Mr. Burnett did. I have several notions Magazine in 1980. how or why he did, but it seems essential only to say “I loved working on the book,” Neugeboren says. “It that he had a passion for good short fiction, strong was like getting a master class in the history of the short fiction, that very easily and properly dominated American short story.” the room.”

WHIT BURNETT CONTINUED devoting his energies to J. D. SALINGER, who died in 2010, would have turned Story and appearing at writers’ conferences through one hundred in 2019. He left a complicated legacy as a the 1950s, but Salinger had not forgiven him for the writer, cultural fi gure, war veteran, and human being, Lippincott fi asco. Burnett’s intermittent attempts to and his centenary will no doubt be an occasion for get in touch with the writer went unanswered. By 1953, remembrances and reappraisals. Salinger had other concerns. Appalled by the intrusions Thomas Beller fi nds it fi tting that Dodge Hall, the on his privacy that followed the success of The Catcher site of Salinger’s early literary breakthrough, became in the Rye, he moved his family to a wooded tract in the seat of Columbia’s School of the Arts. The graduate Cornish, New Hampshire, closing himself o from the writing program, established in 1967, is headquartered world and becoming, as the Times wrote, “the literary on the fourth fl oor. Its classes are held one fl ight down world’s most famous recluse.” from the spot where Whit Burnett once read William In 1964, Hallie Burnett wrote to Salinger, asking Faulkner and a young man sat gazing out the window, him to contribute an introduction to a book celebrat- dreaming of stories to come.

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4.18_FEATURE_Salinger_F2.indd 17 11/13/18 3:33 PM CREDITS GO HERE

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4.18_FEATURE_Mascia-F.indd 18 11/14/18 4:27 PM BULLET POINTS

Anger. Fear. Frustration. Hope? A year in the life of a reporter on the front lines of America’s gun-violence epidemic.

By Jennifer Mascia ’07JRN CREDITS GO HERE CREDITS photo by christopher churchill

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4.18_FEATURE_Mascia-F.indd 19 11/14/18 4:27 PM most days there’s a moment in my commute when I look up and imagine somebody walking onto the subway train with an AR-15. I don’t suppose other people think about this stu as much as I do, but I can’t avoid it: guns have crept into my consciousness.

i work at the trace, a nonprofit, attack by a lone gunman at Sandy was by no means comprehensive: we nonpartisan newsroom that focuses on Hook Elementary School in Newtown, were missing a lot more incidents than we America’s gun-violence epidemic. This Connecticut. I was an editorial assistant found. Still, for a year and a half I devoted makes me an informed reciter of grim at the New York Times, working for most of my life to the endless cataloging statistics: these include more than three business columnist Joe Nocera. Joe had a of gun injuries and deaths in the US. The hundred mass shootings in the past year. young child, and the slaughter of twenty conclusion that emerged from this work Seventeen dead and seventeen injured at first-graders and six educators in their was not surprising. In fact, it was radically Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School classrooms hit him hard. As a father, simple. As Joe wrote just a year into the in Parkland, Florida. Ten dead and he wanted to know how this could have project, “The clearest message The Gun thirteen injured at Santa Fe High School, happened. As a reporter, he needed to Report sends is the most obvious. Guns near Houston. Eleven dead and six understand the scale, scope, and impact make killing way too easy.” injured at the Tree of Life synagogue in of gun violence in America. He asked me Pittsburgh. Twelve dead and twenty-one to find out more. the trace, the country’s only digital injured at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Since no government agency aggre- news site covering gun issues 24/7, was Thousand Oaks, California. gates this data, I resorted to daily Google launched in 2015. I was one of the first News searches and wrote a few lines staers. Funded by Everytown for Gun these numbers are incomplete. about every incident in a blog Joe called Safety, a nonprofit established after Sandy Beyond the mass shootings that make The Gun Report. I usually documented Hook to advocate for gun reform, The the headlines, there is no true, real-time about twenty a day, five days a week. It Trace was supposed to go live toward accounting of who is getting shot every day — in bar fights, suicides, accidents, “crimes of passion,” gang killings, and drive-bys. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps statistics on gun fatalities culled from death certificates, but their figures are two years old. (There were thirty-eight thousand gun-related fatalities in 2016.) And lost in the stats are the physical and psychological wounds of gun violence. Tens of thousands of people are shot each year, and often their injuries are devastating: shattered bones, perforated organs, and spinal-cord and brain

injuries. The psychological toll is, of AP PHOTO / JAE C. HONG course, all but impossible to calculate.

i started covering gun violence nearly six years ago, in the wake of the Illegally owned firearms seized by Los Angeles County authorities in 2018.

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4.18_FEATURE_Mascia-F.indd 20 11/14/18 4:28 PM with the Confederate flag and the FBI’s failure to act on its own information. For the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, it was the use of the semiautomatic AR-15 rifle that had just been used in Las Vegas and the shooter’s domestic-violence conviction that the Air Force had never forwarded to the FBI. For the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, it was the gunman’s anti-Semitic, anti- immigrant posts on a far-right social network. That’s what they’re looking for from me: the takeaway. What’s the issue that’s been exposed?

i guess my background predisposed me to this line of journalism. Before I was born, my father had served twelve years in prison for gunning down Mark Barden and Jennifer Hensel hold photos of their children Daniel and Aville, who died in the shooting at a police informant. Years after his death Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. from lung cancer in 2001, I learned that he’d killed many more people during his the end of June, but we had to bump were killed and 422 were wounded by time as a drug dealer and mafia associate up the date because on June 17, 2015, a bullets, or the massacre of twenty-five in Brooklyn and Miami in the 1950s, ’60s, twenty-one-year-old white supremacist people a month later at the First Baptist and ’70s. In an attempt to comprehend murdered nine people at the Emanuel Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. how my doting father — who I knew as a African Methodist Episcopal Church in genial carpet cleaner — could be a brazen Charleston, South Carolina. i take my phone to the bathroom assassin, and how my mother — a former because I’m afraid I’ll miss an AP alert high-school English teacher who’d toiled many americans still can’t that’s going to tell me there’s been another in violent East New York — could forgive understand why Sandy Hook wasn’t the shooting. The one about the Pulse his crimes, I began investigating his tipping point in the gun debate. Who nightclub was posted just before dawn. past. Shortly before I graduated from the could argue for the sanctity of the Second After these multiple-casualty attacks, I J-school, I turned the story into a Modern Amendment above all else in the face of compile photos to accompany eulogies Love column in the Times. In 2010, I distraught parents of murdered six- and on The Trace’s Twitter feed. We started explored it again in a memoir. seven-year-olds? doing this for the victims at Pulse because And what I found after all this search- As it turned out, it was frighteningly there were so many casualties and we ing was this: guns made it easy for my easy to dismiss emotional parents as being didn’t want the people to get lost behind father to kill people. too compromised by their grief to weigh a number — we wanted to put faces in on gun policy. Never mind that some of to names. Now I do it after every mass i have an italian last name, but those same individuals were gun owners shooting. As I crop the photos, arrange my mom was Jewish. My grandmother themselves. Because the shooter su ered them into a collage, and type out the came here from Ukraine to escape the from obvious social and emotional issues, names, I’m consumed by the feeling that pogroms. Five days after the Pittsburgh the debate was quickly redirected into a everything has to be perfect. I have so shooting, a group of girls in school discussion of failures in our mental-health little power over anything; the only power uniforms were handing out Shabbat system. This was not a gun problem but a I have is to make sure everyone’s names candles outside my oce. One of them psychological problem. are spelled right. came up to me and said, “Are you Jewish?” In the end, a coalition of anguished I hesitated. For the first time in my life, I parents wasn’t strong enough to counter when a mass shooting happens, was afraid to answer. the NRA. Neither were the deaths of friends reach out by text or on Facebook. forty-nine victims in the June 2016 They’re looking to me for the horrible i have a coping mechanism: rampage at Pulse nightclub in Orlando details. But they’re also looking for clues I sleep all weekend. I try to be comatose or the shooting on the Las Vegas Strip on to the larger narrative that will emerge. as long as I can. But despite my fears and

REUTERS / MICHELLE MCLOUGHLIN REUTERS October 1, 2017, where fifty-eight people For Charleston, it was the gunman posing bouts of real pessimism, when people

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4.18_FEATURE_Mascia-F.indd 21 11/14/18 4:28 PM ask me how I feel about the chances for love and strength to the students in before february 2018, the idea meaningful political reform, I tell them I’m Parkland, FL.” “put the guns down!” that teenage survivors of a school shooting more optimistic than I was a year ago. The “Keep your head up.” would be able to corral hundreds of conversations around guns are changing. Until Parkland, I’d never seen children thousands of their peers into the street of color in a low-income neighborhood to advocate for gun reform — a political on my way to work, I pass a that’s disproportionately aected by gun third rail if there ever was one — and charter school that boasts “world-class violence memorialize the mostly white, manage to dominate a news agenda led by progressive education for the children upper-middle-class victims of a mass a head-spinning number of domestic and of Harlem.” While violent crime has shooting. That’s when I knew something international scandals would have seemed dropped significantly in New York City was changing. outlandish. But the Parkland teens weren’t over the last two decades — I’ve heard easy to dismiss. Unlike the family members gunshots maybe half a dozen times in david hogg, a senior at Marjory who turn to gun-reform advocacy after the eighteen years I’ve lived in Harlem — Stoneman Douglas High School, filmed losing a loved one to a mass shooting, the when it does occur, these kids are among the lockdown that accompanied the kids in Florida had lived through one. the most likely to be exposed to it. They massacre at his school on February 14, Like soldiers, they’d seen and smelled and may not encounter as many firearms as 2018. The videos, which show Hogg and dodged and fled, and reported back that, their peers in, say, a gun-friendly south fellow students hiding in a dark closet and contrary to the NRA’s argument that “the Florida suburb, where some families calmly and rationally articulating their only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun spend Sundays at the range, but it’s a fear and fury, quickly went viral. At the is a good guy with a gun,” having a firearm good bet that they see more gun crime. time, Hogg wasn’t thinking politically. would not have prevented a shooting that Which is why when I was passing by “I recorded those videos because I didn’t was over almost before it began. the school last February, I stopped in know if I was going to survive,” he told the my tracks. Hanging in the window was New York Times. march for our lives, the a floor-to-ceiling bright-yellow poster Too young to be ideologues, the teenage March 24, 2018, protest for gun reform dotted with figures that resembled chalk survivors didn’t trac in rhetoric or cam- organized by the Parkland students, outlines of dead bodies at crime scenes. paign slogans. What they were expressing drew 1.2 million people across the US, Written on each of these figures was a was pure, unvarnished emotion. Here making it one of the biggest youth name and an age: Meadow Pollack, 18. were kids fed up with gun violence — protests since the Vietnam War. Veterans Helena Ramsay, 17. Alex Schachter, 14. and the failure of elected ocials to do joined the call for tighter regulations They were the seventeen victims — anything about it. Fueled by that outrage, on firearms. Some of the proposals fourteen students and three teachers the Parkland kids set out to reinvent a articulated by the Parkland students — of Parkland. Around the outlines were fifty-year-old gun-reform movement and (which were later embodied in a messages scrawled in red ink: “Sending thrust it into the mainstream. manifesto) became Florida law. In fact, a mere three weeks after the shooting, the same Republican-dominated legislature that has permitted an NRA lobbyist to have the final say on gun legislation for the last several decades passed a series of gun laws that incorporated proposals from a group of teenagers. When has that ever happened? Never, that’s when.

since the massacre, state legislatures have passed at least fifty gun regulations. Twelve states have enacted so-called red-flag laws, which enable law enforcement, and sometimes family REUTERS / BRENDAN MCDERMID members, to petition a judge to remove guns from potentially dangerous people. The pro-gun governor of Vermont signed into law a slew of gun reforms. And, for the first time in decades, lawmakers are New York City students take part in a national school walkout to protest gun violence on April 20, 2018. not afraid to campaign on the issue.

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4.18_FEATURE_Mascia-F.indd 22 11/14/18 4:28 PM People attend the March for Our Lives demonstration for stricter gun control in Washington, DC.

from the perspective of someone up 31 percent of the electorate in the won a state House of Representatives who devotes all her time and energy to recent midterm elections, compared to seat in an upset. “I think what I did is America’s gun-violence problem, the 21 percent in the last midterms, in 2014. something any father would do for their Parkland students have had a major child,” Sullivan, choking back tears, told a impact. Though they were called “crisis the recent midterms saw local reporter after his victory. actors” by trolls, their social-media savvy the toppling of more than two dozen pushed them above the din and nudged NRA-backed candidates across the US. if we are to decrease shooting the National Rifle Association closer to “Overall, this country chose to move in the deaths in America, we must shift the fringes. Gun-rights advocates have direction of gun safety,” Fred Guttenberg, some entrenched attitudes about gun defined the debate for decades, claiming the father of fourteen-year-old Parkland ownership and safety. That will probably the moral high ground in their defense of victim Jaime Guttenberg, tweeted on take decades. But change is already the constitutional right to bear arms. But November 7. Indeed, as this magazine happening: the Parkland kids have forced in the wake of Parkland, the NRA has lost went to press, pro-gun-reform Democrats many gun owners to reflect on the place dozens of corporate partners, been cited had gained seven governorships and of guns in American society. And today’s multiple times for violating campaign- flipped six state legislative chambers. high-school students who are building finance laws, and suered a sharp decline Two parents of murdered children won their political identity around gun reform in membership. their races after making gun control the are tomorrow’s college students and centerpiece of their campaigns. Lucy parents and elected representatives. during the summer of 2018, the McBath, an African-American busi- Their activism is giving the gun-reform Parkland survivors started a nationwide nesswoman whose son Jordan was shot movement its best chance in a generation voter-registration drive in an eort to six years ago by a white man angry over to succeed, and perhaps one day, when build a voting bloc formidable enough the loud music coming from his car, mass shootings are an anomaly and not a to rival NRA supporters. Youth voter defeated her NRA-backed Republican regular occurrence, we’ll be able to look registration went up 41 percent in Florida challenger in the race for Georgia’s Sixth back and remember exactly when things in the six months after the shooting, and Congressional District. In Colorado, began to change: on February 14, 2018, at a surge has also been recorded across Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex was one a suburban high school in south Florida, the country. According to one survey, of twelve people gunned down in an with a massacre that proved to be one too

OLIVIER DOULIERY / SIPA VIA AP IMAGES / SIPA OLIVIER DOULIERY voters eighteen to twenty-nine made Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012, many for our kids to tolerate.

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4.18_Feature_NOVAK_F.indd 30 11/15/18 10:09 AM Dancer Michael Novak ’09GS has been cast in the role of a lifetime — Paul Taylor’s successor

BY REBECCA SHAPIRO

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4.18_Feature_NOVAK_F.indd 31 11/15/18 10:09 AM hen Michael Novak ’09GS was twelve years old, he organization with such an uncertain path. But many thought developed a stutter so severe that it rendered him his heir would likely be a dancer further into his or her career, W almost mute. Ordering dinner at a restaurant was who had been with the company longer. an impossible task; trying to answer a question in class was Still, Tomlinson thinks Novak was an inspired choice. torture. “It was awkward, scary, and, most of all, completely “Michael is passionate and articulate about the Taylor reper- isolating,” Novak says. “I wanted desperately to communicate, toire and its contribution to modern dance,” he says. “He’s a and I couldn’t.” Novak, who was taking jazz and tap classes after student of dance history and has already demonstrated a deep school, soon found that he could channel his frustration into concern about supporting future choreographers. There’s no movement. The more he fought to express himself, the better question that he will leverage this passion, along with sheer dancer he became. In other words, Novak says, “dance became talent, dance knowledge, and energy, in working to advance my voice.” Paul Taylor’s vision of American modern dance.” Today that voice is stronger than ever, and Novak has just Novak grew up in a suburb of Chicago in a family that appre- been given a megaphone to amplify it. Earlier this year, four ciated music, theater, and all things creative. His father was months before his death at eighty-eight, the legendary chore- “a copywriter, consultant, and fiction writer … a real artistic ographer Paul Taylor named Novak, thirty-six, as successor and soul,” Novak says. His mother, the executive assistant to the vice heir to his modern-dance empire. As artistic director, Novak president of a steel company, loved musicals and would sing will head up Taylor’s three dance companies — the Paul Taylor show tunes with Novak as she cooked dinner (“our favorites Dance Company, which performs only works by Taylor; were Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, and Jesus Christ Taylor 2, a touring company dedicated to showcasing Taylor’s Superstar,” he says). Neither of Novak’s parents were dancers, work to audiences around the world; and Paul Taylor American but they were supportive when their son expressed an interest. Modern Dance, which presents new and historical works by “I tried a bunch of team sports and wasn’t great at any of other choreographers alongside Taylor’s own. He will also over- them, so I was looking for an outlet for my energy,” Novak says. see the Taylor archives and the Taylor School in New York. “A dance studio opened near my house, and I started taking “And I’ll continue to dance with the companies,” says Novak, classes. It was the right fit from the start.” laughing over iced co ee and fruit at a café across from Lincoln As Novak worked to overcome his stutter — he credits hours Center, where he’s about to head into a four-hour rehearsal. spent with a speech therapist as well as his burgeoning dance “I just might never sleep again.” career — he grew more confident both in and outside the There’s no trace of a stutter left in Novak’s speech; in fact, it’s studio. In high school, he was president of the drama club and almost impossible to imagine him as an awkward teenager. He’s earned starring roles in almost every musical, winning an all- confident, funny, and Disney-prince handsome, with frosty-blue state drama award for the role of David in Bob Randall’s play eyes, a chiseled jawline, and perfectly sculpted hair. He sits with David’s Mother. He also frequently took the train into Chicago military posture, even in a casual co ee shop, and rarely breaks for more-intensive dance classes. eye contact. At eighteen, Novak enrolled at Philadelphia’s University Novak joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 2010 and of the Arts, where he planned to major in dance and theater. quickly became a standout. In his debut season, he was nomi- Though he had a solid background in modern dance, jazz, and nated for a Clive Barnes Award (a top honor for young dancers tap, Novak quickly realized he would need more training in the and actors). For the 2018 season, a striking photograph of fundamentals of ballet if he wanted to dance professionally. Novak dancing solo decorated the company’s program covers He withdrew from University of the Arts and enrolled at the and was featured in its advertising (“frankly, I never thought I’d Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet, where the rigors of practices see myself in the New York Times at all, let alone in a full-page and performances soon took a toll on his body. ad in tights,” he says). He’s performed fifty-six roles in Taylor “I basically started to develop shin splints immediately and dances, thirteen of which were created for him. Still, for most in then ended up with stress fractures in both legs,” Novak says. the dance community, the announcement of Novak as Taylor’s “It was excruciating, physically and mentally. I realized that it successor was unexpected. was in my best interest to quit dancing and take care of myself.” “I think it’s safe to say that no one saw this coming, least of all Novak was twenty-three years old and had given more than me,” Novak says. “For the first few months, I felt a physical wave a decade of his life to dance. Suddenly he had to imagine an of shock every time I thought about it.” entirely new future for himself. “It’s not an unusual story for a John Tomlinson, the executive director of the Taylor Dance dancer, but it was devastating nonetheless. I really thought I was Foundation, has said that the decision was surprising on two never going to dance again,” he says. He moved to New York and PREVIOUS PAGE: PAUL B. GOODE levels. For years, Taylor had said that he had no plans to name a applied to two nontraditional programs to complete his under- successor at all — rather, he planned to create a committee that graduate education — New York University’s Gallatin School of would determine the company’s artistic future after he died. Individualized Study and Columbia’s School of General Studies. The foundation pushed Taylor to reconsider, fearing it would Columbia immediately won him over. “I remember going on my be dicult to fundraise for and build excitement around an campus tour at Columbia, and I just knew,” he says. “I thought

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4.18_Feature_NOVAK_F.indd 32 11/15/18 10:09 AM Michael Novak (right) and Paul Taylor dancer Eran Bugge in Promethean Fire. “I found myself in a network of artists who were not just creative but also intellectual … I knew immediately that I had found my kin.”

to myself, this is the soil that I need to root myself in for the with two Barnard professors who specialized in dance history next few years.” — the late Mary Cochran, who chaired the dance department, Novak was drawn to Columbia’s arts programming as well and Professor Emeritus Lynn Garafola — and decided to as the Core Curriculum (“at that point in my life, I was mostly cross-register for classes there. looking for a strong liberal-arts education,” he says). But what “I remember Michael as a very curious student. He was obvi- really swayed his decision was the school’s large community of ously a talented performer, but he also wanted to understand dancers, many of whom were in similar places in their careers the context of what he was performing,” Garafola says. and lives. “I found myself in a network of artists who were not Under Cochran’s and Garafola’s tutelage, Novak became just creative but also intellectual. People at Columbia thought deeply immersed in dance history, eventually dropping his like me and communicated like me. I knew immediately that I religion major and writing his thesis on dance photogra- had found my kin.” pher George Platt Lynes. “It was largely inspired by a series Novak entered as a double major in dance and religion and of nude photographs that Lynes took in 1948 of Nicholas became involved in a new campus group called the Columbia Magallanes and Francisco Moncion in a loose interpretation Ballet Collaborative, which was made up of retired ballet danc- of George Balanchine’s now iconic Orpheus,” Novak says. ers. Novak was doing an independent study in choreography, “There’s so much in this one series — fashion, surrealism, and he focused a semester on crafting a piece for the collabora- nudity, homosexuality, portraiture — and the dancers’ bodies tive. With his injuries healed, Novak started performing with take on a truly mythical status. I argue that Lynes’s work is the group and soon assumed the role of artistic director. the most important collection of dance photography of the

PAUL B. GOODE B. PAUL Through the collaborative, Novak also started working closely twentieth century.”

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4.18_Feature_NOVAK_F.indd 33 11/15/18 10:09 AM Novak had planned to go on to graduate school, for a master’s in arts administration or an MBA. But his legs were getting stronger and less prone to injury, thanks in part to Columbia dance classes. During his senior year, he performed the classic Nijinsky ballet Afternoon of a Faun, as produced by Garafola, who was also serving as his thesis adviser. “It’s a complex dance,” Garafola says. “It’s choreographed as a moving frieze, with the kind of poses you would see on a Greek vase. Michael had both the technical skill and the imagination to infuse the poses with movement. I knew immediately that I had found my faun.” For Novak, the performance turned out to be a seminal moment. “I was dancing this incredibly iconic role, in a room full of the world’s most eminent dance historians. And I real- ized that I still might have something left to give,” he says. “By the time I graduated from Columbia, I had decided to try to pursue a professional dance career one last time.” Cochran, a former Taylor dancer, thought the company might be a good fit for Novak. At her suggestion, Novak started taking classes at the Taylor School while he was still at Columbia and was accepted into its summer intensive program. “I just fell in love. I couldn’t get enough of Paul’s movements, of the theatri- cality — there’s an emphasis on line and technique, but there’s always the freedom to move,” Novak says. “I also really responded to the emotional range of his dances. He has very funny pieces and very dark pieces. And the body of work is so huge that I could spend years growing into it. I’d never get bored.” A spot opened in the company in 2008, the year before Novak graduated from Columbia. He made it to the final round of auditions, but he didn’t get the job. “Then there’s this awk- ward waiting period,” he says. “You don’t know if another spot will open the next year or in five years.” While he waited, Novak took whatever work he could find, which was particularly chal- lenging since he had graduated during the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. “I was a personal assis- tant. I taught body-conditioning classes. I was dancing with at least three companies at all times. I taught ballet and jazz and modern,” Novak says. “I was twenty-seven, and I was getting tired of scraping together money for health insurance and for student loans. I was craving stability.” In 2010 — sooner than he was expecting — Novak got a call to say that another spot had opened at the Paul Taylor Dance Company. He auditioned again, and this time he was in. Though Novak had been dancing seriously for over fifteen years, he says that joining the company was one of the hardest things he had ever done. The company spends about a third of the year touring, a third rehearsing, and the last third in what it calls the New York season (“I think of New York as our final exams for the

year”). Not only did Novak have to master the bulk of Taylor’s CREATIVE / LASPATA DECARO extensive repertoire, he also had to get used to the lifestyle of a touring dancer: “There are so many things you don’t think about. How to dance when you’re jet-lagged. How to stretch in an air- port when your plane is delayed. How to stick to your nutrition and cross-training when you’re in Oman, for example.”

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4.18_Feature_NOVAK_F.indd 34 11/15/18 10:09 AM “I just fell in love. I couldn’t get enough of Paul’s movements, of the theatricality.”

Novak says he spent his early years with the company watching as many rehearsals and performances as he could. “I’ve always loved watching other dancers,” he says. “Even at the beginning, it never felt intimidating. It was exhilarating to be able to learn from these incredible artists who were now also my peers.” Though he says that every role he’s performed with the company has made him a better dancer, he has a particular a ection for Fibers, a dance that Taylor created in 1961. “We performed it in 2013, which was the first time it had been produced since the sixties. The costume was very intricate — a fencing mask with striped panels over the eyes and plastic material around the body. Dancing while I was basically bound by plastic was a completely unique, almost terrifying experi- ence,” Novak says. “But what really made it special was that it was my first ‘Paul role’ — that’s what we call roles that he danced himself.” Now Novak is stepping into a much bigger “Paul role.” As the company’s first artistic director, he doesn’t have much of a play- book to follow. In fact, he says, it’s unusual for an active dancer with a company to assume such a role; often it’s a former dancer who has already stepped into a management position. Unlike Taylor, Novak does not have any immediate plans to make his own dances. “I do have a background in choreography, but I see myself more as a curator for now,” Novak explains. He says he is planning, programming, and thinking about ways to bring dance to new audiences. As a devoted student of modern- dance history, he’s also excited about resurrecting dances that haven’t been performed in decades. “The first thing I did was to take out all my dance-history books from Barnard and Columbia,” Novak says. To prepare for his new job, Novak also immersed himself in the Taylor archives, developing a deep knowledge of the com- pany’s nearly seventy-year history. In the first few months of Novak’s tenure, Taylor was his mentor, sitting with him during rehearsals and going over notes on the performance together and meeting at Taylor’s Lower East Side apartment to talk through the 2019 and 2020 seasons. Since Taylor’s death in August, the weight of Novak’s new role hits him from time to time. Novak had hoped to have more time to spend apprenticing under the renowned artistic direc- tor. But Novak says he takes comfort in recalling the way Taylor approached him about the job. “It wasn’t a question: it was a directive. That signaled to me that he trusted me to do this, and that he believed I could,” Novak says. “Paul Taylor left us an incredible body of work, inspiring generations of artists and audiences with his wit, musicality, humor, and humanity. When I think about the fact that this legendary artist gave over his entire legacy for me to

BILL WADMAN protect and preserve, I really can’t imagine a higher calling.”

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4.18_Feature_NOVAK_F.indd 35 11/15/18 10:09 AM THE BIG IDEA The Science of Healthy Aging

We talked with Linda P. Fried, dean of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and an internationally recognized gerontologist, about the secrets to living a longer, healthier, and happier life — and why the graying of America may be a good thing

By David J. Craig

We know the US population is aging. more people are now drawing benefits out Q Can you give us a little perspective on of those programs relative to the number this demographic shift? paying taxes into them. But the situation Today, 15 percent of all Americans are can be addressed with some combination sixty-five or older, and by 2030 that of minor tax increases and adjustments in number will reach 20 percent. This isn’t the programs’ eligibility ages. a temporary bump caused by the aging What I find perplexing is the attitude of baby boomers. It’s primarily the result that older people represent a finan- of major public-health achievements cial burden on society. I see them as a that, over the past century, have added great untapped resource. Psychological more than three decades to the average research has shown that older people American lifespan. Many people are have a strong desire to make a dierence now living well into their eighties or in the world. Many of them are eager to nineties, which means that we have an remain involved in work or in volunteer entirely new stage of life to explore. It’s activities. So why not connect these large amazing. It’s what we always wanted: for numbers of wise and experienced older everybody to live longer. And yet we’ve Americans with important social initia- declared it a disaster — “Oh, no, we can’t tives that could use their help? aord it; how terrible to have all these old people around.” You designed a nationwide program, the AARP Foundation Experience So you don’t share the concerns of Corps, that assigns older Americans people who warn that this cohort to serve as tutors in public schools. will bankrupt our Social Security and Yes, the inspiration came from work I did Medicare systems? as a young physician in Baltimore back It’s true that Social Security and Medicare in the 1980s. I saw a lot of depression, will soon need to be tweaked because anxiety, and feelings of social isolation

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4.18_BIG-IDEA_Fried.indd 36 11/15/18 10:04 AM Linda P. Fried

in otherwise healthy older people, and promotes interdisciplinary research so I encouraged them to find something on nearly every aspect of aging. Mail- “What I nd meaningful to do and report back to me. man School scientists are investigating Nine times out of ten, I would hear that questions like: How do you prevent or perplexing is they couldn’t find suitable roles for them- delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease? selves out in the community. How can older people remain active even So in the 1990s I designed a new when they begin to experience health the attitude that approach, and later I teamed up with a problems? And how might we redesign social activist named Marc Freedman our cities, workplaces, and social policies older people to create a volunteer program in which to better serve people of all ages? older people can serve in public schools to represent improve children’s success. Today, Experi- What are some of the important ence Corps includes two thousand volun- findings so far? a nancial teers tutoring thirty thousand students a One of the biggest breakthroughs in the year in twenty-one US cities. Studies have field of gerontology in recent years has burden on shown that children in the participating been to show how surprisingly resilient schools earn better grades, have fewer our minds and bodies are. For instance, society. I see behavior problems, and are more likely Columbia scientists have demonstrated to go on to complete high school. The that we can continue to improve our cog- volunteers benefit, too, in terms of both nitive abilities until very late in life, even them as a great their physical and mental health. accessing and strengthening parts of our brains that we’d long left dormant. And untapped Since joining Columbia in 2008, you’ve my own research has shown that many of established the Mailman School as a the physical ailments that are associated resource.” major hub of research on aging. with aging — weight loss, muscle weak- Our school now hosts the Robert N. ness, exhaustion, slow walking, and bal-

ANDREW FRENCH Butler Columbia Aging Center, which ance problems, along with heart disease

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4.18_BIG-IDEA_Fried.indd 37 11/15/18 10:04 AM and stroke — are not an inevitable part of a pittance compared to the $225 billion More and more Americans are work- growing old, as physicians used to think, that the disease is estimated to cost ing past the official retirement age. Is but are actually preventable. our country annually. Meanwhile, the your faculty studying that issue? number of Alzheimer’s cases in the US Yes, adults over the age of fifty-five are How can you prevent them? is expected to triple, to sixteen million, the fastest growing segment of the work- The single most important thing a person by 2050. force, and we’ve done extensive research can do as he or she gets older is to remain Research may point a way forward, on the topic. Older people remain on physically active. Diet is important too, though. The Health and Retirement the job for many di erent reasons. Some but physical activity is crucial. Exercise is Study, a longitudinal survey funded by can’t a ord to retire. Others simply love the closest thing we’ve found to a magic the National Institute on Aging, has what they do and want to keep doing it. pill for combating the e ects of aging. recently shown that among Americans As scientists, we’re looking at the situa- That’s because it works on every physio- with high levels of education, rates tion agnostically and asking: if an older logical system and keeps your entire body of Alzheimer’s disease have actually person chooses to continue working, fine-tuned. It even stimulates your brain plummeted since 2000. Now, the fact regardless of her motivations, how can and helps to prevent cognitive decline. that the decline is occurring only among she accomplish that in a way that’s bene- better-educated people is problematic, ficial to both her and her employer? That said, the prevalence of Alzheimer’s obviously, but it should motivate us to disease has been rising. Do you think figure out exactly what resources, activ- What have you learned so far? we’re prepared as a country? ities, and environments protect against Our research has debunked a lot of Unless we invest more money in dementia. In the meantime, I think we myths about older workers. For example, studying the disease, both as a medical ought to be investing more money in we’ve found that workers in many indus- problem and as a public-health chal- public-health programs that encourage tries continue to be productive well past lenge, it could be a truly devastating participation in the simple things that the age of sixty-five and that the wealth situation. Right now, the US government we already know are beneficial for long- of experience they bring into the work- spends about $600 million a year on term cognitive health: reading, learning place improves a team’s performance. Alzheimer’s research, which is less than new tasks, exercising, eating healthfully, This is true in a range of settings, from it spends studying AIDS or cancer and is and leading an active life. white-collar workplaces to production

The sewing-machine-repair shop Sew Right and the spring-manufacturing company Lee Spring are among the dozens of New York City businesses that the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center has recognized for valuing older workers.

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4.18_BIG-IDEA_Fried.indd 38 11/15/18 10:04 AM lines. One study in a German automo- alcohol abuse, diabetes, stroke, and bile factory showed that employees on a heart disease, as well as less access to “Psychological production line make fewer mistakes if education — all risk factors for frailty, the team is multigenerational. dementia, and other serious health prob- research has lems that strike people in old age. Many Are employers getting the message? of my Columbia colleagues and I are now shown that Ageism is still a problem in many collaborating with public-health experts workplaces, unfortunately. But more overseas to strategize about how devel- older people and more companies are recognizing the oping nations can best prepare for this advantages of hiring and retaining older transition, based on what we’ve learned workers. Some big corporations, like CVS works, or doesn’t, in our own countries. have a strong drugstores and Fidelity Investments, have recruited older people because they What are some of the lessons desire to make realize that older customers prefer dis- you’ve shared? cussing their health needs or retirement There are so many. Some may seem a di erence plans with people closer to them in age. small, but they’re important. For exam- And many small companies, where sta ple, Mailman School researchers have in the world.” turnover can be especially disruptive, been looking at how urban infrastruc- are hanging on to older workers because ture and public policy can a ect the they value their institutional knowledge lives of older city dwellers. We’ve shown and experience. Overall, the research that installing more street benches, many people are truly happy retiring and indicates that the multigenerational giving older people free access to public devoting their time to family, hobbies, and workplace is a win-win: good for the transportation, and inviting them to take leisure, others feel the urge to do more. companies and good for the workers. classes at local universities and at other We know this is true because Experience institutions through which they can stay Corps, along with a handful of other Some have suggested that older engaged can dramatically increase their nationwide volunteer programs for older workers take jobs away from levels of physical, social, and mental people, always has long waiting lists of young people. activity, and thereby improve their would-be participants. I’m an advocate for That’s another myth that’s been disproved. overall health. These are enormously these programs not because I think doing In fact, several studies have shown that cost-e ective measures that can be volunteer work is the only way to age older workers provide a boost to our econ- implemented in cities around the world. healthfully but because I’ve seen firsthand omy and create jobs for young people, And then there are larger-scale inter- what it can mean for older people to know since they have more disposable income. ventions. My Mailman colleague Kavita that their lives still have a larger pur- One serious challenge that does exist Sivaramakrishnan is now working in pose. I’ve sat with retired police ocers, is that companies are often reluctant to India, China, and Kenya to understand plumbers, lawyers, corporate CEOs, and pay for their older workers’ health-care culturally relevant approaches to long- others who, after mentoring children, have plans, which tend to be more expensive. term-care programs for older people. We looked me in the eye and said things like, I proposed a solution to this in a recent believe that expanding such programs is “This is the most important work I’ve ever paper: older workers ought to be able to a critical need, because these and many done.” That conviction inspires them to get receive full Medicare coverage, which is other developing nations are undergo- out of bed every day, to walk to a nearby currently available only to retirees. This ing social changes similar to those that school, and to stay physically and mentally would lower companies’ health-care costs occurred in the US many decades ago, fit. And as a result, a child who might oth- and encourage them to keep on their when grown children began moving far erwise have dropped out of school goes on older workers. away from their parents and so were no to graduate. Two lives are changed. longer available to directly care for them We need to design more roles like this Are only industrialized nations seeing in their later years. China has the most for older people, whether that means their populations age? urgent need for new approaches, as a having them serve as community health The same demographic shift is occurring result of its one-child policy. advocates, companions for homebound throughout the world. In some ways, people, or mentors to younger employ- the changes will be more dicult for To get back to the US, what work ees at their companies. We need to stop low- and middle-income nations. Many must still be done here? bemoaning the challenges posed by of them lack the robust social safety nets We are still in the process of defining what our population’s aging and instead ask that we have for older people. And some we want our lives to look like in our seven- ourselves a bold question: how could this

LEFT: COURTESY OF THE COLUMBIA AGING CENTER; RIGHT: COLUMBIA AGING CENTER / JULIA XANTHOS LIDDY CENTER / JULIA XANTHOS AGING COLUMBIA CENTER; RIGHT: AGING OF THE COLUMBIA COURTESY LEFT: of them have rising rates of smoking, ties, eighties, nineties, and beyond. While transition be great?

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4.18_BIG-IDEA_Fried.indd 39 11/15/18 10:04 AM EXPLORATIONS

FRONTIERS OF RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY

New smart helmet could spot concussions in real time

his fall, tens of thousands of American electromagnetic wave patterns of a trau- football players, from grade-schoolers matic brain injury, they will send an alert to Ton up to the pros, will be treated for a computer on the sidelines. concussions. Experts suspect that for “Within seconds of a player being every player who is pulled from a game and hit, everyone will know whether or not diagnosed, another will have his or her injury he’s su ered a concussion,” says James go unnoticed, since only those who report feel- Noble ’08PH, a Columbia neurologist who ing ill or display the most conspicuous signs of designed the technology with Columbia traumatic brain injury — such as losing con- biomedical engineer Barclay Morrison. sciousness or acting disoriented — are likely to “This will eliminate a lot of the problems be examined by a neurologist. you have now with coaches, athletic trainers, In order to detect concussions as they occur, and team physicians having to make fairly and to help coaches determine quickly and subjective judgments about who should be conclusively when players should be taken o removed from a game to receive a full neuro- the field, a team of Columbia researchers is logical evaluation.” developing what would be the first wearable The idea for the NoMo was inspired by diagnostic device for traumatic brain injury. Noble’s experiences serving as a neurologi- Called the NoMo, the device incorporates cal consultant to collegiate and professional DAVID BUTLER II / USA TODAY SPORTS electroencephalography (EEG) sensors of the football teams. In that role, he helps the type commonly used in hospitals to mea- teams’ doctors determine if and when players sure a patient’s brain activity. The sensors, who have been benched for concussions are which would ordinarily be taped to the scalp, fully recovered and battle-ready again. This is are instead tucked in between the pads of a a critical decision, since a player who returns football helmet. Upon detecting the distinct to the field and takes additional hits too soon

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4.18_Explorations.indd 40 11/15/18 11:16 AM after su ering a concussion is initially planning to use such more likely to incur long-term devices in the 2016 season, neurological damage. ultimately shelved the idea. “Everybody involved “One problem with accel- in football wants a more erometers is that a concus- reliable way of identifying sion may result from an when these injuries happen,” accumulation of hits rather Noble says. “The culture of than from one big one,” says the game, at any level, is such Noble. “Our device is more that the players are often reliable because it monitors reluctant to volunteer that the brain’s actual physiolog- they’re hurt. Plus, the symp- ical activity in response to toms of a concussion can be these hits. It will provide a subtle and hard to spot.” real medical diagnosis.” Over the past decade, Noble and Morrison several other research teams conducted a preliminary test EEG sensors inside a football helmet can detect concussions in real time. have attempted to create of the NoMo at a Columbia wearable devices to detect football practice last year. sports, including hockey, their feet or from enduring concussions. Some have They found that it success- wrestling, lacrosse, and, if the shock waves caused by developed accelerometers fully recorded the players’ the sensors can be made explosions. that, when implanted in brain waves, but that it must small enough to slip into “The beauty of our design football helmets, measure be made smaller to fi t com- a headband, soccer and is that it doesn’t matter what the physical intensity of hits fortably into a helmet. They basketball. Furthermore, causes the concussion,” says that players endure. The are currently working on a they say, the device could be Morrison. “If you experience jostling of a player’s helmet new version of the device. inserted into military hel- a traumatic brain injury, has proved to be an imper- Eventually, they say, the mets to detect when soldiers a red light will go o on a fect proxy for concussions, NoMo could be adapted for su er concussions, either computer and tell someone though, and the NFL, after use in a number of contact from being knocked o you need help.” What fi sh can teach us about our powers of perception Scientists have long wondered how our brains tune out elephant-nose fi sh (pictured below) that recognizes the myriad sounds produced inside our own bodies — unimportant internal stimuli and summarily blocks them such as the creaking of bones, the pumping of blood, and out. Now, in a new study in the journal Neuron, they show the intake of breath — and focus instead on the sounds that when this “noise-cancellation mechanism” is shut of the outside world. Nathaniel Sawtell and Larry Abbott, off, the fi sh become hopelessly disoriented. Sawtell and neuroscientists at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute, Abbott suspect that a similar mechanism is operating have been making strides in solving this mystery. They in the human brain and that their research could inform have identifi ed a section of the brain of the African studies of sensory disorders such as tinnitus. TOP: COURTESY OF NOMO DIAGNOSTICS; BOTTOM: PAUL STAROSTA PAUL BOTTOM: OF NOMO DIAGNOSTICS; COURTESY TOP:

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4.18_Explorations.indd 41 11/15/18 11:16 AM EXPLORATIONS NewNew fl iightght rroutesoutes save ttimeime bbutut damage health

ore airplanes are fl ying directly over densely populated areas, M An artist’s rendering of a moon (foreground, in blue) orbiting the exoplanet Kepler-1625b. thanks to airport computer systems that automatically chart the most effi cient routes. e hunt for the fi rst But a new study by researchers at Columbia’s Mailman School exomoon may be over of Public Health concludes that the benefi ts of the reduced iscovering a planet outside our solar system is di cult. Spotting a moon fl ight times are outweighed by orbiting one of those distant planets? Well, that’s even harder. It is so the health effects on residents Dtough, in fact, that no one has ever accomplished it. below. Looking at the increase But soon that could change. In a recent paper in the journal Science in noise pollution around New Advances, Columbia astronomers David Kipping and Alex Teachey report evidence York City’s LaGuardia Airport of a moon around a Jupiter-like planet called Kepler-1625b, which is orbiting a star ssinceince rroutesoutes wwereere cchangedhanged iinn ssomeome eeightight tthousandhousand llightight yyearsears ffromrom EEartharth iinn tthehe cconstellationonstellation Cygnus.Cygnus. WithWith datadata 2012, the researchers deter- ggatheredathered bbyy NNASA’sASA’s HHubbleubble SSpacepace TTelescope,elescope, tthehe aastronomersstronomers ddeterminedetermined tthathat mined that people living in wwhenhen tthehe pplanetlanet ppassedassed iinn ffrontront ooff iitsts sstartar iinn llateate 22017,017, tthehe sstar’star’s bbriefrief ddimmingimming ccertainertain QQueensueens nneighborhoodseighborhoods wwasas ffollowedollowed bbyy a ssecond,econd, mmoreore ssubtleubtle ddipip iinn llight.ight. TThathat iiss cconsistent,onsistent, KKippingipping wwillill lloseose aann aaverageverage ooff oonene yyearear ssays,ays, wwithith ““aa mmoonoon ttrailingrailing thethe planetplanet likelike a dogdog followingfollowing itsits ownerowner onon a leash.”leash.” ooff ggoodood hhealthealth ooverver tthehe ccourseourse TThehe CColumbiaolumbia rresearchersesearchers hhadad ppreviouslyreviously publishedpublished moremore tentativetentative evidenceevidence ofof of their lifetimes, due to their Kepler-1625b’s apparent lunar companion. This new study contains higher- heightened risk of cardiovascu- resolution data that also suggest that Kepler-1625b is wobbling slightly as it lar disease and other ailments hurtles through space, as would be expected if a moon were orbiting the planet linked to stress. and exerting a subtle gravitational pull from di erent directions. EXOMOON: NASA / ESA / L. HUSTAK; AIRPLANES: NATHAN DUMLAO, RICARDO MANCIA “Ideally, airports should be Kipping and Teachey say that they will need to observe Kepler-1625b passing built farther away from urban by its star at least once more to confi rm their fi ndings. (The planet’s next transit centers,” says lead author Peter will occur in May 2019.) But their study has already created excitement among Muennig ’98PH, a professor astronomers, not only because it contains the most compelling evidence yet for a of health policy and manage- moon outside our solar system — a so-called “exomoon” — but also because it sug- ment. “The next-best option is gests that the body orbiting Kepler-1625b is unlike any of the approximately 180 to use fl ight patterns that send known moons in our solar system. For example, Kipping and Teachey’s exomoon planesplanes ooverver ggreenreen sspace,pace, wwater-ater- candidate appears to be the size of Neptune, which would make it by far the largest ways,ways, aandnd iindustrialndustrial aareas.”reas.” moon ever discovered. And based partly on its orbital path, the scientists say that it is likely hot and gaseous, whereas all known moons are cold and rocky. “This moon would have fairly surprising properties,” says Kipping, whose lab’s research was the subject of the cover story in the Winter 2017–18 issue of Columbia Magazine. “If confi rmed by subsequent Hubble observations, the fi nding could provide vital clues about the development of planetary systems and cause experts to revisit theories about how moons form.”

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4.18_Explorations.indd 42 11/15/18 11:17 AM organizers will have to do a What do retail workers want? better job of listening to what retail workers actually want. Just a little respect Traditionally, US unions have focused on fighting for almart is the Workers International Union And yet despite these chal- better pay and benefits. But largest private (UFCW) as it attempted to lenges, Reich and Bearman what Walmart employees Wemployer in organize employees. Their argue, there is still reason to want most, the researchers the US, with findings are presented in think that Walmart employ- say, is respect. In interview 1.5 million Americans, a new book, Working for ees may unionize. In recent after interview, they write, or nearly 1 percent of the Respect: Community and years, they point out, an Walmart employees told country’s workforce, stocking Conflict at Walmart. advocacy group run for and them that what they’d like its shelves, ringing up its In order for workers to by the company’s employ- to see changed about their customers, and wrangling act collectively, Reich and ees, Organization United jobs is to be treated more its shopping carts. The vast Bearman argue, they have to for Respect, has enrolled respectfully by their bosses, majority of these workers be able to develop trust in one thousands of members by to have more say in managing receive low wages and few another and come to see that providing them information their schedules and prior- benefits, and not a single they have shared interests. But and advice about routine itizing their duties, and to one of them is represented Walmart’s workforce is unusu- workplace issues, like what be granted small freedoms by a union. Why has it been ally heterogeneous, consisting justifies a medical leave, that they’re often denied, like dicult to organize workers of, among others, teenagers, what types of tasks supervi- having the ability to chat for a at places like Walmart? laid-o factory workers, sors can legally ask employ- few moments with customers To answer this question, busy moms, retirees, and the ees to do, and how to handle they know, to choose when to Columbia sociologists Adam formerly incarcerated, a group oneself in a disciplinary take a bathroom break, or to Reich and Peter Bearman that might not feel a natural hearing. The organization display one’s nickname on undertook an ambitious inves- sense of solidarity. Nor are has a robust online presence, a name tag. tigative project, sending teams their working conditions con- hosting discussion boards “It’s not as if Walmart of student researchers across ducive to forming bonds, since that connect employees from employees don’t want better the United States to conduct their shifts are constantly across the country, and it pay. They do. Many of them in-depth interviews with more rotating. And then there is therefore has the potential are barely scraping by,” said than a hundred Walmart the fact that the Walmart to build the kind of collec- Bearman in a recent inter- employees, surveying thou- corporation has taken a hard tive that might challenge view. “But more fundamen- sands more, and even embed- line against union activists in Walmart and other major tally, there is a baseline of ding the students in a workers’ the past, shutting down sev- retailers on a national level. human dignity that associates rights group created by the eral stores where its workers But for this to happen, feel they’re being denied.” United Food and Commercial attempted to organize. Reich and Bearman say, labor The sociologists recom- mend that union organizers borrow a page from the US labor movements of the late nineteenth and early twenti- eth centuries — movements that were driven, they say, as much by workers’ desire for clear rules about how bosses should treat them as by con- cerns about compensation. “Workers in the late nine- teenth century were poor, yes, but they also felt pow- erless and humiliated when they went to work, and early labor organizations spoke to

EDUARDO MUNOZ / REUTERS MUNOZ EDUARDO that situation,” says Reich.

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 43

4.18_Explorations.indd 43 11/15/18 11:17 AM EXPLORATIONS Can AI defeat the dreaded tsetse fly?

is time-consuming and “We knew that if you could expensive, since it requires sort the flies during the pupal lots of nimble-fingered lab stage, you wouldn’t have to workers to carefully sort male be so delicate with them,” and female flies by hand. says Moran. “We could even Zelda Moran ’17PH, a automate the task.” sta research associate at Moran has since teamed Columbia’s Earth Institute, up with Columbia physicist believes she has found a way Szabolcs Marka to develop to streamline this process. an artificial-intelligence pro- Her innovation stems from a gram that can instantly deter- discovery she made in 2015 mine if tsetse pupae contain while working in Vienna for male or female flies. The next the International Atomic step, they say, will be to create Energy Agency (IAEA), a robotic mechanism that, which oversees international upon identifying a male pupa scientists working on the Sen- moving past on a conveyor t may look like an ordinary In recent years, the egalese project. In an eort to belt, will blow a pu of air to housefly, but the African Senegalese government, in study the early stages of the separate it from the females. Itsetse fly is one of the partnership with interna- tsetse fly’s physical devel- Moran says that she is cur- most dangerous insects in tional aid agencies, has found opment, Moran invented a rently in conversations with the world. The sole trans- an ingenious way to fight near-infrared imaging tech- IAEA scientists about build- mitter of the infectious the deadly pest by breeding nique that enabled scientists ing a prototype system that disease known as sleeping the flies in captivity, steril- to peer inside its opaque pupa could be incorporated into sickness, which kills thou- izing the males with zaps of encasement for the first time. the tsetse-breeding facility in sands of people and millions radiation, and then releasing This led her and colleagues to Senegal. She hopes that her of livestock annually in them into the wild. This has observe that male and female technology, if it proves eec- sub-Saharan Africa, the disrupted the tsetse flies’ pupae develop on slightly dif- tive, will enable the IAEA to tsetse fly has made large mating patterns and caused ferent schedules, with females expand its tsetse-sterilization swaths of land on the conti- many colonies to collapse. sprouting wings a day or two project and eventually bring nent uninhabitable. The strategy, while eective, before the males. it to other African countries. More crop per drop

ndia faces chronic water shortages and maize, and millet. More moderate improve- widespread malnutrition — problems that ments in agricultural productivity, the scien-

Iare expected to worsen as the country’s tists found, could be achieved by replacing TOP: GEOFFREY M. ATTARDO, PHD; BOTTOM: AP PHOTO / ANUPAM NATH population continues to grow. wheat fields. But a team of environmental scientists The study may hold lessons for other led by Kyle Davis, a postdoctoral fellow at countries facing severe water short- Columbia’s Data Science Institute, has found ages, since rice and wheat are among that both challenges could be ameliorated the world’s most popular, and most if farmers switched the grains they produce. water-intensive, grains. The researchers, whose paper appears in “While we recognize the economic, the journal Science Advances, found that social, and cultural challenges involved in India could reduce the amount of water used making such major changes in grain produc- for irrigation by nearly 33 percent — while tion, the goal of our work is to help countries improving nutrition — by replacing plots think of ways to better align food security and of rice with less thirsty crops like sorghum, environmental goals,” Davis says. An Indian woman sorts grains from husks.

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4.18_Explorations.indd 44 11/15/18 11:17 AM STUDY It doesn’t pay to be nice HALL Kind and trusting people are more likely to fall into debt, default on loans, RESEARCH BRIEFS and declare bankruptcy because they tend to care less about money and are therefore prone to making bad financial decisions, finds Sandra Matz, an assistant professor of management at Colum- bia Business School. Matz’s study analyzed personality and financial data from more than three million people.

When “gluten-free” is full of it About one-third of dishes labeled “gluten-free” in US eateries contain traces of gluten, according to a study led by Benjamin Molten slag is dumped into a landfill. Lerner, a researcher at Columbia’s Celiac Disease Center. Lerner crowdsourced data from more than eight hun- Turning dross into gold dred people who tested some 5,600 dishes in restau- rants around the country using handheld gluten-detec- he process of turning raw iron ore into steel generates tion devices. He found that pizza and pasta advertised enormous amounts of waste material, called slag, that as gluten-free are the most likely to be contaminated. Taccumulates in stockpiles where its toxic elements can cause environmental or health problems. Safe harbor Myrna Weissman, a Columbia profes- But what if steel companies could recycle that slag, separating out sor of epidemiology and psychiatry, has found that its constituent elements and repurposing them for other industrial children are less likely to attempt suicide if religion or uses? A team of Columbia engineers led by Ah-Hyung (Alissa) spirituality is important to their parents. Park, the director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, and Xiaozhou (Sean) Zhou ’15SEAS, an associate research scientist in the Votes of despair? Anxiety about rising rates of Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering and the Depart- alcohol- and drug-related deaths and suicide may ment of Chemical Engineering, has devised a system to do just that. have helped tilt the 2016 presidential election in And next spring, one of the world’s largest steel companies, China’s favor of Donald Trump, according to a study led by Baotou Iron and Steel Group, will implement the team’s technology, Lee Goldman, the head of Columbia University Irving opening a twenty-thousand-square-foot slag-recycling facility at its Medical Center, who is also an epidemiologist. Even flagship smelting plant in Inner Mongolia. when controlling for unemployment levels and other The project aims to eventually recycle all the nearly three million economic factors, Goldman and his colleagues found tons of slag that the plant stockpiles annually, turning it into a wide that support for Trump was strongest in US counties range of chemical and mineral products useful to the paper, plastic, where mortality rates had increased the most sharply paint, cement, oil, gas, and steel industries. “We even hope to recycle over the previous fifteen years. some of the slag that the company has already discarded, which covers almost one square mile of land,” says Zhou. A cool coat A team of researchers led by Columbia Park and Zhou’s technology grew out of their research in carbon engineers Yuan Yang and Nanfang Yu has created capture and sequestration, which involves converting CO into a highly reflective white paint that, when applied to 2 carbonate minerals for storage. Once the researchers realized they buildings and rooftops, can lower internal temperatures could extract calcium carbonate from slag, they were able to develop by as much as six degrees Fahrenheit, thereby slashing an ultra-efficient system that pumps the waste through a series of cooling costs. The paint’s reflectivity derives from its reactors that remove its elements one by one. unique corrugated texture, which was inspired by the The Columbia researchers say that their technology could improve shiny, grooved hairs of the Saharan silver ant. the environmental sustainability of steel production throughout the world. While many other steel companies have begun to recycle some Outmaneuvering malaria Columbia microbiolo- parts of their slag, by mixing their carbonate minerals into cement gists Leila S. Ross and David Fidock have discovered and paper, the new Baotou facility will be the first to approach a that many people in Southeast Asia carry a genetic “zero-waste” recycling solution. mutation that renders a popular malaria medicine, “The techniques we’ve developed have the potential to make iron piperaquine, ineffective. The discovery is expected to and steel manufacturing substantially more sustainable, not only in save lives by helping public-health workers identify China but globally,” says Park. those who need alternative treatments. LENINA11ONLY / SHUTTERSTOCK LENINA11ONLY

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 45

4.18_Explorations.indd 45 11/15/18 11:17 AM NETWORK

YOUR ALUMNI CONNECTION

Clockwise from top left: dishes from Haku in Hong Kong; Gaggan in Bangkok; Hide in London; Corner House in Singapore.

While preparing for a vaca- Around the World in tion to Spain in 2012, though, Grinberg realized that two of 100 Restaurants the world’s top fifty restau- rants were in towns that he very June since 2002, In 2017, Grinberg ate at planned to visit. He decided a group of a thousand ninety-nine of the world’s to make reservations, and, as Eculinary professionals hundred best restaurants. he says, “a hobby was born.” and food critics have This year, he expects that Grinberg says he was partic- gathered in some far-flung, he’ll complete the list — ularly taken by the concept of idyllic location — this year it tackling the one that eluded the tasting menu. was Spain’s Basque country him last year, as well as the “For someone who didn’t — to vote on a list of the few 2018 additions. But actually know a lot about world’s hundred best restau- Grinberg isn’t a food critic food, it was an incredi- rants. For chefs and restau- or a chef himself — he’s a ble introduction,” he says. rateurs, a place on the list is finance executive, based in “You’re putting yourself in a deeply coveted honor. For the Bay Area. And until a the chef’s hands. So I was gastronomes, it’s the ultimate few years ago, he wouldn’t eating things that I never fantasy roster. But because have called himself an would have ordered.” the list spans thirty countries adventurous eater. Grinberg travels frequently and showcases meals that cost “I was actually pretty for work and takes several more than an average mort- picky, a total meat-and- international vacations a year, gage payment, no one has potatoes guy,” he says. “I so he started making a point actually eaten at every restau- didn’t know much about of checking the list whenever PAUL GRINBERG rant on it. In fact, no one has restaurants, or care about he was in a new city. Then he even come close — except for them. I just ordered steak found that he was planning Paul Grinberg ’89BUS. wherever I went.” trips around it.

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4.18_Network-F.indd 46 11/15/18 10:11 AM UNDER THE RAINBOW As a photojournalist covering conflict zones, climate change, and cultural curiosities, John Wendle ’07JRN has spent his career traveling the world. In this image he captures a young man galloping across a pasture in Kyrgyzstan. He says it was a rare peaceful moment at the famously brutal World Nomad Games, dedicated to traditional sporting events from Central Asian countries.

“It didn’t start out as a “I know this sounds ridic- beyond, Grinberg eventually goal; I never thought I’d get ulous, but it isn’t always fun did get a reservation — but anywhere near the whole list,” or easy. There are some trips he was thwarted again. Grinberg says. “But eventu- where I just can’t face the An impending typhoon in ally, I suppose, my competi- thought of lifting another Japan, as well as a death in tive nature took over.” fork or spoon to my mouth,” Grinberg’s family, made it With the top fifty in his Grinberg says. To combat the impossible for him to make sights, Grinberg says, “things fatigue — and the massive the dinner. got a little weird.” On his mis- caloric intake — he says The 2018 list was released sion, he’s flown twelve hours that he eats simply at home this past June, and Grinberg Paul Grinberg for a single dinner reserva- and works out for up to two now has five additional tion. He’s eaten two dinners hours every day. is notoriously dicult to restaurants to visit; he says in one evening (“I was only in In 2017, Grinberg set a visit, especially since they he intends to get to them all. Adelaide, Australia, for one goal to visit the full top one only open their reservation And while his nemesis, Sushi night, and I needed to hit two hundred. And while most line once a month. Grinberg Saito, actually fell o the list restaurants”). He ate at ten of restaurants were helpful was determined; he worked this year, Grinberg plans to France’s three-Michelin-star with reservations, some- all his business connections dine there this coming spring restaurants in a five-day span. times even staying open past and once recruited sixteen so he’ll have fully completed And he once ate sushi for so their usual hours to accom- friends to man the phones both the 2017 and 2018 lists. many days in a row that his modate Grinberg, there was on a reservation day, but to “It’s my white whale,” he mercury levels temporarily one that wasn’t impressed no avail. After news of his says. “The quest won’t be rose to eight times those of a — Tokyo’s Sushi Saito. With almost-feat started circu- complete until I slay it.”

JOHN WENDLE normal man his age. only eight seats, Sushi Saito lating in food media and — Rebecca Shapiro

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 47

4.18_Network-F.indd 47 11/15/18 10:12 AM NETWORK ASK AN ALUM: OPERA FOR ALL Laser Focus

Fred Plotkin ’80JRN is the author of rthur Ashkin ’47CC hasn’t Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning exactly let old age slow Ahim down. At ninety-six, and Loving Opera and the lead opera correspondent for WQXR Radio. He he has just won the Nobel Prize in Physics, making him the regularly appears on NPR to discuss oldest person ever to be named his two passions — classical music a Nobel laureate — and he’s still and Italian cuisine. actively working. “I guess I just made it,” Ashkin told the Nobel Committee in COLUMBIA MAGAZINE: How did you October. “Because you can’t win become an opera expert? if you’re dead.” FRED PLOTKIN: I’ve always loved the Ashkin won the prize for his performing arts. My father was a musician, Fred Plotkin in the Teatro at the Italian Academy. invention of optical tweezers, my mother was an administrator at Lincoln which use laser radiation pres- Center, and my stepfather was a manager at CM: What are your feelings about contem- sure to manipulate particles, Columbia Records. I was a child actor, but I porary opera? atoms, viruses, and other living soon realized that I preferred life backstage. I FP: People say there are no good operas any- cells without damaging them. studied Italian Renaissance history and opera more, but I think there are fantastic works These tools have led to profound production at the University of Wisconsin– nowadays. One challenge with modern opera breakthroughs in medicine, such Madison, and later I moved to Italy. I studied is that it is expensive to produce, because you as the ability to separate healthy at DAMS in Bologna — Italy’s equivalent to have to pay royalties to living people. If I had blood cells from infected ones. Juilliard — and got a Fulbright to work at the to name one modern masterpiece, it would be La Scala opera house in Milan. After return- Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie, based ing to New York and studying journalism on the book by Sister Helen Prejean. The at Columbia, I got a job as a program editor opera is able to magnify certain emotions in for the Metropolitan Opera House and later ways that the book and film versions do not. became performance manager there. CM: What’s a great introductory opera? CM: What type of work do you do now? FP: Verdi’s Rigoletto, in part because most peo- FP: Outside of NPR, I consult with opera ple already know some of the music. I recently companies and teach a course at NYU called took a friend to see it. She’d never been to the Arthur Ashkin in 1947. Adventures in Italian Opera. I’m the opera opera before, and she was in tears by the end. Ashkin, who worked at expert for Times Journeys, which are small- Columbia’s Radiation Lab as an group travel tours organized by the New CM: What advice do you have for an opera undergraduate, earned his PhD at York Times. I also write and lecture about newcomer? Cornell and spent the majority of Italian food and have published six books FP: First, you can’t be passive. You have to his career at Bell Laboratories. on the topic. actively listen to the music as it tells the story. I Though he hopes to be able to TOP: LEN SMALL / COLUMBIA MAGAZINE; CENTER: UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES really believe that if you read the synopsis and travel to Stockholm to claim his CM: Most operas are more than a hundred then listen and watch without looking at the award, he told the committee years old. Why are they still relevant? translations in the projected titles, you engage that he doesn’t plan to spend FP: Because they’re about us. The tragedy, much more and get a lot more out of it. much time celebrating. “I’m the passion, the insanity, and the discordant Second, turn o your analytical faculties. working on something new and aspects of modern life are all reflected. And You don’t “understand” opera; you feel it. In important — a paper on solar some operas, such as Mozart’s La clemenza our multitasking culture, we hear; we don’t lis- energy,” Ashkin said. “The world di Tito, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Verdi’s Don ten. We see, but we don’t observe. Modern life badly needs science around Carlo, and Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, are teaches us to shut o our feelings, but opera climate change right now.” very political — they deal with the role of the activates our emotional potential. People who For more on Columbia’s Nobel individual in society and how the decisions of think it’s a frivolous diversion just don’t know. laureates, see our Finals quiz on leaders inevitably aect people’s lives. — Julia Joy page 64.

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4.18_Network-F.indd 48 11/15/18 10:12 AM Shop Smarter Your guide to this year’s alumni-produced gifts

Community-garden hot sauce from Small Axe Peppers, cofounded by John Crotty ’96BUS. Three-pack, $29.99.

Oxford jacket from Zachary Prell menswear, founded by Zachary Prell Sterling-silver friendship charm ’05BUS. $198. from A Little Peace jewelry, founded by Teresa Saputo-Crerend ’87CC, ’92BUS. $85 with chain, $42 without.

Candle from Otherland, cofounded by Abigail Cook Stone ’16BUS and Sayyid Markar ’16BUS. $36.

Silk tie from Knot Greenpoint backpack tote Standard, cofounded by from Canopy Verde, founded John Ballay ’13BUS. $165. by Linda Wong ’03BUS. $165.

Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One, by Anita Lo ’88CC. Hardcover, $28.95.

Silk pajama top from Alessandra Mackenzie, founded by Alessandra Baker ’18BUS. $275.

Convertible backpack from Mack Weldon, cofounded by Brian Berger ’03BUS. $148. FROM TOP LEFT: ZACHARY PRELL; SMALL AXE PEPPERS; A LITTLE PEACE; KNOT STANDARD; OTHERLAND; CANOPY VERDE; KNOPF DOUBLEDAY PUBLISHING GROUP; MACK WELDON; SOPHIE ELGORT WELDON; SOPHIE MACK GROUP; PUBLISHING VERDE; KNOPF DOUBLEDAY CANOPY OTHERLAND; STANDARD; KNOT A LITTLE PEACE; PRELL; SMALL AXE PEPPERS; ZACHARY LEFT: TOP FROM

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 49

4.18_Network-F.indd 49 11/15/18 10:12 AM NETWORK 4 Alumni Podcasts Guaranteed to Make Extra Credit You Feel Smarter Microfinance on demand t’s often said that poverty is budget consistently, allowing cyclical. In order to make her to buy materials on the third Recode Decode Imoney — by starting a small Thursday of every month. Host: Kara Swisher business, for example — you Siroya returned to New York ’85JRN need to borrow money. But to access in 2008 and resumed a career in credit, people need to meet a strict investment banking, but she says Silicon Valley’s premier set of financial prerequisites that she couldn’t stop thinking about journalist sits down with determine their credit scores, a fact the business owners she had met. A-list tech and media that puts conventional borrowing players and isn’t afraid to out of reach for billions worldwide. ask the nerd gods some very tough questions. And so the cycle continues. “The financial system is closed o Good Law/Bad Law to too many people, especially in Host: Aaron Freiwald developing markets,” says Shivani ’85CC Siroya ’06PH. “And those are the A trial lawyer for twenty- people that are most in need of plus years and a former small loans.” investigative journalist, Siroya, who is the CEO and Freiwald oers ample founder of the microfinance evidence that the intricacies of law matter to company Tala, became intimately every American. Recent topics include the future acquainted with this problem while of sports betting, cell-phone privacy, and climate- working for the UN Population change legislation. Fund in India in 2006. In her role analyzing cost-estimation mod- Shivani Siroya So Money els for local public-health pro- Host: Farnoosh Torabi grams, she spent a lot of time with She wondered how she could ’03JRN small-business owners. replicate the personal loans she “I got to know their daily lives had made on a larger scale. Siroya An Iranian-American intimately. I met their customers. realized that the observations she personal-finance expert I saw the hundreds of interactions had used to underwrite her loans discusses investing and they had every day,” Siroya says. were quantifiable, and that much entrepreneurship with “And I realized that a credit score of the data was right there on her top business minds, authors, and influencers wasn’t the only way to assess some- customers’ smartphones. “When and asks them to share practical strategies for one’s risk.” you pay a phone bill or an electric money mastery. Using her own money, Siroya bill, there’s a record on your started making small loans — $300 phone. When you buy a bus ticket Stay Tuned with Preet to $500 — to small-business own- or pay a school fee, you get a noti- Host: Preet Bharara ers, looking at dierent criteria to fication. Even the kinds of apps ’93LAW determine if someone was a good you use are signals about finan- The former United States candidate for credit. For example, cial behavior,” Siroya says. “My Attorney known for his she knew that one local tilemaker customers might not have had a

enthusiastic prosecution saved 30 percent of her income traditional credit history, but they COURTESY OF SHIVANI SIROYA of public corruption and every month to pay for her son’s all used mobile phones.” white-collar crime (and also for being fired by schooling, demonstrating that she Siroya, who studied public health President Trump) oers his singular insight into was goal-oriented and disciplined. and econometrics at Columbia, had the current administration and invites guests to She lent to another artisan after no experience working in tech, but talk about justice, fairness, and leadership. watching how she balanced her she started taking coding classes

50 COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19

4.18_Network-F.indd 50 11/15/18 10:12 AM NEWSMAKERS and eventually developed an $100 and is generally paid o algorithm that uses new data within a month. Siroya says O Writer Kelly Link ’91SOA won a 2018 sets to determine people’s that her team — now spread MacArthur Fellowship — also called a creditworthiness. The end across oces in California, “genius grant.” Link is known for her result was Tala’s first prod- Mexico, Tanzania, Kenya, genre-bending short stories, which blend uct: an Android app — now and India, all markets where elements of science fiction and fantasy with available in five countries — Tala is active — is constantly realistic depictions of modern life. Link also that allows people to apply for trying to tweak the algorithm runs Small Beer Press, which publishes new small loans regardless of their to ensure that the process is voices in fantasy and literary fiction. financial history. ethical and free of bias. And O Biochemist Adrian Krainer ’81CC and “It works in real time, the company, which has been Columbia pharmacology professor C. Frank using thousands of dierent called one of the world’s most Bennett won this year’s Breakthrough Prize data sources to determine innovative startups by both in Life Sciences. Often called “the Oscars of risk,” Siroya says. “So if you Fast Company and Business science,” the $3 million awards are the world’s have an Android device and Insider, is growing quickly. most lucrative scientific prizes. Krainer and you’re in one of our markets, Siroya says that it aims to be Bennett were recognized for their work you can apply for a loan and in at least two more regions using RNA splicing to develop new drugs to get an instant decision.” by 2019. treat spinal muscular atrophy, a devastating Tala, which is funded by a “Combating global poverty genetic disease found in children. diverse group of investors, may sound like a lofty goal,” O Sigrid Nunez ’75SOA won the National Book has made over nine million Siroya says. “But with every Award for her novel The Friend. Two other loans since 2013, with a loan, we feel like we’re mak- Columbians were finalists: Diana Khoi Nguyen 92 percent repayment rate. ing a dent.” ’12SOA, for her poetry collection Ghost Of, The average loan is around — Rebecca Shapiro and Sarah Smarsh ’05SOA, for her memoir Heartland (see our review on page 56). Additionally, the National Book Foundation included novelist Hannah Lillith Assadi ’08CC, ’13SOA on its annual “5 Under 35” list. O Leyla Martinez ’18GS was selected for a JOURNEYS & SAFARIS Soros Justice Fellowship and will use her stipend to continue her work as an advo- cate for criminal-justice reform. Martinez, a formerly incarcerated mother, founded an organization that supports students aected by incarceration. O The Alliance for Justice honored attorney Roberta Kaplan ’91LAW at its annual gala. Kaplan is best known for representing Edith Windsor in the case that toppled the Defense of Marriage Act, and she is also a cofounder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which provides legal support to women in sexual- harassment cases. O Elissa Slotkin ’93SIPA was elected to the United States House of Representa- tives, unseating a Republican incumbent in AFRICA • ASIA • SOUTH AMERICA • AUSTRALIA • EUROPE Michigan. During the Obama administration, Inspirational Custom Vacations Slotkin worked as an analyst for the CIA and as an assistant secretary of defense. +1 855 468 5555 redsavannah.com Find and connect with all your classmates at alumni.columbia.edu

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 51

4.18_Network-F.indd 51 11/15/18 12:15 PM BULLETIN

UNIVERSITY NEWS AND VIEWS

Ehsan Yarshater Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies endowed with $10M gift

olumbia has received a on Persian art, and critical coming to teach at Columbia C$10 million gift from the editions of Persian texts. in 1958. The first full-time Persian Heritage Founda- “I am deeply honored as professor of Persian studies tion to endow the Ehsan well as delighted to witness at an American university in Yarshater Center for Iranian the creation of the Ehsan the post–World War II era, Studies, formerly known Yarshater Center for Iranian Yarshater launched the Cen- as the Center for Iranian Studies,” Yarshater said in a ter for Iranian Studies here Studies. The center has statement shortly before he in 1968. In 1972, he began been renamed in honor died. “It is a source of great work on the Encyclopaedia of its founding director, a comfort to me that through Iranica, which (though still longtime Columbia profes- the support of the Persian unfinished) would become sor and leading historian Heritage Foundation and the center’s most prominent of Iran. Yarshater died on the stewardship of Columbia achievement. Now overseen September 2 at the age of University such interna- by Columbia historian Elton ninety-eight, just two weeks tionally acclaimed projects Daniel, the encyclopedia after the gift and the center’s as the Encyclopaedia features thousands of entries renaming were announced. Iranica and A History of written by some 1,600 schol- The gift will enable the Persian Literature, as well ars. The New York Times, Yarshater Center to continue as many other future proj- in its obituary for Yarshater, to advance the field of Iranian ects, will find a secure home called it “a magnum opus of

studies through its scholarly at the Yarshater Center.” Iranian history and culture EILEEN BARROSO publications, which include Born in 1920 in Hamadan, that helped transform the the fifteen-volume Encyclo- Iran, Yarshater was educated modern understanding of paedia Iranica, a book series in Tehran and London before Persian civilization.”

52 COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19

4.18_BULLETIN.indd 52 11/15/18 11:22 AM REPORT ADDRESSES GENDER AND RACE DISPARITIES AMONG FACULTY

two-year study on the status of women and underrepre- Asented minority faculty at Columbia — one of the most thorough examinations of gender and racial equity ever under- taken by an institution of higher education — has resulted in a set of proposals for closing salary gaps, spurring academic advancement, and improving the overall work environment. The 145-page report, drafted by the Policy and Planning Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, was released in October. Among the report’s findings is that Columbia has a lack of diversity in senior leadership of academic departments and centers; insucient transparency about how important decisions are made; and unclear policies and decision-making processes. It also found evidence of disparities in workload and salary for women and underrepresented minorities, and a ALBRIGHT REMEMBERS HAVEL persistent problem of harassment and discrimination. ormer US secretary of state Madeleine Albright Some of these issues were addressed even before the report F’76GSAS, ’95HON visited campus this fall to was finalized, but others “will require concerted and dedi- honor the late Václav Havel ’90HON, the Czech cated eorts over time,” says Maya Tolstoy, interim executive playwright and political dissident who led his vice president and dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, country’s anti-communist revolution and subse- who oversaw the writing of the report. The recommendations quently served as its first democratically elected range from tangible changes, such as immediately correcting president. Albright unveiled a bust of Havel — a gift salary inequities, to promoting broader cultural shifts. to Columbia from the Václav Havel Library Foun- President Lee C. Bollinger, in a letter to the Columbia commu- dation — and discussed the relevance of his legacy nity accompanying the report, wrote that he is “deeply grateful today. She said that Havel, who came to Columbia as to the Arts and Sciences faculty for engaging in this careful an artist-in-residence for two months in 2006, “was self-examination, for identifying where we are falling short, and a relentless advocate on behalf of civil and political for pointing out where we must direct our eorts as a University.” rights for all people.” He celebrated his country Adds Tolstoy: “One of the things that’s important about this “without falling into the trap of chauvinism,” she report is that this is not merely a Columbia problem: it’s an said. “Instead of ideology or politics, he stressed the academic problem at many universities. I hope this will help obligation we all have to each other.” change the conversation in higher education.” For video, visit worldleaders.columbia.edu.

NEW INSTITUTE WELCOMES 15 INAUGURAL FELLOWS TO PARIS

his fall, Columbia’s new Institute for Ideas the world and our place in it,” says Mark Tand Imagination welcomed its first cohort Mazower, a Columbia historian and the insti- of fellows, a group of fifteen eminent scholars, tute’s founding director. writers, and artists from around the world, to The Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Reid Hall in Paris. The fellows, who have come a University-wide initiative, was created to together for a yearlong residency, include a promote intellectual innovation and inter- sound and video artist from Nigeria, a com- cultural dialogue. Based at Columbia’s Reid poser from Syria, a philosopher from France, Hall, which is also home to one of eight and writers from Malaysia, the UK, India, Columbia Global Centers, it will host work- and China, along with a number of Columbia shops, conferences, and public events. scholars in the arts, humanities, and sciences. “The quality of the opening group of “By forging a closer bond between schol- fellows gives us enormous hope that this arship and the creative arts, we are seeking experiment will prove to be seminal,” says

TOP: BRUCE GILBERT; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF COLUMBIA GLOBAL CENTERS, PARIS CENTERS, GLOBAL OF COLUMBIA COURTESY BOTTOM: GILBERT; BRUCE TOP: Reid Hall to engage with other ways of thinking about President Lee C. Bollinger.

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 53

4.18_BULLETIN.indd 53 11/15/18 11:22 AM BULLETIN CROSSCOUNTRY RUNNERS ARE CHAMPS AGAIN!

On a cold and rainy October day at Princeton’s West Windsor Fields, the Columbia women’s cross-country team won its second straight Ivy League Heptagonal Championship title. Seniors Erin Gregoire and Libby Kokes, junior Katie Wasserman, and sophomore Allie Hays earned All-Ivy team honors. “It was a great run for us,” says head coach Dan Ireland. “We have an entirely new team this year, so we weren’t sure what to expect. We thought if we worked hard, we could defend our title. I’m really proud of them.” In the men’s race, junior Kenny Vasbinder was the fi rst to cross the line for Columbia, claiming ninth in the fi eld overall and earn- ing a spot on the All-Ivy team.

GIVING DAY RAISES $20.1 MILLION

he University’s annual TGiving Day this year raised a record $20.1 million for fi nancial aid, research, athletics, and other pro- TOP: CU ATHLETICS / MARYAM K. HASSAN; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF COLUMBIA DINING SERVICES Mealtime grams, exceeding last year’s at John total by nearly $5 million. Jay Dining The twenty-four-hour Hall. fundraising drive, held CAMPUS DINING RANKED #1 on October 24, also shat- tered records for partici- olumbia’s campus dining was tently proving to their students that pation, with donors in all Crecently judged by the Daily Meal the 600 menu items served on campus fi fty states and sixty-three to be the best in American higher daily are just as good as, if not better countries contributing a education. The popular food website than, anything else New York City has total of 17,103 gifts. The annually surveys more than two thou- to o er.” They also noted that more schools with the highest sand colleges and ranks their dining than half the food served in Columbia’s alumni-participation rates halls based on the quality and variety dining halls is locally sourced, that a were the College of Den- of their o erings, their sustainability registered dietitian is available for one- tal Medicine, Columbia practices, and the community-building on-one consultations with students, and College, Barnard College, events they organize. The site’s editors that the University makes signifi cant Columbia Business School, praised Columbia’s chefs for “consis- donations to food pantries. and Columbia Engineering.

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4.18_BULLETIN.indd 54 11/15/18 11:22 AM With the gift annuity we “ not only get great returns, but a tax deduction as well. Best of all, the remainder will go to support Columbia.”

—OMAR ’59SEAS AND CAMELLA WING

Honor a connection to Columbia with a gift that pays you income.

Omar and Camella Wing recently established a gift at Columbia that will make payments to them for life, with the balance going to support scholarships at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Giving in this way has also earned them entry into the prestigious 1754 Society.

Does your giving meet your income needs? Contact the Office of Gift Planning at 800-338-3294 or [email protected] to discover ways to support Columbia while securing an income stream for you and/or a loved one.

giving.columbia.edu/MeetOurMembers 800-338-3294 • [email protected]

4.18_BULLETIN.indd 55 11/15/18 11:22 AM BOOKS Heartland By Sarah Smarsh ’05SOA (Scribner)

erhaps no group has been more debilitating psychosis. To be broken phys- scrutinized over the last two years ically while working was just a part of life, Pthan the white working class. Smarsh writes, one exacerbated by the fact Countless op-eds have decried the that few have access to health care. “It’s a hell myopia of coastal elites who, safe in their of a thing to feel — to grow the food, serve liberal bubble, fail to understand the “fl yover the drinks, hammer the houses, and assemble country” that elected Donald Trump. For the airplanes that bodies with more money some, America’s cultural and political reck- eat and drink and occupy and board, while oning seemed to come out of nowhere. But as your own body can’t go to the doctor.” journalist Sarah Smarsh ’05SOA writes in her If the book revolves around one question, powerful, vitally relevant book Heartland, it is this: how did Smarsh get out? After fi ve “You can go a very long time in the country generations of Smarshes lived in poverty with without being seen.” no escape route in sight, how did a member Smarsh was born in rural Kansas of the sixth end up with a graduate degree in 1980 — the dawn of a decade that from Columbia, a down payment for a house, would be marked by Reagan’s trickle- and a memoir nominated for a National Book down economics, welfare cuts, and the Award? There is, of course, no single answer, early stirrings of the housing crisis. but Smarsh posits some theories. She was The timing of her birth, she writes, raised in part by two supportive male role “meant that my life and the economic models — her father and grandfather — a demise of American workers would rarity in a family that often fell victim to unfold in tandem. But we couldn’t see dangerous men. She avoided the trap of teen it yet out in the Kansas fi elds.” Her pregnancy. And yes, she was exceptionally family’s fears were more immediate: talented and worked exceptionally hard. She Would her grandfather’s aging farm was the fi rst in her family to attend college, equipment get him through the har- and when she matriculated at the University vest? Would there be enough money to of Kansas, she did so with a merit scholarship put gas in the car or pay for childcare? and three jobs lined up. Without both those Smarsh writes smartly and often things, she insists, college would have been poetically about the chaos that poverty an impossibility. creates. She was shu ed between Despite Smarsh’s impressive self-determi- divorceddivorced parentsparents andand grandparents,grandparents, followingfollowing nation, Heartland serves as a nuanced chal- them to wherever they could fi nd jobs. Still, lenge to, if not a direct rebuttal of, the conser- compared to previous generations, her life vative fetishization of personal responsibility was relatively stable. Smarsh’s mother lived in refl ected in popular books like J. D. Vance’s forty-eight di erent places before giving birth Hillbilly Elegy. The author is keen to show when she was eighteen; her grandmother that poverty is not the result of lethargy and married seven times and seemed to traverse bad choices, and that the American dream the entire Midwest in her quest for a better is not necessarily attainable for anyone who life for herself and her children. works hard enough. And while Heartland Central to the family ethos was work — is less of a political treatise than Hillbilly endless, often backbreaking work. Smarsh’s Elegy, politics and the consequences it has on grandfather farmed 160 acres of land, moon- the Smarsh clan are a powerful undercurrent lighted as a butcher, and still had to collect to every family story. and sell aluminum cans to make ends meet. Most members of Smarsh’s family are Her father, a skilled contractor, eventually Republicans, which, she explains, is for them took a job delivering cleaning solvents, which a matter of pride — even when it means resulted in chemical poisoning and years of voting against their best interests. “People on

56 COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19

4.18_Books.indd 56 11/15/18 1:10 PM welfare were presumed ‘lazy,’ and for us there was no more hurtful word,” she writes. “Impoverished people, then, must do one of two things: Concede personal failure and vote for the party more inclined to assist them, or vote for the other party, whose rhetoric conveys hope that the labor of their lives is what will compensate them.” Smarsh bought into this idea as a teenager, joining the Young Republicans and campaigning for George W. Bush. It was only in her junior year of college that her perspective began to change. Studying sociology, she writes, she began to see her circumstances in a new light: “Study after study … plainly said in hard numbers that, if you are poor, you are likely So Far So Good to stay poor, no matter how hard you work.” “It is good to rsula K. Le Guin ’52GSAS was best known for her science- America feels more divided have an end fi ction and fantasy novels, which transported readers to Uother worlds while also asking important questions about than ever before — politi- to journey cally, racially, socioeconom- towards; but it life on Earth. But Le Guin was also a prolifi c poet, and two weeks ically — and while Smarsh is the journey before her death in January 2018 she fi nished the manuscript doesn’t purport to know how that matters, for So Far So Good, a collection that serves as an appropriate to solve this problem, she’s a in the end.” capstone to her important career. wise and eloquent guide to at — Ursula K. Le Guin Fans of Le Guin’s fi ction will recognize some familiar themes least understanding its com- in So Far So Good — particularly, reverent odes to animals (myth- plexity. It’s also notable that ical and real) and the unfathomable mysteries of the natural Smarsh didn’t begin writing world. But perhaps most profound are Le Guin’s meditations on in November of 2016; rather, aging, and on the relationship of soul to body. It’s clear from these this book is the result of new poems, including “How It Seems to Me,” that Le Guin was fi fteen years of research into facing death not only with resolve but with wonder. her family history. And that history, with Smarsh’s clear- How It Seems to Me eyed narration, makes obvi- ous what many op-eds seem In the vast abyss before time, self to have missed: Trump’s is not, and soul commingles election, and the seismic with mist, and rock, and light. In time, political chasms that have soul brings the misty self to be. followed, didn’t come from Then slow time hardens self to stone nowhere. It was the inevita- while ever lightening the soul, ble result of deep fault lines till soul can loose its hold of self that have existed in America and both are free and can return for generations. to vastness and dissolve in light, the long light after time. © MARIAN WOOD KOLISCH © MARIAN WOOD — Rebecca Shapiro

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 57

4.18_Books.indd 57 11/15/18 1:10 PM BOOKS Your Duck Is My Duck By Deborah Eisenberg (Ecco)

these parties, the narrator, a painter in with whom Keith falls unexpectedly in a creative slump, runs into a wealthy love; and Celeste’s neighbor Cordis, an couple who whisk her o to their “beach elderly former bookstore owner. We also place” on an unnamed tropical island, hear about Cordis’s beloved husband, where they seem to gather an odd a self-styled archaeologist bent on array of friends, business associates, discovering the origins of language, who and artists. One of them, a puppeteer, disappeared twenty years earlier during explains to the narrator that the island an excavation. (Among his theories, a has descended into poverty because the sound bite that could be used to sum up wealthy couple has bought up most of many stories in the book: language is its arable land. His work in progress is, “amenable to many uses, but it devel- fi ttingly, an allegorical show featuring oped to serve the pressing demands donkeys, bats, and serfs who mount an of malice, vengefulness, and greed — insurrection against an evil monarchy humanity’s most consistent attributes.”) that is secretly controlled by an even Desperately in need of money, Keith more evil corporate empire. (Yes, it’s takes a job as Cordis’s personal assis- depressing, the puppeteer says, but “I tant, and while working there, he grows mean, these are the facts.”) close to Celeste. Keith is burdened The story’s title derives from a by the theft of his father’s money and eborah Eisenberg, a profes- purported Zen koan drunkenly, and fi nally decides to confess to Celeste, sor of writing at Columbia’s inaccurately, invoked at dinner by the just as she is about to leave for a work DSchool of the Arts, is a rarity husband of the host couple. He reminds project in Slovakia. She cuts o ties with among fi ction writers: one the team of accountants and lawyers he him, and in her absence, Keith loses his who sticks strictly to short stories. But as has inexplicably gathered at his beach resolve to be free of his father and drifts her passionately devoted fans would say, house that if the deal they’re working back to the dreadful man’s dubious pro- with stories like hers, who needs novels? on falls through, he owes them nothing. tection. Cordis becomes more and more With Your Duck Is My Duck, her “‘Don’t think for a moment that if the frail. And several harrowing passages in much-anticipated fi fth original collection boat is scuttled, I’ll throw you my rope. Celeste’s voice reveal that she has fallen and the fi rst since 2006’s Twilight of the I’m sure you all recall the Zen riddle gravely ill in Eastern Europe. These ach- Superheroes, Eisenberg again proves about the great Zen master, his disciple, ingly real characters struggle to express that short fi ction can be equally complex, and the duck trapped in the bottle? … their better selves and connect with fulfi lling, and engrossing. Everyone recall the master’s lesson? It’s one another, but they often mangle the Eisenberg’s style is idiosyncratic and not my duck, it’s not my bottle, it’s not attempt or let the opportunity slip away. notoriously di cult to describe. It slides my problem?’” Words fail; the reader’s heart breaks. in and out of tenses and points of view. That duck hovers in the background Heartbreak, in fact, is an inescapable It can be meandering, ambivalent, and of all six stories in this collection, theme in this volume, amid the cascades pastiche-like, and yet it is ultimately particularly “Merge,” its tour de force. of perfectly imperfect sentences, the precise, penetrating, and morally Here, Eisenberg takes on the subject of chuckle-inducing insights, the spot-on unambiguous. She is often hilarious and language itself — “the tool that doesn’t characterizations of contemporary always surprising. The opening sen- work,” in one character’s estimation. mores, the unblinking intelligence, tence of the title story is a pretty good Told mostly in fl ashbacks, “Merge” the profound (but rarely overt) polit- distillation of her voice: “Way back — immerses us in the intersecting lives of ical engagement, the fi erce yet tender oh, not all that long ago, actually, just three New Yorkers living in the same humanism. We inhabit a world that’s a couple of years, but back before I’d apartment complex: Keith, fresh out of “producing perpetually increasing gotten a glimpse of the gears and levers Princeton and now living on $10,000 awfulness from rock-bottom bad,” and and pulleys that dredge the future up he’s stolen from his father, a brutal trapped ducks are everywhere. Those from the earth’s core to its surface — I captain of a scorched-earth industry; ducks, Eisenberg insists, are our ducks. was going to a lot of parties.” At one of Celeste, an idealistic young woman — Lorraine Glennon

58 COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19

4.18_Books.indd 58 11/15/18 1:10 PM READING LIST New and noteworthy THE BIG FELLA by Jane releases Leavy ’74BC, ’76JRN From 1979 to 1988 — a time when women sportswriters CRASHED by Adam were almost unheard of — Tooze Ten years after the Jane Leavy covered tennis, economic crash of 2008, baseball, and the Olympics Columbia historian Adam for the Washington Post. Tooze reexamines the com- Since then, she’s written plex factors that led to the best-selling biographies of crisis and the ways that the Mickey Mantle and Sandy ensuing period of recovery Koufax; now she turns her has shaped the economy attention to another legend: and governance not just Babe Ruth. Though Ruth of America but of the looms large (literally and world. Comprehensive and fi guratively) in the American impeccably researched, the imagination, almost nothing book makes a compelling was known until now about THE CURSE OF BIGNESS Now Adam Kirsch, a Colum- case for how the Wall Street his childhood, or about his by Tim Wu Columbia Law bia professor of American debacle has infl uenced most fascinating relationship with School professor Tim Wu is studies, has collected 270 of major world events — from sports agent Christy Walsh. known for coining the term Trilling’s letters (skillfully Ukraine’s destabilization Leavy draws on more than “net neutrality,” referring to culled from thousands writ- to Brexit and the rise of 250 interviews, as well as a the idea that data should be ten between 1924 and 1975), Trump. Along the way, trove of previously unre- treated equally by Internet giving us rare insight into Tooze asks two important leased documents, to create service providers in order to the man behind the ideas. questions: Was the crisis this warm portrait of an prevent tyranny by the small In this fascinating volume, inevitable? And is it over? American icon. group of companies that give we become privy to Trilling’s us access to that data. With courtship of his wife; to his THOSE WHO KNEW COME WITH ME by Helen this book, Wu pivots from battles with depression; and by Idra Novey ’00BC, Schulman ’86SOA Life is that concept to talk more even to some salty exchanges ’07SOA The epigraph of full of countless decisions, generally about extreme with rivals and former stu- Idra Novey’s second novel big and small, and at some corporate concentration, dents (Allen Ginsberg ’48CC, reads like a haunting haiku: point most of us wonder in which global industry is to name just one). “In the aging port city / of what would have happened controlled by a small group an island nation / near the if we had made di erent of giant fi rms. Wu argues THE KENNEDY start of the new millen- choices. Helen Schulman’s that what Supreme Court DEBUTANTE By Kerri nium.” It’s fi tting for Novey, mind-bending new novel, Justice Louis Brandeis called Maher ’04SOA Few Amer- who has spent most of her a look at the terrifying “the curse of bigness” in 1914 ican families have been career as a poet. But with potential of technology in is again a major threat, and chronicled as thoroughly this electric, deeply feminist the spirit of Black Mirror, warns that we need to return as the Kennedys. But one story, she proves herself makes this thought exper- to the “trustbusting” values fi gure is still relatively equally adept at fi ction. In iment real. Schulman, the of the mid-twentieth century unexplored: JFK’s sister Those Who Knew, a woman author of the New York in order to address growing Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy. named Lena suspects that a Times bestseller This Beau- income inequality. In her heartbreaking debut powerful man is responsible tiful Life, follows Amy Reed, novel, Kerri Maher imagines for a terrible crime. Lena the newly minted PR chief LIFE IN CULTURE edited Kick’s years as a rebellious also has personal experience at a Silicon Valley startup by Adam Kirsch Lionel debutante in London during with the man, and knows that allows people to explore Trilling ’25CC, ’38GSAS was World War II. Central to that speaking out could their “multitudes” — the a giant of American liter- the drama is a star-crossed come with dire conse- planes on which all their ary criticism and a pillar of romance with a Protestant quences — a timely parable alternative life choices play intellectual life at Columbia aristocrat — an impossible for the #MeToo era. out simultaneously. College for over fi fty years. choice for the Catholic Kick.

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 59

4.18_Books.indd 59 11/15/18 1:10 PM BOOKS Lost Children Archive By Valeria Luiselli ’15GSAS (Knopf)

ach year tens of thousands organized and annotated. Their fi nal of unaccompanied migrant destination is the Chiricahua Moun- Echildren cross the southern tains in the heart of Apacheria, a place, border of the US to confront according to the husband, “where the last an immigration system that is at best free peoples on the entire American con- ill-prepared and at worst unapologet- tinent lived before they had to surrender ically hostile. Valeria Luiselli ’15GSAS to the white-eyes.” knows that system well. Her 2017 book That the couple is traveling south, in Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in the opposite direction from the migrants, Forty Questions detailed her experi- suggests this is not a summer jaunt but ence volunteering as an interpreter in a form of katabasis, or descent into the immigration court, helping lawyers underworld. This theme is underscored determine which children might be by the books the husband has packed eligible for relief. for the journey: Heart of Darkness, The The book was a passion project for Cantos, The Waste Land, Lord of the Luiselli, a brilliant young novelist who Flies, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. already had a stack of literary acco- The last, an audiobook, is, to the couple’s lades under her belt, but the nonfi ction frustration, automatically cued up so that format had limits. As she writes in each time they turn on the player a voice the opening chapter, “The children’s intones “When he woke in the woods in stories are always shu ed, stuttered, the dark and the cold of the night he’d always shattered beyond the repair of As the drama reach out to touch the child sleeping a narrative order. The problem with unfolds, the author beside him.” trying to tell their story is that it has no It’s an appropriate reminder that beginning, no middle, and no end.” skillfully weaves children are the lodestone of this novel. Now Lost Children Archive, together narratives Not just the boy and girl in the car but the Luiselli’s fi rst work of fi ction written in migrant children whose stories are in the English, retells the stories of migrant that span multiple news and the Apache children whose leg- children so that we might truly fathom generations, ends are retold by the husband. The wife their su ering and acknowledge that also reads aloud from Elegies for Lost the roots of the immigration crisis are perspectives, and Children, a book she says is loosely based buried deep in our culture. The author cultures. on the Children’s Crusade, in which thou- — who was born in Mexico, grew up in sands of children traveled alone across South Africa, and has made her home Europe in 1212 in the hope of reclaiming in New York — gently prods us to look they were working on an oral-history Jerusalem for Christendom. at America from a wider perspective, project. Now he wants to relocate to As the family journeys into the desert, across generations, through an array of Arizona to research a documentary the stories of all these dislocated, undoc- characters and locations, and through about the Apaches. Her life is in New umented, and brave children intertwine. multiple dislocations and relocations, York, where she volunteers as an inter- The boy and girl wander o into the including her own. preter and plans to record children’s desert and are lost. They meet a group But fi rst Luiselli asks us to begin stories in immigration court. Their mar- of migrants and spend the night with with the myriad negotiations of family riage slowly fl oundering, they set o on them before reuniting with their parents life. The novel opens in a car, with a the iconic American road trip hoping to in Apacheria. As the drama unfolds, the husband, wife, son, and daughter fi nd clarity. author skillfully weaves together nar- (we are given pronouns, not proper They leave New York with boxes full ratives that span multiple generations, names) driving from New York City to of research materials: reference books, perspectives, and cultures, creating a Arizona. The couple, both Mexican, newspaper clippings, maps, photos, conclusion that might best be described met at Columbia University, where government reports. All are carefully as a spectacular singularity.

60 COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19

4.18_Books.indd 60 11/15/18 1:10 PM Luiselli is an erudite writer, and the novel is an interrogation of many literary texts and techniques. The elegies that the wife reads aloud each allude to literary works about voyages, but the influences are seam- lessly embedded, not showy. Indeed, as the author says CALLING ALL in her endnotes, “I’m not interested in intertextuality as an outward, performative gesture but as a method or READERS procedure of composition.” Nevertheless, Luiselli’s Do you enjoy wit and her references to «*SLFLNSL\NYMNIJFXYMFY\NQQHMFSLJYMJ\F^\JQN[JFSIYMNSP$≴ sources as diverse as Paul Simon; Ezra Pound; Susan «Learning about breakthroughs in climate science Sontag ’77GSAS, ’93HON; and precision medicine, and reading about artists, R. Murray Schafer; Laurie humanitarians, entrepreneurs, and inventors? Anderson ’69BC, ’72SOA, ’04HON; and Sally Mann «Keeping up with Columbia and your oer regular jolts of insight  FQZRSNHTRRZSNY^$≴ and delight. Lost Children Archive gives us a deeper look into the lives of migrant children, Please support while reminding us that this is a story that has been told Columbia Magazine before and will need to be told again. In Luiselli’s retell- ing she suggests that neither with a voluntary her first documentary approach nor her fictional subscription in the approach has successfully reclaimed and revealed the amount of your choice children’s lives, but both texts have helped expose the

darker forces that enveloped Checks payable to Columbia Magazine them. “That recognition and can be sent to: coming to terms with dark- Columbia Magazine

ness is more valuable than 622 West 113th Street all the factual knowledge New York, NY 10025 we may ever accumulate,” 4WITSFYJTSQNSJ ≴ says the narrator. “Stories bit.ly/ColumbiaMagazine don’t fix anything or save anyone but maybe make the world both more complex and more tolerable. And sometimes, just sometimes, more beautiful.” — Sally Lee

COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 61

4.18_Books.indd 61 11/15/18 2:30 PM BOOKTALK Star Wars Neil deGrasse Tyson ’92GSAS, the astrophysicist and host of television’s Cosmos, discusses his new book, Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance between Astrophysics and the Military, cowritten with Avis Lang

NDT: I can say that most of us would crazy idea. There’s already a space force, not work on a project that had direct controlled by the Air Force, called the application to war. But a side of us Air Force Space Command. Its man- says: wait a minute. If war invented date is to prepare for confl ict in space something I can use, then I’m going to and cyberspace. Maybe some generals use it. Because I can do better science are completely happy with that, and I with it. don’t need to second-guess what they And if I publish research in a peer- judge to be the most e cient way to run reviewed, publicly accessible journal, their operation. But if you did spawn the military can take whatever it wants. the Space Force from the Air Force, I’d We can’t control it. It’s public domain throw in a couple of things. I’d throw at that point. So that’s why we’re curi- in asteroid defense — I mean, why ously complicit. not? — and maybe do something about the debris that’s in orbit. That poses a CM: Would science receive less funding hazard, a security risk. So I would boost if not for the potential military their portfolio in sensible ways. applications? NDT: Yes. That’s true, no matter the CM: Regarding our national investment Columbia Magazine: You make the science. That has always been true. in science, are we keeping up with case that science and the military are We’d still get funding, but the really big other countries, especially China? uneasy business partners. How is space funding goes to the military. For exam- NDT: The answer is no in almost every linked to war? ple, we now have a very good under- way, except for the total amount of Neil deGrasse Tyson: We have shared standing of the origin of the moon. money we’re spending on the military. interests. One of the earliest, best This is relatively modern knowledge, Our annual military budget is greater examples is Galileo, who perfected the gleaned from data brought back from than the sum of those of all the rest of telescope in 1609. We think of him as our visits to the moon. But why did we the developed nations in the world. an astrophysicist calmly looking up at go to the moon? Oh, we went because There was a day when your military the night sky. We don’t think of him we wanted to beat the Russians. We strength was measured by how many as empowering the Venetian military. had a military motivation to go into soldiers you had, how many fi ghter jets But Galileo helped the military before space. Do you know how many scien- you had, how many naval vessels you he observed the sun, moon, and stars. tists went to the moon? Take a guess. had. But if someone’s going to attack us Have a look, he said. You can see a ship via cyberwarfare, or someone’s going to ten times farther away than you other- CM: I think we had one, didn’t we? render us blind by taking out our GPS wise could. You can identify whether NDT: One person (Harrison Schmitt). satellites, you need a di erent kind of the fl ag is friend or foe. The military He was on Apollo 17, which was the army. You need an army that knows commissioned him to make a slew last NASA mission to the moon. So computers. You need an army that of telescopes. clearly going to the moon wasn’t about knows how to use a joystick. You need It’s a two-way street. We look over science. It was about other things. But a geek army. You need people who are the picket fence at the military, and we got science done on it. science-literate. they do the same. We both gain at the The nature of confl ict is changing. CLAIRE MERCHLINSKY end of the day. CM: How does President Trump’s pro- And you are going to need access to posed “Space Force” tie into all this? that kind of intellectual capital to CM: How do scientists feel about con- NDT: Just because it came out of engage the future of warfare. tributing even indirectly to war? Trump’s mouth does not mean it’s a — Bill Retherford ’14JRN

62 COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19

4.18_Books.indd 62 11/15/18 1:10 PM CLASSIFIEDS

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4.18_Books.indd 63 11/15/18 1:10 PM FINALS Test Your Medal Since 1901, when the fi rst Nobel Prizes were bestowed, Columbia faculty and alumni have racked up a mountain of gold from Scandinavia. If you can ace this Nobel quiz, you deserve a medal yourself.

1. Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler 6. Robert Millikan 1895GSAS, winner of the 1882CC, 1884GSAS won the 1931 Nobel Peace 1923 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Prize for his work strengthening the international photoelectric effect, was the fi rst Columbian to court at The Hague. With whom did he share do what? the prize? a) appear on a postage stamp a) Jane Addams, social-work pioneer b) become president of the American Physical b) Cornelia Sorabji, Indian social reformer Society (founded at Columbia in 1899) c) Valeria Parker, physician and suffragist c) earn a PhD in physics from Columbia

2. Physicist Julian Schwinger ’36CC, ’39GSAS, 7. George Wald ’28GSAS, ’90HON won the 1967 ’66HON won the 1965 Nobel Prize for his work on Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his quantum electrodynamics. He also shared which discovery that the retina contained traces of major science award in 1951, the fi rst year the what vitamin? prize was offered? a) vitamin A Albert Einstein Award vitamin B a) b) 2 b) Enrico Fermi Award c) vitamin C c) I. I. Rabi Award 8. When thirty-one-year-old Tsung-Dao Lee 3. In 2009, Barack Obama ’83CC became the won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for his fourth US president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. work on elementary particles, he became The fi rst was Theodore Roosevelt 1899HON in the second-youngest Nobel laureate ever. He 1906. What did Roosevelt win for? was also the youngest person to do what? a) opening up the Panama Canal a) win the Enrico Fermi Award b) negotiating an end to the b) become a full professor at Columbia Russo-Japanese War c) become home secretary of the National c) establishing the Academy of Sciences US Forest Service 9. Leon Cooper ’51CC, ’54GSAS, ’73HON won the 4. In 2004, two Columbia 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on super- scientists, Richard Axel ’67CC conductivity. What TV character was named in and Linda B. Buck, shared the part for Cooper? Nobel Prize in Physiology or a) Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory Medicine for identifying a family b) Mark Cooper on Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper of genes that govern what? c) Leon the chameleon on Canimals a) the olfactory system

b) the vestibular system 10. In addition to Axel and Lee, eight current REUTERS / CORNELIUS POPPE / NTB SCANPIX / POOL c) the auditory system Columbia faculty have won a Nobel Prize. Match their names with the six Nobel fi elds: 5. Seven Columbia alumni have (1) peace, (2) physics, (3) physiology or won the Nobel Prize in economics. medicine, (4) chemistry, (5) economics, Who was the fi rst, in 1971? and (6) literature. a) William Vickrey ’47GSAS a) Horst Störmer ___ e) Martin Chalfi e ___ b) Simon Kuznets ’23GS, b) Eric Kandel ___ f) Orhan Pamuk ___ ’26GSAS, ’54HON c) Joseph Stiglitz ___ g) Edmund Phelps ___

c) Milton Friedman ’46GSAS d) Joachim Frank ___ h) Robert Mundell ___

ANSWERS

64 COLUMBIA WINTER 2018-19 H5 G5, F6, E4, D4, C5, B3, A2, 10: 9A, 8B, 7A, 6C, 5B, 4A, 3B, 2A, 1A,

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