Double Play the Epic Dialectic of Tony Kushner
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SPRING 2011 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE Double Play The epic dialectic of Tony Kushner C1_FrontCover2.indd C1 3/25/11 4:22 PM C2_CUClub.indd C2 3/20/11 11:32 AM CONTENTS Spring 2011 62214 DEPARTMENTS FEATURES 3 Letters 14 A Sentimental Education By Paul Hond 6 College Walk Playwright and political activist Meet the Flockers . Feeding the Meter . Tony Kushner provides insight Letter from Brisbane . Hands and Hearts into a key stage of his development. 38 News 22 What Happened to Angkor? Purdy in charge of research . Northwest Corner By David J. Craig Building opens . Alumni at the Oscars . Columbia tree-ring scientists journey Gift launches collaboration between the business to a remote forest in Cambodia to and law schools search for clues about the demise of a civilization. 46 Newsmakers 28 The Arab Reawakening 48 Explorations Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Syria –– and counting. Arab studies 50 Reviews professor Rashid Khalidi discusses the popular revolts reshaping North Africa 62 Classifi eds and the Middle East. 64 Finals 34 Daughter, Lost: A Short Story By Julie Wu ’96PS A mother answers a knock on the door. Cover illustration by Gary Kelley 1-2 ToC.indd 1 3/29/11 12:44 PM IN THIS ISSUE COLUMBIA MAGAZINE Executive Vice President for University Development and Alumni Relations Fred Van Sickle Dustin Rubenstein is an assistant professor in Columbia’s Publisher Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS Biology. He received the 2010 American Ornithologists’ Editor in Chief Union Ned K. Johnson Young Investigator Award and the Michael B. Shavelson 2011 Animal Behavior Society Young Investigator Award. Senior Editor >> Page 6 David J. Craig Associate Editor Paul Hond Contributing Editors Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN, Eric McHenry Kathryn Vreeland ’06CC is currently studying at the Art Director University of Queensland School of Medicine in Brisbane, Eson Chan Australia, as part of an exchange program with the Assistant to the Editor Ochsner Clinical School in New Orleans. >> Page 9 Nicole Brown Web Editor Jacqueline Ballantine Editorial Assistants Deaton Jones, Amanda Pickering, Lauren Weiss Mailing Address Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Columbia Magazine Studies at Columbia. His most recent book is Sowing Crisis: Columbia Alumni Center 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. New York, NY 10025 A new edition of Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Tel. 212-851-4155 Modern National Consciousness was published last year. Fax 212-851-1950 [email protected] >> Page 28 www.magazine.columbia.edu Address and Archive Assistance [email protected] 212-851-4155 To update your address online, visit Julie Wu ’96PS is the author of The Third Son, which was alumni.columbia.edu/directory short-listed for the 2009 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel-in-Progress or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). Competition and will be published by Algonquin Books in Advertising: fall 2012. >> Page 34 Publisher’s Representative Bruce Ellerstein 917-226-7716 To download our advertising brochure or submit a classifi ed advertisement online, visit www.magazine.columbia.edu/advertise. Columbia Magazine is published for alumni and friends of Columbia by the John Mariani ’73GSAS is a food and travel columnist Offi ce of Alumni and Development. for Esquire, wine columnist for Bloomberg News, and © 2011 by the Trustees of Columbia University author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink. in the City of New York >> Page 54 2 Columbia Spring 2011 1-2 ToC.indd 2 3/28/11 4:18 PM letters PICTURING FRENCH Mitchell is correct that the Obama White that bullet together. One hopes that Presi- I am writing to commend Paul Hond for his House failed to either solve the economic dent Obama will concur. article on Howard French (“The Power of crisis or demonstrate the president’s empa- Gordon E. White ’57JRN Lingering,” Winter 2010–11). French is pic- thy and concern. In a way, it was unfair of Hardyville, VA tured as highly competent: a star reporter for the voters to blame Obama for the continu- the New York Times, speaks seven languages, ing economic downturn, just as it was unfair How sadly predictable. I picked up “A and now a professor at Columbia. My mental of them to turn out George H. W. Bush in Midterm Examination” hoping for some image automatically identifi ed him as a Cau- 1992 for the economic recession that was balanced and nuanced thinking and found casian, if not a WASP. Then came the zinger: essentially over by that November. the usual array of patronizing, elitist, “where his ancestors were slaves.” Brilliant Obama adopted the problem as his own and knee-jerk clichés that liberals always writing and editing. Congratulations. by optimistically asserting that his stimulus deploy against Republicans, particularly That said, is it now accepted usage to allow package would reduce unemployment to when grasping for a way to explain the the solecism of number disagreement within 6 percent or less. He said it, and when it “shellacking” of the 2010 midterms. a sentence? In the article “Grave Decisions,” did not happen, the voters blamed him. Mitchell says the GOP swept the House I read “one in fi ve . spends their days.” I see Mitchell is correct that the Republicans’ in 2010 not by “presenting alternative pol- this in the pages of the Times, a book from danger is in overreaching to satisfy the icies or a rational critique of the Obama Oxford University Press, and in other pub- right wing of their party. The Tea Party administration, but by allowing the most lications. Is this the result of succumbing to has been mostly concerned with taxes and extreme and sometimes downright wacky the late feminist mania when “his” or “him” the defi cit and in general has not taken up attacks on the Democrats to drive the became anathema? It grates. the social issues of the far right: abortion, Republicans’ message.” Giulio D’Angio ’43CC immigration, gay marriage, and the like. This is an absurdly simplistic analysis. Philadelphia, PA They have their crazies, but Tea Party What I remember of the fall run-up are folks I know are primarily interested in the impassioned speeches and thought- MIDTERM EXASPERATION fi scal issues. ful writing of dynamic people like Eric As a newspaperman who covered national Since cutting entitlements, though neces- Cantor ’89GSAPP, Carly Fiorina, Tim politics in Washington for more than 50 sary, will not be popular, the two parties Pawlenty, Scott Brown, Paul Ryan, and years and who has voted for both parties, can only succeed by agreeing to take that Marco Rubio. Did Mitchell bother to and occasionally could not vote for either step together, and not allowing either party read Rep. Paul Ryan’s “A Roadmap for party, I am writing in response to Lincoln to demagogue. Speaker John Boehner has America’s Future”? Mitchell’s article “A Midterm Examina- made that clear. The Republican leadership These men and women, and their very tion” (Winter 2010–11). and the White House need to agree to bite serious policy prescriptions, were not hard Spring 2011 Columbia 3 3-5, 60-61 Letters2.indd 3 3/24/11 2:26 PM LETTERS to fi nd in the months before the election—if ing because they reject the radical growth But his fair and balanced approach goes Mitchell had chosen to do some real report- of the federal government in recent years. out the window when he cautions the ing. In fact, they were all over Fox News For example, since the Democrats gained Republicans on misreading the November and the dreaded “right-wing talk radio.” control of Congress in January of 2007, elections. He avers that Republicans must I suppose the stereotype of simple-minded the national debt has increased from not view the election results as “a triumph Republicans “cling[ing] to guns or religion,” about $8.6 trillion to $14 trillion, up 63 of the radical right-wing ideology.” as President Obama once put it, is reassur- percent in just four years. This debt is Since when are balanced budgets, smaller ing to liberals — but it is not reality. If the growing by more than $100 billion per government, lower taxes, free trade, and Democrats want to win, they will have to month and is approaching 100 percent defi cit reduction radical? Perhaps in urging stop underestimating and start listening. of GDP. Voters know the runaway spend- such caution, Mitchell reveals why pro- Stephanie Gutmann ’90JRN ing had to be approved by Congress, and gressives lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate Piermont, NY they know that this level of debt is reck- seats in November. less and unsustainable. They realize that Gerard J. Cassedy Jr. ’65BUS “A Midterm Examination” contains no it gravely threatens our economic strength Ponte Vedra, FL mention of Lincoln Mitchell’s politics, and national security. while there is a note that he is an associate Mitchell states that the “constant talk Lincoln Mitchell’s assessment of the 2010 research scholar at Columbia’s Harriman about how the Democrats were taking elections reveals how diffi cult it has become Institute. This gives the impression that the away people’s rights to own guns, make to engage in dispassionate analysis. author is presenting a scholarly, objective their own decisions about medical care, I am particularly intrigued by the facil- analysis rather than an editorial. While it or run their own businesses—all dramatic ity with which he dismisses as “far-out,” is well known that almost all university overstatements at best — resonated with “absurd,” “unfathomably strange,” “nutty,” professors are liberals, Columbia Maga- many voters.” But these concerns are not and “downright wacky” a number of per- zine seems to be presenting an editorial as “dramatic overstatements” at all.