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The Dark Room Collective Kindling a literary movement Move forward. With conﬁ dence.

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features 32 Elbow Room | by Sophia Nguyen The Dark Room Collective and a generation of African-American writers

40 Are Animals “Things”? | by Cara Feinberg p. 16 The evolving law of animal welfare—and rights

46 Vita: Caleb Strong | by Richard D. Brown Brief life of an exemplary politician: 1745-1819

48 Harvard’s Eugenics Era | by Adam Cohen When the academy embraced scientific racism, immigration restriction, forced sterilization, and suppression of “the unfit”

John Harvard’s Journal 16 The Kennedy School’s crane, debating diversity and inclusion, laugh-out-loud computer scientist, the crew on ice, an Overseers’ challenge slate, augmenting the Corpora- tion’s academic ranks, “flyover-state” students, netminder from Alberta, and an up-and-down season for men’s basketball p. 40

departments 2 Cambridge 02138 | Letters from our readers—and comments on the College’s curricular challenges

3 The View from Mass Hall

avilla 8 Right Now | Scarcity and school choice, litigating for veterans’ rights, climate change and human history 12A Harvard2 | A calendar of spring events, Arts First, World War II artifacts, osner; miguel D head-over-heels for high heels, woolworkers, and premier pastries

53 Montage | The “bad boy of musical theater,” mammal species’ limited life span, Damon & Naomi’s multichannel creativity, Hoon Lee’s royal roles, Thomas Hart Benton’s reach, Thomas Jefferson’s “fractal” governance, and more 63 Alumni | Amid Mexico’s drug crisis, a move toward decriminalizing marijuana— amille T okerud/getty images; stu R plus Overseer and other candidates, Club and other honorands, and “Our John Harvard” p. 55 68 The College Pump | Gossiping about rhetoric in the College, c. 1819, and a youthful cat-averse experiment On the cover: Photograph © 2016 Elsa Dorfman, RI ’72-’74 . From left to right: John Keene, Danielle Legros Georges, 76 Treasure | From each ancient ocarina, “a story and a sound” Janice Lowe, Tisa Bryant, Major Jackson, Sharan Strange, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Artress Bethany White, Patrick 69 Crimson Classifieds Sylvain, and Tracy K. Smith, 2013 clockwise From top: Jim Harrison; C

www.harvardmagazine.com

Letters

editor: John S. Rosenberg senior editor: Jean Martin managing editor: Jonathan S. Shaw Cambridge  art director: Jennifer Carling associate editors: Marina Bolotnikova, Migration, capital punishment, House “master” Sophia Nguyen staff writer/editor: Lydialyle Gibson asistant editor-online: Laura Levis Judge Posner First, I think the label “pragmatist,” even assistant editor: Nell Porter Brown I have to praise Lincoln Caplan’s ar- if Posner’s own self-description, is not only berta greenwald ledecky ticle on Judge Richard Posner (“Rhetoric misleading but unfair to William James. I undergraduate fellows and Law,” January-February, page 49) for see Posner’s approach as far closer to John Jenny Gathright, Bailey Trela largely avoiding the gushing worshipfulness Dewey’s perversion, “instrumentalism.” editorial intern: Olivia Campbell of the typical Harvard Magazine piece. But I Second, I think his approach is funda- still must demur on some points. mentally wrong, even dangerous, for a contributing editors John T. Bethell, John de Cuevas, Dick 7 ware ary 15-24 this year, is a sort of anti-curriculum that occupies part of the hole opened Friedman, Adam Goodheart, Curricular Conundrums in the College calendar when schedules Elizabeth Gudrais, Jim Harrison, During the past decade, the Faculty of Arts were synchronized across the University Courtney Humphries, Christopher S. and Sciences (FAS) has labored mightily and in the 2009-2010 academic year. Offer- Johnson, Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, at length to construct a workable general- ings range from interesting international Christopher Reed, Stu Rosner, Deborah education component for undergraduates’ academic immersions to campus Winter- Smullyan, Mark Steele course of study. At present, Gen Ed comprises session events proper: a wilderness frst- harvard magazine inc. eight courses intended to lift young scholars’ responder course, various bootcamps, president: Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. eyes from their felds of concentration and résumé writing, ice climbing, ballroom ’69. directors: Peter K. Bol, Jonathan connect them to the civic and ethical chal- dance, Japanese sword fghting, chats with L.S. Byrnes, D.B.A. ’80, Scott V. Edwards, lenges of the twenty-frst-century life they high-profle alumni, ceramics, and so on. Thomas F. Kelly, Ph.D. ’73, Ann Ma- will encounter Out There. As the faculty’s But one cannot help but think that the own review committee reported, the effort early promise of innovative intellectual rie Lipinski, NF ’90, Lars Peter Knoth has fallen signifcantly short, for reasons and other forms of outreach and experi- Madsen, John P. Reardon Jr. ’60, Bryan E. from the profound (real differences of opin- mentation has not been realized—and Simmons ’83 ion about how best to structure such an edu- that lack of resources (and the committed cation) to the parochial (differences in how attention it would take to secure and ap- Board of Incorporators graduate students in the sciences and in the ply them well) again is a factor. For many This magazine, at ﬁrst called the Harvard Bulletin, was founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was char- arts and humanities are paid)—for details, students and their families, the result is tered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s see harvardmag.com/gened-16. Moreover, just a weird hole in the calendar after ex- governance. The membership is as follows: Stephen too few resources were made available when ams: too late for seasonal employment; a J. Bailey, AMP ’94; Jeffrey S. Behrens ’89, William I. Bennett ’62, M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. Bol; the program came into being during the f- fve-week annoyance for some; and—when Fox Butterﬁeld ’61, A.M. ’64; Sewell Chan ’98; Jona- nancial crisis. Harvard’s academic year fnally ends with than S. Cohn ’91; Philip M. Cronin ’53, J.D. ’56; John de Cuevas ’52; James F. Dwinell III ’62; Anne Fadiman The emerging proposal to revivify Gen its festival rites—an unnecessarily delayed ’74; Benjamin M. Friedman ’66, Ph.D. ’71; Robert H. Ed triangulates visions of the current pro- summer break. Giles, NF ’66; Richard H. Gilman, M.B.A. ’83; Owen Gingerich, Ph.D. ’62; Adam K. Goodheart ’92; Phil- gram into what might be deemed a Lite Harvard wants to be known for edu- ip C. Haughey ’57; Brian R. Hecht ’92; Sarah Blaffer version, imposing fewer requirements cational excellence alongside its research Hrdy ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Ellen Hume ’68; Alex S. Jones, NF on students and faculty members alike, ’82; Bill Kovach, NF ’89; Florence Ladd, BI ’72; Jen- prowess, and for what the College dean nifer 8 Lee ’99; Randolph C. Lindel ’66; Ann Marie and allowing somewhat more freedom of calls a transformative student experience. Lipinski, NF ’90; Scott Malkin ’80, J.D.-M.B.A. ’83; choice among courses—discussed further Perhaps it is time for some undergraduates Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. ’69, Ed ’77, L ’78; Lisa L. Martin, Ph.D. ’90; David McClintick ’62; Winthrop at harvardmag.com/curriculum-16. The and teaching-focused faculty members to L. McCormack ’67; M. Lee Pelton, Ph.D. ’84; John P. report outlining this reform specifes the point out, to those on high, these obvious Reardon Jr. ’60; Christopher Reed; Harriet Ritvo ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98; places where resources are needed to make opportunities to do better on campus dur- Barbara Rudolph ’77; Robert N. Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78; it work, even at this reduced scale. ing the academic year. Theda Skocpol, Ph.D. ’75; Peter A. Spiers ’76; Scott H. Stossel ’91; Sherry Turkle ’69, Ph.D. ’76; Robert H. Meanwhile, Wintersession, held Janu- v john s. rosenberg, Editor Weiss ’54; Jan Ziolkowski.

2 March - April 2016 The View from Mass Hall

Better Together

he New York Times described it as the “frst rigorously tested insight into the biology behind any common psychiatric disorder.” I regard it as an exemplary demonstra- tion of the unmatched potential of the Harvard medical Tecosystem. Steven McCarroll, associate professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School (HMS); working with Aswin Sekar, an MD-PhD student; drawing on the resources and human genome analysis of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; and joining together with Beth Stevens, an assistant professor of neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard, has provided what the Times hails as “a showcase of biomedical investigation at its highest level.” Their work offers unprecedented insight into how, through a process called synaptic pruning, genes can increase an individual’s risk of developing schizophrenia. This advance in the understanding of a devastating disease has the potential to lead ultimately to treatments and perhaps even cures. HMS, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard hospitals, and the Broad Institute joined together in this discovery as participants in an environ- found in the body and produces data that is analyzed in real time ment in which both researchers and pathbreaking science thrive. to predict when a clot will form. Less than three weeks later, a One of the great pleasures and satisfactions of my job is learn- team of scientists at MIT, Harvard, and several other institutions ing about breakthroughs that emerge from the remarkable world announced a leap forward on the path to an effective treatment for of Harvard science and medicine. Happily, this is a quite regular type 1 diabetes. They have developed an implantable device that occurrence. Last semester brought news of a genetic mutation that stops the immune system from attacking human insulin-producing may help predict the risk of brain disorders in newborns with heart beta cells that were themselves recently developed in the laboratory problems, an analysis of the response to Ebola that offers critical of Doug Melton, Xander University Professor and a member of the lessons for addressing future epidemics, a “human-gut-on-a-chip” joint FAS-HMS Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. that offers a new pathway to understanding inflammatory bowel This collaboration between bioengineering and stem cell science diseases, and a faster method of using search data to track and moni- across departments, schools, and even institutions brings clinical tor the flu created by two statisticians in the Faculty of Arts and development—and a possible cure—within our grasp. Sciences (FAS) and a faculty member in the computational health Crucial to these and so many other successes is location in a broad- informatics program at Boston Children’s Hospital who is also an er biotech community that constantly invests in translating promis- applied mathematics lecturer at the Harvard Paulson School. In ing ideas into applications and therapies, a so-called Massachusetts September, Stephen Elledge, the Gregor Mendel Professor of Genet- “supercluster” that comprises eight of top fourteen NIH-funded in- ics and of Medicine at HMS and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, dependent hospitals and attracted nearly $2 billion in venture capital received the 2015 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in in 2014. This spring, Provost Alan Garber and I regard the selection recognition of his work describing “the DNA-damage response— of a new dean for Harvard Medical School, a critical leader within a fundamental mechanism that protects the genomes of all living this precious ecosystem, as among our very highest priorities. In the organisms.” Understanding the network that informs a cell of DNA face of challenges to funding for scientifc research and fundamen- damage, triggers repairs, and prevents mutations marks a signifcant tal shifts in systems for the delivery of health care, we must sustain advance in the effort to explain the origins of cancer. and extend Harvard’s leadership in bio-medicine and ensure that The spring semester is off to an auspicious start with the pub- we fully realize the potential of this extraordinary community to lication of research on a pair of extraordinary devices. A group of contribute to the alleviation of human suffering. researchers led by Don Ingber, founding director of the Wyss In- stitute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Judah Folkman Pro- Sincerely, fessor of Vascular Biology at HMS and Boston Children’s Hospital, and professor of bioengineering at the Harvard Paulson School, unveiled a network of “vessels” that subjects blood to conditions

Harvard Magazine 3

Letters judge. Take antitrust law, where he has had Fourteenth Amendment, while Black ar- the most influence. I personally am sympa- gued that the only rights “incorporated” by thetic to his wealth maximization approach. the due process clause were those enumer- But there are many—as Caplan notes—who ated in the federal Bill of Rights. think economic efficiency is less important It is easy, I think, to see the line from publisher: Irina Kuksin than the political and social benefts of hav- Frankfurter to Freund to Posner: the only director of circulation and ing a large number of small operators. This absolute is intelligence! Certainly, none fundraising: Felecia Carter is basically a matter of values—and should of these men hide their lights under the donor relations and stewardship the choice be made by an unelected and ir- Biblical bushel. They were all far brighter manager: Allison Kern removable judge? than their generational director of advertising: Another example is peers and did not hesi- Robert D. Fitta his switch on photo IDs tate to let everyone for voting. He gives two know it. However, even new england advertising manager: reasons: “voter imperson- as a legal naïf, I could Abby Shepard ation fraud is extremely see that Frankfurter was classified advertising manager: rare,” and the require- engaging in gross judi- Gretchen Bostrom ment “impede[s] voting cial lawmaking, clothing designer and integrated marketing by people easily discour- his totally subjective a manager: Jennifer Beaumont aged from voting.” As priori conclusions with associate web developer: someone who has lived the patina of erudition. Jeffrey Hudecek so many years in Chicago, The same can be said of how could Posner pos- much of Posner’s juris- gift processor and office manager: sibly say voter fraud is prudence. Robert Bonotto “extremely rare”? And no The co-founder of the one, I think, will disagree now ubiquitous 12-step ivy league magazine network that lack of knowledge about or interest in programs said that the frst step toward director of operations: public affairs is widespread even among the theism is for a person to admit that he or Heather Wedlake, Heatherwedlake@ roughly 60 percent of the eligible electorate she isn’t G-d. Posner would defnitely not ivymags.com who cast a ballot. Is it thus sound policy to make it in Alcoholics Anonymous. Like his encourage voting by those likely to be the Harvard mentor, he sees himself (perhaps editorial and business office most defcient in those regards? correctly) as the smartest person in the 7 Ware Street John Braeman ’54 room. More problematic, he gives no evi- Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 Champaign, Ill. dence of recognizing any “higher author- Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 ity,” e.g. natural law, originalism, constitu- Website: www.harvardmagazine.com On the last day of his constitutional law tionalism. E-mail: [email protected] class, the last words that [Loeb University] These three Harvard Law School wise Professor Paul Freund uttered were, “In the men seem to possess in great abundance @harvardmagazine law, there is only one absolute and that is “the haughty spirit that goes before a fall.” facebook.com/harvardmagazine intelligence.” At the time, I was much im- They even fail to recognize that great fun- pressed with this “build a better mousetrap” dament of our system (which sociologists Harvard Magazine (ISSN 0095-2427) is published bimonthly by Harvard Magazine Inc., a nonproﬁt cor- theory, dovetailing as it did with what I had have basically verifed): that the collective poration, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, come to see as the true Harvard motto: Vani- wisdom of 12 people, randomly selected, is phone 617-495-5746; fax 617-495-0324. The magazine is supported by reader contributions and subscriptions, tas (rather than Veritas). usually better than that of one genius. advertising revenue, and a subvention from Harvard According to Lincoln Caplan, Freund H. John Rogers ’66 University. Its editorial content is the responsibility of was Richard Posner’s mentor, the man the editors. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Mass., New Martinsville, W.Va. and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send ad- who, e.g., obtained a clerkship for him with dress changes to Circulation Department, Harvard Justice Brennan. Just as I did a few years Editor’s note: Stephen Ellmann ’72, J.D. ’76, of Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037. Subscription rate $30 a year in U.S. and possessions, $55 later, Posner probably spent a lot of time New York Law School, observes that the Canada and Mexico, $75 other foreign. (Allow up to parsing the difference in the constitutional Posner article “refers to my father, Richard 10 weeks for ﬁrst delivery.) Subscription orders and customer service inquiries should be sent to the Cir- thinking of Justices Frankfurter and Black. Ellmann, but spells his last name ‘Ellman.’ culation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, My memory goes back fve decades, but I We two-n Ellmanns have fought for gen- Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, or call 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499, or e-mail [email protected]. can still see clearly the process by which erations to preserve that second ‘n.’ ” The Single copies $4.95, plus $2.50 for postage and han- these two giants authorized the federal editors regret the oversight. dling. Manuscript submissions are welcome, but we government to bring the states into align- cannot assume responsibility for safekeeping. Include stamped, self-addressed envelope for manuscript re- ment with what might be called civilized Mass Migration turn. Persons wishing to reprint any portion of Harvard thinking. Frankfurter took the position In “When Water Is Safer Than Land,” Jac- Magazine’s contents are required to write in advance for permission. Address inquiries to Irina Kuk- that it was state conduct which “shocked queline Bhabha suggests that the abandon- sin, publisher, at the address given above. the conscience” that was prohibited by the ment of the Dublin Convention regime was Copyright © 2016 Harvard Magazine Inc.

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a result of Europe’s migrant crisis (January- experience, both in and out of the classroom. February 2016, page 41). In fact, Germany’s The author’s descriptions are a breath of suspension of the Dublin protocols helped fresh air in the current environment of other cause the crisis. The Convention forces mi- college students far and wide demonstrat- Travel the world with fellow grants to seek asylum in the frst European ing and petitioning for “safe spaces,” “trig- alumni and Harvard study Union country they enter, thereby preventing ger warnings,” and more authentic “ethnic leaders. Choose from more “asylum-shopping.” Since most migrants ar- foods.” Those other students often partici- than 80 trips annually. rive frst at one of the impecunious nations of pate in shout-downs of speakers with op- southern Europe, this sensible policy damp- posing views, or may even scream for the FEATURED TRIPS ens the allure of generous northern Europe- removal from buildings and academic dean welfare states. When this bulwark was partments of names and statues of persons removed in the summer of 2015, the stream with imperfect histories. By comparison, of migrants predictably turned into a flood. Gathright appears to possess self-awareness Enoch Powell famously observed that of her understandable insecurities. Instead “The supreme function of statesmanship of demonstrating for external changes that is to provide against preventable evils.” might help her temporarily feel more com- Angela Merkel abdicated this function by fortable, she fnds herself developing im- opening Germany’s borders. Her actions pressive journalistic skills writing this qual- have earned plaudits from the elite me- ity piece that is informative for all of us. SEPTEMBER 18–28, 2016 dia, globalist politicians, and ivory-tower As an undergraduate in the 1960s, and THE HOLY LAND: ISRAEL & PALESTINE academics. But she must weigh this fleet- as a white male, I would like to reassure ing approval against the enduring scorn of Gathright that I experienced a range of STUDY LEADER: PETER MACHINIST AB ’66 Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages German taxpayers who must now support similar insecurities and anxieties about the foreigners that she recklessly invited. my own place as a Harvard undergraduate Long after Merkel has left office, Germany then. Kudos to her for sharing “My Har- will struggle to placate a potentially inas- vard Education.” similable minority, many of whose con- Hugh R. Winig, M.D. ’65 stituents are openly hostile to European Lafayette, Calif. culture, traditions, and manners. If Europe seeks a future other than the Well said. dystopia foretold by Jean Raspail in The Laura Burnett, M.L.A. ’86 Camp of the Saints, it must turn away from San Diego SEPTEMBER 18–27, 2016 the myopic globalism of Angela Merkel BEHIND THE SCENES AT CERN & ITER and embrace the sober, far-sighted nation- I present a small talk to third-year Johns alism of leaders like Viktor Orban, Nigel Hopkins medical students, entitled “The Ig- STUDY LEADER: TO BE ANNOUNCED Farage, and Marine Le Pen. norome.” It’s intended to show that igno- Matthew D. Burwell, M.B.A. ’06 rance is a fundamental element in medical Cambridge care, that the ability to acknowledge and manage ignorance is essential, and that hu- The Undergraduate’s Identity mility is a necessary part of honesty. It is not Thank you for publishing the essay by Jen- a uniformly popular talk here. ny Gathright (The Undergraduate, “My Har- Jenny Gaithright has provided a bril- vard Education,” January-February, page 35) liant description of one aspect of igno- describing her growing emotional maturity rance and has really helped me. Although OCTOBER 7–21, 2016 in dealing with her insecurities and anxiety not specifc to the feld of medicine, the ig- THAILAND, LAOS & CAMBODIA as a woman of color in situations that are norance she describes is a direct threat to new and awkward for her in her Harvard people of color who become patients. It’s STUDY LEADER: PETER BOL an area of ignorance that medical profes- Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages speak up, please and Civilizations sionals, as everyone else, may not naturally Harvard Magazine welcomes letters recognize and manage. I am adding her ar- TO BOOK YOUR NEXT TRIP, on its contents. Please write to “Let- ticle to the front of the syllabus. CALL US AT 800-422-1636. ters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Thomas E. Finucane ’71, M.D. FOR MORE TRIP OPTIONS, VISIT Cambridge 02138, send comments by e- Professor of medicine, Johns Hopkins ALUMNI.HARVARD.EDU/TRAVELS. mail to yourturn@harvard.edu, use our Baltimore website, www.harvardmagazine.com, or fax us at 617-495-0324. Letters may Capital Punishment be edited to ﬁt the available space. Sophia nguyen’s “Capital Punishment’s Persistence” (January-February, page 14),

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Harvard Magazine 7 Letters

LETTERS (continued from page 7) nian майстер (“expert”). In English, it has father’s urging, I inquired whether the Mur- countless benign usages other than the one phy Scholarship still existed. Alas, the funds an Indian female. All of the other articles and denoting the owner of slaves in the pre-1865 had long since been expended. references were to white males, with the ex- American South. Yet, with President Drew John G. Murphy Jr. ’68 ception of fve photos of white women. Faust’s approval, public opinion at Harvard McLean, Va. As a graduate of the Harvard Gradu- is about to expunge the term “House mas- ate School of Education, I took several ter” [see page 17]. Education AWOL? courses by top scholars and professors of Of itself, what one calls the leader of a In all of the articles I have read in Har- color, and fnd it upsetting that their work Harvard House is not important. But the vard Magazine concerning the improvement is not more prominently featured in the effort to expunge “master” is a sign we are of teaching at Harvard, I have yet to come overall university publication. My work in a silly season of the intellect. Harvard is across any reference to the Harvard Gradu- now takes me to areas of the nation that not doing away with its magister in artibus ate School of Education, a readily available are struggling to deal with race, education, (“master of arts”), and there is no agitation resource that, on the surface at least, would equity, and diversity. My former position against “Overseer”—a Harvard word whose seem to be able to make some contribution at the U.S. Department of Education, as context in slavery bespoke brutality. to the effort. Is this lack because there has the deputy director for STEM Education, What is really going on? “Master” and been no effort to reach out to HGSE, because allowed me to tackle issues of underrep- “mistress” were common terms for teach- HGSE has rebuffed the effort, or because resentation in STEM felds, which is a seers in English and American schools and the magazine has chosen not to mention any rious concern that should be reflected by colleges, including in the 380 years of Har- such collaboration? our nation’s top institutions. Harvard and vard. Language changes and the usage may John H. Gillespie, Ed.D. ’72 other top institutions could help us make seem quaint to us. But it never implied Old Lyme, Conn. sense of the racially charged issues of gun condonation of slavery, which many Har- violence, educational inequity, immigra- vard graduates spent their lives oppos- Editor’s note: Recent coverage of the online tion, etc. The article on the Syrian refugee ing. More than a few died in the war that initiative and of the College’s General Edu- crisis is a good example, and it would have ended it. cation program did not involve HGSE peo- been nice to at least include an image of It is fashionable—worse, I think, it is ple because they were not specifcally en- Professor Bhabha. Images matter, and in a acceptable—to despise the class of people gaged there, but they appear in the broader magazine that I look forward to reading bi- who founded and led Boston, Harvard, spectrum of coverage on teaching and monthly, I want to see the faces of women and Massachusetts in their frst three cen- learning, many times. and men of all races reflected as contribu- turies. The peer tribalism of the sopho- The magazine has pro- tors to this publication from one of the top moric has sometimes shaken the world for fled Pforzheimer pro- institutions of learning on the earth. the better. But in this case, it only seems fessor of teaching and Visit harvardmag. Camsie McAdams, Ed.M. ’05 to want to walk off with the head of the learning Richard Light com for additional Washington, D.C. dean, or of the dean’s English. “House mas- and reported on sever- letters. ter” never had anything to do with “slave al of his initiatives; devoted a recent cover Editor’s note: We take the point, and encour- master.” The real implication of the agi- story (“Computing in the Classroom,” age you to look at multiple issues, not just tation to expunge the term is to exclude March-April 2015, page 48) to HGSE fac- one bimonthly edition, and the magazine’s a certain class of people from the human ulty members and others involved in devel- extensive reporting online. The magazine family. It closely resembles anti-Semitism, oping and deploying educational technol- does not run photographs of contributors, which it could easily turn into. ogy; profled its current dean in unusual so to do so for repeat contributor (and sub- To date, Drew Faust has led Harvard with depth and detail (“Education and Oppor- ject—see the photograph at harvardmag. a common-sense enlightenment that was tunity,” September-October 2013, page 52), com/bhabha-16) Jacqueline Bhabha would making her beloved. Her association with following initial news coverage; reported be an aberration. Finally, as the reports of this silly season of the intellect halts that. on the school’s capital campaign and pri- the senior vice provost for faculty develop- David A. Mittell Jr. ’66 orities online (see harvardmag.com/hgse- ment and diversity suggest (http://faculty. Boston 16) and in print; covered the new Harvard harvard.edu), in many respects, the Uni- Teaching Fellows Initiative; and reported versity’s professoriate is less diverse than Murphy Memories extensively on HGSE researchers’ evalua- it wishes—a subject of regular, thorough I read with interest the note in the “Yes- tions of HarvardX, among other examples. reporting in these pages (see page 21). terday’s News” column (January-February, Our reporters are in regular contact with page 32) that in 1916 “William Stanislaus the school. “Master” No More Murphy, Class of 1885, leaves all his money The purpose of a university is to teach, to establish scholarships at the College for Erratum and to try to teach accurately when public young men with his last name.” Thanks to this The Vita on Cora Du Bois (January-Febru- opinion would prefer obfuscation. The Eng- generosity, my father, John Gordon Murphy ary, page 46) mentioned the American Asso- lish word master is a very old Indo-European ’25, LL.B. ’31, who grew up in a large working- ciation of Anthropology; the organization’s word, among whose cognates are Latin ma- class family in Somerville, was able to receive correct name is the American Anthropologi- gister (“teacher”), French maître, and Ukrai- a Harvard education. Many years later, at my cal Association. We regret the error.

Harvard Magazine 75 Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

price-push paradox mechanism. Boston’s busing system shared the same goal: delink children’s neighborhoods from the quality of their education Debating School Choice and integrate the schools. (The city aban- doned much of the system in favor of more neighborhood-based school assignment in uring the U.S. Bicentennial in and untested social theories. Evidence- 2013.) Choice’s success depends heavily on 1976, Boston Herald American pho- based research has produced divergent the characteristics of the cities where it’s tographer Stanley Forman, NF data on the effectiveness of school-choice implemented and the mechanics of each D ’80, snapped a spot photo of a systems (which aim to equalize educa- system—and a good deal more on factors white man assailing a black man with a pole tion access by allowing families to choose that researchers don’t yet understand. Re- bearing the American flag. While the nation among schools in their district) over cent contributions by visiting professor of celebrated its founding revolution, Boston neighborhood-based schools. Under economics Parag Pathak and Larsen pro- in the 1970s was undergoing a different kind choice systems, families typically com- fessor of public policy Christopher Avery of revolution. “The Soiling of Old Glory,” pete for seats at the best schools through suggest that even if school choice could as the image was later titled when submit- a lottery, an admissions test, or some other work exactly as intended, the policy may ted for the Pulitzer Prize, shocked Bostonians: the African American was Ted Landsmark, a civil- rights attorney, and his attacker, Joseph Rakes, a protester against the court-ordered desegregation of Boston public schools, which sparked years of racially motivated violence across the city. The desegregation plan eventually proved very successful at busing students across the city, but measuring busing’s success in improving educational outcomes for students is not as simple. One goal of social science is to inject ra- tionality into public debates, like the school- choice question, that have been animated by

particularist passions petrone valeria

8 March - April 2016 Illustration by Eva Vázquez

Right Now harm the disadvantaged students whom Ohana Family Camp it’s designed to help. Create lifetime memories for your A recent paper models a choice system family this summer on peaceful that assigns schools according to families’ Lake Fairlee in Vermont. Cozy cabins preferences, allotting seats at more sought- with fireplaces. Farm-fresh meals. after schools by lottery. Parents would Swimming, sailing, canoeing, compete for access to the best schools, so kayaking, fishing, hiking, biking, that each school would not only reflect the tennis, crafts, and more. Delighting socioeconomic mix of the community but generations of families since 1905. also become perfectly equal—and aver- Imagine your family right here. age—in quality, Avery explains. But such a www.OhanaCamp.org Even if school choice could work exactly as intended, it might harm the very students THE ORIGIN OF OTHERS THE LITERATURE OF BELONGING it’s designed to help. THE NORTON LECTURES | MARCH & APRIL 2016 result, the model shows, would encourage wealthy families to abandon the system for better-than-average schools that are either private or in another district—a “flight” TONI MORRISON phenomenon widely documented already. Pathak and Avery also show a second MAHINDRA HUMANITIES CENTER AT HARVARD | TICKETS REQUIRED | VISIT MAHINDRAHUMANITIES.FAS.HARVARD.EDU mechanism—the effect of school quality on home prices—that forces flight not by wealthy families, but by the poor. “When you introduce school choice, school quality compresses…so the house-price distribution compresses as well,” Pathak says, meaning that low-income families are priced out of their own neighborhoods as the schools in their community improve. Home values reflect differences in school quality so faithfully that prices spike and fall along district boundaries. “You see this at the border between [the Boston public school system] and Brookline...if the houses are almost identical, they’re still very different prices because people perceive the schools to be much higher quality in Brookline,” he explains. Programs for High School Students In reality, though, researchers know that school choice hasn’t worked this way. Every summer, more than 2,000 motivated high school students Because of variation in families’ school from around the world are selected to attend Harvard Summer School preferences, imperfect information, test- and experience college life. based admissions systems that favor ad- vantaged students, and other frictions, Pre-College Program Secondary School Program 2-week program (noncredit) 7-week program (college credit) cities that have embraced choice systems are very far from producing perfectly equal Session I June 26 to July 8 June 18 to August 6 Session II July 10 to July 22 schools. In some cases, school lotteries do Session III July 24 to August 5 help underserved students gain access to top schools. What, then, of the model? “What happens in practice is, we think, summer.harvard.edu/high-school-programs

Harvard Magazine 9 Right Now some combination of things,” Avery sug- explains, “is the possibility that—even erupted in Boston four decades ago might gests. Real-life choice systems resemble though you have made the lowest-quality be as a conflict over scarce resources. something between neighborhood schools school better—you actually haven’t helped Rather than ask how to distribute high- and a perfect-competition choice system. the intended beneficiary,” whose family is quality schools equitably, the researchers If schools remain sufficiently unequal, priced out of that school’s district. suggest, the better question may be how then people can afford to continue to live Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, to create more very good schools, so that where they’re living. Says Avery, “It’s sort because the school-choice movement a good education isn’t a scarce resource at of a paradox.” treats high-quality education as a scarce all. “However we do it,” Avery says, “we Still, the model suggests that the as- resource best allocated by a free market. have to get to a point where where you live sumptions driving the rationale for school If good schools are a scarce resource, then isn’t so connected to the quality of your choice may be wrong, given a private only some children can access them—and school.” vmarina bolotnikova housing market where home prices are they tend to come from wealthy families tied to perceived school quality. Even in a who find ways to game the system in their christopher avery website: best-case scenario that assumes away the favor. “If left unchecked,” Avery says, “nat- www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty- other logistical frictions of school choice, ural forces seem to run in the direction of staff-directory/christopher-avery the home-price force still produces un- making [good] schools more accessible to parag pathak website: equal outcomes. “The most surprising the wealthy.” http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/ thing coming out of that analysis,” Pathak One reading of the busing riots that ppathak

pedagogy meets practice Fighting for Veterans, Learning the Law

he letter arrived right on he read the letter, he’d lost his one chance than when a letter arrives in his or her time—and for Wilson Ausmer Jr., to appeal his benefits case. The Veterans hometown mailbox. that turned out to be a very bad Benefits Administration wasn’t going to The student lawyers became involved T thing. It was 2011, and Ausmer, a help him—but a trio of Harvard Law School in Ausmer’s case in 2013, while interning lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, was in (HLS) students did. Bradley Hinshelwood, at the HLS Veterans Law and Disabil- Afghanistan, serving his second tour of duty J.D. ’14, Juan Arguello, J.D. ’15, and Christo- ity Benefits Clinic, within the school’s overseas. The decorated soldier had already pher Melendez, J.D ’15, took up Ausmer’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC). paid a personal price to serve his country: he case, arguing, among other things, that the Each semester since 2012, when the clinic suffered from headaches, anxiety, and post- clock on an appeals claim should start only was established in Boston’s Jamaica Plain traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to after a veteran has returned home, rather neighborhood, about 30 students have his time on the battlefield, assisted veterans with and had incurred a signifi- legal cases, winning cant foot injury as well. verdicts of local and na- The letter, mailed to tional importance. his home in Missouri, Ausmer’s student de- contained invaluable fenders presented their information on how case to a panel of three he could file an appeal judges from the U.S. for military disabil- Court of Appeals for ity compensation. It also Veterans Claims who stated that he had to re- were visiting Harvard spond within 120 days of as part of its annual edu- receipt. cational outreach. The Ausmer wouldn’t re- panel’s January 2014 rul- turn home for another ing in the students’ fa- five months. By the time vor marked a landmark Daniel Nagin, faculty victory. It allowed re- director of the clinic cently discharged veter- (right), and Andrew Roach, J.D. ’13, meet ans like Ausmer, whose with a veteran in ability to file an appeal Jamaica Plain. is “materially affected”

10 March - April 2016 Photograph courtesy of the Harvard Law School Veterans Law and Disability Benefits Clinic Right Now by their service, to have 210 days from their lawyers in responding to this problem?’” says. “You’re providing a compelling and discharge date to appeal, potentially help- Participants in the program are guided by unique learning opportunity for students, ing thousands of former soldiers. Nagin and lawyers from the firm Chisholm and also doing good in the world, trying “Arguing Ausmer v. Shinseki was the high- Chisholm & Kilpatrick. (Veterans’ cases are to close the justice gap in any way you light of my experience at HLS,” says Melen- referred to the clinic through the Rhode Is- can.” From the Revolutionary War until dez, himself a veteran who served in both land firm’s existing pro bono program with the establishment of the Court of Appeals Iraq and Afghanistan. “I met esteemed judg- Disabled American Veterans.) The students for Veterans Claims in 1988, he points out, military veterans who were denied ben- The Veterans Benefits Administration efits hadno judicial recourse. Second-year law student Travis Lev- wasn’t going to help him—but a trio of erett, whose grandfather was a veteran, has spent his time at the clinic working Harvard Law School students did. on estate planning and wills. Veterans, he says, are often “behind on their mortgage es, set precedent, and was able to see the can choose to represent veterans in adminis- payments, they have health issues, their case through to a successful remand to the trative and federal court appeals that chal- benefits have been cut—getting your will [Veterans Administration]. Because of this lenge denials of federal and state veterans together is not going to take priority.” His experience, I can head into professional life benefits; represent clients and their families clinic work “really hammered home to fully prepared to conduct veterans advocacy in estate- and financial-planning matters; me that law is a service industry, and you throughout the VA appeals process.” or represent clients in administrative and really have to be available whenever your Other students have successfully court appeals that challenge denials of So- clients are.” vlaura levis backed a female marine’s challenge to a cial Security disability benefits. Board of Veterans’ Appeals decision to The twin goals of the clinic—which harvard law school veterans deny her disability benefits for military also covers issues of administrative, dis- clinic website: sexual trauma; ensured that a homeless ability, mental health, probate, and con- http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/clinical/ Navy veteran received Massachusetts stitutional law—are service and pedagogy. clinics/veterans-law-and-disability- veterans’ services benefits despite a prior “You’re doing two things at once,” Nagin benefits-clinic-lsc criminal conviction; and obtained service- connected-disability benefits for an Af- ghanistan war veteran diagnosed with epochs of ice cancer. “As we train students, we want to give them the opportunity to understand and appreciate the needs and sacrifices The Science of History of disabled veterans,” says Daniel Nagin, clinical professor of law, faculty director of the Legal Services Center, and founder n his 1998 book Consilience, Pellegrino dant snowfall produces a thick frozen of the veterans clinic. “The work is com- University Professor emeritus Edward record dating back thousands of years. plicated and demanding—it’s an uphill O. Wilson dreamed of a time when the Now, laser-based technology developed battle, and there are too few resources I boundaries between sciences and hu- at the University of Maine’s Climate for people who need help….We are asking manities would fade away, leaving an intel- Change Institute is sensitive enough to students to consider, ‘What is the role of lectually unified store of human knowledge. produce 50,000 measurements per me- His vision was prescient. Today, it’s possible ter—enabling researchers from UM and to use isotope analysis to pinpoint the origin from Harvard’s Initiative for the Science Explore More of a single thread of silk that traveled the of the Human Past (SoHP) to analyze Silk Road. DNA tests of ancient skeletons samples from the tightly packed Colle For one in a series of online-only can reveal how people lived, ate, and died— Gnifetti glacier in the Swiss Alps. Goe- articles on research in progress, see: and two years ago helped confirm the role let professor of history Michael McCor- of the Plague of Justinian in the collapse of mick, who chairs SoHP, recalls a promi- Shedding Light on Genetic the Roman Empire. Ice-core samples drawn nent Swiss climate scientist telling him, Cancer Risks from polar caps or glaciers are telling “There are no good Swiss ice cores.” In A new study offers historians more than they ever be- fact, there were—but the technology to a clearer picture of lieved possible about the worlds their read them didn’t exist. how genetics and research subjects lived in. These find- Colle Gnifetti marks the first time his- the environment ings share once-inaccessible insights torians have been able to look directly at influence cancer into the human past—and into human- weather patterns around the Mediterra- risk in families. ity’s fragile climate future. nean that date back nearly 2,000 years— harvardmag.com/walker-15 Until recently, ice-core research was much farther than traditional resources, limited to Arctic regions, where abun- like thermometer readings or tree rings.

Harvard Magazine 11 Right Now

The Mediterranean “is where history hap- Middle Ages contributed to greater rain- around 1250 to 1650. Parts of the ice record pened, and we no longer have to guess fall and flooding—a breeding ground for suggest temperatures may have begun the conditions [people] lived in,” McCor- disease vectors—and famine, which weak- dropping earlier still, closer to 1200, but mick says. “We can see it there in the ice ened the population and aggravated mor- other parts don’t appear to agree with the record.” And with unprecedented preci- bidity. historical record at all, prompting both sion: “If you ask what the weather was The data, which More stresses are still groups of scholars to take a closer look at like on Christmas of 1257, I can tell you,” preliminary, also challenge accepted truths their results. Laboratory science, McCor- says history of science lecturer Alexander about European history. Estimates about mick points out, “is no more sure than any More, a postdoctoral fellow with SoHP. when the Little Ice Age began run from other kind of knowledge, and has to be Unlike other tools used to submitted to the same kinds approximate weather, ice re- of challenges and testing as cords offer proxies for many our most nuanced interpreta- types of climate events— tion of a medieval love letter.” temperature, precipitation, More also cautions against air circulation, even burning allowing current ideas about biomass—that can be tested climate change to influence against one another or com- inquiry into the past. “We bined to analyze the climate have to keep an always skepti- context from a moment in cal mind, and not be so excit- history. ed by our findings that we dis- The Harvard-UM team miss clear signs of problems,” compared data from the Colle he says. Even so, a confluence Gnifetti ice core to historical of evidence, strengthened by weather records from 1200 the Colle Gnifetti data, sug- to 1400—an era of explosive gests climate change played economic growth in Europe a pivotal role in the events but also of the Black Death of the late Middle Ages. Less and the beginning of the Lit- directly, climate-induced re- tle Ice Age, a period of cool- source scarcity appears also to ing that followed the relative have stimulated European co- warmth of the Middle Ages. lonial ambitions. If that’s true, They found that historical re- the implications for the pres- ports of bad harvests showed ent appear unnervingly clear. a striking correspondence The scale of climate change with drops in temperature, in the last two decades, Mc- approximated by the fre- Cormick says, “appears to be quency of oxygen isotopes beyond anything we’ve seen in the ice record. A similar, in the last 2,000 years—and though weaker, relationship we’ve seen some scary things appeared between historical in the last 2,000 years. reports of precipitation and “Twenty years ago, we drops in temperature record- couldn’t know the climate in ed in the ice core. the Roman Empire was warm- Both findings advance his- ing,” he adds. “There were torical narratives about the some slight hints that it got relationship of the Little Ice warm in the Middle Ages.… Age, famine, and the Black Now we can see that climate Death, which killed as much change occurred much more as half of Europe’s popula- swiftly than I had thought tion. The historical and scien- possible.” tific records—“independent vmarina bolotnikova lines of argument deriving from independent evidence michael mccormick website: deriving from different ar- history.fas.harvard.edu/ eas of reality,” McCormick people/michael-mccormick explains—increasingly ap- alexander more website: pear to tell a similar story: scholar.harvard.edu/ the cooling period of the late alexandermore/home

12 March - April 2016 Illustration by Sam Falconer A PLACE OF DISCOVERY

Harvard opens doors to new experiences, new friends, and new knowledge. From Sanders Theatre to the Science Center to the Houses, learning happens everywhere—and transforms each and every student, intellectually, socially, and personally.

MARCH/APRIL 2016 THE HARVARD CAMPAIGN FOR ARTS AND SCIENCES | VISIT CAMPAIGN.HARVARD.EDU/FAS

FAS 16-390 MarApr Full Pg 1-28.indd 1 2/1/16 9:05 AM Right Now HIGH MARKS FOR RENEWED HOUSES

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: A STUDENT PRACTICES IN A STONE HALL MUSIC ROOM IN QUINCY HOUSE; REBEKKA ELIZABETH- MARIE DEPEW ’16 (RIGHT) CHATS WITH A FRIEND IN THE CHEERFUL COMMON ROOM AT STONE HALL; A LIVELY FOOSBALL GAME ENGAGES (FROM LEFT) MEGAN MCLAUGHLIN ’16, JOAN TIMMINS ’16, AND CHRISTINE CAHILL ’16 IN MCKINLOCK HALL AT LEVERETT HOUSE; ROOMMATES MARK STEINBACH ’17 (LEFT) AND JASON SHEN ’17 ADMIRE A MURAL FEATURING RABBITS, THE LEVERETT HOUSE MASCOT, INSIDE MCKINLOCK HALL; AYO OPEYEMI ’17 ENJOYS HIS BRIGHT AND COMFORTABLE LIVING SPACE IN THE NEWLY RENOVATED DUNSTER HOUSE.

16-390 MarApr Insert 1-28.indd 1 2/1/16 9:08 AM Right Now

HOUSE RENEWAL IS BRINGING NEW VITALITY TO out.” Bishogo, an African studies concentrator from the Harvard’s venerable House system to meet the needs of Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa, is en- 21st-century living and learning while preserving the historic amored with the lower level, which has been transformed character of each residence. Renovations to Quincy House’s from a dark corridor with low-hanging pipes to a center of Stone Hall, Leverett House’s McKinlock Hall, and Dunster House life with the Dunster Grille, music and art rooms, tness equipment, and more. House are complete, with Winthrop House up next. Below, learn how three undergraduates are using these exciting While updating the 1930 residence, House Renewal has revitalized spaces. maintained the old Harvard feel that generations of Dunster alumni cherish. e Berk Junior Common Room, library, Music Makers and dining hall have new luster, and the distinctive deep- brown wainscoting that once paneled student rooms has been Walk by the Abu-Suud Music Suite repurposed around the House. “When you walk in, you see in Stone Hall at Quincy House this dark wood all over,” Bishogo notes. “It lets you know, on a typical Sunday afternoon and yes, I am still in Dunster.” you’re bound to spot many spirited students playing trumpets, violins, Building Community and traditional Mexican instruments. is is Mariachi Véritas de Leverett House resident Madeline SAMEER MEHRA ‘17 Harvard, which rehearses weekly Cooper ’16 adores natural light, COMPUTER SCIENCE in the soundproof music room on so one of her favorite spots in QUINCY HOUSE the vibrant lower level. McKinlock Hall is the Douglas W. Garden Light Court that anks the “We all cram in there, and it works dining hall. e appealing corridor out great,” says trumpet player Sameer Mehra ’17, a computer was created by enclosing an old science concentrator from Greenwich, Connecticut. e music alleyway with a glass roof and add- room, built during the renewal of Stone Hall three years ago, has MADELINE COOPER ’16 ing tables, chairs, and a long wooden a screen that can be used for videoconferencing or, in this case, BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING bench. “I’ll sit and eat or study out posting lyrics to learn. “With mariachi, you have to know all the LEVERETT HOUSE there,” Cooper says. “I like that big music from memory,” Mehra explains. “We aren’t necessarily skylight feeling; it’s very open and the best players, but we love the music and have a lot of heart.” comfortable.” Daily Discoveries Cooper, a biomedical engineering concentrator from Ashland, Massachusetts, appreciates the variety of lounges, meeting For Colette Bishogo ’16, senior year is lled with discov- rooms, and other shared spaces in McKinlock Hall, the second ery—not only in her classes, but in completed renewal project. ere’s the Emerald Library eater, her Harvard home. She constantly a multipurpose room for performances and other activities. nds new places to study and relax ere’s the Halina and Pavel Bren Room, a tech-enabled in Dunster House, which reopened seminar room o¢ of the light court where a student health this past fall after 15 months of con- organization that Cooper is involved with meets regularly. And struction. She also keeps meeting there’s the art studio for creative expression, where students new people, thanks to the renewed can participate in a variety of workshops. COLETTE BISHOGO ’16 common areas and reconfigured AFRICAN STUDIES hallways that House Renewal Overall, Cooper says, “House Renewal encourages people to DUNSTER HOUSE brought. get out of their rooms and socialize or study with others. It strengthens our sense of community, and I think that’s great.” OF COURTESY STUDENTS PHOTOS NEWS OFFICE 16-390 PHOTOGRAPHERS/PROFILE BY HARVARD FAS PHOTOGRAPHY “It feels a lot more open; you can move easily from one side of the House to another,” she says. “There are so many places to study and hang

THE HARVARD CAMPAIGN FOR ARTS AND SCIENCES | VISIT CAMPAIGN.HARVARD.EDU/FAS MARCH/APRIL 2016

16-390 MarApr Insert 1-28.indd 2 2/1/16 9:08 AM Harvard2 Cambridge, Boston, and beyond

12B Extracurriculars Events on and off campus through the end of April

12D Celebrating Harvard’s Art-makers The 24th Arts First Festival

12G The Stuff of World War II A “new” Natick museum

12H Stepping It Up Shoes not made for walkin’, in Manchester, N.H.

12J Woolapalooza Sheep-shearing, spring lambs, and woolen arts at Drumlin Farm 12N Sweets for All Bakeries that “do it the old-fashioned way” courtesy of drumlin farm wildlife sanctuary

Harvard Magazine 12A Harvard Squared ittig/ ameron W nology; C h t ysics ph stro aeology and E h rc enter for A useum of A sonian C h mit S

The Peabody Museum of ollege, Peabody M Extracurriculars e Harvard- Archaeology & Ethnology Events on and off campus during March and April www.peabody.harvard.edu In Fine Feather: Selected Feather- exhibitions & events Technology, and Culture examines U.S. work from the Peabody Collections

The Collection of Historical broadcast communications, from ham ra- highlights rare and beautiful examples of ellows of Harvard C Scientific Instruments dios and underground networks to the birds’ plumage. (Opens April 13)

www.chsi.harvard.edu reports of Edward R. Murrow and the ad- arker quartet; courtesy of Th e p

Radio Contact: Tuning In to Politics, vent of podcasts. (Opens March 10) Native American Running: Health, h Culture, and Sport. Coinciding with the

From left: A Wayana headdress from Suriname, at the Peabody; The Parker Quartet © Presidenteft: and F performs in the Blodgett Chamber Music Series; and an ALMA image of the young star HL Boston Marathon and the eightieth anniver- rom L courtesy of t Tau and its protoplanetary disk, the topic of a lecture at the Center for Astrophysics sary of Ellison Myers “Tarzan” Brown Sr.’s F

COME FOR A VISIT. MEET OUR STAFF. EXPERIENCE THE COMMUNITY. Building Community COME FOR A VISIT. MEET OUR STAFF. EXPERIENCECOMEA Not-ForTHE FOR ProfitCOMMUNITY. A VISIT. MEET OUR BalletSTAFF. classes: EXPERIENCEAssisted THELiving CommunityCOMMUNITY. One Home at a Time EXPERIENCE THE COMMUNITY.age 3 through teen, A Not-For-Profit• Daily FitnessAssisted and SocialLiving Events Community adult and pointe. and Selling More Homes in our Market than Anyone Else • Special MemoryA• ASupport Not-For-Profit Warm, Inclusive• Two Community AcresAssisted of Secure Living Gardens Community Neighborhood and Walking Paths New Students Welcome! Neighborhood•• LectureSpecial Series/VisitingMemory Supportand Walking Professors Paths• Two Acres of Secure Gardens • Two Acres of Secure Gardens View current & summer • Daily Fitness and SocialNeighborhood Events • Private Studios nowand available Walking Paths and Walking Paths schedules at: • A Warm, Inclusive• DailyCommunity Fitness and• Social* Short Events Term Stays• PrivateAvailable Studios now available • A Warm, Inclusive• Special Community Memory• *Care Short Term Stays Availablewww.freshpondballet.com Supporting: Huntington Theatre Company, US Fund for UNICEF, • A Warm, Inclusive Community • * Short Term Stays Available Neighborhood Visit us on Facebook: The Mt. Auburn Hospital, The Guidance Center, and The Cambridge Jazz Festival • 1-BR & Studio Apts Available facebook.com/FreshPondBallet 165• *ShortCHESTNUT Term STREET, Stays AvailableBROOKLINE WWW.GODDARDHOUSE.ORG165 CHESTNUT STREET, BROOKLINENina Alonso, Director, FPB 165 CHESTNUT STREET, BROOKLINE LANCE CHAPMAN AT 617-731-8500WWW.GODDARDHOUSE.ORG EXT. 105 1798a Mass Ave WWW.GODDARDHOUSE.ORG [email protected] / www.gailroberts.com / 617 245-4044 CALL LANCELANCE CHAPMAN CHAPMAN AT AT 617-731-8500 EXT.Cambridge, 105 MA 02140 617-731-8500 EXT. 105 617.491.5865

12B March - April 2016

160320_Coldwell_GailRoberts.indd 1 1/25/16 10:48 AM Building Community One Home at a Time and Selling More Homes in our Market than Anyone Else

Supporting: Huntington Theatre Company, US Fund for UNICEF, The Mt. Auburn Hospital, The Guidance Center, and The Cambridge Jazz Festival

[email protected] / www.gailroberts.com / 617 245-4044

160320_Coldwell_GailRoberts.indd 1 1/25/16 10:48 AM Harvard Squared victory in the 1936 race (he also won in 1939), this multi-day event explores the his- STAFF PICK: Celebrating the Arts at Harvard tory and significance of Native American running traditions. (April 15-18) The annual arts extravaganza spon- sored by Harvard offers more than 100 music events, from live performances of dance, The Parker Quartet music, and theater to public-art installations; www.boxoffice.harvard.edu most are free and open to the public. Festivi- The program includes the winner of the ties begin on Thursday, April 28, at 4 p.m. Blodgett Composition Competition, Amen with the Harvard Arts Medal ceremony; dico tibi: hodie mecum eris in paradiso, by President Drew Faust and festival founder, doctoral candidate Kai Johannes Polzhofer. actor, and author John Lithgow ’67, Ar.D. Paine Concert Hall. (March 5) ’05, will honor the 2016 medalist, architect Frank Gehry, Ds ’57, Ar.D. ’00. ac Harvard Wind Ensemble Most of the 2,000 art-makers are under- The Asian American Dance Troupe and Sunday Jazz Band graduates, says Jack Megan, director of the

www.boxoffice.harvard.edu Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA), which organizes the festival: “The great joy is Ch ase/HJon p On the program are “Joy in the Oasis,” by getting to work with very creative, very diverse, and very inspiring young people.” The jazz bassist Rufus Reid, and “I Remember Clif- weekend lineup includes Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the Harvard Pan-African Dance ford,” by tenor saxophonist Benny Golson. and Music Ensemble, Mariachi Véritas de Harvard, and the Brattle Street Chamber Lowell Lecture Hall. (April 15) Players, as well as hands-on “Make Art” stations; concerts by the Silk Road Ensemble and rock and pop groups that bang it out in a “Battle of the Bands”; and an internation- Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra al-dance showcase that opens with a tango contest featuring the Harvard Ballroom www.boxoffice.harvard.edu Dance Team. In addition, OFA has made a point of sponsoring art that explores social Works by Claude Debussy and Jean Sibelius. and political issues—like minority inclusion and gender identification—that have arisen Sanders Theatre. (April 16) at Harvard and other universities, especially within the last year. “Where Do We Go From Here?” is an interactive art installation of 13 individual, human-sized, Plexiglas Kuumba Singers boxes, each containing letter-shaped mirrors that, together, spell out “make commu- www.boxoffice.harvard.edu nity.” Despite “the terrible things happening around the world,” Megan notes, “we can The forty-sixth Dean Archie C. Epps Spring still hope to have moments of beauty, creativity, and collaboration. Artists have a con- Concert. Sanders Theatre. (April 23) tribution to make in creating space for reflection and, ultimately, change.” vn.p.b.

Nature and science Theater lectures The Harvard-Smithsonian Center Harvard-Radcliffe The Mahindra Humanities Center for Astrophysics Gilbert and Sullivan Players www.mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/ www.cfa.harvard.edu/events/mon.html www.hrgsp.org content/norton-lectures Skyviewing and a lecture on “Where Do Love transcends social class on the high Novelist and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, Planets Come From?” by doctoral candi- seas in H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass Litt.D. ’89, delivers the six Norton lectures date Anjali Tripathi. (March 17) That Loved a Sailor. (March 25-April 3) under the umbrella title, The Origin of Others, The Literature of Belonging. Spotlight Sanders Theatre. (March 2-April 12) Cigarette butts, broken glass, bottle The Radcliffe Institute for caps, liquor “nips,” snack packets, hy- Advanced Study podermic needles, lottery tickets, tires, www.radcliffe.harvard.edu hubcaps, matchbooks, shopping carts, “One Writer’s Trip.” Author Michael and the occasional computer monitor. Pollan discusses his forthcoming book on All are among the litter likely to be found humans’ use of plants and fungi to induce by the 3,000 volunteers at the Annual altered states. Knafel Center. (April 6). Earth Day Charles River Cleanup, on the morning of April 30. Some 30 miles Loeb associate professor of social sciences of shoreline and shallows, from the river’s of Conservation and Recreation, Waltham Laurence Ralph speaks to “Witnessing mouth in Boston Harbor nearly to Wildcat Land Trust, Esplanade Association, Emer- Death: Policing, Race, and Limits of Pond in Milford, are scoured before crews ald Necklace Conservancy, and the office Democracy in the 21st Century.” gather for a celebratory picnic. The Charles of Massachusetts state senator William N. Fay House. (April 13) River Watershed Association leads the ef- Brownsberger. Volunteer slots fill quickly. fort, in partnership with the Charles River To register, visit www.crwa.org/charles- Events listings are also found at www. Conservancy, Massachusetts Department river-cleanup/event-registration. harvardmagazine.com.

12D March - April 2016 We’ve spent a lifetime mastering the senses, so you can get the most out of life. Visit MassEyeAndEar.org

160301_MassEyeEar_v1.indd 1 1/11/16 10:30 AM huecu March 2016_outlines.indd 1 1/14/16 10:22 AM Explorations The Stuff of World War II Curators shape a modern museum of history. by Nell Porter Brown

uring a field trip to the Mu- Clockwise from top: a Sherman tank seum of World War II in Natick, dominates the Massachusetts, a burly high- “America Enters school junior stopped at the the War” exhibit; a D German doll’s belt glass case holding Adolf Hitler’s personal buckle sports a swastika; British effects: pills, powders, and ointments from propaganda targeting women; his medicine cabinet; a monogrammed sil- Rendell, Carter, and Heywood; ver hand-mirror; and a leather mustache- flags and other artifacts from trainer, worn at night to keep stray hairs the Pacific theater in line. ing off Route 9, behind a Dick’s “He said, ‘Ah, I get it now!’” reports di- Sporting Goods. It holds the rector of education Marshall W. Carter, most comprehensive collection Ed.M. ’97. The student had connected the of World War II artifacts in the “personal vanity and megalomania with the world. “Other places will have dictator.” It’s just this sort of insight, Carter a complete set of guns, or of believes, that the museum—especially in uniforms,” says Carter, or focus its planned expansion—should induce. on one nation’s involvement, or “The opportunity here,” he explains, “is to historic events, such as the Ho- understand that individuals in history had locaust. “But what we have is temperaments and agency that were very the most global collection—ma- complex, and that those traits ended up af- terial from every theater, from documents and objects are on display, in fecting millions.” battlefronts, and home fronts, and no one mind-boggling breadth: from a draft of the The museum is a plain, low-slung build- else has attempted to do that.” Some 8,000 1938 Munich Agreement (with penciled

Photographs courtesy of the Museum of World War II Harvard Magazine 12G Harvard Squared marginalia by Hitler and Neville Chamber- Samples of lain) and a complete set of plans for D-Day Hitler’s art supplies and (as well as a map with original notations watercolor on landings and units), to explosives dis- works. Rendell guised as lumps of coal, German enigma says, “He machines, a French sewing kit used to rarely painted people.” relay messages for the Resistance, and the bronze bust of Hitler that General George have died were saved and went home.” war. “In the 1940s I remember neighbors and S. Patton used as a doorstop. That mobile hospital will likely be set up friends of my parents coming back, mostly Another half-million items are in stor- in the museum’s pending reincarnation as medics from the Pacific, and talking about age, including the latest acquisition, the a two-story, 62,000-square-foot structure the horrors,” he says, “but by the 1950s ev- most complete known mobile auxiliary (six times its current size) slated to be eryone was talking about the glories of war; surgical hospital—a 50-foot canvas tent, built and fully open to the public within no one could afford to remember the horrors two operating tables, anesthesia equip- three years. because they were too devastating. I was ment, thousands of instruments. “What’s struck by this and concerned, even though amazing about it is the atmosphere it cre- Kenneth W. Rendell, who built his ca- I was just a kid.” His goal in amassing the ates,” says Carter. “People entered that reer as a dealer in historic documents, be- ephemera, then and now, is to “save the re- tent hanging on to life. And because of the gan the collection at age 16. Born in 1943, ality of the war, which reflects the very per- innovation of the MASH, which was new the Somerville native was unusually sensi- sonal and complex causes and consequenc- to World War II, many people who would tive to shifting cultural perceptions of the es, which were horrible—for everyone.”

CURIOSITIES: empowerment, and play,” per exhibit notes from the original show organized by Lisa Small at the Brooklyn Museum last year. orn

Not Made for Walkin’ Take Walter Steiger’s fetishistic “Unicorn Tayss.” Leopard- h print vamps and ankle straps top six-inch curved stiletto heels, Less a fête for the feet than a feast for the eyes, much of the à la golden horns. Rem D. Koolhaas’s “Eamz” capture the in- haute couture footwear on display in Killer Heels: The Art of the dustrial chic of mid-century designers Charles and Ray Eames: High-Heeled Shoe at the Currier Museum is “barely wearable,” fire-engine red flats that appear hoisted by a metallic lever at Zucker Jay ph by admits curator Samantha Cataldo. “Any woman who has put her the heel. Nicholas Kirkwood’s suede “Pumps,” encrusted with otogra foot in a non-sensible shoe knows they are not comfortable.” Swarovski crystals in a floral pattern, lack any utility. h Instead, the 150 shoes range from eighteenth-century European Some 50 examples on display are historic, such as satin-weave- embroidered precursors of the “pump” to Dutch designer Iris embroidered silk Manchu-era platforms, Chinese shoes for bound van Herpen’s mounds of tangled black strands, which resemble feet, and traditional wooden Japanese geta from the 1800s. They the roots in a mangrove point to the Eastern origins of high heels. (Shoes have always swap, and were pro- walked the line “between form and function,” Cataldo says.) duced by a 3-D printer. Stilted bath sandals in the Ottoman Empire kept feet dry, and All are presented as heeled equestrian Persian footwear kept riders firmly in stirrups, courtesy steiger,rt; of walter P design objects akin to but both soon evolved as fashion styles that represented physical

titled sculpture, and as status, beauty, and even worldly power. useum of A ia M

“layered cultural sym- Fast-forward to the twentieth century and Roger Vivier and ph bols in narratives of at- Salvatore Ferragamo, the designers most often credited with “in- iladel traction, transformation, venting” the stiletto heel. To create the blade they adapted ex- h At left: “Unicorn Tayss,” truded steel, Cataldo explains, a material also on the rise in anada; P Walter Steiger, spring 2013; transforming the world of architecture and the urban built Casuccio e Scalera per Loris landscape, largely in the form of skyscrapers. “That shoe Azzaro, 1974-79 (below); and gingham platform shoes, was really when the high heel became a sex symbol,” she

Vivienne Westwood, 1993 adds. Wearing them “changes our whole posture…pushing useum, T oronto, C

certain parts of the body out and other parts in.” However oe M glamorous “killer heels” can be, they do have a polarizing ata Sh ata effect. “For some people, putting heels on makes them feel

taller and more confident and offers a sense of authority,” ©2014 B t: Cataldo notes. “For others, they symbolize objectification h and constricting standards Currier Museum of Art of beauty. Sometimes, too, Manchester, New Hampshire www.currier.org people just find them erotic.” February 6-May 15 vn.p.b. lockwise from lower rig C

12H March - April 2016 OYSTER PERPETUAL

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151117_LuxBondGreen-Rolex-pk.indd 1 9/23/15 12:26 PM Harvard Squared

By 1999, his private collection had been torian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D. ’68, Last fall, Rendell and his wife and busi- consolidated at the Natick facility, but was and the director of the Churchill Museum ness partner, Shirley McNerney Rendell, open just to friends, scholars, war veterans and Cabinet War Rooms in London, Phil once a local television news reporter, hired and their families, and military person- Reed.) The nonprofit museum was incor- professional senior staff: Carter, formerly nel. (Longtime trustees include retired porated in 2011, when it started admitting the K-8 principal of Milton Academy, and four-star general George W. Casey Jr., his- members of the public by appointment. Samantha Heywood, who left the Imperial War Museums to become the founding director and direc- All in a Day: Woolapalooza tor of exhibits. The museum is expected to stay open through- The 206-acre Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln out construction, which could is Mass Audubon’s only working farm-cum-educational cen- begin as early as next spring; ter. Staff members tend livestock and bountiful vegetable visit museumofworldwarii.org/ and flower crops while safeguarding meadow, woodland, visit.html or e-mail museu- and pond habitats, and providing refuge for injured or or- [email protected] to phaned wildlife—turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks, barred make an appointment. owls, a great horned owl, pheasants, and a fisher. “Ms. G,” Just what shape the new the Commonwealth’s official state groundhog, also resides museum’s content, design, and on site, but is generally not on public view. narrative structures will The farm’s annual Woolapalooza festival on take is still a matter for March 26 supports these efforts to highlight the curatorial interpretation. interconnection among animals, people, and the Right now, items are dis- natural world. Twenty-six ewes will be freed played chronologically in from their winter coats, some just weeks after some two dozen areas— giving birth. (Seventeen appeared to be expect- from “Germany in the ing at press time.) The rest of the celebratory 1920s” to “War Trials.” day is filled with herding-dog demonstrations The white walls are and farm-life and arts activities. Artisans also largely covered by inge- demonstrate how raw wool is washed, card- nious and often vitriolic ed, spun, and eventually turned into sweaters. propaganda posters pro- “Many people think of farms as being active only when Scenes from an early duced by all the combatants; the rooms are everything is green and growing,” sanctuary director Re- spring festival at simply lit. The dearth of dramatic display Drumlin Farm in nata Pomponi says, “but there are exciting things going on Lincoln, Massachusetts. staging and what curators call “didactics” all year round in nature. One of the important ways New See new lambs, try out (explanatory texts that guide experience) England farmers use the winter is the arts of spinning and allows visitors freedom to think about and weaving, and witness Mass Audubon’s Drumlin for other ‘crops’ like maple syr- absorb the staggering volume of materials the annual rite of Farm Wildlife Sanctuary up and products like wool.” At sheep-shearing. at their own pace and psychological ca- www.massaudubon.org/ get-outdoors/wildlife- Woolapalooza, visitors can buy pacity. Three hours is recommended for a sanctuaries/drumlin-farm farm-tapped syrup, along with a lunch of farm produce first-time visit. March 26, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. and meat. All the barns will be open, as well as the four How to retain “the intimacy of the objects miles of walking trails (weather permitting), because and documents,” given a much bigger space by late March, as Pomponi notes, “People are really and crowds, “is one of the challenges,” notes anctuary ready to get outside again after a cold, long winter.” Heywood. The greater creative and intellec-

For those who shun crowds (and Woolapalooza ildlife S tual puzzle, though, is figuring out how the has drawn thousands of visitors in the past), Drumlin complex scope of World War II will be con- arm W Farm is also open daily. Classes and events include ceptualized and tangibly portrayed. What

workshops on fermenting foods, making cheese, and rumlin F could, or should, be taught? What is most running a chicken coop; night walks in search of owls; relevant to a wide-ranging contemporary exploring the biological life of small ponds, and the audience, especially to young people, and

fundamentals of Northeastern birding. vn.p.b. courtesy of D what might the war mean to them in the future? For Carter, the museum’s educational power lies precisely in that personal contact and potential for connection with

12J March - April 2016 Harvard Squared the primary materials of history, including apparent detritus like the bit of tickertape reading, “THE WAR IS OVER.” As the living memory of the war dims, he knows, it With sweeping ocean views from is the ephemera that keep history, and its multiple levels, this 13-room lessons, alive. And so the museum, atypi- residence is among the most cally, allows students and teachers to significant homes on the North Shore. Meticulously renovated to touch objects: to feel “a soldier’s backpack, maximize the pleasure of living in one the heft of a rifle, or run their fingers along of New England’s finest seaside the scarred grooves of a Sherman tank hit communities, the property has an by fire, or look through…binoculars that understated grandeur that invites were on the deck of the USS Arizona at carefree living amid luxurious interiors and constant views of sea Pearl Harbor.” He has already begun build- and sky. ing the educational programs, and expects “Bass Rock” to guide more than 1,500 students through Gloucester - $3,600,000 the collection before June. Even the handwritten documents under glass convey the human touch, he adds, “with the ink and the loops of the cursive letters…and the scratch outs and amendments.” Of the museum’s trove of personal journals, notes, and manuscripts, Manchester- $2,249,000 Prides Crossing - $949,000 Beverly -$4,500,000 Dwight D. Eisenhower’s letters to his wife, Mamie, are especially emotional, Representing the Amanda Armstrong Senior Global Real Estate Advisor given common perceptions of the man as North Shore’s the cool-headed supreme commander of c 978.879.6322 finest homes AmandaArmstrong.net the allied forces in Europe. “It is a terribly [email protected] sad business to tot up the casualties each Each office independently owned and operated day,” he wrote on April 16, 1944. “Moth- ers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, and friends must have a difficult time preserving any comforting philosophy…War demands great toughness of fibre—not only in the soldiers that must endure, but in the home that must sacrifice their best.” By revealing the multidimensionality and vulnerabilities of great leaders, Carter hopes that students will more readily explore their own characters—and act on 21st- their capacities for empathy, bravery, and even heroism. Foundation (ARS), / Artists Rights Society New York. the Moon) , 1937–38. © The Willem de Kooning Willem de Kooning,Cow Jumps Over (The Untitled Century Heywood believes war is not inevitable: “It happens because men and women make choices,” she asserts. “The majority of us get along in life without conflict at every turn, and ‘peace’ is the norm for most of us on the planet.” But she also acknowl- edges that wars will “probably always happen,” and therefore any serious war museum should address “why and how did wars happen, and how and why can they be avoided?” Laboratory To that point, the museum’s newest exhibit, on anti-Semitism between 1919 and 32 Quincy Street 1939, opening April 8 at the New-York His- Cambridge, MA for the Arts torical Society, illustrates the incremental harvardartmuseums.org rise of prejudicial hatred. Rare documents

Harvard Magazine 12K Harvard Squared

are highlighted, but so are items like pamphlets, shop signs, ash- trays, and post- cards that Hey- wood says “helped ‘normalize’ anti- Semitism in Ger- man society.” To create the show, she spent months culling through the archives. “A depressing task,” she adds. “But enabling people today to see material like this, knowing what it Atlifecare Brookhaven living is as good as it looks. led to during the war, may lead to Brookhaven at Lexington offers an abundance of opportunities for them think afresh intellectual growth, artistic expression and personal wellness. Our residents about discrimina- share your commitment to live a vibrant lifestyle in a lovely community. tion, or about poli- Call today to set up an appointment for a tour! tics today.” A Full-Service Lifecare Retirement Community Rendell wants www.brookhavenatlexington.org the museum to re- (781) 863-9660 • (800) 283-1114 flect the continuing “relevance of A French wedding this period, 1920- dress made from an American reserve 1945.” On the do- parachute; binoculars Leadership & Team Building Programs mestic front, he salvaged from the deck notes parallels be- of the USS Arizona designed for your organization! tween the political mood of 1920s Germany and the “staggering number of disaffected Americans…we have people who are broken and humili- “We learned a lot about ourselves and our team. ated, who don’t have jobs, and there’s no We learned about leadership skills and ultimately sense of [positive] nationalism,” he says. “And that is so dangerous.” communicating together.” In his view, the nation’s current political divisiveness and dysfunction recall the - Matt Linblad, Boston Bruins Player Development Camp gridlock evident in 1940 in Washington, D.C., when President Franklin Roosevelt was “stuck between the isolationists and the interventionists.” Decisive action occurred only after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and after Hitler and his follow- ers had already wrought unprecedented destruction. “I get really irritated when people talk about how we won the war, when more than 400,000 American soldiers died,” he says. “That’s not winning. We didn’t lose as badly as others—but nobody wins war. And the more the museum THOMPSON ISLAND (617) 830-5114 OUTWARD BOUND can make people aware of that—of the EDUCAPROFESSIONALTION CENTER [email protected] realities of war, of the very serious conse- Boston Harbor Islands www.thompsonisland.org quences—the better.”

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160319_PremProp_full_v2.indd 1 2/2/16 1:11 PM Tastes and Tables Sweets for All Greater Boston bakeries that “do it the old-fashioned way”

Hiroko Sakan and her son, Takeo, work together at their bakery, Japonaise; Praliné’s French treats are laid out like jewels, under glass.

inspired goodies, the standouts include the rum baba, ricotta cheese cup, and the cannolis, fresh-filled to order (all $2.75). “Everything is made here, in the back,” René says, gesturing over the glass cases filled with cookies—half moons (or “black and whites”), rainbow-sprinkle- dipped, and nubby pine-nut—toward the kitchen. “We do it the old-fashioned way,” he adds, with “fresh eggs and butter, flour, sugar, honey—all the basics.” For similarly no-nonsense, hand-cut donuts (unlike those eople are picky about pastries. created what she liked.” In addition to the maple-infused numbers dotted One lady’s scone is another’s scorn. azuki cream, the Sakans produce a delec- with bits of hand-cured bacon and free- A gentleman’s prized honey-glazed table chocolate cake layered with sliced trade chocolate), go to Linda’s Donuts P donut is another’s adamant do not. bananas ($3.75 a slice) and a wonderful Japa- in Belmont (http://lindasdonutsbelmont. What follows is a very short list of baker- nese white bread, shoku pan, made with milk com), supposedly named for the former ies that rose above derision during an im- ($3.75) or heavy cream ($4). The business is owner’s daughter. She’s not there now, promptu office taste-test. being transferred to Takeo, so his mother but patrons will find Arthur Paloukos A clear favorite, the “azuki cream,” from can retire. “But it’s hard for her to just go, serving bags, boxes, and plates of do- Japonaise Bakery & Café, in Brookline, after she has been doing this for so long,” he nuts—most popularly, the Boston cream, (www.japonaisebakery.com), is a dreamy says. “And at the same time, I can do all the raspberry-apple jelly, and chocolate hon- pillow of croissant pastry baked with a bread myself, but I still need some help on ey-dipped sweets ($1.25 each)—that his smear of red bean paste at the bottom, the cakes.” then cooled and pumped full of fresh Established in 1958 whipped cream. The $3.50 treat is not fuss- by French émigré ily sweet, notes Takeo Sakan, who does Antoine Khachadou- the baking alongside his mother, Hiroko rian, Antoine’s Pas- Sakan, who opened the shop in 1985. try Shop, in Newton Missing the Asian-French-fusion pastry (http://antoinespas- of her native land (U.S. baked goods histori- tryshop.com), is still cally lean toward hefty English varieties), a family-run opera- Sakan read cookbooks, experimented with tion, now led by his Asian and French techniques, and listened brother, René. Of the to her own “good palate,” her son says, “then French- and Italian-

12N March - April 2016 Photographs by Jim Harrison Guiding you home.

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160328_Compass.indd 1 1/25/16 2:58 PM Harvard Squared father, John, arrives every day at 4 a.m. eryjp.com). Located to make. The cozy shop opens two hours on a busy street across later, when regulars shuffle in and take from the police station up the 18 seats, primed for a mug of cof- in Jamaica Plain, the fee and a gab session. Soon, others line up, seven-seat, storefront construction workers and cops, kids and café offers sweets that their parents, all pining for that warm range from the rus- hunk of sweet dough that will carry them tic salted chocolate- through the day. chunk cookies ($2.95) For fancier fare, head a few blocks east and cranberry oat bars to Praliné Artisanal Confections (www. ($2.25) to the refined pralineconfection.com). French-born bostok (sliced brioche owner and pastry chef Sophia Benyam- topped with apri- ina opened it a year ago and specializes cot jam, frangipane, in macarons—pistachio, orange blossom, and almonds; $3.95), chocolate, and raspberry, among others, raspberry-apple galette ($2.95), and palm- Alejandra Ramirez, Olivia Hitchens, $2.50 each—and French tea cakes, includ- iers (those crunchy, buttery pastries also and Gabriela Ramirez (from left to right) preside over the goods at Antoine’s ing madeleines, cannelés (cylinders of cara- known as “elephant ears”; $2.50). Don’t Pastry Shop in Newton. melized crust with custardy interiors), leave without a tappo ($1.25): Italian for and financiers (springy cakes, typically al- bottle-stopper, this dense shot of crusty The hard-to-find French-stylegibassier mond-flavored), that cost around $3: “a lot chocolate cake has a molten center. ($3.95), an anise-laced cushion spiked of butter and sugar,” comments the sales- Customers love the loaves at Clear with bits of candied orange peel, won the girl. Also on offer aretarte aux fruits; choc- Flour Bread, in Brookline, where the highest marks in the tasting. But the bak- olate-honey marshmallows; and almost- kitchen adheres fiercely to traditional ery does not wholesale its pastries, warns too-pretty-to-eat handmade chocolates. European baking and pastry techniques. general manager Inga Sheaffer: “If you More eclectic, with a grungy-chic vibe, But excellent, too, are the scones, cook- want those, you have to make the trip.” is Canto 6 Bakery (www.canto6bak- ies, and croissants (from $2.95 to $3.50). vnell porter brown

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12P March - April 2016 John Harvard’s JournalJournal KENNEDY SCHOOL, UNDER CONSTRUCTION. The Harvard Kennedy School aims to build students’ capacity for better public policy, wise democratic governance, international amity, and more. Now it is addressing its own capacity issues (as described at harvardmag.com/ hks-16). In January, as seen across Eliot Street from the northeast (opposite page), work was well under way to raise the level of the interior courtyard, install utility space in a new below-grade level, and erect a four-story “south building.” The project will bridge the Eliot Street opening between the Belfer (left) and Taubman (right) buildings with a new “gateway” structure that includes faculty offices and other spaces. The images on this page (above and upper right) show views diagonally across the courtyard from Taubman toward Littauer, and vice versa. Turning west, across the courtyard toward the Charles Hotel complex (right), affords a look at the current open space between buildings; the gap is to be filled with a new, connective academic building, including classrooms.

Debating Diversity following the widely publicized deaths of black tape. The same day, College dean Toward a more inclusive Harvard African-American men and women at the Rakesh Khurana distributed to undergrad- hands of police. Particularly last semester, uates the results of an 18-month study on di- Amid widely publicized student protests a new wave of activism, and the University’s versity at the College. The day before, Presi- on campuses around the country in the last responses to it, have invited members of the dent Drew Faust had joined students at a year and a half, many of them animated by Harvard community on all sides of the is- rally in solidarity with racial-justice activ- concerns about racial and class inequities, sues to confront the challenges of inclusion. ists at Yale and the University of Missouri. Harvard has had its own—sometimes qui- Campus conversation on racism peaked eter—upwelling of activism. The cadence last November, when the portraits of Afri- Leaders of the Houses. In December, the of campus protests has gained particular can-American professors at Harvard Law heads of all 12 undergraduate Houses de- urgency in the last two academic years, School (HLS) were found defaced with cided unanimously to abandon the title “House master” (imported in the 1930s from the Oxbridge residential systems), in In this Issue favor of a new term more in line with their role in the twenty-first century; the Uni- 19 Harvard Portrait 23 Brevia versity is expected to announce a new title 20 Yesterday’s News 25 The Undergraduate this semester. Said Michael Rosengarten, 22 News Briefs 26 Sports co-master of Mather House, “[The title]

Photographs by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 17 John Harvard's Journal had an association with slavery in the current events,” McDonald said. “House The Law School’s roots. At graduate South, and you just can’t divorce them.… leaders have been thinking about this for schools, too, students have protested mat- We have a long history relating to Oxford a long time.” The change has been delayed ters both symbolic and fundamental. The and Cambridge, but times change, and we not by disagreement about the need for a vandalism of black professors’ portraits in have to make sure the University isn’t so new title, but by uncertainty about what November (University police have closed inflexible that it can’t change.” that should be, said Khurana (who is him- the investigation without finding a sus- He and Mather House master Chris- self master of Cabot House). pect) lent momentum to Reclaim Harvard tie McDonald, Smith professor of French Similar changes are under way at peer Law School, a coalition of students and staff language and literature and professor schools: Princeton announced that it members advocating for racial-justice re- of comparative literature, had, as a joke, would drop the title “master of the resi- forms, including removal from the school’s briefly changed their own titles to “chief dential college” two weeks before Har- shield of the crest of the slave-owning Roy- executive officers” on the House website vard’s announcement, and administrators all family, whose wealth endowed HLS’s a few weeks ahead of the college-wide de- at Yale, where a long and public debate first faculty chair. That demand had already cision. “It was a non-gendered name that over “master” has raged, are considering been made by the HLS student group Royall described most of what we do,” Rosen- doing the same. (Yale also is expected to Must Fall, but failed to gain traction until garten said, alluding to the feeling among announce whether it will strike the name after the vandalism, when Dean Martha Mi- some that “master” is biased with respect of fervently pro-slavery alumnus John C. now called racism a “serious problem” at the to gender as well as race. Calhoun from one of its residential colleg- school and created a committee to consider Students and journalists have tended es. In January, portraits of Calhoun were dropping the crest. (Faust, for her part, told to interpret the masters’ December deci- removed from the college.) the Crimson in January that she does not sion as a reaction to current conversa- Do such symbolic matters truly influ- favor hastily abandoning building names tions about race. A few weeks ahead of ence undergraduates’ experiences? Those and symbols of Harvard’s past, though she the change, a group of students had met who called for the change insist that they remains undecided about the HLS shield.) with Faust to discuss their These demands, and pro- demands to make Harvard testers’ broader challenges more hospitable to students of to University policy, pose “a color, including changing the profound challenge to those House master title. Other un- who have never seriously dergraduates felt the change contemplated how inclusion was an abrupt and trivial con- might or should change in- cession to activist demands. stitutional practices,” wrote Any “connection between Paul professor of constitu- the academic title of master tional law and professor of and slavery is grounded nei- history Tomiko Brown-Nag- ther in history nor in reality.… in in a Slate op-ed. Rather than legitimizing these Some students have criti- games of word association,” cized Minow for what they The Harvard Crimson editorial- see as her unwillingness to ized, “Harvard and its admin- address their other demands, istrators ought to spend time including the creation of a addressing actual issues of inclusivity on Mather House co-master Michael Rosen program in critical race theory (which ex- campus. ” garten and master Christie McDonald amines the role of racism in law and soci- House masters insist this wasn’t how do. “Our job is to not have any impedi- ety); curricular reforms that would “ensure their decision was made. The change ments to doing our job,” Harrington said. the integration of marginalized narratives “only seems ridiculous if you believe that “We’re trying to wrap our arms around and a serious study into the implications of we didn’t understand the etymology. We 400-plus students and create a commu- racism, white supremacy, and imperialism know the etymology. It isn’t that we didn’t nity for them....We don’t want barriers to in creating and perpetuating legal analysis get it,” said Anne Harrington, master of that relationship.” Anthony Jack, a tutor and thought”; and significantly expanded Pforzheimer House and Ford professor of in Mather who is African American, re- financial aid. “Some students and staff have the history of science. “I don’t think you called a moment when the title evoked an presented a list of demands. We are, howev- could find a single House master who is uncomfortable historical connotation. “I er, a community of many voices and hopes, comfortable using that title anymore. We was asked to come to Amherst for an event, and we have an obligation to provide and all go by our first names. [The title] rings in and I wrote back, ‘I would love to, but let protect the opportunity for all to partici- twenty-first-century ears as imperious and me ask my House master for permission to pate, speak, and be heard,” Minow wrote in suggestive of a kind of arbitrary power.” leave,’” he explained. “When you transport an e-mail to the HLS community in Decem- “It’s important to understand that the something from one context to another, it ber. “Real institutional change requires the impetus to change the title of ‘House mas- doesn’t allow it to be devoid of the context engagement of many members of our large ter’ definitely was not just a reaction to of the new setting.” and diverse community.”

18 March - April 2016 Photograph courtesy of Christie McDonald and Michael Rosengarten Perhaps because of the racially fraught legacy of law in the United States, ten- harvard portrait sions at the school appear to run especially high. Michele Hall, a second-year student, said that students of color are routinely exposed to racism in the classroom. “It’s hostile every day to go into class and talk about laws that affect populations of col- or….Every time issues of profiling come up, black students say, yes, they’ve been profiled on campus, and white students are shocked,” she continued. “Our daily experience is colored by these types of in- cidents, big and small.” Other members of the community describe what they view as a climate of intolerance toward dissenting views. Third-year student William Barthow, who created Responsible Speech at HLS, a website where students have expressed disagreement with the protesters, believes many students who oppose activist demands are intimidated into silence. “There’s a contingent that disagrees with the protesters but is afraid to voice that view publicly because of the social back- lash of doing so,” he said. Barthow and 36 other students signed a letter in Decem- ber urging Reclaim Harvard Law School to remove from its demands certain items that the signers believe threaten academic freedom—such as the proposed first-year course on racial inequality in the law, which, they write, “would be taught in a highly partisan manner.” James Mickens

Animating a diverse community. This ten- James Mickens is explaining how comedians Hannibal Buress and Louis C.K. get sion has played out most visibly at Yale, their laughs: Buress’s high “joke density” versus Louis C.K.’s slow-build storytelling. where disputes about social-justice issues For Mickens, an associate professor of computer science known for his snappy, engag- escalated into a discussion about whether ing, and laugh-out-loud funny PowerPoint presentations on computer security (many college students and administrators were viewable online), YouTube comedy clips are research. “A lot of people don’t realize that acting more as censors than facilitators of even the sciences are a social field,” he says. “When you can explain your work well free inquiry. In Cambridge, the College’s and create a narrative, you are building a universe for people to inhabit with you.” He responses have been more muted. Khurana approaches teaching the same way. Mickens joined Harvard’s faculty last fall, after six rejects the dichotomy drawn between free years with Microsoft Research and a one-year visiting professorship at MIT. He tries speech and student calls for racial justice: to give his students a “deeper sense of the work,” he says, beyond money and prestige “Those are sort of false binaries...one can and Silicon Valley. Growing up in Atlanta as a physicist’s son (and a serious heavy metal engage in free-spirited exchange and also fan; he owns a formidable record collection and plays in two one-man bands), he was do that in a way that is respectful,” he said. drawn to computer science and the potential to “build things with your mind, without “It requires skill and capacity-building and a needing a backhoe. There’s a lot of architectural thought, and yet at a certain level genuine desire to hear from somebody else’s you’re in a different reality.” After Georgia Tech, and a Ph.D. from the University of perspective.” Others suggest that the chal- Michigan, he now studies security—or the lack of it—in distributed systems (multiple lenges of embracing Harvard’s increasingly computers connected to a network). A lot of his research, he says, “is thinking about diverse student body demand more expan- failure scenarios.” It also addresses the fundamental tension between privacy and profit sive University strategies. “From the 1960s in Web services like Facebook and Gmail. He’s working on a data-storage system that on, it was about quantitative diversity. Now would allow users to retain control of their online content—and a whole new ecosys- it’s about qualitative diversity, as Tomiko tem of Web services to go with it. Building without a backhoe. vlydialyle gibson Brown-Nagin has written. So the question

Photographs by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 19 John Harvard's Journal

is, how do you bring together a community of diverse people?” McDonald said. Yesterday’s News That question was the subject of the From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine College Working Group on Diversity and Inclusion’s report, released in November. It addressed ways to ensure that under- 1926 Thick ice on the Charles River 1971 The peer-counseling group Room graduates can benefit equally from their has lasted a month longer than usual, forc- 13, operating from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. every Harvard experience, regardless of racial, ing the crew coach to hire men to cut a night, has been founded as a way for stu- economic, or other background. The study channel from Newell Boathouse to areas dents to talk anonymously to a sympa- spans College life from the academic, by of the river with more open water. thetic listener or get information on sen- calling on departments to consider how sitive topics like birth control and drug their methods of inquiry or lack of diver- 1936 The article “Electing Overseers use. The founders credit their motto to sity may exclude some groups, to the ex- Fifty Years Ago” reports that alumni in the Beatles: “We get by with a little help tracurricular and residential, by urging the 1886 were informed not only of candi- from our friends.” Houses to create programming that pro- dates’ qualifications but also of their opin- motes conversations about diversity. ions on controversial Harvard issues: 1981 The student-faculty committee In their freshman year, for example, stu- should attendance at morning prayers be formed in response to student demands dents participate in mandatory Commu- made voluntary? should knowledge of for a Third World Center unanimously nity Conversations: a series of discussions Greek be required for admission to the recommends instead the establishment of about diversity and the Harvard commu- College? should women be allowed in the a foundation to improve racial relations on nity. But the report notes that many House professional schools? should the marking campus. Rather than encourage “further tutors stress the need for dialogue beyond system be abolished in College courses? separation of the races,” the committee the first year. It sharply criticizes the lack seeks an organization that does for race of regularity across Houses in their com- 1941 The first Crimson to appear after and ethnicity what Phillips Brooks House mitment to diversity: “The process of ap- spring recess decries the prejudice that led does for charity and service. pointing resident tutors and scholars is in- the U.S. Naval Academy to forbid Lucien formal and thus lacks transparency, which V. Alexis Jr. ’42, a black member of the 1996 The Harvard women’s basket- leads to mistrust in its integrity,” it states, Harvard lacrosse team, from playing in the ball team (20-7 overall, 13-1 Ivy) reaches later referencing allegations raised last game held there during the break. the NCAA tournament playoffs for the May that Dunster House was unwelcom- first time in history. (The men’s team ing to LGBT students. “The lack of clear 1961 Radcliffe women are included in hadn’t made it since 1946.) Despite losing policies, structures of accountability, and the Harvard Who’s Who directory, 100-83 to number-three seed Vanderbilt, consistency across Houses puts everyone lengthening the student section by some number-14 seed Harvard twice draws at risk and erodes trust.” 35 pages. within five points of its rival in the “It’s not enough to have just two days of game’s final minutes. Community Conversations and say, ‘Okay, we’ve done that,’” said Harrington, a member of the working group. “Our challenge is to make community conversation feel like a value rather than something burdensome.” Creating an inclusive environment also might mean “changing the optics of the residential Houses, so that they celebrate the traditions of individuals who aren’t necessarily just straight white men,” she added. As a way to express Harvard’s values, she stressed, such symbols matter. Skeptics like Bar- thow question the ex- tent to which University policy can affect students’ day-to-day experiences

Illustration by Mark Steele and interactions, where many grievances an increase of 62 percent; Latino professors first Latino in psychology, our first African about racial intolerance originate. “Mi- have doubled from 18 to 36. But as noted, American in computer science.” croaggressions”—everyday slights against their share of the faculty overall remains Part of the challenge is the dearth of marginalized groups, like the prejudiced low: during the past decade, the proportion underrepresented minorities in academia. assumptions that students of color say of underrepresented minority junior faculty African Americans account for about 6 they experience in their social groups or (which includes African Americans, Lati- percent of Ph.D. recipients in the United in College or law school classes—occur nos, Native Americans, and faculty of two or States, according to the National Sci- outside the administration’s sphere of in- more races) has grown from 10 percent to 11 ence Foundation—a figure that has not fluence, he said. “I’m not sure if the right percent; the share of underrepresented mi- changed in a decade. Latinos also make response is a top-down response...It’s nority senior faculty increased from 5 per- up 6 percent of recipients, up from 5 per- a social problem, not an administrative cent to 8 percent. Asian Americans, who are cent a decade ago. “We’re all in competi- problem.” not considered underrepresented, account tion for the same people,” Singer said. At for 10 percent of senior faculty and 19 per- Harvard, these trends also appear to hold. The faculty. Beyond the portraits hung cent of junior faculty. No faculty members Harvard College is the most diverse school on House walls, an area of wide student are Native American. in the University, she said, while graduate concern has been the composition of “For 11 percent of the junior faculty to be students look roughly the same as faculty Harvard’s faculties, whose members they underrepresented minorities and 8 percent in terms of diversity statistics. That trend meet daily in classrooms. Student activ- of professors to be underrepresented mi- reinforces itself: minority students who ists on many campuses have called for in- norities—Harvard’s doing better than a lot don’t interact with minority faculty are creasing the number of underrepresented of other places,” said Judith Singer, senior less likely to pursue academic careers. minorities in the faculty ranks. In January, vice provost for faculty development and To meet the demands of equity and di- a group of Harvard Medical School and diversity. Nonetheless, she continued, “You versity, Harvard has had to rethink every Dental School students delivered a peti- see these percentages moving, but they’re stage of its faculty recruitment process. tion calling on Faust to select a medical moving more slowly than a lot of people “We’ve discovered that the way our posi- school dean who is committed to increas- would like.” Stressing that the composition descriptions are worded influences ing student and faculty diversity. Yale tion of the faculty evolves appointment by who applies,” Singer explained. Her office committed $50 million last fall to increase appointment, over long stretches of time, encourages faculty search committees to the diversity of its faculty over five years. she pointed out, “Last year we tenured our write broad position descriptions and to University of Missouri students have called on the administration to increase the share of black faculty to 10 percent by next year—up from 3 percent now. And Brown has announced an ambitious plan Explore More to double its share of underrepresented minority faculty to 18 percent by 2025. Harvardmagazine.com brings you Recent history suggests that such changes won’t come easily. Nationally, continuous coverage of University and alumni news. only about 6 percent of University faculty Visit to find these stories and more: members are African American. At Har- vard and elsewhere, the share of underrep- Approaching Arabic resented minority professors has moved An undergraduate reflects on learning little in the last decade. “With respect to a language. harvardmag.com/arabic-16 faculty diversity,” said McDonald, “we’re still working on the quantitative.” Harvard and HUCTW Reach Harvard’s latest data on total ladder Tentative Contract Agreement faculty (a group including both tenured and tenure-track professors) show the The deal marks the end of nearly a year of proportion of black faculty remaining sta- strained negotiations between the University ble at 4 percent. Of 1,485 total ladder facul- and its largest labor union. ty, 42 are black professors, and 18 are black harvardmag.com/huctw-16 el

junior faculty. Another 4 percent of ladder ff On Crimson Careerism faculty are Latino, representing 36 profes- h ra sors and 26 junior faculty. Both groups Back at Harvard after four decades away W; keitW; are more likely to be non-tenured than harvardmag.com/houghton-16 CT the faculty overall. The population of tenured black and Latino professors has grown steadily in the last decade: the number of visit harvardmagazine.com black professors has increased from 26 to 42, From top: istock; HU

Harvard Magazine 21 John Harvard's Journal conduct active outreach to talented mi- academic pipeline. Mather House tutor An- ment of the last few years. Critics who nority candidates: “If you want to diversify thony Jack, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology condemn coddled college students “miss your faculty, you cannot just sit there, post who studies the effects of race and class on the point of the protests,” he said, and an ad, and expect people to apply.” students’ experiences at elite colleges, said those protests’ connections to broader “In the old days,” she said, faculty hir- Harvard should make a broader effort to di- inequities that extend to the gates of elite ing worked quite differently. “You called versify its ranks: embrace novel areas of re- universities. The symptoms raised by the up a few of your buddies, or your former search (such as his own scholarship), for ex- national racial-justice movement also are students, and said, ‘Who do you have for ample, and develop minority scholars at the reflected in Harvard’s racial legacy, the me this year?’” Persuading professors to college and graduate levels. “Diversify your experiences of students, and the diversity abandon old systems, and to confront their graduate programs—I was the first black of the faculty. “We know the target of the implicit biases, she added, is not simple. male in eight years in my department,” he criminal justice system is men and women *** said. Jack was recently named a Junior Fel- of color. When we think about the faculty, Harvard’s approach to date has many low, and next fall will join the faculty of the it’s the inverse: there’s nobody—relative- critics who believe the University could Graduate School of Education. ly—who’s African American,” Jack said. do more to prevent attrition of minority Jack traced the current wave of student “The underlying issue is equality.” scholars at the source of the problem: the protest to the Black Lives Matter move- vmarina bolotnikova

seeks to “develop effective strategies for General Education, Downsized News Briefs promoting in children kindness and a The proposed revision of the College’s commitment to the greater good”) has ad- General Education curriculum reached An Overseers’ Challenge? dressed the cutthroat arena of college ad- the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) for On February 1, Ron Unz ’83 delivered pe- missions. “Turning the Tide,” a report re- debate on February 2. Compared to the pro- titions for himself and four other candidates leased in January, proposes reworking gram outlined in December (described at seeking places on the ballot for the annual admissions to promote ethical engagement harvardmag.com/curriculum-16), this ver- election of new members to Harvard’s Board among applicants, reduce excessive pres- sion, on which FAS members will vote later of Overseers. (The list of Harvard Alumni sure for achievement, and create a fairer this term, further eases course requirements. Association nominees appears on page 66.) process for economically disadvantaged If enacted, undergraduates will take four Under the theme, “Free Harvard, Fair students. Gen Ed courses (down Harvard,” the petitioners advocate “great- It recommends that from eight now), each er transparency” in admissions, a message students participate “explicitly designed to coupled with language about “abuses” in in authentic service prepare students for a admissions and “powerful statistical evi- or community engage- life of civic and ethical dence” of a quota that limits admission of ment—lasting at least engagement in a chang- Asians—leading to their statement, “Racial a year, and including ing world.” They will discrimination against Asian-American stu- such contributions as fall into four broadened dents has no place at Harvard University working to provide categories: Aesthetics, and must end.” They also “demand the im- income for one’s fam- Culture, Intepretation; mediate elimination of all tuition for under- ily (a leveling step that Histories, Societies, In- graduates,” citing both income from the en- recognizes diverse dividuals; Science and dowment and the notion that moving from student circumstanc- Technology in Society; financial aid to a tuition-free model would es). It also recom- and Ethics and Civics. more readily promote diversity in the stu- mends that students Students will also have dent body. A detailed report on Harvard’s go beyond individual to fulfill a distribution admissions and student-diversity policies, service to collective requirement, taking a its finances, and the petitioners’ arguments action that addresses course each in arts and appears at harvardmag.com/overseers-16. community challenges, exposing them to humanities; social science; and science and If the petitioners qualify for the ballot, the emotional and problem-solving aspects engineering—but one of these may be from an announcement with the full list of can- of teamwork. The report urges institutions their concentration (flexibility the Decem- didates is expected in mid February, after to state clearly their interest in the quality ber proposal did not permit). And they face this issue of the magazine was printed; the of applicants’ activities, not their quantity, a new Empirical and Mathematical Reason- outcome will be noted online at harvard- and to put their use of standardized tests ing requirement. If a student were to place magazine.com toward the end of February, in the evaluation process into context. The out of that (the course remains to be defined and printed in the May-June issue. recommendations arose from a meeting of by a separate committee) and use a concen- admissions officers, counselors, and others; tration course for distributional purpos- Reenvisioning Admissions they have been endorsed by admissions of- es, she would reduce her requirements for The Graduate School of education’s ficers from dozens of institutions, includ- Gen Ed plus distribution to six term-length Making Caring Common project (which ing Brown, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. classes. vjohn s. rosenberg

22 March - April 2016 Encouraging Entrepreneurs A “Poverty Preference” As universities foster student and affiliate Amid concerns about lower-income stu- start-ups (“Inside Startup U,” on Stanford, Brevia dents’ participation in elite higher educa- The Chronicle of Higher Education; “Universities tion, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, Race to Nurture Start-Up Founders of the a major source of scholarships, in Janu- Future,” The New York Times), Har- ary published “True Merit: En- vard’s iLab has spawned the In- suring Our Brightest Students novation Launch Lab for alumni, Have Access to Our Best Colleg- just across Western Avenue. And es and Universities.” Citing data now the Business School and its showing that students from Arthur Rock Center for Entrepre- families in the lowest economic neurship have taken the show on quartile comprise only 3 per- the road, introducing the HBS cent of enrollment at the most Startup Studio in Manhattan. A selective schools, while those “gathering place” for local entre- from the top quartile com- preneurial alumni and a “work- prise 72 percent of enrollment, space for New York-based teams,” the authors call for a “poverty it welcomed an initial nine enter- preference” to factor into ad- prises, ranging from an online- missions decisions—much as fitness firm and a maternal nutri- legacy and athletic preferences tional-beverage company (Bundle do. Princeton president emeri- Organics) to Tootelage, which tus William G. Bowen, LL.D. supplies educational content for ’73, and colleagues previously at-home learning. Applicants are made a similar argument for a required to have at least $500,000 sort of socioeconomic affirma- in seed funding and fewer than tive action in Equity and Excellence seven employees. in American Higher Education (see the excerpt, “A Thumb on the Aiming at Endowments Scale,” May-June 2005, page 48); Several years after U.S. senator the problem they identified per- Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) aired propos- Crimson Tiger: Molecular biologist sists, and may even have worsened. als to mandate that university endow- and geneticist Shirley M. Tilghman, LL.D. ’04, president emerita of ments distribute 5 percent of their as- Princeton, has been elected a Fellow of Schwarzman Scholars Debut sets annually (as foundations do), and the Harvard Corporation. She began The first class of Schwarzman Scholars perhaps be required to spend much of serving as of January 1, filling the (a new master’s program based at Tsing- that money on financial aid (see “Endow- vacancy created by the sudden death of hua University in Beijing, modeled on the James F. Rothenberg ’68, M.B.A. ’70, ments—Under a Tax?” July-August 2008, last summer. Tilghman joins fellow Rhodes and Marshall scholarships) in- page 65), another legislator is toying education leaders Lawrence S. Bacow, cludes 111 students, six of them from Har- with a similar idea. Bloomberg reported former chancellor of MIT and presi- vard: Bonnie Lei ’15 (a former organismic dent of Tufts, and Nannerl O. Keohane, in January that U.S. representative Tom president emerita of Wellesley and and evolutionary biology concentrator); Reed (R-New York) is drafting legisla- Duke, on the 13-member senior Christian Føhrby ’14 (government); John tion directing schools with large endow- governing board. She brings to the Randolph Thornton ’14 (history); Jona- ments to spend 25 percent of endowment Corporation command of the life than Jeffrey ’16 (history); Rahim Mawji sciences and broad engagement with income on financial aid for lower-income Princeton’s outstanding engineering ’15 (applied mathematics); and Rugsit students—or risk losing their tax-ex- program, significant changes in campus Kanan ’16 (sociology and economics). empt status. Depending on how income residential life, and the expansion of its and need were defined, Harvard, with performing arts offerings and facilities. Nota Bene Read a full report at harvardmag.com/ a $4.7-billion endowment investment tilghman-16. Arts first first. Frank Gehry, Ds ’57, Ar.D. return in a good year like fiscal 2014, ’00, will become the first architect to re- could be required to spend much more intentions. Whether the proposal ad- ceive the Harvard Arts Medal when he is than it actually did under its existing vances past the talking stage, or not, the honored on April 28, during the annual need-blind aid policy. That might pose idea of tapping endowments to enhance Arts First festival. problems in leaner years, like fiscal 2015, aid spending, without boosting public suggesting an unwanted degree of vola- appropriations, continues to pop up. For Masters move on. Moore professor of tility from the formula, not to mention another perspective, see the news about biological anthropology Richard W. problems of conforming to donors’ gift the Overseers slate, facing page. Wrangham and Elizabeth A. Ross, mas-

Photograph courtesy of Shirley M. Tilghman Harvard Magazine 23 John Harvard's Journal

ter and co-master (as the titles have tra- who aims to develop an artificial kidney line with the recommendations of its ditionally been; see page 17) of Currier via 3-D printing (see Harvard Portrait, advisory committee; abstained on and House since 2008, have announced that November-December 2013, page 62); opposed two proposals on genetically they will relinquish those roles at the end Folkman professor of vascular biology modified nutritional ingredients; and of the academic year. Donald E. Ingber, who is also profes- abstained on a resolution on drug pric- sor of bioengineering and director of the ing, noting that “profits on effective Writers’ roster. University affiliates Wyss Institute (see “Mimicking Organs,” ‘blockbuster’ drugs help fund research nominated for the National Book Critics January-February, page 12, a report on and development.” Circle awards (to be conferred March 17) his “organs on a chip”); and professor of include Bernbaum research professor of pathology Guillermo J. Tearney, who Top teachers. The Fannie literature Leo Damrosch, Eternity’s Sunrise: works on noninvasive optical imaging. Cox Prize for Excellence The Imaginative World of William Blake; Char- in Science Teaching—for lotte Gordon ’84, Romantic Outlaws: The Pritzker honorand. Alejandro Aravena, exemplary work in in- Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and a former faculty member at the Gradu- troductory courses, and Her Daughter Mary Shelley; Vivian Gornick, ate School of Design, has won the Pritz- accompanied by a $10,000

RF ’08, The Odd Woman and the City; and ker Prize, conferred annually on an out- personal award and Harrison Jim professor of the practice of literary criti- standing architect. Atypically, his firm, $40,000 in support for John Asher cism James Wood, The Nearest Thing to Life. ELEMENTAL, based in Santiago, Chile, teaching and research— Johnson was recognized not for its trophy build- has been conferred on Rumford professor The class of 2020. The College announced ings, but for designing very low-cost of physics and McKay professor of applied in early December that 918 of 6,173 early- housing units whose occupants, in many physics Jene Golovchenko and professor action applicants (14.9 percent) had been cases, finish and extend the structures of astronomy John Asher Johnson. (John- granted admission to the class of 2020. on their own, as their resources permit. son’s work was described in a Harvard In the prior year, 977 of 5,918 applicants The work was featured in “For Santiago’s Portrait, January-February 2014, page 23.) (16.5 percent) were admitted, continuing Poor, Housing with Dignity” (see har- a trend: a larger pool of early applicants, vardmag.com/housing-16). Miscellany. Susan Holman, M.T.S. ’91, a and a smaller cohort granted early ad- senior writer at the Global Health Edu- mission. A total of 39,044 students ap- Cyber studies. The Belfer Center for Sci- cation and Learning Incubator, has won plied, up 4.7 percent from last year. ence and International Affairs, at the the 2016 Grawemeyer Award in religion Harvard Kennedy School, has received a for Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Hu- Inventors three. The $15-million gift from its eponymous sup- man Rights. Gary Haugen ’85 and Vic- National Academy of In- porters—Robert (J.D. ’58) and Renée tor Boutros, Ed.M. ’99, won the award ventors, founded in 2010 Belfer, and their son Laurence (’88)—to for ideas improving world order for The by member universities launch a project on cyber security. Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires and nonprofit institu- the End of Violence.…Yale began piloting its

tions to honor academic Harrison Jim Proxy profile. The Corporation Com- system of carbon charges, which are be- work that results in pat- Jennifer Lewis mittee on Shareholder Responsibil- ing tested on 20 campus buildings—part ents, has admitted 168 new fellows, in- ity revealed in its 2015 annual report of its effort to reduce emission of 300,000 cluding: Wyss professor of biologically (http://www.harvard.edu/shareholder- tons of carbon dioxide annually.…Diane inspired engineering Jennifer Lewis, responsibility-committees) that Har- Quinn, formerly senior vice president of vard voted in favor of Cirque du Soleil, has joined the American shareholder proposals Repertory Theater as executive director…. for corporate disclosure The Boston Redevelopment Authority of political and lobby- has approved construction of Harvard ing expenditures. The Business School’s Klarman Hall, an au- committee abstained on ditorium and meeting complex (see the certain proposals con- roundup of capital-campaign news, Janu- cerning greenhouse gases ary-February, pages 26-28); the BRA noted and global warming, in a $171-million project cost.

Radcliffe Honorand: Federal Reserve chair Janet L. Yellen will receive the Radcliffe Medal, awarded annually to “an individual who has had a transformative impact on society,” on May 27, during Commence- ment week. The first woman to lead the Federal Reserve will participate in a conversation with Beren professor of economics N. Gregory Mankiw. The event also features personal reflections by Yellen’s immediate predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke ’75.

24 March - April 2016 Photograph courtesy of the Federal Reserve the undergraduate Kid from a Flyover State by bailey trela ’16

hen I finished winter ex- turned out, people denied just that. To many long as he’s not so refined, has a rougher un- ams, I flew home and was of my classmates, the Midwest was the derstanding of decorum. Anyway, he’s off to picked up by my father in quintessential void; from both the coasts, attend some East Coast school, and upon ar- Indianapolis. We detoured they forayed into other countries, while the rival gets it into his head to do some studying, Wthrough Terre Haute on the way to New center of their own remained a cipher. In the but he’s so bemused by the fanciful brick and Harmony, in the south of our state, driving face of this assessment, I’d never found the high-rise architecture of his temporary home all the way beneath a gray, rain-threaten- time to develop my own understanding of that he has to stop and ask a native for the lo- ing sky. my state. It existed, I knew. It took up space. cation of the library: “Excuse me—I’m new The drive always seemed drowsy and But beyond that, I couldn’t say much. here. Would you mind telling me where the anonymous. I felt vaguely aware that As we drove home, the empty space library’s at?” The native responds in a voice there was nothing of interest outside the filled up. It wasn’t as if I’d suddenly come gone all transatlantic: “Here at Harvard,” he system, off the road. Trees might rear and to understand the land. Rather, a differ- draws it out, long as a sigh, “we don’t end our fields spread outward, farming equipment ence had emerged, a sudden complexity sentences with prepositions.” Not to be trod might stand desolately in the harvested that I’d never allowed myself to see, and I upon, our Texan (or Sooner, or Hoosier) re- emptiness and small oil-field pumpjacks had to ask myself, with a newfound critical sponds in a stereotypical Texan (or Sooner, or bob steadily—and yet they seemed paste- bent: What had I been seeing? And why? Hoosier) accent: “I’m very sorry about that. board figures in a perfunctory scene, as Could you please tell me where the library’s though the onward and endlessly stretch- So there’s this Texan, or maybe he’s a Soon- at, [expletive of your choice]?” ing scroll of the Hoosier State needed to er, or a Hoosier—it doesn’t really matter, so Just a few months before entering Har- be filled bysomething . vard, I was told this But it was different joke by an established this time. I refused to let member of my Indiana the scene’s peculiarities community—his hearty pass under my notice. I frame convulsed mid saw hedge apples like delivery by bouts of yellow brains in the road- shoulder-slapping mer- side ditches; wire fences riment—who himself thronged with shrub- had attended a similar bery—when birds sit on East Coast institution the wire and excrete, my in the 1980s. Beyond father explained, they the avowed triteness of drop motley seeds; entire the setup, delivery, and fields run with regular punch line lurked implic- rows of upchurned earth, it messages, not the least like the traces of massive of which was: You’re going moles: evidence that a to have to watch your back. drainage system of black Your tools will be humor plastic pipes had been in- and subversion, the joke stalled. said; you will have to I’d spent the first 18 stock your quiver with years of my life in Indiana; the arrows of conscious I knew the land so well humility and, like a folk that it had passed into hero, contrive to let them archetype, become some- fly at the right moment, thing that just was. Say at the right target. what you would about it, It sounds pompous you couldn’t deny it ex- and solemn and naïve, isted. But at Harvard, as it but I really was think-

Illustration by Miguel Davilla Harvard Magazine 25 John Harvard's Journal ing along those lines, in that lofty regis- dice is still a long way from the presence were merely lovable yokels, patched over- ter, when I landed on campus in the fall of interest. alls and all; that the mindless cultivation of 2012. I understood that I was supposed I’ve always felt that, to a majority of my of commercial crops constituted its raison to be aggrieved; I was primed for a fight classmates, Middle America is akin to Mid- d’être—became solidified, entrenched. but found that I’d spent my days prepar- dle Earth: a mythic space whose unmarked When I dipped home for summer or winter ing for a battle long-since fought. Where zones bear the cautionary legend “Here be breaks, I saw in the long glides through the had all the spooky elitism flown? Nobody Republicans,” or something more nebulous countryside what I expected to see: nothing. cared where I was from, save to marvel still; it exists only as idealized space, unar- It all comes back to indifference, which, halfheartedly at the minimal scale of my ticulated, untouched, unexplored. in the present context, is the same as ignorance. When people talk to me about Indi- “…the absence of prejudice is still ana, their ignorance is apparent. And in a strange way, it ends up protecting my own a long way from the presence of interest.” ignorance, safeguarding it. I always note, in these interactions, an unwillingness on origins (a town of 800; one K-12 school of And I think this perception of emptiness both sides to probe too sharply. Whether 150). Nobody was walking with canes and affected me—I became like a travel agent, this springs from a desire not to give of- monocles. Perhaps most unfortunate, it bent on selling my home state, presenting fense or something else entirely, the end re- seemed I’d never get the chance to use the as lures whatever stereotypical emblems sult is the same: nothing is challenged; I’m powdered wig my grandma had bought came to mind. I had to justify it, prove that forced to defend nothing; and no one learns me as a graduation gift. something was there. Over time I built this anything. Not that there isn’t a reasonable In place of the aggression I’d expected, I into a routine, a sort of grandstanding alter solution to this indifferentism; I certainly found ignorance; in place of antagonism, an ego who engaged in all forms of cornpone wouldn’t advise anything so militant as an offer of assimilation. No one understood In- kvetching, extolling the manifold virtues organized chauvinism. Nor would it be rea- diana, so no one could hold the state against of cornbread and down-home coziness, sonable to make everyone learn a few things me. Of course, I was more than pleased to the friendliness of backwaters—even, on about every state and then quiz them on a discover this; one could do worse, I thought, one occasion, crafting an impromptu dance bimonthly basis. But it does seem to me that than forget all about Indiana. move at a party and christening it on the we could give more thought to the spaces spot “The Shucker,” despite the fact I’ve we bring with us, to recognize in even the My friends have a running joke, to which, probably shucked only enough corn in my plainest plats of land an irreducible strange- in four years of college, I’ve failed to provide entire life to yield half a bushel of husks. ness—and then perhaps, like a cherry on a winning retort. It goes like this: I say some- The problem is, if you’re constantly try- top, someone could reach out to say, “Tell thing about Indiana—anything at all—and ing to sell your homeland, you’ll hardly have me about the Hoosier State.” they remind me that I meant to say Idaho, or time to reflect on it critically. Whatever Iowa; they’re all interchangeable, like we’re youthful impressions of Indiana I’d brought Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow playing horseshoes with homelands. Either with me to Harvard—that its residents Bailey Trela already misses Indiana. that or someone cocks a head, squints quiz- zically, and says: “Where?” As if the Hoosier state isn’t, just this year, celebrating its bicentennial (Huzzah! Sumptuous Joy! Viva Sports the Crossroads!). It’s very funny, the whole thing. But it leaves me feeling lousy, too. A Calming Presence There are names for these places—In- diana, Iowa, Idaho: right now, the voguest is “flyover state,” meaning, ideally your feet Hockey goalie Emerance Maschmeyer will never touch their barren and mercifully steadies her team, in record-setting fashion. miniaturized ground; meaning, the best that can be said about them is they’re avoidable. “Flyover state” seems to me to encapsu- he moment was easy to miss. the pads of goalie Emerance Maschmeyer ’16, late, better than its coiner could ever have Halfway through the third pe- who flicked it harmlessly into the corner. intended, the strange blending of tact riod in an early January game And that was it. Maschmeyer, 21, a se- and indifference that seems to determine that Harvard would soon put nior co-captain of the Harvard women’s so much of our dialogue, as Harvard stu- Tout of reach, Colgate defenseman Nicole hockey team and its principal goaltender dents, about the regions we call home. I’ve Gass skated into the zone and, from the top for the past three years, had made her never gotten into a fight because someone of the right-hand faceoff circle, snapped a 2,108th career save, surpassing the school’s took umbrage at my Hoosier bearing, but, hard shot toward the Harvard net. The puck all-time record. A half-second later, her as I’ve come to learn, the absence of preju- sailed past two Crimson defenders and into teammates corralled the puck along the

26 March - April 2016 Document1Document1 11/20/03 11/20/03 11:51 11:51 AM AM Page Page 1 1

left boards and, after a skirmish at the ASSISTEDASSISTEDLIVINGLIVINGRETIREMENTRETIREMENTCOMMUNITYCOMMUNITY blue line, cleared it Independent and Assisted Living out of the zone and Here’sSpecializedHere’s what what Memory people people Care are are up the ice. In the next 10 minutes, Harvard Whatsayingsaying do Harvard about about us. alumni us. would score another have in common? three goals to win the game 6-2, and it Cadbury Commons wasn’t until after the A Remarkable Senior Residence final buzzer that the rink announcer reported Maschmeyer’s Emerance record to the ap- Maschmeyer Name:Name:MiltonMilton R. R. plauding crowd. By Occupation:Occupation:PostalPostal Supervisor, Supervisor, Retired Retired Hobbies:Hobbies:Reading,Reading, Walking, Walking, Exercising Exercising then she’d made another nine saves. saves that night on 30 shots—and eventu- Lifestyle:Lifestyle:Independent,Independent, Active Active “My opinion is, she’s the best goalie on ally her teammates found their stride. “I ChoiceChoice of Senior/Assisted of Senior/Assisted Living: Living: CadburyCadbury Commons Commons the college level,” says Landry Family head like being able to steal a game,” she says. The Harvard alumni who chose coach Katey Stone. Canada’s national team “A team can be outshooting and outplay- “There“There is a is stable a stable and and gentle gentle atmosphere atmosphere Cadburyof help and Commons empathy throughoutmay have the wants her; so does the newly formed Na- ing us, but if I’m able to stand on my head of help and empathy throughout the community.retiredcommunity. from I feel Iwork, feelassured assured but that not thatI am fromI partam part oflife. of tional Women’s Hockey League: in 2015 and give my team the chance to win— others’others’ lives, lives, as they as they are ofare mine. of mine. For Formyself, myself, the all-women professional league chose that’s the best feeling.” I feelIMuseum feel that that Cadbury CadburyVisits Commons • CommonsPlay Reading provides provides a a wellSymphonywell trained trained and andcaring Selections caring group group of •people ofLecture people who who her as one of 20 athletes its inaugural draft. Whenever she’s in the net, Maschmeyer are interestedare interested in my in welfare.”my welfare.” “She’s really good,” Stone says, “and she’s a sings a song in her head. Not always the Series • Yoga • Organic Gardening CallCall (617) (617) 868-0575 868-0575 to arrange to arrange a personal a personal calming presence back there. You can feel same one—and she’s cagey about divulg- tour,Calltour, (617) or visit or 868-0575 visit www.cadburycommons.com www.cadburycommons.com to arrange a personal tour, it all over the ice.” Averaging just over 30 ing titles (that might provoke the hockey WhereWhereor visitThe www.cadburycommons.comThe Emphasis Emphasis Is On Is OnLiving Living saves per game, Maschmeyer (teammates gods)—although she allows it’s less likely 66 Sherman6666 Sherman Sherman Street, Street, Street, Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge, EQUAL EQUAL MA 02140◆ ◆ (617) 868-0575 HOUSING HOUSING MAMA 02140 02140 (617)• (617)868-0575 868-0575 OPPTY call her “Mash”) is hovering close to sev- to be country (“a little slow”) than hip- OPPTY eral Harvard or NCAA records: for save hop or R&B. “It depends on my mood.” percentage, goals-against average, ca- But when the pucks are flying toward her reer shutouts, per-season wins. Last year and opposing forwards crashing the net, a It’s not too late to she backstopped the team all the way to song in her head helps hold her focus. become a doctor the NCAA tournament final, where the That’s what her teammates talk about Bryn Mawr College’s prestigious women fell to Minnesota in the title game. when they describe her: her focus, her Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program will help you realize your dreams. Harvard did take the 2015 ECAC regular- calm, her stability. Among the qualities • For women and men changing career direction season and tournament championships, that make a goalie good—lightning re- • Over 98 percent acceptance rate into medical and upset a top-ranked, unbeaten Boston flexes, disciplined positioning, a split- school College team to win the Beanpot Tourna- second instinct for when and where the • Early acceptance programs at a large selection of medical schools ment for the first time in five years. puck is coming—confidence is sometimes • Supportive, individual academic and This season has been a harder slog: seven the most elusive. It doesn’t seem that way premedical advising players (two of them Olympians) gradu- for Maschmeyer, though. Standing all of Bryn Mawr College Canwyll House | Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 ated last spring, and the early fall was dis- five-foot-six, she fairly disappears into her 610-526-7350 [email protected] rupted by absences and injuries, including pads, a pair of dark eyes behind a wall of www.brynmawr.edu/postbac/ one to center Mary Parker ’16, last year’s white and crimson. But she does not dis- leading scorer. Along with her co-captain, appear on the ice. Her technical skill is for- defenseman (and Olympian) Michelle midable, and her poise and self-assurance Picard ’15 (’16), Maschmeyer, who will give her team confidence to push hard and graduate this spring with a degree in soci- take chances on offense. “She’s fun to play TURN TO ology, has helped steady a younger squad. in front of,” Picard says. “You always know “She’s rock solid,” Picard says. And she’s that she’ll have your back if you make a PAGE 71 helped her team win games they otherwise mistake.…Nothing rattles her.” TO BROWSE LISTINGS might not have. In a November contest IN OUR SPECIAL SECTION against Northeastern, the Huskies came The first time Maschmeyer strapped on a out flying; for the first period, the Crimson set of goalie pads, it was just to be polite. She SPOTLIGHT players found themselves mostly on their was seven years old, and she’d been playing heels, battling in their own defensive zone. hockey since she was three. “I started out as ON ITALY Against volley after volley, Maschmeyer a forward,” she says. “I liked scoring goals.” kept the puck out of the net—she made 30 Then she joined a league in which the young

Photographs by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 27 John Harvard's Journal players rotated positions, including guarding my dad would be like, ‘You can’t get off the grew up idolizing—and against whom she the goal. “So I would just be in regular player ice until you can lift the puck.’ And then may compete for a spot in the 2018 Olym- equipment in net,” she recalls. After one game, we’d come in and my mom would put us pics—was the first) invited to play in Ed- she told her parents she’d had fun as goalten- in the bathtub to warm up.” She gets a far- monton’s Brick Invitational Hockey Tour- der. That Christmas, there was a set of goalie away look when she talks about Bruderhe- nament, an event that routinely draws pads under the tree. “I felt like, OK, this is im and the rink and all those acres. “That’s future NHLers. In her last year of high my present. I have to try this on.” The first the root of my game,” she says. “My game school, she played with the Alberta Junior outing on the ice didn’t go well. There were was built there, with my family.” Hockey League, at the highest amateur tears. “I did not like it,” she says. “I had my pads on the opposite legs; it was a mess.” Af- The rink Arlan Maschmeyer constructed ter that, though, it got better, and then it got serious. Her siblings—all five Maschmeyer every winter had full-size boards and Plexiglas kids played hockey—were overjoyed to have a goalie to shoot against in their backyard rink. shielding and a warming shack. “Backyard rink” doesn’t really do justice, though. Maschmeyer grew up outside Bru- Coach Stone remembers visiting Mas- level, and also played in the Alberta Win- derheim, Alberta, Canada, a tiny speck of a chmeyer before the goalie came to Har- ter Games and Canada Winter Games. town about an hour’s drive from Edmon- vard. “It was a long trip—we took an air- Hockey Canada came calling that year, ton. Her parents, Arlan and Christine, farm plane and then another and then got in a too. In 2012, she won gold with the nation- 10,000 acres of wheat, barley, and canola. car and drove another couple of hours and al under-18 team in the International Ice The rink Arlan Maschmeyer constructed arrived on one of the most beautiful sum- Hockey Federation World Championship every winter had full-size boards and mer days,” she recalls. She spent hours in Finland and Sweden. Maschmeyer was Plexiglas shielding and a warming shack. touring the farm in Arlan’s pickup truck in net for the gold-medal game, a 3-0 shut- There were workout stations, shooting- and chatting with Maschmeyer’s grand- out against the U.S. team (facing future drill spots, and dummy bags to practice mother; she ate with the family out on Harvard teammate Brianna Laing in goal body-checking. A player himself until age the deck. “By the end, it’s pitch black, and for the Americans). Playing with Canada’s 20, he coached his daughter and her sib- we’re about to drive away, and Emerance under-22 team, Maschmeyer has competed lings—three brothers and a sister—in said to me, ‘Thank you for coming; it was twice, in 2014 and 2015, in Europe’s Four those early years. “We’d be out there until really important for me that you know Nations Cup (this past November the team 12:30 at night skating, and our toes would where I come from.’ That’s a special kid.” took second place), as well as in the world be frozen,” she says. “It was awesome. And Until college, Maschmeyer played on championship in Sweden last March. She This season Maschmeyer made her 2,108th boys’ teams; at 10 she was only the sec- plans to be there this spring, too. “I’m still save, surpassing the Harvard’s women’s ond female goalie (Hockey Canada legend getting stronger,” she says. hockey all-time record. Shannon Szabados, whom Maschmeyer That’s true, says sophomore forward Carly Heffernan, Maschmeyer’s roommate, best friend, and teammate—both at Harvard and Hockey Canada. The two grew up half an hour apart in Alberta and met when Heffernan was 12 and Maschmeyer was 15. Already, she says, Masch- meyer is the best goaltender she’s ever played against or in front of. The two practiced together back home last summer, and the goalie coach often asked Heffernan to take shots on Maschmeyer at the end of a practice session. “So I’ve probably tried 200 different moves on her,” Heffernan reports. “And maybe— maybe—10 went in. I’ve said to her, ‘I’ve probably taken more shots on you than anyone in the world, and I still can’t figure you out.’ She just laughed. She’s so calm in the net. You can’t throw her off.” And the song keeps playing in her head. vlydialyle gibson

28 March - April 2016 www.gocrimson.com A Slim Margin Ups and downs for men’s basketball in early conference play One evening in mid January, Zena Edo- somwan ’17, the star center of Harvard men’s basketball, stood at the free-throw line for what seemed like a low-stakes attempt. Har- vard was playing Ryerson, a Canadian team added to the schedule primarily as a tune-up for Ivy play, and the outcome was hardly in doubt: the Crimson was up by 13 in the second half, and Stemberg head coach Tommy Amaker had been drawing on his bench. Yet Edosomwan—who had struggled with free throws earlier in the season—focused as though the Ivy title were on the line. He took a deep breath as he eyed the basket and then bounced the ball twice be- second-half points, a disconcerting num- Pre-injury, Zena Edosomwan ’17 anchored fore spinning it in his hands. After repeating ber for a program that prides itself on the Crimson offense as a reliable scorer in the post and an outstanding rebounder. this ritual three times, Edosomwan bent his playing high-level defense; and lost anoth- knees, rose, and flicked his wrist. The shot er point guard, Matt Fraschilla ’17, also to continued. Harvard, he said, would be was good, but the next attempt clanged off an ACL tear. “extremely formidable” by the beginning the front rim. There were some bright spots, namely of Ivy play in January. Amaker echoed the The sequence echoes the challenge the the performance of Edosomwan, who tal- point, emphasizing in his post-game re- team faces this season. After graduating lied 13 points and hauled in 16 rebounds to marks to his players and the press that the seven seniors from a class that went to earn his first career double-double. But the team was improving. four consecutive NCAA tournaments, and contest offered early proof that this year’s Still, with a matchup looming against then losing star point guard Siyani Cham- Harvard squad was not ready to compete Kansas (then fourth-ranked in the coun- bers ’16 to an off-season knee injury, the at the elite level of its predecessors. try), things had the potential to deterio- Crimson has had to squeeze the most out rate—quickly. of its talent, maximizing its opportunities Incremental Progress. The next few And at first they did: playing in historic to improve as it plays one of the most dif- games—a 69-63 loss at home to the Uni- Allen Fieldhouse, Harvard fell behind by ficult schedules in program history and versity of Massachusetts and a 69-56 set- 16 points in the first half. Then the team strives to capture a sixth consecutive con- back at Boston College—did not allay staged an extraordinary comeback, tying ference championship. concerns. Chambers’s replacement, fresh- the game at 56 with just over seven-and- man Tommy McCarthy, had 10 turnovers a-half minutes remaining. Although the Unwelcome Surprise, Challenging Start. and just one assist during this stretch, and Crimson ultimately fell to the Jayhawks At last spring’s season-ending banquet, the Eagles torched the Crimson for 53 sec- 75-69, the performance suggested that Amaker suggested that the 2015-2016 squad ond-half points. An 80-45 thrash- had the potential to surprise people, despite ing of Bryant just before Thanks- losing so many seniors. That comparison giving hinted at the Crimson’s rested on the assumption that this year’s potential, but Amaker’s squad Crimson would have Chambers, who had followed that performance with started as point guard since his freshman a dismal loss at Holy Cross and year. But once Chambers tore his ACL, the then another setback, 80-71, to question became how such a young team Northeastern. could possibly compensate for his loss. After the game, Huskies head As the season got underway, it was clear coach Bill Coen encouraged Har- how hard this task would be. After dis- vard fans to focus on the bright patching MIT (a Division III opponent) side, noting that the Crimson 59-39 in the season opener, the Crimson were young and had talent that fell the next night to Providence 76-64. would coalesce as the season The outcome was not surprising—Provi- Coach Tommy Amaker is dence is led by national player of the year trying to shape a young Crimson squad, including candidate Kris Dunn—but the way it freshman point guard Tommy happened was unnerving. The Crimson McCarthy, shown in action turned the ball over 22 times; gave up 42 against the University of Kansas.

Photographs by Gil Talbot/Harvard Athletic Communications Harvard Magazine 29 John Harvard's Journal

Amaker’s players were better than their 2-6 record suggested. On defense, the Crimson contained one of the most potent teams in the country, and its freshmen keyed the resurgence on offense. McCarthy nailed three three-pointers (one with the shot clock winding down and two Jayhawks descend- ing on him), and Weisner Perez ’19—until then a seldom-used reserve—tallied 15 points off of the bench. Most important, the team showed that it was not afraid to compete with tough opponents.

A Resurgence. That strong performance seemed to help the roster coalesce, and the Crim- son won four of its next five games. The streak began with a 75-69 win, opposition’s best offensive player, prompt- Agunwa Okolie ’16 has been the over crosstown rival Boston University, ing ESPN commentators to suggest that he team’s best defender, guarding the opposing team’s best perimeter player in which Harvard was led by yet another was one of the best defenders in the coun- on offense and earning national freshman. Corey Johnson hit six three- try; Patrick Steeves ’16, who did not play recognition for his impact. pointers, including a shot he made while during his first three years in Cambridge falling out of bounds with just over 30 due to injury, was a significant contributor when the Catamounts double-teamed seconds remaining—giving the Crimson a off the bench, notching 10 points against Edosomwan. six-point lead. Auburn; and Edosomwan, who averaged The contests signaled the kind of chal- Far more impressive was the team’s 20.3 points and 13 rebounds per contest lenges the Crimson was apt to face within performance after exams in the Diamond during the event, was named to the all- its conference. Unlike the opponents Har- Head Classic, a holiday tournament in Ha- tournament team. vard faced in Hawaii, Ivy League teams waii. After knocking off Brigham Young The success in Hawaii, followed by a tend to play at a slower pace, which re- University 85-82 in a taut opening round 77-57 thrashing of Wofford (a 2015 NCAA quires more patience and discipline on game that went to overtime, the Crim- tournament participant) on December 31, defense. Ivy rivals are also familiar with son bested Auburn University from the suggested that Amaker’s squad could be a the Crimson’s strategy and personnel and high-powered Southeastern Conference contender in the new year. eager to defeat Amaker’s squad. 69-51 in the semifinals before falling 83- After completing non-conference play 71 to Oklahoma (then ranked third in the The Competition Stiffens.The first Janu- by dispatching Ryerson 73-57 and nar- country) in a game that Harvard led at ary games, on the other hand—a 65-62 rowly beating Howard 69-61, the Crim- halftime. setback at home against Vermont and a son faced just 13 regular season games in Despite entering the eight-team tourna- narrow 77-70 win over Dartmouth (also a tightly contested league—and imme- ment with the weakest profile in the field, at home)—showed that the strong perfor- diately experienced one of its most dif- the Crimson managed to finish second. mance in Hawaii was no guarantee of fu- ficult stretches thus far. First came a 63- Agunwa Okolie ’16 routinely guarded the ture success. Against Vermont, turnovers 50 loss in its rematch with Dartmouth in (17 total) again plagued the Crimson. And Hanover, in a game that it led by 11 points Harvard Hardwood injuries continued to mount. After tweak- in the second half. Next the squad lost ing his knee against Wofford, back-to-back home games to Cornell (77- Follow the men’s and women’s Steeves did not suit up 65) and Columbia (55-54). That dropped teams all season long: visit against the Catamounts, Harvard to 1-3 in conference play, three harvardmag.com/basket- and McCarthy left the games behind Yale and Columbia, then ball to read game dispatches Vermont contest after sharing first place in the Ivy standings. and analysis by David Tannen- hyperextending his As the injury-plagued Crimson faced the wald ’08, and sign up at knee midway through heart of its league schedule in early Feb- harvardmag.com/email to the first half. Most ruary, its margin for error was as slim as receive basketball alerts. alarmingly, the Crimson a single free throw. failed to generate offense vdavid l. tannenwald

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160133_AdvancedLeadership_Harvard.indd 1 11/24/15 9:59 AM Elbow How the Dark Room Collective made space for a generation of African-American writers Room by sophia nguyen

o outward sign sets the pale yellow house at 31 Inman Street apart from its neighbors. Someone going on a literary pilgrimage in Cambridge might start a mile away, at 104 Irving Street, where e.e. cummings N ’15 grew up; then head west, to 16 Ash Street, where T.S. Eliot ’10, A.M. ’11, Litt.D. ’47, studied Sanskrit in the attic; then westward still, to the final residence of Robert Frost ’01, Litt.D. ’37, at 35 Brewster Street—guided the whole way by blue historical markers, never thinking to glance in the opposite direction. But back in Central Square, that anonymous Victorian was the cradle of the Dark Room Collective. There, in the late 1980s, a trio of young Afri- can-American writers—Sharan Strange ’81, Thomas Sayers Ellis, and Janice Lowe—formed their own literary center of gravity. During its decade of existence, their reading series and writers’ group gathered a nebula of creative energy, a starry critical mass whose impact on American letters continues to expand. The Dark Room Collective (DRC) was a haven for early members like writer and translator John Keene ’87, experi- mental prose writer Tisa Bryant, and poet Patrick Sylvain, Ed.M. ’98—a place to get together and get serious about their craft. It was “a whole ‘nother kind of education,” says Keene. “It was an immersion in a world that I only kind of glimpsed when I was in college.” By e-mail, co-founder Sharan Strange comments, “I often say that working within

the DRC and curating the reading series was in many ways my “be in that space and see what the model for this life that I want- true M.F.A. experience.” The reading series was also an early ed looked like. For me,” Smith adds, “the Dark Room was really performance venue for then-emerging talent—from current Bos- about saying, ‘If you want to do this, this is how you do it. And ton poet laureate Danielle Legros Georges to Natasha Trethewey, don’t wait. Do it now.’” RI ’01, U.S. poet laureate from 2012 to 2014. Many others passed through over the years, including Aya de Leon ’08, now director of The audience for literary writing is small, and slimmer still for Poetry for the People at the University of California, Berkeley; poet poetry; by that measure, it’s unsurprising that the Dark Room and critic Carl Phillips ’81; visual artist Ellen Gallagher; sound art- remains obscure. But even dedicated readers of contemporary ist Tracie Morris; and actress Nehassaiu deGannes. In all, the par- verse might know the Collective only as a common footnote to its ticipants’ published books number in the dozens, and they have alumni’s impressive biographies. earned fellowships and nominations and wins for honors like the Over coffee at Lamont Library, Harvard Review poetry editor Ma- National Book Awards, Whiting Awards, and Pulitzer Prizes. jor Jackson, RI ’07, muses, “I almost tweeted this, but am glad that I “Once you’re in, you’re in forever,” declares poet Kevin Young didn’t—,” then just barely hesitates before continuing, “And may- ’92 in his nonfiction inquiryThe Grey Album: On the Blackness of Black- be this is no better—but I think if there were a group of poets who ness. Young joined while still an undergraduate, as did Tracy K. were white and male, or white and male and female, or white and Smith ’94, who remembers thinking, “Oh, wow—these young female, there would have been a documentary made about them people want to be writers, and I want to be a writer, but they’re by now. There would be a movie about them.” Individual mem- actually doing it.” She began to help with lighting at events, just to bers have been celebrated, and the Dark Room has been loosely

32 March - April 2016 associated with those summed accomplishments. But, he says, the Ellis was a projectionist at the Harvard Film Archive and a clerk Collective has not been recognized as a whole: “Maybe we need to at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop. all grow gray hairs before that happens and America catches up.” As Ellis recalls in his 2007 poem “Spike Lee at Harvard,” the bookshop experience was fraught, and in that way, instructive: “I “For Some of Us, It Was Church” got my first glimpse/of the life of poetry/(through the Grolier’s/cin- The Dark Room Collective began with loss. As the mem- ematic glass window).” The life on display was orderly and mono- bers tell it: on December 8, 1987, Strange, Thomas Sayers Ellis, chromatic: the faces in the portraits above the shelves were nearly and their two housemates piled into a car to make it to Harlem all white. At some point, his employer wondered if the black poets by noon, for the funeral of James Baldwin. More than 4,000 paid should be shelved separately so customers might more easily find their respects at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Toni Mor- their work; Ellis said he didn’t think so. (An intervening line, dry rison, Maya Angelou, William Styron, and Amiri Baraka spoke at but not unkind, adds: “Well, at least she asked.”) the service. Strange and Ellis, aspir- ing writers who first met Baraka at a reading at Tufts University, came at his invitation (“It was probably very clear that we needed a lesson in Who We Owed,” Ellis later reflected in an essay) and his eulogy may have left the deepest impression. Baldwin’s spirit “will be with us as long as we remember ourselves,” Baraka told the attend- ees. “For his is the spirit of life thrill- ing to its own consciousness.” Strange had stood in the same room as Baldwin once. He had come to Har- vard for a tea, and, as she later wrote in the literary magazine Mosaic, she felt “too shy to break through the thick clot of fans around him and offer the admiration he had been accustomed to for decades.” She and Ellis, their mourning amplified and made vague by distance, felt their hero’s absence as a double negative; having never known him in person, they missed him twice over. The funeral filled them with new urgency about honoring their literary ancestors while they were still alive. They began planning the following spring. In a third-floor room of their house used for storing old photographic equipment, they’d been building a library they christened “The Dark Room: A Collection of Black Writing.” At the time, 31 Inman was already a communal house for artists and activists. Strange worked as a community organizer in Roxbury and as a prisoner advocate through Cambridge’s American Friends Service Committee;

Members of the DRC, photographed by Elsa Dorfman in 2013; from left to right: Sharan Strange, Janice Lowe, Danielle Legros Georges, John Keene, Tisa Bryant, Major Jackson, Artress Bethany White, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Patrick Sylvain, and Tracy K. Smith

Photograph © 2016 Elsa Dorfman, RI ’72-’74 Harvard Magazine 33 This homogeneity reflected the shop’s who came through were ex- surrounding scene. Literary events in Snow traordinary”—including, Cambridge rarely featured artists of col- memorably, Alice Walker. or, though a number of prominent black for Toi Derricotte “After the reading,” he re- writers taught in the Boston area. Team- ports, “There was a young ing up with Janice Lowe, a poet and mu- It came once, the year I turned ten. woman who had really been sician studying at the Berklee College of That year they told us how we struggling, and she was cry- Music, Strange and Ellis paid visits to would become women, and I began ing, and she told Alice Walker such eminences as science-fiction writer that her work had basically Samuel R. Delany and future Nobel laure- my monthly vigil. But this was kept her alive. And Alice ate Derek Walcott, asking them to head- the miracle, singular, unexpected. Walker—I’d never seen this— line a new reading series that would pair she left the podium, and came them with a younger writer. The Dark The whites had finally stopped and embraced her.” Room couldn’t offer an honorarium, they resisting. Unwanted at their school, Other young artists also said, but they could promise eager listen- were eager to join what came ers and book sales. we went anyway—historic, our parents to be known as the Dark In their living room, “We met on Sun- intoned, eyes flashing caution Room Collective, and to pay day afternoons after church and for some to our measured breaths. their literal and figurative of us it was church,” Strange wrote. In dues. They put together the fact, they did it “with chairs from the readings and accompanying church,” as Tisa Bryant told an inter- That first martial autumn mellowed musical performances and viewer in 2005. “We’d get some water and into a winter of grudging acceptance art shows. They pooled their some snacks and some stuff and put some and private discontent, a season of hope resources to pay for their music on, clean the house and everybody shaped by fists and threats. guests’ tickets to Boston, for would come in.” Sometimes the space Then angels molted, pelting all gas money to drive them to the grew so full that not everybody could train station and airport—for fit. Spilling onto the porch and down a dinner out if possible, but a the street, the audience listened through of creation with their cast-off garb. home-cooked meal if not. On open windows and doors. We went home early, drifting through the off-Sundays when there As later described by poet Cornelius a landscape of sudden ghosts, wasn’t a public event, they Eady, who was invited to be a young voice would hold small sessions to in the series’ early seasons, “It was like the yard churning in frothy waves, critique each other’s work. being part of a Sunday revival meeting. as if by an invisible tide of protestors. In between, they kept busy, A crowd showed up (I couldn’t tell who swapping books and going to actually lived there and who didn’t), some What I remember most is its rude film screenings and museum furniture got moved, some chairs unfold- exhibitions. Along the way, ed, and Pow! Their living room turned coldness, stinging and wet. How we they documented their activi- into a salon…that’s how they all seemed mixed it with milk, sugar, vanilla, ties. Patrick Sylvain was the to take it: with a serious joy and pride into a poor child’s ice cream that Collective’s videographer, re- in their belief in being black and being melted before we could savor it. cording readings on tape. El- wordy, which totally disarmed me.” lis, a photographer, coaxed his often camera-shy fellow mem- A Scene, Busted Open —Sharan Strange bers to pose for shoots around Word about the series spread. Older Cambridge. writers praised the project to their col- Occasionally, the visiting leagues; members posted photocopied neon flyers around town. writers would lead impromptu workshops. Sylvain relates how The organizers made a concerted effort to reach out to “journal- Yusef Komunyakaa—still five years away from his Pulitzer, but ists, editors, critics, arts organizations, academic institutions, ac- recognized by the Dark Room Award for Poetry in 1989—took tivists, merchants, students, and just plain folks,” wrote Strange. the time to review his drafts. “And he says, ‘Patrick, there’s a lot John Keene, then a loan-officer trainee at the Bank of Boston, there’—and then he kept going—‘But I think there is too much. learned about the Dark Room through his barber, who thought Oh dear, but there’s too much. Okay. Now we have to remove all that it was a bookstore. This “sent my 22-year-old behind hiking the fat. We have to make this poem muscular.’” Sitting outside halfway across Central Square to see these books I thought they’d Carpenter Center, the two men cut through the unnecessary ad- be selling,” he later wrote in a remembrance on his blog. When jectives and adverbs. The older writer gave the younger some ad- Keene showed up, some neighbors set him straight, and intrigued, vice he’s remembered ever since: “Make sure that the verbs and he kept checking back until he finally came upon a reading. Join- the nouns dance on the page.” ing “was one of the most fortuitous occurrences, but also one of The Dark Room gathered a wide circle of associates and pa- the best decisions, I ever made in life,” he says now. “The people trons, which may explain the varying accounts of the member-

Reprinted from Ash by Sharan Strange 34 March - April 2016 Copyright © 2001 by Sharan Strange. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston ship process: a phone interview in one person’s report, a nomination and voting process in another’s. “It was not like pledging a fraternity or a sorority or anything like that—but it came close,” Jackson jokes. Kevin Young, who attributes his early publishing ambitions to Strange and Ellis’s encouragement, says that “I thought we just were friends”—until his poems ran in the literary journal Callaloo, and Ellis asked why the Collective didn’t appear in Young’s author’s note. “And I was like, ‘I didn’t know I was in the Dark Room.’ That was how I got in.”

“The Dark Room Col- ylvain lective was one of the more influential The DRC in 1990: founders movements in the city of Boston,” says Janice Lowe (top), Thomas

Sayers Ellis, and Sharan S Patrick hs © fiction writer Don Lee, an associate of Strange, and a group shot at p the group. Lee, who first moved to the 31 Inman Street area to pursue his M.F.A. at Emerson Photogra College, and then became editor of the journal Ploughshares, ob- seum’s auditorium could hold hundreds, the Dark Room series served how they shook up the “lily white” literary scene. “There continued drawing standing-room-only crowds. was terrific energy, and it was contagious.” He helped write a “Ours was a pretty eclectic audience” in terms of ethnicity, age, grant application that secured the Dark Room $12,500 from the and class, says Strange. “I will venture to say that they probably Lannan Foundation—“not a huge amount, but at the time fairly had more folks of color from Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, Ja- significant”—which helped cover the travel expenses of writers maica Plain, Cambridge (and not just “Ivy League Cambridge”), they were beginning to invite from farther afield. and other parts of the city coming into that space on a regular Eventually, this activity drew the interest of establishments basis than they had before. And once folks came for the reading like the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Strange says series, they were a captive audience for the museum’s exhibi- that the founders initial- tions”—like one on the legacy of Mal- ly conceived of the Dark colm X, curated by a Dark Room sup- Room as independent porter, video artist Yvette Mattern. of publications, univer- The Good Life “Although I never visited that sities, “or bookstores, house on Inman Street, I do know even. We wanted it to When some people talk about money that what these young people did is be more homegrown— They speak as if it were a mysterious lover historic,” wrote Askold Melnyczuk, grassroots, so to speak. Who went out to buy milk and never editor of AGNI. “That house could not We wanted our guests hold them. They needed more room, and audiences to feel Came back, and it makes me nostalgic and they made it. I hope they have comfortable, not alienat- For the years I lived on coffee and bread, changed this scene forever. They cer- ed in any way, we hoped, Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday tainly busted it open.” “Black poetry by the venue.” Forced Like a woman journeying for water is/a place you can go/to in Cambridge,/ out by rising rent, the From a village without a well, then living Massachusetts,” Columbia University series relocated to the professor and presidential inaugura- museum, just across the One or two nights like everyone else tion poet Elizabeth Alexander, an river, on Boylston Street. On roast chicken and red wine. early reader in the series, wrote in her They brought a local tribute, “The Dark Room: An Invoca- jazz band, the Roxbury Tracy K. Smith tion.” “Soul buddies, compañeros /of Blues Aesthetic, with — sound, word, mind / Boston is no lon- them. Though the mu- ger /Boston with you there.”

Tracy K. Smith, “The Good Life” from Life on Mars. Copyright © 2011 by Tracy K. Smith. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org. The Drive-By Readings functioning within a larger group, and thus of the similarities and By 1994, when their local series’ final season—in its final venue, differences in voice and style among us. I’m a shy person; I have a Derek Walcott’s Boston Playwrights’ Theatre at Boston Univer- ‘quiet’ style. Others, I think, were more conscious of themselves sity—drew to a close, the Collective writers were taking their as ‘performers’—or, rather, different personalities led to different show on the road. During their travels they brought new mem- performance styles. Performing with the other Collective members bers into the fold. One was Jackson, who had invited them to read made me more desirous of doing strong work in order to contrib- at Philadelphia’s Painted Bride Art Center, after interviewing ute something worthy.” Ellis for The Source, a hip-hop magazine. “Thomas and I talked for “It felt, really, like you were participating in this long tradi- almost two hours about everything. I had never talked to another tion found in jazz and hip hop and baseball and boxing—of be- man that long on the phone,” Jackson recalls, laughing. “We cov- ing yourself but also having to step up your game,” Young says. “I ered art, we covered literature, we covered poetry.” think that was really important, to make you do that extra mo- In his 2006 collection Hoops, ment of editing or woodshedding.” Jackson versified the encoun- Although they did not establish a permanent ter: “I, myself, emerged from Self-Portrait as the physical home, the Collective opened a lasting a dark cave lured/By history symbolic space in the literary world. In his 1996 and two visions. A romantic,/I Allegory of Poetry sketch of the Dark Room for The New Yorker, Cor- stood in my b-boy stance, nelius Eady wrote, “[I]t’s clear they are in this arms ruled,/Angled back, head for more than trophies…they are marking a path posed for the authentic—/Up A corpse snores in morning traffic. for others to follow.” That same year, he and poet joined the Dark Room Col- I edge along a sidewalk Toi Dericotte led their first summer retreat for lective./Were I in Kentucky, I hoisting trash can after trash can. African-American poets, in upstate New York. would, even then,/Have unit- Even maggots marvel (The foundation that resulted, Cave Canem, now ed with the Affrilachians,/So offers fellowships to 54 new writers annually, as strong the urge to place my at the eloquence of my lift. well as regional workshops and residencies.) pen aside/My generation. El- The Dark Room’s camaraderie was not con- lis was our Pound.” Piling into I peer inside the roar flict-free. “As you can imagine, it wasn’t all cars and splitting up what of a steel mouth smooth bike riding,” Jackson says. Personalities little money they made from & know lampshades once clashed, and there were aesthetic and politi- these stops, Collective mem- cal fights. A piece by Ellis inThe American Poetry bers traveled throughout the channeled light. Review from 1998, the year the Collective ended, Northeast, and farther afield Everyone is dumbstruck alludes to times of turmoil: “Clean house, lose to Washington, D.C., Atlan- friends—like Angry Sister X—forever.” Sylvain’s ta, and Miami for what they like Cousteau at seaside. memory, with the comfort of distance, is breezi- called the Drive-By Readings. er: “Of course, as with all groups and families, we The Dark Room’s presence A cat smarter than me have divisions—which sister or cousin you pre- on the page had grown, as circles a boom box. fer, and so forth.” Don Lee riffed on these “natu- members’ writing appeared An unclothed doll ral rivalries and skirmishes” in his 2012 novel, The in Callaloo, AGNI, Ploughshares, prostrate on a curb Collective, about a fictional coterie of Asian-Amer- The Kenyon Review, and else- tans in the sun. ican writers. Pressed for particulars, he laughs where. But before any of them and says, “They’ll keep those things under their had “a readership—lowercase hats. But I think it’s the natural outcome of hav- ‘r,’” Jackson says, “we tested When I lie down at night ing people who were as passionate and as smart out poems in public. When my wife says I reek and as opinionated as that group. I think they all you are aware of the poem of recycled news. I carry look on it with great fondness now, in the light both on the page and poten- of nostalgia.” tially read before an audience, wet onions into sleep. “I think there were probably a number of it does, I think, impact the Days unfold in sheaves. reasons why it disbanded, good and bad,” says spirit of the writing. Not to Keene—not least of which were the gradu- say that it’s less interior. But I’ve pondered retiring ate programs and other job opportunities that you become aware that the to a shopping cart, beckoned. At heart, they were all “inkslingers,” poem should have a certain in Ellis’s parlance—focused on their work and sound, should have a certain to crushed cans for shoes. decreasingly interested in the business of logis- rhythm or pace.” I’d whistle songs only tics and promotion. As the members moved away In an e-mail, Strange writes, from my youth. from Boston, it became more difficult to come to- “Going on tour further so- gether to perform. lidified a sense of collective as The Dark Room’s last drive-by reading was well as individual identity—it —Major Jackson on Valentine’s Day, 1998, at the Painted Bride. As made me more conscious of the Collective dissolved, Cave Canem solidified.

Reprinted from Roll Deep: Poems by Major Jackson. Copyright © 2015 by Major Jackson. 36 March - April 2016 With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. With its annual prize—judged blind by someone different each year, granting $1,000 and publication to one debut talent—it ushered the first books by Trethewey (Domestic Work, 1999), Jack- son (Leaving Saturn, 2000), and Smith (The Body’s Question, 2002) into the world.

Elbow Room The critic who tries to sum up the Dark Room succinctly—hunting for that single thread that weaves the writers into aesthetic unity—will be stymied. If ever there was a Dark Room manifes- to, it’s been lost; in any case, its likely signatories are working artists, who generally have strong al- lergic reactions to that kind of definition. They do have common interests, in the broad- est sense: identity and history. Pick any two members and they’ll share themes, or plain old enthusiasms—for the honed chaos of Sun Ra’s jazz, say, or the tropes of genre movies. Several draw on their Southern heritage for inspiration: Young’s Dear Darkness includes a series of odes to foods like chitlins, sweet potato pie, and pepper vinegar; Strange’s Ash delves into her childhood in Orangeburg, South Carolina; Trethewey’s Na- tive Guard dwells on the meeting of personal and public history, examining her parents’ interracial marriage alongside the scars of the South. Keene’s dense fictions inCounternarratives —speculating The Collective in 1996: Room alumni are tenure-track. But the implicit accu- about W.E.B. Du Bois and William James passing (from left) Natasha sation of assimilation overlooks how they may shake Trethewey, Kevin Young, each other on Mount Auburn Street, or Langs- Major Jackson, Nehassaiu up the institutions they inhabit. Ellis, despite being ton Hughes’s trysts—have a kinship with Tisa deGannes, Thomas Say- a visiting professor of poetry at the mecca of M.F.A. Bryant’s sharp interrogations of classics, from ers Ellis, Sharan Strange, programs, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is especially Manet’s Olympia to Woolf’s Orlando, in her book Adisa Vera Beatty difficult to pin with that critique. His current project Unexplained Presence. involves a band of writers and musicians (including What the Dark Room gave to its members makes their output Janice Lowe) called Heroes Are Gang Leaders, who create collage- difficult to corral. It’s something Ellis has called “elbow room”—a like sound poetry—including tributes to forebears like Amiri jostling freedom of movement that made Bryant, all those years Baraka and Gwendolyn Brooks. ago, feel unexpected exhilaration during her 40-minute phone in- As with theatrical works, these texts can be encountered as terview with the Collective. Though she at first tried to fake a print (they’ve been published in The Oxford American, Poetry, and The love of jazz and the blues—at the time, these genres were to her Paris Review) but reveal different dimensions in live performance parents’ taste, not hers—she then admitted to being a fan of the and audio recordings. By design, no single medium offers access Cure, the Smiths, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. “And it was the to the unruly whole, and its essence can be viewed only periph- most miraculous thing, because suddenly we were doing these bi- erally. Only on the page can the reader observe the sly, intricate zarre medleys of Smith songs and P-Funk and Run DMC and Billy word games, swinging freely between made-up ideophones and Bragg and Psychadelic Furs and Joan Armatrading. It was outra- unusual homophones; only aloud can the listener enjoy the exu- geous,” she told her interviewer. In “Dark Room: An Invocation,” berant sonic play, the performers biting off some syllables and Elizabeth Alexander declares “the house/came down because/we extending others in a comic glissando drawl. And both would knew how to read/each other, could code-switch/with the same miss the theatrical antics of the performers seen up-close, and in fast dazzle.” Now it’s a critical commonplace to hear that some person. Dark Room writer can reference Homer and Tupac in the same This past October, Heroes Are Gang Leaders celebrated the space, making virtuoso maneuvers between different expressive release of their second album, The Avant-Age Garde I Ams of the Gal registers. At the time, Bryant said to herself with relief, “Okay, I’m Luxury, at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, which shares not the freak I thought I was.” a space with a burlesque show and supper club. Sitting around The Dark Room has been criticized for producing depoliti- candlelit tables covered in white cloth, the audience—socialized cized, conservative, and academic literature—art in which so- by other readings, perhaps, into polite reticence—didn’t answer cial concerns are subsumed by introspection and genteel form. Ellis’s “Good evening” loudly enough. “It means you’re scared,” he Professionally, the “academic” critique sticks—many of the Dark told them. “And if you’re scared, we’ll take you hostage.” He wasn’t

Photograph by Kwaku Alston Harvard Magazine 37 kidding. The cacophony was intended to confuse; it laid siege to Trethewey presented Smith with a black statuette he dubbed the preconceptions of how sound builds sense. Ellis waved his arms “Dark Room Pulitzer.” A life-sized cutout of Langston Hughes, wildly like a conductor, mimed playing a violin, flung around a kidnapped from the local restaurant Busboys and Poets, presided; wooden clapper whose loud crack made everyone flinch. (The in another corner, the lucky melon was placed in the hands of a CD track of the same piece seems almost gentle by comparison, statue, held aloft like a stripey green jewel. In June, Trethewey despite the vocalist’s occasional yowls: the saxophone riffs wind would be named Poet Laureate. through the words rather than battle them.) These days, the members of the Dark Room Collective are Few writers devote themselves to making the “Assassin po- scattered across the country, and call various universities home: ems, Poems that shoot/guns” that Baraka called for in his iconic Brown, Emory, Princeton, Rutgers, Spelman, CalArts, Washing- “Black Art,” in which he enjoins, “Clean out the world for virtue ton University in St. Louis. The usual demands of adult life (stu- and love,/Let there be no love poems written/until love can exist dents, children of their own) and the unusual ones of literary freely and/cleanly.” Perhaps the Dark Room takes its cue, instead, stewardship (judging prizes, editing journals) compete for atten- from the imperative laid out in Brooks’s “The Second Sermon on tion. And foremost, there’s the writing. In 2015 alone there was the Warpland”: “This is the urgency: Live!/and have your bloom- Keene’s fiction collectionCounternarratives, Smith’s memoir Ordi- ing in the noise of the whirlwind.” The group’s internal diversity nary Light, and Jackson’s Roll Deep; 2016 brings Lowe’s Leaving CLE, is innately political, because defiant freedom underwrites it, and and Young’s volume of selected and uncollected poetry, Blue Laws. that freedom is hard-won. A clue to how this connects to a larger Amid the years of extraordinary productivity, the 2013 tour was project of black liberation might be found in the Collective’s un- an occasion for stock-taking. official motto, the closest they come to a list of demands: “Total “I’m absolutely humbled by everyone’s growth on the page, and life is what we want.” you can read the work quietly to yourself. But to see people grow into a comfort—everyone grown into their art, and what their Going on Tour, and Home sound is—that’s humbling,” says In 2013, the members marked their twenty- Jackson. It felt less like a reunion fifth anniversary with readings at literary than “like going to a family home hotspots in various American cities: the As- Dead Daddy Blues somewhere.” sociations of Writers & Writing Programs The final stop, in Santa Fe in De- Conference, held that year in Boston; the Po- The weather says cember, afforded a last moment of etry Foundation in Chicago; Poets House and Listen public reflection. Of their found- the Harlem Arts Salon in New York City. They My mother says Pray ing, Ellis said to the audience, “Of took along commemorative buttons, their course, we were having fun. And books, and a talisman—an imperfectly-round I walk around looking we were—you know, you need watermelon with “The Dark Room Collective for the light all day each other. You need other people Reunion Tour” Sharpied on its side. As in the who think like you, maybe, who old days, the events had live music, and read- God says nothing read like you, maybe, who walk and ing order was determined by drawing names breathe like you, maybe. You think out of a hat. The river Why you’re adding something that’s The weekend after the tour kicked off, don’t you stay needed, that you don’t see. There’s Smith was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for I wait around, wait something about that, that never her third verse collection, Life on Mars—a stark, for the start of the rain ends, no matter who you are and elegiac book drawing on sci-fi imagery to ex- where you are.” amine grief and God. In 2006, Trethewey had Later in the evening, he added, won the prize—also just as she turned 40, and My feet say Forget you “The idea of collective changes, also for her third book, Native Guard. My hands say Never transforms. We’re not a collective “If you told us in 1991, ‘Two of you guys will We look for him in the way we used to be, but”— win,’” says Young, it would not have seemed by firefly light his voice became mock-solemn— out of the question. “We might have thought “We’re honoring the paaaast with that. But it was amazing to have that come like the supposed summer the possibility of the futuuuure.” true.” Later that April, the group gave their Wash- Old grief can’t protect you In the recording of their ap- ington, D.C., reading at the Lutheran Church New sorrow pearance at Furious Flower, a 1994 of Reformation, on Capitol Hill. Every pew sails your way conference at James Madison Uni- was filled. Then the writers and attend- versity, the Dark Room members are ees (including several Cave Canem fellows) Lately it stays evening round-faced and un-grayed. They headed to the home of anesthesiologist and almost all day read their work with the kind of art collector Darryl Atwell, toasting the occa- quiet that comes from confidence. sion with red and blue Solo cups and sharing —Kevin Young When they stumble over their a sheet cake with “2 Pulitzers” piped on it in words, they smile. The narrator of icing. Ellis orchestrated a ceremony in which the video, the last in an anthology

Excerpted from Blue Laws by Kevin Young. Copyright © 2016 by Kevin Young. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. about African-American literature, calls them the “initi- ates”—bearers of a torch hand- ed down by elders in the Black Arts Movement and beyond. It’s tempting to describe their activity as a kind of literary renaissance, when in fact the Dark Room Collective placed themselves in a tradition with deep historical roots, an unbro- ken lineage that called for con- tinuation, not rebirth. “Even in the nineteenth century, groups of African Americans got together and discussed the work,” Jackson explains. “So I don’t want to fashion the Images from the 2012 Dark Room Collective as trail- reunion tour: (clock- blazers as much as a group of wise from above) Kevin privileged, young, black aspir- Young, Major Jackson, and Nehassaiu de- ing writers who wrote work. Gannes in Chicago; We have to acknowledge Janice Lowe and Tisa that—that we benefited from Bryant in Washington, the gains of the previous gen- D.C.; Sharan Strange, Jackson, Natasha erations, writers who had to Trethewey, Young, answer questions that we don’t Thomas Sayers Ellis, and have to answer now.” deGannes in Chicago; and Ellis, John Keene, The Dark Room provided a Jackson, and Tracy K. place for minds to crash freely Smith in Chicago into each other and spark. It nourished embryonic talents as they decided how they wanted to grow. With “safe space” now a watchword of campus activism, and Silicon Valley co-opting “incubator,” both terms seem somehow inadequate to the phenomenon described by Ellis at the Santa Fe reunion. “At the Dark Room Series all those years ago,” he said, “there was always that moment when the reading would reach that total togetherness, that place where, no matter who we were or where we were from…the moment of community would explode.” “Explode,” but to where? Jackson puts it this way: “Each generation triggers the next generation into song and lyric.” “We might think of tradition not just as inheritance but as devotion—one measured by fetish as well as by other religion—and even invention,” Young suggests in The Grey Album. “Tradition is not what you inherit, but what you seek, and then seek to keep.” As other Dark Room alumni have in the past, both will teach rations in amber. When Jackson is asked about some lines from at Cave Canem next summer. his long sequence “Letter to Brooks,” in Hoops—“This was the While its writers are mid career—and until some manuscript aim of the DRC, / To test the puddles of white supremacy…”—it library gets acquisitive takes him a moment to “play and ambitious—the Dark critic to Major Jackson,” in- Room’s material memory A reader going on literary pilgrimage through this magazine terpreting the original intent. rests with various mem- might visit “The Rebellion of E.E. Cummings” (March-April “Puddles,” he says. “That’s bers who have the old 2005), “The Young T.S. Eliot” (July-August 2015), and “Extracting interesting.” Then: “Puddles photo negatives, video- the Woodchuck” (January-February 2014) on Robert Frost, all evaporate, right?” He laughs. tapes, clippings, and fly- by contributing editor Adam Kirsch; Shaun Sutner’s brief profile “With enough heat.” ers. And of course, there of Kevin Young (September-October 2007); and our conversation are the poems themselves, (available online) with Tracy K. Smith from last April. Sophia Nguyen is associate editor of preserving youthful aspi- this magazine.

Photographs by Rachel Eliza Harvard Magazine 39 Are Animals “Things”? The law evolves.

by Cara Feinberg

eremy and Kathryn Medlen have two children, but sion, ending the Medlens’ quest for compensation. with eight-year-old Avery around, it often felt like three. Animals were property, the Supreme Court ruled, but they were A beloved mixed-breed mutt with flopped-forward Lab- not like other types of property. Although an heirloom is “sen- rador ears, Avery was a member of the family, welcome on timental,…an owner’s attachment to a beloved pet is more: It is the couch, included on vacations, a fixture in family photos. emotional…based…on the rich companionship it provides,” the But in June 2009, the dog spooked at a thunderclap and fled court found, and “cannot be shoehorned into keepsake-like senti- the Medlens’ Fort Worth, Texas, backyard. He ended up at mentality for litigation purposes.” a nearby shelter, where his overjoyed owners found him the The Medlens were stunned. If this were true, they argued, one following day. They lacked the cash to pay the required fees, how- could seek sentimental damages for the destruction of a “taxider- ever,J so a “hold for owner” tag was placed on Avery’s cage until their mied” pet deemed an heirloom, but not for a euthanized animal. return. But when Jeremy Medlen arrived with the cash and his two Furthermore, it trapped them in a Catch-22. “Loss of companion- children in tow, their pet had disappeared. Somehow, there’d been a ship” damages were not available because Avery wasn’t human, yet mix-up, the Medlens were told. Avery had been put to sleep. the court also said that pets offered such “rich companionship,” Devastated by the loss, the Medlens brought a lawsuit seeking they could not be treated as things. It left the Medlens wondering: damages for Avery’s sentimental value from the shelter worker Did property law apply to animals, or didn’t it? Was a lost heir- who’d made the tragic mistake. But in the Lone Star State, they loom, an inanimate thing, really more emotionally valuable than learned, “loss-of-companionship damages” were available only their beloved pet? And why, if judges believed an animal to be a for human plaintiffs who’d lost close human family members. In special kind of property—“not a fungible, inanimate object like, the eyes of American law, animals are considered property, and in say, a toaster,” as the court wrote—was the law still so unclear? Texas, this entitled the Medlens only to their “property’s” market value. As an eight-year-old mutt, Avery had virtually no value at These questions are at the center of a Harvard Law School all, and the case was dismissed. (HLS) course on animal law. First offered in the spring of 2000, So the Medlens appealed the decision. In the past, Texas courts it was initially among a handful of its kind; today, more than 150 had awarded damages for the sentimental value of personal prop- American law schools offer classes on the topic, a reflection of the erty with little or no market value—such as lost heirlooms like growing interest in a young field whose scope and influence are jewelry, pistols, and hand-made bedspreads—and still being defined. the Medlens argued that Avery fit this category Chris Green and Kristen Stilt These issues have also become increasingly com- in Austin Hall’s Ames perfectly. The Texas Court of Appeals agreed, but courtroom with Lola, Stilt’s pelling to practicing lawyers. In the United States, the state’s Supreme Court overturned that deci- rescue dog from Egypt laws regulating the treatment of animals have been

40 March - April 2016 Photograph by Stu Rosner Dogs held in a U.S. shelter on the books since the early Colonial period, but “animal law” as a rights, and which animals should have them—is wide-open. If field is relatively new, and focuses increasingly on the interests of the persons have rights and property doesn’t, some scholars and prac- animals themselves, rather than on their value to the humans who titioners argue, then legal “things” like animals remain mere chat- write and litigate the laws governing them. tel in the eyes of the law, subject to whatever use legal persons As the role of animals in society and the economy has evolved, and deem important. But if animals are no longer deemed property, more recently, as scientific research has revealed more about ani- many ask, where should law draw the line? Should primates have mals’ cognitive abilities and social development, public sensibility the same rights as humans? Should dogs? Should ants? What has changed dramatically, often leaving outmoded law behind. As a about animals in the wild, or those used in medical research, or result, lawyers worldwide have begun searching for innovative ways the billions slaughtered for food? to make animals more visible to the law: strengthening and enacting At the moment, says Stilt, the law remains unwavering: animals new anti-cruelty statutes, improving basic protections, and, in some are property—albeit with certain protections. But the people more radical cases, challenging animals’ property status itself in an administering that law have become increasingly uncomfortable effort to grant them fundamental rights. with that designation. The Medlens’ case is a good example that But even as legal advocates press toward the same goal—clos- she teaches in both her property and her animal-law courses. ing the gap between the way many people believe animals should “Even the Supreme Court judge who wrote the opinion, before he be treated, and how the law actually treats them—their strate- ruled against [the Medlens], spent pages talking about how ‘Tex- gies can differ vastly. Sometimes, they clash outright. ans love their dogs,’” she points out; he drew a clear distinction “Animal welfare and animal rights are two different goals between animals and anvils. within the field of animal law,” explains law professor Kristen According to Stilt, this is where things stand in 2016 in animal Stilt, who teaches the animal-law survey class—an annual course law—a discipline that, 40 years ago, formally didn’t exist. “It’s typically oversubscribed on the first day of registration. The law part of what makes this field fascinating,” she says. “We know divides everything in the universe into just two categories, she how law doesn’t work for animals, but we have no clear idea yet explains: “persons” and “property.” Legal persons have rights, about how it should.” property doesn’t—so all “animal laws” on the books are about y images tt protection and welfare, not about intrinsic individual rights. Harvard’s original animal-law class, taught over the years Most lawyers interested in animal issues focus on animal wel- mainly by adjunct professors who are scholars and practitioners in fare, she says, using the existing legal system to challenge, im- the field, was a product of student demand. In 1995, law students prove, augment, and enforce laws protecting animals. But the founded a local chapter of the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund

Camille Tokerud/ge issue of whether animals should have legal rights—and which (SALDF), affiliated with the national Animal Legal Defense Fund,

Harvard Magazine 41 a nearly four-decade-old organization dedicated to protecting ani- isn’t.” Animal law is part of the newest expansion of that circle, mals from abuse through legislation and litigation. (SALDF mem- and “there’s an opportunity now to contribute to the develop- bers don’t litigate; their mission is to educate the community about ment of law reform in a way that hasn’t always been the case.” issues facing animals, and various avenues of reform.) Hosting and promoting more than 20 events per year, SALDF quickly became a That opportunity and responsibility fall largely to Stilt, the strong voice on campus, and by 2000, HLS had acknowledged their faculty director of the new program, and Chris Green, its execu- appeals. A gift from Pearson Television in honor of game-show host tive director, who must decide how to design a curriculum that and avid animal protectionist Bob Barker funded the original course. covers a topic intersecting with all other areas of legal study. In the years since, both regional and national bar associations have Cases involving animals range from civil suits (like the Medlens’ established their own animal-law committees to support and shape pet-compensation case) to criminal trials (like football player the burgeoning field. That has, in turn, inspired Harvard to broaden Michael Vick’s, for animal cruelty and dog fighting) to environ- its investment in the discipline. mental lawsuits (protecting wildlife and its habitat), says Stilt— This year, HLS added “Wildlife Law” to its curriculum. Taught and “those are just the obvious ones.” She ticks off a long list of by Jonathan Lovvorn, senior vice president and chief counsel at other questions that have come before the courts, among them: the Humane Society of the United States and an adjunct professor Does the right to free speech apply to undercover videotaping of of law at Georgetown University, the class is one of several new cruel animal practices? Should humans be able to patent an ani- courses Harvard plans to offer. A gift from Bradley L. Goldberg, mal? Who gets the pet in a divorce? Should religious freedom out- founder and president of the Animal Welfare Trust, has under- weigh animal-welfare concerns? written a new Animal Law & Policy Program intended to expand Stilt touches on many of these topics in her survey class, but the animal-law curriculum, establish an academic fellowship pro- says a single course can never do the field justice. Among the top- gram, and foster future academic gatherings and scholarship. ics she and Green are considering for attention is comparative in- “This is one thing most law schools have not done to date—to ternational animal law, a topic with which Stilt is quite familiar. approach animal law in an integrated academic program as op- Her own background is in Islamic law (she also directs Harvard posed to a one-off course,” says Goldberg, who hopes his gift will Law School’s Islamic Legal Studies Program, including its new help establish animal law as a recognized academic discipline. Animals, Law, and Religion Project). Her interest and expertise “My interest comes from believing that animal protection is a in animal law began as a Middle Eastern history doctoral student global social-justice movement…but unlike other social-justice living in Cairo, where she worked with a group of Egyptians who movements such as women’s rights or civil rights, animal rights were starting the first modern animal-protection organization in goes almost totally unrepresented in academia.” the country. Animal issues became a focus of her scholarship, and Dean Martha Minow thinks the climate for animal-law growth she is currently working on a study of the recent inclusion of an animal welfare provision in the Egyptian constitution. Chris Green’s career in animal law, in contrast, began at HLS. Af- ter a year there in the early 1990s, he took a six-year leave of absence and planned to enroll in veterinary school; he credits Harvard’s decision to offer that first animal-law class—and its engaging teacher, animal-protection lawyer and scholar Steven Wise—for helping him chart his professional life. Green eventually became an officer in the school’s SALDF chapter and immersed himself in animal advocacy; he went on to publish on the subject and become a legal advocate for animals, serving as chair of the American Bar Associa- tion’s animal law committee and, most recently, as the director of legislative affairs for the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF). He also became a committed vegetarian—as are most animal lawyers; attorneys, quipped one practitioner, don’t eat their clients. Wise began that first class, recalls Green, with a seemingly simple question: “Why should a human have fundamental rights?” Wise, in a recent telephone interview, said he has raised that issue in every class he has taught since, and students have respond- y I mages y tt

ed with several explanations: sentience, cognition, language, and e / G / Many egg-laying chickens spend their lives in cages. spirituality. But according to Wise, “The only way to answer that t question is: ‘Because a person has the form of a human being.’” on Pos is ideal. “Though treatment of animals has always been an issue, Consider the case of a baby born with only a brain stem—no con- t only recently has law begun to take it seriously,” she says. “For sciousness, no sentience, only the ability to breathe and digest. anyone thinking about the purpose of law, the legal treatment of Students would recoil, he said, when he’d ask why they couldn’t animals forces a confrontation with what law is actually about— experiment on that baby…or kill, or even eat, her. ineau/ The Washing t

‘What are its purposes? What are its limits? Is law only about hu- Courts or legislatures may ultimately decide that it is “human ar man beings?’” One way to understand legal history, she explains, form” that determines personhood, Wise told a New York Times erald M is to trace “the ever-expanding circle of law—who’s in and who Magazine reporter in 2014. But if they do make that decision, he G

42 March - April 2016 continued, “I’m saying that’s irrational. Why is a human indi- with 10,000 laying hens crammed five or more to a crate, he vidual with no cognitive abilities whatsoever a legal person with “could be fined $15,000 and sentenced to six months in jail under rights, while cognitively complex beings such as [a chimp] or a the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.” dolphin or an orca are things with no rights at all?” Some legal scholars answer the animal rights question very dif- Steven Wise agrees that animal-welfare work is both valuable ferently. Richard Epstein, a law professor at New York Universi- and necessary; he practiced it himself for years. To date, he points ty, is an outspoken critic of Wise and of the notion of extending out, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), an organization he rights to animals. “You cannot prove that an animal has the capaci- founded and now runs that protects the civil rights of animals, ties of a human being by proving that it’s not a stone,” he said in is the only group of lawyers practicing animal rights law, or animal an interview. The issues that would come with rights, he argued, jurisprudence, as he now calls it. “I practiced animal law,” he says, would cascade and snowball down a slippery slope. If a wild ani- “because that was the only law that existed.” Although he now mal occupies land, can it own it? Can animals enter into contracts? fights to address the larger question of legal personhood, he ac- Can they vote by proxy? knowledges that there are thousands of suffering animals that Even if the law awards animals just one right—the right to need legal protection today. bodily liberty, as Wise advocates—the question, Epstein argued, becomes, “Which There is no federal law protecting chickens from animals?” “We kill millions of animals a day for food,” he abuse on a farm…but if someone kills or injures pointed out. “If they have the right to bodily liberty, it’s basically a holocaust.” a blue jay in the rafters of a chicken house, he Epstein pointed to the work of many animal-welfare lawyers—as well as to the could be fined $15,000 and face months in jail. work of Temple Grandin, an autistic professor of animal studies who designs farm-animal His sights, though, are set squarely on removing animals from slaughter systems that take animal needs and fears into consider- the category of “things,” a goal he believes requires the construc- ation—as shining examples of what animals need. “You can give tion of a new kind of law dealing with the rights of nonhuman animals protection without giving them rights,” he said. “The two animals. In 2013, he filed his first of three cases on behalf of chim- are separate things.” panzees, producing headlines such as “Should a Chimp Be Able During the past few decades, animal protections have expand- to Sue Its Owner?” and “Are Chimps Entitled to Human Rights?” ed exponentially. Various states now have laws banning unethical (Chimpanzees, says Wise, are just the first of many animals he hunting practices. In 2013, California became the first state to ban hopes to help free. He settled on them because of the abundant the use of lead bullets for hunting (which not only kill their tar- research on their cognitive capacities; not only are they the clos- get, but poison the scavenger birds and animals who clean their est nonhuman relatives, sharing 99 percent of humans’ DNA, carcasses). Many states outlaw steel-jawed leg-hold traps and they also share the ability to think, feel, anticipate the future, cock- and dog-fighting (some, including Colorado and Massachu- and remember the past. More practically, he adds, if his team setts, ban bear-baiting). Florida, by ballot initiative, was the first does achieve success, freed captive chimps can go to established state to forbid gestation crates (6-by-2-foot-wide metal crates sanctuaries; other large animals with high levels of cognition, in which breeding sows spend their entire lives, unable either to like orcas, have no such option.) stand or turn around); eight states followed suit with similar pro- Wise’s strategy has been to file writs of habeas corpus (re- tections. A 2016 Massachusetts ballot initiative proposes ensuring quests that a judge evaluate whether someone is wrongfully that breeding pigs, veal calves, and egg-laying hens can stand up, imprisoned) on behalf of chimpanzees. In the past, such writs lie down, turn around, and extend their limbs by phasing out in- have been issued only for persons, and no U.S. judge has yet bro- humanely small and crowded cages. Perhaps most notably, as of ken that legal precedent. But personhood has been awarded to 2014, when South Dakota added a felony provision to its animal nonhumans in the past, Wise points out: corporations and ships anti-cruelty laws, all 50 states can now prosecute violations of have been classified as persons under the law. They don’t enjoy animal anti-cruelty laws as felony offenses. all the rights that individual humans do, but in the case of cor- Nevertheless, the scope of the protection afforded an animal porations, for instance, the Supreme Court has ruled that busi- often depends on where it lives and what “business” it’s involved nesses have the right to spend money in elections, and may in with. Many state anti-cruelty laws categorically exempt farmed some cases, on religious grounds, refuse to cover birth control in animals or standard husbandry practices, such as de-horning, employee-health plans. de-beaking, tail-docking, and castration without pain relief. Although he has not yet won a habeas claim on behalf of a There is no federal law protecting chickens from cruelty or abuse chimp, Wise has gained significant ground with courts. When on a farm, for instance, and state anti-cruelty laws often exempt he began his work, no court had ever allowed a non-injured hu- them from protection, says Jonathan Lovvorn—but if someone man to sue on behalf of an injured animal. But this past year, one kills or injures a blue jay in the rafters of a chicken house filled judge did grant Wise “an order to show cause” (basically habeas

Harvard Magazine 43 without a prisoner being called into court, he explains)—allow- “reached its conclusion on the basis of a fundamentally flawed ing him to argue on behalf of his chimpanzee client in front of a definition of personhood.” The court reasoned that habeas cor- judge and the chimpanzee’s owner. The judge did not rule the pus applies only to legal persons and assumed that chimpanzees chimp a “legal person,” but the mere granting of the hearing—an could not qualify. But that line of reasoning, he wrote, relied on action historically reserved for humans—was, says Wise, a mile- “a classic but deeply problematic—and at the very least, pro- stone in his multiyear effort. “I don’t believe that animals’ prop- foundly contested—definition of ‘legal personhood’ as turning on erty status is the root of the problem,” he explains. “I believe that an entity’s present capacity to bear ‘both rights and duties.” This being ‘a thing’ is.” definition, he argued, “would appear on its face to exclude third- His work for two chimpanzee clients, Hercules and Leo (used trimester fetuses, and comatose adults…importantly [misunder- for research at Stony Brook University), may already be paying standing] the relationship among rights, duties, and personhood.” off. In 2013, he and NhRP filed a case against the university on the Denver University constitutional law professor Justin Marceau, chimps’ behalf. NhRP persisted through an appeal, and refiled the J.D. ’04, also filed an amicus brief on behalf of a group of fellow case in March 2015. A month later, Stony Brook indicated that it scholars, stating that “this may be one of the most important ha- would no longer experiment on the chimps. Now, after months beas corpus issues in decades and the lower court’s resolution of of negotiation with the chimps’ owner, the New Iberia Research the matter is in fundamental tension with the core tenets of the Center, NhRP has begun a public-pressure campaign to release historical writ of habeas corpus.” the animals to the custody of a sanctuary. Marceau recently attracted national attention for winning a landmark federal case in Idaho as the lawyer representing ALDF, In the past, when teaching her animal-law survey class, Kristen an animal advocacy organization that, along with a diverse co- Stilt has devoted an entire segment to nonhuman primates and alition of organizations, challenged a state statute criminalizing Wise’s work. What he may not yet have achieved in the courts, undercover investigations documenting animal welfare, worker she says, he has unquestionably achieved in the court of public safety, and food-safety violations at industrial-farm facilities. opinion. Coverage of his work has brought the issue of animals The court set a precedent, ruling that the statute violated both in captivity—particularly chimpanzees—into general public con- the First Amendment (regarding free speech) and the Fourteenth versation, raising questions among activists, scholars, and “people Amendment’s equal-protection clause by enacting a statute mo- who simply had never given these issues thought.” tivated by “unconstitutional animus” against animal advocates. This past May, Loeb University Professor and constitutional- The decision may be a harbinger for other states that have enacted law scholar Laurence Tribe submitted an amicus letter support- such agricultural gag (“ag-gag”) laws. “Laws like the one in Idaho ing NhRP’s request for an appeal in one of its first chimpanzee try to silence modern-day Upton Sinclairs—the whistleblowers cases. His procedural argument: that “the lower court fundamen- of our time,” says Marceau, “and a court has now ruled that’s un- tally misunderstood the purpose of the common law writ of ha- constitutional.” In law school, Marceau originally planned to focus solely on civil rights and the death penalty. But after taking the animal-law survey course, then taught by David Wolfson (a visiting professor, now a partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy who devotes his pro-bono hours to animal-welfare law), he, like Chris Green, found a new passion. “The class absolutely changed the trajectory of my life,” says Marceau. At the Sturm College of Law, he now holds the first animal-law chair in the country. Support from scholars like Tribe and practicing lawyers like Marceau helps bolster Wise’s work, Kristen Stilt explains, but the resulting news coverage is no less significant. “We’ve seen time and again that law follows a change in societal thinking,” she says. Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision to allow gay marriage, and Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 ruling to desegregate public schools, both followed significant shifts in public opinion.

Steven Wise’s habeas corpus work is important, explains Rabbits being used for testing by the cosmetics industry Stilt, but it is certainly not the only route toward legal change for animals, or even for chimpanzees used in research. Although he beas corpus,” which is simply to consider arguments challenging hopes to change a system of legal thinking from the ground up by restraint or confinement (“the question of whether and when a fighting for individual chimps, other lawyers are navigating the court has authority to entertain a detainee’s petition at all”), not existing legal system and fighting, perhaps more pragmatically, images y tt e to decide whether or not to award relief (“the question of what for the species as a whole. G hez/ substantive rights, if any, the detainee may invoke, and what rem- For the past two decades, first as a private attorney, and then as c edy…the detainee may properly seek”). chief counsel for the Humane Society, Harvard’s current wildlife- an iqui S iqui Perhaps more significantly, Tribe also claimed that the court law instructor, Jon Lovvorn, has done just that. “As an academic S

44 March - April 2016 and intellectual matter, I think Steve Wise’s work is fascinating,” That single ruling didn’t dispense with chimpanzee research, says Lovvorn. “But the bottom line is, it’s not a practical use of Lovvorn explains; the change in practice had come incrementally time and resources, and I don’t think it’s feasible politically or le- from a multipronged, multiyear effort involving the courts, gov- gally.” Instead, he urges lawyers to work within the existing le- ernment agencies, Congress and state legislatures, and social ad- gal framework: improving, enforcing, and drafting new laws and vocacy. The result: any lab hoping to continue invasive work with measures to protect animals today. Rather than pursuing a revo- chimps must now meet the NIH’s stringent standards and apply lutionary change in legal thinking, he adds, “We need practical for an ESA permit—permits that will be granted only for work action to prevent animal suffering.” that benefits or enhances survival of the species in the wild. Fol- Consider the Animal Welfare Act, the federal law protect- lowing the NIH’s declaration and the reclassification of captive ing animals in research facilities, breeding facilities, and places chimps as “endangered,” no lab has applied for a permit to con- of exhibition like zoos and circuses. Passed in 1966, it is now the primary federal law regulating minimal standards of treatments for animals in human care, “and yet there are several loopholes,” Lovvorn points out: the vast majority of animals used for research— rats and mice—and the billions of birds and livestock slaughtered for food each year fall outside its bounds. But primates used in research do fall under the act’s protections. In 1985, Congress passed an amendment requiring the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the law, to adopt standards promoting the psychological well-being of primates licensed and registered to research facilities. The USDA adopted the standards as mandated, but failed to set specific enforcement guidelines, requiring instead that research institutions set their own. For the next two decades, animal advocates filed lawsuits against the department, but none of their efforts produced the guidelines they sought. The issue continues to be a legal battleground. Meanwhile, in the clash over protections for chimpanzees, Lovvorn’s team has made progress on a much Is the end of chimpanzee research in the United States at hand? larger scale. Five years ago, they filed a petition request- ing that captive chimps be reclassified as “endangered” under the duct research, suggesting the end of an era of invasive chimpanzee Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), as wild chimps already medical research. are. For years, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which admin- “For years it was believed that we would solve every other an- isters the ESA, instead labeled captive chimps as “threatened,” a imal-welfare problem before we ever got chimps out of research classification, Lovvorn’s team argued, that the government used to labs,” Lovvorn says. “It turns out, this will be one of our first.” turn a blind eye to the use of the animals in medical research. In 2011, while Lovvorn’s group was still trying to change Last fall, on the first day of Harvard’s first new animal-law chimps’ ESA classification, their argument was bolstered by a re- class in more than a decade, a group of students filed into a class- port from the National Academy of Sciences stating that chimps room in Wasserstein Hall for “Wildlife Law,” with several lin- were no longer necessary for medical research. Two years later, ing up by Lovvorn’s desk to see whether they had made it off the the National Institutes of Health (NIH) agreed to phase out waiting list. Once the students were sorted, he began with a brief most government-funded chimp research and retire most of its introduction and a PowerPoint presentation. chimps to sanctuaries. The NIH also implemented a list of strin- “For decades, there was a huge difference between this chimp gent conditions for the psychological welfare of chimps used in in a cage, and this one here in the wild,” Lovvorn told the class, future research for any lab seeking funding—exactly what the pointing to two photos on a screen at the front of the room. Now USDA had resisted doing for decades. These included a defini- a banner moment had arrived, “one we’ve been working on for tion of an “ethologically appropriate environment” for chimps more than 20 years.” Four months after the Fish and Wildlife Ser- (dictating minimum standards for enclosure size and design, vice had designated captive chimps as endangered, the law had management tactics, and social conditions), and proof that the officially gone into effect, making that very day, September 14, ures/Corbis ct lab’s research could not be done by any method other than by 2015, the first day it became illegal to harm, harass, kill, or injure using chimpanzees. any chimp anywhere in the United States—in a cage, in a lab, or inden Pi inden

M In June 2015—five years after Lovvorn’s team first filed their pe- in the wild. tition to reclassify captive chimps as endangered—FWS agreed to bring captive chimps under the same umbrella of protections Journalist Cara Feinberg works in print and in documentary television. She can

Harvard Magazine 45 Vita Caleb Strong Brief life of an exemplary politician: 1745-1819 by richard d. brown

n January 1745, Caleb and Phebe Lyman Strong, of North lent head and heart”—he resigned in 1796 to resume legal practice. ampton, Massachusetts, brought their only son for baptism to By now leaders throughout the state recognized Strong’s ca Itheir pastor, Jonathan Edwards—America’s greatest theolo pacity to inspire confidence among sharply divided men. In 1800, gian. For the baby, Edwards’s touch symbolized transmission of a a fractured Federalist Party nominated him for governor, though legacy of rectitude and humility. The boy, descended from church some objected “to the choice of a man who lives a hundred miles founders, became known locally as “Deacon”; his later titles includ from salt water, whose wife wears blue stockings, and who, with ed U.S. senator and governor of the Commonwealth. his household, calls hasty pudding luxury.” He was “too frugal,” His parents sent teenaged Caleb to York, Maine, to prepare for and “rides down to Boston in the stage.” But the eloquent partisan Harvard with an alumnus, Reverend Samuel Moody. After grad Fisher Ames ridiculed such “childish, tattling objections.” Strong, uating in 1764, Strong served as temporary preacher in churches he testified, “is a man of sense and merit, and made and set apart to near his home, but then turned to the law, despite a bout of small be a Governor,” notwithstanding his “modesty.” pox that left him nearly blind. Apprenticed to a leading attorney, The contest against another Harvardian, Jeffersonian Elbridge he relied on family to read him law texts, becoming a great listener. Gerry, was decided by just 100 votes. (In Northampton, Strong won In 1772, he earned admission to the bar. 268 to 2 .) In victory, he was conciliatory: when, during his inaugu That year he publicly declared his commitment to Christ, af ral parade, he spied the Jeffersonian Samuel Adams standing at his firming his lifelong religious devotion. Northampton townsmen doorway, Strong left his carriage and, removing his hat, walked over promptly elected the 27-year-old as a selectman—an unusual mark to shake the old revolutionary’s hand. Strong’s refusal to dismiss of trust that proved emblematic of Strong’s career as one of the officials based on party won over some Jeffersonians; Federalists most reliable leaders in the independence movement. valued his staunch support for education and religion. Reelected When Britain’s “Intolerable Acts” closed Boston in 1774, galvaniz annually until 1807, in defeat he returned to his practice. ing the colony’s resistance, Strong’s popularity brought election to His leadership resumed when Federalists called on him to block Northampton’s Committee of Correspondence, Safety, and Inspec state support for President Madison’s warlike policy toward Britain tion. Townsmen also sent him to the legislature and, in 1779, to the in 1812. After narrowly beating his old rival Gerry, Strong refused to convention that wrote the state’s constitution, where fellow del cede control of the Massachusetts militia to the federal government egates put him on the four-man drafting committee. But Strong de for an attack on Canada, but allowed its use to defend the state clined election to the Continental Congress and the state supreme against British raids. With the war’s end in 1815, he retired for good. court; he needed to support his growing family by practicing law. Moderation, common sense, and an understanding of human Appointed state prosecuting attorney in Northampton, Strong frailties, not brilliance, distinguished Strong’s leadership. He sup strengthened his reputation in the Commonwealth’s largest county. ported the death penalty, but as an attorney led an unprecedented He focused on property law—including defending people of color popular petition campaign to spare an Irish immigrant client, con suing for their freedom. Like most attorneys, in 1786-87 he opposed victed of sodomy, arguing the penalty was too severe. As governor Shays’ Rebellion, a debtors’ uprising to block foreclosures. After its he showed mercy by granting pardons or, when a young Hindu suppression, legislators chose him for the Constitutional Conven was to hang for rape, by deporting the youth instead. In an era of tion in Philadelphia, where his support for the “Connecticut Com fierce partisanship—sometimes leading to fatal duels—Strong’s promise,” whereby large states agreed to equal representation for all modesty and understanding won the trust of leaders who did not states in the Senate, helped break a critical impasse. But he left the trust each other. A senatorial successor, Henry Cabot Lodge, wrote Convention when his wife fell ill, never signing the Constitution. that “though he was a leader in a very dogmatic party, he always When Massachusetts representatives convened to ratify or reject expressed himself temperately, and in a fashion which gave offense the Constitution in 1788, Strong provided crucial support for na to no man.” Strong supported Federalist principles, but “never tional government. A seaboard delegate told him, “You can do more pushed them in practice to a dangerous distance.” with that honest face of yours than I can with all my legal knowl edge.” After ratification, state legislators elected him to the new Richard D. Brown, Ph.D. ’66, is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of U.S. Senate, where he helped shape the Judiciary and Naturaliza history emeritus at the University of Connecticut and author of the forth- tion Acts, and the national bank. Reelected in 1792—Vice President coming Self-Evident Truths: Contesting Equal Rights from the Adams declared, “[Massachusetts] cannot do better…he is an excel Revolution to the Civil War.

46 March - April 2016 Caleb Strong portrait by Gilbert Stuart, courtesy of Frederick Strong Moseley III ’51 Harvard Magazine 47 Harvard’s Eugenics When academics embraced scientific racism, Era immigration restrictions, and the suppression

n August 1912, Harvard president emeritus of “the unfit” by Adam Cohen Charles William Eliot addressed the Harvard Club of San Francisco on a subject close to his heart: racial purity. It was being threatened, he declared, world. Harvard was hardly the only university that was home to by immigration. Eliot was not opposed to admitting new prominent eugenicists. Stanford’s first president, David Starr Jor- Americans, but he saw the mixture of racial groups it dan, and Yale’s most acclaimed economist, Irving Fisher, were lead- could bring about as a grave danger. “Each nation should keep its ers in the movement. The University of Virginia was a center of sci- Istock pure,” Eliot told his San Francisco audience. “There should entific racism, with professors like Robert Bennett Bean, author of be no blending of races.” such works of pseudo-science as the 1906 American Journal of Anatomy Eliot’s warning against mixing races—which for him included article, “Some Racial Peculiarities of the Negro Brain.” Irish Catholics marrying white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, Jews But in part because of its overall prominence and influence marrying Gentiles, and blacks marrying whites—was a central on society, and in part because of its sheer enthusiasm, Harvard tenet of eugenics. The eugenics movement, which had begun in was more central to American eugenics than any other univer- England and was rapidly spreading in the United States, insisted sity. Harvard has, with some justification, been called the “brain that human progress depended on promoting reproduction by the trust” of twentieth-century eugenics, but the role it played is best people in the best combinations, and preventing the unwor- little remembered or remarked upon today. It is understandable thy from having children. that the University is not eager to recall its part in that tragically The former Harvard president was an outspoken supporter of misguided intellectual movement—but it is a chapter too impor- another major eugenic cause of his time: forced sterilization of tant to be forgotten. people declared to be “feebleminded,” physically disabled, “crimi- nalistic,” or otherwise flawed. In 1907, Indiana had enacted the na- Eugenics emerged in England in the late 1800s, when Francis tion’s first eugenic sterilization law. Four years later, in a paper on Galton, a half cousin of Charles Darwin, began studying the fami- “The Suppression of Moral Defectives,” Eliot declared that Indi- lies of some of history’s greatest thinkers and concluded that ge- ana’s law “blazed the trail which all free states must follow, if they nius was hereditary. Galton invented a new word—combining the would protect themselves from moral degeneracy.” Greek for “good” and “genes”—and launched a movement calling He also lent his considerable prestige to the campaign to build for society to take affirmative steps to promote “the more suitable a global eugenics movement. He was a vice president of the First races or strains of blood.” Echoing his famous half cousin’s work on International Eugenics Congress, which met in London in 1912 to evolution, Galton declared that “what Nature does blindly, slowly, hear papers on “racial suicide” among Northern Europeans and and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly.” similar topics. Two years later, Eliot helped organize the First Na- Eugenics soon made its way across the Atlantic, reinforced by tional Conference on Race Betterment in Battle Creek, Michigan. the discoveries of Gregor Mendel and the new science of genet- None of these actions created problems for Eliot at Harvard, ics. In the United States, it found some of its earliest support for a simple reason: they were well within the intellectual main- among the same group that Harvard had: the wealthy old fami- stream at the University. Harvard administrators, faculty mem- lies of Boston. The Boston Brahmins were strong believers in the bers, and alumni were at the forefront of American eugenics— power of their own bloodlines, and it was an easy leap for many founding eugenics organizations, writing academic and popular of them to believe that society should work to make the nation’s eugenics articles, and lobbying government to enact eugenics gene pool as exalted as their own. laws. And for many years, scarcely any significant Harvard voices, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.—A.B. 1829, M.D. ’36, LL.D. ’80, dean if any at all, were raised against it. of Harvard Medical School, acclaimed writer, and father of the Harvard’s role in the movement was in many ways not surprising. future Supreme Court justice—was one of the first American Eugenics attracted considerable support from progressives, reform- intellectuals to espouse eugenics. Holmes, whose ancestors had ers, and educated elites as a way of using science to make a better been at Harvard since John Oliver entered with the class of 1680,

48 March - April 2016 had been writing about human breeding even before Galton. He Harvard’s Bussey Institution, propounded a particularly racial ver- had coined the phrase “Boston Brahmin” in an 1861 book in which sion of eugenics. In his 1919 book Inbreeding and Outbreeding: Their Ge- he described his social class as a physical and mental elite, iden- netic and Sociological Significance, East warned that race mixing would tifiable by its noble “physiognomy” and “aptitude for learning,” diminish the white race, writing: “Races have arisen which are as which he insisted were “congenital and hereditary.” distinct in mental capacity as in physical traits.” The simple fact, Holmes believed eugenic principles could be used to address the he said, was that “the negro is inferior to the white.” nation’s social problems. In an 1875 article in The Atlantic Monthly, East also sounded a biological alarm about the Jews, Italians, he gave Galton an early embrace, and argued that his ideas could Asians, and other foreigners who were arriving in large numbers. help to explain the roots of criminal behavior. “If genius and talent “The early settlers came from stock which had made notable con- are inherited, as Mr. Galton has so conclusively shown,” Holmes tributions to civilization,” he asserted, whereas the new immigrants wrote, “why should not deep-rooted moral defects…show them- were coming “in increasing numbers from peoples who have im- selves…in the descendants of moral monsters?” pressed modern civilization but lightly.” There was a distinct pos- As eugenics grew in popularity, it took hold at the highest sibility, he warned, that a “considerable part of these people are ge- levels of Harvard. A. Lawrence Lowell, who served as president netically undesirable.” from 1909 to 1933, was an active supporter. Lowell, who worked In his 1923 book, Mankind at the Crossroads, East’s to impose a quota on Jewish students and to keep black students pleas became more emphatic. The nation, he from living in the Yard, was particularly concerned about said, was being overrun by the feebleminded, immigration—and he joined the eugenicists in calling for who were reproducing more rapidly than sharp limits. “The need for homogeneity in a democracy,” the general population. “And we expect he insisted, justified laws “resisting the influx of great to restore the balance by expecting the numbers of a greatly different race.” latter to compete with them in the size Lowell also supported eugenics research. When the of their families?” East wrote. “No! Eu- Eugenics Record Office, the nation’s leading eugenics genics is sorely needed; social progress research and propaganda organization, asked for access without it is unthinkable….” to Harvard records to study the physical and intellec- East’s Bussey Institution colleague tual attributes of alumni fathers and sons, he readily William Ernest Castle taught a course agreed. Lowell had a strong personal interest in eugenics on “Genetics and Eugenics,” one of a research, his secretary noted in response to the request. number of eugenics courses across the The Harvard faculty contained some of nation’s most University. He also published a leading influential eugenics think- textbook by the same ers, in an array of aca- name that shaped the demic disciplines. Frank views of a generation W. Taussig, whose 1911 of students nation- Principles of Economics was wide. Genetics and Eugen- one of the most widely ics not only identified adopted economics text- its author as “Professor books of its time, called of Zoology in Harvard for sterilizing unworthy University,” but was individuals, with a par- published by Harvard ticular focus on the lower University Press and classes. “The human race bore the “Veritas” seal could be immensely im- on its title page, lend- proved in quality, and its ing the appearance of capacity for happy living an imprimatur to his immensely increased, if strongly stated views. those of poor physical and 1893 January 11, In Genetics and Eugen-

mental endowment were puck, ics, Castle explained prevented from multiplying,” he The views of Charles William Eliot that race mixing, wrote. “Certain types of criminals (above) and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. whether in animals or aided the descendants of immigrants and paupers breed only their kind, in keeping out new immigrants, as humans, produced in- and society has a right and a duty depicted in Joseph Keppler’s 1893 ferior offspring. He be- to protect its members from the “Looking Backward,” from Puck. lieved there were supe- repeated burden of maintaining rior and inferior races, and guarding such parasites.” and that “racial crossing” benefited neither. “From the view- Harvard’s geneticists gave point of a superior race there is nothing to be gained by cross- important support to Galton’s ing with an inferior race,” he wrote. “From the viewpoint of the fledgling would-be science. Bota- inferior race also the cross is undesirable if the two races live side nist Edward M. East, who taught at by side, because each race will despise individuals of mixed race

Harvard Magazine 49 and this will lead to endless friction.” “negro” race had “never Castle also propounded the eugeni- produced any individuals cists’ argument that crime, prostitu- of really high mental and tion, and “pauperism” were largely due moral endowments” and to “feeblemindedness,” which he said was apparently “incapable” was inherited. He urged that the unfor- of doing so. His next book, ty tunate individuals so afflicted be ster- i Is America Safe for Democracy vers ilized or, in the case of women, “seg- i (1921), argued that civili- n regated” in institutions during their zations declined because reproductive years to prevent them of “the inadequacy of the from having children. qualities of the people who brary, Harvardbrary, U Like his colleague East, Castle was i are the bearers of it”—and

deeply concerned about the biological ton L advocated eugenic steriliza- impact of immigration. In some parts of gh tion. the country, he said, the “good human Harvard’s embrace of stock” was dying out—and being re- eugenics extended to the placed by “a European peasant popu- athletic department. Dud- S Am 2245 (1054)/ Hou lation.” Would “this new popu- M ley Allen Sargent, who ar- lation be a fit substitute for rived in 1879 to direct the old Anglo-Saxon stock?” Hemenway Gymna- Castle’s answer: “Time alone sium, infused physi- will tell.” cal education at the One of Harvard’s most College with eugenic prominent psychology principles, including professors was a eugenicist his conviction that who pioneered the use of certain kinds of exer- questionable intelligence cise were particularly testing. Robert M. Yerkes, important for female A.B. 1898, Ph.D. ’02, published students because they an introductory psychology built strong pelvic textbook in 1911 that included a muscles—which over chapter on “Eugenics and Mental time could advantage Life.” In it, he explained that “the cure the gene pool. In “giv- for race deterioration is the selection of the fit as par- ing birth to a child…

ents.” es no amount of mental g Yerkes, who taught courses with such titles as a and moral education “Educational Psychology, Heredity, and Eugenics” will ever take the

and “Mental Development in the Race,” developed a MPI/Getty I m place of a large well- now-infamous intelligence test that was administered Prescott Hall sought supporters nationwide for developed pelvis with to 1.75 million U.S. Army enlistees in 1917. The test pur- the Immigration Restriction League, including the plenty of muscular and governor of Montana. The 1921 Emergency Quota ported to find that more than 47 percent of the white Act cut annual immigration from any country to 3 organic power behind test-takers, and even more of the black ones, were fee- percent of its nationals in the United States in 1910. it,” Sargent stated. The bleminded. Some of Yerkes’s questions were straight- presence of large fe- forward language and math problems, but others were more like male pelvises, he insisted, would determine whether “large brainy tests of familiarity with the dominant culture: one asked, “Chris- children shall be born at all.” ty Mathewson is famous as a: writer, artist, baseball player, co- Sargent, who presided over Hemenway for 40 years, used his median.” The journalist Walter Lippmann, A.B. 1910, Litt.D. ’44, position as a bully pulpit. In 1914, he addressed the nation’s largest said the results were not merely inaccurate, but “nonsense,” with eugenic gathering, the Race Betterment Conference, in Michigan, “no more scientific foundation than a hundred other fads, vita- at which one of the main speakers called for eugenic sterilization mins,” or “correspondence courses in will power.” The 47 percent of the “worthless one tenth” of the nation. Sargent told the con- feebleminded claim was an absurd result unless, as Harvard’s late ference that, based on his “long experience and careful observa- professor of geology Stephen Jay Gould put it, the United States tion” of Harvard and Radcliffe students, “physical education…is was “a nation of morons.” But the Yerkes findings were widely one of the most important factors in the betterment of the race.” accepted and helped fuel the drives to sterilize “unfit” Americans and keep out “unworthy” immigrants. If Harvard’s embrace of eugenics had somehow remained Another eugenicist in a key position was William McDou- within University confines—as merely an intellectual school of gall, who held the psychology professorship William James had thought—the impact might have been contained. But members formerly held. His 1920 book The Group Mind explained that the of the community took their ideas about genetic superiority and

50 March - April 2016 biological engineering to Congress, to the courts, and to the pub- age of immigrants from northern Europe increased significantly, lic at large—with considerable effect. Jewish immigration fell from 190,000 in 1920 to 7,000 in 1926; Ital- In 1894, a group of alumni met in Boston to found an organiza- ian immigration fell nearly as sharply; and immigration from Asia tion that took a eugenic approach to what they considered the was almost completely cut off until 1952. greatest threat to the nation: immigration. Prescott Farnsworth While one group of alumni focused on inserting eugenics into Hall, Charles Warren, and Robert DeCourcy Ward were young immigration, another prominent alumnus was taking the lead of scions of old New England families, all from the class of 1889. They the broader movement. Charles Benedict Davenport, A.B. 1889, called their organization the Immigration Restriction League, but Ph.D. ’92, taught zoology at Harvard before founding the Eugenics genetic thinking was so central to their mission that Hall pro- Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, in 1910. Funded in posed calling it the Eugenic Immigration League. Joseph Lee, A.B. large part by Mrs. E.H. Harriman, widow of the railroad magnate, 1883, A.M.-J.D. ’87, LL.D. ’26, scion of a wealthy Boston banking the E.R.O. became a powerful force in promoting eugenics. It was family and twice elected a Harvard Overseer, was a major funder, the main gathering place for academics studying eugenics, and the and William DeWitt Hyde A. B. 1879, S.T.D. ’86, another future driving force in promoting eugenic sterilization laws nationwide. Overseer and the president of Bowdoin College, served as a vice Davenport wrote prolifically.Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, pub- president. The membership rolls quickly filled with hundreds of lished in 1911, quickly became the standard text for the eugenics people united in xenophobia, many of them Boston Brahmins and courses cropping up at colleges and universities nationwide, and Harvard graduates. was cited by more than one-third of high-school biology text- Their goal was to keep out groups they regarded as biologically books of the era. Davenport explained that qualities like criminal- undesirable. Immigration was “a race question, pure and simple,” ity and laziness were genetically determined. “When both parents Ward said. “It is fundamentally a question as to…what races shall are shiftless in some degree,” he wrote, only about 15 percent of dominate in the country.” League members made no secret of their children would be “industrious.” whom they meant: Jews, Ital- But perhaps no Harvard eugenicist had more impact on the ians, Asians, and anyone else Davenport public consciousness than Lothrop Stoddard, A.B. 1905, Ph.D. ’14. who did not share their north- His bluntly titled 1920 bestseller, The Rising Tide of Color Against White ern European lineage. explained that World Supremacy, had 14 printings in its first three Drawing on Harvard influ- years, drew lavish praise from President ence to pursue its goals—re- qualities like Warren G. Harding, and made a mildly cruiting alumni to establish disguised appearance in The Great Gatsby, branches in other parts of the criminality and when Daisy Buchanan’s husband, Tom, country and boasting President exclaimed that “civilization’s going Lowell himself as its vice presi- laziness were to pieces”—something he’d learned dent—the Immigration Restric- by reading “‘The Rise of the Colored tion League was remarkably genetically Empires’ by this man Goddard.” effective in its work. Its first When eugenics reached a high- major proposal was a literacy determined. water mark in 1927, a pillar of the Har- test, not only to reduce the to- vard community once again played a tal number of immigrants but ork critical role. In that year, the Supreme

also to lower the percentage ew Y Court decided Buck v. Bell, a constitutional from southern and eastern Eu- challenge to Virginia’s eugenic sterilization ty of N rope, where literacy rates were i law. The case was brought on behalf of Carrie vers i lower. In 1896 the league per- n Buck, a young woman who had been designated suaded Senator Henry Cabot “feebleminded” by the state and selected for eu- Lodge of Massachusetts, A.B. genic sterilization. Buck was, in fact, not feeble- 1871, LL.B. ’74, Ph.D. ’76, LL.D. U bany/state minded at all. Growing up in poverty in Charlot- ’04, to introduce a literacy bill. tesville, she had been taken in by a foster family ty of Al i Getting it passed and signed and then raped by one of its relatives. She was de- vers i n into law took time, but begin- U clared “feebleminded” because she was pregnant ning in 1917, immigrants were Eugenicist out of wedlock, and she was chosen for steriliza- legally required to prove their literacy Charles Daven- tion because she was deemed to be feebleminded. port (above) to be admitted to the country. promoted ideas By an 8-1 vote, the justices upheld the Virginia The league scored a far bigger that led to the law and Buck’s sterilization—and cleared the victory with the passage of the Im- sterilization way for sterilizations to continue in about half migration Act of 1924. After hearing of Carrie Buck (shown with the country, where there were similar laws. The extensive expert testimony about her mother majority opinion was written by Oliver Wen- the biological threat posed by immi- the day before dell Holmes Jr., A.B. 1861, LL.B. ’66, LL.D. ’95, a grants, Congress imposed harsh na- her trial), a de- former Harvard Law School professor and Over- cision supported tional quotas designed to keep Jews, by Oliver Wen- seer. Holmes, who shared his father’s deep faith Italians, and Asians out. As the percent- dell Holmes Jr. in bloodlines, did not merely give Virginia a green

Harvard Magazine 51 light: he urged the nation to get serious about eugenics and pre- narrow grounds—leaving the rest of the nation’s eugenic steril- vent large numbers of “unfit” Americans from reproducing. It was ization laws intact. Only after the civil-rights revolution of the necessary to sterilize people who “sap the strength of the State,” 1960s, and changes in popular views toward marginalized groups, Holmes insisted, to “prevent our being swamped with incompe- did eugenic sterilization begin to decline more rapidly. But states tence.” His opinion included one of the most brutal aphorisms in continued to sterilize the “unfit” until 1981. American law, saying of Buck, her mother, and her perfectly nor- mal infant daughter: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” TodAy, the American eugenics movement is often thought of as an episode of national folly—like 1920s dance marathons or Pro- In the same week the Supreme Court decided Buck v. Bell, Har- hibition—with little harm done. In fact, the harm it caused was vard made eugenics news of its own. It turned down a $60,000 enormous. bequest from Dr. J. Ewing Mears, a Philadelphia surgeon, to fund As many as 70,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized for eugen- instruction in eugenics “in all its branches, notably that branch ic reasons, while important members of the Harvard community relating to the treatment of the defective and criminal classes by cheered and—as with Eliot, Lowell, and Holmes—called for more. surgical procedures.” Many of those 70,000 were simply poor, or had done something that a Harvard’s decision, reported on the front page of The New York judge or social worker didn’t like, or—as in Carrie Buck’s case—had Times, appeared to be a counterweight to the Supreme Court’s rul- terrible luck. Their lives were changed forever—Buck lost her daugh- ing. But the University’s decision had been motivated more by re- ter to illness and died childless in 1983, not understanding until her luctance to be coerced into a particular position on sterilization final years what the state had done to her, or why she had been unable than by any institutional opposition to eugen- to have more children. ics—which it continued to embrace. “Our real purpose Also affected were the many people kept out Eugenics followed much the same arc at of the country by the eugenically inspired im- Harvard as it did in the nation at large. In- should be to segregate migration laws of the 1920s. Among them were terest began to wane in the 1930s, as the field a large number of European Jews who desper- became more closely associated with the Nazi and to eliminate the ately sought to escape the impending Holo- government that had taken power in Ger- caust. A few years ago, correspondence was dis- many. By the end of the decade, Davenport unfit, worthless, degen- covered from 1941 in which Otto Frank pleaded had retired and the E.R.O. had shut down; with the U.S. State Department for visas for the Carnegie Institution, of which it was erate and anti-social himself, his wife, and his daughters Margot and part, no longer wanted to support eugenics Anne. It is understood today that Anne Frank research and advocacy. As the nation went to portion of each racial died because the Nazis considered her a mem- war against a regime that embraced racism, ber of an inferior race, but few appreciate that eugenics increasingly came to be regarded as and ethnic strain… . ” her death was also due, in part, to the fact that un-American. many in the U.S. Congress felt the same way. It did not, however, entirely fade away—at the University, or na- There are important reasons for remembering, and further ex- tionally. Earnest Hooton, chairman of the anthropology department, ploring, Harvard’s role in eugenics. Colleges and universities to- was particularly outspoken in support of what he called a “biologi- day are increasingly interrogating their pasts—thinking about cal purge.” In 1936, while the first German concentration camps what it means to have a Yale residential college named after John were opening, he made a major plea for eugenic sterilization— C. Calhoun, a Princeton school named after Woodrow Wilson, or though he emphasized that it should not target any race or religion. slaveholder Isaac Royall’s coat of arms on the Harvard Law School Hooton believed it was imperative for society to remove its shield and his name on a professorship endowed by his will. “worthless” people. “Our real purpose,” he declared in a speech Eugenics is a part of Harvard’s history. It is unlikely that Eliot that was quoted in The New York Times, “should be to segregate and House or Lowell House will be renamed, but there might be a way to eliminate the unfit, worthless, degenerate and anti-social por- for the University community to spare a thought for Carrie Buck tion of each racial and ethnic strain in our population, so that we and others who paid a high price for the harmful ideas that Har- may utilize the substantial merits of its sound majority, and the vard affiliates played a major role in propounding. special and diversified gifts of its superior members.” There are also forward-looking reasons to revisit this dark mo- None of the news out of Germany after the war made Hooton ment in the University’s past. Biotechnical science has advanced to abandon his views. “There can be little doubt of the increase dur- the brink of a new era of genetic possibilities. In the next few years, ing the past fifty years of mental defectives, psychopaths, crimi- the headlines will be full of stories about gene-editing technology, nals, economic incompetents and the chronically diseased,” he genetic “solutions” for a variety of human afflictions and frailties, wrote in Redbook magazine in 1950. “We owe this to the interven- and even “designer babies.” Given that Harvard affiliates, again, will tion of charity, ‘welfare’ and medical science, and to the reckless play a large role in all of these, it is important to contemplate how breeding of the unfit.” wrong so many people tied to the University got it the first time— The United States also held onto eugenics, if not as enthusiasti- and to think hard about how, this time, to get it right. cally as it once did. In 1942, with the war against the Nazis raging, the Supreme Court had a chance to overturn Buck v. Bell and hold Adam Cohen ’84, J.D. ’87, is the author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, eugenic sterilization unconstitutional, but it did not. The court American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, published struck down an Oklahoma sterilization law, but on extremely in March by Penguin Press.

52 March - April 2016 Montage Art, books, diverse creations

54 Open Book 55 Exact Changes 56 Chapter & Verse 58 The Man Who Has Been King 59 Off the Shelf 60 The “Little Republics”

Miller in his new theater, and (clockwise) scenes from recent productions: Bonnie and Clyde, Hands on a Hardbody, Jerry Springer, and High Fidelity

consecutive summers, he guided patrons to Meet Him in St. Louis their seats and listened to family-friendly productions of Oklahoma! and Fiddler on the Scott Miller “saves shows from Broadway” Roof. Itching to tackle “more challenging, adult stuff,” he arrived at Harvard ready by meredith redick to start a concentration in musical theater, only to learn there wasn’t one. “It didn’t cott Miller ’86 dreams of produc- pect of a theater devoid of patrons doesn’t dull even occur to me to ask,” he says. He brief- ing an absurdist musical called Prom- Miller’s smile. The self-described “bad boy of ly considered transferring before learn- enade. The author, Maria Irene Fornés, musical theater” has earned a following in his ing that the College would fund student S recorded a series of nouns on index hometown, St. Louis. And New Line Theatre, productions. Then he proceeded to stage cards and then randomly selected from the the nonprofit company he founded, recently what he calls “guerilla theater” in com- stack to write each scene. “It’s so bizarre,” he celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and mon rooms, libraries, and wherever else says, grinning and leaning back against the moved into its first permanent home. he could find space. “Because there was no show posters that line the walls of his home Miller began his career as a teenage ush- theater department, there was no control,” office. “Honestly, I’m terrified that no one er at what was then the city’s only profes- he says. “It was wild and really cool.” would actually come to the show.” The pros- sional musical-theater company. For eight After graduation, Miller opted against

a move to New York, electing instead to Pellegrino University launch his career away from the entrenched o p e n b o o k Professor emeritus Edward norms of Broadway. Partly because costs O. Wilson has written with were lower, St. Louis was a “safe space” for increasing urgency about the kinds of rule-breaking productions he The Mammalian mankind’s disruption of the wanted to stage. “If it’s bad,” he says, “it’s biosphere, and the heedless bad in St. Louis.” He founded New Line extinction of species. He con- in 1991. The early years were challenging. Life Span tinues the argument in Half- Making money by writing and directing Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life edgy theater in small venues across the city (Liveright, $25.95), with this vivid challenge to humans’ self-perception, from the was almost impossible, but Miller became beginning of “History Redefined” (chapter 16): skilled in the financial acrobatics necessary to keep the company afloat: “We figured History is not a prerogative of the out we could do one show that might tank, human species. In the living world like Jerry Springer: The Opera, and then some- there are millions of histories. Each thing that was more secure financially, like species is the inheritor of an ancient Bonnie and Clyde.” lineage. It exists in a point of space Beginning in 2008, the company earned and time after a long journey through national attention for reviving Broadway the labyrinth of evolution. Each twist flops. Miller became infatuated with the and turn has been a gamble with the cast album for a new show called High Fi- species’ continued existence. The delity, adapted from Nick Hornby’s novel. players are the many ensembles of Curious to find out why it tanked on genes in the population. The game Broadway after just 13 performances, Mill- is the navigation of the environment er dug up a bootleg video of the produc- in which the population lives. The tion, concluded that the “original director payout is the share of breeding indi- was just awful,” and reached out to the viduals in the next generation. The composer and lyricist about getting the traits prescribed by the genes that rights. They were surprised but thrilled sufficed in past generations might that he wanted to resuscitate their show. in the future continue to do so, but High Fidelity made its second debut in might not. The environment is also a raucous, pared-down production that ock ock changing. In new environments the t sold out almost every night of its three- genes may keep on winning, allowing and-a-half-week run. Following that hit, the species to survive. Or not. Some New Line revamped two more shows with

of the variants of the genes, having ©JF Tringali/is short-lived Broadway runs: Cry-Baby, adapt- arisen by mutation or forming new com- Looking up: For all their evolutionary ed from the John Waters film, in 2012, and binations, might even cause the species advantages, mammalian species have Hands on a Hardbody, about a Texas contest shorter life spans than ants and trees. population to grow and spread. But at in which participants vie to win a truck, any time in a changing environment, the fore a champion in a club of champions. in 2014. Each of the re-crafted productions species could lose this game of evolu- We all are best of the best, descendants drew enough attention that directors all tion, and its population would spiral to of species that have never turned wrong over the country began seeking his advice. extinction. in the maze, never lost. Not yet.… “We’ve accidentally become this company The average life span of a species varies The human species, of course, has that saves shows from Broadway,” he says. according to taxonomic group. It is as long an evolutionary history, which reaches In the theater world, Miller’s faithful- as tens of millions of years for ants and very far back in time beyond traditional ness to scripts is uncommon. Many di- trees, and as short as half a million years recorded history. We, too, are the twig- rectors cut chunks from shows—even for mammals. The average span across end of a phylogeny. The multitudinous from hits—to save time and hassle, or to all groups combined appears to be (very stories of human cultures are epics in broaden appeal. New Line’s associate di- roughly) a million years. By that time the the usual sense, but you will understand rector, Mike Dowdy, says he’s never seen species may have changed enough to be that the traits of human nature that have Miller cut a line from a production. When called a different species, or else it may molded these stories are also products something feels wrong, Miller scavenges have split into two or more species—or of evolution.…The two levels, biologi- for past versions of scripts, tracks down vanished entirely to join the more than cal and cultural, flow one into the other. writers and lyricists, and scours the Inter- 99 percent that have come and gone since This is the reason that history makes no net for anything that helps provide useful the origin of life. Keep in mind that every sense without prehistory, and prehistory context. He relied on the memoir of an ad- surviving species (including us) is there- makes no sense without biology. dict in early 1990s New York City to shape his interpretation of Rent. For Hair, which

54 March - April 2016 Montage

New Line has produced several times, he lyricists who spurn commer- New Line’s 2014 scrounged up a first-person account of an cial norms and turn instead to production of Rent LSD experience to help his actors bring productions focused on social the psychedelic scenes to life. As Miller and political issues. “People does more research, “he gets more and were writing these shows that more excited, and that fuels us,” Dowdy felt like old-school musicals, says. “He’s really about creating a world but with new dark, ironic for the actors to live in.” content,” he says. “It was hap- Miller’s production choices strategically pening all around the country, highlight each story’s social relevance. His but all the little pieces didn’t version of Rent offers one example. For the know about each other.” set’s focal point, he requested a vast round New Line started as one of platform painted to look like the moon. those pieces, a radical Mid- The platform represented everything from western theater lonely in its a table to a dance floor to a state of limbo mission. But after two-plus for characters forced to navigate lives shat- decades operating out of church base- holds a black-box theater, rehearsal space, tered by addiction and disease. He also ments and college theaters, it finally has studios, and offices. New Line inaugurated cast unusually young actors, judging that a permanent brick-and-mortar home. The the space in November with its sold-out the show’s wrenching narrative was much Marcelle Theater is tucked inside a reno- production of Heathers. Next up is American sadder that way. vated warehouse on a gentrified street in Idiot, opening in March. According to Miller, shows like Rent, the city center. Designed especially for As for his dream production of Prom- which debuted in 1996, are part of a new age New Line thanks to local philanthropists enade? Well, Miller says, “We’ll do that one of musical theater created by writers and Ken and Nancy Kranzberg, the facility when we have $20,000 in the bank.”

is also a photographer, as well as a graphic Exact Changes designer and filmmaker. Together they run a small press. Their modus operandi is curi- Musicians Damon & Naomi’s many pursuits ous more than cautious, headlong, willing to take a chance on the unknown. by lydialyle gibson The pair formed the influential indie- rock trio Galaxie 500 with fellow Harvard n 2002—the year the Argentine peso col- says, “I have this marvelous Brazilian gui- alumnus Dean Wareham ’85 in 1987: Kru- lapsed, eliminating half the scheduled tar. And it’s changed how I play my other kowki on drums (lacking a drum kit at shows in their South American tour— guitars, how I write songs.” first, he famously borrowed one from class- I husband-and-wife bandmates Damon That episode is not really so unusual for mate Conan O’Brien), Yang on bass, and Krukowski ’85 and Naomi Yang ’86 flew to the couple in their plural pursuits. Kru- Wareham on guitar. They had been high- neighboring Brazil to play the rest of the kowski is also an essayist and poet; Yang, school friends in New York City, listening dates. The trip was a risk; Brazil’s econo- the daughter of photographer John Yang ’54, to punk, post-punk, and New Wave music: my was also faltering, and they knew they might not get paid. But they loved Brazilian music, they’d dreamed of seeing the country, and the promoter who invited them was, in Krukowski’s words, “a lovely man.” Other bands might have canceled, but, Yang says, “I think in general we’re curious.” They went. In the end, the promoter couldn’t pay. He’d guaranteed their fee in American dol- lars, and Brazil’s soaring inflation put it out of reach. As the tour drew to a close and they headed for the airport, Krukows- ki asked the promoter to send him instead a classical guitar that had caught his eye in a São Paolo shop, a beautiful instrument with nylon strings and a luminous body. (He knew that the man, who happily agreed, could barter for it.) “And now,” he Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang

Photograph by Stu Rosner Montage

Krukowski and Yang with their Galaxie 500 bandmate Dean Wareham in 1988, and a still from Yang’s film, Fortune rukowski amon K ang and D aomi Y f N esy o esy t cour bands like the Velvet Underground and Joy respectively. They dropped out to give their sures”—like a movie star dying young, of- Division. “When we started, it was the be- full attention to the band. fers Yang, with mystique intact. ginning of indie rock, before it got codified Four years and three albums after it be- Afterward, the couple, based in Cam- by major record labels,” Yang says. “And it gan, the Boston-based Galaxie 500, a pio- bridge, fanned out artistically. They be- was an irresponsible thing to do—there neering influence on “slowcore’s” dreamy gan performing as Damon & Naomi. They wasn’t any way you were going to make sound, broke up abruptly in 1991, when launched their press, Exact Change, reviv- any money. It wasn’t the popular form of Wareham left on the cusp of a major-label ing out-of-print books focused on “Surreal- the day; it was what the freaks did.” At deal and what might have been main- ism, Dadaism, Pataphysics, and other nine- the time, both Krukowski and Yang were stream stardom. “That was the path we teenth and twentieth century avant-garde in graduate school at Harvard, studying were tentatively considering,” Krukowski art movements,” including works by Louis comparative literature and architecture, says, but “it fell apart amid all the pres- Aragon, Guillaume Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein—“basically,” Yang says, “books Da- mon was reading in Widener Library and c hapter & verse couldn’t go buy his own copy.…We wanted to make these available to people.” Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words Meanwhile, Yang moved into filmmak- ing. “All of a sudden it was like being hit Dan Jacobson asks if anyone can pro- d’heure,” and Cartouche’s remark is by lightning,” she says. “It’s a wonderful vide definitive attribution for the as- quoted verbatim in Antoine Servan’s Le thing to discover, in mid life, something sertion, “From the music they love, you Soldat citoyen (1780). that you never thought you would do, and shall know the texture of men’s souls.” to find this passion for it. It’s like, in a used That line, he writes, is quoted in the “My Little Papaya Tree” (January- bookstore, finding a whole other section.” 1949 movie The Passionate Friends, where February). Michael Saxton wrote, “Try She’s directed music videos for other art- the character played by Trevor Howard Googling ‘and a mynah bird in a papaya ists, and in February 2015 released Fortune, states, “I copied it out a book of Gals- tree’ to get a Hawaiian version of ‘The a gorgeous and evocative 30-minute silent- worthy’s to impress you.” Twelve Days of Christmas.’ I heard this film study of filial grief, laid over an origi- long ago on The Midnight Special, WFMT, nal Damon & Naomi soundtrack. With a “a bad 15 minutes at the end” Chicago.” According to a 1979 article by visual sensibility not unlike her musical (January-February). Laurence Senelick Michael Scott-Blair of the Copley News one, Yang’s videos are stylish and emotive, replied: “The quotation seems to be a lit- Service, quoting UCLA folklorist Joan full of metaphorical possibilities. eral if awkward translation of the French Perkal, the list runs: 12 televisions, 11 For Krukowski, who’s published two catchphrase un mauvais quart d’heure. missionaries, 10 cans of beer, nine pounds volumes of prose poems, a consuming in- The notorious highwayman Cartouche of poi, eight ukeleles, seven shrimps a- terest is the digital shift that upended the (1693-1721) is supposed to have re- swimming, six hula lessons, five big fat creative worlds he and Yang inhabit: mu- marked, after he was sentenced to be pigs, four flower leis, three dry squid, two sic and publishing. A fellow this year at broken on the wheel, “A mauvais quart coconuts, and….” Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & d’heure is soon over!” It became prover- Society, he is at work on a book of essays bial very quickly. In his Systeme de la na- Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter on that topic. The book’s discussion, he ture (1770), Baron d’Holbach extended and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware says, reaches beyond the much-lamented it to the axiom that “Most criminals en- Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail economic fallout for musicians when lis- visage death as merely un mauvais quart to [email protected]. teners stopped buying albums and began streaming music online—though it covers

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160332_Fundraising-full_v8.indd 1 2/8/16 11:07 AM Montage that, too. (In 2012, Krukowski created a mit words. “The choice of what sound is War II, he explains, was “actually a very stir by publicizing in the magazine Pitch- meaningful is very serious and not obvi- unsettled moment for American media. A fork his own meager streaming royalties.) ous,” he says, “and it’s been made accord- lot was changing, and some really curious But he also explores the social media ing to technological demands. A lot of forms came out, some interesting experi- channels that replaced fanzines, post- sonic information gets lost.” mental work—and a lot of dead ends. But cards, and mail-order record catalogs: “a Looking forward, Krukowski looks interesting dead ends.” The current mo- sea change in how subcultures exist.” And back. “We’ve always been very inspired ment has similar cultural and economic he is interested in how digital process- by the 1920s in publishing,” he says; Ex- confusions. He and Yang, he says, will ing compresses sound, eliminating ancil- act Change was meant to pay homage to keep trying things. And if someone offers lary “noise”—sighs, breaths, the tension the little magazines from that era. But the them a ticket to perform in Brazil, they’ll of inhabited silence—in order to trans- early modernist period just before World probably go. The Man Who Has Been King An actor’s ascent by sophia nguyen

hree times, Hoon Lee ’94 has been lord of all he surveyed on stage: as Ferdinand of Navarre T in the Public Theater’s Love’s La- bor’s Lost; as Polixenes, sovereign of a pet- al-strewn Bohemia in A Winter’s Tale at the Yale Rep; and most recently as Broadway’s reigning King of Siam in The King and I. Each time, he’s been alert to what makes the head that wears a crown lie so uneasily. Authori- ty bumps up against mortal limits; grandeur Lee (left) leaps down the stage (right) with flips, revealing foolishness as its opposing co-star Kelli O’Hara in the show’s iconic polka, “Shall We Dance?” face. Lee has a knack for playing monarchs as men. gendered hacker and forger. The actor de- He didn’t really plan on being an actor. translate physically what he understands scribes his experience on the show as hav- At Harvard, he was president of the Din mentally,” the playwright told the Los Ange- ing “people around the pool, and they’ve & Tonics—a 1991 review in The Crimson les Times, “which is rare in actors.” got life vests and rafts and stuff for you, commends his “fetching solo” in their a “This is going to sound a little funny,” but you’re being plunged into the deep cappella rendition of “Sam, You Made the Lee says, before admitting that he’s only end, and that forces you to swim.” He Pants Too Long”—and did a few plays, recently come to view acting as his voca- worked with the show’s physical trainer but afterward pursued a job in tech. The tion, and as a career that he could sustain and stunt team to condition himself for industry burned him out. “At the tail of and deepen over time. “I don’t mean that the role: “If you’re a guy who’s built like the first dot-com bubble,” Lee recalls, “we I’ve been waffling,” he continues. “It has me, to play somebody who not only wants were losing our minds, working way too more to do with a certain comfort level.” to wear women’s clothes, but wants to ap- hard.” When he joined a production of a For a while, he saw himself taking what- pear powerful and beautiful in them—I friend’s musical touring Taiwan in 2001, ever opportunity was right in front of thought this person would probably try the 28-year-old saw the gig less as an en- him, his talent too green to afford a longer to shape himself a certain way.” try point than an escape. But a year later, view. Whatever the size of a given role, he The work also had mental demands. In he made his Broadway debut in Urinetown, felt like he was playing catch-up with his theatre, acting requires “managing your and the year after that, his television de- cast-mates. ability to concentrate over a long period of but in Sex and the City. Then he was recog- That changed with the cable series time, and to keep reinventing what you’re nized with a Theatre World Award in 2008 Banshee, set in a small Amish town ridden doing, even if it’s technically the same for his first lead role, inYellow Face, David with (surprisingly multinational) crime. thing.” Screen acting has other require- Henry Hwang’s searching satire about The pulp thriller gave Lee his most promi- ments: “to gather your energy toward ex- race and reputation. Lee “has the ability to nent screen role so far: as Job, a fluidly ecution on a take, to try to create a flash

58 March - April 2016 Photographs by Paul Kolnik Montage

monizing others, this twenty-fifth- the atmosphere to offset climate change— anniversary edition of a book about and puts into context the work of McKay Off the Shelf Irish women moving to America in professor of applied physics and professor Recent books with Harvard connections the twentieth century, based on oral of public policy David Keith, who was the histories at the Schlesinger Library, subject of this magazine’s July-August 2013 bears a simple message: they emi- cover story, “Buffering the Sun.” The Annotated Little Women, by grated because they had to. Louisa May Alcott, edited by John Mat- A Passion for Society: How We teson, J.D. ’86 (W.W. Norton, $39.95). Shadow Cold War, by Jeremy Fried- Think About Human Suffering, by You’ve never seen a bigger Little Women. man, assistant professor of business Iain Wilkinson and Arthur Kleinman, Alcott’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biogra- administration (University of North Rabb professor of anthropology and pher (Eden’s Outcasts)—who combines Carolina, $32.95). At a time when many professor of psychiatry (University of a Columbia Ph.D. with his Harvard J.D., Americans would struggle to identify the California, $65; $29.95 paper). A moral and now teaches English at John Jay Col- contending interests in, say, Syria, a young argument and a critique of social sci- lege—covers the Alcotts’ connection to historian looks at the other Cold War, the ence, aiming to move beyond the natu- the Marches, and provides more than you Sino-Soviet competition to champion rev- ral tendency to “see all human problems imagined anyone could know in hundreds olution in the Third World while the main as those of individuals,” and instead to of notes and illustrations (from Norman U.S.-U.S.S.R. competition was Rockwell to Elizabeth Taylor). chilling the developed world. Being reminded that those American Amnesia, by Jacob S. Hack- rivalries echo still, alongside er ’94, G ’02, and Paul Pierson (Simon & new ones, is a salutary first Schuster, $28). A reminder, by political step to untangling the messy scientists at Yale and Berkeley, respec- present. tively, that the default posture toward government and the public sector need Thomas Hart Benton: not be dismissive loathing. The authors Discoveries and Interpre- suggest that “It takes government—a lot tations, by Henry Adams ’71 of government—for advanced societies (University of Missouri, $50). to flourish,” through the public-private The author, professor of art alchemy of the mixed economy. history at Case Western Reserve, collects his many Thoreau’s Wildflowers, edited by essays on the artist whose Geoff Wisner ’80 (Yale, $30). In time for work spanned everything New England spring (the official publica- from his iconic regionalist murals to his Thomas Hart Benton’s Roasting Ears tion is timed for the vernal equinox), a deep involvement with Jackson Pollock. selection of Henry David’s botanical ob- broaden scholars’ and citizens’ field of servations through the year, sensitively Landscapes & Gardens, by George view to encompass suffering on a social illustrated by Barry Moser’s black-and- Hargreaves, M.L.A. ’79. et al. (Oro Edi- scale, and responses to it. Kleinman’s es- white illustrations that complement the tions, $19.95 paper). A viewbook of proj- say “On Caregiving” appeared in the July- texts without competing with them. ects by Hargreaves and co-principals in August 2010 issue. his eponymous landscape-architecture Smarter Faster Better, by Charles firm (he served as chair of the depart- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the Duhigg, M.B.A. ’03 (Random House, ment at the Graduate School of Design). American City, by Matthew Desmond, $28). The New York Timesman sets out They are refreshingly unapologetic about Loeb associate professor of the social sci- to make you more productive. His their use of flowering perennials; the im- ences (Crown, $28). Inequality and pov- high-speed scan of the literature and ages of Stanford’s science and engineering erty extend beyond the obvious economic of workplaces takes you through an quad may prove trying for the inhabit- metrics (low income, absence of wealth) eight-step process, from motivation and ants of New England schools during the to the brutal struggle for the basics of daily making up teams through innovation winter. living, like housing. Desmond, a young so- and dealing with data. If you are not ciologist whose fieldwork in Milwaukee inspired, embrace your slackerdom. The Planet Remade: How Geoengi- was the subject of “Disrupted Lives,” this neering Could Change the World, magazine’s January-February 2014 cover Models for Movers, by Íde B. O’Carroll, by Oliver Morton (Princeton, $29.95). The article, here details several of those lives in Ed.M. ’91 (Attic/Cork University Press, $21 briefings editor at The Economist examines painful, novelistic detail. But it is all fact— paper). At a time of migration crises and de- the science and politics of intervening in and all twenty-first-century American.

Art © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, Harvard Magazine 59 New York, NY; Photograph © Christie’s Images / Bridgeman Images Montage

Lee as the outlaw Job in eyebrows and spindly severity) might be Banshee, a role he calls struck by the richness of Lee’s. At its cen- “liberating” ter are deep reserves of humor, a joviality Past versions of the to match his petulance and pride. His wit script were mined for ma- complements the heroine’s. It leads natu- terial that brought out rally to the sparring, startling chemistry these politics. The king’s that culminates in the famous “Shall We first scene has him confer Dance?” scene. In seconds, through silent with his prime minister gesture—extended arm; turned cheek—a about Cambodia’s fall to romance unfolds and is foreclosed. When the French. “That creates a New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley very different atmosphere revisited the show, urged by readers to see in the kingdom,” Lee says. Lee opposite co-star Kelli O’Hara, he com- Especially among the mented, “It’s as if the spirits of Spencer ensemble, “You see, in a Tracy and Katharine Hepburn have en- sense, that they are looking tered the royal palace.” to the king to guide them But being alone on stage spotlights the to safety, and to steward king’s self-awareness—especially in “A their nation.” He contin- Puzzlement,” in which he admits, “There ues, “The king on stage is are times I almost think/I am not sure of really only as powerful as what I absolutely know.” An oddity of the the others allow him to be. libretto is that he is the only major char- If the other people on stage acter who doesn’t switch to unaccented, do not greet him with def- vernacular English in his lyrics. But Lee erence, then the audience brings real conviction to the soliloquy. His has no indication that they big, resonant voice lends dignity, and trag- should feel that.” edy, to the broken grammar. By the time he On paper, the charac- reaches the final, beseeching lines (“If my of lightning.” And off the set, he notes, the ter can be painfully oblivious—an object Lord in Heaven Buddha show the way/Ev- role has subtly changed the texture of dai- of occasional condescension for Anna ery day I do my best for one more day”), ly life: news articles about cybersecurity (the “I” of the title), and thus the view- sweat beads his forehead, and his chest “ping a little differently” for him. “And on er. It would therefore be simple to play heaves. There’s surprising pathos in this the lighter side, you find yourself by a store the king as a broadly charismatic blank, scene of a man reckoning with his scale and kind of checking out a pair of thongs.” onto which these competing perceptions in the world. Here’s a king grappling with In an intensely physical show, Job are projected. A theatergoer better ac- his power—and a performer in total com- stands out amid the hulking thugs. His quainted with Yul Brynner’s version (all mand of his own. work is basically invisible; his presence anything but. His intimidating glamor— featuring a wardrobe of wigs, stilettos, and the odd corset—is as essential to Banshee’s aesthetic as its bravura action sequences. The “Little Republics” The character does join in the cartoonish carnage, swearing a blue streak through a Thomas Jefferson’s “fractal” view of American self-governance glossily painted mouth. Lee seems to savor every syllable. by susan dunn Last September, he returned to Broad- In their fascinating, subtle, and deeply in- way to take the title role in The King and I, am going to Virginia,” Thomas sightful new book, Annette Gordon-Reed, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musi- Jefferson wrote in November 1793, Warren professor of American legal histo- cal about an Englishwoman who arrives shortly before resigning as George ry at Harvard Law School and professor of in Bangkok to tutor the children of the “I Washington’s secretary of state. history, and Peter S. Onuf, the Thomas Jef- autocratic king of Siam, who is striving to He was anxious “to be liberated from the ferson Memorial modernize his country. The Lincoln Cen- hated occupations of politics, and to sink Foundation pro- “Most Blessed of the Patri- ter revival clarifies the show’s East meets into the bosom of my family, my farm and my fessor emeritus archs”: Thomas Jefferson and West dynamics: the central characters’ books…. I shall imagine myself as blessed as at the University the Empire of the Imagination, mutual incomprehension is foregrounded the most blessed of the patriarchs.” of Virginia, seek by Annette Gordon-Reed by a larger colonial drama, in which the What kind of patriarch did this Ameri- to understand, as and Peter S. Onuf kingdom tries to stave off foreign interfer- can founder wish and imagine himself to dispassionately (Liveright, $27.95) ence. be? ask two eminent Jefferson scholars. as possible, how

60 March - April 2016 Photographs by Gregory Shummon/Cinemax Montage

Jefferson gave meaning to his existence, how he wished to be perceived by others, how he shaped his private and public lives, and how he reconciled in his own mind his status as a slave-owner with his immortal words that “all men are created equal.” Dispensing with a traditional chrono- logical biography, Gordon-Reed and Onuf focus instead on fathoming Jefferson’s own perspective and sense of self, carefully examining his home life in Virginia, his years in France, his many roles in American politics, his hospitality, and his artistic and intellectual interests—his observations of the natural world, his enthusiasm for music and books, his thoughts about religion.

Monticello was the center of Jefferson’s universe. Throughout his long life of public ock service—as a member of the Continental is t Congress, war governor of Virginia, Ameri- phisticated salons he had frequented in Jefferson’s perspective and sense of self can minister in Paris, secretary of state, vice Paris, Monticello demanded no dazzling finally receive the close scrutiny required for understanding this complex Founder. president, and president—the mountaintop displays of wit and tolerated no mali- slave plantation he built always remained cious gossip. And unlike the unruly world seers, workers, and slaves who did not his lodestar, the home he longed for. of politics, which Jefferson referred to as fit into his “program of willed domestic Home meant peace: discord and argu- “Bedlam,” Monticello was a domain over tranquility” were cast out. Even members mentation were excluded. Unlike the so- which he could exercise control. Over- of his family “tried hard to live up to their

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Harvard Magazine 61 Montage

assigned roles,” Gordon-Reed and Onuf fact promoting the “proslavery fantasies of remark. “I now see our fireside formed into happy relations between masters and slaves a groupe,” Jefferson wrote his daughter on southern plantations.” Martha in 1797, “no one member of which Of course, we know that Jefferson often has a fibre in their composition which referred to slavery as “evil,” but the ag- can ever produce any jarring or jealousies ing patriarch persuaded himself that its among us.” Nothing seemed to matter as eradication was a task best left to future Dumbarton Oaks much to Jefferson as his idyll of sweet, generations. In a famous letter written to warm, benevolent family life. Writing to James Madison in 1789, he proposed that Medieval Library his other daughter Maria as president in “the earth belongs always to the living jan m. ziolkowski 1801, he remarked wistfully that “it is in generation” and that “the dead have nei- general editor the love of one’s family only that heartfelt ther powers nor rights over it.” Gordon- happiness is known.” Reed and Onuf suggest that this concept Monticello, the domain of a loving pa- of generational sovereignty would permit “A boon to professional medievalists, triarchal father, was also the elegant es- Jefferson to wash his hands of slavery by their students and the general tate of a refined gentleman, whose visitors withdrawing “from the noisy and con- reader, and every good library would partake of the most enlightened tentious world of the ‘living generation’ ought to own the series.” conversation America had to offer (and into the ‘tranquility’ of retirement.” The of the finest of French wines). House enterprise of abolishing slavery, Jefferson —Keith Sidwell, servants were mostly kept offstage by a wrote in 1814, “is for the young; for those Times Literary Supplement clever arrangement of dumbwaiters and who can follow it up, and bear it through revolving service doors, but, as Gordon- to its consummation. It shall have all my new for spring 2016 Reed and Onuf point out, there was no prayers, & these are the only weapons of way to hide the fact that Monticello was an old man.” a slave plantation and that Jefferson was Holy Men of Mount Athos the master of numerous enslaved people Although Jefferson never ceased ide- Edited and translated by whom he could purchase, punish, or sell alizing Monticello as “a powerful counter- Richard P. H. Greenfield as he wished. The privileged life of the weight to the strife and discord of political & Alice-Mary Talbot man whose Declaration of Independence life,” the pull of politics proved irresistible. doml 40 / $29.95 put human equality at the center of the His 1793 retirement lasted only until 1797,

On Plato’s Timaeus How did Jefferson live with the contradiction Calcidius between the Declaration and slaveowning? Edited and translated by John Magee American Experiment was based on the when he became vice president under John doml 41 / $29.95 subjugation and exploitation of a con- Adams. Those retirement years were as demned race. much ordeal as idyll. Writing to Maria in Old English Psalms How, Gordon-Reed and Onuf ask, did 1802, President Jefferson admitted that they Jefferson explain and live with this burn- were probably the most depressing of his Edited and translated by ing contradiction? life. It was a time when the young republic Patrick P. O’Neill His solution, they believe, was to imagine was struggling to define itself, and it did not doml 42 / $29.95 a “reciprocal relationship” with his enslaved suffice to live as a patriarch in the bosom of people, while declining to recognize that his family. Deeply committed to fostering any degrading submission took place. They democratic self-government, he longed to “did things for him. He, in turn, did things fulfill his role as republican patriot. for them.” Some guests were surprised that Yet, in Jefferson’s imagination, the roles Jefferson treated his slaves as though they of patriarch and patriot were not discon- were members of his family (which some nected; on the contrary, they were closely of them indeed were). “How gentle, how linked, as were their two abodes, home humble how kind” were the master’s “man- and nation. ners,” one friend exclaimed. “His meanest The kind patriarch’s well-governed fam- For a complete list of all titles in slave must feel as if it were a father instead ily, knitted tightly together by tender at- the series visit: of a master who addressed him, when he tachments, was, in his mind, the bedrock of www.hup.harvard.edu/doml speaks.” The authors cogently remark that, republican self-government. Domestic life, Harvard University Press by convincing himself that it was possible to defined by the selfless and caring bonds be a slaveholder and still have enslaved peo- among family members, was a school for ple’s best interests at heart, Jefferson was in virtuous, sociable citizens. The model of

62 March - April 2016 alumni the family, Gordon-Reed and Onuf write, Onuf demonstrate in their excellent book, and in his mind, the mountaintop home “would radiate out to the community, the Jefferson’s self-fashioning as blessed fam- over which he presided constituted an state, and the nation. The American na- ily patriarch was inextricably and inti- ideal model for the nation and the world. tion would, in turn, become an example to mately tied to his vision of self-governing the world of the capacity for relationships communities and a self-governing free na- Susan Dunn, Ph.D. ’73, McCoy professor of hu- based on harmony, bonds of trust, and mu- tion. Monticello was what Jefferson want- manities at Williams College, is the author of many tual interest to keep peace in the world.” ed for himself—and, minus slavery, it was books, including Dominion of Memories: Jef- Jefferson’s famous prescription for re- also a prescription for a free republican ferson, Madison, and the Decline of Vir- publican government rested on what he nation in which citizens could enjoy their ginia (reviewed in the March-April 2008 issue, called “ward republics.” “Divide every inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the page 26) and 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, county into hundreds, of such size that all pursuit of happiness. In his imagination Hitler—The Election Amid the Storm. the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it,” he wrote in 1810. Each hundred was to elect all local officials, including jurors, and have civil of- alumni ficials “to manage all its concerns, to take care of its roads, its poor, and its police by patrols.” These “little republics,” he wrote, “would be the main strength of the great Mexico Debates Marijuana one.” Ironically, Jefferson found the model for them in New England, not in Virginia. A new tack on stemming drug-related violence “These wards, called townships in New England,” he wrote in 1816, “are the vital by lydialyle gibson principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the per- uan Francisco Torres Landa, do so, after a legal battle that went all the fect exercise of self-government, and for LL.M. ’90, a corporate attorney in way to the country’s Supreme Court. its preservation.” Indeed, the goal was to Mexico City, has never used mari- For him, the fight isn’t about the free- make “every citizen…an acting member of Jjuana and doesn’t plan to start now, dom to grow his own pot or a desire to get the government.” He could only hope that even though he recently became one of only high. It’s about the catastrophic violence “in the fulness of time” Virginians and the four people in Mexico granted the right to engulfing his country, fueled by drug traf- rest of the nation would follow the progressive example of the Easterners. Jefferson’s concept of a republican nation composed of self- governing states, counties, and “wards” which, in turn, were composed of family units, predat- ed the groundbreaking discovery of fractals in 1975 by the math- ematician Benoit Mandelbrot, an occasional visiting professor at Harvard. A form of geometric rep- etition, fractals are, as one writer described them, “smaller and smaller copies of a pattern suc- cessively nested inside each other, so that the same intricate shapes appear no matter how much you zoom in to the whole.” Mandel- brot’s favorite example was the cauliflower—“a single floret,” he wrote, “looks like a small cauliflower. If you strip that floret of Plaintiffs Pablo Girault, Armando Santacruz, and Juan Francisco Torres everything except one floret of a Landa show off the permits allowing them floret…it is again a cauliflower.” to grow and use marijuana. And so, as Gordon-Reed and

Photograph by Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images Harvard Magazine 63 alumni ficking—murders, kidnappings, torture, the first step in filing suit.) With the law- After more than a decade, the country’s extortion—and the desperate search for suit, the plaintiffs risk exposing them- American-backed “war on drugs” has some way, any way, to stop it. selves to danger—and indeed, they are imprisoned thousands of Mexicans but careful never to call out a cartel by name, secured few lasting victories against orga- Between 2007 and 2014, according to data never to attack any specific person—but, nized crime, political corruption, and the from Mexico’s National Institute of Statis- Torres Landa says, “When you see damage flow of drugs and money throughout Mex- tics and Geography, the country recorded being done, you cannot simply watch. You ico. “The cost to society” of drug-related more than 164,000 homicides, as many as cannot stand by and say it’s OK for people incarceration, Santacruz says, “is huge; the half or more (estimates vary) attributable to be kidnapped and extorted. No.” destruction of lives is huge. This is a total- to drug violence—and no comprehensive American consumers are, by far, the ly dismal, totally destructive policy.” count exists for the thousands of drug-re- prime market for Mexican drug traffick- Organized crime “is tearing the country lated kidnappings. In 2011, at the height of ers, so legalizing marijuana in Mexico, apart,” Mexican Supreme Court justice the cartel wars, 27,000 people were killed. where the drug is less popular, will not Alfredo Gutierrez Ortiz Mena, LL.M. ’96, And this January, a newly elected mayor in immediately undermine the drug cartels’ said during a December talk at Harvard on the central city of Temixco, who had vowed business. But as Santacruz and Torres the role of the court in Mexico’s democra- to combat organized crime “frontally and Landa hoped, the court decision did open cy, and meanwhile, the issue of drug policy directly,” was shot to death at her home less a conversation that had remained stalled “had been pushed under the rug.” He ruled than 24 hours after taking office. Days later, for years: about the effectiveness of Mexi- in favor of the plaintiffs in November and UCLA researchers released findings that the co’s drug laws (some of the most severe in in his talk compared the landmark case drug violence in Mexico was undoing a cen- Latin America), and about the wisdom of to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in tury’s worth of gains in male life expectancy. its tough-on-crime approach. Brown v. Board of Education and Brown’s role in “It’s a disaster,” says Tor- sparking an American con- res Landa. And Mexico’s versation on civil rights. “If prohibitions against drugs, the court had not stepped along with its ceaseless in,” he mused, “would the campaigns against traf- states have done something? fickers, he argues, “have Would the federal govern- themselves created more ment?” damage than the damage they were supposed to Torres Landa and Santa- mitigate.” cruz found themselves asking Which is why, in 2013, similar questions about Mex- he and Armando Santa- ico’s drug policy. The men cruz, M.B.A. ’87, whom he seem unlikely antagonists in met through the Harvard Juan Francisco a fight over access to weed. Club of Mexico, along Torres Landa Armando Santacruz Husbands, fathers, buttoned- with two other plaintiffs, down professionals, each has sued for the right to grow and consume Since the ruling, President Enrique served as president of the Harvard Club of their own pot. As members of the anti- Peña Nieto, a longtime opponent of mari- Mexico. Born in the state of Guanajuato, crime organization México Unido Contra juana legalization, has said he welcomes Torres Landa was raised in Mexico City and la Delincuencia (Mexico United Against a debate—though he hasn’t changed his earned a law degree from the Universidad Na- Crime/MUCD), all four would like to see mind—and has promised to convene medi- cional Autónoma de México and worked for marijuana legalized outright. cal experts and sociologists to discuss pos- several years at a firm in Mexico City before On November 3, the Supreme Court sible reforms. A senator from Nuevo Leon, moving on to Harvard and six months in prac- ruled 4-1 in the plaintiffs’ favor, declaring a state deeply scarred by drug violence, tice in Washington, D.C. He then returned that the country’s laws against the pos- proposed legislation to allow the import home to the firm (which in 2014 merged with session and use of the drug represented of medicines made from cannabis. And the international firm Hogan Lovells), where a violation of their fundamental human Mexico City’s mayor introduced a plan to he is a partner. rights, specifically “the right to the free de- potentially legalize medical marijuana na- Santacruz also grew up in Mexico City; velopment of one’s personality,” enshrined tionwide. The city’s archbishop, Cardinal he studied accounting at the Instituto in the Mexican constitution. (The ruling Norberto Rivera, gave his and the Catholic Tecnológico Autónomo de México before applies only to the four who brought the Church’s assent. “We have no problem,” he attending Harvard Business School. He is case, though; for it to become law, the Su- told reporters, with the drug’s medicinal co-founder and CEO of Grupo Pochteca, a preme Court would have to decide four use. Months later, Torres Landa says, “This raw materials, chemical, and paper-distri- more cases in the same way. And it may topic has not faded. It is being discussed bution company with operations in Brazil, get the chance: since December, at least not only in the executive branch and the Central America, and Mexico. five other sets of plaintiffs have applied for congress, but in offices, restaurants, and Both men remember a different, safer permission to grow their own marijuana, colleges. It is a true awakening.” Mexico. As a child, Santacruz traveled

64 March - April 2016 www.alumni.harvard.edu alumni on the equivalent of a Greyhound bus to “would always be cans reported hav- a family ranch in Chihuahua, some 800 overwhelmed by ing used marijuana miles from Mexico City: “When I turned the power and the during the past 13, my mom allowed us to go there on our incredible force of year, versus the 7.5 own.” By the 1990s, however, things had the drug business.” percent of Ameri- turned “nasty,” and in 1997 he and oth- Torres Landa adds, cans who report ers started MUCD. Its lead founder—and “The drug policy having used it in one of the legalization plaintiffs—is Jo- we have lived with the past month. The sefina Ricaño de Nava, whose son, Raul, for many years has Supreme Court had been kidnapped that May by a killer in fact generated The lawsuit has its origin in MUCD, a citizens’ ruling has been nicknamed “El Mochaorejas”: The Ear tremendous avail- group formed in 1997 to try to reduce crime. widely reported Chopper. “He used to send them to the ability and diversity of drugs, and in a way and “gives us a chance to spell out the real families to put pressure on them to pay that the government exercises no control dangers,” Santacruz says. “Look, pot is cer- up,” says Santacruz. In the end, Raul was over whatsoever.” tainly dangerous.…But it’s not going to turn killed; a family member found his body at you into Godzilla. And if anyone you know the morgue months later. And three years Changes in drug policies among other smokes under regulated conditions—which ago, Santacruz’s own brother was abduct- countries in the region should bolster efforts is what we’re proposing, that the governed, although he was released unharmed. in Mexico. In Colombia, personal marijuana ment regulates it—we will all be better off Torres Landa had a cousin who was kid- use is legal, and Uruguay legalized cannabis than if people have to touch base with or- napped and killed. “And an uncle,” he in 2013. The following year Chile planted its ganized crime every time they need to get says, “whom I was able to recover.” first crop of medical marijuana, using 850 some dope.” In 2004 a MUCD-organized “Let’s Res- seeds imported from the Netherlands. Most pivotal in shrinking the Mexican cue Mexico” march drew 250,000 people, all But public opinion in Mexico has solidly marijuana trade are the evolving revisions dressed in white, onto the streets of Mexico opposed legalizing pot. In part, say Santa- of U.S. marijuana policies. “Honestly, it City, and the group has pushed for reforms cruz and Torres Landa, that’s because the will be best for us when the U.S. fully le- in policing and criminal justice. But, Santa- drug, paradoxically, is little known locally. galizes,” says Santacruz. “Legalizing lo- cruz says, the group saw that such efforts In a 2011 survey, about 2.5 percent of Mexi- cally here in Mexico, we can reduce some

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Harvard Magazine 65 alumni of the problems, but we still will have the risen. To truly disable organized crime, gal,” Santacruz says, “then we can move illegal export market.” Some 40 percent Torres Landa and Santacruz know, will on” to other drugs. “We know it’s a long to 70 percent of the pot consumed in the require legalizing not just marijuana but journey.” Perhaps that’s why, on Decem- United States comes from Mexico (esti- those other, harder drugs. “In the long ber 11, when the plaintiffs picked up their mates vary among U.S. law enforcement term, yeah,” Torres Landa says. That’s a permits from Mexico’s federal health au- groups)—enough to represent roughly 15 tougher sell, but one that is also gaining thority office and displayed them for news percent to 30 percent of the cartels’ overall traction around the globe. Last year, Bra- photographers waiting outside, the two revenue. But in recent years, 23 states and zil’s Supreme Court began debating the men, half-smiling, looked not so much ex- the District of Columbia have legalized decriminalization of marijuana, cocaine, ultant as resolute. marijuana in some form, and Mexican sup- and heroin, and Ireland announced plans pliers, reportedly, are already being affect- to decriminalize heroine, cocaine, and ed: between 2012 and 2014, Border Patrol marijuana possession. In Colombia and Overseer and HAA seizures of Mexican pot fell by 23 percent, Peru, it is legal to cultivate and possess Director Candidates according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement cocaine; in Germany and Switzerland, Agency (DEA). And late last year, multiple people caught with cocaine face fines in- This spring, alumni can vote for five new news reports described how legal marijua- stead of jail. Several countries, including Harvard Overseers and six new elected di- na grown in the U.S. was driving down the Canada, the United Kingdom, and the rectors of the Harvard Alumni Association price so sharply that some Mexican farm- Netherlands, allow the medical use of (HAA). ers had stopped planting it. cocaine or heroine—or both. Portugal de- Ballots, mailed out by April 1, must be re- Those same reports, though, noted that criminalized all drug use in 2001. ceived back in Cambridge by noon on May some farmers are switching over to pop- For now, Santacruz and Torres Landa 20 to be counted. Election results will be pies. That tracks with the DEA’s findings, are pursuing one small step at a time. announced at the HAA’s annual meeting too: seizures of heroin (and methamphet- “When people see that we don’t become on May 26, on the afternoon of Commence- amines) along the Mexican border have a zombie nation because marijuana is le- ment day. All holders of Harvard degrees, except Corporation members and officers of instruction and government, are entitled A Special Notice Regarding Commencement Day to vote for Overseer candidates. The elec- Thursday, May 26, 2016 tion for HAA directors is open to all Har- vard degree-holders. Morning Exercises Candidates for Overseer may also be To accommodate the increasing number of people wishing to attend Harvard’s nominated by petition if they obtain a Commencement Exercises, the following guidelines are provided to facilitate admis- prescribed number of signatures (201 this sion into Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement Morning: year) from eligible degree-holders. Lists • Degree candidates will receive a limited number of tickets to Commencement. of signatures for five potential candidates Their parents and guests must have tickets, which must be shown at the gates in or- were submitted by the February 1 dead- der to enter Tercentenary Theatre. Seating capacity is limited; there is standing room line; for more information, see page 22. on the Widener steps and at the rear and sides of the Theatre. For details, visit the The HAA’s nominating committee has Commencement office websitehttp://commencement.harvard.edu ( ). proposed the following candidates. Note: A ticket allows admission, but does not guarantee a seat. Seats are on a first-come basis and can not be reserved. The sale of Commencement tickets is For Overseer (six-year term): prohibited. P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale ’74, Evan- • A very limited supply of tickets is available to alumni and alumnae on a first- ston, Illinois. Associate provost for faculty come, first-served basis through the Harvard Alumni Association http://alumni.( and Frances Willard professor of human harvard.edu/annualmeeting). Alumni/ae and guests may view the Morning Exercises development and social policy, North- over large-screen televisions in the Science Center and at most of the undergraduate western University. Houses and graduate and professional schools. These locations provide ample seat- Helena Buonanno Foulkes ’86, M.B.A. ing, and tickets are not required. ’92, Providence, Rhode Island. President, • College Alumni/ae attending their twenty-fifth, thirty-fifth, and fiftieth reunions CVS/pharmacy; executive vice president, will receive tickets at their reunions. CVS Health. Karen Falkenstein Green ’78, J.D. ’81, Afternoon Program ALI ’15, Boston. Senior partner, Wilmer The Harvard Alumni Association’s Annual Meeting, which includes remarks by its Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP. president, Overseer and HAA election results, the presentation of the Harvard Med- Ketanji Brown Jackson ’92, J.D. ’96, als, and remarks by President Drew Gilpin Faust and the Commencement Speaker, Washington, D.C. Judge, United States convenes in Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement afternoon. For tickets (which District Court. are required, but free) visit the HAA website or call 617-496-7001. John J. Moon ’89, Ph.D. ’94, New York vThe Commencement Office City. Managing director, Morgan Stanley. Alejandro Ramírez Magaña ’94, M.B.A.

66 March - April 2016 alumni

’01, Mexico City. CEO, Cinépolis. Kent Walker ’83, Palo Alto. Senior vice president and general counsel, Google Inc. “ Our John Harvard” Damian Woetzel, M.P.A. ’07, Roxbury, Connecticut. Artistic director, Vail Inter- During its 150th-anniversary celebration in December, the Harvard Club of national Dance Festival; director, Aspen New York unveiled Everett Raymond Kinstler’s portrait of John P. (Jack) Reardon Jr. Institute Arts Program, DEMO (Kennedy ’60. In accompanying remarks, club president Charles L. Brock, J.D. ’67, AMP ’79, a past Center), and independent projects. HAA president, cited the highlights of Reardon’s formal University service: director of undergraduate admis- For Elected Director (three-year term): sions, of athletics, and of the Janet Nezhad Band ’83, M.B.A. ’89, J.D. ’90, Harvard Alumni Association. New York City. Development consultant (He also served on the club’s to nonprofit organizations. board, and is a Harvard Medal- Rye Barcott, M.B.A.-M.P.A.’09, Char- ist.) Brock then turned to ad- lotte, North Carolina. Managing partner dress the man he called “our and co-founder, Double Time Capital. Jack of all trades. Our ace of David Battat ’91, New York City. Presi- Harvard clubs. Our king of dent and CEO, Atrion Corporation. countless Crimson hearts.” Susan M. Cheng, M.P.P. ’04, Ed.LD. ’13, Reardon’s “rare wisdom, wit, Washington, D.C. Senior associate dean and warmth” have been de- for diversity and inclusion, Georgetown ployed as he has “counseled University School of Medicine. and cajoled presidents and Farai N. Chideya ’90, New York City. provosts” and other members Distinguished writer in residence, Arthur of the Harvard community. But L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York more important, Brock said, University. Reardon is “the kind of person Trey Grayson ’94, Fort Mitchell, Ken- so many of us aspire to be,” at tucky. President and CEO, Northern Ken- the core of Harvard as a hu- tucky Chamber of Commerce. man institution: “Jack, you are Victor Jih, J.D. ’96, Los Angeles. Litiga- our John Harvard.” tion partner, Irell and Manella LLP. Eliana Murillo ’10, San Francisco. Head of multicultural marketing, Google Inc. da. Gullahorn joined the board of directors Program during Ramadan, which was held Michael C. Payne ’77, M.D. ’81, M.P.H. ’82, of the Harvard Club of Naples in 2008 and in numerous cities worldwide. Other ini- Cambridge. Attending physician, depart- reestablished the HAA’s Summer Commu- tiatives include alumni mixers, mentoring ment of internal medicine, division of gas- nity Service Fellowship for Collier County, programs for students, networking events, troenterology, Cambridge Health Alliance. helping to raise funds to sponsor 22 posi- and the annual dinner in Cambridge, tions for undergraduates. Subsequently, which has featured inspirational speak- as club vice president, and now president, ers who focus on the Islamic world. The HAA Clubs and SIGs Awards she has worked to coordinate internships HUMA Muslim Life Fund also supports The citations, awarded at the HAA board for incoming freshmen, as well as organize Harvard’s first paid Muslim chaplain. of directors meeting in February, honor both winter-break internships for students. The Harvard Club of Quebec (HCQ) alumni and groups that have organized ex- Timothy J. Pearson, M.P.P. ’89, of An- has seen tremendous growth during the ceptional programming. chorage. As secretary of the Harvard Club last three years, increasing member- E. Andrews Grinstead ’97 of Mobile, of Alaska since 2006, Pearson has coordi- ship from just eight to nearly 200. Under Alabama. Having served as the HAA nated activities and events, built partner- the leadership of club president Andre Alumni Leadership Conference co-chair, ships with other organizations, such as the DuSault, M.P.A. ’00, the club also estab- HAA director of southeastern states, and Yale and Princeton clubs, and worked to lished a board of governors, wrote a new HAA director of general-interest SIGs, get new club members involved with the constitution, and created a nomination Grinstead has been an invaluable alum- community and the board. He has also committee for succession planning. As ni leader, assisting numerous clubs and bolstered bonds with the larger academic part of the HAA’s Global Month of Ser- SIGs with organizational revitalization, network in Alaska. vice, HCQ collaborated with other local engagement, transition, and develop- Since its founding in 2004, the Harvard institutions, such as the U.S. consulate in ment. In addition, he is a past president University Muslim Alumni (HUMA) has Montreal, to organize meaningful events and vice president of the Harvard Club grown to include more than 300 alumni. and initiatives. The club has also spon- of the Mid-South and has been a schools The shared interest group has helped bring sored dozens of other gatherings, such as and scholarships admissions interviewer. together Harvard’s Muslim community, the popular Young Professional Speakers Jeanne E. Gullahorn ’54 of Naples, Flori- with initiatives such as the Global Iftaars Series, to effectively engage alumni.

Portrait by Everett Raymond Kinstler Harvard Magazine 67 The College Pump Harvard Politics

two years part-time starting in 1806, com- the most spendid theatre of eloquence is muting from his Senate service in Washing- at the Bar.” ton, D.C., to Cambridge. After him came a For good politically incorrect measure, minister, the Reverend Mr. Joseph McKean, Adams opined, “an impediment of speech as Jay Heinrich tells in his history of the is a disqualification, professorship (“How Harvard Destroyed the exhibition of which Rhetoric,” July-August 1995, page 37). The in that professorship Visit harvardmag.com “Your wooden arm you hold outstretched concerns of the job, writes Heinrich, “grad- reflects disgrace upon to view the John Quincy to shake with passers-by.” ually drifted away from oral address, politi- those who made the ap- Adams letter. cal meaning, and anything remotely prac- pointment, and is an insult upon the founder feisty letter written in 1819 tical.” In his letter to his friend Boylston, of the Institution.” in the distinctive hand of John Adams bemoaned McKean’s appointment. The letter is a gift to Harvard from David Quincy Adams, A.B. 1787, A.M. “With regard to the professorship of M. Rubenstein, a Harvard parent, graduate ’90, LL.D. 1822, hangs today, rhetoric and oratory, I do most sincerely of Duke and the University of Chicago Law Aframed, in the office of Harvard president wish it could be given to a person capable School, and co-founder and co-chief execu- Drew Faust. It offers outspoken candor of understanding its duties, and of perform- tive officer of the investment firm The Carlyle about yesterday’s faculty politics to any- ing them,” he wrote. “To Mr. M’Kean [sic] it Group—a more than usually philanthropic one who happens to read it while standing was a sinecure, given him for his wants and billionaire who co-chairs the Harvard Cam- around waiting for today’s action to unfold. his vices, and not for any quality required by paign and the Kennedy School campaign. A snippet appears below; the entire letter the place....But the corporation of Harvard may be read on this magazine’s website. University, though including some of the Adams, who was then the nation’s sec- best men in the world, is and for many years retary of state, wrote tartly about a range has been more of a Caucus Club, than of a On cats: The late Daniel Merton Wegner of Harvard topics to his close friend, Ward Literary and Scientific Society—Bigoted to was the Lindsley professor of psychology Nicholas Boylston, a cousin of his father, religious liberality and illiberal in political in memory of William James, but “first and principle—When they foremost, he was an inventor,” write three of have a place to fill, their his colleagues in a memorial minute about question is not, who is fit him presented to the Faculty of Arts and for the place, but who is Sciences last December. He started out in to be provided for? and college studying physics and engineering, their whole range of can- but switched to social psychology. “Al- didates is a Parson, or a though he ultimately became a widely cel- Partizan, or both.” ebrated éminence grise who won every major Adams goes on to dis- award his field could offer, he never stopped parage clerics wholesale being the ten-year-old boy who sat in the as candidates for the attic of his house in East Lansing with an John Adams, A.B. 1755, A.M. ’58, LL.D. ’81. “I professorship. “The Pulpit is indeed one of issue of Popular Mechanics and a chemistry set, speak the whole truth to you,” he wrote, “be- the scenes of practical oratory,” he writes, trying to develop a formula that would turn cause nothing less can do any good.” “but it is oratory of the lowest class. The the family cat into a family dog because, as Boylston was the nephew of the found- Pulpit Orator has no antagonist. There may he would maintain for the rest of his life, er of the Boylston professorship of rhetoric be triumph without a victory; but there can there is simply no good reason for cats.” One and oratory, and John Quincy Adams had be no victory without a Battle. Now as in hopes, piously, that no harm befell the cat been the first to hold the post, serving for the days of Cicero, the great struggle and in this attempted alchemy. vprimus v

68 March - April 2016 Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications Treasure Mesoamerican Notes New music from ancient instruments

nside one glass case sits a little too: a dog riding on the back of round owl, its eyes staring straight a cow, and a creature that looks ahead, its clay wings almost fluffy. half-anteater, half-pig (below). Next to it stand what looks like a fal- “Each of these is a story and Icon, and a pair of monkeys with O-shaped a sound,” says Davíd Carrasco, mouths. Inches away, an alligator, an arma- the Divinity School’s Ruden- dillo, and a flat-bodied frog. A smiling, seated stine professor for the study of man wears a hat and a heavy necklace. There Latin America, who also teaches are shells and fish and lizards and a squat in the department of anthropol- chicken (bottom)—and stranger figurines ogy. The objects, some as small as a coach’s whistle, others as large as a grapefruit, are ocarinas, Mesoamerican flute- like instruments dating back as far as 4,500 years, now on display at the Peabody Mu- seum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Once thought to be toys, ocarinas are, Carrasco explains, ago after a campus performance by musician complicated musical instruments—some and Latin American scholar José Cuellar (a have multiple chambers and can sound San Francisco State professor emeritus also more than a dozen notes—that played known as saxophonist Dr. Loco of the Rock- an important role in pre-Columbian re- in’ Jalapeño Band). A curator recognized one ligious rituals and domestic life. (Large of the instruments Cuellar played that day enough to cover its player’s face like a as an ocarina just like the hundreds boxed mask, the figure above right was prob- up in the basement. She told Cuellar about ably used for parades.) them, and when he returned to Harvard in They offer a glimpse, he 2012 as a Peabody Mu- adds, into ancient Meso- seum Hrdy Fellow, he american beliefs: for instance, opened up the ocarina Visit harvardmag.com/ that human and animal spir- boxes. “He laid them extras to see José Cuellar playing the its could inhabit each other’s all out for the staff and ocarinas. bodies. “Some of these ani- played them, one af- mals—they’ve been turned ter another, finding the tones, testing the into a musical instrument, ranges, ” Carrasco recalls. “It was a beautiful but it can only be played by a afternoon. People heard these instruments human. So the human breath that had not made sounds for perhaps 1,000 possesses the animal.” years. He brought them back to life.” The instruments in the vlydialyle gibson Peabody exhibit, Ocarinas of the Americas: Music Made in José Cuellar returns to Cambridge to give a lecture Clay, were rediscovered in the and ocarina performance on March 31. Visit www. museum’s vaults a few years peabody.harvard.edu/ancient-sounds for details.

76 March - April 2016 Photographs © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology