Alex Loznak '19 Is Suing the U.S. Government for the Right to a Safer Planet
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Summer 2020 PREVAILING OVER PANDEMIC ALUMNI SHARE STORIES OF LIFE DURING COVID-19 VIRTUAL CLASS DAY THE SHOW DID GO ON! CONGRATS TO THE Columbia CLASS OF 2020 College RACHEL FEINSTEIN ’93 SCENES FROM HER Today FIRST MAJOR MUSEUM RETROSPECTIVE TAKING Alex Loznak ’19 is suing the U.S. government CLIMATE CHANGE for the right to TO COURT a safer planet Contents Columbia College CCT Today VOLUME 47 NUMBER 4 SUMMER 2020 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Alexis Boncy SOA’11 EXECUTIVE EDITOR Lisa Palladino DEPUTY EDITOR 10 14 24 Jill C. Shomer ASSOCIATE EDITOR Anne-Ryan Sirju JRN’09 FORUM EDITOR features Rose Kernochan BC’82 CONTRIBUTING EDITOR 10 Thomas Vinciguerra ’85 ART DIRECTOR Eson Chan Taking Climate Change to Court Alex Loznak ’19 is one of a team of young people suing Published quarterly by the the U.S. government for the right to a safer planet. Columbia College Office of Alumni Affairs and Development By Anne-Ryan Sirju JRN’09 for alumni, students, faculty, parents and friends of Columbia College. CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS 14 AND MARKETING OFFICER Bernice Tsai ’96 “What Has Your Pandemic ADDRESS Experience Been Like?” Columbia College Today Columbia Alumni Center Fourteen alumni tell us how COVID-19 has shaped their lives. 622 W. 113th St., MC 4530, 4th Fl. New York, NY 10025 By the Editors of CCT PHONE 212-851-7852 24 EMAIL [email protected] Uniquely United WEB college.columbia.edu/cct The College produced its first-ever virtual ISSN 0572-7820 Class Day to honor the Class of 2020. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect official positions of Columbia College 25 or Columbia University. © 2020 Columbia College Today #CC20STILLROARS All rights reserved. We asked members of the Class of 2020 what it means to be graduating at this unprecedented moment. Cover: Photo by Robin Loznak Contents departments alumninews 3 Within the Family 31 ESB Lights Up for Lions 4 Message from Dean James J. Valentini 32 Message from CCAA President Facing the future after an academic year no one Michael Behringer ’89 could have predicted. Maintaining College community when we can’t be together. 5 Around the Quads Student innovation, faculty awards, 33 Lions virtual reunion and more. Charles Miers ’80; Annie Tan ’11 28 Columbia Forum: Rachel Feinstein 35 Bookshelf Feminist sculptor Rachel Feinstein ’93 gets Ted Shawn: His Life, Writings, and Dances a major museum retrospective. by Paul A. Scolieri ’95 37 Just Married! 38 Class Notes 73 Obituaries Dr. Paul A. Marks ’46, PS’49; Eugene T. Rossides ’49, LAW’52; Saul Turteltaub ’54, LAW’57; Brian Dennehy ’60; Terrence McNally ’60; Charles P. Wuorinen ’61, GSAS’63; Heyward H. Dotson ’70, LAW’76 79 Core Corner Our Core Centennial cartoon caption contest concludes with an illustration by Ariel Schrag ’03. DR. BENJAMIN SCHWARTZ ’03, PS’08 SCHWARTZ DR. BENJAMIN “In 1923, with the introduction of the home refrigerator in the U.S., a new art form emerged among some of the younger artists there.” Like Columbia College Alumni facebook.com/alumnicc The winner of our third Core Centennial cartoon caption contest is Patrick Rapp ’66! Thank you for all your submissions. View Columbia College alumni photos This issue’s cartoon is on page 79. instagram.com/alumniofcolumbiacollege Follow @Columbia_CCAA Join the Columbia College alumni network college.columbia.edu/cct college.columbia.edu/alumni/linkedin JÖRG MEYER Within the Family Notes on a Surreal Season t’s hard to know where to begin when writing this column, against the backdrop of these recent strange and devastating months. I look across my makeshift desk, out the window, where I — after a chilly spring — green leaves finally fill the gridded pane. My husband, our 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter and I joined my parents at their home in Massachusetts in early April; they help with childcare while my husband and I work remotely. We take turns cooking dinner, then watch TV together or drift into different corners to decompress. At least once a day, we speculate how much longer. I am enormously grateful for our situation, but as the weeks have passed, my homesickness has grown acute. I miss our apartment in Brooklyn; I miss my office in Morningside Heights. I miss the hour-long commute that took me from one to the other, a trip I often cursed (fie, MTA!) but that I now understand offered precious personal time to read or listen to podcasts or even nap until, on my luckier days, I woke just as the conductor announced my stop. These are small and easy losses to catalog. There have been losses Elsewhere in the issue, we invited 14 alumni The CCT team, far, far greater in recent months — overwhelming in their scope to contribute reflections on the changes to clockwise from top and complexity, impossible to fully comprehend. I struggle to make their daily lives during the early months of left: Deputy Editor sense of all that’s happening: COVID-19, with its wrenching the pandemic. Our original aim had been to Jill C. Shomer, Editor- in-Chief Alexis Boncy human and economic toll; the brutal murders of Ahmaud Arbery, create a time capsule of sorts, but as the proj- SOA’11, Executive Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and the subsequent protests — a ect developed, we found ourselves moved and Editor Lisa Palladino, communal keening that reflects too many years of injustice, heart- heartened in ways that we hadn’t anticipated. Associate Editor break and anger, and which has demanded a national reckoning. We hope it does the same for you. Anne-Ryan Sirju JRN’09 and Art We each must decide how we will respond to these crises: How do we And speaking of heart, don’t miss our Director Eson Chan. contend with their many facets; with whom will we share our thoughts graduation coverage, starting on page 24. and feelings; what calls to action will we issue or answer? These are con- Class Day and Commencement went virtual versations that begin quietly, in moments of self-reflection, and open in lieu of traditional ceremonies, and we highlight 10 seniors from outward to engage family, friends, community and others. the remarkable Class of 2020. The lessons they’ve taken from the Of course, the community we have in common is that of Colum- extraordinary circumstances of their last semester — and the inten- bia College. As Dean James J. Valentini eloquently addresses in his tions they now carry into the world — are truly inspiring. message on page 4, we are part of an institution where “much of In case you missed our June 14 email announcement, I’d encourage what our undergraduates really explore is knowledge of the self and you to read our recent Online Exclusive, a Q&A with Dr. Ashish K. of their own humanity, in the context of others.” The foundation Jha ’92, director of Harvard’s Global Health Institute. In it, Jha — that the College instills in its students and alumni, and the aware- whom you might recognize from appearances on MSNBC and other ness it fosters — for anyone who swims in its proverbial waters — networks — offers an optimistic prediction of our future, but doesn’t have prepared all of us to consider the questions of equity, ethics, mince words about what’s gone wrong with the federal response to responsibility and democracy that are suddenly, urgently vital. COVID-19. We also announced that we’re posting this issue online In this issue’s cover story, we take up questions of responsibility relat- only, having paused publication of the print magazine due to the ing to another of today’s most pressing issues: climate change. There, financial implications of the pandemic. the spotlight is on activist Alex Loznak ’19, who, with 20 other young We’ll be back with a print magazine in the fall. In the meantime, people, is suing the U.S. government for the right to a clean environ- I welcome your feedback at [email protected]. Be well. ment. The groundbreaking case, Juliana v. United States, charges that our leaders have caused undue harm to its plaintiffs by enabling and even encouraging policies that promote fossil fuels and carbon dioxide pollu- tion. We look both at the remarkable case and Loznak’s personal story — his crusade is inspired by his family’s 152-year-old Oregon farm, Alexis Boncy SOA’11 which has become increasingly threatened by drought and wildfire. Editor-in-Chief 3 CCT Summer 2020 college.columbia.edu/cct MATTHEW SEPTIMUS MATTHEW Message from the Dean Looking with Clear and Unblinking Eyes hen Columbia College began the academic year last I am glad to be at Colum- September, it would have been impossible for me to bia College right now. Our imagine how differently it would draw to an end. students are part of an insti- W While every year has its distinctions, as humans, we tution that is rigorous about rely on predictable rhythms to guide us. At Columbia, we start on a learning, inquiry and the pur- grand scale with Convocation for the incoming class, then gather suit of knowledge. While we together in a sea of Columbia Blue for Homecoming, observe the often hear about Columbia’s quietude of fall and spring exam periods, and finish the year with several research and discoveries at more grand events: Class Day, Commencement and reunion. the frontiers of science and The past several months have reminded us that whatever we might medicine, much of what our expect, life presents the unpredictable. And this year, the unpredictable undergraduates really explore arrived on a scale and with a force many of us had never before expe- is knowledge of the self and rienced.