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SPRING 2018, VOLUME 110, NUMBER 3
UCH_Spring2018 cover and spine_v1.indd 1 4/25/18 10:26 AM Seeking great leaders.
The Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative off ers a calendar year of rigorous education and refl ection for highly accomplished leaders in business, government, law, medicine, and other sectors who are transitioning from their primary careers to their next years of service. Led by award-winning faculty members from across Harvard, the program aims to deploy a new leadership force tackling the world’s most challenging social and environmental problems.
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UCH_ADS_v1.indd 2 4/26/18 4:25 PM 2017.11.17_ALI_Ivy_Ad_Chicago.indd 1 11/17/17 11:15 AM 180108_ALI_Chicago.indd 1 11/17/17 1:11 PM Features SPRING 2018 VOLUME 110, NUMBER 3 24 GROUND TRUTH Chris Begley, AM’92, PhD’99, is an archaeologist with a taste for adventure. Just don’t call him Indiana Jones. By Susie Allen, AB’09
32 LET’S GET LOST Finding our way in the age of GPS doesn’t have to mean sacrificing serendipity. By Edward Tenner, AM’67, PhD’72
38 SHADES OF MEANING Twenty-nine years after his death, the work of Faber Birren, EX’23, still colors the world around us. By Christopher Good, Class of 2019 Plus: “Faber Birren’s Bright Ideas.” Infographic by Chloe Reibold
42 BABYOGRAPHY Since 1928, families have documented childhood landmarks in a book rich with history. By Susie Allen, AB’09
48 PAST AND PRESENT Questions for geologist Susan Kidwell on her work in the emerging discipline of conservation paleobiology, teaching students out in the field, and what artists and scientists share. By Laura Demanski, AM’94
Departments 3 EDITOR’S NOTES The air we breathe: Handing down stories. By Laura Demanski, AM’94
4 LETTERS Readers remember Jonathan Z. Smith, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and other campus figures; reflect on growing older; seek ice-skaters; debate a speaking invitation; and more.
9 ON THE AGENDA Deepening Chicago Booth’s ties to the wider University. By Madhav Rajan
11 UCHICAGO JOURNAL Alison L. LaCroix on a quiet period in the Constitution’s history; creative In “Let’s Get Lost” (page writing becomes a College major; Hanna Holborn Gray looks back on an 32), Edward Tenner, academic life; making the moon; and more. AM’67, PhD’72, argues 51 PEER REVIEW against overrelying on In the alumni essay, yoga and meditation lend new perspective to a judge’s work. GPS technology in our Plus: Alumni News, Deaths, and Classifieds. navigations of the world. Illustration by Maria 80 LITE OF THE MIND Corte. Remember road trip bingo? Play our version on the quadrangles.
See the print issue of the University of Chicago Magazine, web-exclusive content, and links to our Facebook and Twitter accounts at mag.uchicago.edu.
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 1
Contents_Spring18_v1.indd 2 4/27/18 3:38 PM igh tunes: The Laura Spelman Rockefeller H Memorial Carillon fills the campus air with sweet melodies each weekday at noon and 5 p.m. while classes are in session, and for special events. During Alumni Weekend, University carillonneur Joey Brink will give tours of the bell tower (as in 2017, shown here). For more about the instrument and its main musician, see “Heavy Metal,” page 23. photography by john zich john by photography
UCH_Wallpaper_v2.indd 2 4/26/18 4:20 PM EDITORˆS NOTES
Volume 110, Number 3, Spring 2018
editor Laura Demanski, AM’94 senior editor Mary Ruth Yoe associate editor Susie Allen, AB’09 The air we breathe managing editor Rhonda L. Smith BY LAURA DEMANSKI, AM’94 art director Guido Mendez alumni news editor Andrew Peart, AM’16 graphic designer Laura Lorenz contributing editors John Easton, AM’77; Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93; Brooke E. O’Neill, AM’04; Amy Braverman Puma
Editorial Office The University of Chicago Magazine, 5235 South Harper Court, Suite 500, Chicago, IL 60615. telephone 773.702.2163; fax 773.702.8836; hat’s the last book ston through a chain of family mem- email [email protected]. you read by an alum? bers who’d carefully tended the stories The University of Chicago Alumni Was it by someone handed down to them, so the UChicago Association has its offices at you knew, or are writers’ community Lewis belonged 5235 South Harper Court, 7th Floor, Chicago, IL 60615. telephone 773.702.2150; only one or two de- to is connected from the institution’s fax 773.702.2166. address changes grees of separation beginnings to today. Classmates of 800.955.0065 or [email protected]. from? The book on mine studied fiction writing with the web mag.uchicago.edu my nightstand now, late Richard Stern, who in 1991 drove The University of Chicago Magazine and the one queued from San Francisco to Los Altos, Cali- (ISSN-0041-9508) is published quarterly up after it, are by fornia, to visit Lewis, then 91. He spent (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer) by the alumna Janet Lewis, a whole day at her home hearing about University of Chicago in cooperation PhB’20. She’s not too well remem- UChicago in the 1910s, her Poetry Club with the Alumni Association, 5235 South Harper Court, 7th Floor, Chicago, IL Wbered today, and even I first learned of friends there, and the rest of her life, 60615, and sent to all University of Chicago her as the wife of Yvor Winters, EX’21, and recorded it all in a 2003 Virginia alumni. Published continuously since 1907. the poet and critic who became best Quarterly Review essay. Periodicals postage paid at Chicago and How sharply happy I was to find additional mailing offices.postmaster known as a teacher of poets. Send address changes to The University of Lewis herself began as a poet be- Stern’s essay online. It wouldn’t have Chicago Magazine, Alumni Records, 5235 fore turning to historical fiction, existed but for him having run across a South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615. which she wrote while raising chil- book in the Regenstein poetry stacks, © 2018 University of Chicago. dren and keeping a household that and but for Lewis’s long life and long Advertising Contact uchicago-magazine@ served as a sometime home to many memory—a lucky thing it was. uchicago.edu or visit mag.uchicago.edu of Winters’s students. She wanted Much of the joy of editing the Mag- /advertising. The Magazine is a member to take up fiction but felt she lacked a azine is in helping hand down what of the Ivy League Magazine Network, whose clients include other colleges and story to tell, so she turned to histori- UChicagoans remember. This issue universities. These advertisements help cal figures including Martin Guerre is no exception. Former president the Magazine continue to deliver news and John Johnston. Hanna Holborn Gray’s new memoir of the University of Chicago and its alumni The Irish Johnston, whose life An Academic Life, the subject of “The to readers. Please contact the editor with any questions. events sparked her 1932 novel The In- Long View” (page 20), deepens the vasion: A Narrative of Events Concern- well of stories that make up our his- ivy league magazine network ing the Johnston Family of St. Mary’s, tory as a University. One letter writer Heather Wedlake, Director of Operations web ivymags.com came to Lake Superior in 1790 to shares a melancholy story about En- email [email protected] make his fortune and married into an rico Fermi, vouchsafed to him by his telephone 617.319.0995 Ojibwa chief’s family. Lewis, who alumnus father, Fermi’s physician grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, spent (page 6); another relates his own tale The University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual long summers in northern Michigan of being gently hazed by Robert May- orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic and heard stories of Johnston and his nard Hutchins himself (page 8). origin, age, status as an individual with a wife, the Woman of the Glade, from We at the Magazine, and your fel- disability, protected veteran status, genetic their descendants, to whom she dedi- low readers, treasure your stories and information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information, please see cated the book. need them like air. Please keep send-
photography by laura demanski, am’94 equalopportunity.uchicago.edu. Much as Lewis learned about John- ing them. ◆
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 3
Ed Notes_Spring2018_v1.indd 3 4/27/18 12:24 PM Essay appreciation “A Chaplain’s Compassion” (Win- LETTERS ter/18) by Bailey Pickens, AB’10, is the best article you’ve ever published. And that’s saying a lot (because of the longtime excellence of your editorial). Moonlighting mathematician Carol DeChant Your article about Eliot Ness, PhB’25 (“Out of the Shadows,” Winter/18), sarasota, florida brought to mind another University of Chicago connection with the legend of the Untouchables. In the climactic scene of the 1987 movie, the Ness character bluffs Secret history a corrupt judge into switching the In “Where the Art Is” (Winter/18), Besides having a jury, which Capone has bribed, with Susie Allen, AB’09, writes that the a clean jury from another case. The Art to Live With program was found- distinguished career as “second bailiff” who swaps the juries ed in 1958. I remember an art loan a probabilist, Billingsley was played by the late Patrick Billings- program prior to that. When I was a ley, a longtime U of C professor of first-year student in 1956–57, living acted in numerous plays. statistics and mathematics. Besides in Mathews House, Burton-Judson, having a distinguished career as a there was a program in which students probabilist, Billingsley acted in numerous plays at Court Theatre and other in the dorms could borrow framed venues, as well as in several movies filmed in Chicago. For example, he appears works of art, at no charge, for the aca- briefly as the biology teacher inMy Bodyguard (1980). demic year. All you had to do was to Daniel Heitjan, SB’81, SM’84, PhD’85 go to Ida Noyes Hall and ask for one. carrollton, texas As I recall, the loans were made from a cloakroom on the ground floor. There were prints by Paul Klee, Georges Late life lessons before the Greek and Roman founda- Rouault, and other famous artists. I In reading Martha Nussbaum’s and tional thinkers were bandying ideas, got one by Leon Golub, AB’42—black Saul Levmore’s essays about aging and it deserves a place among the and white, possibly in lithograph cray- (“Looking Back,” Winter/18), the grand frameworks we use for con- on, a very serious subject, befitting a word I kept expecting to find but structing narratives about ourselves. new student in the College. Golub was didn’t was karma, and I don’t find it in Like other such structures, it doesn’t already well known by then. I was de- their book either, via a “Look Inside” lend itself perfectly to verification by lighted to have a “real” work of art in search on Amazon. In their Western- experiment, but it gives better returns my room. centric view I think they have over- than many other explanatory frame- Harvey Choldin, AB’60, looked a very useful concept for aging works. At the very least, it’s a use - AM’63, PhD’65 thoughtfully and coming to a produc- ful heuristic. And if karma is really a chicago tive and insightful understanding of thing—who’s to say it’s not—why not the connections in one’s past, present, poke around in it to come to a helpful According to Emily Edwards, Art to Live and possible future. I recommend it to understanding of why things are the With registration and programming co- them and to everyone. way they are in your life? ordinator at the Smart Museum of Art, Thinking about karma was well Orin Hargraves, AB’77 the University has few records of the developed in Indian philosophy long niwot, colorado early days of Art to Live With and relies on archival and alumni recollections like Brava! Bravo! for the Harvey Choldin’s “to help us create a sort Nussbaum-Levmore of institutional history of the program.” essays. Considering the His letter is the first Edwards has heard emphasis they place of any program activity before 1958, when on the novel’s impor- it was in fact operated out of the Office of tance in the develop- Student Activities in Ida Noyes Hall, ment of the modern as Choldin recalls. The artwork that he psyche, it would be borrowed is likely Golub’s lithograph interesting to know Totemic Crucifixion.—Ed. how they think it differs from the part What do you know? played by myths and The Magazine came this week. The epic poetry in earlier first thing I noticed was a headline: societies. “In the Know” (UChicago Journal, Ken Shelton, AB’69 Winter/18), an article about the new (Class of 1968) Stevanovich Institute, whose mission galveston, is the question: How do we know what texas we know? In one course I took in my
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Layout_Letters_Spring18_v2.indd 4 4/25/18 3:11 PM second year at UChicago, the opening Wow, in that one for the antiauthoritarian Jonathan. line was: we are going to inquire into When he was sitting with Eliade how we know what we know. sentence, I was hooked, one evening, Jonathan noticed Eli- Wow, in that one sentence, I was and continue to be. ade was ailing from some flu or such. hooked, and continue to be. I have When Jonathan expressed concern, studied many fields since then: busi- Eliade responded, “We will take care ness, public health, law, and more. The efit of mankind” (“Good Behavior,” of it.” And Jonathan understood that question resonates still. My wife, Bar- UChicago Journal, Winter/18). Eliade would do something shamanis- bara McCool, and I have a near-finished Bend them like Bentham. To the tic to help himself. book titled “Active Aging, Designing a vectored go the spoils. Choice architec- Jonathan described growing up in Life.” In our research into how to best ture ploys can be the best-laid schemes Manhattan. He became interested in live a healthy lifestyle, we read widely, of mise-en-scène. Array of hope. Eastern religions sufficiently that he guided by asking, how do the writers Philip Frankenfeld, AM’81, PhD’89 engaged a teacher of Zen (as I recall). know what they purport to know? Ex- washington, dc One of his final exams: Jonathan was ercise, healthy eating, friendship net- to attend a large cocktail party with works, spirituality, and more appear A counterpoint his Zen master, who stood in one widely. Yet when it comes down to how Nathan Aviezer’s (SM’59, PhD’65) corner of the crowded room (in some they know what they purport to know, letter (Winter/18) correctly points apartment with a view of Central there is a wide gap. For me it remains the out that the Japanese death toll from Park, as I imagined). Jonathan was to UChicago way: I follow those whose US conventional bombing in World stand in the opposite corner. The Zen research seems sound and whose find- War II exceeded 500,000, and uses master spoke softly and Jonathan was ings are relevant to my quest. In fields that to draw the conclusion that a “dem- to hear what his teacher was saying. not lending themselves to scientific re- onstration of power” of nuclear bombs After that, I was cautious to shield my search, I lean toward those whose rea- wouldn’t have compelled the Japanese lips when I wanted to speak to some- soning is good and relates well to science government to surrender. Curiously, one else in Jonathan’s presence. that sheds some light on behavior. he doesn’t carry his own reasoning Now, my falling away from the To me UChicago hews closest to further to ask how it could have been way. Jonathan encouraged me to stay the fundamental question, how do that the far fewer civilian deaths at Hi- in History of Religions. He said he we know what we know? Second to roshima and Nagasaki brought the war would escort me to the Modern Lan - that, how does this professor or this to a conclusion. The most reasonable guage Association or such meetings discipline approach its work? How do answer is that they didn’t—the war in after my PhD so that I would get a job. they discover what might be the best the Pacific was brought to its conclu- He thought I could find something in theory to fit the known facts? What sion not by the use of nuclear bombs but Austin, Texas, or such. I, Jewish im- can they teach me about how to think by the entry of the Soviet Union into migrant that I was, thought, “What’s about things? How can I know what I the war with Japan. See Ward Wil- a Jew to do in Austin?” I remembered think I know and convey it to others son’s article “The Winning Weapon? the vignette he gave of visiting Texas for their consideration? UChicago to Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light (perhaps for a job interview). He me is about the life of the mind, and of Hiroshima” (International Security, went to a real cowboy-type bar. He learning is a lifelong endeavor. Spring 2007). stood with one foot on the rail and I have very little recollection of the Bob Michaelson, SB’66, AM’73 ordered something. A real cowboy many courses taken at the Univer- evanston, illinois sauntered in, bellied up to the bar, and sity, but the basic question is alive and said “Gimme a shot of Manischewitz.” well. One book, The Red and the Black A life in stories Apocryphal? Well, a good story. (1830), by Stendahl, continues to flit in I started studying with Jonathan Z. I wrote a BA proposal to study and out of mind without any thought Smith (Deaths, Winter/18) after Hen- Maimonides’s Guide for the Per - of content, but this morning I began a ry Rago, head of the New Collegiate plexed (University of Chicago Press, new painting, Red and Black, to split a Division’s History of Religion (no 1963, with an introduction by Leo canvas. The Stendahl title haunts my “s”), died far too young. We five or six Strauss with the help of Ralph Ler- thoughts and now comes back as colors students were dispatched to History ner, AB’47, AM’49, PhD’53). Ler- that go well together on canvas. Per- of Religions, a discipline of a different ner was assigned as my adviser. I was haps it is time to read the book again. color, the hue of Mircea Eliade, whom handed a two-page single-spaced read- Monty Brown, AB’59, MBA’60 Smith admired. In his modern but di - ing list—some texts in Hebrew, some kansas city, missouri minutive office, Jonathan introduced in Arabic, some in Greek and Latin, of himself with vignettes. course. I spent a hot summer in non-air- Punstoppable How at Santa Barbara, as his lec- conditioned libraries starting to read. In his Nobel Banquet speech, 2017 tures got more popular, they piped That fall, I switched to premed. Economic Sciences laureate Richard them by television into a lecture hall. A dedicated teacher, a precious Thaler exhorts nudge-letarians glob- But they required him to wear a tie, man, Jonathan Smith. ally to use the prod and preadjust of which he refused to do. So they paint- Nathan Szajnberg, AB’74 choice architecture to “Nudge for ed a tie on the screen; the tie didn’t (Class of 1971), MD’74 good. … Nudge for the greatest ben- move, Jonathan did. Another victory palo alto, california
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 5
Layout_Letters_Spring18_v2.indd 5 4/27/18 11:12 AM LETTERS
Invitation on ice Laura Demanski (AM’94), you skate backward? (Editor’s Notes, “Cold Comforts,” Winter/18.) How did you miss being recruited by a member of the Maroons Women’s Hockey team (icehockey.uchicago.edu), a small but enthusiastic group of mixed abilities who traverse Chicagoland at ungodly hours for the thrill and adrenaline fix of a strenuous hour of hockey on cheap ice to empty stands. The 2016–17 Di- vision 5 champions in the Women’s Central Hockey League, this club Puck dreams? The Maroons Women’s Hockey team is looking for students, team, self-coached and captained by staff, and alumnae to join its ranks, and strongly encourages beginners. the highest ranked undergraduate, is bolstered by assorted UChicago staff and alumnae. Join us! With practices ased bent to understand and learn. I dialogue. Steve Bannon does none of starting at 11 p.m. we can guarantee it believe in Nat Hentoff’s notion that these in advancing his racist, misogy- won’t conflict with anything else on the response to speech we do not like nistic views. your schedule. We can also guarantee is better speech. I despise Steve Ban- Derek Brockbank, AB’03 it will be more fun than anything else non and find him and his ideas disgust- washington, dc you’ve ever done. We are truly in it for ing and contrary to all of the values the love of the game. and principles of our democracy. I am dismayed by the protests from stu- Sandra Schloen However, I applaud Chicago Booth dents, faculty, and other alumni against Oriental Institute professor Luigi Zingales’s decision the invitation to Steve Bannon to speak chicago to invite him to speak on campus. on campus. I myself am no fan of Ban- Subject his ideas to the usual scrutiny non or his views, but, as Voltaire said, This invitation is under serious consid- we have learned and practiced here at I adamantly defend his right to express eration by the editor and extends to local the University for generations. Let them. I hope that those on campus who readers who skate backward. Contact him feel the sting of true academic disagree with what he says will engage the team via their website to express examination. Those who would bar him in civil and rational discourse. interest.—Ed. him from campus seem cowardly and By the way, as a Canadian I want fearful that they do not have the intel- to point out to those on campus who Bannon invitation debate lectual ability to deal with his ideas. If welcomed my prime minister, Justin I am a proud graduate of the Universi- his economic ideas parallel his social Trudeau, with open arms and probably ty of Chicago. I consider my time there ideas he will be exposed as an irrel- at the same time oppose Bannon’s pres- as one of the most important develop- evant scholar. If not, who knows, we ence, that Trudeau during his short ten- mental steps in my life. I continue my may even learn something from him. ure as leader of Canada has already been relationship with the University as the Robert B. Bloom, SB’58 cited by our Ethics Commissioner for correspondent of my graduating class. highland park, illinois breaches, has been called out for lying It is there where I learned to examine many times, and has passed legislation unpopular ideas, conflicting ideas, I’m incredibly disappointed in UChicago mandating forced speech. There are
new and strange ideas, with an unbi - inviting Steve Bannon to come speak. no angels among politicians but we go am’94 demanski, laura by photography While I fully respect the University down a treacherous path when we try to inviting dialogue and opposing view- squelch voices in a free and open society. Subject his ideas to the points, even viewpoints as reprehensi- M. Dov Dublin, AB’69 usual scrutiny we have ble as Steve Bannon’s neo-Nazi white toronto supremacist views, inviting someone learned and practiced to speak who has demonstrated such Fermi memories here at the University basic contempt and opposition to sci- My father, Lester R. Dragstedt Sr. ence, scholarship, and evidence-based (SB 1915, SM 1916, PhD 1920, MD for generations. Let him analysis is the antithesis of everything 1921), was chief of surgery at the Uni- the University of Chicago purports to versity of Chicago and a friend of En- feel the sting of true stand for. Debate and learning must rico Fermi (“Clashing Colleagues,” academic examination. be based in truth, facts, and Socratic Fall/17).
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Layout_Letters_Spring18_v2.indd 6 4/25/18 3:12 PM My father figured out that some kind of secret atomic project was be- ing worked on at the U of C. Dad used to eat lunch and play bridge at the Quadrangle Club. While there were fewer and fewer students in the Uni - versity in the early 1940s, all of a sud- den there were lots of brilliant new scientists, “professors,” at the club, playing bridge at lunchtime. Dr. Fermi developed cancer of the stomach for which only palliative sur- gery could be offered then. Dad op- A erated on him. As Dr. Fermi became increasingly ill, the FBI proposed to my father that they should post a guard outside Dr. Fermi’s hospital room door. That was in case that, in sucker his delirium, he should start to reveal national secrets. Dad responded that there was no one at Billings Hospital who had the intellect to comprehend the unconscious ravings of Dr. Fermi. for No guard was placed. I was a teen during the war. My friends and I used to go to the infield of Stagg Field to practice hitting golf balls. We became annoyed when any of our balls happened to land in the west science. stands, because immediately a guard would come and shout to us to get away from there. We couldn’t afford to lose golf balls so we tried not to hit them µChicago is a new mathematicians, and there, but it was impossible to under- monthly newsletter that engineers, and see how stand why we couldn’t retrieve them. I thought your last issue was excel- brings UChicago science the University’s rich lent. I enjoyed the letters to the editor and the article on Eliot Ness, PhB’25 to you. Be invited into history of inquiry unfolds (“Out of the Shadows,” Winter/18). the fields and labs of to the present day. Thank you. Lester R. Dragstedt Jr. UChicago scientists, des moines, iowa
Bees under siege A friend recently sent me an article about ancient beekeeping (“Sweet Honey in the Rocks,” Fall/15). Now while I didn’t graduate from the Uni- photography by laura demanski, am’94 demanski, laura by photography versity of Chicago, my brother did in 1951 and a great and close friend, Paul Wagner, AB’38, a distinguished grad- uate, recently passed away at 98. Like the author, I have been a bee- keeper for more than 40 years and found the article fascinating. I do have to com- ment on a small but interesting fact. The author says he has either 11 or 12 colonies. Don’t miss out on discovery in the making. Without saying why he is not precise, the approximate number indicates that To sign up, go to alumni.uchicago.edu/sci. he, like all American beekeepers, is be- ing affected by attacks from everything
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Layout_Letters_Spring18_v2.indd 7 4/27/18 11:12 AM Chicago, 1929–1950 (University of Chi- Along the way I modeled LETTERS cago Press, 1991), a history of the years when I attended and graduated from for Maude Phelps the Hutchins college experiment. Hutchins, and her husband It is interesting and perceptive, but like colony collapse disorder to varroa I was surprised to note one omission would occasionally visit mites and tracheal mites. and wonder if the author did not know and tease me. “Aren’t Bees were not native to America but about it. His account of the early years were brought over by the Europeans. leaves the impression that no formal you cold?!” When I started beekeeping it was an in- degrees were awarded until quite teresting and relatively straightforward late. However, I know of at least one dependently and then pass this major business. Now the attacks on the honey- (me) in 1943, and I think that I was not qualifying exam, we would get credit bee are so extreme that many migratory alone. I was a precocious high school and could graduate a year early, and beekeepers, those with thousands of student (not yet quite 14 years old) have a degree before being drafted. colonies, only use their bees for pollinat- when I received a four-year scholar- I did that. The end result was that ing the big almond crops in California or ship to what was then called the Four I received a PhB in 1943. I don’t be- the orange trees in Florida. They don’t Year College, located in a small house lieve that I was alone but really don’t even bother to extract honey, as the loss very close to the chapel. I commuted remember. The irony of this was that of colonies is so high, the economics do from home via the 63rd Street street- when I was then called up for the draft, not encourage extracting. car and vividly remember being in the I was instantly rejected (!) as 4-A for Perhaps the most interesting fact in Reynolds Club when Roosevelt gave being underweight (six feet tall, 120 the article is the migratory nature of the Day of Infamy address. Life and pounds). So I spent the last year of my beekeeping in the ancient era, as Syr - the University were never the same. four-year scholarship taking courses ian bees were transported to Palestine In 1943 I and some others would in physics and math, and then took a for their gentleness and productivity. shortly be draft age and were of - job doing thunderstorm research in I have told nonbeekeepers for years fered a “proposition.” The faculty the basement of the Reynolds Club. that the honey found in the tombs of recognized that several of us would I was always led to believe that the the pharaohs 3,000 years later was be drafted before we could finish our role of the Hutchins/Adler Four Year potable, as the bees excrete an enzyme “last year”—but there was an impend- College was to develop Rennaissance that preserves it indefinitely. ing vacation quarter. We were taken men and women from young “gifted and Peter Krulewitch aside and told that if we were inter - talented” students, and I like to think clove valley, new york ested they would provide the critical that I came to fit that mold. Life has course outlines, reading lists, etc. for treated me incredibly kindly, in no small Hutchins College days our “last year” and we could, without sense reflecting that education.Along I have just (after all these years!) fin - any other assistance, spend our sum - the way I modeled for Maude Phelps ished reading William H. McNeill’s mer reading and cramming—and then Hutchins, and her husband would oc- (LAB’34, AB’38, AM’39) Hutchins’ take a special comprehensive exam. casionally visit and tease me. (“Aren’t University: A Memoir of the University of If we were able to study and read in- you cold?!”) I assume that he must have known that I was one of “his” students. If there is a record somewhere of the BLAST FROM THE PAST outcomes of the Four Year College it might be appropriate to note that there I read with interest, and several Di-gel tablets, the seminal article was at least one PhB awarded. And it on delicatessen evaluation by those two leading trencherscholars, might be worth checking to see if there Professors Madansky and Shubik (Spring/76). Quarrel though I were not one or two others from that may with some aspects of the experiment design (the concept of summer quarter. “regulation pickles and mustard” is repugnant), I have no doubt that George W. Tressel, LAB’42, PhB’43 the techniques used will form the basis silver spring, maryland for further study. … Though the logistics would be somewhat more complicated The University of Chicago Magazine than an evaluation of Manhattan’s East welcomes letters about its contents or about Side delicatessens, please prevail upon the life of the University. Letters for pub- these distinguished gourmands to lication must be signed and may be edited undertake a geographical examination for space, clarity, and civility. To provide of the pizza, including samples a range of views and voices, we encour- from such diverse locales as New age letter writers to limit themselves to York, Chicago, Des Moines, and the 300 words or fewer. Write: Editor, The undisputed pizza capital of the University of Chicago Magazine , gelatoplus United States, Dayton, Ohio. 5235 South Harper Court, Suite 500, —Gary Gastineau, Chicago, IL 60615. Or email: uchicago Short Hills, NJ, Sept/76 [email protected].
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Layout_Letters_Spring18_v2.indd 8 4/27/18 11:13 AM ON THE AGENDA
Deepening ties BY MADHAV RAJAN, DEAN AND GEORGE PRATT SHULTZ PROFESSOR OF ACCOUNTING, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
hen I arrived at the will serve as a base for Booth’s Execu- University of Chi- tive MBA Program in Asia. This cen- cago Booth School ter will allow us to engage more fully in of Business on July a part of the world that is increasingly 1, I was an outsider; I important to the global economy. hadn’t studied at Chi- Third, Booth has worked to foster cago or served on the a deeper connection with the College. faculty and had last The Trott Business Program provides visited the campus 10 introductory courses in business and years earlier, to give career support for College students, an academic talk. As while the Dougan Scholars Certifi- we enter the spring quarter, I don’t feel cate Program enables a select few to Wnew anymore. For the past year I have Rajan previously spent 16 years on gain a deeper understanding of the immersed myself in all things Booth, the faculty of the Stanford Univer- economic disciplines driving busi- learning about the school’s unique cul- sity Graduate School of Business. ness. We also administer the Chicago ture and its extraordinary community. Booth Scholars Program, which al- I have spent much of my time traveling, lows fourth-year students to apply to connecting with our alumni across the ing to have an impact in the real world, our Full-Time MBA Program. globe and learning about the great im- applying our skills to fields as diverse We also are delighted to partner with pact the Booth MBA has had on their as health care, education, and energy. the economics department on the new careers and personal lives. Booth faculty collaborate regularly business economics track of its under- Booth is fortunate to be part of a with collegues across UChicago, es- graduate major. This represents the university with a celebrated history pecially those in the economics de- biggest involvement by Booth in the and a culture that emphasizes rigorous partment. In addition, Booth enjoys College’s curriculum in 60 years. We inquiry and respect for the individual. a symbiotic relationship with the Uni- could not be more excited by the oppor- Like UChicago, Booth’s greatest asset versity in several key areas. tunity to (re)connect with the stellar is our world-class faculty, who produce First, what was once a small en - undergraduate population at UChicago! pathbreaking ideas with global impact. trepreneurship center at Booth has I look forward to even closer collabo- We view scientific research and intel- grown into a University-wide engine ration with the University to maximize lectual debate as the backbone of this for revolutionary ideas and transfor- Booth’s impact. This includes scaling institution and firmly believe that disci- mative new ventures. Over the past our joint degrees and making it possible pline-based knowledge and thoughtful two decades, the Polsky Center for for faculty from across the University analysis are the foundation of good busi- Entrepreneurship and Innovation to teach our students. Our new MBA/ ness practice and policy, as well as the has made a name for itself supporting MPCS with the computer science de- basis for an effective MBA curriculum. our nascent entrepreneurs, venture partment is off to a strong start, and Booth has traditionally been strong capitalists, and private equity profes- we look forward to working with the in accounting, economics, and fi - sionals. Now, with the help of further Law School to improve the JD/MBA. nance. But its core strength is its em - generous gifts from UChicago trustee It is imperative we think of business in phasis on data, evidence, and rigor. In and Booth alumnus Michael Polsky, combination with other fields and put this regard, we have been ahead of the MBA’87, the center has greatly ex- these together in innovative ways. curve, and the world is just catching panded its mission and brought the I’m excited and proud to serve the up to us. Our faculty are prominent in teachings of the business school to the preeminent academic school of busi- data science and quantitative market- broader University community. ness at one of the world’s great in - ing as well as behavioral science and Second, we are in the final phase of stitutions of higher learning. To be management. We aspire to use our ex- constructing a new UChicago center in entrusted with this deanship is an in -
chicago booth chicago pertise in analysis and decision mak- Hong Kong. When it opens this year, it credible honor. ◆
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OntheAgenda_Spring 2018_v2.indd 2 4/27/18 11:19 AM LSE-UCHICAGO DOUBLE EXECUTIVE MASTER’S IN HEALTH POLICY FROM HARRIS PUBLIC POLICY AND THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
2 YEARS 2 DEGREES 2 CITIES
AUTUMN 2018 + 2019 2–3 weeks in London
SPRING 2018 + 2019 2–3 weeks in Chicago
SUMMER 2019 Capstone Project
SPRING 2020 MSc Dissertation
Solutions to global health challenges require global thinking.
VISIT US ONLINE lse.uchicago.edu
LSE-Chicago Ad_v5.indd 1 2/5/18 10:19 AM UChicago Journal_v5.indd 10 4/27/18 9:47 AM LSE-UCHICAGO DOUBLE EXECUTIVE MASTER’S IN HEALTH POLICY SPRING 2018 Harper’s Index, 13 ...... Original Source, 14 ...... Citations, 17 ...... For the Record, 18 ...... Fig. 1, 22 FROM HARRIS PUBLIC POLICY AND THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
2 YEARS 2 DEGREES 2 CITIES
AUTUMN 2018 + 2019 2–3 weeks in London
SPRING 2018 + 2019 2–3 weeks in Chicago
SUMMER 2019 Capstone Project
SPRING 2020 MSc Dissertation
Solutions to Scientists think Earth’s moon formed from a collision like this one, but there are a lot of unanswered questions.
PLANETARY SCIENCE The question of when Earth got its its water during the main stage of its water is one scientists puzzle over. growth. As part of their study, the global health challenges Did it happen relatively late, as a re- team performed the largest analysis to sult of collisions with meteorites and date of oxygen isotopes in lunar rocks. Water other objects containing ice? Or was Understanding when and how it earlier, as the young planet was Earth became the blue planet it is to- still forming? day is important because it sheds light require global thinking. world New research from a team includ- on another scientific puzzle—how the ing UChicago cosmochemist Nicolas moon and Earth came to coexist. A study of lunar rocks sheds new Dauphas, published in Science Ad- Up until about 10 years ago, scien - light on the origins of the Earth vances, suggests it was the latter— tists thought they had a pretty good
VISIT US ONLINE nasa/jpl-caltech courtesy illustration and its moon. that Earth acquired the majority of theory of the moon’s formation. But lse.uchicago.edu the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 11
LSE-Chicago Ad_v5.indd 1 2/5/18 10:19 AM UChicago Journal_v5.indd 11 4/27/18 9:47 AM then more precise measurements of lu- nar rocks came along and complicated the existing model. The most widely accepted theory of the origin of the moon speculates that a giant object about the size of Mars, known as Theia (for the Greek god- dess who was the mother of Selene, goddess of the moon), smashed into proto-Earth at just enough velocity that parts of both bodies broke off and formed the moon. Earth, according to this theory, has a little of the moon and the moon has more of Earth, but you’d expect to find significant differ- ences between rocks from each body. Early measurements—many taken by the late UChicago geochemist Rob- ert Clayton—did not have sufficient precision to tell lunar rocks and Earth rocks apart. But in the last decade, Dauphas says, it became clear this picture wasn’t quite right. Elements can come in different forms, called iso- topes, and these give scientists clues to a rock’s origin. As ways to measure isotopes improved, scientists discov- ered striking similarities between the moon and Earth. Referred to as the “lunar isotopic crisis,” this intro- duced a problem for the main theory of lunar formation, because it’s highly unlikely the isotopes would be exactly the same for two random objects in the Over the past several years, Dauphas has analyzed the isotopic makeup solar system. of meteorites (shown here), Earth rocks, and lunar rocks to understand “This, to my mind, is one of the most how the moon and Earth formed. compelling questions in modern plan- etary science,” says Dauphas, head of the Origins Laboratory and professor sured the oxygen isotopes of both after the great impact. That indicates in the Department of Geophysical Sci- lunar and terrestrial rocks with ex- most of Earth’s water probably ar- ences and the Enrico Fermi Institute. tremely high precision. They found a rived much earlier. “Right now it’s completely open. It’s very small but detectable difference in The question of how planets ac - amazing to still be asking this.” the isotopes of the two bodies. quire water is interesting for a number One theory to explain the match- And that’s where water comes in. If of reasons, Dauphas says, including ing isotopes is a scenario in which Earth’s water was added late as a result the search for distant exoplanets that proto-Earth was totally vaporized by of meteorite collisions, as a popular might have water—and thus a similar one or more giant im- theory contends, kind of life. pacts, and both it and THIS, TO MY MIND, then Dauphas’s team Dauphas notes that the current the moon formed out would have found a study only focused on oxygen iso - of the cloud. But ma- IS ONE OF THE MOST greater isotopic dif- topes. Measuring the isotopes of other
jor uncertainties per- COMPELLING QUESTIONS ference between lu- elements might reveal bigger differ- lachat jean by photography sist, since scientists IN MODERN PLANETARY nar and Earth rocks, ences between the moon and Earth, have reached dif- because water-bear- and complicate the picture. “Oxy- ferent conclusions SCIENCE. RIGHT NOW IT’S ing meteorites have gen, titanium, tungsten—these are about how different COMPLETELY OPEN. unusual mixtures the ones that are still keeping us up at the oxygen isotopes of oxygen isotopes. night,” he says. He and his colleagues between lunar and terrestrial rocks But the isotopic differences they have found an important clue, but the really are. identified were more subtle, suggest- mysteries of Earth’s water and its rela- Seeking to clarify the issue, Dau- ing that only 5 to 30 percent of all the tionship to the moon aren’t solved just phas and his fellow researchers mea- water on Earth arrived on meteorites yet.—Louise Lerner, AB’09
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 12 4/27/18 9:48 AM COMPUTATION and also to diagnose social and strate- gic influences on citing behavior.” In theory, references in an academic WILLIAM paper enable authors to credit their RAINEY Blinded by predecessors, the researchers and HARPER’S work upon which they built their new INDEX discovery. But in practice, citations the cite are chosen for many reasons—authors A new model reveals forgotten are more likely to cite themselves, WELCOME powerful colleagues in their field, and influencers and “sleeping beauties” researchers at prestigious institutions, BACK, ALUMS of science. and are often biased toward citing more recent or already highly cited articles. Buttons on offer at this For centuries, scientists and scholars Despite these imperfections, many year’s Alumni Weekend have measured the influence of individ- computational studies of scientific in- swag buffet: uals and discoveries through citations, fluence have relied on the citation re- a crude statistic subject to biases, poli- cord as a useful proxy. The new study, tics, and other distortions. A new pa- led by former Knowledge Lab postdoc- per led by the University of Chicago’s toral researcher Aaron Gerow, takes a Knowledge Lab describes a different novel, deeper approach, using both the 66 way to keep score in science—a more full text of articles and external infor- direct measure of how ideas ripple out mation such as author identity, affilia- Longest string of name tag across scholarship and culture. tion, and journal reputation. ribbons spotted last year: The authors’ new computational Employing a computational method model throws the spotlight onto known as topic modeling—invented work that changed the path of sci- by coauthor David Blei of Columbia ence but has remained underappreci- University—the model tracks “dis- ated. The approach can be adapted cursive influence,” or recurring words 10 to trace influence in other areas, such and phrases through historical texts People tearing up the dance as literature or music, the authors say that measure how scholars actually in the paper, published March 12 in talk about a field, instead of just their floor at the 2017 GO Party: Proceedings of the National Academy attributions. To determine a given of Sciences. paper’s influence, the method allows “We’re measuring how much scien- researchers to imagine how science tists’ and scholars’ writings influence would have proceeded without it. 532 discussion of ideas in the future,” says “We can not only find out how top- James Evans, director of the Knowl- ics changed over time but can actually Average number of edge Lab and professor of sociology at simulate the future without a given doc- audience questions in an UChicago. “Influence is a politicized ument from the past and look at how dis- process; those who get the influence course moving forward was different UnCommon Core session: get the credit, and those who get the with and without a given document,” credit get the capital to do the next big says Gerow, now an assistant professor thing. This is the first time we have a at Goldsmiths, University of London. tightened ability to identify influence, “Citations are one kind of impact, and 15 Faces painted at the 2017 Alumni and Friends Family Festival: 47 Years the Interfraternity Sing has been sung (as of 2018):
©istock.com The ideas that shape fields the most aren’t always the most widely cited. 107
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 13 4/27/18 9:48 AM discursive influence is a different kind. Neither one is the complete story, but they work together to give a better pic- ORIGINAL SOURCE ture of what’s influencing science.” The authors trained the model on BEARING WITNESS JSTOR, a massive database of aca- demic publications, which allowed them to quantify various biases and discern distinct patterns of influence. Scientists who persistently published in a single field were more likely to be “canonized” in a way that compelled others to cite them disproportionate to their papers’ discursive contribu- tions. On the other hand, discoveries that crossed disciplinary boundaries tended to have outsized discursive im- pact but fewer citations, likely because the “owner” of the idea and her allies remain socially and institutionally dis- tant from the citing author. One interesting subcategory of pa- per the model detected is known as “sleeping beauties,” or papers that went relatively unacknowledged for years or even decades before experiencing a late burst of citations. For example, a 1947 paper on graphene remained ob- scure and forgotten until there was a resurgence of research interest in the A sense of witnessing history is century—contains a powerful ultrathin carbon material in the 1990s at the center of War, Trauma, juxtaposition: on the left, a picture and a Nobel Prize for two University of Memory, a new exhibit at the of four smiling young boys sitting Manchester researchers in 2010. Special Collections Research on a wooden fence in the Brazilian “Papers have a news cycle, when Center through August 31, countryside; on the right, three lots of people chat about them and cite featuring works created by men reproducing the pose in the them, and then they’re no longer new individuals who experienced war same location, leaving a gap for news,” Evans says. “Our model shows between the 16th century and their disappeared cousin. 44, plate goya. francisco that some papers have much more in- today. By making these images Another book features a striking fluence than citations will typically public, the artists implicate us black-and-white photograph demonstrate, such as these ‘sleeping as fellow witnesses: What I have of four men enjoying coffee beauties,’ which didn’t have much in- seen, now you have seen too. and pastries in a well-lit café, center, research collections fluence early but come to be appreci- This sense of shared witnessing while attending studiously to ated and important later.” is stark in Francisco Goya’s print their correspondence. The air of The same model can also be used to “Yo lo vi” (above), whose caption pleasantness is short-lived: a measure influence in other areas, the translates simply to “I saw it.”
telltale Nazi insignia adorns a vi,” lo “yo authors said. Text from poems or song In the foreground a man pulls helmet on the windowsill, and lyrics, and even extratextual charac- another man along as a woman the entire book turns out to be teristics such as stanza structure or similarly pulls a young child, while a celebration of the occupation chord progressions, could feed into soldiers advance menacingly from of Poland. Intended as buoyant guerra la de desastres los
the model to find underrecognized the background. The dragged propaganda, the image now the influencers and map the spread of new man and child are shocked by reminds us how easily the horrific concepts and innovations. something outside the picture, becomes the everyday. library chicago of university “Though we developed and vali- but we are not shown this, only Trauma is both everywhere dated this model on scientific text, the witnessing itself. and nowhere in this exhibit, now we can use it for anything and ev- Other pieces focus on what is just as it is for all individuals erything, especially cases where there unseen, or how trauma is present and communities touched by
are no traces of influence but patterns in its absence. A book on South war. According to curator Sarah 1893. , in the content itself,” Evans says. “It’s American desaparecidos— Wenzel, “You go through the like trending on Twitter, but where political prisoners disappeared routines of daily life, and the special everything is Twitter. That is what’s by South American military trauma is behind the scenes.” most exciting to me.”—Rob Mitchum dictatorships in the 20th —Lucas McGranahan
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 14 4/27/18 9:48 AM POLICY board. “They went to the doctor get Office’s Panel of Health Advisers more, they used more prescription since 2009 and regularly shares her drugs, they went to the hospital research with policy makers nation- more—and they went to the emer- wide to inform debates over Medic- Measuring gency department more,” Baicker aid expansion, block grants, and other says. (Though important, this find- policy questions around the imple- ing wasn’t fundamentally surprising mentation of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid to her as an economist: “You just took (ACA, also called Obamacare). For informed decisions on health something expensive and made it free. Research can speak to the costs and Why wouldn’t people go more?”) benefits of health care policies—re- care policy, Katherine Baicker Contrary to expectation, partici- vealing important facts to guide the prescribes hard evidence. pants’ emergency department use decision-making process, rather than actually increased by 40 percent after letting conventional wisdom lead dis- If you have health insurance, are you enrolling in the program, a rate that cussions astray. So what is Baicker’s more or less likely than an uninsured held steady over time, Baicker found. verdict on Medicaid expansion, in person to visit the emergency room? A Oregon Medicaid participants did light of her team’s findings on emer- popular theory: with better access to see substantial benefits, including gency department use? That’s not her preventive care, you’d be more likely lower rates of depression and higher call as a researcher to make, she says. to visit your primary physician for less financial stability. Baicker says the “It is really important to be disci- serious issues, keeping you out of the program “virtually eliminated” the plined in focusing on what science emergency room and relieving some of out-of-pocket burden for catastrophic and scholarship can tell us and what the burden on the health care system. medical expenditures and slashed the they can’t, and drawing a bright line But that’s not how it works in prac- risk of debt or unpaid bills due to medi- between evidence and advocacy,” she tice, as Katherine Baicker, dean and cal expenses by more than half. says. “As a researcher, it’s my job to be Emmett Dedmon Professor at the But despite increased use of health a faithful reporter of what the evidence University of Chicago Harris School care resources across the board, new supports. … I think that’s the overarch- of Public Policy, and her coauthors Medicaid enrollees saw no measurable ing mission of all of the faculty at Har- found in a series of papers drawing on improvement in physical health issues ris and around the University: to be the a unique experiment in Oregon and such as high blood pressure or diabe- voice of clear analytical reasoning and several national data sources. tes. Medicaid involves trade-offs, evidence-based decision making.” In fact, several widespread assump- Baicker found, just like most other Like most programs, Medicaid de- tions about ER use were wrong, the public programs, and its costs and ben- livers both costs and benefits. It’s up to studies revealed. Uninsured patients, efits aren’t always what the public and voters and policy makers to weigh those who are often blamed for emergency policy makers expect. factors. Should taxes support better department overcrowding, don’t ac- The complicated nature of health health care access, mental health, and tually visit the ER any more than in- care policy in the United States un- financial security for Medicaid partici- sured patients, Baicker and colleagues derscores the need for knowledgeable pants? What about better education, in- showed in a 2017 Health Affairs paper. leadership at the state and national frastructure, or tax breaks for citizens The insured and uninsured actually levels. “My goal is to provide evidence who benefit from those investments? use the ER at about the same rates. that drives a well-informed discus- “These are all competing policy pri- Patients on Medicaid use it the most, sion of the trade-offs involved in each orities,” Baicker says, “and no study but only by a fairly narrow margin. of those policies,” says Baicker, who can tell you which is more important Much of Baicker’s research has up- has served on the Congressional Bud- to you.”—Ingrid Gonçalves, AB’08 ended conventional wisdom about health policy. For the past decade she and colleagues have examined data from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, which started in 2008 as a waiting list for the state’s Medicaid program—with names from the list chosen by lottery. Oregon didn’t set out to “generate a policy experiment,” Baicker says. “They did this because unfortunately they only had enough funding for a lim- ited number of people. But that had the side effect of generating a perfect ran- domized controlled trial of Medicaid.” The results were striking: new Medicaid recipients in Oregon ac-
©istock.com cessed more health care across the Many popular assumptions about ER use are wrong, Baicker’s research shows.
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 15 4/27/18 9:48 AM an ongoing founding process that ex- tended beyond the Philadelphia Con- vention. In this spirit, many believed that the Constitution would be rela- tively easy to build out with further amendments—12 of which had already been ratified by 1804. The country was a work in progress. The amendment process proved burdensome, however, and the Con- stitution would not be modified once between 1805 and the 1865 abolition of slavery. All the while, debates raged over the regulation of inter- and in- trastate commerce, jurisdiction over contested bodies of water, and states’ rights and obligations regarding fu- gitive slaves—issues on which the Constitution was silent. Even though 19th-century Americans “tended to worship the founders,” LaCroix says, “they also felt like they were being left high and dry.” They were, in part, grappling with questions of federalism, or the proper relationship between the states and the central government. This is famil- iar ground for LaCroix, whose first book, The Ideological Origins of Ameri- In a new book, LaCroix looks at a historical period in which new Americans can Federalism (Harvard University tried to navigate complex issues unaddressed in the Constitution. Press, 2010), traced American federal- ism to the colonists’ vision of dividing powers between the British imperial LAW was not settled with the document’s government and an internal colonial ratification in 1788, nor with any sub- one. The two governments could co- sequent amendment. The Constitu- exist, it was thought, each governing tion is a conversation. different aspects of colonial life. The long LaCroix’s new book The Interbel- Although such a system had histori- lum Constitution: Union, Commerce, cal precedent, as in the distributed and Slavery from the Long Founding power centers of the Holy Roman Em- founding Moment to the Civil War (Yale Univer- pire, British politicians and theorists sity Press, forthcoming), supported such as William Blackstone strongly by a fellowship from the National rejected the notion that a single polity moment Endowment for the Humanities, will could be ruled by multiple authorities The Constitution is a short read. The examine the inter- at once. In the end, bellum—“between THERE ARE WRONG ANSWERS of course, the colo- rest is history. the wars”—period nists created their from 1812 to 1861. IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AND own federation that “There isn’t an optimal distribution According to La- THERE ARE RIGHT ANSWERS, excluded the impe- of federal versus state power,” says Croix, these years, rial power. written off by many AND THE RIGHT ANSWERS American feder- constitutional scholar Alison LaCroix, degrane lloyd by photography the Robert Newton Reid Professor of as a lull between the CHANGE OVER TIME. alism poses a set of Law and associate member of the De- founding and Recon- challenges that are partment of History. “I mean, there struction, were in fact a time of great familiar to court watchers today. La- might be an optimal one, but you can’t constitutional meaning making. Croix’s point, however, is that our un- find it in the Constitution.” The prevailing feeling among derstanding of federalism has changed LaCroix is among those who view judges, politicians, and ordinary peo- over time. Prior to the Civil War, constitutional law as an ongoing nego- ple of the generation after the found - Americans assumed the legitimacy of tiation between the text and evolving ers was that the concrete of America what is now termed “cooperative fed- historical circumstances. The mean- had not yet set. These early citizens eralism”—federal projects relying on ing of the Constitution, in this view, viewed themselves as participating in states for execution—as long as Con-
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UChicago Journal_v6.indd 16 4/27/18 12:37 PM gress was acting within its enumer- is not set in stone. This includes her an “enriching, rather than simplify- ated powers and in the name of the experience coteaching the Univer- ing” role in legal disputes. states. In contrast, modern constitu- sity’s first class on law and linguistics The United States Constitution is tional doctrine tends to view the states with Jason Merchant, the Lorna a short read, as constitutions go. The and federal government as locked in Puttkammer Straus Professor in the text outlines a structure of govern- an adversarial relationship, as in the Department of Linguistics and the ment, but the precise contours of that Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling that the College, in winter 2014. While the structure depend upon the exigencies Affordable Care Act was unduly co- Supreme Court has made a habit of of history and the vagaries of lan - ercive in requiring states to expand appealing to the authority of 18th- guage. This makes the Constitution Medicaid or lose all federal funds for century dictionaries to fix the mean- anything but static, even as the words the program. ing of terms, LaCroix and Merchant on parchment remain the same. As For LaCroix, the value of history lies are now drawing on advances in com- LaCroix puts it, paraphrasing her col- in understanding such differences. “In putational linguistics to detect his- league Gerald Rosenberg, associate other words,” she wrote in a 2009 es- torical shifts in meaning across vast professor of political science, “there say, “it is alienness, not sameness, that bodies of text—an effort supported are wrong answers in constitutional makes the study of ideas valuable.” by the Neubauer Collegium for Cul - law and there are right answers, In the classroom, for instance, ture and Society. LaCroix hopes the and the right answers change over LaCroix emphasizes that doctrine project will allow linguistics to play time.”—Lucas McGranahan
CITATIONS
SHOT IN THE DARK and Vera Tesic, assistant If you’ve ever dutifully gotten professor in pathology, your flu shot only to come more research is needed to down with the virus months understand original antigenic later, you know the vaccine sin and ultimately produce isn’t foolproof. According to a better flu vaccines. study published February 20 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, MONEY IN THE BANK your immune history with flu What happens when nearly may play a role in the vaccine’s every resident in a state gets effectiveness. The research a government-funded boost team, led by Sarah Cobey, to their income? Despite the assistant professor in ecology influx of cash, they don’t leave and evolution, analyzed blood the workforce, according to a samples of adults infected February 12 National Bureau of with flu in 2012–13, when the Economic Research working vaccine was only 39 percent paper coauthored by Damon effective—a failure blamed Jones, associate professor at on adaptations in egg-grown Harris Public Policy, and Ioana vaccines, mutations that Marinescu of the University can cause the virus to differ of Pennsylvania. They studied from circulating strains and the Alaska Permanent Fund Nom: When the Milky Way devours nearby star systems, it become less effective. Instead, Dividend, established in 1982, leaves behind stellar streams, like those shown here. the researchers found, many which provides each state people didn’t have a strong resident of more than a year, enough immune response regardless of age, with an to the vaccine, thanks (or no UChicago, Argonne, and annual lump sum payment COSMIC APPETITES thanks) to a phenomenon Fermilab, announced the averaging $2,000. These cash Our home galaxy is a messy called “original antigenic sin.” eater. Thanks to the halo of discovery of 11 new stellar When the immune system transfers don’t affect the dark matter that surrounds streams. Until now, researchers encounters a strain of flu state’s rate of employment, the the Milky Way, smaller star knew of only about two dozen that differs only slightly from researchers found. However, systems are pulled toward it others. These stellar morsels types it has seen before, it they do increase the share of and eventually gobbled up. are tricky to detect, because doesn’t recognize the virus Alaskans who work part-time jobs by 1.8 percentage points, This process leaves behind they’re made up of just a few as novel and produces the an uptick that may be the cosmic “crumbs”—leftover stars and spread out over vast same antibodies it made in stars torn from their galaxies result of new entrants into expanses of sky, but are worth the past—antibodies that called stellar streams. At the may not do the trick anymore. the labor market. The study hunting for, because they help American Astronomical Society That’s what happened for many offers new evidence of how meeting in January, scientists researchers understand the people who got the flu vaccine different aspects of universal from the Dark Energy Survey, Milky Way’s structure, how it in 2012. According to Cobey basic income proposals might an international collaboration grows, and how it interacts and coauthors Emily Landon, change employment.
illustration courtesy nasa/jpl-caltech/r. hurt (ssc/caltech) hurt nasa/jpl-caltech/r. courtesy illustration that includes members from with the dark matter around it. assistant professor of medicine, —Susie Allen, AB’09
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 17 4/27/18 9:49 AM FOR THE RECORD
clinical professor of law, is the world, including the Giant automate their compliance founder of the Criminal Juvenile Magellan Telescope in Chile, and programs, received $315,000. Justice Project, which defends in space. Through the UChicago Startup children and young adults who Investment Program, launched have been charged with criminal CGIU AT UCHICAGO in 2016, the University coinvests behavior. Stone also works to The University of Chicago, alongside established venture reform juvenile and criminal law President Bill Clinton, and funds in start-ups led by policies. Sunny Fischer, AM’82, Chelsea Clinton will host the UChicago faculty, students, served as executive director Clinton Foundation’s 11th staff, and alumni. The University of the Sophia Fund, the first annual Clinton Global Initiative has set aside $25 million from its private women’s foundation University meeting October endowment to invest in start- solely devoted to women’s 19–21. More than a thousand ups raising early funding rounds. issues, and, later, of the Richard undergraduate and graduate TRANSITIONS H. Driehaus Foundation. Fischer students from across the Amanda Woodward, the also helped start a public country and around the world William S. Gray Distinguished housing museum in Chicago. will gather to discuss and Service Professor of Clinical psychologist Scott Cook develop ideas and proposals Psychology, was named dean works in UChicago Medicine and to address some of the most of the Division of the Social the Biological Sciences Division pressing social, economic, Sciences, effective April 4. to help achieve culturally and environmental challenges Woodward, a scholar of the competent health care and facing the next generation. social development of infants reduce health care disparities and young children, had across all communities. WEATHERING THE STORM been interim dean since July This spring, students, scholars, 2017. Executive vice provost SETTING UP HOUSE and artists affected by David Nirenberg, the Edgar The University has announced Hurricanes Irma and Maria D. Jannotta Distinguished plans to build a new residential were welcomed to work at JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED Service Professor of Medieval hall and dining commons the University of Chicago Ade Ayoola, an Odyssey History and Social Thought, located between Woodlawn as their home institutions Scholar and a fourth-year in the was appointed interim dean of and University Avenues, were rebuilding. Under a new College, was selected as one of the Divinity School beginning north of 61st Street. The initiative launched January 49 inaugural Knight-Hennessy June 1. He succeeds Laurie new Woodlawn Residential 24, select undergraduates, Scholars at Stanford University. Zoloth, the Margaret E. Burton Commons will open in the graduate students, and faculty Ayoola will receive full funding Professor in the Divinity 2020–21 academic year and spent spring quarter taking to pursue a medical degree School, who will serve as senior house approximately 1,200 classes and conducting research from the Stanford School of lachat jean by photography news; uchicago lachat; jean by photography right: to left advisor to the provost for undergraduate students at UChicago. The University will Medicine while participating programs on social ethics. and resident staff in 11 host visiting Puerto Rican artists in the scholarship’s global College houses, along with from May to July. leadership program. A OBJECT LESSONS lounges, study rooms, and biological chemistry major, The Smart Museum of Art outdoor spaces. The firm of Ayoola has worked with the is creating a new center Elkus Manfredi Architects is Chicago nonprofit BUILD aimed at engaging UChicago designing the facility. (Broader Urban Involvement students, artists, and faculty and Leadership Development), in “object-driven research”: FOND FAREWELL which works to increase interdisciplinary research, UChicago will wind down its the educational and career learning, and conversations activities at Yerkes Observatory outcomes of at-risk youth, and driven by the study and in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, has studied diabetes in Ibadan, experience of original works over the next six months Nigeria, as a fellow with the of art. The Feitler Center for and formally cease on-site Center for Global Health. Academic Inquiry, named for operations by October 1, the Joan Feitler, AM’55, and Robert University announced March MAKING HISTORY Feitler, LAB’45, EX’50, will be 7. Since the observatory’s Lorraine Daston, a visiting led by newly appointed director establishment in 1897, SAVVY INVESTORS professor in UChicago’s John Issa Lampe and will bring more Yerkes has been the site of The University has invested U. Nef Committee on Social students to the museum as part groundbreaking work by in two start-ups founded Thought and the Department of their studies. Lampe comes scientists such as George Ellery by Chicago Booth alumni of History, has been awarded to the Smart Museum from the Hale; Edwin Hubble, SB 1910, through the UChicago Startup the Dan David Prize for her Yale University Art Gallery. PhD 1917; and Subrahmanyan Investment Program. Foxtrot, achievements in the research Chandrasekhar. The facility a Chicago food and alcohol of the history of science. The HONORING DIVERSITY was home to UChicago’s delivery service founded by annual award, which includes At the annual Martin Luther Department of Astronomy and Michael LaVitola, MBA’14 a $1 million prize, recognizes King Jr. Day celebration on Astrophysics until the 1960s. In (above), received $450,000; scholars for innovative and January 16, three members recent decades the University’s Ascent Technologies, cofounded interdisciplinary research in of the UChicago community research in observational by Brian Clark, MBA’17, and technological, scientific, social, received Diversity Leadership astronomy has shifted to using Aaron Droba, MBA’16, which or cultural fields covering the Awards: Randolph N. Stone, facilities located around the helps users build, manage, and past, present, and future.
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 18 4/27/18 9:49 AM HUMANITIES son is on leave. In planning the major, such as Mary Gaitskill, Junot Diaz, he says, the faculty looked at what’s and Russell Banks. Some of the stories worked best at other schools and built are unconventional, and so are their their pedagogy from the ground up, understandings of love. The goal is to The writing unencumbered by convention—for broaden students’ reading and prompt example, the convention of training them to think differently about their by workshop. writing. “The more uncomfortable on the wall Writing workshop–style classes they are,” Tran says, “the more they In which creatively inclined College are in the curriculum, but they’re not might go in an interesting direction in the only part or even the most signifi- their own work.” students gain a major. cant. Majors must take classes in lit- The approach seems to be work- erature and in other fields they select ing. Third-year creative writing major There’s always been creative writing at with faculty advisers to complement Ricky Novaes says his professors “try UChicago—just ask alumni who took their individual interests as poets, fic- to push the boundaries of poetry.” One classes with novelist Richard Stern, or tion writers, playwrights, essayists, of his favorite courses so far is Manifes- fans of Susan Sontag, AB’51. The sub- or translators. Also required are two tos, Movements, Modes. Edgar Garcia, ject has long been available to College technical seminars devoted to the for- Neubauer Family Assistant Professor students as a minor or a concentration mal study of literary technique. in English Language and Literature, within the English major, and plenty These intensive reading and writ- had students read and analyze literature write on their own time. ing courses “try to conceive of ques- alongside, for instance, visual art by Cy Now it’s a formal major as well. Both tions of technique as broadly and with Twombly and Claymation videos. academic and experimental in orienta- as much conceptual openness as pos- Some students anticipate careers in tion and demands, the new creative sible,” Reddy says. Students might writing or publishing, but many don’t. writing program introduced this year focus on what constitutes a line in po- Third-year Adrienne Beck, whose takes the traditional writing workshop etry, on uses of first-person point of magical realist fiction seeks to expose as the barest point of departure. So far view in fiction, or on something more “the weird and magical elements lying 78 students have signed on, dwarfing esoteric. Poet and collegiate assistant just behind the veneer of the quotid- the 30 the faculty anticipated. professor Lynn Xu’s winter 2018 semi- ian,” wants to go into medicine. Since arriving in 2010, professor nar The Poem that Forgot It Was a “Writing and art help with being and chair John Wilkinson has worked Poem, for example, looked at songs, detail oriented and experiencing em- to strengthen the creative writing mi- films, and other art often described as pathy, both of which are important nor and establish the major. Both are “poetic” to examine evolving concep- parts of the medical field,” says Beck. designed to “foster an environment tions of the term and the form. If nothing else, she thinks students where students would debate the cul- Novelist Vu Tran, assistant profes- interested in medicine should take tural, political, and aesthetic affilia- sor of practice, teaches The Love Sto- humanities classes “to broaden their tions of their writing and understand ry, a hybrid literature class/workshop. horizons and avoid getting burnt out.” its historical antecedents,” he told the Students write and hone their own Novaes, a double major in politi- Chicago Maroon. 10- to 25-page original short story in cal science and creative writing, is Poet and associate professor of Eng- which love—in any form—plays a sig- pondering law school, public policy lish Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy is the nificant role. Along the way they read work, or what he calls his dream job— program’s interim chair while Wilkin- contemporary short stories by writers high school English teacher. Thinking about words from a poet’s perspective and stretching the boundaries of lan- guage, Novaes believes, make him a better writer in general. Third-year Angela Ma, a double major in creative writing and eco - nomics, knew she wanted to pursue a creative writing minor before she set foot on campus. She declared the major a week after it was announced, delighted to find a “community with a similar faith in fiction” and “a place where I could not only read, but read with other writers.” Tran, the director of undergraduate studies, calls creative writing “one of the few disciplines in academia where all the students really want to be there. Your parents are not pressuring you to
photography by jean lachat Writing workshops are just one component of the new creative writing major. take creative writing.”—Jeanie Chung
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 19 4/27/18 12:13 PM As the University’s 10th president, Gray helped steer the institution through a precarious era for higher education.
PIONEERS reserved for men in academe. During World War II was over, and the Uni - a more than six-decade career, she was versity’s enrollment and endowment the first woman to hold a succession of were both sagging. It seemed a certain teaching and top administrative posi- golden age had ended—her shabby The long tions at Harvard, Northwestern, and digs just one sign that resources were library chicago of university apf1-06504; archive; photographic uchicago Yale Universities and UChicago. In tight. 1978 she became the University of Gray’s forthrightness would come view Chicago’s first woman president, and in handy as she set about the task of Hanna Gray’s memoir offers a first- the first woman to head a major re- rebuilding the institution’s financial search institution. health. The shadow of charismatic person view of a career of firsts. Gray’s rise was exceptional; rela- former president Robert Maynard tively few women of her generation Hutchins—the Core curriculum, the At Harvard during the 1950s, women broke into the ranks of tenure-track fierce commitment to intellectual in- could enter the university’s Faculty faculty, let alone assumed leadership quiry and academic freedom, even Club only by the side door. But a young roles. But she perceived no distinction the removal of Big Ten football—still assistant professor of history named in how UChicago faculty and trustees loomed large, and any changes Gray Hanna Holborn Gray didn’t always worked with her, she writes—“I was would make would have to be done in observe that rule. When attending never treated as a different species.” dialogue with his legacy. departmental meetings at the club, she Her detailed personal account is fo- She respected that legacy but seems took to using the front door. cused as much on the evolution of the to have been undaunted by it as she “Everyone was too much a gentle- University and higher education as on guided the University through the man to stop me,” Gray recalls in her her own trailblazing career. challenges of the day. She raised tu- just-released memoir, An Academic The terrain could be rocky. Gray’s ition, expanded the enrollment of the Life (Princeton University Press). first day as president found her in a College, and allocated general funds Gray, 87, the Harry Pratt Judson Dis- sweltering office furnished with little toward need-based financial aid. On tinguished Service Professor Emeritus more than a desk and a plastic couch. this foundation, Gray instituted a se - of History, would be the first woman to Higher education was in crisis. The ries of administrative measures—a step over many other thresholds once boom fueled by the GI Bill following centralized budget office and a pro-
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UChicago Journal_v6.indd 20 4/27/18 12:37 PM When the University observed its centennial, Gray celebrated alongside her presidential predecessor Edward H. Levi, LAB’28, PhB’32, JD’35.
fessionalized development office, for on intellectual freedom, its capacity of the evils of the Vietnam War—to instance. She undertook a sweeping for interdisciplinary discourse and campus to speak and receive an award analysis of the University’s academic scholarship, its exceptional students for his work as president of the World divisions and graduate life known as and the breadth and rigor of education Bank. Widespread protest ensued. the Baker Commission. they had on offer.” When Gray refused to disinvite him, The commission’s 1982 report, pre- Gray had been prepared for academic even Studs Terkel, PhB’32, JD’34, pared in the face of declining academic leadership seemingly since birth. Her “appeared on the quadrangle with a job prospects for graduating PhDs parents were persecuted intellectuals megaphone to condemn my behavior.” and the specter of a who fled Germany In her defense of free expression downturn in college GRAY .... WOULD BE THE during Hitler’s rise, and in many other ways, Gray asserted enrollments, called settling with their a commanding presence that unequiv- for a rethinking of FIRST WOMAN TO STEP OVER young daughter and ocally established the place of women graduate education MANY OTHER THRESHOLDS son in Connecticut in at the helm of major US universities. at the University. Its 1934. Her father, Hajo Yet during her presidency, she contin- recommendations in- ONCE RESERVED FOR MEN Holborn, joined the ued to encounter spaces that remained cluded a reduction of IN ACADEME. history department at off limits. Elite men’s clubs frequently course work require- Yale. He and her moth- played host to university presidents ments, the creation of new master’s er, Annemarie Bettmann Holborn, who and other civic leaders for meetings programs, and providing doctoral stu- was Jewish by heritage, conveyed an and events, and she found it her fate dents with better fellowship support “unshakable belief in the worth of intel- to “coeducationalize more than one” and broader training to equip them lectual and political freedom,” for they such place, including the Chicago for careers both outside and within had experienced its extreme assault. Club downtown. When confronted, the academy. Gray’s belief in academic freedom the club held a vote and decided to ad- All the while, Gray kept her sights was visceral and would sometimes mit women as visitors. A ladies’ room set on what she considered the Univer- be tested. In her first year in office, was built. “All this was done,” Gray sity’s greatest assets—“its powerful a faculty committee invited former writes, “and I entered the sacred space sense of mission, its uncompromis- defense secretary Robert McNa - without incident.” And many after
uchicago photographic archive, apf1-06511;ing university of chicago library intellectual spirit, its insistence mara—considered by many a symbol her.—Mary Abowd
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 21 4/27/18 9:50 AM FIG. 1 DRIVING UP WAGES
Average hourly earnings, US Female Male
30.0
27.5
25.0
22.5
20.0
Hourly earnings Hourly 17.5
15.0
12.5
10.0 Feb 2015 May 2015 Aug 2015 Nov 2015 Feb 2016 May 2016 Aug 2016 Nov 2016 Feb 2017
When a passenger requests a an average of 7 percent more per more opportunities to make mon- pickup from a ride-share service, hour than women (above). ey—a difference that accounts for the app pings a nearby driver, who The discrepancy is due, in part, nearly half the earnings gap be- can accept or decline the trip. All to experience. The more you drive tween men and women drivers. drivers in a market charge the for Uber, the more you know when The study drives home an im- same rate: in Chicago last year, to hit the streets and which trips portant point: the gender wage
the base fare for UberX was $1.70, to accept (airport fares are a reli- gap may not always stem from al.) et cook from (data lorenz laura by graphic plus $.20 per minute and $.95 per able moneymaker, for instance). a pay structure that is itself dis- mile. It’s a transparent system Women are less likely to learn criminatory. Rather, women face that seems perfectly designed these tricks because they drive challenges outside the labor mar- to eliminate disparities in how fewer hours overall and have a ket that may prevent them from much male and female drivers can higher attrition rate than men: getting ahead. “Women have more earn—right? after six months, more than 76 constraints—i.e., take the kid to Not quite, according to research percent of women quit driving for school in the morning,” List ex- coauthored by John List, the Ken- Uber, versus 65 percent of men. plained to the Freakonomics Radio neth C. Griffin Distinguished Ser- But men and women weren’t podcast. These constraints can vice Professor in Economics and just driving at different times and lead them to “receive less experi- the College, and collaborators at in different places. They were also ence and less learning-by-doing. … Stanford and Uber. In a study of al- driving at different speeds. On As policy makers, what we want to most 1.9 million Uber drivers from average, men drove 2.2 percent do is make sure that we can allevi- January 2015 to March 2017, the faster than women and completed ate those constraints as much as researchers found that men make more trips per hour, giving them possible.”—Susie Allen, AB’09
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UChicago Journal_v5.indd 22 4/27/18 9:50 AM INTERVIEW tional Queen Fabiola Carillon Compe- tition, also offers private lessons to 20 graduate and undergraduate students at the University each year and com- Heavy poses and commissions new works for carillon. In comments edited and con- densed below, he tells the Magazine metal how he fell for the bells. You probably don’t know musician —Susie Allen, AB’09 Joey Brink’s name, but you may have How did you get started playing heard him perform. the carillon? I started piano lessons when I was On a Friday afternoon in February, eight, and in high school I played mal- University carillonneur Joey Brink is let percussion—xylophone and vibra- getting ready to climb 240 of Rocke- phone—which is kind of similar to feller Chapel’s 271 stairs. From a small bells. I had no idea what a carillon was playing cabin near the top of the tower, until I toured Yale. As we walked by he’ll perform David Bowie’s “Life on Harkness Tower, the tour guide said, Mars” on the Laura Spelman Rock- “There’s a bunch of bells in the tower, efeller Memorial Carillon. It’s not the and people play them kind of like a pi- first time he’s rocked Bowie on the in- ano.” And I thought, “Whoa, I really strument’s 72 bells—Brink commemo- want to do that.” Installed in 1932, the carillon has 72 rated the iconic performer’s 2016 death So my first day on campus as a fresh- bells made with 100 tons of bronze. with a recital of his greatest hits. man, I went and found the group and Brink, 29, brings a youthful edge to was like, “I want to join!”—maybe a an instrument with medieval origins. little too enthusiastically. You take les- classical music arranged for the caril- Since his arrival at the University in sons for 10 weeks and then you audition. lon. I think playing a variety of music 2015, the campus soundscape has in- That audition is still about the most is the most fun for me and also best for cluded Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and stressful thing I’ve ever done. There’s the community. Prince’s “Purple Rain,” alongside 50 to 80 people that want to join every more traditional selections. Brink, a year and they take five. What makes a piece of music work past winner of the prestigious Interna- After graduating I went to a carillon well for carillon? school in Belgium for a year, where I Anything that has a clear melody that rigorously, intensely studied carillon. you can sing or whistle will work on the Then I came back to the United States carillon. If the music doesn’t have much to do something totally different and of a melody, like a rap or R&B song that got a master’s in engineering. But while requires a lot of percussive hits, it’s not I was in graduate school at the Univer- going to work quite as well—though sity of Utah I realized I could be a full- something like “Hotline Bling” was do- time carillonneur. That was shortly able. I can’t sustain a note like a singer before I came here. could, so a slow, dramatic Céline Dion epic is not going to work all that well. You’ve chosen to play a lot of Alternatively, if it’s too fast and really nontraditional carillon music. rhythmic and arpeggiated, that often
graphic by laura lorenz (data from cook et al.) et cook from (data lorenz laura by graphic Why is that? doesn’t work either. Disney songs tend I really enjoy pop music and film mu- to be right in that sweet spot. sic. Some of my favorite things to play on the carillon are Disney songs from When you’re at, say, a cocktail Pocahontas, Beauty and the Beast, Mulan. party, what do you tell people who Those songs work ask what you do for a living? so well on bells— It really depends on how much I want the melodies and to talk. Sometimes I’ll just say I’m a the harmonies. teacher or a musician. Then people So that was just might say “What do you play?” and personal taste. And I do that opens up a can of worms. But if really like taking requests from the I’m feeling talkative, I’ll say I play in community. People can submit re - a bell tower and I teach bells. It’s the quests online, and I keep a close eye on most fun when people don’t believe me. those. I also like to play contemporary They actually think I’m kidding. That’s
photography by anne ryan (bottom); photography by robert kozloff music written for carillon, as well as happened a couple of times.
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 23
UChicago Journal_v5.indd 23 4/27/18 9:50 AM profile GROUND
TRUTHChris Begley, AM’92, PhD’99, is an archaeologist with a taste for adventure. Just don’t call him Indiana Jones. by susie allen, ab’09
24 the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018
UCH_Begley_v7.indd 24 4/24/18 11:04 AM UCH_Begley_v7.indd 25 4/24/18 11:05 AM hris Begley and I are on a drive, a little out- fills it make Begley nervous too. In fact, when he teaches side Lexington, Kentucky, when he gets Intro to Archaeology at Transylvania (“Transy,”as it’s also an idea. “I want to show you a shipwreck,” called, is named for a short-lived colony established in Ken- he says. tucky in 1775), he devotes an entire class session to Indiana Begley doesn’t need a map as he navi- Jones and whether he’s ultimately good or bad for the field. gates his tan Jeep Cherokee toward the He admits he loves the movies, archaeological flaws and banks of the Kentucky River. We pull all, and the interest they’ve generated in his field. But he over and clamber to the water’s edge. It’s fears the stereotype discourages those who don’t see them- late November and the riverbank is slip- selves reflected in it: people of color, for example. pery with dead leaves. Thirty feet or so When journalists write about him, they tend to focus on ahead, the promised shipwreck is just vis- the most Indy-esque elements of his work, adventure and ible above the water’s surface. danger. It’s understandable—Begley is best known for his The Brooklyn, a 1903 stern-wheeler, was once a floating research in eastern Honduras, including the Mosquitia, a restaurant. The vessel met an unhappy end in 1988, when, roughly 32,000 square mile rainforest region often char- after a bad drought, its hull was punctured by the river’s acterized as forbidding and difficult. rocky bottom. Since then the Brooklyn has slid deeper and Begley doesn’t fundamentally disagree with these de- deeper below the water’s surface. scriptions, though he’s careful to point out that danger isn’t An archaeologist whose recent work focuses on ship- what drew him to archaeology. He went to eastern Hondu- wrecks, Begley, AM’92, PhD’99, has his eye on this one. ras because he wanted to know about the people who once There’s been relatively little archaeological investigation of made it their home, and he dives for shipwrecks because life along Kentucky’s water routes, and he’d like to take stu- they tell us how people lived and what mattered to them. dents and fellow scholars out to study the Brooklyn and other To answer those questions requires a certain amount of ad- craft submerged in the state’s rivers and canals, as well as the venture, but it isn’t the point. Nor is discovery, a word that remnants of historic water infrastructure, such as water lines provokes an almost allergic reaction from Begley: every- and pumping stations. He likes shipwrecks because they help thing he’s studied and documented, he tells me more than you understand what people valued: What did they buy and once during my visit, was known about and pointed out to sell, and what were they willing to ship over long distances? him by the local and indigenous populations who have been But Begley, an associate professor at Transylvania Uni- indispensable to his work. versity in Lexington, hasn’t as much time to devote to the “I don’t know that I’ve discovered anything. … I don’t fledgling Kentucky Waterways Project as he’d like, in part even know which sites I first documented, or some other -ar because he’s been busy doing research on shipwrecks in the chaeologist,” he says. “It just doesn’t matter.” He’s fond of a Mediterranean and El Salvador. phrase credited to the archaeologist David Hurst Thomas: It’s worth pausing here to consider that, in Begley’s it’s not what you find, it’s what you find out. world, this constitutes an entirely unexceptional explana- Begley isn’t shadowboxing when he expresses frustra- tion: I have not had enough time to devote to domestic shipwrecks, tion about the portrayal of archaeology in the media. For because I have been too busy diving for shipwrecks internation- ally. Begley’s work and the stories it generates are so abun- dant and so entertaining that talking to him is like meeting the guy from the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the stock photo (previous pages); photo courtesy chris begley World” commercials. He had a run-in with a famous Hon- HE’S SEEN UP CLOSE duran bandit! His grandfather was an Appalachian folk hero! He was one of Men’s Journal’s “50 Most Adventur- WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ous Men”! He explored the jungle with Ewan McGregor for a BBC documentary! THE POPULAR APPETITE When, a couple of days into my visit, Begley mentions off- handedly the underwater search-and-recovery missions he’s done, it barely registers. That he searches for murder victims FOR A GREAT STORY in the deep is not even the most exciting thing he’s saidthat day. So, yes: Begley does in many ways resemble the swash- DEVOURS A MORE buckling Indiana Jones archaeologist archetype, and he
knows it. Yet this archetype and the way he so tidily ful - NUANCED REALITY. national geographic creative/alamy
26 the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018
UCH_Begley_v7.indd 26 4/27/18 8:48 AM Begley says he’s drawn to archaeology in difficult environments, “because I like those challenges, but also because places with those attributes tend to be less explored, providing an opportunity to fill a need.”
several years the area in Honduras where he began his ca - authorizing the creation of the Office of Surface Min- reer has been at the center of a dispute about exactly these ing Reclamation and Enforcement, both Joe and issues: the sometimes distorting force of publicity on com- J. T. were there. Later J. T. became a lawyer for the office. plex scholarly work, the media’s love of danger, discover- Begley got his first taste of adventure exploring the hilly ies, and firsts. He’s seen up close what happens when the outskirts of his grandparents’ house in Blackey, Kentucky popular appetite for a great story devours a more nuanced (present day population: 156). Sometimes he’d find his way reality—when it gets in the way of the truth. into abandoned coal mines, or happen on an old mine car. During those backyard excursions, he felt a visceral connec- tion to the past. When he got dropped off back home in Lex- rom his grandfather Joe, Begley inherited not only a ington, dirty and exhilarated, he’d watch Jacques Cousteau deep connection to his home state of Kentucky but on television. That was what he wanted to do, he decided: go also the idea that you should fight for regular folks places he’d never been, see things he’d never seen. F against the powerful. (His grandmother Evelyn Begley picked up field techniques as an undergraduate at Gaynell Caudill Begley, EX’39, attended the University Transy, with the help of summer field schools and volunteer of Chicago.) work with University of Kentucky archaeologists. By the Joe Begley was among the earliest anti-strip-mining ac- time he enrolled in graduate school in anthropology, he felt tivists in Kentucky. When Joe settled in eastern Kentucky, well prepared for fieldwork. At UChicago he bulked up on “immediately he saw people being abused by coal com- postmodern theory and absorbed everything he could from panies,” Begley says. His grandfather found ways to get his professors, including Marshall Sahlins, the Charles F.
stock photo (previous pages); photo courtesy christhings begley done: Joe Begley knew everyone, talked to everyone, Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthro- worked with everyone. “It was that connection that really pology, with whom he played basketball a few times a week. allowed his effectiveness,” he says. Without those relation- In graduate school Begley heard Instituto Hondureño de ships, you “just end up screaming from the sidelines.” Antropología e Historia (IHAH), the government agency Joe was also comfortable working outside the system responsible for archaeology in Honduras, was looking for when it suited his purposes: during one particularly cold someone to document prehistoric sites in the eastern part winter, when county residents couldn’t get enough fuel to of the country. heat their homes, he convinced the railroad to illegally dump He knew relatively little about the area, and his Spanish an entire carload of coal by the side of the tracks, which he was rudimentary. His first field season was rough—not so distributed to locals like an Appalachian Robin Hood. much a baptism by fire as a baptism by constant, unending Begley’s father, J.T., continued the family’s so - dampness. But Begley discovered he was well suited to cial justice tradition by working as a poverty lawyer. working in challenging conditions. “I don’t have any partic-
national geographic creative/alamy When former president Jimmy Carter signed the law ular skill that makes me any good at this stuff, except that I
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UCH_Begley_v7.indd 27 4/24/18 11:05 AM hen Begley started his fieldwork, archaeologists I DON’T HAVE ANY had been working in eastern Honduras for about 70 years. There was a lot they still didn’t know about PARTICULAR SKILL THAT W the people who had lived there centuries earlier. But they had an essential source of information all around them—the indigenous Pech, the group’s likely descendants. MAKES ME ANY GOOD Begley turned to the Pech for help throughout his re- search. He was part of an early wave of archaeologists AT THIS STUFF, EXCEPT paying close attention to the needs and knowledge of local populations, says Rosemary Joyce, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “We needed to learn THAT I CAN JUST STAND to be collaborative. We needed to learn to talk to the local people, to listen to them,” Joyce says. Begley was “consis- BEING UNCOMFORTABLE tently already there.” Others have written about the Pech, but “Chris is the person who has spent the most time with FOREVER. them, and that definitely comes out in his writing,” says Mark Bonta, a geographer at Penn State Altoona. can just stand being uncomfortable forever,” he says. (Physi- Without their help, Begley says he would never have cal fitness helps, but “sometimes you imagine that getting in found the 125 sites he documented in his dissertation. (He shape will make something easy. It just makes it possible.”) estimates that since completing his dissertation he’s docu- In its early stages, the research consisted of what Begley’s mented another 75 and that around 400 sites belonging to dissertation describes, decorously, as “pedestrian survey” this group have been identified in total.) and “pedestrian reconnaissance”—essentially, walking His Pech collaborators knew where all the sites were, big around in the jungle, looking for ruins, and trying not to die. and small. They also helped Begley interpret what he was Getting yourself killed is easier in eastern Honduras than seeing. When he found the remains of grinding stones at in many places, thanks to its arsenal of poisonous snakes, some of the sites he excavated, he assumed they must have including the deadly fer-de-lance, and insect-borne tropical been used to mill corn. The Pech corrected him, saying diseases. Bad luck and quotidian disasters (sprained ankles, they used grinding stones for manioc, or cassava, as well. sunken canoes) can also add up. Completed in 1999, Begley’s dissertation offered the On rare occasions, people posed as much of a threat as most reliable modern data about the archaeology of the the snakes and bugs. During one of his last field seasons in Mosquitia, according to Joyce. “He’s the one person who’s graduate school, Begley and his local guides, one of whom actually done extensive work in this area,” she says. was just 15, encountered a well-known bandit—the Jesse Begley’s research helped pin down basic information James of Honduras, “the boogeyman you scare the kids about the group—what they ate (probably manioc), what with”—brandishing a gun. The bandit had been hiding language they spoke (most likely something in the Macro- in the jungle to evade law enforcement and was less than Chibchan family, like the Pech today), when their culture thrilled to cross paths with an American academic who reached its height (1000–1200 AD, give or take). The cul- might reveal his whereabouts. Begley and his companions ture appears to have declined drastically by the 16th cen- got away by sneaking off at night. To avoid leaving foot- tury, though some of the larger sites were abandoned even prints, they waded through a river. earlier, before the arrival of Spanish explorers. Begley tells this story over a beer at a nearly deserted bar There’s no modern-day name for the group. When Beg- not far from the wreck of theBrooklyn . His shoulders suddenly ley was writing his dissertation, he considered coming up drawn tight, he says he doesn’t know how to reckon with this with one, just for convenience, but decided it wasn’t his memory, so he tries mostly not to think about it, how it would place to do so. “If the Pech want to come up with some name have taken days or weeks for anyone to find their bodies. For for their own ancestors, that’s great,” he says. “I’ll be glad hours they had no idea whether they’d gotten away or not. to use that.” As they walked, Begley found himself imagining the For years scholars defined these ancient Mosquitians movie version of the escape, where he’d come up with some mostly by what and who they weren’t. The architecture and ingenious plan if the bandits caught up with them. But no pottery they left behind didn’t look quite South American, scheme announced itself. He was just tired and afraid. “I but it wasn’t quite Mayan either—though there were clear remember thinking, I could have gone to law school.” signs of trade and cultural exchange with their neighbors
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UCH_Begley_v7.indd 28 4/24/18 11:05 AM to the north. As occupants of a border region, the people f you work in Honduras for a little while, you’ll start to of the Mosquitia had their own distinct identity and mate- hear stories about the White City, or Ciudad Blanca—a rial culture, but they adopted some characteristics of the mysterious place, tucked away in some remote part of powerful societies around them. I the Mosquitia, perhaps full of treasure. Stick around Begley’s research revealed one big surprise: the sites he long enough and you’ll meet people who claim to have found studied contained ball courts—rectangular arenas bordered it. (“Somehow they never seem to have photographs,” says by two parallel mounds with sloping walls. Ball courts were Henderson, his eye roll nearly audible through the phone.) used to play the Mesoamerican ball game, a sport used for No one knows exactly when or how the present-day recreation, diplomacy, and ritual. At times it ended with White City legend emerged. The myth has some similari- human sacrifice, though some believe this element has been ties to Pech stories about a place called Kao Kamasa (the overemphasized. (One scholar I spoke with recalled hearing White House), filled with gods who fled their villages after a guide at a major Mayan ruin tell tourists that the winners of Europeans arrived in Honduras. The only people who can the ball game were always sacrificed. She found this hard to enter the “Place of the Ancestors,” as the Pech also call it, believe: “That would seem to lead to low-scoring games.”) are those who speak all seven indigenous languages. And To archaeologists, finding ball courts in the Mosquitia since no one does anymore, Kao Kamasa remains inacces- was a big deal. According to the prevailing theories at the sible. Another local indigenous group, the Tawahka, also time, they simply didn’t belong so far east. But there they have a legend about a lost place special to them. were. “It really required us to rethink the way that ball Early Spanish explorers told a story of their own. In 1526 courts figured into social life,” Joyce says. Hernán Cortés wrote to Emperor Charles V about a town Building them was not an arbitrary architectural choice. “eight or ten days’ march from that town of Trujillo. … So “It has implications for your belief system, for your cos- wonderful are the reports about this particular province, mology, for everything,” Begley says. To him it suggested that even allowing largely for exaggeration, it will exceed that the upper crust of the ancient Mosquitia had imported Mexico in riches.” Nearly two decades later, a Spanish the game from the Maya and used it to prove they were the priest named Friar Pedraza wrote about a wealthy civili- source of mystical knowledge from faraway lands. “Elites zation living on the north coast of Honduras. were borrowing certain elite public elements—ball courts, Somewhere along the way, the indigenous tales of Kao site plans—from their powerful neighbors as a way of gain- Kamasa got conflated with these Spanish reports, result - ing and maintaining power,” he explains. ing in an El Dorado–like legend, one that has proved irre- The presence of ball courts also shed light on the social sistible to generations of explorers and treasure hunters. relationships between the various cultures that inhabited Their hunts for a singular, fixed location belied the shift- lower central America. “That says to me that they were ing, elusive quality of the White City legend. It wasn’t clear very closely related to their neighbors to the west,” says which version of the story guided these adventurers in their John Henderson, an archaeologist at Cornell University. searches—was it the Spanish accounts of cities filled with “Once Chris began to make it clear there are some really gold, or one of the many indigenous versions? For the hunt- big sites out there, then the fact they had ball courts in them ers, it seemed not to matter. was really interesting.” The early 20th century saw a succession of American ex- plorers setting out in search of the White City. One of these adventurers, Frederick Mitchell-Hedges, didn’t find it but said he’d heard from locals of a place called the Lost City of WE NEEDED TO LEARN the Monkey God. Another, R. Stuart Murray, got closer. He reported that a local had brought him several stone ar- TO BE COLLABORATIVE. tifacts from the Lost City of the Monkey God, but the man was bitten by a fer-de-lance and died before he could reveal WE NEEDED TO LEARN the city’s location. Next came Theodore Morde, who, after a four-month search, claimed to have seen the lost city with his own eyes. The media went wild. But key excerpts of TO TALK TO THE LOCAL Morde’s journals, rediscovered in 2016, show him to be a fraud: he never found the city, or even got close. PEOPLE, TO LISTEN Begley had heard the stories, and like many scholars of Honduras, he didn’t put much stock in them. He knew TO THEM. there were lots of large and interesting archaeological sites
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UCH_Begley_v7.indd 29 4/27/18 1:15 PM in eastern Honduras, but as far as he was concerned, none duras, the tenor of the media coverage and the UTL team’s of them could be the White City, because the very idea of willingness to cooperate with it violated fundamental prin- the White City is an assemblage of fact, fiction, and misun- ciples of their field. Begley cowrote an open letter outlining derstanding. Even the indigenous versions of the legend, his objections. Twenty-six scholars including Joyce, of UC he argues, may not be tied to a single location, or a site of Berkeley, signed it. They were troubled by the language of any size: for the Pech and the Tawahka, Kao Kamasa rep- discovery used to describe the newly located site, and by resents an idealized past, a golden age before the arrival of the characterization of the culture that inhabited it as un - Spanish explorers and other outside threats. known and vanished—how vanished could it be, given that But the probable nonexistence of the White City hasn’t the culture’s likely descendants, the Pech, were still living stopped people from continuing to look for it. In fact, it was in the area? a recent quest for the elusive site that sparked a scholarly Henderson, of Cornell, didn’t sign the open letter Beg- debate about archaeology’s relationship with the media. ley cowrote—“I was kind of irritated at the politically cor- Documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins had long been fas- rect quality of the objection,” he says—but shared some cinated by the White City legend and, in 2012, decided to of the same frustrations. He took particular issue with take a high-tech approach to the hunt using lidar, or light de- articles in which the find was “pitched as astonishing and tection and ranging. It was a long shot; even some involved entirely new.” in Elkins’s mission suspected it wouldn’t work, given the In fact, “there had been a whole lot of work out there, density of the rainforest in eastern Honduras. much of it done by Chris,” Henderson says. He believes But the technology did its job. When Elkins’s team, the archaeologists studying the site should have intervened accompanied by journalist Douglas Preston, flew a lidar- more forcefully to point out how much was already known equipped plane over a 55-square-mile region of the jungle, about the ancient residents of the Mosquitia. “They were the imaging system penetrated the canopy of trees and happy to let the publicity machine generate a lost civiliza - revealed, among other things, what they believed to be a tion,” he says. major archaeological site. Throughout 2015 Begley and others traded barbs with Initially Begley was thrilled by the news. The Under the the archaeologists involved with the UTL team. Preston, Lidar (UTL) group, as Elkins’s team came to be called, had who’d covered the team’s work in the New Yorker and Na- found important remains of the culture he’d been studying tional Geographic, went on to write a book about it, The Lost for years. “With lidar, you can find archeological sites that City of the Monkey God: A True Story (Grand Central Publish- you could never before,” Begley told Preston in a New York- ing, 2017). In the book Preston alleged Begley didn’t have er article published in 2013. “There is incredibly valuable the proper authorization for his field work in the Mosqui - information in those images.” He offered to help the team tia after 1996. Begley denies the charge. (Dario Euraque, interpret the lidar results, but no one took him up on it. a professor at Trinity College in Connecticut who was the Meanwhile the press got the bit between its teeth and director of IHAH from 2003 to 2006, told me he does not ran. The UTL team announced in a press release that they find the accusation against Begley credible.) had located “what appears to be evidence of archaeological It was, all in all, a bruising controversy. Begley remains ruins in an area long rumored to contain the legendary lost angry about the attacks on his reputation but has tried not city of Ciudad Blanca.” The wording was cautious—and to dwell on them. He had stopped doing fieldwork in the largely ignored. A typical headline was this, from the Daily Mosquitia years before, mostly out of fatigue. “Every Mail: “Scientists ‘discover’ legendary lost White City of field season felt like some special forces training or some- gold in dense Central American jungle thanks to advanced thing. Here’s a 70-pound pack, carry that for a month. … I laser mapping.” was ready for something else,” he says. He was more con- Three years later, Douglas Preston, who had continued cerned about the Hondurans who were critical of the UTL to follow the UTL team’s work, wrote an article in Na- tional Geographic that described the lidar-located site as the “never before explored” remnants of a “vanished culture.” (In the same article, the team was more careful to reject as- sociation with the White City appellation. “Archaeologists EVERY FIELD SEASON … no longer believe in the existence of a single ‘lost city,’ or Ciudad Blanca, as described in the legend,” Preston wrote.) FELT LIKE SOME SPECIAL Another wave of sensationalized media coverage followed.
To Begley and other archaeologists specializing in Hon- FORCES TRAINING. photo courtesy chris begley
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UCH_Begley_v7.indd 30 4/24/18 11:05 AM In recent years Begley has been focused on underwater archaeology. With the help of local fishermen, he and col- leagues documented 45 shipwrecks off the coast of Greece.
research. The mission had the support of the Honduran Of the 45 shipwrecks the group documented, 37 had been government, so speaking out carried greater risk for them. shown to them by locals. There was no magic technology, Meanwhile, the UTL team continues to report from just people. what they now call the City of the Jaguar. Some of their That’s not to say Begley isn’t interested in gee-whiz findings echo Begley’s previous research about the early gadgetry and the ways it can help archaeology. For the residents of the Mosquitia—among other noteworthy ele- past decade he’s been working on developing and testing ments of the site, the team in 2016 reported the presence of a portable 3-D imaging system that can be used in remote “two parallel mounds that may be the remains of a Meso- and hostile environments, including underwater. Begley american ballcourt.” has proposed that the light, portable system could be used on everything from historic cemeteries to ancient foot im- pressions to maritime archaeology. He’s tested the system egley still goes back to Honduras occasionally, but in Honduras, Spain, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, and his research is now focused on underwater archae- closer to home in Missouri and the Kentucky River. ology, which, not unlike the rainforests of Hondu- More and more, he’s drawn to projects in his home state. B ras, comes with logistical challenges. Depending He wants his students to know that there is important ar - on how deep you dive, “you may be able to work for 15 min- chaeological work to be done, even in their own backyard. utes at a time a couple of times a day,” Begley explains. At “I love Kentucky,” he tells me on a rambling drive depths of 100 feet or more, cognitive impairment—divers through horse country outside Lexington. He points out call it the “rapture of the deep”—kicks in. “It’s like being little things: historic buildings, bluegrass, the way the drunk,” he says. properties are lined by a particular type of stone wall. Later His work on shipwrecks has taken him to Central Amer- we walk across a natural stone bridge in Daniel Boone Na- ica and the Mediterranean. In all of these places, just as in tional Forest, and he tells me about the rock formations. He the Mosquitia, getting to know the local population was describes the scenery as we pass—sycamores, oaks, Vir - essential. In Greece, a project he was involved in man- ginia pine. His roots here are deep. aged to find, over a pair of two-week field seasons, some Though teaching at a small liberal arts school can feel 45 shipwrecks, “a quarter of all shipwrecks ever recorded limiting for someone so attracted to research and field- in Greece,” Begley says. Everyone wanted to know how work, he also likes working with kids from Kentucky, who they’d done it. “Folks would ask, what technology are you make up the majority of Transy’s student population. He using?” The answer was fishermen. wants them to hear a professor who sounds like them. Local fishermen had a wealth of knowledge from years After a day of teaching Begley goes home to his family in spent on the water, and once the team gained their trust, the same Lexington neighborhood where he grew up and they were eager to share what they knew. For instance, first imagined a life of travel and adventure. He’s glad that where nets got caught on something deep below the wa- his children know where he comes from. He is an archae-
photo courtesy chris begley ter, and stories they’d heard of what might be down there. ologist, after all. He wants them to know their history. ◆
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UCH_Begley_v7.indd 31 4/24/18 11:06 AM excerpt LET’S GET LOST Finding our way in the age of GPS doesn’t have to mean sacrificing serendipity. by edward tenner, am’67, phd’72 illustration by renaud vigourt
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UCH_tenner_v1.indd 32 4/25/18 4:43 PM UCH_tenner_v1.indd 33 4/25/18 4:43 PM FROM THE BOOK: Travelers can even preview actual buildings photographed by roving camera cars. Travel appears to be reaching a level THE EFFICIENCY PARADOX of efficiency few imagined even in the 1990s. by Edward Tenner But what does efficient travel really mean, and what may we be losing as well as gaining in the GPS era? Copyright © 2018 by Edward Tenner. The limits of all representations of geographic reality Published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of bring us to the complementary skill of wayfinding, which The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, might be called way-losing. Waylosing is productive and in- a division of Penguin Random House LLC. structive disorientation, distraction, wild-goose chases, dead ends. Google Maps and Google Street View can still be used for exploration, but the Google mission statement, “organize the world’s information and make it universally he master rhetoricians of ancient Greece accessible and useful,” says nothing about randomness or and Rome taught what has ever since been curiosity or the value of occasionally disorganized infor- called the method of loci, or places. The mation. As writer Ari Schulman has noted, the condition- orator or student imagines a house with ing of our expectations by representations did not begin a number of rooms, or in some variants a with electronic maps or online image sharing. Even in the walled city. Some systems even use the hu- heyday of print, it was a challenge to visit sites like the man hand. Each room would be furnished Grand Canyon without having the experience diminished with objects representing the ideas or by the familiarity of guidebooks. facts to be remembered or narrated. There is nothing like the “lost art of getting lost,” as an The idea of the memory palace has often-repeated phrase puts it. Part of the enjoyment of the gone in and out of fashion and is now a fa- old-style road trip, as celebrated in books and films, was vorite technique of the revived sport of memory competi- encountering people and sights that were not described on tion. Memorizers are usually advised to choose a familiar any map or in any guide. The goal of Silicon Valley seems to Tbuilding, but the technique also seems to work with virtual be the creation of a personalized, dynamic, ultimate guide- ones. A pure textual outline is a less efficient way of memo- book to the world. Even its definition of serendipity is an- rizing facts than a set of connected images. other description for accessing useful existing knowledge. If our minds grasp knowledge in such a spatial way, what Consider the scenario envisioned in 2010 by Eric does the electronic efficiency of GPS—ever improving, Schmidt, the CEO of Google, who imagines walking down ever more depended on—imply for our ability to navigate the streets of a foreign city and having information searched our world? A growing number of researchers—geogra- automatically: “‘Did you know? Did you know? … This oc- phers, neuroscientists, psychologists, anthropologists, curred here. This occurred there.’ Because it knows who I and others—have misgivings about the effects of electronic aids on spatial literacy. There is no disputing the benefits of geographic effi- ciency. With the US Defense Department’s release of ac- curate military Global Positioning System (GPS) location WAYLOSING IS services to the public, following authorization by President Bill Clinton in May 20 0 0, and the rise of smartphones a few PRODUCTIVE AND years thereafter, the sense of location of a large part of hu- manity has changed radically. INSTRUCTIVE Today it is easy to pinpoint our locations by coordinates within a few meters and to construct itineraries for travel DISORIENTATION, from virtually any location on a continent to any other. Visitors to a city can see annotated maps of their real-time surroundings with restaurants, museums, and other attrac- DISTRACTION, WILD- tions, and upload their own photos. Motorists 50 years ago might visit an auto club office and get a set of strip maps cus- GOOSE CHASES, tomized with their route and notices of construction and other delays; today such routings are available instantly. DEAD ENDS.
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UCH_tenner_v1.indd 34 4/25/18 4:43 PM am. It knows what I care about. It knows roughly where repaired. It was a visit to another century, down a back I am.” And he continues that “autonomous search—this alley and up a flight of stairs, where I met a small, bent, ability to tell me things I didn’t know but am probably very elderly man who removed the heels and saw that to save interested in is the next great stage … of search.” money on rubber the manufacturer had filled them with That autonomous search can now be implemented by so- wooden inserts. I was mildly humiliated when the cobbler called augmented reality, the overlaying of images, video, cackled “Ami, Ami,” using the Germans’ semi-insulting GPS, and other information in word for Americans, the equivalent real time on images of places of “Kraut”—perhaps a foretaste of the as displayed by cameras on the approaching decline of US shoe manu- screens of smartphones and facturing. Yet in writing my disserta- other devices. Some applica- tion on 19th-century German history, tions, like the Pokémon Go I discovered that the shoe repairer and game, a virtual treasure hunt his little shop and the balcony in a cen- for Pokémon characters, may turies-old courtyard made the artisans help people get productively I was studying much more vivid. lost if they are not too single- Waylosing is thus efficient in its inef- minded about it. On the other ficiency, just as conventional travel has hand, in their quest for the become inefficiently efficient. There characters, players often seem are now not only conventional guide- riveted on the screen rather books but audiotours and smartphone than the surroundings through guides in almost all major museums. Yet which the game takes them. the experience—like the first encoun- Old-style waylosing was ter with often-reproduced monuments different. You could misread like the Grand Canyon—can be anticli- a map or take a wrong turn; or mactic because of saturated exposure. a bridge on a carefully planned For centuries seeing an original routing might be unexpectedly work in a foreign museum was a closed without good detour privilege of affluent travelers who signs. Today there is almost a had probably seen at best a black-and- getting-lost industry. The art white engraving; now mass airline is a subject of a book by the writer Rebecca Solnit, of a con- travel fills the great collections. The paradox is that be - ference by the New America Foundation, and of frequent cause of crowds equipped with smartphones and digital articles and blog posts. Most people seem to be able to re - cameras, and because of the demands of conservation and call a productive incident. security, it can be hard to appreciate a work at close range. Yet being lost is not so easy. As Solnit observes, today’s On the other hand, color art photography and reproduc- urban and suburban hikers and campers no longer have the tion have improved immensely; a growing number of mu- same familiarity with nature and wilderness skills as 19th- seum collections are available freely as high-definition century people who had grown up in the countryside. Get- images online. These images are often made with lighting ting productively lost on road trips and in cities also needs apparatus that would damage the objects with regular use preparation—not in the sense of finding one’s way back but that is allowed for a single session. Museum website but in being able to notice unexpected features and to meet viewers can also enlarge details of objects beyond the ca- people unaccustomed to travelers. There is a special thrill pability of a normal magnifying glass. And as one art mu- in seeing something not famous in guidebooks. seum director observed to me as we toured an exhibition, If travel means ticking off a bucket list of sights effi - younger visitors are seeing the objects only through the ciently, getting lost can be only a distraction. But many of devices they are using to record them—even though none the most memorable sights are those unfamiliar from the of these images will approach the quality achieved by the books. When I was an exchange student in Heidelberg in museum’s professional photographers. the late 1960s, I saw the castle and other landmarks and The inefficient wanderer, on the other hand, will be lived in a converted patrician house in the center of town using his or her time more efficiently by discovering what across from the historic university center. But what I re- is less documented, or even undocumented. Those will of- member most vividly was a side trip to have a pair of shoes ten be the memories that persist longest. Schulman quotes
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UCH_tenner_v1.indd 35 4/25/18 4:43 PM the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s comment that when we at last encounter the canonical sites, “the data of the senses are A REVIVAL OF INTEREST pushed under in favor of what one is taught to see.” Self-driving cars also would make it especially difficult to get lost. A human driver can take a turn on a hunch, can IN SPATIAL LITERACY, slow down in time to visit an unusual sight. It is not clear how well autonomous vehicles will be able to react to spon- FROM THE EARLIEST taneous directions. Will a traveler be able to say, “pull over at the antiques shop with the red sign”? And autonomous SCHOOL YEARS vehicles will not have the local knowledge of taxi and lim- ousine drivers whose personalities and interactions are wonderfully unpredictable. THROUGH GRADUATE The Silicon Valley philosophy fails because private life cannot be run as a business, and even businesses can benefit STUDIES, IS LONG from unbusinesslike accidents. The algorithmic approach to life can be helpful because the future is often like the OVERDUE. past, yet reality has not lost its power to surprise us in ways that enhanced reality can never anticipate. attack, is too great to abandon a backup capability, navy Global Positioning Systems need not be a threat to real ef- senior officers have concluded. ficiency. The next generation, which will combine signals Our challenge is to combine preindustrial wayfinding, clas- from land stations with those of satellites to achieve accura- sical printed maps, and the newest navigational technology cy of inches rather than yards, will make devices more useful to realize the best of each mode. The science of geography, than ever. For users of maps and atlas- which has studied these es, it is much more efficient to know technological transitions, is coordinates instantly than to have to a potentially ideal guide, but thumb through indexes. GPS might be it has long faced challenges in abused by some hikers and climbers, the United States. but it is still a godsend for others. A revival of interest in spa- One problem of Silicon Valley, as tial literacy, from the earliest of some of its critics, is a binary out- school years through gradu- look that appears to require a choice ate studies, is long overdue. between old and new. This is under- And it does not have to wait standable on both sides. The indus- for a national commission, try, with its high failure rate, needs a multimillion-dollar planning vision of change that will sweep away grants, curricular guide- the old. Some opponents of technoc- lines, and the rest of the appa- racy, conversely, are reluctant to con- ratus of educational change. cede any real net benefit. A pragmatic Teaching can certainly help view is to see information technology in spatial awareness, but as a series of complementary layers the skills of wayfinding and and adding to our capabilities. The waylosing are within every- United States military, which took body’s reach. It begins with the lead in developing satellite navi- the family. Even a shopping gation during the Cold War, is also trip to a supermarket can be, recognizing it. The US Naval Academy, which discon- with a little preparation, a highly educational experience. tinued teaching celestial navigation in 1998 after a cur- Why are food stores located where they are? Why is produce riculum review, restored it to the course of study in 2010. nearly always near the entrance, and milk far from it? We are While even the present GPS is more accurate than tradi - all instinctively geographers. We don’t learn to navigate space tional methods by orders of magnitude—sextant readings efficiently. It often takes trial and error. can err by a mile and a half—the risk of disrupted GPS, in- It is an encouraging sign that more parents are choosing cluding defensive disabling of the system in case of enemy to raise their children in cities. Observing the city, learning
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UCH_tenner_v1.indd 36 4/25/18 4:44 PM about its layout, the zones efficiency what it gains in destination of its economic activities, efficiency. The first-time traveler, try- its transportation, can be a ing to focus out the window at the usual visual education itself. But distance, sees only a blur; the view has suburbs—especially older to be extended outward at least a mile ones—have stories of their or so to prevent dizziness, so contact own to be discovered. with surroundings is partially lost. In An ordinary automobile or bus ride can be packed with fact, when high-speed lines are built over new and more di- information. The automotive industry has promoted back- rect rights-of-way, they are likely to blight the beauty zones seat entertainment systems to keep children occupied, and that travelers most want to see. This has not always been there is nothing necessarily wrong with them, but children the case. The rescued Settle–Carlisle railroad line linking (and adults) should experience their world more and tunnel England and Scotland, built at prodigious expense in funds through it less. There is an in-car gaming system called Mi- and human life for main line service in the Victorian era, was leys with location-sensitive features. It isn’t hard to imagine still indirect enough to enhance rather than harm the land - that GPS-equipped software could be used to help children scape of the Yorkshire Dales, but the planned H2 high-speed learn more about what they are seeing on a trip, and to in - train is now feared as a threat to another natural wonder, the volve parents. Chiltern Hills. There is also much to be said for lower-speed transporta- In considering travel and the natural and human land- tion. As a visitor to France, I have admired the TGV railroad scape, we see the ambiguity of the idea of efficiency. One lines that now travel at up to 320 km/20 0 miles per hour. Giv- kind is measured by the directness and speed of a trip, so that en airport congestion and security delays, they are often ef- the ultimate goal may be to eliminate any sense of a journey fectively faster than flying. But they change the experience at all. Airlines flying above the clouds, interstate highways, of travel. When I first took a TGV, I noticed two things. and high-speed railways all began to break our connections First, to sustain the extra-high speeds, the lines had been with the landscapes through which we move. The supposed cut through the countryside as directly as possible, avoiding utopia of watching videos in a self-navigating vehicle is the the natural contours and roads usually paralleled by con- outcome of a process at least a half century old. ventional railroads of the 19th and 20th centuries. This is a As we have seen, though, there is more to efficiency than long-standing trend. In the Princeton, New Jersey, area, the directness. Systems vulnerable to natural hazards or mali- main line between New York and Philadelphia originally fol- cious attack with no human backup can hardly be considered lowed the sometimes meandering route of its predecessor, efficient in the long run. Technology that leaves no place for the Delaware and Raritan Canal. During the Civil War, the human skills, that even reflects suspicion of them, is para- present direct right-of-way was laid out to the east. A new hu- doxically dependent on the prowess of fallible programmers. man landscape of factories and cities grew up around it ( John Technology that isolates us from the environment does not Stilgoe has described the landscape in his book Metropolitan let us use our travel time to our greatest advantage. Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene [Yale University There is still reason to be optimistic about travel. Lo- Press, 1985]), and enough remains to record that history. cation-based mobile computing can help us avoid its frus- The TGV, with far fewer stops and even straighter lay- trations. It can be pro-serendipitous, help us search for out than 19th-century express lines, loses in sightseeing information about our surroundings (as opposed to receiv- ing it passively), and help us share our discoveries. GPS can be skill enhancing, not deskilling, but only if we retain our ability to navigate the old-fashioned, inefficient way with- CHILDREN (AND ADULTS) out it. Technology, if used rightly, can exercise our built-in SHOULD EXPERIENCE GPS rather than allow it to atrophy. ◆ Edward Tenner, AM’67, PhD’72, is a distinguished schol- ar of the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study THEIR WORLD MORE of Invention and Innovation and a visiting scholar in the Rutgers University Department of History. His essays AND TUNNEL THROUGH and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, IT LESS. and the Wilson Quarterly, and on Forbes.com.
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 37
UCH_tenner_v1.indd 37 4/25/18 4:44 PM legacy SHADES OF MEANING Twenty-nine years after his death, the work of Faber Birren, EX’23, still colors the world around us. by christopher good, class of 2019
am convinced when I say that color has been a ne- wrote.) Joseph traveled the world, drew illustrations for glected art,” Faber Birren, EX’23, declared in 1934. newspapers, and earned acclaim for a 1924 solo exhibition No one could make the same claim today, eight at the Art Institute of Chicago. decades on. Certain slivers of ROYGBIV—like That Faber is an anagram of the German Farbe, for color, Tiffany blue or T-Mobile magenta—have been seems to be a coincidence—Faber shared his given name copyrighted under federal law, while others have with his grandmother Catherine’s maiden name. Still, it fit. inspired scientific inquiry and even public policy As a child, he drew on walls and painted murals; as a teen, interventions. Take Baker-Miller pink, a shade he experimented with dyes. some believe has a soothing effect (the experimen- After a brief stint at the Art Institute, Birren arrived at tal evidence for this claim is mixed). Endorsers the University of Chicago in the fall of 1919 with plans to include supermodel Kendall Jenner, who painted study education. He discovered he didn’t miss making art her living room in the bubblegum-like hue, and prison of - but couldn’t shake his interest in studying color—and such ficials in Switzerland, where every fifth prison or police a program didn’t exist at the University of Chicago, or any Istation has at least one pink cell. other academic institution. In the spring of 1921, Birren How color came to a place of such cultural and commercial dropped out, committed to educate himself about color, prominence is a big question, but it has some answers in the and became a regular at the Chicago Public Library. life and writings of Birren, an unconventional consultant and Birren’s early studies were, in a word, eccentric. At one theorist who proclaimed that he was concerned with color point he resolved to test an old scrap of folklore—that be- “not as individual feeling and expression but as mass psychol- ing surrounded by red walls could make a person go mad— ogy and mass reaction.” Over a nearly 60-year career, Birren by coating his entire bedroom with vermillion paint. In a went from a self-taught enthusiast to “the most authoritative week’s time, the only change he could gather was that he source” on color according to the New York Times. felt cozy and cheerful. Birren didn’t just demystify his subject: he “put color to In 1935 Birren left Chicago for New York City, where he work,” as he described it, in 20th-century America, from began to evangelize about color design to skeptical indus- the machinery of heavy industry to the linoleum of suburban trialists. He promised a Chicago wholesale meat company kitchens. Alongside these commercial efforts, he wrote prob- he could boost their sales—the white walls of the com- ing reflections on more speculative, less understood aspects of pany’s coolers, he believed, lent the meat an unappealing color—its power to heal us and to change how we feel. gray tinge. Birren studied porterhouse steaks under vari- After emigrating from Luxembourg, Birren’s grandfather ous lights before determining a blue-green backdrop would Henry Birren settled in Chicago in 1848 and became an under- make the beef look redder. Sales went up, and before long taker. Faber wrote in a 1928 family history that it was “out of the company’s top competitor changed its color scheme too. pure love for beauty, in spite of his heritage of frugality” that he drove “the finest hearse that graced the city’s streets.” Joseph Birren—Henry’s youngest son, and the only one not to become an undertaker—started as a profes - COLOR ... IS MORE LIKE sional painter in 1885, when he was recruited to work on a 360-degree picture, or cyclorama, of the Battle of Get- RELIGION. IT IS IN THE tysburg. (“He was the only painter on the staff who could
achieve the task of making a dead soldier look dead,” Faber BLOOD. illustrationby cherly chalmers
4038 thethe universityuniversity ofof chicagochicago magazinemagazine || may–junspring 2018 2012
UCH_Legacy_FaberB_v4.indd 38 4/24/18 11:55 AM “The story of color is almost the story of civili- zation itself,” Birren wrote in 1963.
diers in dangerous factories, he worked with the DuPont Company to codify the use of bright colors to mark work- place hazards—yellow for stumbling hazards; red for fire protection; orange for equipment that might “cut, crush, burn, or shock”; blue for caution; green for first aid. The system was also adopted by the US Army. For Birren this was truly color at work: intended not merely to decorate, but to catch the eye “with serious meaning.” In 1947 American Magazine compared the lanky, analyti- cal Birren to Sherlock Holmes, and in the postwar era he continued to fit the part. In 1954 Condé Nast hired him as a consultant to House and Garden, where he used computers to analyze paint sales and forecast seasonal trends. In the factory or the supermarket, Birren was a business- man. On the page, in books such asColor and Human Response: Aspects of Light and Color Bearing on the Reactions of Living It wasn’t until color was found to have an impact on bot- Things and the Welfare of Human Beings (Van Nostrand Rein- tom lines that Birren gained a real audience with corporate hold, 1978), he styled himself as a student of color in the tradi- America. In 1945’s Selling with Color (McGraw-Hill), Bir- tion of poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who wrote a book ren related stories from his own clients (painting office (Farbenlehre, 1810) on color theory, and French chemist Michel- walls a darker tone than machinery reduced irritability and Eugène Chevreul, an early theorist of color interaction. inattentiveness among workers, he found); best practices Birren, who died in 1988, steered clear of what he dubbed (in hospitals, operating rooms should be blue-green, while “hyperbole and outright charlatanry” on the subject of col- private patient rooms should be decorated in warm, light or; in writing about its therapeutic uses, he cited the scien- tones); and, for good measure, a smattering of interesting tific research of his day. For instance, he devotes several stories he’d heard (Purdue University, he learned, devel- pages in Color Psychology and Color Therapy: A Factual Study oped red nail polish for agricultural laborers to compare of the Influence of Color on Human Life (McGraw-Hill, 1950) against the ripeness of tomatoes). to the psychoanalyst Felix Deutsch, who observed altera- Soon Birren’s services were in demand in a wide range of in- tions in his patients’ blood pressures when he put them in dustries. When a pool table manufacturer asked him to boost different colored rooms. Describing how artists and de- sales, he suggested that they do away with seedy pool shark signers should use color, Birren used language borrowed connotations by changing the baize from green to purple. from medicine: they “may now … write prescriptions Sales picked up. Then, in 1939, Walt Disney invited Birren which have a basis in fact rather than fancy.” to work as a color consultant. He ended up advising Disney Still, his approach to his life’s work was never just scien- animators on the design of Bambi, Fantasia, and Pinocchio. tific. “Color … is more like religion,” Birren wrote in 1945. His business prospects weathered World War II. At “It is in the blood, an essential part of the psychic make-up a time when other artists were recruited to disguise US of an individual.” For all Birren’s insistence on the need for troops and tanks, Birren brought bright colors to wartime the clinical study and use of color, his writings couldn’t help
illustration by cheryl chalmers cheryl by illustration industry. As inexperienced workers replaced deployed sol- but betray a sense of awe at its power. ◆
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 39
UCH_Legacy_FaberB_v4.indd 39 4/24/18 3:50 PM Yellow Safety color code for stumbling hazards
Peach Cafeteria walls, to improve appetite
Orange Safety color code for hazards that may cause severe injury
Salmon Bathroom walls, for a sense of well-being
Red Safety color code for fire-safety equipment
Maroon Birren’s favorite color
Pink To make golf balls easier to spot on green grass
Blush Rose Electric shavers FABER for women BIRREN’S BRIGHT IDEAS infographic by chloe reibold
Faber Birren Infographic.indd 48 4/25/18 12:45 PM Purple The baize of a billiard table
Wedgewood Blue The color of Birren’s dining room
Blue Egg cartons for white eggs
Blue Safety color code for equipment needing repair
Blush Rose Blue-Green Electric shavers Operating room walls (also FABER for women the best color for selling steaks) Green Safety color code for first-aid equipment
Light Green BIRREN’S Textile mill walls, to reduce fatigue
Black To make objects BRIGHT IDEAS seem heavier
Faber Birren Infographic.indd 49 4/25/18 12:45 PM 42 the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018
UCH_BabyBookSTLA_v6.indd 42 4/30/18 1:49 PM UCH_BabyBookSTLA_v5.indd 43
Since 1928, families have documented childhood landmarks in a book rich with history. life stories
4/26/18 1:45 PM BABYOGRAPHYby susie allen, ab’09 photography by nathan keay Our Baby’s First , were intended as both keepsakes Oncereserved primarily for wealthy families, baby books grew in popularity through the 20th century. Some, like Years Seven and instruction manuals for parents. The information—and style—of the books changed with the times. The midcentury flair of this edition from 1958 was replaced by a new look in the 1980 edition (below). clockwise from top left: clematis, peony, peony, allium (prebloom), coneflower, peony
------on The book book The Our Baby’s But before
a baby book cre book baby a , oday, many infant mile stones, from first steps to firstwords,arecaptured smartphonesandshared family and friends with in minutes. the era of FaceTiming was there Grandma, with Our Baby’s First Seven Years of Aid Mothers’ by ated continues to give parents Our Baby’s First Seven Years The idea for DeLee advocated for a variety of prac Chicago Lying-In Hospital and currently produced by the Chicago Lying-In Hospi tal board of directors. Part keepsake vol ume and part medical advice, Years Seven First de and growth the track to way lasting a theirvelopmentof newborn, year.yearby cen a nearly still today, It’s production in tury after it was first published. the for to refer can you record a “provides rest of a child’s life,” says Gail McClain, a board member who worked on the eighth edition, released in 2013. was birthed by Joseph Bolivar DeLee, the reformist founder of the Chicago Lying-In Hospital and a pioneer in the field of ob stetrics. When DeLee he began 1888, in his school career medical at Northwestern’s grew appalled by what he deemedand “unclean” “ignorant” birthingmortality practices. in Maternal the United Statesly high at the time—one was woman died alarming ev for ery154 live births. Many theseof lives were claimed by so-called childbed fever, a com mon and devastating postpartum infection. tices he believed would protect the safety of mothers and infants. He emphasized a clean environment and the use gowns, of and sterile cloths, mouth gloves, sheets, even for natural deliveries,essary,the use and, forceps.of when nec T
44 the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 UCH_BabyBookSTLA_v5.indd 45
Of particular concern to DeLee were mothers living in poverty. He hoped to create a facility specifically designed to help these women give birth safely and free of charge. In 1895 he opened the Chi- cago Lying-In Hospital and Dispensary at the corner of Maxwell Street and Newber- ry Avenue, near Hull House. The hospital also offered training to doctors, medical students, and nurses eager to learn about DeLee’s ideas. In 1927, with the Chicago Lying-In Hos- pital thriving, DeLee partnered with the University of Chicago, which agreed to fund the construction of a new hospital building in Hyde Park that opened in 1931. Seven years later, the Chicago Lying-In Hospital officially merged with the Uni- versity of Chicago Clinics. As labor and delivery grew safer in the early 20th century, baby books grew in popularity. Wealthy families in particu- lar bought the keepsake volumes to store the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 45 2018 spring | magazine chicago of university the photographs of the newborn and to record lists of gifts and congratulations received. DeLee believed they could serve a more serious purpose. A baby book, he wrote in the foreword to the first edition ofOur Baby’s First Sev- en Years, “should have all the delicate and lovely sentiments attaching to the birth and beginnings of life of the new indi - vidual, but it should have more than this. It should be a record showing the gradual A baby book should have all the delicate and lovely sentiments attaching to the birth and beginnings of life
4/26/18 2:08 PM of the new individual, but it should have more than this. , which, as in Our Baby’s First Seven Years Seemingly no memory or detail is too small for the 1978 edition (below), includes checklists milestones. developmental important of 1958 the including versions, early the of Some edition (this page), even dedicated page a to birds the about questions childrens’ recording bees. the and
------has
Our Baby’s Baby’s Our Our Baby’s First Seven has changed to reflect new knowl new reflect to changed has While inventories of physical and be Each edition of To prepare the 2013 edition, McClain physical and spiritual development of the the of development spiritual and physical body and soul. carefully, … out A study filled if of this, 1000 as such books baby will give valuable informationpartmentmedicine.”pro of Then, now, as in every de ceedstowardwentthebookfrom research and patient care. with development—and child about edge the times. Gone are outdated descriptions of temperament (a child might be phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric, and or melanedition) first the to according cholic, warnings to correct habits such as finger sucking and nose rubbing. A section once titled “Mother’s Notes” becameNotes” in the “Parents’ 1980s. havioral milestones are a constant, everything not stood the test of time. Several early editions included a page, “Questions Pertaining to Sex” (parents were tocord re “Question asked,” “Age,” “Answer,” and “By Whom”), that disappeared by ticular ages, for instance, because faculty membersadvised themthatearlier editions of edition Each new reflect to changed child about knowledge with development—and times. the Years says, she and other board members “went to the experts”—pediatricians, dentists, dietitians, teachers at the LaboratorySchools. They removed information on how much a child should weigh at par the 1970s. Years Seven First
46 the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018
UCH_BabyBookSTLA_v5.indd 46 4/26/18 2:09 PM Seemingly no memory or detail is too small for Our Baby’s First Seven Years, which, as in the 1978 edition (below), includes checklists of important developmental milestones. Some of the early versions, including the 1958 edition (this page), even dedicated a page to recording childrens’ questions about the birds and the bees.
The book, which has sold more than eight million copies through hospital gift shops around the country and now online, is familiar to many families.
didn’t reflect enough variation in normal and healthy weight. The book, which has sold more than eight million copies through hospital gift shops around the country and now online, is familiar to many families. In the course of revising the book, “it was incredible,” McClain recalls. “So many people said, ‘I had one!’” Pat Brend’s family has copies of Our Ba- by’s First Seven Years for four generations. the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 2018 spring | magazine chicago of university the She remembers her mother filling out her book and even storing her report cards in its pages (“some years that was a good memory,” she says). Brend carried on the tradi- tion with her two sons. She filled out each book completely, she says: “I was very thorough.” And she noticed some changes. Her book had a question about favorite radio programs; her sons’ asked about TV shows. Brend recently bought a copy for her fifth great-grandchild—the other four have their own copies too. Just as she and her parents and children did, her grandchildren have copies of Our Baby’s First Seven Years in which to lov- ingly document favorite foods, names of friends, and lost teeth, page by page, gen- 47 eration by generation. ◆ glimpses PAST AND PRESENT by laur a demanski, am’94
usan Kidwell, the William Rainey Harper ern environments and modern processes, and that I should Professor of Geophysical Sciences, has flip to working exclusively on these modern issues, where taught at the University since 1985. Gen- I could maybe help save the world. It is a very rewarding erations of students have learned from kind of work. her in the Core curriculum course Envi - ronmental History of the Earth and on This sounds like something that would interest students. field trips to California, the Bahamas, and Yes. Geology is fun anyway because, I always say, earth sci- other geologically notable destinations. ences is a great field to go into when you can’t decide what Trained as a field geologist, Kidwell kind of science you want to do. It includes everything— has branched out in the past two decades physics, chemistry, biology. to conservation paleobiology, an emerg- Conservation paleobiology is the next level because you’re ing discipline that uses the fossil record to understand envi- interacting with cultural stressors and cultural history and Sronmental change. The work applies basic science to reveal taking the same very integrated, holistic approach. You con- what ecosystems looked like before human activity and sider the whole range of human activities that might have other stressors took their toll. It brings her into partner- been affecting an ecosystem, as well as natural variables, and ship with ecologists, biologists, public agencies, and others try to figure out what actually happened and what drove it. to identify ways to restore environments’ natural states. The main thing I’m after is the sort of Holy Grail of con- In a conversation with the Magazine that has been edited servation biology itself, and that is to figure out what systems and condensed, Kidwell discussed how this work has also were like originally, so that we can figure out what should be made her a part-time cultural historian, how field work the targets for restoration. Which areas have changed, how trains young geoscientists to look, and what art and science have they changed, and what was natural really like? And share in common. then what, if anything, can we do to bring it back? At that point, you begin to hand it over to other scientists. What is conservation paleobiology? I would say it is using fossil records to give a longer time Tell us about the lost ecosystem you discovered off Cali- perspective on issues of conserving biodiversity and restor- fornia last year. ing habitats. It’s a relatively young field in that we’re just It’s one of my all-time favorite projects. It’s such a picture of getting formalized, but people have been using fossils to how science discoveries happen. My former postdoc Adam give insights on endangered species for decades. Tomašových and I were trying to establish how many years This work has become increasingly focused on using were represented by assemblages of dead shells in the seabed. very young fossil records, just from the last few centuries We were using a method that dates individual shells to estab- to the last few thousands of years. So it’s a bridge. We’re lish decades and centuries represented by the accumulations. working on species that are still living today. Mostly we’re looking to see changes in population sizes, in the geograph- ic ranges of species that are still living today, but that we fear are waning or in peril of some sort. THE MAIN THING How long has this been your focus? I’M AFTER IS THE I first got really involved around 2000. I was invited to join a research group evaluating the role of fishing, particularly SORT OF HOLY GRAIL overfishing, in the apparent collapse of coastal ecosystems. It was a real introduction to ecology. I realized that I OF CONSERVATION couldn’t continue to maintain this dual life of doing field
geology work on old records, and also all this work on mod- BIOLOGY ITSELF. photography by jean lachat (top); photo of scallop shells courtesy susan kidwell
48 the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018
Glimpses_Kidwell_v4.indd 48 4/25/18 3:28 PM “Old field areas are like old friends,” says Kidwell, who returns to many of hers on field trips with her geological sciences students. Below, scallop shells from muddy sediment collected on the western Palos Verdes shelf off the coast of Southern California.
THAT’S WHEN I REALIZED, “OH, MY GOSH, COULD IT BE COWS?” IT SEEMED SO LUDICROUS.
We had been focusing on various kinds of clams, but Adam realized that there were a lot of shells of a different kind of bottom-dwelling organism called a brachiopod, which also filter feeds but attaches permanently to the sea- bed. They settle as little larvae. If you have any sediment accumulation, they are toast. Adam suggested we should date the dead brachiopod shells and establish how old they are. There are very few studies of brachiopods, but they’re important in the deep time fossil record. We thought this assemblage would date from the initial post–Ice Age rise in sea level, say 18,000 to as recently as 5,000 years ago. What we found was that not only had these brachiopods been out there for all these thousands of years but they had persisted in abundance all the way up, basically, to the present—as recently as a couple hundred years ago. So what happened to them? Why aren’t they out there now? In 50- plus years of intense sampling by local biologists, they had not encountered any of these organisms alive. So that was wildly exciting, and we just stumbled on it.
What did happen to them? We knew something about cultural history. It couldn’t be climate change, it couldn’t be waste water, it couldn’t be urbanization—these were all in the 20th century, but the brachiopods were disappearing in the 19th century. That’s when I realized, “Oh, my gosh, could it be cows?” It seemed so ludicrous.
And yet, it was cows? In geologic literature, you sometimes run across a sentence saying the rate of sediment runoff from Los Angeles and Or- ange County watersheds must have been much higher during the mission era because of all the cows. But were there really enough cows to have done that? No one gave hard numbers. So I realized we were going to have to learn something about range ecology and sediment runoff, and first we needed a to- tal number of cows to figure out how much sediment they
photography by jean lachat (top); photo of scallop shells courtesy susan kidwell could have caused to run off. Could it have been the right
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 49
Glimpses_Kidwell_v4.indd 49 4/25/18 3:29 PM magnitude to do what had been done to the brachiopod com- munities? They’re buried in mud, and they do not tolerate PEOPLE DON’T THINK mud. We figured “mudification” was implicated. I imagined that the impact of cows is that they over - ABOUT FOSSILS graze—they remove the vegetation and it’s not there to hold rain water, so the water runs off, carrying sediment. BEING USED FOR But when I tried this out on a biologist, he said no, the cows trample the ground and they compact it. Then when rain SUCH PRESENT-DAY comes down, it can’t infiltrate, so an even larger propor- tion of the rainfall runs off the surface. Qualitatively the ISSUES. story fit, but it was quite a job to gather the data, model it, and determine that megatons of dirt per year were stripped. The answer, published last year—we’re writing up the spreading and San Andreas slip faulting, and has an excep- detailed version now—is that LA experienced a hundred tionally thick and well-exposed stack of rocks dating from years of soil loss, starting within a few decades of Spanish the last six million years. It’s a fabulous range of paleo en- colonization, as livestock populations exploded toward vironments for students to ponder. 100,000. That unmanaged rangeland became 100 percent In the field you can help students develop a zoom lens ap - cropland by 1900. But once you no longer had pristine prai- proach to rocks and to the world. Geologists are always zoom- rie with normal levels of animals grazing on it, you had ing in and out. We’re looking at landscape scale, we’re looking muddy, sediment-laden water going into the sea. That was at hand specimen scale, we’re pulling out the microscope, and a real experience, becoming a little bit of a historian. we’re doing the same thing temporally. We’re thinking now, in the past, in the super-deep past, and we do it automatically. What are the larger consequences of the brachiopods The nature of the world is different at different scales. No dying off? matter where you take someone in the field, it’s no longer a It wasn’t just the brachiopods. There were scallops, colonial theoretical issue. They start exercising their eyes and their animals called bryozoans, and other animals that couldn’t brain in this different way. handle mud. It was a mosaic of shelly and sandy habitats with just small mud patches. So we had the extinction of an entire To the extent that you have free time, how do you spend it? ecosystem that no one even suspected had been there. What I’m most serious about is gardening. When I’m not We now have a legacy of widespread mud that is the new doing it, I’m reading about it and visiting botanic gardens normal, and not something that can be removed. The 20th and arboretums. century brought new stressors like warming and waste wa- I also love to go “arting.” There are very close ties be - ter. Waste water has been turned back, and the ecosystem tween field geology and art. As geologists we’re looking at is recovering from that very nicely. But Adam and I know 3-D reality but need to express it in 2-D. Sometimes you can that it hasn’t recovered completely, because we know what do that with a graph and do it mathematically. But a lot of the mud community looked like before. our evidence is relational. We need to turn it into diagrams, We’re thus proposing that a fully natural ecosystem is which are abstractions. Another way of understanding not recoverable here. We should realize that with a sense what you’re looking at is to draw it. of loss and a sense of accountability. But moving forward, I’ll never forget a big Monet exhibition I saw in London. what we can do is to get the best possible ecological ser- It wasn’t until I saw that there were, like, 10 0 haystacks that vices and aim to recover to the early state of those mud eco- I realized his work was so analytic of the interactions of systems. Our young fossil records tell us what these mud light and other slight changes. communities will look like when their part of the original And of course science is like that. It’s a process of system- ecosystem has recovered. People don’t think about fossils atic discovery. It’s so much more creative than people real- being used for such present-day issues. ize, and scientists are more driven by passion than people realize. You can’t have the persistence it takes without the You just returned from your latest field trip with geo- passion. I love seeing these other passions. People are go- logical sciences students. Where did you go? ing to make art whether they’re paid or not, whether they I took 10 students to the Salton Trough in California, a tec- become famous or not. tonic basin that’s at the northern end of the Gulf of Cali - This intellectual journey that true artists are on—you fornia. The Gulf is a very young ocean, with both seafloor know, we all share it. ◆
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Glimpses_Kidwell_v4.indd 50 4/26/18 1:38 PM Notes and Releases, 54 ...... Alumni News, 56 ...... Advanced Degrees, 71 ...... Deaths, 76 ...... Classifieds, 79 peer review
Cool breeze: Saxophonist and flutist Hanah Jon Taylor, then director of the University of Chicago Jazz Ensemble, improvises a tune for his friend Fred Malava (left) and other parkgoers at Promontory Point in 1992. photography by christopher dahlen, ab’95, copyright 2018, the chicago maroon. all rights reserved, reprinted with permission
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 51
Peer Review_Spring18_v5.indd 55 4/26/18 11:05 AM ALUMNI ESSAY
The meditative judge BY EDWARD SPILLANE, JD’92
n the meditation and yoga class- person at that time. Her situation and Misdemeanors include disorderly es I’ve taken for the past several her struggles were more important in conduct, public intoxication, traffic years, I’ve learned that mind- the moment than any other thoughts, offenses, theft, and driving with an fulness—an acute awareness of concerns, or appointments I had at the invalid driver’s license. The last of- what is happening in the present time. My focus was on her. fense is particularly omnipresent as moment—can improve my life. Today I have been a judge in College more states suspend people’s licenses In yoga mindfulness allows one Station for a little over 15 years. Before for unpaid fees and fines, feeding a to unite the body and the mind in that I was a felony prosecutor. In the cycle that prevents many defendants the present through a variety of past five years, just as I began to culti- from closing their cases. Without a physical poses. But as a munici- vate mindfulness through meditation license they can’t drive to work, and pal court judge in College Sta- and yoga, I have been focused on mis- without working they can’t pay down tion, Texas, I have also seen it work demeanors, an area in need of reform. what they owe. With court costs, fees, Iwonders in my courtroom. In retro- Too many misdemeanor defendants in driver’s license suspension surcharg- spect, I was using mindfulness long jail are there not because they are a risk es, and failure to appear charges, a before I recognized what it was. to the public or refuse to come back to $200 case can easily become $2,000. I met my first “client” while in law court, but because of their economic And that might as well be $2 million school. At the University of Chicago circumstances. They either cannot to an indigent defendant. Law School’s Mandel Legal Aid Clin- make the bail assessed against them Richard G. was such a defendant. ic in the early 1990s, we were helping or cannot pay the fines, fees, and other A year ago he received two violations: citizens avoid losing their housing due charges that stack up in many cases. speeding and no insurance. I first saw to evictions that violated federal civil Working on reform takes a global Richard in the jail when he was arrest- rights law. I do not remember her name. view and requires insights beyond an ed for failing to appear. When I see de- But I can remember as clearly as if it individual defendant; however, I have fendants in the jail, I always let them were yesterday the experience of see- learned that individuals tell the story out without making them post a bond. ing the law I had studied in class come better than statistics. Mindfully fo- I have found if they have a chance to to life in the basement legal aid clinic. cusing on the person in the courtroom talk to a judge who listens to them and I can still remember the dress and allows a judge to gain insights that can explains the options (including plead- sweater she wore for the interview then go beyond that one person. ing not guilty), they tend to show up to at the clinic and her children, who ac - court and cooperate. companied her. She told me her story, Too many misdemeanor I asked Richard, “Why didn’t you her struggles, her work history, and we come to court?” He told me that he eventually were able to save her hous- defendants in jail are was saving money for the fines and ing by sending a letter to the landlord there not because they court costs but also that he was afraid explaining the situation and the lawsuit of being arrested there. I let him know photo credit teekay credit photo we might file should she be evicted. are a risk to the public that our standard practice is never to theispot It wasn’t until many years later or refuse to come back arrest defendants in our courthouse c/o that I understood why I still have a even if they have active arrest war- clear image of meeting this woman. to court, but because rants for not appearing or unpaid fines. Even though our discussions were of their economic Richard was a hard worker. He brief and her name is lost to me, I was held two jobs yet was having trouble photo credit teekay completely and utterly mindful of that circumstances. making ends meet with a child whose ©2018 jon krause
6452 the university university of chicago of chicago magazine magazine |sept–oct | spring 2011 2018
UCH_Alumni Essay_Spillane_v2.indd 52 4/25/18 4:20 PM an undue burden have given us a way to release defendants from impossi- ble financial obstacles. We also have incorporated a long list of alternative sentencing options that work: teen court, where teens make decisions about how much community service their peers should perform; drug re- habilitation programs; high school degree training; first offender, victim impact, or community living classes; and mentoring or tutoring. In my experience these programs, when properly funded and run, are more effective than jail or fines for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Our judicial council and chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court Nathan Hecht, working with our state legislature, even managed to get a safe harbor law passed in 2017: now no de- fendants can be arrested if they come to court, even if they have active war- rants outstanding for failing to appear or unpaid fines. What I once discussed with Richard G. is now Texas law. Most judges’ chief desire is for de- fendants to avoid future visits to any courtroom, and alternative punish- special needs incurred hefty medical of the fines and fees Richard owed. ments that rely less on fines and bail bills. He could not afford insurance Cooperation is a two-way street, and have produced positive results. and was on his way to losing his driv- I made sure he had a chance to be a law A mindful focus on individual er’s license. The $200 traffic ticket abiding citizen, one who knows now defendants in the courtroom can would in many courts be the beginning not to be afraid of courts or judges. allow judges to contribute to large- of an impossible financial burden. The Richard G. is one man with one case scale reform. Applying punishments bottom line was that Richard could in one court in Texas. But, like the lady mechanically actually creates crimi- not hold his two jobs without driving in the Mandel Clinic, one person can nal justice failures. A focus on the a car. As a judge, I needed to be mind- represent so much more. How can we present allows a judge to gain more ful of Richard’s individual case. put mindfulness in practice through- insight into each defendant and serve I told Richard that as long as he came out the justice system with the positive the best interests of everyone in his or to court he would never be arrested. results I’ve seen in one courtroom? Im- her court. What I experienced as a law Even if he could not follow my order, provements in the law itself will go a student at the Mandel Legal Clinic we would listen to and work with him long way quickly, along with training now makes sense to me so many years as long as he kept in contact. Richard and persuading stakeholders across later. Mindfulness works. ◆ photo credit teekay credit photo theispot assured me that he would get insur- the criminal justice system.
c/o ance. He paid what he could of the In Texas, far from a liberal state Judge Edward Spillane, JD’92, is a speeding fine and performed commu- and with a legislature perhaps more member of the National Task Force nity service on a Saturday morning. conservative than its citizens, laws on Fines, Fees, and Bail Practices After one month of his cooperating granting judges the ability to waive and of the Misdemeanor Criminal with the court and after he showed fines, court costs, and fees in cases Justice Project of John Jay College photo credit teekay ©2018 jon krause proof of insurance, I waived the rest where alternative punishments are of Criminal Justice.
theuniversity university of ofchicago chicago magazine magazine | sept–oct | spring 20182011 6553
UCH_Alumni Essay_Spillane_v2.indd 53 4/25/18 4:20 PM NOTES
CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER In 1956 Timuel Black, AM’54, brought Martin Luther King Jr. to campus for what would be his first major speech in Chicago. In 1963 Black organized the Freedom Trains that took Chicagoans to the March on Washington, where they heard King deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. And this February, the South Side community where Black grew up celebrated him as a local icon of GOING SOLO the US civil rights tradition. At a From March 2 to April 28 the Zg Gallery in Chicago held the first solo exhibition Black History Month ceremony at of visual artist Clare Rosean, MFA’12. Middle West: New Paintings and the Walter H. Dyett High School Works on Paper featured paintings and drawings that Rosean says for the Arts in Washington Park, “illustrate the personal and shared anxieties of a lifelong Midwesterner,” Black was presented with the school’s including the mixed media work Hobo Code (above). Newcity listed Rosean’s inaugural Honorary Eagle Award “for exhibition as one of its top five art shows in Chicago in March, calling his continuous fight for Civil Rights, her work “playful and eerie.” Rosean credits her dreamlike visual style to and his commitment to preserving comic art and medieval Sienese painting. Bronzeville’s rich history and legacy.” Black’s two-volume oral history of the Great Migration to Chicago is called mathematics in 1965. After making President and was a judicial law Bridges of Memory (Northwestern history as the student who integrated clerk for the Illinois Appellate Court University Press, 2003 and 2007). UNA, Gunn pursued a career in in Chicago. He has worked on the politics and business. He was an in- Illinois Commerce Commission WORLD CINEMA WINNER ternational trade adviser to President since 2007, becoming its chief At this year’s Sundance Film Ronald Reagan and later founded administrative law judge in April Festival, Time Share (2018), Gunn Solutions, a technology com- 2015. He was the first African cowritten and produced by Julio pany that provides consulting services American to hold that position in Chavezmontes, AB’05, won the to institutional investment managers. the commission’s history. Special Jury Award for screenwriting in the category World Cinema VETERAN PUBLIC SERVANT MAJOK’S NEXT ACT Dramatic. Chavezmontes established John E. Whitley, AM’98, PhD’00, The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama his reputation as a leading Mexican was nominated to be assistant secretary was awarded in April to Martyna filmmaker in 2012 with the horror of the Army by President Donald J. Majok, AB’07, for her play Cost filmHalley , nominated for several Trump on February 2. Whitley, an of Living, about two relationships Ariel Awards, Mexico’s equivalent of Army veteran with experience in the involving a person with a disability. the Oscars. Time Share tells the story Department of Homeland Security and In January Majok also became of two fathers who become convinced the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the first woman to receive the an American timeshare conglomerate was a faculty member at George Greenfield Prize, awarded jointly by clare is plotting against their families. The Washington University’s Trachtenberg the Philadelphia-based Greenfield
film is currently being marketed for School of Public Policy and Public Foundation and the Hermitage Artist rosean US and international release. Administration before becoming Retreat in Englewood, Florida. The
a senior fellow at the Institute for prize includes a $30,000 commission , HONORING A CAMPUS PIONEER Defense Analyses in Virginia. for a new work and additional support hobo
At a ceremony held in March, the for its writing and production. Majok code University of North Alabama NEW COMMISSIONER plans to write a musical about friends , 2018. , 2018. (UNA) honored Wendell W. Gunn, D. Ethan Kimbrel, AB’92, was who struggle with life as refugees
MBA’71, by officially renaming its appointed by Governor Bruce after growing up near the Chernobyl courtesy commons building the Wendell W. Rauner to the Illinois Commerce nuclear disaster area. Her most recent Gunn University Commons. Gunn Commission on January 19. Kimbrel, play, queens, about two generations of
was the first black student ever to who studied law at George immigrant women living in Queens, the
enroll at UNA, then called Florence Washington University, previously premiered in March at the Claire Tow artist State College, where he earned a served as a legislative analyst for Theater at Lincoln Center.
bachelor’s degree in chemistry and the Office of the Illinois Senate —Andrew Peart, AM’16 .
54 the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018
Notes_Layout_Spring18_v6.indd 54 4/27/18 1:28 PM SONGS FOR SCHIZOID SIBLINGS University, suggests Zangwill’s play RELEASES By Lionel Ziprin; introduction, notes, is relevant to our own contemporary and bibliography by Philip Smith, debates about immigration and diver- AB’89; The Song Cave, 2017 sity, while presenting supplemental When he died in 2009, poet and readings that illuminate why it sparked The Magazine lists a selection of general Jewish mystic Lionel Ziprin left controversy in its own time. interest books, films, and albums by alumni. behind a trove of mostly unpublished For additional alumni releases, use the link work in his home on Manhattan’s Lower to the Magazine’s Goodreads bookshelf at East Side, where he played host for mag.uchicago.edu/alumni-books. decades to artists and writers attracted to the esoteric side of New York City’s FUTURE HISTORY: GLOBAL FANTASIES IN cultural underground. Prepared from SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN AND the original typescript by editor, BRITISH WRITINGS curator, and bookseller Philip Smith, By Kristina Bross, AM’90, PhD’97; Oxford Songs for Schizoid Siblings is the first University Press, 2017 book by Ziprin to emerge posthu- In the interregnum England planned mously from the author’s archive, what became often violent ventures and only the second of his books ever to conquer, colonize, or take posses- published. A linked series of nearly sion of lands in the Americas and 300 poems mixing Kabbala, nursery East Indies. Kristina Bross, associate rhymes, nonsense poetry, and Beat professor of English at Purdue Uni- experimentalism, this avant-garde text APPROACHING THE FIELDS versity, examines how a range of mid- shows its roots in Jewish tradition. By Chanda Feldman, AB’99; Louisiana 17th-century texts, from astrological State University Press, 2018 almanacs and pamphlets of millenar- AMERICA’S POLITICAL INVENTORS: THE LOST Approaching the Fields is the first full- ian prophecy to missionary tracts and ART OF LEGISLATION length collection of poetry by Chanda colonialist propaganda, helped lay By George W. Liebmann, JD’63; I. B. Feldman, visiting assistant professor groundwork for the British Empire Tauris, 2018 of creative writing at Oberlin College. by other means: envisioning a world After the United States entered Imbuing memory into the Southern of global interconnection. World War I, its government created US landscape, these poems of place emergency institutions to organize a interweave narratives of personal war economy, establishing a political identity, family history, and the model based on the allocation of re- larger African American experience sources to interest groups that is still in scenes of individual witness and with us today. According to historian reflection. The collection’s penulti- and lawyer George W. Liebmann, mate section, “But We Lived,” is a this model has left the United States sequence based on family stories in ill-equipped to pass major new public and immediately after Jim Crow–era policy legislation addressed to the citi- segregation in the South. zenry at large. His models for a differ- ent future range from John Winthrop’s FRACTIVISM: CORPORATE BODIES AND foundation of New England towns in CHEMICAL BONDS the 17th century to Byron Hanke’s de- By Sara Ann Wylie, AB’02; Duke University velopment of residential community Press, 2018 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DINOSAURS: A associations in the 20th. While unconventional oil and gas NEW HISTORY OF A LOST WORLD extraction is upheld by US industry By Steve Brusatte, SB’06; William THE MELTING POT leaders and regulators as a path to the Morrow, 2018 By Israel Zangwill; edited by Meri-Jane energy economy of the future, debates The T. Rex, Triceratops, and Brachiosau- Rochelson, AM’76, PhD’82; Broadview over fracking’s human and environ- rus that Hollywood turned into screen Press, 2018 mental consequences are playing out legends represent only a few characters Israel Zangwill’s drama The Melting in states across the country. New in a cast of hundreds of known dino- Pot debuted on the American stage forms of grassroots activism around saurs. Steve Brusatte, a reader in ver- in 1908, intervening in turn-of-the- the practice are also on the rise. Sara tebrate paleontology at the University century debates about immigration Ann Wylie, assistant professor of of Edinburgh, tells the fuller story here. and nationhood with the story of sociology, anthropology, and health His narrative history of the dinosaurs David Quixano, a Russian Jew who sciences at Northeastern University, traverses more than 200 million years has survived the Kishinev pogrom and documents the work of nonprofits and from origins to extinction. Intertwined embraces America as a place of ethnic academic research groups that help are Brusatte’s firsthand accounts of ex- assimilation. In this critical edition, affected communities gather data and cavations across the globe and discov- Meri-Jane Rochelson, professor emer- participate in the public debates. eries he has helped add to the record. ita of English at Florida International — Andrew Peart, AM’16
the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018 55
Releases_Layout_Spring18_v10.indd 55 4/26/18 11:59 AM IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO BECOME A DOCTOR • Intensive, full-time preparation for medical school in one year • Early acceptance programs at select medical schools—more than any other postbac program • Supportive, individual academic and “Though I retired in 2017, premedical advising “Montgomery Place and Hyde I’m still conducting research VISIT US AT WWW.BRYNMAWR.EDU/POSTBAC Park are both so diverse and and serving on numerous [email protected] alive. I’ve made many friends dissertation committees. 610-526-7350 Even as a professor emeritus, of resident-planned activities my days are very busy. BRYN MAWR COLLEGE and scheduled bus trips to theaters, concerts and operas, Making Montgomery Place which I really appreciate. our new home is ideal for my wife, Louise, and me. Some residents I already know of our proximity to the Point. from the University. We’re I love walking briskly along making new friends, too.” the pathways, enjoying the – alter Kaegi, lake and the view of the Professor of History, ’65 – ’17 Chicago skyline.” – Mariel Stitziel, AM’66 Montgomery Place Montgomery Place
5550 South Shore Drivee hicago 5550 South Shore D rive Chicago 773-753-4100 MontgomeryPlace.org 773-753-4100 MontgomeryPlace.org uchicago photographic archive, apf4-02481, university of chicago library
56 the university of chicago magazine | spring 2018
AlumniNews_Spring18_v10.indd 56 4/27/18 10:21 AM It works both ways. Required to take an IRA distribution? Consider a contribution to UChicago.
“I find the strategy of a direct transfer to the University both fulfills my pledge contribution and minimizes my taxable income. It works!”
—COLEMAN SESKIND, AB’55, SB’56, SM’59, MD’59
If you own a traditional IRA and have Learn more. reached the age of 70 and a half, you can Visit giftplanning.uchicago.edu/winwin make a qualified charitable distribution Email [email protected] of up to $100,000 per year from an IRA Call 866.241.9802 account directly to the University. The distribution counts toward your annual IRA minimum withdrawal requirements and is effectively excluded from taxable income altogether. (Certain rules apply.)
AlumniNews_Spring18_v10.indd 75 4/27/18 10:26 AM his talk show. Survivors include his wife, Marx’s Critical Theory (1993) put forth an DEATHS Marjorie; a son, Matthew D. Rosenberg, influential reinterpretation of Marx’s theo- LAB’76; a brother; and two grandchildren. ries of labor. A UChicago faculty member Robert McCormick Adams, Ph B’47, since 1987, Postone codirected the Chicago FACULTY AND STAFF AM’52, PhD’56, the Harold H. Swift Dis- Center for Contemporary Theory, was a tinguished Service Professor Emeritus of member of the Greenberg Center for Jew- Angelo Scanu, distinguished service pro- Anthropology, died January 27 in Chula ish Studies, and chaired the College Core fessor emeritus of medicine and biochem- Vista, CA. He was 91. Adams joined the sequence Self, Culture, and Society. He is istry and molecular biology, died January UChicago faculty in anthropology in 1955, survived by his wife, Christine Achinger; 12 in Chicago. He was 93. After receiving eventually serving in several leadership his son, Benjamin B. Postone, LAB’11, a Fulbright Scholarship in 1955, Scanu left positions: as dean of the Division of the So- AM’17; a sister; and a brother. the University of Naples in his native Italy cial Sciences, as provost of the University Raymond Gadke, AM’66, reading room to study biochemistry at the Cleveland from 1982 to 1984, and twice as director of manager at the Joseph Regenstein Library, Clinic. In 1961 he entered the UChicago the Oriental Institute. A scholar of Near died February 26 in Chicago. He was 74. internal medicine residency program, Eastern archaeology, he reshaped theories A member of the University’s library staff and in 1963 he received his first faculty ap- about ancient urban societies, pioneered the since 1969, Gadke began overseeing the mi- pointment in the Department of Medicine use of landscape archaeology methods, and croforms department when the Regenstein as assistant professor of cardiology. His left a lasting influence on the study of the Library opened in 1971 and went on to man- research advanced the understanding of Anthropocene. His many books include age the periodical reading room and the ref- lipoprotein(a), a genetic risk factor for ath- Land behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement erence collections. Known for his personal erosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Until on the Diyala Plains (1965) and two others collection of religious statues, he donated his retirement in 2010, he was director or on Mesopotamian settlement patterns. rare religious studies materials to the Re- principal investigator on numerous grant- From 1984 to 1994, he was secretary of the genstein and established the Elden and Ruth funded research projects and programs, Smithsonian Institution. Survivors include Lauffenburger Gadke Endowment Fund including the Lipoprotein Study Unit and a daughter, Megan Adams, LAB’73; two to acquire scholarly resources in the field. In Lipid Clinic. His wife, Ann Wahl Scanu, stepdaughters; and three grandchildren. 2015 more than 50 UChicago alumni raised AM’79, died in 2007. He is survived by his Robert N. Clayton, the Enrico Fermi Dis- money to create the Ray Gadke Internship partner, Celina Edelstein; daughter Gabri- tinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Fund through the Jeff Metcalf Internship ella Scanu, LAB’83; son Marco Scanu, Chemistry, Geophysical Sciences, and the Program. He is survived by a brother. LAB’84; and two grandchildren. Enrico Fermi Institute, died December 30 John T. Cacioppo, the Tiffany and Marga- Jack Halpern, the Louis Block Distin- in Michigan City, IN. He was 87. In cosmo- ret Blake Distinguished Service Professor guished Service Professor Emeritus of chemistry, his studies of oxygen isotopes of Psychology, died March 5 in Chicago. Chemistry, died January 31 in Chicago. He in lunar rocks retrieved by the Apollo mis - He was 66. A founder of the field known was 93. A leader in the field of inorganic and sions led to a method of identifying meteor- as social neuroscience, Cacioppo served organometallic chemistry, Halpern joined ites, which fueled expansive studies of how as chair of the Social Psychology Program UChicago in 1962. His research on homoge- planets and other bodies in the solar system and director of the Center for Cognitive neous catalytic reactions in organometallic formed. He also made major contributions to and Social Neuroscience. Studying the links compounds became instrumental to a vari- the field of stable isotope geothermometry. between social and neural development, he ety of modern chemical manufacturing pro- Chair of the Department of Geophysical Sci- demonstrated the effects of loneliness on cesses, from pharmaceuticals to adhesives. ences and later director of the Enrico Fermi mental and physical health. His many pub- For many years he was editor of the Journal Institute, Clayton was awarded the Nation- lications include Loneliness: Human Nature of the American Chemical Society, and from al Medal of Science in 2004. He is survived and the Need for Social Connections (2008). 1993 to 2001 he served as vice president of by his wife, Cathy; his daughter, Elizabeth He received the Career Achievement Award the National Academy of Sciences, where Clayton, LAB’93; and a granddaughter. from the Chicago Society for Neuroscience he was also associate editor of the Proceed- Peter Freund, professor emeritus in the in 2016 and the William James Fellow Award ings of the National Academy of Sciences. A sup- Department of Physics and the Enrico from the Association for Psychological Sci- porter of the arts, Halpern was a longtime Fermi Institute, of Chicago died March 6. ence in 2018. He is survived by his wife, board member of UChicago’s Court The- He was 81. A theoretical physicist and lit - Stephanie Cacioppo, assistant professor of atre and Smart Museum of Art. Survivors erary author, Freund joined the UChicago psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience; a include daughters Janice Halpern, LAB’68, faculty in 1965 and specialized in particle daughter; and a son. and Nina Halpern, LAB’72; a brother; two physics. He was an early contributor to su- Steven Collins, the Chester D. Tripp Pro- grandchildren; and a great-grandson. persymmetry and string theory. His pub - fessor in the Humanities, died February 15 Milton J. Rosenberg, professor emeritus lications in theoretical physics include the in New Zealand. He was 66. Collins joined of psychology, died January 9 in Chicago. monograph Introduction to Supersymmetry the UChicago faculty in 1991 and taught in He was 92. A social psychologist and a long- (1986) and Superstrings (1988), which he the Department of South Asian Languages time radio host, Rosenberg taught in the coedited. In 20 07 Freund began publishing and Civilizations and the Divinity School’s Department of Psychology at UChicago narrative nonfiction and fiction, including history of religions program. He was an ex- from 1965 until his retirement in 1996. For A Passion for Discovery (2007), about fa - pert in the Buddhist traditions recorded in nearly 40 years he hosted the daily long- mous physicists of the 20th century. He the Pali language of South Asia. His publi- format interview program Extension 720 on is survived by his wife, Lucy (MacAlpine) cations include Selfless Persons: Imagery and WGN radio, broadcasting to 38 states and Freund, AM’60, PhD’65; two daughters; Thought in Theravada Buddhism (1982), bringing top public intellectuals of the day and five grandchildren. the textbook A Pali Grammar for Students to a mass audience. Rosenberg’s scholarship Moishe Postone, SB’63, AM’67, the (2006), and the anthology Readings of ranged from the hidden social dynamics be- Thomas E. Donnelley Professor in the De- the Vessantara J¯ataka (2016), which he hind attitude acquisition to forms of public partment of History and the College, of Chi- edited. He is survived by his wife, Claude protest in the Vietnam War era. His publi- cago died March 19. He was 75. Postone was Grangier, senior lecturer in Romance cations include Vietnam and the Silent Ma- a leading commentator on the works of Karl Languages and Literature; three children; jority: The Dove’s Guide (1970) and Beyond Marx and studied the phenomenon of 20th- and three grandchildren. Conflict and Containment: Critical Studies of century anti-Semitism in the context of Robert J. LaLonde, AB’80, professor at Military and Foreign Policy (1972). In 2008 capitalism’s history. His book Time, Labor, Harris Public Policy, died of complications he won the National Humanities Medal for and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of from a neurodegenerative illness January 17
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Layout_Deaths_Spring18_v9.indd 76 4/26/18 10:02 AM in Chicago. He was 59. LaLonde was on lations. He is survived by his wife, Eleanor; included a five-volume series on Christian the UChicago faculty for three decades a daughter; a son, Robert H. Shadur, JD’72; doctrine, The Christian Story (1978–2007). and served as director of Harris’s doctoral three grandchildren; and four great-grand- He is survived by four daughters, including program. An expert in labor economics, he children. His daughter, Karen Shadur, Skye F. Gibson, AB’82; a son; eight grand- was also a fellow at the National Bureau of AM’87, died in 2010. children; and a great-grandson. Economic Research and the Institute for the Daniel M. Enerson, SB’44, MD’46, died Study of Labor. He served on the board of the February 5 in Smicksburg, PA. He was 95. 1950s nonprofit Public/Private Ventures, which A specialist in cardiovascular and thoracic helps improve the outcomes of community surgery, Enerson contributed to early re- William M. Cross, AM’51, died March 2 in initiatives and social policies and programs. search in cellular swelling and aortic valve Springfield, IL. He was 91. A minister in the He is survived by his wife, Laura Skosey, replacement. He was also a thoracic surgeon Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, LAB’79, AM’87, PhD’96; two daughters, at West Penn and Allegheny Valley Hospi- from 1955 to 1992 Cross served numerous Elena Skosey-LaLonde, LAB’13, and Eve tals in the Pittsburgh region before opening Lutheran congregations throughout the P. Skosey-LaLonde, LAB’16; a son, current his own private practice in the city. In the Midwest. He earned a doctorate in sociol- Lab student Julian Skosey-LaLonde; his 1970s, he and his first wife founded Wind- ogy at South Dakota State University in father; four sisters; and two brothers. gate Vineyards and Winery in Smicksburg. 1971 and taught at Valparaiso University, He is survived by his second wife, Cath- Purdue University Northwest, Illinois 1930s erine; four children; and four grandchildren. College, MacMurray College, and Lincoln Charles Edward Lindblom, PhD’45, died Land Community College–Jacksonville, Landrum R. Bolling, AM’38, died January January 30 in Santa Fe, NM. He was 100. IL. He is survived by two sons. 17 in Arlington, VA. He was 104. Bolling The Sterling Professor Emeritus of Econom- Ernest J. Blum, AB’52, AM’59, of Miami, taught political science at Brown University ics and Political Science at Yale University, FL, died January 17. He was 86. Blum was and Beloit College before joining the faculty Lindblom taught at Yale for nearly four de- a journalist, linguist, and travel writer. He of Earlham College, a Quaker institution, cades and helped found its Institute for Social reported on Japanese business and cultural where he served as president from 1958 to and Policy Studies, where he was director news for Economic Salon, a New York– 1973. He later became executive vice presi- from 1974 to 1980. His paper “The Science of based business magazine, and covered the dent of the Lilly Endowment and then chief Muddling Through” introduced the theory cruise industry for Travel Weekly, a national executive of the Council on Foundations. of incrementalism to discussions of public newspaper for travel agents. His career was A longtime nonviolence advocate, Bolling policy change and decision making. InPolitics marked by extensive travels and a passion played an unofficial role in President Jimmy and Markets: The World’s Political-Economic for learning new languages. He is survived Carter’s negotiations with Arab and Israeli Systems (1977), he addressed why organized by his wife, Lois; a son; and a daughter. leaders and helped secure the 1984 release of business dominates the public policy sphere. David M. Solzman, AB’53, PhD’66, of a US journalist held captive by Hezbollah. He He is survived by a daughter; two sons, in- Chicago, died February 19. He was 83. is survived by two daughters, two sons, eight cluding Eric Lindblom, EX’75; five grand- Solzman was an associate professor emeri- grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. children; and three great-grandchildren. tus of anthropology at the University of Miriam Gollub Banks, SM’47, CER’94, Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where he taught 1940s died November 25 in Chicago. She was 96. geography, meteorology, and astronomy A longtime resident of Hyde Park, Banks since 1965. An expert in urban geography, Myron Rush, AB’42, PhD’51, died January studied biochemistry at UChicago. She put he authored the book The Chicago River: An 8 in Herndon, VA. He was 96. Rush was her scientific training to work volunteering Illustrated History and Guide to the River and trained as an encryption specialist in the for Chicago Public Schools to help evalu- Its Waterways (1998) and frequently gave US Army Air Force during World War II ate and update their science curriculum. local boat tours for alumni of both UIC and and afterward worked in the CIA’s Foreign Her husband, Seymour Banks, MBA’42, UChicago. He is survived by his wife, L. Broadcast Information Service Analysis PhD’49, died in 1996. She is survived by a Rachel McKinzie; two daughters; a broth- Group, where he helped establish the field daughter, Hannah Banks, LAB’70; sons er; and a granddaughter. of Kremlinology. While working as an ana- Joel Banks, LAB’73, and David Banks, Hazel L. (Mason) Hadley, EX’54, of Pal- lyst for the R AND Corporation, Rush pub- LAB’77; and five grandchildren. myra, PA, died December 27. She was 97. lished The Rise of Khrushchev (1958), which Mary (Wheeler) Heller, PhB’47, died De- Hadley was a civilian mathematics instruc- put forth a predictive analytic technique cember 25 in New York City. She was 89. A tor in the US Navy during World War II that was used to assess Soviet power strug- professional fine art photographer, Heller and later studied mathematics education at gles during the Cold War. From RAND was a longtime board member of the Inter- UChicago. Her career as a mathematics in- Rush moved to Cornell University, where national Center of Photography and the structor included positions at high schools, he was professor of government, and served MacDowell Colony. She served as president the University of Mary Hardin–Baylor, and the CIA as a consultant intermittently from of the board of the Chamber Music Society the Ohio State University. Her husband, the 1970s through the 1990s. His wife, The- of Lincoln Center and supported land con- Wayne B. Hadley, PhD’54, died in 2001. resa Neumann, AB’44, died in 2012. He is servation and historic preservation on Nan- She is survived by a daughter and a brother. survived by a daughter, two sons, four tucket, MA, through the ’Sconset Trust, a Richard H. Lobenthal, AB’55, of West grandchildren, and a great-grandchild. nonprofit she helped found. Survivors in- Bloomfield, MI, died September 26. He was Milton Shadur, SB’43, JD’49, died Janu- clude a daughter and two grandchildren. 83. Lobenthal was the Michigan director of ary 15 in Glenview, IL. He was 93. Shadur Gabriel J. Fackre, DB’48, PhD’62, died Jan- the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from served as US District judge for the Northern uary 31 in Oregon City, OR. He was 92. A 1964 to 1996. In retirement he served as District of Illinois from 1980 until Septem- theologian and pastor in the United Church Midwest regional director of the ADL and ber 2017, though he never officially retired. of Christ, Fackre taught at Lancaster Theo- interim director of the American Civil Lib- He wrote more than 11,000 opinions on the logical Seminary before joining the faculty erties Union in Michigan. He is survived by federal bench. Many of his notable cases of Andover Newton Theological School, his wife, Judith Kovach; a daughter; a son; involved civil rights. In 1983 he approved where he was the Abbot Professor Emeri- a brother, Joseph S. Lobenthal, AM’52, a voluntary school desegregation plan pro- tus of Christian Theology since his retire- JD’55; seven grandchildren; and seven posed by the Chicago Board of Education. ment in 1996. As president of the American great-grandchildren. In 1986 he ruled that inmates in protective Theological Society in 1990–91, he stressed David O. Munroe, MBA’56, died February custody in Stateville Correctional Center ecumenical dialogue among Christian 22 in Centerville, OH. He was 92. Munroe had experienced constitutional rights vio - denominations. His theological writings worked for International Business Ma-
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Layout_Deaths_Spring18_v9.indd 77 4/24/18 10:34 AM chines (IBM) in Westchester County, NY, Abby Dorfman Tanenbaum, LAB’62, Jack L. Uretsky, JD’75, died August 24 in from 1963 to 1989. In retirement he volun- AB’66, of Naperville, IL, died October Hinsdale, IL. He was 93. A theoretical phys- teered as a business manager for St. Joseph 13. She was 72. Tanenbaum was a retired icist and a lawyer, Uretsky established a legal Catholic Church and School in Cincinnati, college math instructor. She is survived practice in Illinois that ranged from military where he also assisted with business opera- by her husband, William M. Tanenbaum, veterans’ issues to patent law. At the time tions at Venice on Vine, a preemployment SB’66; two daughters; a sister, Julie Dorf- of his death, he was a guest physicist in the training and job placement program through man, LAB’66, and a grandson. [See Alumni High Energy Physics Division at Argonne the nonprofit Power Inspires Progress. News, page 60.—Ed.] National Laboratory. Survivors include a Survivors include his wife, Lenore; three Stephen A. Zarlenga, AB’63, of Valatie, daughter, a son, three grandchildren, and daughters; and four grandchildren. NY, died April 25, 2017. He was 75. Zarlen- one great-grandson. Munir M. Nawas, AM’58, PhD’61, died ga was founder and director of the American July 23 in Berg en Dal, Netherlands. He Monetary Institute, a nonprofit charitable 1980s was 89. An academic specialist in clinical trust dedicated to the study of monetary his- psychology, he taught at the University of tory and the cause of monetary reform. In Michael L. Hemler, MBA’85, PhD’88, Missouri, Indiana State University, and The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of of Granger, IN, died February 14. He was Radboud University in the Netherlands un- Money, the Story of Power (20 02), he critiqued 64. An associate professor of finance at the til retiring in 1983. He published numerous the private control of the US monetary sys- University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza Col- articles on the fundamentals of psychother- tem. [See Alumni News, page 59.—Ed.] lege of Business, Hemler taught courses on apy and wrote a popular student handbook William R. Arnold, PhD’63, of Lawrence, derivatives, financial management, and ap- on theories of personality. He is survived KS, died November 17, 2016. He was 83. plied investment management. His research by his wife, Eugenia; a daughter; two sons; A sociologist who specialized in criminol- on investments concentrated on financial and five grandchildren. ogy, Arnold taught at Hanover College derivatives. He is survived by his wife, Deb; and the University of Texas at Austin three daughters; a stepdaughter; a stepson; 1960s before joining the University of Kansas, and two sisters. where he was an associate professor of so- Robert Pincus-Witten, AM’60, PhD’68, ciology for more than three decades. His 2000s died on January 28 in New York City. He was books on youth crime and criminal justice 82. An influential art critic, Pincus-Watten include Juveniles on Parole: A Sociological Mary Ellen Konieczny, PhD’05, of South was a longtime contributor and editor for Perspective (1970) and Juvenile Misconduct Bend, IN, died February 24 of cancer. Artforum and a professor at the City Univer- and Delinquency (1983). He advocated for She was 58. Associate professor of sociol- sity of New York (CUNY). His books in- changes to sentencing guidelines in the Kan- ogy and the Henkels Family Collegiate clude Eye to Eye: Twenty Years of Art Criticism sas state legislature and policies to reduce Chair at the University of Notre Dame, (1984) and Postminimalism into Maximalism: disproportionate minority youth confine- Konieczny was the author of The Spirit’s American Art, 1966–1986 (1987). After re - ment. He is survived by his wife, Margaret; Tether: Family, Work, and Religion among tiring from CUNY in 1990, Pincus-Witten a daughter; two sons; eight grandchildren; American Catholics (2013), an ethnography switched to the commercial art world, serv- and five great-grandchildren. of Catholic parishes and their politics, and ing as curator at Gagosian Gallery and direc- Marvin Frankel, PhD’64, of Bronxville, coeditor of Polarization in the Catholic Church: tor of C&M Arts (later Mnuchin Gallery). NY, died in mid-January. After briefly Naming the Wounds, Beginning to Heal (2016). Bernard P. Alpiner, SB’60, died February teaching at the University of Chicago, he She was at work on a book about religion in 5 in Libertyville, IL. He was 81. Trained as joined the faculty at Sarah Lawrence Col- the military. She is survived by her husband, a physicist, Alpiner worked for companies lege in 1971, where he was professor of psy- Chris Chwedyk; two sons; her mother; and specializing in electronics and automatic chology until his death. His classes taught two brothers. test equipment before cofounding Chicago therapeutic models and addressed clinical Robert E. Croston Jr., AM’06, of Chicago, Laser Systems (CLS), an international situations but also posed philosophical died March 5 of Marfan syndrome. He was corporation that manufactured laser equip- questions about mental health concepts and 34. Croston was principal of Jenner Acad- ment. He retired in 1994, after CLS was criteria. [See Alumni News, page 62.—Ed.] emy of the Arts, an elementary school in acquired by a high-tech company. He is sur- Stanley Bach, AB’66, died May 30, 2017, the former Cabrini-Green area of Chicago’s vived by his wife, Patricia; three daughters; in Tampa, FL. He was 71. Bach taught at Near North Side. He helped bring about a six stepsons; a sister; and 11 grandchildren. the University of Massachusetts before merger that goes into effect this fall between Elizabeth S. Mayhall, AB’61, died January moving to Washington, DC, in 1974 to Jenner, which serves a majority African 25 in Durham, NC. She was 78. Mayhall work in the federal government. He joined American and lower-income student popu- lived abroad with her husband and children the Congressional Research Service of the lation, and nearby Ogden International in London and Kolkata, India, before they Library of Congress in 1976, where he was School, which draws from a largely white settled in Durham in 1973. Mayhall was a a senior specialist in the legislative process and wealthier population in the neighboring senior psychiatric diagnostic technician at until his retirement in 20 02. He coauthored area. He is survived by his wife, Sheena; his Duke University Health System’s Division Managing Uncertainty in the House of Rep- father; three sisters; and a brother. of Neurology until her retirement in 2001. resentatives: Adaptation and Innovation in She is survived by a daughter, a son, two Special Rules (1988), about congressional 2010s stepdaughters, and five grandchildren. strategy and decision making in the 1980s. Jay Bloom, AM’62, died January 21 in Oak- Cynthia DuBois, MPP’10, died of cancer land, CA. He was 80 years old. From 1965 1970s January 2 in Chicago. She was 32. Dubois until his retirement in 1999, Bloom was earned a master’s in public policy at Harris an associate professor of economics at the Albert S. Liu, SB’71, of Walnut Creek, CA, Public Policy before entering the North- State University of New York, New Paltz, died January 18. He was 70. A program western University School of Education and where he served as department chair in manager in the federal government, he held Social Policy, where she received her PhD in economics and helped establish a separate positions in human resources at the Internal 2017. Her doctoral research focused on affir- department of business. He also served as Revenue Service and in the Public Build- mative action policies intended to diversify a faculty adviser to Hillel and president of ings Service at the General Service Admin- candidate pools in labor markets ranging the local chapter of United University Pro- istration. He ended his career as manager of from professional football to education. fessions. He is survived by his wife, Judith; computer systems for a regional office of the She is survived by her partner, John Boller, a daughter; a son; and three grandchildren. GSA. He is survived by a brother. SM’91, PhD’99; her father; and her sister.
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