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. 11.20_COVER-F.indd 1 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE MAGAZINE.COLUMBIA.EDUMAGAZINE.COLUMBIA.EDU SPRING/SUMMER 2020 OCCUPANCY SUMMER 2020

MODEL RESIDENCES NOW OPEN

CONDOMINIUM RESIDENCES STARTING FROM $940,000

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PAGE 14 CONTENTS

FEATURES

14 WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED FROM THE PANDEMIC (SO FAR) Experts explain what we know, what we need to know, and why there’s still so much to discover about the impact of COVID-19 By the editors of Columbia Magazine

22 AN EPIC ADVENTURE An organization of emeritus professors and administrators taps the intellectual wealth of Columbia elders By Paul Hond

28 THE LAWS OF LOVE They say everyone has a New York story. This is mine. By Ankur Paliwal ’15JRN

34 A TASTE OF HONEY Eli Lichter-Marck ’08CC went searching for purpose and truth. He also found sweetness and light. By Paul Hond

40 RAISING STRONG SEXUAL CITIZENS A Q&A with two social scientists David D. Ho, a leading on consent, power, and assault expert on viral epidemics, on Columbia’s campus with fellow researchers. By Lorraine Glennon SAMANTHA CASOLARI ’05SIPA CASOLARI SAMANTHA

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 1

11.20_CONTENTS.indd.20_CONTENTS.indd 1 44/23/20/23/20 112:352:35 PPMM COLUMBIA CONTENTS MAGAZINE DEPARTMENTS Executive Vice President, 5 University Development & Alumni Relations FEEDBACK Amelia Alverson

Deputy Vice President for Strategic Communications 8 Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS COLLEGE WALK Quiet Contemplation \ The Short List \ Shakespeare with a Twist \ Future Nurses Editor in Chief Sally Lee on Call \ Rapid Response \ The Morning- side Candidate Art Director Len Small

44 Managing Editor EXPLORATIONS Rebecca Shapiro PAGE Toxic Alzheimer’s proteins exposed in new 34 Senior Editors detail \ Montreal pact saves ozone, slows David J. Craig, Paul Hond warming \ How butterfl ies beat the heat \ Copy Chief A new twist on religious liberty \ The hidden Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN

costs of corporate tax breaks \ Study Hall Digital Editor Julia Joy

48 Design Assistant NETWORK Michelle Shin ’20CC Life on Mars \ Pet Projects \ One Size That Fits You \ Ask an Alum: Tattoo Trivia \ Creative Space, Creative Mind \ Newsmakers Senior Director for Strategic Communications Tracy Quinn ’14SPS

54 Director for Marketing Research Linda Ury Greenberg BULLETIN University news and views PAGE Communications Offi cer 40 Ra Hearne

58 BOOKS Until the End of Time, by Brian Greene \ The Splendid and the Vile, by Erik Larson \ Teen Beat! \ Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Subscriptions: Address and subscription assistance FROM TOP: COURTESY OF ELI LICHTER-MARCK; ANNA PARINI; COURTESY OF LAWS OF MOTION by Kawai Strong Washburn \ Plus, Reynold [email protected] Levy discusses Start Now To update your address online, visit alumni.columbia.edu/directory, 64 or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). RARE FINDS Advertising: A Prize of a Desk [email protected]

Letters to the editor: PAGE 50 [email protected] Columbia Magazine is published for alumni and friends of Columbia by the FOLLOW US Offi ce of Alumni and Development.

© 2020 by the Trustees of Columbia University @ColumbiaMag @columbiamag in the City of New York

@columbiamagazine COVER ILLUSTRATION BY MELINDA BECK

2 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_CONTENTS.indd.20_CONTENTS.indd 2 44/23/20/23/20 112:352:35 PPMM 2020 Summer Programs – Coming to You Online

Columbia is your premier resource to continuing your studies at an Ivy League university this summer. We will miss our beautiful campus, but we are glad we can help students proceed with their educational goals by offering our world-class curriculum online.

Visiting Students High School Students

Your Columbia, Your Community Summer Immersion Immersive pre-college Session 1: June 29–July 17 Undergraduates Bachelor’s Degree programs for talented & Graduate Students Holders & Professionals domestic and international Session 2: July 21–August 7 Join Columbia students Prepare for graduate studies high school students. Session 3: August 10–14 and faculty in hundreds or sign up for certification of university courses programs offered online taught in an online format. this summer. College Edge An opportunity for high Fall, Spring & Summer Session I: May 26–July 2 school students to take Offerings courses for university credit. Session II: July 6–August 14

sps.columbia.edu/EndlessSummer sps.columbia.edu/HSEndless

11.20_CONTENTS.indd.20_CONTENTS.indd 3 44/21/20/21/20 22:57:57 PPMM I just loved school and particularly loved Columbia. NOW I WANT TO GIVE BACK.

Jacqueline Rosay ’64GSAS 1754 Society Member

SUPPORTING HER ALMA MATER AND HER HERITAGE

Jackie served as a professor for 31 years and though retired will continue to infl uence future generations through her planned gift. She designated a portion of her most signifi cant asset, her retirement account, for the general purposes of Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. The GSAS Dean and the Institute Director will use her generous gift for their greatest needs, including scholarships, similar to the ones she received while earning multiple graduate degrees from Columbia.

ARE YOUR ASSETS CAPABLE OF MORE THAN YOU IMAGINED? Call the Offi ce of Gift Planning at 800-338-3294 or email us at [email protected] to discover how giving through your retirement plans can be an easy, cost-effective way to help the causes you care about most.

READ MORE OF JACKIE’S STORY AT GIVING.COLUMBIA.EDU/ROSAY

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3 INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS TO FOLLOW

COVER TO COVER the white Protestant elites in America bonded as they Thank you for the best were so worried at the turn fought together in the war. alumni magazine I know. of the twentieth century Carol Crystle ’64GSAS, ’71TC I receive several, but none (“In Defense of Humankind,” Chicago, IL @columbiaalumni compares to yours in the Winter 2019–20). But with For campus pics, school highly interesting, informa- all due respect to cultural STIGLITZ ON CHINA spirit, and Columbia Alumni tive articles it publishes. anthropologist Franz Boas, Of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s many Association shout-outs Most are just boring brag our assimilation had notable insights on econom- rags. I glance at them, say nothing to do with the ics, his views on China’s weak “That’s nice,” then recycle changing dimensions of intellectual-property regime them. I actually read skulls and noses. have not withstood the test of Columbia Magazine. It had everything to do time (“Rethinking Globaliza- Judith V. Lechner ’69LS with three cultural factors. tion,” Winter 2019–20). Chapel Hill, NC First, the Immigration Act of China now produces more @earthinstitute 1924 sharply cut the number patents than the rest of the For climate and science I have been reading Columbia of immigrants from Southern world combined. It has been news and Nat Geo–style Magazine a long time, and and Eastern Europe, which the largest registry of trade- nature shots the quality of recent issues meant that by the 1950s, a marks for well over a decade. is impressive. I read the past large proportion of those It dominates in even more four issues basically from dreadful Italians, Jews, and obscure rights, such as regis- cover to cover because there Slavs had been brought up trations for plant-variety were so many fascinating, in the United States, had protection. For at least well-written items. The let- attended English-language the last ten years, the vast ters and editorial responses grammar schools, and had majority of patents have been @columbiagsapp are also fi rst-class. found jobs in the American held by China, and the vast For the latest in architectural Benjamin Tua ’63CC workforce. Second, those majority of patent litigation innovation and inspiration McLean, VA schools, whether public has been brought by Chinese or parochial, taught the people against Chinese BECOMING students to be patriotic entities. In certain fi elds, AMERICAN Americans, living, as they such as software patents and Follow us at @columbiamagazine Many of us graduates of were told, in the best country genetic inventions, China has Columbia are the grand- on earth. And fi nally there been granting more robust children and great-grand- was World War II. The Nazis rights than the United States, children of those deplorable gave racism a bad name, and in part due to the work of immigrants about whom men from all ethnic groups Stiglitz and others who have

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 5

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thought the US regime version of St. Paul’s,” College overprotective. China is now Walk, Winter 2019–20). leveraging its IP regime, judi- After I read it, I was immedi- cial efficiency, talent program, ately curious if close-up photos technology-transfer regime, existed of the sixteen stained- and science policies to dom- glass windows around the inate many fields — such as dome that have been cleaned semiconductors, materials and repaired. I’ve found only science, clean energy, and two so far on the Columbia telecommunications — where website (Pell and Cheesman). the US has traditionally had a Can you please help? competitive edge. Francis Sypher ’63CC, Stiglitz should recognize ’68GSAS that what distinguishes New York, NY China’s IP environment is no longer the “gap in knowledge” We’ve found two more for you that he identifies between it (at left), and readers can view and more advanced econ- restore manufacturing jobs or the lowest it’s been since 2016, other renovation photos at omies but China’s unique coal-mining jobs,” but it was thanks to the Trump tariffs. bit.ly/StPaulsChapel. — Ed. planned corporate economy, never meant to. The tariffs James L. Mullin ’77CC which has long deprived are meant to punish China Dover, NJ I enjoyed reading about the foreign creative companies for its unfair trade practices, preservation efforts that have and individuals the full for its limits on US imports, Claiming that forced shar- so greatly improved St. Paul’s value of their rights through for its industrial espionage, ing of intellectual property Chapel. You mentioned that its market barriers and its and for its policy of demand- constitutes “good develop- John La Farge designed the intrusive planned economy ing proprietary-knowledge mental policy, because it helps three stained-glass windows for technology and IP. By transfers in exchange for a country like China close the in the apse. But you neglected perpetuating myths about a doing business in China. gap” ignores China’s rapacious to mention that the sixteen less advanced country with Stiglitz acknowledges that theft of American technology stained-glass windows in a weak IP regime in need of the tariffs will force corpora- that has as its main goal the the dome were designed by foreign technology, Stiglitz tions to “simply move their supplanting of American mili- La Farge’s friend — and my denies China the recognition factories to other developing tary and economic power. great-grandfather — David it is owed for its many countries.” Exactly! The US Konrad Motyka ’85CC Maitland Armstrong, himself accomplishments. His advo- consumer will pay less for the Hoboken, NJ a luminary of the art world cacy is not only outdated but goods from these countries in the late nineteenth and also potentially dangerous than those from China, and LOCAL LUMINARIES early twentieth century. to Americans. China will be forced to con- Many thanks for your great Peter Stuyvesant Brooks Mark Cohen ’84LAW sider revising their trade prac- article on the restoration of ’87GSAS Emeryville, CA tices. Today our trade deficit is St. Paul’s Chapel (“The Con- Highland, NY

The writer was the US Patent KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS and Trademark Office’s first CODE SCHOOL CODE SCHOOL representative to China at BC Barnard College NRS School of Nursing the US Embassy in Beijing BUS Graduate School of Business OPT School of Optometry (2004–2008) and a former CC Columbia College PH Mailman School of Public Health DM College of Dental Medicine PHRM School of Pharmaceutical Sciences senior adviser on China pol- GS School of General Studies PS Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons icy to the USPTO’s director. GSAPP Graduate School of Architecture, SEAS Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Planning, and Preservation Applied Science GSAS Graduate School of Arts and Sciences SIPA School of International and Public Affairs Stiglitz says that the US– HON (Honorary degree) SOA School of the Arts China trade war is unwise JRN Graduate School of Journalism SPS School of Professional Studies JTS Jewish Theological Seminary SW School of Social Work and unwinnable but offers KC King’s College TC Teachers College COLUMBIA little support for that posi- LAW School of Law UTS Union Theological Seminary LS tion. He says that it “will not School of Library Service

6 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_FEEDBACK.indd.20_FEEDBACK.indd 6 44/22/20/22/20 33:42:42 PPMM LISTEN, DOCTOR Listening is not an “art.” occupational therapy to the made in your review make Kudos to the professionals It is surely not “radical.” It patient, we use our specialized that day seem further off. and institutions championing is not “narrative medicine.” knowledge and skills to facil- Alan Goldman ’91CC narrative medicine through It is simply listening. It is itate collaborative work with University Heights, OH Columbia’s master’s program, humanity. It is empathy. Yet the patient. The earliest clas- its recent workshop, and its somehow it seems from this sic textbooks for occupational NEWS FLASH requirement that medical article that what used to be therapy clearly delineate this I congratulate Jordana Kier students take a narrative- basic human nature is any- philosophy as a guide for on her organic feminine-care medicine course (“Patient thing but. professional practice. product line, Lola, and I com- Storytellers,” College Walk, So to present and future Narrative medicine is a mend her for her work with Winter 2019–20). As your caregivers: Your patient is long overdue and impor- the advocacy organization article establishes, training a person. Treat them like tant addition to the skill set Period Equity (“Time to Talk health-care professionals in one. Look them in the eyes. of physicians. It is equally about Tampons,” Network, narrative tools is valuable for Engaging with a patient on important to recognize that Winter 2019–20). But I have improving care. a personal level should not occupational therapists have to take exception to one thing I highly recommend the require you to stray “from been incorporating it into she says, namely, “We really book A Fortunate Man: The medical routine.” It should their practice since the pro- want to be with our custom- Story of a Country Doctor, be routine. A three-day fession was founded in 1917. ers from their first period written by John Berger, with workshop won’t make that Deborah Yarett Slater ’73PS through their first hot flash.” photographs by Jean Mohr, happen. Experience will. So Waban, MA News flash: Most women which through both language here’s a radical idea. Get off do not stop menstruating and images illustrates the your phone. Look at your PEACE PROCESS when they get their first hot power of narrative medicine patient. Engage. Listen. Your review of Columbia flash. Everybody is differ- in the work of a physician Empathize. Repeat. professor Lis Harris’s book ent, but it is not uncommon named John Sassall in an Sandra (Schwartzberg) In Jerusalem (Winter 2019– to continue to menstruate impoverished rural commu- Lerman ’97BC 20) states, “At twenty-one, (albeit perhaps irregularly) nity. I gave this book to my Englewood, NJ Rasmea Odeh was accused for years after starting to brother upon his acceptance of terrorism, illegally tor- have hot flashes or other to medical school, and I have It is a major step forward to tured, and served ten years symptoms of perimenopause. given it as a thank-you to the recognize the importance at the Ramla prison before Also, not all women get hot “country doctors” I have been of narrative medicine in being released in a prisoner- flashes. In any case, it’s good fortunate enough to find. addressing critical emotional exchange news for Lola that women I have also left doctors who as well as physical needs to program.” You note that will most likely need their lack the ability to commu- benefit the whole patient. Odeh’s story is “shocking.” products for a bit longer nicate, empathize, “radically However, this concept is What is truly shocking is than anticipated. listen,” and “bear witness.” not new. Client-centered your failure to mention that Susan Marples ’88CC, I think these skills enable a care based on the individual Odeh was in fact convicted ’89GSAS doctor to collect crucial infor- patient’s story, its impact, and of taking part in bombings New York, NY mation, cultivate a trusting how the patient interprets that killed two Israelis in relationship, and reduce a and makes meaning of it in 1969. Does this not meet your patient’s anxiety, and are the context of their lives is definition of terrorism? Or do thus necessary for the best central to the profession of you feel that because the acts QUESTIONS? possible medical care. occupational therapy. were committed in the name COMMENTS? Wendy J. Eisner ’79GSAS As a graduate of Colum- of the Palestinian cause that Great Neck, NY bia’s master’s program in this excuses them? WE WELCOME THEM ALL! occupational therapy, I can Peace between these two E-MAIL US AT: As someone who comes tell you that this model was peoples will only come about [email protected] from a family of doctors (my the foundation of all our when both sides — and their OR WRITE TO US: father, my husband) and coursework and fieldwork. supporters — are willing Columbia Magazine who has been a brain-cancer It is the basis of “therapeutic to confront uncomfortable Columbia Alumni Center patient for sixteen years now, use of self,” a concept that all realities that do not align 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 New York, NY 10025 I was quite disturbed by the occupational therapists must with their own received “Patient Storytellers” article. master. Rather than providing truths. Statements like those Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity.

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NOTES FROM 116TH STREET AND BEYOND BILL DRUMMY

8 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_CW-4.indd.20_CW-4.indd 8 44/22/20/22/20 33:36:36 PPMM THE SHORT LIST

Tune in to Columbia LISTEN Bizcast, a podcast from Columbia Business School, for career insights, B-school news, and interviews with alumni innovators and faculty experts. gsb.columbia.edu /articles/columbia-bizcast

Columbia Global Reports, READ a nonfi ction publisher dedicated to timely, underreported topics, is offering a free bonus book from its backlist to new and existing subscribers. Sign up to receive seven releases, including 2020’s The Call: Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project, by Krithika Varagur. globalreports.columbia.edu/subscribe

Columbia’s 2020 Kit WATCH Film Noir Festival was canceled due to COVID-19, but you can still get your fi x of fedoras and femmes fatales. Visit the School of the Arts’ website to listen to past discussions with fi lmmakers Quiet Contemplation and fi lm scholars. arts.columbia.edu /create-your-own-fi lm-noir-festival his spring, as the coronavirus pandemic surged in New York City, the Morningside and Manhattanville campuses were a study in Tsilence. With classes moved online and faculty and non-essential Who says staff following work-at-home protocols, the campus had “an NETWORK you have eerie and uncharacteristic stillness about it,” as President Lee C. Bollinger to leave the house to make meaningful observed in a letter to the Columbia community. He noted the sharp personal connections? Alumni job seekers contrast with the medical campus uptown, where Columbia physicians, and those simply looking to reach out to nurses, technicians, administrators, medical and public-health research- fellow professionals can sign up for a virtual ers, maintenance personnel, and security guards — some of whom moved Networking Hour (professional attire optional). into the vacated Morningside residence halls to ease their commutes — alumni.columbia.edu/career-resources faced a deluge of patients stricken with COVID-19. In that same letter, Bollinger off ered his deepest thanks for the sacrifi ce and commitment of those frontline workers while Self Made, lamenting the “heartbreaking” decision to cancel the May BIBINGENGE a limited 20 University-wide Commencement ceremonies. Not since seseriesries iinspirednspired by tthehe stostoryry ooff King’s College was closed during the American Revolution- ppioneeringioneering AfAfrican-Americanrican-American ary War had the ritual failed to proceed. Instead, plans were bbeautyeauty eentrepreneurntrepreneur MMadamadam made to record the ceremony and share it virtually. C. J. WaWalker,lker, ppremieredremiered tthishis sspringpring Though no light-blue caps would be tossed in Low Plaza, onon NetflNetfl ix.ix. BasedBased onon thethe biographybiography BBollingerollinger hhopedoped ttoo fi nndd a wwayay ttoo hhonoronor 22020020 gragraduatesduates iinn pperson,erson, by A’LeliaA’Lelia BundlesBundles ’76JRN,’76JRN, Walker’sWalker’s when the time was right. “There is no academic ceremony I love more,” great-granddaughter and a University Trustee,

TOP LEFT AND RIGHT: BILL DRUMMY; CENTER: EILEEN BARROSO BILL DRUMMY; LEFT AND RIGHT: TOP he wrote, “and I expect to love this one the most.” it stars Octavia Spencer. netfl ix.com

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 9

11.20_CW-4.indd.20_CW-4.indd 9 44/22/20/22/20 33:36:36 PPMM COLLEGE WALK Shakespeare with a Twist Local students attend a School of the Arts performance of Twelfth Night

eliciting laughter, hoots, and peanut- gallery interjections. “It’s fantastic, because that’s how it was in Shakespeare’s day,” says Reed. “People threw fruit when they didn’t like a character. Offstage, characters talked to audience members. There was a back-and-forth, and that’s what we’re trying to do: make theater less stuffy and elitist. We’re saying, ‘Hey, we know you’re there, we know this is a play, and we’re inviting you in. You can scream, holler, check out, or whatever.’” Though Shakespeare’s English can be baffling to uninitiated ears, Reed and his classmates managed to impart meaning. “There are physical jokes and verbal jokes,” Reed says. “Younger kids respond more to physicality, and that helps them access the language. If we match the physical and the verbal together successfully, some of the older or the past fifteen years, legions Sprinkled with scampering entrances kids will understand what Shakespeare of New York City schoolchildren and capering antics, Twelfth Night is actually saying. Students also pick up have descended upon the ninety- follows the maiden Viola (played by on what’s relatable to their lives, like Fnine-seat black-box theater Yeena Sung), who is shipwrecked on having an unrequited crush or not being in the basement of Schapiro Hall on the shores of Illyria, with her twin able to reveal who you truly are.” West 115th Street to meet with William brother having gone missing in the CTH associate artistic director Carl PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LEN SMALL; PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK: EVERETT COLLECTION, DANIEL PADAVONA, RANTA IMAGES Shakespeare. Through a program called wreck. Viola disguises herself as a man Cofield ’14SOA says that serving the the Young Company, which was started and finds work in the court of Duke community through theater has personal by Brian Kulick, the chair of Columbia’s Orsino (Clayton McInerney). Now meaning for him as an actor and director School of the Arts graduate theater called Cesario, she becomes Orsino’s of color. “The partnership lets Columbia department, third-year Columbia favorite manservant — and secretly falls students spread the gospel of theater in theater students visit local middle and in love with him. But Orsino pines for less affluent schools where the arts have high schools to conduct workshops and Countess Olivia (Owala Maima), whose been cut,” Cofield says. “I grew up with then, over two weeks, give ninety-min- riotous household includes her boister- dreams of being an actor, but it was only ute performances of a Shakespeare play ous, incurably pickled uncle, Sir Toby when I saw someone who looked like me each weekday morning. Belch (Titus VanHook) and her prudish doing classical texts that I understood In 2018, the Young Company enlisted steward, Malvolio (Jon Robin). When that there was a seat for me at the table.” the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH), Orsino sends Cesario to convey his The benefits also extend to the a nonprofit dedicated to theater pro- affections to the countess, Olivia falls Columbia students: the actors, direc- duction and education, to collaborate for the messenger instead. tors, and stagehands, by working with in a production of Romeo and Juliet. The director, Logan Reed, conceived CTH, receive Actors’ Equity Association This year, CTH and the Young Company Illyria as a coastal party town, with Sir contracts. “That makes them union presented Twelfth Night, a raucous but Toby and his merry band of revelers members and opens professional doors,” melancholic comedy whose ingredients sporting sunglasses, shorts, and tank says CTH general manager Ryan Patrick of gender switching, love triangles, tops. The high spirits of Olivia’s reti- Ervin ’18SOA. For Ervin, who studied bullying, and gleeful dissipation struck nue proved catching to the audience dramaturgy at Columbia, the biggest a present-day chord. — twelfth-graders on this morning — perk is the look on the kids’ faces. “To

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11.20_CW-4.indd.20_CW-4.indd 1100 44/22/20/22/20 33:37:37 PPMM see young people connecting Future Nurses on Call to Shakespeare for the first Columbia nursing students and faculty nurse practitioners time is really powerful.” confront a new reality After a flurry of frolics, pranks, blustery speeches, lovelorn odes, and songs he School of Nursing faced adjustment: students were advised sung by Olivia’s jester, Feste an unprecedented dilemma. that they would, in fact, be working (Othello Pratt Jr.), Twelfth Normally, as part of its with COVID-19 patients. The school Night culminates with the Tcurriculum, nursing students informed the students of the risks and appearance of Viola/Cesario’s are posted to New York City hospitals, emphasized that there was no shame missing twin, Sebastian where they work one-on-one with prac- in turning down the assignment: it (Jae Woo). With everyone ticing nurses to make the transition would be up to them and their fami- unmasked and reconciled, from student to nurse. But in March, lies to decide. Out of the 180 students most of the characters find a with COVID-19 spreading throughout in Columbia’s MS program in nursing, measure of fulfillment — and the city, hospitals with burgeoning eighty-five signed up to work. They so did the kids, who clapped caseloads suspended the student started in April. and cheered and then made practicums. This was followed by an Though the arrangement is not an orderly exit to the school edict from Columbia University Irving part of the academic curriculum, the buses outside. Medical Center (CUIMC) that, for safe- students are invited to attend weekly ty’s sake, no student should take care of online seminars run by faculty and led someone diagnosed with COVID-19. by Jennifer Dohrn ’05NRS, an associ- At first, students were allowed to ate professor of nursing, to share their work in hospitals that had yet to be experiences. “Working in any capacity overrun by the pandemic as long as in any hospital is a frightening thing they weren’t caring for COVID-19 right now,” says Honig, and the idea patients. But as more COVID-19 cases is to give students a chance to relieve were admitted to the hospitals — anxiety and, ideally, forestall any and as more institutions came to pri- potential posttraumatic stress. Says oritize the health of their employees Honig, “People rally during a time of — the students were turned away. crisis, and afterward it hits them.” And so the School of Nursing got In lieu of traditional clinical expe- creative: anticipating that hospital rience, the nursing school is seeking staff would soon be under stress — other ways to keep students engaged. they were getting sick, their families Seventy-six students are participating were getting sick, they were self- in CUIMC’s coronavirus hotlines, isolating, they were tired — the school fielding questions from the public This year’s performances ran offered to send students to hospitals and hospital staff about symptoms, for one week instead of two as paid nurse technicians, where they testing, and treatment and allowing due to the coronavirus out- could draw blood, take vital signs, and hospital personnel to be diverted from break, and the ensuing social perform EKGs for non-COVID-19 the phones to units where their skills isolation only underscored the patients. “It’s less than what a profes- are needed. And with city hospitals power of the art form. sional nurse does but similar to what also desperate for help, the school has “The ritual of theater,” says students would do under the super- deployed eighty students to answer Cofield, “requires you to be vision of a staff person,” says Judy similar questions for the NYC Health surrounded by other people Honig ’77TC, ’05NRS, the School of and Hospitals COVID-19 hotline. and to experience something Nursing’s vice dean of academics and “Call centers are substituting for some together with them in real dean of students. of the advance practice that students time. That’s what makes it But no sooner had the arrangement are missing out on,” says Honig. “It’s magical. And I think the been negotiated than the hospitals an unusual clinical, but it’s keeping times we’re in now will make filled up almost entirely with people them part of the crisis response, us yearn for that again.” infected with COVID-19. Now the which is important. We’re putting — Paul Hond school had to make another on-the-fly technology in place so a lot of our

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students can do telemedicine disease, who are at high risk of — interviewing and assessing fatal exposure to coronavirus patients electronically.” infection simply by leaving Telemedicine has become their homes — are being “seen” essential for students and via computer or telephone. faculty alike. At the Nurse “It’s hard to examine a Practitioner Group (NPG), patient without being there,” the nursing school’s faculty- says Ferrara, “but we’re teach- run clinic, technology is ing patients how to check their helping professionals manage own pulse and take their own a crisis unlike any in living temperature and report the memory. “I’ve been a nurse results during the visit.” NPG practitioner for twenty years, has also taken on the crucial and I’ve never seen anything role of electronically following like this,” says Stephen Ferrara, up with the non-COVID-19 the associate dean of clinical patients that CUIMC has affairs at the nursing school released in order to free A face shield produced by Columbia Engineering. and the director of NPG. “In up beds for those critically the infectiousness, the severity, stricken with the virus. the widespread rates, and the The situation has tested both Rapid Response measures that we are taking to faculty and students, and there try to stem the further spread, is no longer such a thing as this pandemic is unlike any- business as usual. “We don’t AS MEDICAL WORKERS IN NEW YORK faced thing I could have expected.” know what the future is going a harrowing shortage of personal protective The clinic, which consists to bring, and it’s hitting every- equipment in their fight against the new coro- of ten nurse practitioners, has body,” Honig says. navirus, Columbia engineers — and librarians — met the emergency head-on. In March, Madiha Choksi ’19GSAS, a “I’ve been a nurse practitioner research and learning technologies librarian at for twenty years, and I’ve never Columbia University Libraries, began produc- ing protective face shields using the libraries’ seen anything like this.” 3D printer and a model by Budmen Industries, a 3D-printer company in upstate New York. two locations: one in Midtown Even before the pandemic, Within days, Choksi and Alexander Gil Fuen- and one at CUIMC on 168th the courage and resilience of tes, a librarian of digital scholarship, formed Street. NPG serves the local nurses could hardly be over- a consortium of local 3D-printing companies community, typically conduct- stated. Still, in the face of such and volunteers to crank out and deliver thou- ing annual physicals and uncertainty, you might expect sands of shields per day. treating both garden-variety that many who had planned to At the same time, at Columbia Engineering, maladies and chronic condi- pursue what is often called the students, faculty, and technical staff designed tions like high blood pressure world’s most honorable profes- their own face shields with an emphasis on and diabetes. In late February sion might change direction. production speed and affordability, then man- the uptown location was Yet of the 244 students slated ufactured them in the Columbia Makerspace. converted into a “cough, cold, for this year’s incoming class Teaming up with CUIMC, which tested and and fever” clinic, set up to — courses start this summer — approved the prototypes, the school stepped up provide onsite assessments 231 are still planning to attend. production to turn out fifty thousand shields of patients with potential “This was the commitment daily for New York hospitals. coronavirus symptoms and they made, and they’re looking “If back in early March anyone had suggested

determine if they should forward to joining us,” Honig that we would be designing and mass-producing YEVGENIY YESILEVSKIY be tested. Other patients — says. “That’s the kind of a product in just a week — or even at all — we including the elderly and those applicants we have — they just would have said a clear no,” said engineering with diabetes, chronic lung wade right in.” dean Mary Boyce. “But desperate times call for disease, and cardiovascular — Paul Hond extraordinary measures.”

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11.20_CW-4.indd.20_CW-4.indd 1122 44/22/20/22/20 33:37:37 PPMM The Morningside Candidate A hundred years ago, Nicholas Murray Butler ran for president of the United States. It didn’t go well.

hese days, national ical scrum. So he conducted political conventions what his biographer, Michael are predetermined: Rosenthal ’67GSAS, calls a Ta candidate prevails “stealth campaign.” in the primaries and is “Butler was clearly running formally chosen by delegates for president, but he didn’t to be a party’s nominee for want to draw attention to it,” the presidency. But delegates says Rosenthal, a professor weren’t always bound to emeritus of English and the primary results. The 1920 author of Nicholas Miracu- Republican National Con- lous: The Amazing Career of vention in Chicago saw eight the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas aspirants, including Columbia Murray Butler. “He didn’t president Nicholas Murray run in the primaries; he didn’t Butler 1882CC, 1884GSAS, want to raise money, which Nicholas Murray Butler in 1916. vying to be picked. With he found demeaning; and he many delegates undecided, didn’t want to be attacked by and chairman of the Board cabal of Republican senators the contest was up for grabs; other candidates.” of Trustees of a tremendous shifted their votes to Ohio and if anyone was confident Born in 1862 in Elizabeth, educational and finan- senator Warren G. Harding. of victory, it was the Sage of New Jersey, to a middle-class cial institution conducted “Butler was hoping till the Morningside Heights. family, Butler earned a along the lines of a business end that things would go his One of the nation’s most doctorate in philosophy, enterprise.” Columbia was way,” Rosenthal says. After honored public intellectuals, became a professor, and in no “scholar factory”; it was a the final ballot, Butler had Butler also saw himself as 1902 succeeded Seth Low as “citizen factory.” two delegates. “It was the its savior, and his lofty sense University president. A wooer “To claim that Butler was greatest loss of his career, but of destiny convinced him of the wealthy and powerful, the president of a university he maintained the idea that that voters would concur. he expanded Columbia from a that did not produce scholars he didn’t really lose for the Campaigning during the small, local school to the larg- was ludicrous,” Rosenthal rest of his life.” First Red Scare, Butler est university in the country. says. “But that was the trap Butler retained his Colum- warned of those who “frankly President Theodore Roosevelt Butler was in.” bia presidency and became proclaim their preference 1899HON dubbed him He was trapped, too, says president of the Carnegie for the political philosophy “Nicholas Miraculous,” and Rosenthal, by a “totally nar- Endowment for Interna- of Lenin and Trotsky to that 1920 campaign circulars noted cissistic personality”: electoral tional Peace in 1925. In 1931, of Washington, Hamilton, that Butler had “rubbed shoul- failure was so repugnant to he won the Nobel Peace Prize Webster, and Lincoln.” In an ders with presidents, gover- him that he made self-defeating for strengthening the Inter- acquired patrician elocution nors, diplomats, statesmen choices — not raising money, national Court at The Hague. that turned “America” into and the big men of the nation.” not hiring savvy political Butler retired from Colum- “A-mad-ica,” Butler called for But after eight years of operators — in order to claim, bia in 1945 and died two a revival of patriotic ideals, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, if he did lose, that he had years later. His memorial in lest the nation succumb to the former president of Princ- never fully tried to win. St. Paul’s Chapel drew hun- a “social democracy” that eton, voters weren’t clam- Still, Butler trusted that dreds of mourners. Among would take over “each indi- oring for another academic, delegates in Chicago would them was the next Columbia vidual’s life and business.” so Butler sought to shed his choose him to run against president, Dwight D. Eisen- While Butler sought to own pedagogical image. His Ohio governor James M. Cox, hower, who would win the reinstate mercantile values leaflets mocked Wilson as who had replaced an ailing Republican nomination in in a world slouching toward “the schoolmaster type of col- Wilson. After four nights, 1952 and become, as Butler Bolshevism, dignity required lege president” while casting with no candidate capturing had not, president of the

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LIBRARY him to stay above the polit- Butler as “the executive head a 471-delegate majority, a United States. — Paul Hond

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11.20_CW-4.indd.20_CW-4.indd 1133 44/22/20/22/20 33:37:37 PPMM WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED FROM THE PANDEMIC (SO FAR) Columbia University experts on the front lines of the crisis explain what we know, what we need to know, and why there’s still so much to discover about the true impact of COVID-19

by the editors of columbia magazine

11.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd 1144 44/22/20/22/20 55:24:24 PPMM study found, primarily as a result of rapid population growth and the resulting human encroachment into wilderness. “As people move into previously unde- veloped habitats, wild animals are being crowded into smaller areas and are mixing with people more,” says coauthor Marc Levy, a geospatial-data expert at Columbia’s Earth Institute. Simon Anthony, a Columbia epidemi- ologist who studies how viruses move between species, says that humans pick up these infections in myriad ways: by eating the flesh of wild animals, also called bushmeat; by eating fruits or vegetables that have been nibbled on by infected rodents, bats, or birds; by drinking water contaminated by infected animals’ urine or feces. Raising livestock close to forests is also a major risk, he says, since domes- tic animals can catch infections from wild ones and later infect their owners. And yet efforts to clear wild animals Simon Anthony inspects a vampire bat in the Brazilian rainforest. away from new human habitats are prone to backfiring. Anthony notes that bats are frequently the targets of extermination WE LEARNED THAT OUR PLANET HAS BECOME campaigns but only become more danger- ous when forced out of their caves. He and A BREEDING GROUND FOR EMERGING DISEASES colleagues are now working with agricul- tural communities throughout the develop- ing world to teach people how to minimize there was a time, from around the There were fatal hemorrhagic fevers like their chances of contracting novel infec- end of World War II through the 1960s, Ebola, which likely came from bats; Lassa tions while living peacefully beside bats when public-health officials in the US fever, from rodents; and Marburg fever, and other disease carriers in their vicinity. and Europe thought they had conquered also from bats. There were infections that “Our message is: protect bats but keep most infectious diseases. Many of his- cause serious neurological problems, like your distance,” Anthony says. “We know tory’s worst communicable illnesses — Lyme disease, which originated in mice that bats carry viruses that can be trans- smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, measles, and which is transported by ticks, and mitted to humans, but it’s also important to syphilis, typhoid, influenza, leprosy, and West Nile and Zika, both of which are remember that they serve vital ecosystem the plague — were being brought to heel transmitted by mosquitoes. And then, in roles, pollinating plants and controlling by vaccines, antibiotics, and antiviral this century, came bird flu, swine flu, and insect populations. Without them many of drugs. And because new infections were a trio of extraordinarily dangerous new the foods we enjoy would disappear and rarely observed, mankind’s triumph over respiratory ailments caused by bat viruses: insect-borne diseases would increase.” the microbial world was seen as virtually SARS, MERS, and now COVID-19. In the According to W. Ian Lipkin, the John complete. US Secretary of State George war between man and microbes, it seems, Snow Professor of Epidemiology and the Marshall spoke for many when he the germs are making a comeback. director of the Center for Infection and declared in 1948 that human civilization The numbers tell a sobering story: Immunity at Columbia’s Mailman School was on the cusp of eradicating infectious between 1960 and 2004 alone, 335 new of Public Health, the rural poor in tropical diseases forever. infectious diseases emerged, the vast regions are at the greatest risk of contract- But in the late twentieth century majority caused by viruses or bacteria ing novel diseases, in part because they something unexpected happened. Strange that spread from animals to people, often depend on bushmeat as a source of new infections began to emerge. First according to one Columbia study pub- cheap protein and may have little choice there was AIDS, caused by a virus that lished in Nature. Such “spillover” events but to farm patches of freshly cleared for-

ILLUSTRATION BY MELINDA BECK; ABOVE: COURTESY OF SIMON ANTHONY COURTESY ABOVE: BECK; MELINDA BY ILLUSTRATION jumped from chimpanzees into humans. have been occurring more frequently, the est. But he says that a demand for exotic

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11.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd 1155 44/22/20/22/20 55:24:24 PPMM animals among wealthy consumers — for pets, food, or use in Many other factors are now contributing to the emergence traditional medicine — is a growing public-health threat. In fact, of novel diseases, Lipkin says. He points to climate change, the wild-animal and seafood market in Wuhan, China, that was which is shifting the natural habitats of many wild animals at the center of the COVID-19 outbreak catered to an upper- and causing them to migrate to more populated areas; com- class clientele. A leading theory about the disease’s emergence mercial demand for natural resources, which is driving timber is that one or more pangolins — small endangered mammals and mining companies deeper into native woodlands; and whose meat is coveted as a delicacy in some parts of Southeast the growth of megacities in the developing world, where poor Asia — became infected and passed the virus from bats to food sanitary conditions put people at heightened risk for insect- handlers and customers. Alternatively, some scientists have borne diseases. theorized that the coronavirus might have been carried into the “In recent years, all of these elements have been in play,” market by poachers or others involved in the illicit animal trade. he says. “It’s a perfect storm.”

with COVID-19 had contributed to the WE LEARNED THAT THE WORLD IS ILL-PREPARED spread of the disease. In fact, one of the first comprehensive analyses of transmis- TO DEAL WITH GLOBAL PANDEMICS sion patterns — published by Columbia data scientists Jeffrey Shaman ’03GSAS and Wan Yang in the journal Science that month — found that asymptomatic in late january, when most Americans Meanwhile, back in New York City, people were driving two-thirds of the were hearing about the novel coronavirus Lipkin’s team at the Mailman School’s disease’s spread. for the first time, the Columbia epide- Center for Infection and Immunity was As this magazine went to press, Lipkin miologist W. Ian Lipkin was in Beijing, already working on an ultrasensitive test was himself recovering from COVID-19, advising the Chinese government on its for COVID-19, one capable of detecting which he contracted through routine response. One of the world’s leading virus small amounts of virus that conventional social exposure in New York City. The hunters, Lipkin has nearly four decades types of diagnostic tools might miss. illness barely slowed him down, though: of experience in identifying, tracking, (Some team members flew with Lipkin by April, he and his colleagues had and developing diagnostics for emerging to China to study a sample of live virus as completed work on their diagnostic infectious diseases. He frequently travels a reference.) Such a technology would be system, which also identifies people to other countries to help them fight epi- invaluable, Lipkin knew, if people carrying who have recovered from COVID-19 demics, as he did for China with SARS in light viral loads, and possibly exhibiting no and whose blood plasma or antibod- 2003 and for Saudi Arabia with MERS symptoms, were nevertheless contagious. ies might be useful in producing new in 2012. This past winter, he booked By March it was apparent that Lipkin’s medications. They hope to soon roll out a flight to Beijing immediately upon instinct had been right: large numbers what they call their C3 test, which has learning from Chinese colleagues that of people unaware they were infected been approved by the FDA, as part of the virus was spreading quickly. “At that point, it’s a race against time,” he says, “because until you have a vaccine or treatment, containment is your only hope.” After meeting with health and science ministers, fellow epidemiologists, and phy- sicians working on the front lines, Lipkin delivered a series of recommendations to senior Chinese leaders. He endorsed their efforts to lock down Wuhan, urged them JOSHUA BRIGHT / THE NEW YORK TIMES / REDUX to close hundreds of live-animal markets like the one at the center of the outbreak, and advised them to reveal everything they knew about the virus to the international community. “‘Not only will this benefit global health,’ I told them, ‘but it will demonstrate to the world that you’re a reli- able and transparent partner,’” Lipkin says. W. Ian Lipkin

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11.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd 1166 44/22/20/22/20 55:24:24 PPMM community screening programs in the US and abroad. But Lipkin is also looking further WE LEARNED THAT OUR AGING POPULATION out on the horizon, with an eye toward HAS DEEP VULNERABILITIES averting future pandemics. The only way to contain a highly contagious new disease in our globalized world, he says, is to spot it quickly and immediately the covid-19 pandemic has shut down bring the full power of the international society in an unprecedented way, but scientific community to bear in identify- for the elderly, the consequences of both ing the guilty pathogen and determining the disease and the social distancing how it is being transmitted. To ensure required to curb its spread are sizable. that this happens in a timely manner, Gerontologist Linda P. Fried, dean of Lipkin says, wealthy nations must devote the Mailman School of Public Health, more resources to disease-detection explains that adults sixty-five and older systems both within their borders and in are at higher risk for severe illness and developing countries. death from the virus because of their Lipkin, in conjunction with epidemiol- “decreased reserves.” ogists in more than a dozen countries, is “There are changes in our physiology developing plans for such a surveillance as we get older that make it harder for Linda P. Fried system. Called the Global Infectious Dis- us to bounce back from any kind of ease Epidemiology Network, or GIDEoN, illness. We call that frailty,” Fried says. lives,” Fried says. Second, aging adults it would equip scientists in parts of “Older people are also more likely to feel lonely when they aren’t able to Africa, Southeast Asia, and South Amer- have other long-term medical condi- contribute to society. While others might ica with advanced biomolecular tools tions. Because of that, the body is less bond with colleagues or schoolmates that Lipkin and his Columbia colleagues able to handle a major stressor as they work or attend class online, the have designed for rapidly identifying or infection.” elderly are not likely to have such outlets. novel pathogens. Participating research- Such physiological vulnerability is And finally, aging adults are prone to ers would be able to share their observa- exacerbated by the fact that nursing what Fried calls an existential loneliness. tions automatically with other GIDEoN homes, assisted-living facilities, and “People are wondering if their lives scientists around the world in real time. hospitals have been breeding grounds are going to end shortly for reasons out “So the moment anybody in the for COVID-19. But Fried is also con- of their control. They’re wondering if network sees something suspicious, cerned about the well-being of seniors they’ll be able to get the care they need,” everybody sees it,” says Lipkin, who is who live independently. she says. “And most profoundly, they’re currently trying to raise private funding Fried, whose research focuses on wondering if they are going to be cast for the effort. “You could think of it as an healthy aging, says that older adults out of society. If their lives have value.” international immune system.” benefit tremendously by staying both The COVID-19 pandemic has He says that GIDEoN would comple- mentally and physically active. Now, brought that last question into startling ment existing surveillance networks, as people are encouraged — and in reality as society has grappled with such as one run by the World Health many states legally required — to stay impossible dilemmas. In Italy, doctors Organization. That system, he says, at home, Fried worries about further working with limited resources were is hampered both by a lack of on-the- isolating this population. forced to prioritize the care of younger ground diagnostics in many countries “As people get older, their life circum- adults with a better chance of recovery. and by a dependence on national govern- stances change. They lose their spouses As the pandemic rages across the globe, ments to voluntarily report outbreaks. to death or divorce, friends die, children other hospitals may be faced with the Many countries have been suspected move far away,” she says. “Obviously same impossible choices. In addition, of delaying reports of past outbreaks, that now has bigger ramifications. decisions on how and when to relax Lipkin notes, for fear of having limita- There are deep mental tolls, and one of social-distancing recommendations tions placed on their agricultural exports, the most devastating is loneliness.” must factor in the value of society’s travel, or tourism. Fried says that older adults are prone most vulnerable citizens. “Our network, because it would be run to three specific kinds of loneliness. The “The ferocity of this particular virus by scientists and public-health practi- first is brought on by a lack of inter- has caught a lot of us by surprise,” Fried tioners, would take a lot of the politics generational contact. “We need all age says. “We have a lot more questions

COLUMBIA out of the equation,” Lipkin says. groups to interact to create meaningful than answers for the future.”

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11.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd 1177 44/22/20/22/20 55:24:24 PPMM ruses. The program, which is supported by more than $10 million in private dona- tions, involves not only ADARC scientists but members of several other Columbia research teams that have experience in developing antiviral therapies against either HIV or hepatitis. “Viruses tend to share some basic char- acteristics, so an approach that works against one virus is often a good starting point for fighting another,” says Ho, a pioneer of combination antiretroviral therapy for AIDS, a treatment approach that has dramatically extended patients’ lives through the simultaneous adminis- tration of multiple drugs at the first sign of infection. In many ways, the research is simi- lar to other COVID-19 drug-discovery programs now underway at laboratories around the world. Ho and his collab- orators are genetically analyzing the new coronavirus for clues about how it might be susceptible to drugs and then screening chemical compounds that they think might be able to incapacitate it. The Columbia scientists, like others, are proceeding at a breakneck pace, employing an array of experimental new technologies that are designed to reduce the amount of time this work takes. David D. Ho, center, with fellow ADARC researchers Yaoxing Huang and Sho Iketani. “We’re trying to condense the initial stages of drug discovery, which would ordinarily take several years, into just WE LEARNED THAT VACCINE RESEARCH a few months,” says Ho. He expects to bring a number of vaccine and drug can- IS UNDERFUNDED didates to clinical trials within a year. But the Columbia initiative is different from others in one important respect: it david d. ho ’00HON, the world-renowned devote most of their energies to developing is aiming to develop therapies that will AIDS researcher, had just started to settle drugs to treat COVID-19. work not only against the coronavirus into his laboratory at Columbia University “In the past we’ve stepped in to help that causes COVID-19 but against the Irving Medical Center when news broke fight other viruses, such as SARS, bird flu, wide variety of coronaviruses that could of a novel coronavirus spreading across and Ebola, but we knew that our involve- infect people in the future. A diverse China. He and his team of twenty-five ment here was going to be on another group of microbes most frequently found scientists at the Aaron Diamond AIDS level,” says Ho, who in addition to direct- in bats, pigs, birds, and other animal Research Center (ADARC) — an orga- ing ADARC is the Clyde and Helen Wu hosts, coronaviruses have in several nization that Ho has led since 1991 and Professor of Medicine at Columbia. “This cases jumped into humans and caused

that became a part of Columbia’s medical was going to be all hands on deck.” outbreaks of serious disease (four other SAMANTHA CASOLARI ’05SIPA school in late 2019 — quickly shifted gears. ADARC, which occupies two floors of human coronaviruses cause milder, The center’s ongoing efforts to improve laboratory space in the medical campus’s cold-like illness). These outbreaks have HIV treatments and find a cure for AIDS, Hammer Health Sciences Center, is at the happened three times so far this century Ho decided, would temporarily be scaled center of an ambitious multipronged effort — with severe acute respiratory syn- back so that he and his colleagues could to study COVID-19 and related coronavi- drome, or SARS, in 2003; Middle East

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11.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd 1188 44/23/20/23/20 111:381:38 AAMM respiratory syndrome, or MERS, frantically search for vaccines and in 2012; and now COVID-19 — treatments — which may come and Ho believes that additional months or years later, if at all. A WE LEARNED THAT MOST OF US coronavirus “spillover” events are more forward-looking drug-devel- destined to occur. opment strategy could ultimately DON’T KNOW HOW TO “So while we’re undertaking save lives and money, says Ho. WASH OUR HANDS this effort with a great sense of “What’s happened in the past urgency because of the nature of when new infectious diseases have the current outbreak, we’re also emerged is there is an initial surge thinking ahead to what we may of financial support for creating when elaine larson wrote her dissertation confront in the future and trying drugs, but then, once the outbreaks on handwashing in 1980, she never expected that, to come up with more permanent are brought under control, support forty years later, she would still be preaching the solutions,” he says. for the research begins to dry up,” gospel of soap and water. Larson, a professor To do this work, Ho and his he says. emerita at Columbia’s School of Nursing, is an collaborators — who include Ho notes that in 2003, at the infection-control expert and one of the world’s top Columbia faculty members height of the SARS epidemic, his authorities on hand hygiene. She has published Alejandro Chavez, an assistant laboratory and several others were four books and more than four hundred articles on professor of pathology and cell close to developing treatments. the subjects of infection prevention and control, biology; Stephen P. Goff, the Once the epidemic was contained, disease epidemiology, and related issues; she Higgins Professor of Biochemistry though, grant support disappeared has studied the effectiveness of hand sanitizers and Molecular Biophysics and and critical work was left unfin- and the perils of antibiotic resistance; she is a professor of microbiology and ished. Ho now regards that venture intimately acquainted with the types of microbial immunology; Jingyue Ju, the Sam- flora that lurk on the hands of health-care person- uel Ruben–Peter G. Viele Professor HO SAYS THAT IF RECENT nel; and she is a tireless booster of the message of Engineering; and Yosef Sabo, an HISTORY IS ANY GUIDE, that clean hands save lives. “Handwashing is one assistant professor of clinical med- EMERGING DISEASES WILL of the most basic and effective public-health prac- ical sciences — are making lists of tices,” she says. essential features of the COVID-19 CONTINUE TO CROP UP Larson thinks that COVID-19 will have a lasting coronavirus that could be targeted WITH REGULARITY. impact on hand-hygiene practices, which, quite with drugs and then looking to frankly, needed some improvement. “The American see which of those features are as a lost opportunity, because the Society for Microbiology conducted studies some also present in other coronavi- strain of coronavirus that caused years ago and found that around 50 to 60 percent ruses. The scientists will use a SARS is extremely similar to the of people don’t wash their hands after using the new drug-screening technology one that causes COVID-19 — so bathroom,” she says. A significant percentage also developed by Chavez to test prom- similar, in fact, that he thinks the skipped handwashing before food preparation, after ising compounds against dozens of treatments his team had started touching pets, or when they’ve been in crowded strains at once. The technology rep- to develop for SARS may very well spaces. Gender is a factor in health hygiene, with resents a radical improvement over have protected people against the women 50 percent more likely to wash their hands traditional drug-screening tools, new disease. than men. “Women are the ones who are generally which limit scientists to observing “At the very least, I think we’d responsible for food preparation and raising kids, the effects of drug candidates on a be closer to having a treatment for tasks that are more associated with handwashing,” single virus at a time. COVID-19 now if we’d have been Larson explains. She hopes that as men come to If Ho and his colleagues are able able to continue the work,” he says. take on more of these roles, their hand hygiene and to create a therapy that one day Given the magnitude of the health will improve. proves effective against a never- current pandemic, Ho says that he As new viruses continue to emerge — and they before-seen illness, it will be a is cautiously optimistic that gov- will emerge — handwashing remains one of the first. Nobody has ever developed ernments and private donors will most cost-effective ways to prevent their transmis- a treatment for a viral disease continue to support research on sion, reducing the spread of respiratory infections that didn’t exist yet. But Ho says other strains of coronavirus once by around 25 percent. Yes, scientists are busy trying that if recent history is any guide, the outbreak subsides. to develop effective vaccines, but until they do, emerging diseases will continue “Now it’s the third time we’ve Larson says, we all have a role to play. We should to crop up with regularity, forcing been through this,” he says. “I stock up on soap and spend more time at the sink. health officials to scramble to doubt that the world’s going to Singing the “Happy Birthday” song is optional. contain outbreaks while scientists drop the ball on this one.” Washing for at least twenty seconds is not.

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11.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd 1199 44/22/20/22/20 55:24:24 PPMM “First,” says El-Sadr, “governments WE LEARNED THAT must gain the trust of their popula- tions. They must be transparent and WE EXPRESS ANXIETY communicate frequently in order to prevent rumors and conspiracy theories.” IN UNUSUAL WAYS Misinformation plagued the response to HIV and Ebola, leading many people to dismiss the threats or see them as gov- survival shopping, grocery-store ernment plots. And fears of being stig- scuffles, and a run on toilet paper. In matized prevented the sick from getting March, consumer behavior took an Wafaa El-Sadr help. “You must mobilize opinion leaders unusual turn as COVID-19 cases began to assuage these anxieties. We learned to surge. Panic-buying is driven by how to do that effectively for HIV, and anxiety, and “what makes people anxious WE LEARNED THAT we will now have to apply those lessons is feeling a lack of control over how the to a much more transmissible virus.” pandemic will affect them, their family, DEVELOPING NATIONS Another lesson, says El-Sadr, is that and their community,” explains Anne in many places, lockdowns simply won’t Marie Albano, a clinical psychologist NEED SPECIAL STRATEGIES work. “If you’re a vendor who sells pan- and the director of Columbia’s Clinic for cakes for a few pennies a day, you cannot Anxiety and Related Disorders. self-isolate. You have to be in the market. While the hunting of Charmin bears in april, while media attention was You have to interact with people. Other- might help satisfy that need to control focused on Asia, Europe, and the US, wise, you will starve.” In countries where and also a Neanderthal impulse to Wafaa El-Sadr ’91PH was watching ICAP works, many people live five or six provide, Albano says it’s important Africa. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 to a room, often without running water “to recognize the realistic things we in sub-Saharan Africa were rising, por- or soap. “It’s just not feasible to have should be doing, like paying attention tending a major humanitarian disaster. people do what we’d want them to do to to reliable information.” El-Sadr, a University Professor and a protect themselves,” says El-Sadr. We can also keep ourselves grounded by professor of epidemiology and medicine, Then there are the challenges of staying connected with family and friends. is the director of ICAP at Columbia ramping up the medical system: situ- Although the pandemic is teaching us how University, a global health center at the ating testing sites, building laboratory to be better long-distance companions and Mailman School of Public Health that capacity, and transporting health-care colleagues, Albano cautions that we need has been fighting HIV and Ebola in workers to remote places to collect to look out for people who are vulnerable Africa since 2003. She fears that hard- specimens. ICAP has used motorbikes to loneliness: “Those who live alone and won public-health gains of many African and the mail system to convey diagnos- those who have limiting illnesses or dis- countries could be “set back decades” tic samples for HIV, and a large corona- abilities might spiral into anxiety.” by COVID-19. virus outbreak will place even greater Albano recommends that parents ICAP, whose affiliates include 1,800 demands on these assets. guard against transferring their fears to staff members around the world, is To deliver information, ICAP relies their kids. “When children see adults in mobilizing in Kenya, Mozambique, Côte on radio broadcasts. “Radio reaches far tense moods, they feel it,” she says. Still, d’Ivoire, and other countries, setting up and wide,” El-Sadr says. “For HIV, we it’s important to be honest with them. To triage tents to evaluate patients, helping found famous people — a soccer player keep kids stimulated, Albano recommends laboratories get tests and equipment, or a musician — to record the messages, healthy routines. “Children, like adults, and strategizing with health ministries. and we’ll do the same for COVID-19. need to stay on a schedule, stay physically One of the biggest hurdles is securing Radio is the best way to tell people active, and spend time outside,” she says. adequate funding for these basic inter- what to do if they feel sick.” The long-term impacts of COVID-19 ventions. And with wealthy countries If Africa has one advantage, it’s that on mental health are yet to be seen. buying up supplies — masks, gowns, leaders have learned from the crises in “Lives will be permanently changed,” tests, ventilators — poorer nations are Europe and the US. “They know that says Albano. Ultimately, she adds, how left empty-handed. “If this disease takes you have to act fast,” says El-Sadr. “Even

government officials deal with and talk off in Africa,” says El-Sadr, “there is no with the limitations of social distancing MICHAEL DAMES / ICAP about the crisis will influence our state way they’ll have what’s needed.” and lockdowns, they have acted deci- of mind. “The public needs trustworthy Still, ICAP has identified lessons from sively and quickly. The people on the information if they are to regain a sense HIV and Ebola that could streamline ground in Africa are working very hard, of confidence and control.” governments’ response to COVID-19. and we’re supporting them.”

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11.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd 2200 44/22/20/22/20 55:24:24 PPMM “We have a huge responsibility to essen- tial workers,” Vasan says. “We must ensure WE LEARNED THAT HEALTH INEQUITIES that they and their families have access to care, because they’re the ones sustaining EXACT A BRUTAL COST whatever semblance of an economy we have. Many are falling through the cracks. In the case of workers who don’t have when the new coronavirus first And that means meeting people where benefits or protections for when they do emerged in the United States, some observ- they live to combat the mistrust that’s fall sick, where do they go? How do they ers called it the great equalizer, a pathogen been rightfully earned by the health get care? How do they know that going to that attacked widely and indiscriminately, system over decades. We need to go with the hospital won’t mean financial ruin? paying no heed to income, race, or class. humility and a real strategy and say, ‘This People have to know that they can go to a But statistics now tell a different story. is what we need to do and why we need to health-care facility without fear of finan- People of color in the United States, do it, and we’ll make this easier for you.’ cial calamity or immigration enforcement. particularly African-Americans, have If we don’t go to where the problems are And they need to know that now more been dying from COVID-19 in dispropor- the worst and reach out to communities of than ever, because it’s not just a moral tionately high numbers in every region of the country. In Michigan, for example, Black people have accounted for roughly a third of all deaths in a state where they are just 14 percent of the population. In Louisiana, which is 33 percent Black, some 70 percent of deaths have occurred among African-Americans. Similar dis- crepancies can be found from New York to the Midwest to California. Those numbers are staggering, but they should not be surprising, according to Ashwin Vasan, assistant professor of clinical population and family health and medicine at the Mailman School of Public Health and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “This disease is exposing the structural fissures in our society,” says Vasan. “You don’t need to be a scholar of health equity to know A city bus driver in Detroit. that folks are less healthy if they don’t have access to all the building blocks of a color with equitable strategies, we’ll have issue — it’s a public-health issue. healthier life. This isn’t just some random lingering outbreaks that will throw sparks “These underlying inequities threaten all phenomenon: it’s a product of decades and create bigger outbreaks. If you want of us,” Vasan warns. “If people are forced and centuries of racist policy and politics to shorten the epidemic, then that must be to delay care due to lack of coverage, it that make it harder for people of color to part of the plan. It’s nonnegotiable.” increases the likelihood that they’ll spread gain access to capital, good schools, and The disparities are all the more unjust the disease in the community or become good housing, let alone health care itself.” given that African-Americans and Lati- severely ill or both, which puts additional With African-Americans and Latinos nos make up a large part of the essential stress on the health-care system. Our soci- being uninsured at high rates — and being workforce — bus drivers, grocery clerks, ety is entirely interconnected. hit hard by COVID-19 — Vasan is calling maintenance and sanitation crews, deliv- “We’ve been having a debate in our for direct intervention. “We need to deploy ery people — that has risked exposure democracy about incrementalism versus critical tools — testing, tracing, education, to the virus to keep American society on big structural change,” he says. “Now is awareness campaigns — into the commu- life support. In New York, thousands of the time to talk about how we want to nities that are most affected,” he says. “We transit workers have been infected and reshape our society and our economy, need to go not only to communities that dozens have died. Similarly shocking tolls because we’re not going to be the same have high rates of infection and death but have been recorded around the country coming out of this. If ever there was a

SETH HERALD / GETTY HERALD SETH also to places at risk for future outbreaks. among supermarket employees. chance to make big change, it’s now.”

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11.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd.20_FEAT-Corona_F.indd 2211 44/22/20/22/20 55:25:25 PPMM JEANNE STELLMAN

FERDINAND OFODILE

MARGARET JO SHEPHERD

11.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd 2222 44/22/20/22/20 110:090:09 AAMM ADVENTURE AN EPIC An organization of emeritus professors and administrators taps the intellectual wealth of Columbia elders BY PAUL HOND

tepping out of the prewar buildings of Riverside Drive, Broadway, and Claremont Avenue, the scholars strolled across busy intersec- Stions and sidewalks, negotiated the brick courtyard in front of Wien Hall, and arrived, just before noon, at Faculty House. There, Jeanne Stellman, a retired health-policy professor and the president of Emeritus Professors in Columbia (EPIC), welcomed colleagues who had arrived for the organization’s most anticipated talk of the year. The speaker was Madeleine Kunin ’57JRN, the former Vermont gover- nor, ambassador to Switzerland, and deputy secretary of education under President Clinton. Kunin’s latest book, Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties, held particular interest for the EPIC faithful. They listened as Kunin, eighty-six, her stately bearing accented by the swirl of blue in her white hair, recounted her extraordinary life: her family’s exodus from Switzerland when she was seven; her first job, as a newspaper reporter in Burlington, Vermont; her election in 1984 as America’s first Jewish woman governor (she served three two-year terms); her ambassadorship, marked by a hard-won fight to recover Jewish assets deposited in Swiss banks during World War II; her fierce commitment to feminism; and her ongoing efforts to recruit women to run for office. She also talked about aging: finding late love, suffering late loss, downsizing to a smaller living space, discovering a passion for poetry, and feeling “liberated” in her seventies after withdrawing from public life. “I didn’t have to dress a certain way. I didn’t have to speak a certain way,” she said. “It’s as if I opened a new door.” The professors emeriti could relate. They’d gone through doors, too, some of them reluctantly, not knowing what could possibly follow careers that so perfectly assimilated their most avid interests. How, exactly, do you retire from a life of the mind? How do you leave the classroom when there is no mandatory retirement age?

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KYLE T. WEBSTER

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11.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd 2233 44/21/20/21/20 111:491:49 AAMM EPIC, which is run out of the Office which brims with physicians and research- time,” Stellman says. “EPIC is a way of of the Provost, understands such ques- ers from the medical campus uptown. continuing intellectual involvement and tions and works to smooth what many For Stellman, the “downtown” campus, socializing here at Columbia.” acknowledge is a difficult transition. with its landscaped quads and marbled The benefits of intellectual fellowship, With 150 dues-paying members and a libraries, holds an exotic allure. “The fac- wherever it’s found, aren’t just social. They thousand-person mailing list, EPIC offers ulty and the discussions are so different are also medical. Columbia neuropsy- retired Columbia faculty and adminis- than at the medical campus, where we’re chologist Yaakov Stern studies “cognitive trators the opportunity to join a family of very applied and the pace is much faster,” reserve” — the idea that some people can wide-ranging thinkers and practitioners she says. “It’s fascinating for us to expe- cope with age-related changes in the brain who pool their knowledge and learn from rience a part of Columbia totally unlike better than others. Using behavioral stud- one another as they navigate life outside where we spent our careers.” ies and functional MRI, Stern has found the classroom. “It’s the kind of place where Stellman was born in a relocation camp that the brain, in undertaking stimulating you’ll have a neuroscientist talking to in Germany and raised in Far Rockaway, activities (school, a challenging job, a a Russian scholar about the Big Bang,” Queens. She holds a doctorate in physical hobby), accrues a fund of resiliency against says EPIC vice president Lou Cleveland chemistry and is known for her long- age-related decay. Brain imaging indicates ’67GS, who taught in the microbiology term studies on herbicide exposure and that some people have more reserve in old department at Columbia University Irving combat PTSD in Vietnam veterans. With age than others, and use it more efficiently. Medical Center (CUIMC). According to those veterans now in their seventies, “Factors associated with more reserve are Cleveland, that sort of interaction is a Stellman has become more attuned to the higher educational and professional attain- “spectacular benefit,” since he believes that ment, leisure activities, and strong social the biggest source of anxiety for older aca- networks,” Stern says. “These experiences demics isn’t decreased mobility or hearing “You’ll have a develop more robust cognitive networks loss or any other trick of aging. Rather, it’s that allow older people to function better.” the prospect of loneliness. “Intellectual neuroscientist talking EPIC also recognizes the link between companionship in retirement,” he says, “is to a Russian scholar cognitive function and physical exercise. very hard to find.” Ginny Papaioannou, emerita professor of about the Big Bang.” genetics and development, took up yoga he word “emeritus” first appeared in her sixties, got her certification as an as an honorific for retired aca- instructor, and now leads two EPIC yoga Tdemics and clergy in the eigh- public-health aspects of aging, including classes per week. “Many older people teenth century. It comes from retirement. It’s an interest that informs become very inactive physically,” Papa- the Latin verb emereri, meaning “earn her work at EPIC: what happens to ioannou says. “That’s partly because the one’s discharge by service,” a reference to people when they are separated from the exercise culture — running, aerobics — is Roman soldiers who had completed their careers that seemed to define them? designed for young people. As you age term. On a Thursday morning, a cadre Years ago, when Stellman was doing you have to make accommodations. Yoga of Columbia emeriti — or EPICureans, a health study of shipyard workers in was a way for me to do that. And I felt it as they call themselves — gather at the Chester, Pennsylvania, she witnessed a was something I could offer to EPIC.” new EPIC headquarters in room 202 of scene that stamped itself on her mind. In classes held in Faculty House, Papa- Philosophy Hall. It’s a modest, tidy spot “There was a man in his sixties who was ioannou emphasizes poses that improve with exposed brick, a sofa and chairs, and retiring. On his last day at the job, he strength, balance, and flexibility. A week- a desk behind which Diana Dumitru, left in a state of shock. After forty years day morning can find ten EPIC mem- assistant director of faculty retirement and at a shipyard there should be bells and bers in leggings and T-shirts stretched EPIC’s lone employee, is securing spaces whistles, but there was nothing: he just out on mats while the teacher’s laptop for EPIC’s well-attended talks. With square walked out with his stuff.” emits a pan-flute rendition of “Sukiyaki,” footage at a premium at Columbia, the new Stellman wants to avoid such tableaux accompanied by Papaioannou’s soothing office is a strong show of support from the in academia: the retiring professor who, voice: Relax your shoulders … Notice University. “It’s easier to get this much gold after the desk is cleared and the photos your breath … At the yogi’s command, than to get this much space,” says Frances taken down and the books and tchotch- the retirees roll over and curl up. Be Pritchett, professor emerita of modern kes emptied from the shelves, becomes grateful for one another’s company. Indic languages in the Department of disconnected from the institution. EPIC Be grateful, too, that you are also Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African ensures that retirees remain in step with nourishing your brain. Last year, Ottavio Studies. A scholar of the Urdu and Persian the rhythms of University life. “Once you Arancio, professor of pathology and cell poet Ghalib, Pritchett calls herself “part of no longer have the structure of work, you biology at Columbia, published a paper the radical humanist minority” in EPIC, have to figure out what to do with your with colleagues on the hormone irisin,

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11.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd 2244 44/21/20/21/20 111:491:49 AAMM GINNY PAPAIOANNOU which is released into the bloodstream CUIMC, explore end-of-life ethics for clini- It’s a reminder, too, that many EPIC with physical exercise. The study found cians. In EPIC Conversations, organized by members can still command a classroom. that irisin, which is depleted in the brains emeritus history professor Volker Berghahn That they have chosen to step down of Alzheimer’s patients, may play a role in and, like most EPIC talks, streamed live on speaks to EPIC’s role in the Columbia protecting the brain from the effects of the EPIC’s YouTube channel, you could listen ecosystem: with no mandatory retire- disease. In experiments, mice that swam to emeritus urban-planning professor ment age, voluntary departure is a criti- every day — producing more irisin — could Elliott Sclar examine the politics of mass cal driver of faculty regeneration. withstand infusions of beta-amyloid, the transportation or emerita history professor “Scholarship needs to be cutting-edge, sticky protein thought to be the cause Alice Kessler-Harris dissect the politics of and I think it is best left in the hands of Alzheimer’s. And this year, Yian Gu, Lillian Hellman ’76HON. of younger people,” says Frank Wolf assistant professor of neurological sciences, Once a month, a PhD candidate or post- ’71GSAS, dean emeritus of the School of coauthored a study suggesting that brain doc delivers a lecture to EPIC members Professional Studies. Says Pritchett, “It’s shrinkage, a common occurrence in adults on a specialized topic in history, medicine, Columbia’s nightmare that we’ll stay on over sixty, may be prevented with physical music, or literature. In addition to inform- till we’re ninety, repeating the same old activity. Using MRI, the study examined ing those in attendance, these talks allow things and not making room for new the brains of 1,500 people with an average graduate students to shape their material people. So the administration wants us to age of seventy-five and found that subjects for an erudite general audience. be happy and wants to provide a psycho- who engaged in activities ranging from Joshua Navon ’19GSAS, a thirty-one- logical home for future retirees.” light (walking, gardening) to vigorous year-old musicologist and lecturer at (jogging, handball) retained more brain Columbia who studies German classical- hen Samuel Devons volume than those who were inactive. music pedagogy, gave a talk on the edu- founded EPIC in 1999, cational and scientific contexts that led Whe already embodied the PIC likes to mix learning with to the idea of musicality as a universal ideal of the active, engaged lunch, and a menu of recent EPIC human capacity. For Navon, presenting emeritus. Born in 1914 in Wales, the son Eevents suggests a smorgasbord his work to people outside his field forced of the village rabbi, Devons trained at of Michelin-grade nibbles for the him to write less technically and helped Cambridge, became a celebrated nuclear hungry mind. At one of the Tuesday Talks him clarify his arguments. physicist, and in the 1960s served as chair held every other week during the school “The questions from the EPIC audi- of Columbia’s physics department. After year, you might hear Michael Rosenthal ence were some of the most thought- retiring in 1984, he kept both thumbs ’67GSAS, emeritus professor of English, ful I’ve ever received,” he says. “It’s an in the pie of academic life, organizing discuss his book on Grove publisher Barney important reminder that academia isn’t seminars on science education and giving Rosset; or emeritus law professor Peter all about playing the game and trying to historical talks on Isaac Newton and Strauss speak on presidential authority and get a tenure-track job — there are people Benjamin Franklin. He envisaged EPIC the Constitution; or Kenneth Prager ’64CC, who are genuinely interested in intellec- as a way for retired professors to remain chair of the medical-ethics committee at tual work for its own sake.” rooted in the University.

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11.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd 2255 44/22/20/22/20 110:100:10 AAMM “Sam was one of few people in the asked Wolf to give a presentation for “falling off a cliff.” They had no plans, no natural sciences I knew of who had very EPIC’s Tuesday Talks. “But Bob,” Wolf said, road map, no conception of life outside broad interests beyond his own disci- “those talks are by scholars, and I’m an their fortresses of books. pline,” says Wolf. “His notion was to administrator.” When Belknap asked him “Even today,” says Chalmers, “many bring people together from the arts and what he was doing in retirement, Wolf told people don’t think of retirement as a humanities and the sciences. It started him he was running a small charity called time to do things.” out as club of mandarins. It wasn’t an the Child Welfare Fund. “Why not talk organization you joined, it was an orga- about that?” Belknap said. So Wolf did. e never designed a nization you were invited to join — if you After Belknap’s death in 2014, Doug society for longer were eminent enough.” Chalmers, a professor emeritus of polit- ÒW life,” says gerontol- “Most of the lectures at that time were ical science who joined EPIC in 2005, ogist Linda Fried, from a small group of emeritus profes- asked Wolf to organize the Tuesday dean of the Mailman School and a leading sors giving talks on esoteric topics,” says Talks. He and Wolf were old friends, and theorist on aging. “Over the past century, Carolyn Greenberg, professor emerita of he knew that Wolf’s charisma would life expectancy has risen by thirty years. anesthesiology and head of EPIC’s music bring new energy to the group. The modern professoriate was established initiative. “Now there is a much broader Chalmers is special assistant to the when life expectancy was forty-seven; range and greater participation.” In 2004, provost for faculty retirement. His job is no one was thinking about the immense Seymour Topping, professor emeritus of to visit older professors and advise them asset of mature scholars. People are now journalism and former managing editor of their rights as retirees. He talks about healthier and have longer lives, and we of the New York Times, became EPIC health insurance and housing; access to have an opportunity to enable new kinds president. Under Topping, who served courses, buildings, and e-mail; computer of roles that contribute to the greater as administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes at and gym discounts; and negotiating good. Our society just can’t afford to lose Columbia for ten years, EPIC opened itself for benefits like workspace availability, all that knowledge and capability.” to retired Columbia administrators as well teaching opportunities, access to labs, Chalmers agrees. When he became EPIC as faculty, widening its scope and boosting and support for grant applications. president in 2015, he was determined to its membership. Wolf got involved in 2013, When he first started in the role, deploy older academics into the neighbor- when Robert Belknap ’57SIPA, ’59GSAS, Chalmers was struck by the way many hood beyond Columbia’s gates. Needing a renowned professor of Russian litera- professors described their feelings about help, he called Margaret Jo Shepherd, ture who succeeded Topping as president, retiring. They compared it, he says, to emerita professor at Teachers College. In 2016, Shepherd and Stellman, the new EPIC president, met with George Calder- aro, director for outreach programs at the School of Professional Studies (SPS), and Ron Bruno, social-service director at Morningside Gardens, a thousand-unit cooperative near La Salle Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The meeting resulted in a lecture series called EPIC/SPS Com- munity Programs. Each spring, about five talks, free and open to all, are held at Morningside Gar- dens and consistently draw around forty people. Recently you might have heard Ferdinand Ofodile, emeritus professor of surgery, discuss his experience working with African diaspora groups to provide medical aid in Africa and the Caribbean; or listened to Columbia musicology professor Walter Frisch unravel the song “Over the Rainbow.” Frisch recounted the trouble that lyricist Yip Harburg had in finding the opener for composer Harold Arlen’s tune: “Harburg says, ‘He gave me DOUG CHALMERS AND FRANK WOLF a tune with those first two notes,’” said

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11.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd 2266 44/22/20/22/20 110:100:10 AAMM Frisch, adding that the octave leap is not time, and making use of the Dodge gym With little foot traffic on Saturdays, the easy to sing. “Harburg says, ‘I tried I’ll go and Butler Library. musicians — pianists, oboists, violinists, over the rainbow, Someday over the rain- Still others, like Carolyn Greenberg, flutists — can play unhindered. At the bow, or The other side of the rainbow … who taught and practiced anesthesiology last gathering, fifteen people showed up. For a while I just thought I would leave at Columbia for thirty-two years, are There was a Beethoven septet, a Schubert those first two notes out.’” A good job he reviving old passions. quartet, and a Bach trio. “The quality of didn’t, Frisch said. Finally, thankfully, Greenberg took her first piano lesson the musicians in the EPIC group is very Harburg landed on Somewhere. at age seven and continued until college. high,” Greenberg says. “Everyone has But the demands of medical school had experience with chamber music, and ental stimulation and exer- — and then a career and three kids — some play regularly — it’s not a begin- cise may be important to pushed music to the background. Only ner’s group by any stretch. I believe we Mhealthy aging, but more fun- when she left medicine entirely in 2007 could hold our own with music majors.” damental still, according to did she take it up again. One of Greenberg’s dreams is to join Fried, is having a sense of purpose. The forces with Columbia’s music depart- impulse to positively affect the future “Our society just ment for a play-in with students. “It persists after retirement, Fried says, would be an all-Columbia, intergener- and that drive is part of what she means can’t afford to lose all ational event,” Greenberg says. “That when she speaks of harnessing “the social would be great fun.” capital of older adults.” Her signature that knowledge and project is Experience Corps, a volunteer capability.” mbassador Kunin had woven program administered by the AARP some poems, intimate and ele- Foundation in which retirees become Agiac, into Coming of Age, and mentors for at-risk schoolkids. “I was very rusty,” Greenberg recalls. moderator Wolf asked her to Mentoring, of course, is baked into a “I found a Juilliard-trained teacher, and read one. The audience in Faculty House professor’s DNA, and under Stellman, he said it would be about a year before I listened as Kunin read “No Longer.” “No EPIC is building its own program. In would get good enough to audition.” longer will we make love / before break- partnership with Columbia’s Justice-in- A year later, Greenberg tried out for the fast. / No longer will I dream / of seeing Education Initiative, which is supported by chamber-music group at the 92nd Street Y. New Zealand / or the Cape of Good the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, EPIC She got the gig. “It was a real adjustment,” she Hope,” the poem began. Later in the pairs emeriti with formerly incarcerated says. “Chamber music is very different from talk, when Wolf delicately begged Kunin Columbia students. Ginny Papaioannou solo piano. It requires a lot of sight-reading, to read another poem, Kunin eagerly was among the first to sign up. She has and luckily I’m pretty good at it.” reopened the book. “You don’t know how worked with two students: a woman who Two years ago, Greenberg, who the ego is gratified,” she said, and the spent eighteen years in prison and was showed up sporadically at EPIC events, audience laughed. They knew. working as a law-firm intern while taking approached Stellman with an idea. Know- Afterward, Kunin signed books, classes, and a man who was trying to set ing that many retirees played instruments, and then everyone proceeded to the up a credit union in Harlem for what Greenberg wondered: could EPIC bring white-linen-covered tables for lunch. advocates call “returning citizens.” people together to make music? Familiar faces were all around: Chalmers The mentoring is informal and agenda- Stellman was all for it. The first and Shepherd, Cleveland and Pritch- free; mentors are encouraged to take “play-in” was held at Greenberg’s apart- ett, Greenberg and Thys, Stellman and mentees to lunch at Faculty House to ment. Turnout was small — a vocalist, a Papaioannou, whose yoga-class mantra foster a sense of belonging to the Columbia flutist, a clarinetist, and Greenberg. The echoed beneath the din: Be grateful for community. Some go further: Daniel group had dinner and then played for one another’s company. Thys, emeritus professor of anesthesiology two hours. Months later, Wolf, a clari- Friends sipped wine and shared stories; and organizer of the graduate-student netist, hosted a play-in at his Claremont and when the plates were cleared and talks, took his mentee to the opera. Avenue home. This time, a dozen people the glasses drained, the Columbia emeriti Fried often speaks of the need in came. “It was delightful,” says Greenberg, got up, said their goodbyes, and filed out mature age for “a reason to get up in “but then we ran into difficulty finding a through the doors of Faculty House, into the morning.” Columbians tend to meet venue for a subsequent event.” the arms of the afternoon. this need through a mix of altruism and Finally, Diana Dumitru located the personal development. Madeleine Kunin perfect spot: Earl Hall. EPIC suspended activities in March due to took up poetry. Thys is studying music “There’s a grand piano upstairs, and it’s COVID-19. Live events will resume as soon theory. Some are writing books, painting an absolutely beautiful place with won- as possible, while online programming will pictures, volunteering, working part- derful acoustics,” Greenberg says. continue for less mobile members. — Ed.

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11.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd.20_FEAT_EPIC.indd 2277 44/21/20/21/20 111:491:49 AAMM 11.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd 2288 44/20/20/20/20 33:45:45 PPMM PRIDE 2020 THE LAWS OF LOVE They say everyone has a New York story. This is mine.

By Ankur Paliwal ’15JRN BERND JONKMANNS / LAIF REDUX

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11.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd 2299 44/20/20/20/20 33:45:45 PPMM It was a cold morning in the fall of 2015, and I was running in Central Park. As I passed by people, trees, and benches, all a blur of colors, something leaped out to me in sharp focus: two men holding hands. I had seen men holding hands before, but there was time I was fifteen, my father, who worked two jobs, an intimate quality about that couple, or about that had saved enough to buy a one-bedroom apartment moment, that slowed me down. I remember walking built by the government for low-income families. back to my apartment on the Upper West Side At first I didn’t feel different from other kids until knowing that something inside me had shifted. people around me implied I was different. I was in Men holding men. Women holding women. The seventh grade when a male teacher asked me why I way they looked at each other. Smiled at each other. chatted with the girls instead of playing cricket with It was all around me, and it was all I saw for several the boys during sports class. “It doesn’t look good,” days. On the streets and in the subway, in parks, the teacher told me. So I forced myself to play with cafés, museums, restaurants, and takeout joints, as boys and hated it. In ninth grade I auditioned for a well as on campus, they blended effortlessly into the fashion show at my school and was laughed at for New York City landscape. But I noticed them. the way I walked — “like a girl,” students teased. I was thirty years old. I had recently graduated “Don’t move your hands so much while talking,” from Columbia Journalism School, and I was friends advised. I was already called beech ka (some- working as a writing fellow at Nautilus, a hip body who is in the middle) or hijra (the name for science magazine, which had just won two intersex or transgender people). National Magazine Awards. While the fellowship Once on the school bus, a tall guy whom I secretly made me a better journalist, coming to Columbia liked stood in the aisle and began flirting with the and the city of New York altered the course of my girl I was sitting with. Gesturing toward me, he personal life. Completely. asked, “Is he a boy or girl or both? There is only one way to check,” he said, pointing at my crotch. They I WAS RAISED HINDU and grew up in the city of laughed. I stared at my feet. Aligarh, located southeast of New Delhi in one of I hated the way I was. I might have been fifteen or India’s poorest states, Uttar Pradesh. Aligarh is sixteen then. There was nobody like me and no one famous for both its padlock-manufacturing indus- I could talk to about how I felt. When no amount of try and its scholars. Aligarh Muslim University is praying to God to make me the same as other boys considered one of India’s highest seats of learning. helped, I decided to take charge. I would wake up The university was born out of the Aligarh move- at 5:00 a.m., go to the terrace, and practice walk- ment, a late-nineteenth-century reform initiative ing like a man. Back straight. Chest out. Hands by that helped establish a modern educational system your side. Make sure your waist doesn’t sway. It for Muslims in India, where they are a minority. felt wooden. To remind myself, I started keeping Although Aligarh has seen its share of clashes slips of paper that read, Walk like a man. I would between Hindus and Muslims, religious differences look at them throughout the day. It didn’t work. I didn’t have an impact on my everyday life. My just couldn’t change. So I decided to try to excel in best friends were and are Muslims, as were most high school and then in my undergraduate studies of my teachers. in zoology, hoping I would be noticed more for my I lived with my homemaker mother, accountant grades and that the bullying would stop. It worked father, and studious younger sister in a rented room for a time. Then one night the college seniors threw that barely accommodated a twin bed, two chairs, a party. They played a game in which they showed a table, and three storage boxes — one big and two movie titles on a screen and we had to guess which small. Every night my parents would set the table title matched which student. After a couple of over the big box to make space for them to sleep matches, Mrs. Doubtfire flashed on the screen. All on the floor. My sister and I shared the bed. By the heads turned to me. Almost everyone laughed. In

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11.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd 3300 44/20/20/20/20 33:46:46 PPMM India. A year later I moved to New Delhi to work at an environmental magazine. My colleagues at both places were progressive and kind. They noticed my mannerisms but never called me names, which was a relief. But I still didn’t feel safe enough to share my turmoil about my sexuality with them. I assumed they were all heterosexual. They didn’t talk about gender or sexuality. I now realize why it is crucial to have diverse schools and workplaces and to have discussions about diversity, sexuality, gender, and harassment. You have to see people like you being treated equally in order to feel that you are normal. In 2009, the Delhi High Court decriminalized gay sex. Some LGBTQ people celebrated. I didn’t. In my mind, I wasn’t one of them.

I THOUGHT IF I COULD LOVE A WOMAN, every- thing would be fine. I met some wonderful women through friends, but nothing lasted until I saw Swara (not her real name) in my office. I felt drawn to her, so I asked her out and we started dating. A part of me genuinely wanted to succeed in loving her, but she would often tell me that she felt like there was a wall between us that she couldn’t climb. That made me sad. We went on a vacation, and I told myself I would do everything I could to make her feel loved. I don’t know if I was doing it for her or for myself. When a voice inside me said I should kiss her, I did. When that voice said I should hold Ankur Paliwal her, I did. Swara probably sensed the half-realness of it. She was deeply perceptive. She was also the that moment, I realized that none of my attempts to only person who confronted me. “Do you like men?” conceal my true self had worked. she asked me a couple of weeks later over dinner. I covered my fear with a fake smile and said, “No, IN COLLEGE I HAD A STRANGE FRIENDSHIP with what are you saying?” I lied to her. And to myself. a guy. We would hang out long after class, and I would In 2013, I applied to Columbia Journalism School. make excuses at home to sleep over in his room. The I felt that a more global perspective and new skills cuddles in bed soon became exploration of each other’s could help me tell better stories about health and bodies in the dark of the night. We never spoke a word. the environment in India. That year, the Indian In the morning, we would pretend that nothing had Supreme Court overturned the Delhi High Court happened. Pretense was an easy escape. order and re-criminalized gay sex. Although I rarely I knew there were words like “gay,” “lesbian,” came across reports of gay people being arrested, “bisexual,” and “homosexual,” but I never let myself I knew that they lived in constant fear. It was a lot ask if I was one of them — as if just saying those safer to live a lie. words would make me one. It was 2007, and anyone I was accepted to Columbia. Although I got in India who had intercourse with a person of the partial funding, securing the remaining money same sex was a criminal and could be imprisoned was stressful. I had no savings. To help, my father for life. But I didn’t care what the law said, because decided to take out a massive loan by remortgaging the culture around me had reminded me enough his house. I told my parents about Swara and that I that LGBTQ people were other people. I wanted to planned to marry her. Two days before flying to New be mainstream. York, I went to meet Swara’s parents. I sat across After college I left Aligarh and began my career from her father and told him that I would marry his

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ANKUR PALIWAL OF ANKUR COURTESY PHOTOS as a journalist at a newspaper in Jaipur, in western daughter after I finished my course at Columbia.

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11.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd 3311 44/20/20/20/20 33:46:46 PPMM When I left their house, I asked myself — why did of them even came with me to the bar. But I still I do that? wasn’t comfortable identifying with a particular type of sexuality. In late 2015 I fl ew to India to IN THE FALL OF 2014, I landed in New York City. attend my sister’s wedding. In Delhi I met Swara I moved into Columbia housing on Riverside Drive. and instantly felt like an impostor. That night The pace of the city was fast. People had tremen- I lay awake next to her in her apartment, thinking, dous energy. Everyone in my international cohort of I don’t want to be a fraud. The next day, I told her science journalists was brilliant and accomplished. that I thought I liked men. She looked strangely I had chosen to study science journalism because composed and asked, “Are you sure?” I told her I felt my stories lacked scientifi c rigor, and I didn’t I wanted to fi gure it out for myself. I invited her to know how to write about science in a way that my my sister’s wedding, but she didn’t come. I texted readers could connect with on a personal level. her, saying that I was very, very sorry for lying. At Columbia I fell Many days later, in love with the she texted me back, beauty and dark- wanting to know ness of science. why I’d done this to I didn’t think her. I couldn’t say much about Swara. anything more than She wrote me repeating that e-mails saying that I was sorry. she felt she was When I returned losing me. I assured to New York, my her that we would body felt lighter. be together soon. I wanted to learn In my mind I held more about sexu- on to the idea that I ality, so I started would marry her. working on a feature After school I got story for Nautilus. two fellowships that I had several allowed me to stay questions, such as, in New York for if I feel naturally another year. That’s attracted to men, when I decided to why do I watch explore the city. I Ankur with Karan in Brooklyn; Karan at a café in New Delhi. heterosexual porn? think when I saw Why do I still like those two men holding hands in Central Park I was to fl irt with women? Over several conversations ready to see them. Over the next days and weeks, as with developmental psychologists, sociologists, I continued to notice the free expressions of gender and sexual-rights experts, I found a label that I felt and sexuality around me, I slowly began to permit comfortable with: “mostly gay.” I wrote a feature myself to face my feelings. I decided to go to a gay about sexual fl uidity (when your sexual orientation bar in Hell’s Kitchen. I stood across the street and changes over time), but I didn’t identify as sexually took out my phone, pretending to be on a call while fl uid myself. I started coming out to more friends, watching beautiful men go in and out of the bar. professors, and editors. And every time I did, I felt I couldn’t muster the courage to enter. I took the more confi dent and happier. train back uptown. I went on dating apps and met interesting men I did this once more before telling myself that I who identifi ed in many diff erent ways. I was amazed had to honor my feelings. As I stood outside the bar, at the range of their experiences and the openness I could hear my heart pounding. But when I went with which they talked about their lives. I had con- inside, a smile stretched across my face. The music versations about gender, sex, architecture, educa- was loud, but I was at peace. tion, food, and family. Before, the people around me I went there every other weekend. I started made me suppress my sexual identity. In New York telling my New York friends, “I think I like men.” the people around me eased my coming-out process. And every one of them responded with a version I learned how cultures shape so much of what a of “That’s great, Ankur. I’m happy for you.” Some person can and does become.

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11.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd.20_FEAT-Ankur-3.indd 3322 44/20/20/20/20 33:46:46 PPMM IN MID–2016 I RETURNED TO NEW DELHI. Indian Penal Code criminalized the very existence By then, Swara was happily married to another man. of LGBTQ people by criminalizing their sexuality I started coming out to my friends. Although my — an attribute that is as intrinsic to people as their sexuality was a crime then, I had this urge to tell, to race and gender. The Supreme Court ruling empha- speak my truth. Coming out is not a one-time thing. sized that LGBTQ people are constitutionally equal. It’s a process that people need to do over and over Of course, Karan and I are happy that the law is again, probably to solidify something — a new iden- on our side. But cultures change slowly. My father tity, perhaps — or to tell the world that they exist. knows about the ruling, but he still doesn’t approve Most people immediately accepted me. Some took of my sexuality. time. I started meeting Indian men through dating Karan and I live in New Delhi. We have a group apps. Most were not out. Some were married, some of friends around whom we feel loved and safe. Still, had kids, and some said they would marry a woman there are very few places here where we can com- but were meeting men to fill a void inside them. fortably hold hands. When I travel around India, I My parents were desperate for me to get married, almost always pretend to be heterosexual. Same-sex because by Indian standards their thirty-one-year- marriage is not recognized under Indian law, and old son had already crossed the marriageable age. I we wonder what kind of future lies ahead for us in decided to come out to my sister first. I knew she’d Delhi. Can we raise a child who wouldn’t have to accept me. Her response was, “You do what makes constantly explain why she has two fathers? Under you happy. Be with a man or not. But don’t ruin any the government of Narendra Modi, Indian society is woman’s life.” So one night in Aligarh I sat down getting more polarized along lines of class, gender, with my parents, and with much hesitation I said, and religion. My Muslim friends in Aligarh don’t

Coming out is not a one-time thing. It’s a process that people need to do over and over again.

“I don’t like girls.” They looked confused. Then in a feel safe. Muslims and people from marginalized roundabout way I said, “What’s wrong if I spend my castes get publicly lynched. Most mainstream media life with a man?” My mom said, “Men are friends, institutions no longer hold the government account- not life partners.” But my father saw what I was able. Hindu majoritarianism is rising. getting at. He told me that he didn’t approve of In New Delhi I work as a freelance journalist. I same-sex relationships, that it was shameful and also cofounded a journalism project called Land embarrassing. “If you want to go on this path, do it Conflict Watch, in which I work with a team of after we die,” he said. They had given their verdict. journalists and researchers who collect data about Meanwhile, after many frustrating dates, I met ongoing land disputes in India. I am out to my Karan. He is a Sikh. Because of him I know what colleagues and talk to them about Karan. I do this love feels like. He believes in the power of honest consciously to send a message to those who are conversation to sustain relationships. He made a struggling to come out. I want them to know that rule: if we have an argument, we can’t go to bed this workspace is safe and equal. until we talk it through. Karan was with me every In the fall of 2018, I was in New York on a fellow- minute in the fall of 2018, when my mother lost her ship. Karan visited me there. One weekend I took long battle against cancer. him to the Columbia campus and showed him the That was also the year the Indian Supreme Court journalism school. We sat on the Low Library steps struck down section 377. I was in New York, and by the statue of Alma Mater and ate five-dollar my phone started buzzing with texts from friends falafel with rice from a food truck on Broadway — congratulating me. I remember smiling, sitting my go-to meal when I was on a tight budget. Later, in my bed, and replying, “Thank you.” This ruling we walked to Central Park. The sun was setting was the result of a determined fight over several behind the apartment towers on Central Park West, years by lawyers including Arundhati Katju ’17LAW and the trees had taken on the yellows and oranges and her partner, Columbia Law lecturer Menaka of fall. We stood still for a moment. Then I reached Guruswamy, who argued that section 377 of the out and took Karan’s hand.

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TASTE OF HONEY

Eli Lichter-Marck ’08CC went searching for purpose and truth. He also found ssweetnessweetness andand light.light.

By Paul Hond

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11.20_FEAT_Bees.indd.20_FEAT_Bees.indd 3535 44/21/20/21/20 33:04:04 PPMM “With beekeeping you basically get to connect with a wild ani- IIff there’sthere’s a mal,” Eli says with a certain awed reverence. “No mammal is as weird to us as a bee. Cows are like gentle humans. Sheep are like dummy humans. But bees are super smart — they really know bbeeee heaven,heaven, what they’re doing, and they will not let you make mistakes, because if you make a mistake they’ll sting you, and it hurts.” it might look like Rustic Canyon, a wooded, blossomy ravine Parked in the dirt next to the hives is Eli’s 1992 Dodge carved into the Santa Monica Mountains a short distance from pickup. From the truck’s bed Eli grabs a protective veil, a the Pacifi c Ocean. Flourishing with California pepper trees, smoker (a device that blows smoke into the hive to pacify the red-fruited sumac, frilly lilac, purple sage, and creamy jasmine, bees), a fl at, metal all-purpose implement called a hive tool, this pocket of Los Angeles is home to rambling cedar-shingled and a brush to remove clingy bees from the rectangular frames houses and luscious gardens. Nature hums sweetly here. The on which they build their honeycombs. daytime temperature is a dependable 72°F. Dogs bark. Birds Flitting outside the hives are guard bees, whose job is to dart among the trees. And near one of the houses, under a defend the colony from invaders like hornets, yellow jackets, canopy of sycamores, stands a cluster of wooden boxes painted and humans. These worker bees may live just fi ve to six weeks, green, yellow, pink, and blue. The boxes are stacked three high and their duties change as they age: they start as nurse bees, and set a few feet apart. Each stack — there are ten in all — is a graduate to being housekeepers and guards, and fi nally become beehive, and each hive contains some sixty thousand honeybees. foragers who gather nectar for the colony. Eli Lichter-Marck ’08CC grew up in Rustic Canyon, and his father and business partner, Nick Marck ’71CC, still lives here. Their company, Eli’s Bees, which they formed in 2010, sells honey and candles derived from the eff orts of bees plump with the nectar of Santa Monica Canyon, Topanga Canyon (where Eli lives), and Malibu. The delicate honeys, imbued with the perfume and sun- shine of this temperate landscape, are sold to juice bars, natural-food stores, and private customers. For Eli, honey is not the heart of the business but the glaze on a cake made of biology, botany, and climate science. Nurturing bees poses daily riddles that Eli thrives Eli Lichter-Marck holds a hive frame at one of his apiaries in the Santa Monica Mountains. on untangling, and which bring him ever closer to the buzzing intelligence of another world. Eli fi lls the smoker with some burlap, lights it, and squeezes a PHOTOS COURTESY OF ELI LICHTER-MARCK; BEE: DANIEL PRUDEK / SHUTTERSTOCK “Bees are remarkable creatures and remarkable teachers,” little smoke into the hive. The bees become visibly fuddled. “It’s Eli says as he crosses a small footbridge over a creek and sort of a ‘Whoa, what the hell is that?’” says Eli. “Bees give off approaches the hives. “If you’re patient and pay attention, the an alarm pheromone when there’s an intruder, and the smoke bees will tell you what they need.” masks that response. If we opened this hive without smoke, At thirty-four, Eli possesses the earthy wisdom of someone we’d be running.” intimately acquainted with the life vibrations of a diff erent spe- Using the hive tool, he pries open one of the boxes and cies. You might call him the bard of bees, the Homer of honey pulls out a frame, which is covered with hundreds of slightly — an example of what can happen when the Core Curriculum addled bees, some of which crawl onto Eli’s fi ngers. “I have cross-pollinates with the natural world. Eli majored in archi- enough experience to know what I can and cannot do,” he says. tecture at Columbia, but it was a Shakespeare professor whose Eli loosens the bees from the frame with the brush, revealing advice led him, years later, to the bees. And though he could not the wondrous design of the honeycomb, which serves as both have imagined in college that he’d someday become a full-time an incubation chamber and a winter food bank. “The archi- beekeeper, he now glows with love for these fragile creatures — tecture is really interesting,” he says, noting the wax structure’s and he has hitched his fortune to theirs. fi nely wrought hexagonal compartments, or cells. “With the

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11.20_FEAT_Bees.indd.20_FEAT_Bees.indd 3636 44/21/20/21/20 33:04:04 PPMM hexagonal shape, every wall of each cell is shared by another and the duration of the waggle determines the distance. The cell wall, so it’s incredibly efficient. Bees make wax from glands foragers then fly to the locale, where some draw nectar and in their abdomen, which takes a lot of energy, but they don’t others collect pollen, some of which sticks to their hairs and is need very much wax to make a lot of space. Each frame in spread from flower to flower. With the nectar stored in a sac the hive can hold four pounds of honey — that’s an enormous called a honey stomach, they return to the hive and share the amount of volume inside the surface area.” goods with the housekeepers, who deposit it into the cells of the He points to the bottom box, called the brood box, which honeycomb. “When the comb is filled up with nectar, the bees holds the queen. “Inside, it’s pitch-black,” says Eli. “The queen, will fan their wings in order to dry it out,” says Eli. “And that’s who lives around three or four years and mates early in her what turns it into honey.” adult life with about a dozen drones, will walk around, and the Honey is a means for Eli, not an end; it is the ambrosial other bees will smell her and form a ring around her and say, byproduct of a profound process uniting plants, insects, and ‘Lay an egg here, lay an egg here.’ She’ll stick her backside into people. Honeybees are one of twenty thousand bee species in the cell and lay an egg, which is fertilized with sperm that she the world that pollinate many of the fruit, nut, and vegetable has stored in a pouch called a spermatheca. At her peak she’ll plants that humans rely on. “In agriculture, 80 percent of our lay 1,200 to 1,600 eggs a day.” food — everything but grains, which are wind-pollinated — Fertilized eggs will become female worker bees; new queens depends on pollinators like bees,” Eli says. are selected by colony consensus, with nurse bees feeding the chosen larvae a diet of royal jelly, a white substance that So work the honeybees, nurse bees secrete in order to nurture a queen. “The reason Creatures that by a rule in nature teach she becomes a queen instead of a worker is because of the The act of order to a peopled kingdom. special mix of proteins in the royal jelly, which determines — William Shakespeare, Henry V her development,” Eli says. The small fraction of eggs that the queen decides not to fertilize will become males, called drones, n college, Eli took Lit Hum with Edward Tayler, the esteemed whose sole purpose is to mate with a new queen. After mating, Shakespeare scholar and the professor who Eli says had the the queen, with the drone’s endophallus still inside her, will Igreatest influence on him. “I will never have another educa- separate from him, ripping his genitals from his abdomen and tional experience like that,” he says. “Tayler challenged us to sending him to the Great Bee-yond. It’s the females who build find our own way of seeing things, without bullshit. He did not and maintain the hive and feed the colony. tolerate bullshit. He wanted you to see the thing for what it was. “Bees can fly as far as five miles for food and find their And that gave me an attitude for the rest of my life: I don’t want way back to the hive,” says Eli. “They have an insanely acute to deal with bullshit.” visual memory. For example, if I take this beehive and move it It was in that spirit that Eli, after college, took off to South five feet away, the bees will still come to this exact location America. A young idealist in search of meaning, he wanted to looking for the hive. That’s because they fly out in concentric explore landscape ecology, ancient architecture, and sustainable circles and memorize the agriculture. He rented a car and landscape around the hive. drove through Chile, Brazil, and They know exactly the spot Venezuela, pausing to study they’re looking for.” traditional mud-brick building. When a scout bee returns He also surfed — back home, to the hive after locating the waves off Malibu were as fresh flowers, Eli explains, integral to him as the moun- she will communicate where tains — and on the Chilean the food is by crawling over coast he met a man who lived her sisters and performing on the surf break. The man was what’s known as the “waggle a beekeeper, and Eli, who would dance,” a figure-eight move- have done anything to stay on ment punctuated after each his property, offered to work in circuit with a twitching exchange for lodging. That was motion. The angle of the his first brush with bees. bee’s path in relation to the Meanwhile, back in Rustic sun indicates the direction of Canyon, Eli’s dad was having a the food source (bees have an bee problem. internal clock that tells them Nick Marck had studied where the sun is in the sky history at Columbia, but it while they’re in the hive), Eli with his father, Nick Marck. was a class with the film critic

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11.20_FEAT_Bees.indd.20_FEAT_Bees.indd 3737 44/21/20/21/20 33:04:04 PPMM Andrew Sarris ’51CC, ’98GSAS that had helped light his way. mericans have labored to keep their honeybees buzzing “Before college I had been into doing magic,” Nick says. “This ever since European settlers brought Apis mellifera was the time of the draft, the Vietnam War, and I was trying Ato the Virginia Colony in 1622. More recently, in the to figure out what to do with my life. When Sarris described winter of 2006–07, a spate of honeybee colony fail- the role of the director as an illusionist, it really resonated with ures made national headlines. Worker bees were abandoning me.” After college, Nick moved to LA, worked his way up in their hives in droves — going out to gather nectar and never the industry, and eventually became an in-demand director for returning. Called colony collapse disorder, the syndrome would shows like The Wonder Years, Northern Exposure, The X-Files, destroy nearly a third of honeybee colonies each year over the and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. next several years. One day in 2010, Nick discovered that a colony of bees had At the time, Kathleen Pike, a professor of psychology at taken up residence beneath the siding of his house. “All the Columbia, knew nothing about bees, but she was alarmed by honeybees we have here were originally introduced by farm- what she read about the widespread demise of these crucial ers,” says Nick. These commer- pollinators. Scientists named a host of poten- cial honeybees were brought in tial causes: pesticides, habitat loss, pathogens, to pollinate the orange groves parasitic mites. As Pike read more, her curi- that once filled LA County osity grew. She visited some hives, which she (just as California’s almond found “mesmerizing,” and three years ago she groves rely on honeybees decided to try beekeeping in her yard in shipped in from all over the eastern Long Island. She started with three country). Along the way, some hives, in what proved to be one of the hardest, bees escaped their managed most gratifying undertakings of her life. “Bees hives and became naturalized are incredibly interesting intellectually,” she in the mountains, canyons, says, “but there’s also something emotionally and cities. When colonies get captivating about them.” In three years she too big, half the bees split off has yet to get her bees through the winter: — a phenomenon known as though they generate body heat to protect the swarming. When that happens, brood, they may succumb to viruses, strong a ball of migrating bees will storms, or temperature swings that bring settle in whatever adequate them out of the hive too early. But her enthu- space is available. Nick’s house siasm and determination have only grown. provided such a nook. “There are so many ways that bees can Nick called a bee-removal teach us and enrich our thinking,” Pike says. specialist named David Saraf. “For bees, the team is as important as the Eli had just returned from queen. Every bee matters, but no single bee South America dusty with the can make it alone. They’re all in it together. pollen of a budding obsession, During the summer, bees will make honey and in a twist worthy of one of and store it in the honeycomb for a generation Nick’s TV shows, Saraf hired not yet born. They will not be there when the Eli and became his mentor, Kathleen Pike with her hives on Long Island. next generation consumes that honey. That’s teaching him how to remove an extraordinary message.” bees from odd places (sprinkler boxes, attics) without killing Pike’s academic training makes her particularly perceptive them. Along the way, Eli siphoned off some bees — rescue bees, about how humans react to bees. “Most people are afraid of bees,” he calls them — and began stowing them in hive boxes, trying she says. “When we have guests over, they’ll come out to the to build a healthy colony. hives with enormous apprehension. I explain that honeybees “So here’s the thing,” Eli says. “Keeping bees alive is not easy. don’t want to sting you, because after they sting you they die. I For three years I tried and failed with the bees. They would give visitors protective covering and talk about how to approach make honey, but then they would disappear or die.” By then, the hives and where to stand. They start out tentative, and then, Eli was working as a landscape architect and taking premed within minutes, universally, they are freed from their anxiety and classes. He was almost thirty and had no definite career track. ready to just engage in this other world in a way that fills them But a bug had bitten him. And he knew he must answer the with excitement and joy and curiosity. COURTESY OF KATHY PIKE fundamental question: to bee or not to bee? “As a psychologist, I know that careful exposure to phobias Bees weren’t BS. And keeping them alive was, for Eli, a and fears — and education — can help address issues of anxiety. tantalizing puzzle to be solved. “My inclination,” he says, “was I have all these converts who are now in love with the bees. It to go deeper and deeper.” makes me think about how wrong our ideas can be without

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11.20_FEAT_Bees.indd.20_FEAT_Bees.indd 3838 44/21/20/21/20 33:05:05 PPMM firsthand experience. There are parallels to the stigma around Out west, the effects of climate change have already turned mental illness: connecting with someone who has had some tens of thousands of acres of bee paradise into hell. In the mental-health condition, who can talk about it and make it not spring of 2018, Eli had 160 hives spread out in nearby moun- scary, is critical in reducing people’s prejudice.” tains. But that fall, wildfires rampaged through the region, carpeting the hills and pouring into the canyons. Eli lost half ince 2012, Jonathan Snow, an assistant professor of his bees, along with “a ton of equipment.” His hives are still biology at Barnard College, has kept what may be, by recovering — slowly — but Eli considers himself lucky: he Svirtue of their address — the roof of Barnard Hall — the knows people who lost every beehive they had. Two years later, smartest bees in town. Six hives, holding as many as he finds a silver lining in all that lost gold. “Where the fires 360,000 bees, provide both honey and specimens for experi- burned,” he says, “a whole new world of flowers came up.” ments in the Snow Lab. The Barnard bees dine amid the foliage of Riverside eekeepers refer to times of heavy bloom and nectar- and Morningside Parks, upon sidewalk clover, and in the gathering as the “honey flow,” the bread and butter of white-flowering spikes of cherry laurel and pink bracts of Bbeekeeping. In Southern California, Eli’s bees start dogwood on Columbia’s campus. On a table in Snow’s office rest making honey in April. Eli does an April harvest, some jars containing a thick, sticky treasure the color of orange another in early summer, and another in September. “Every opal — 100 percent New York City honey. plant species makes a different kind of nectar,” he says. “Honey- Snow studies the role of infectious diseases caused by a bees prefer to harvest from one type of plant at a time. They’re parasite in the cells of honeybees. While the parasite is not as opportunists and generalists when it comes to flowers. Certain lethal as the Varroa destructor mite (a prime culprit in recent bees and wasps are specialists and only go for one certain upticks in bee mortality), it can amount to a death knell for a flower. Honeybees will go for anything.” stressed or diseased colony. “Stress in honeybees is likely to be Eli is a “sideline” beekeeper, someone who has between ten felt at multiple levels: the colony level, the individual-organism and two hundred hives. Fewer than ten and you’re a hobbyist; level, and the cellular level,” Snow says. “Climate change, which more than two hundred and you’re an industrial-scale enter- involves things like heat stress, can trigger the same pathways prise. Eli is an indie guy, a surfer in a bee suit, ruggedly farming that we’re studying. Pesticides result in cell stress. Nutritional exquisite honeys, each from its own type of flower and each stress due to habitat loss affects these pathways as well.” with its own color and texture and subtle flavors. For Snow, this tenuous state raises broader questions: “If He takes off his veil and drops it in the back of his truck. On honeybees are struggling, what about the other bee species — the edge of the tailgate, a half dozen jars of honey are lined up, bumblebees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees — that people don’t their hues of amber and orange and red catching sunbeams and care about as much, but which are critical to our agricultural glowing from within, a distillation of nature’s harmonies. Eli and natural ecosystems? And what about all the other inverte- offers an impromptu tasting. The light, distinct notes in each brates that are going to be facing similar issues?” sample are as far from characterless commercial squeeze-bear honey as just-picked wildflowers are from a supermarket bouquet. This honey is, no joke, the nectar of the gods, brokered by a truth-seeker, a few million bees, and, in no small way, a professor of Shakespeare. “I’ve always been a do-my-own-thing kind of guy,” says Eli, “and in college, Professor Tayler tried to rein me in and keep me focused on the work. One time I met with him and said, ‘I don’t know what to do, Dr. Tayler. What should I do with my life?’ The way an undergrad will. And Tayler looked at me and said, ‘Wait as long as you can before you decide.’ “So I stopped worrying about it and went with the flow. I’d been so worried, not knowing what to major in or what to do, and Tayler just put me at ease. And it changed my life. I thought: I’ll just figure it out. And then I waited a really long time, Jonathan Snow with a lab member on the roof at Barnard. CARRIE GLASSER / BARNARD COLLEGE / BARNARD GLASSER CARRIE until the bees found me.”

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11.20_FEAT_Bees.indd.20_FEAT_Bees.indd 3939 44/21/20/21/20 33:48:48 PPMM THE BIG IDEA Raising Strong Sexual Citizens Two social scientists discuss their groundbreaking research on consent, power, and assault on Columbia’s campus

In their book Sexual Citizens, dorms, sorority and fraternity houses, students. Our research was guided by Jennifer S. Hirsch, a professor of locker rooms, bars, coffee shops, and two advisory boards — one made up of sociomedical sciences at Columbia’s other spaces where students congregate, faculty and administrators and one of Mailman School of Public Health, observing what went on and reporting undergraduate students. and Shamus Khan, the chair of on what they saw (of course, they always Columbia’s sociology department, identified themselves as researchers). How do you define the term “sexual take a probing yet empathetic look That was combined with 151 in-depth citizen,” and how does it relate to at the intimate lives of Columbia interviews with undergraduates aver- sexual assault? undergraduates and the pervasive aging about two hours each, as well as JSH: Sexual citizenship refers to problem of sexual assault on campus. seventeen focus groups. Our team spent people’s right to say yes to the sex three semesters deeply embedded in they want and no to the sex they don’t Your book is the result campus life, and we hope readers feel want, as well as their understanding of years of research on that reflected in the book. that other people have an equivalent Q Columbia’s campus. How The ethnographic research for Sexual right. Upholding those rights is highly did you design a study on such a Citizens was part of a much bigger relevant to sexual-assault prevention. sprawling, controversial subject, and project, the Sexual Health Initiative In many instances we saw heterosexual what sets your work apart? to Foster Transformation, or SHIFT, men who were acutely aware of their JSH: What distinguishes Sexual Citizens which I codirected with a Mailman own sexual needs but less attuned to from much of the other research that’s School colleague and friend, clinical their partners’ rights to sexual self-de- done on campus sexual assault is the psychologist Claude Ann Mellins. termination. Clearly we have failed to method: the book draws primarily on SHIFT also conducted a survey of educate young people on how to have ethnographic research, which included sexual practices and attitudes e-mailed sex without hurting someone else. We more than six hundred hours of a tech- to 2,500 undergraduates (which had an won’t achieve effective sexual-assault nique called “participant observation,” in astonishing response rate of 67 percent) prevention unless we talk to young peo- which our team of researchers spent time and a quantitative daily diary study ple about sex in ways that acknowledge with undergraduates in dining halls, that lasted sixty days and included 427 their sexual citizenship.

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11.20_BIG-IDEA.indd.20_BIG-IDEA.indd 4400 44/22/20/22/20 11:14:14 PPMM Along with sexual citizenship, your JSH: The third concept, “sexual geogra- SK: Encouraging affirmative consent is taxonomy of undergraduates’ sexual phies,” relates to the way space produces important, but it’s insufficient. lives includes two other key concepts opportunities for sex and vulnerability JSH: That sort of simple educational — “sexual projects” and “sexual to sexual assault. Consider campus dorm intervention, whether affirmative geographies.” Can you explain? rooms, where sex and assaults often hap- consent or something else, is not really SK: One interesting discovery we pen. There are four pieces of furniture: A-game public-health work. A lot of made was that often (though not a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a desk chair. students come to campus with such an always), people committing assaults If students go back to a dorm room, they astonishing level of sexual ignorance that thought they were having consensual can’t both sit in the desk chair, and if a session on consent is like starting with sex. So we realized we needed a bet- both sit on the bed, there can be a sexual calculus when you can’t even count to ter grasp on the reasons young people connotation. One response might be, ten. It’s a vast oversimplification of the seek out sex. Basically, the term “sexual “Don’t go back to someone’s room unless complexity that is sex. project” is the answer to the question you want to have sex.” But we look at sex- “What is sex for?” And the young people ual assault as a public-health issue; our What else, besides your public- we studied turned out to have many focus is on changing the environment. So health perspective, makes your different sexual projects. Sometimes our takeaway is, let’s come up with safe approach different? sex was for pleasure, sometimes to spaces where students can go, say, at two SK: Most of the attention in sexual increase their status within groups, in the morning, that will enable them to assault has been on what to do after a sometimes for a new experience or have the kinds of interactions that they sexual assault occurs — how to adjudi- to comfort a partner. We want young want to have. cate assaults, how to punish a perpe- people who read this book to ask them- trator. Our focus is on prevention, on selves, “What is my sexual project going Is it fair to say that neither of you reducing the likelihood that assaults to be?” And for us, understanding the puts much faith in the policy of happen in the first place. variety of young people’s sexual proj- “affirmative consent” — i.e., requiring JSH: There’s so much fear in the con- ects and how they might lead to sexual a definitive yes from each partner to versation around campus sexual assault,

ANNA PARINI assaults was essential. continue sexual activity? and obviously the risks are real [in the

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11.20_BIG-IDEA.indd.20_BIG-IDEA.indd 4411 44/22/20/22/20 11:14:14 PPMM SHIFT survey, 28 percent of women, 12 percent of men, and 39 percent of gender-nonconforming students reported being sexually assaulted after entering college]. The book includes sto- ries of great suffering. But another way our work is different is that we come at the issue with hope and compassion. We engage in a way that doesn’t simply try to scare people. If all we do is say “He’s a horrible person” when we hear about a senior man in a fraternity who rapes a freshman woman after she has clearly said no, we don’t get anywhere. What if we back up and ask, “Who taught him to ignore women? What kind of family raised him, and what kind of school system failed to educate him to hear women’s voices, to be so unaware of the power he deployed in that situation?” Only sitting in judgment doesn’t lead to solutions. Jennifer S. Hirsch and Shamus Khan

You argue that unwanted sexual Columbia students. That’s not to suggest How were you able to get students contact is fundamentally about that they’re exempt from racism, but they to open up to you about such inequalities of power, not just in are an incredibly progressive group. Yet intimate topics? relation to gender but also class, race, still we see this American context of race SK: The way that we engaged students social status, and sexual orientation, and power playing out in a willingness to — as the experts on their own lives — often in ways that intersect. Can you violate the bodily autonomy of others. was certainly critical to the project. For speak to that? example, SHIFT’s undergraduate advisory JSH: We make two points broadly about The book also includes the board helped us figure out how to ask the need to think differently about experiences of African-American questions and how to reach students power. We look at power that is situa- men who are afraid of being falsely in ways they would actually relate to. tional, where one student is older than accused of sexual assault. There They helped us decode student language another or drunker than another or was, for instance, an affecting story — what does it mean when people say considered “hotter” than another. And about a Black student who had a “hook up,” for example? — and they served then there is power that reflects social consensual sexual experience yet as ambassadors for the project, testifying advantage. Gender is clearly a form of nonetheless felt the need to secretly to its legitimacy. We had all kinds of stu- that; most sexual assaults are committed record his partner afterward to have dents on the advisory board, from people by men and experienced by women. But proof of that consent. involved in Greek life to the head of No gender is insufficient to understand the JSH: Black men who shared their stories Red Tape, the anti-administration protest entirety of this issue. Race is big too. described acute racialized fears of false group. Bringing them in was essential. Every single one of the Black women that accusation that didn’t just reflect their And through that work, our team built we spoke to had experienced unwanted, experience as Columbia students but what relationships with many students; they nonconsensual sexual touching. Every it’s like to be a Black man in America. The spent time with them in dorms, on single one. That statistic cannot be way students navigate sex and consent is the bus to athletic events, in fraternity understood only from a framework of inseparable from the relative privilege or basements, and in spaces of worship. We gender. It illustrates the need to center disadvantage that they face in the world. recruited students for interviews and race in any discussion of sexual-assault SK: Yes, the Black men we spoke to were focus groups through student interest prevention. I like to think that the book concerned not just about false accu- groups, articles in the student paper, flyers

is a jumping-off point for considering all sations but about what it means to be and other on-campus presence, personal ANDRÉS OYUELA kinds of inequalities. accused in an American justice system referrals, and targeted e-mails. SK: The lack of respect for Black women’s that they feel is systematically biased JSH: But more generally, what we saw bodies was notable. And this was among against them. was that our research tapped into a

42 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_BIG-IDEA.indd.20_BIG-IDEA.indd 4422 44/22/20/22/20 11:14:14 PPMM need: students wanted to tell their stories, as a way of helping create solu- “Most of the attention in tions and also to feel that their experi- ences of suff ering were recognized. It’s notable how many students approached sexual assault has been on us asking to be interviewed. For exam- ple, when SHIFT sent out an e-mail what to do aft er a sexual about the survey to the entire under- graduate student bodies of both Colum- assault occurs ... Our focus bia and Barnard, we were somewhat taken aback to receive responses from many individual students saying that is on prevention.” they wanted to participate in a confi dential interview because they had a story to tell. JSH: One of our fundamental policy JSH: I initially brought the idea for Some of the students’ stories are recommendations is comprehensive the research project to Suzanne Gold- excruciating to read — and must have age-appropriate sex education. Not every berg, the executive vice president for been even more so to hear fi rsthand. worker in America goes to college, so university life, and after that conversa- You note that every member of your employers and policymakers need to tion, Claude Ann Mellins and I began research team experienced some think of sex ed as workforce develop- to develop it. Suzanne is the person form of “vicarious traumatization.” ment. A basic skill workers need is the responsible for managing the campuses’ What was that like? ability to have respectful interpersonal sexual-assault response overall, both in SK: No question, it was a lot. Jennifer interactions. Instead of thinking that terms of prevention and adjudication. and I tried to make sure our team felt clicking through a PowerPoint presen- She understood right away that this was supported and to acknowledge that tation will teach a new employee not to a great opportunity for both the Univer- feelings are part of research. All our harass others, let’s use the twelve years sity and the fi eld. And it demonstrates weekly meetings began with a mental- of education we have before that person the power of having high-level feminist health check-in where we’d spend time gets the job. And sex education should leadership. Shamus and I have been on talking about how everyone was doing. be a fundamental element of the #MeToo a massive campus book tour, and I feel But as painful as it was to hear and hold policy agenda. proud of Columbia, because not many those stories, we are mindful of how SK: This is not just a school problem: it’s universities have made such a substantial much harder it was for the students who an everybody problem. And for parents commitment. I mean, every campus is lived them. The broader point here is wondering what they can do for their doing something about prevention, but that engaging with the emotional lives own kids, I think our book provides them it’s diff erent to lay down resources and of our subjects is a fundamental part of with a neutral narrative terrain in which say, “Let’s fi gure this problem out, and the ethnographer’s job, which is to try they can have those otherwise awkward let’s generate a new kind of solution.” to understand people’s points of view conversations. It’s easy to imagine par- — Lorraine Glennon and why they’re acting as they’re acting. ents and kids reading many of the stories That’s also important from a public- together. So rather than telling a child health perspective. It’s not helpful to say, what to do, a parent can say, “Let’s talk for example, “Why don’t these people about Luci and the way she was treated just stop smoking?” or “Can’t these by that fraternity guy. What’s your take obese people just eat less?” As Jennifer on the situation with Adam and his mentioned, we aim for empathetic boyfriend? What might a good plan B understanding of how people get into look like for Charisma when she’s stuck the situations they’re in. out in Brooklyn, far from campus?” Just creating that bit of distance can make You say in the book that a young communication easier. woman who is not in college is probably at greater risk of assault You must have had enormous support than a college student. What are the from the Columbia administration to implications of your work beyond the conduct this study and make the fi nd- academic setting? ings public. How did that come about?

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 43

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FRONTIERS OF RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY

An artist’s rendering of protein accumulations inside a brain cell. Toxic Alzheimer’s proteins exposed in new detail

ne of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s molecules located on the proteins’ outer sur- disease is that brain cells become faces seem to influence their shape, whether or Oclogged with “tau tangles” — long, not they aggregate, and, when they do conjoin, rope-like bands of tau proteins that what types of neurocognitive problems result. obstruct the movement of nutrients within the The appearance of tau tangles in brain cells cells and ultimately cause them to die. is associated not only with Alzheimer’s but COURTESY OF VERONICA FALCONIERI HAYS AND ANTHONY FITZPATRICK / ZUCKERMAN INSTITUTE Until now, scientists had never observed also with several other forms of dementia the individual proteins up close because they and with chronic traumatic encephalopathy are ten thousand times thinner than a human (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease that hair, making them extraordinarily difficult to afflicts many former football players, soldiers, view, even under powerful microscopes. But a and others who have experienced repeated team of neuroscientists at Columbia’s Zucker- head injuries. Fitzpatrick says that his team’s man Mind Brain Behavior Institute recently research, by identifying key differences combined two ultra-high-resolution imag- between these disorders at the molecular ing technologies — mass spectrometry and level, could one day enable physicians to cryo-electron microscopy, the latter a Nobel anticipate the onset of the conditions before Prize–winning technology developed in part symptoms arise and intervene with novel by Columbia researchers — to examine tau drug treatments that slow their progress or proteins in unprecedented detail and reveal prevent them altogether. new clues about how and why they accumulate “Neurodegenerative diseases are among the in destructive tangles. most complex and distressing class of illnesses,” Led by principal investigator Anthony Fitz- he says. “But we are building a road map patrick, the researchers discovered that tiny toward successful diagnostics and therapeutics.”

44 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_EXPL.indd.20_EXPL.indd 4444 44/20/20/20/20 11:03:03 PPMM How butterfl ies beat the heat

utterflutterfl iesies areare inin a bitbit ofof a under the electron microscope bind.bind. BeingBeing cold-blooded,cold-blooded, the scales actually contain lots of Bthey must absorb thermal cavities, crevices, and tunnels. Montreal pact energy from the sun in “This is a perfect design if you order to boost their metabolism want a material to emit most of saves ozone, and have the strength to fl utter the thermal energy it receives from slows warming from fl ower to fl ower. And yet their the sun rather than retain it,” says paper-thin wings are delicate. How Yu, who is an associate professor at can they withstand the heat of the Columbia Engineering. hehe internationalinternational treatytreaty sun’s rays? The researchers then conducted thatthat saved thethe earth’searth’s A team of researchers led by a series of experiments on live but- Tozoneozone layerlayer isis nownow havinghaving Nanfang Yu, a Columbia applied terfl ies, using heat lamps to mimic thethe unintendedunintended benefibenefi t ofof physicist who studies the optical the eff ects of direct sunlight. They sslowinglowing globalglobal warming,warming, accordingaccording properties of biological materials, found that most butterfl y species to a newnew study.study. recently set out to fi nd answers. In exhibit avoidance behaviors when The 1987 Montreal Protocol, rati- collaboration with Naomi Pierce, a subjected to intense heat, closing fi ed by two hundred countries after biologist who oversees the butterfl y their wings and holding them par- scientists discovered a gaping hole collection at Harvard’s Museum allel to the light source in order to in the ozone layer above Antarctica, of Comparative Zoology, Yu’s team minimize the impact. phased out the use of industrial examined the physiology and behav- Finally, Yu and his colleagues chemicals called chloroflchlorofl uorocar-uorocar- iors of dozens of butterfl y species, observed the neuronal activity bbons,ons, oror CFCs,CFCs, whichwhich werewere onceonce including the painted lady, pictured happening inside butterfl y wings. In cocommonlymmonly usedused as refrigerantsrefrigerants andand above, to determine how they regu- doing so, they identifi ed a network vavaporpor propellantspropellants inin aerosolaerosol cans.cans. late the temperature of their wings. of heat-sensing cells that biologists AltAlthoughhough CFCsCFCs areare bestbest knownknown forfor First, the scientists used a novel had never noticed before. ddamagingamaging thethe ozone,ozone, theythey areare alsoalso imaging technique developed in Yu’s “Butterfl y wings are often thought ggreenhousereenhouse gases,gases, whichwhich contributecontribute lab to analyze the colorful iridescent of as rather lifeless objects, but to globalglobal warming,warming, andand a team of scales that cover butterfl y wings. they are actually dynamic systems,” Columbia researchers recently set They found that some scales — says Yu. “Among other things, they out to quantify the impact they specifi cally those atop wing sections are highly sensitive light-detecting had on global temperatures. Using that contain veins, nerves, and sen- panels that enable the insects to computer climate models, they sors for monitoring airfl ow — are swiftly determine the intensity and determined that CFCs and similar shaped to defl ect sunlight. Although direction of sunlight without using substances caused about one-third they appear smooth, when viewed their eyes or antennae.” of all global warming between 1955 and 2005 and half of Arctic warm- ing and ice loss during that period. “In the coming decades, as these chemicals stop being used altogether, and as those that have already accumulated in the atmo- sphere dissolve, they will contribute less and less to global warming,” says lead author Lorenzo M. Polvani, the MMauriceaurice EwingEwing andand J. LamarLamar WoWorzelrzel ProfessorProfessor ofof GGeophysicseophysics at Thermal images Columbia Engineering. “It’s a good- created by

TOP LEFT: NASA; TOP RIGHT: VITALII HULAI / SHUTTERSTOCK; BOTTOM RIGHT: COURTESY OF NANFANG YU OF NANFANG COURTESY RIGHT: BOTTOM HULAI / SHUTTERSTOCK; VITALII RIGHT: TOP NASA; LEFT: TOP news story.” Nanfang Yu.

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allowed a social activist to introduce a religious-freedom argument as part of his or her defense,” says Franke. According to the new report, the US has a long tradition of granting legal exemptions to people of faith, dating back to the Colonial era, when Quakers and other pacifists were given conscientious- objector status and excused from mili- tary service. But until the late twentieth century, such faith-based exemptions were granted only in rare circumstances and typically to ensure the fair treat- ment of religious minorities. (Permit- ting Amish parents to homeschool their children, for example.) Franke and Scott Warren before his trial in 2019. her colleagues say that the past quar- ter century has seen a proliferation of A new twist on religious liberty religious-freedom laws that have broken from legal precedent, in that they grant n many parts of the United States, open a supervised injection site for drug protections to mainstream Christians Christian-owned businesses can users in Philadelphia; and parishioners at and force other people to bear signifi- Irefuse to hire gay or transgender a Texas church trying to stop the Trump cant costs in order to accommodate the workers, withhold contraceptive administration from building its border Christians’ beliefs. coverage from female employees, and wall on their grounds. Of course, liberals’ growing inter- deny services to people of other faiths. None of these exemptions have yet est in claiming religious-based legal This is the result of a wave of so-called been granted, the authors say, in part exemptions raises tricky questions, too. religious-freedom acts — passed by because legislators, judges, and other For example, if a humanitarian worker Congress and more than twenty states government officials tend to look is guided by a strictly secular sense since the 1990s — that permit believers askance at such claims when they come of ethics, does he or she have less of a to sidestep anti-discrimination and from the left. right to help migrants than a believer health-care-access laws. “Liberals are often suspected of being does? And at what point does the grant- But since social conservatives have no guided by political or philosophical ing of faith-based legal exemptions monopoly on faith, you might wonder: aims rather than their religious convic- threaten the foundation of our democ- can people with more liberal values cite tions, especially if they don’t belong to racy, creating, in the ominous words of their spiritual beliefs as justification for a large denomination,” says Katherine Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, ignoring certain laws? Franke ’81BC, the faculty director of the a system in which “each conscience is a A new report, Whose Faith Matters? Law, Rights, and Religion Project and a law unto itself”?

The Fight for Religious Liberty Beyond coauthor of the report. The new report wrestles with these ASH PONDERS ON BEHALF OF THE UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST SERVICE COMMITTEE the Christian Right, sheds light on the There are signs that courts are start- and similar questions, offering tips to subject. Published by Columbia Law ing to take the religious left seriously, help public figures evaluate the poten- School’s Law, Rights, and Religion Proj- though. Last fall, Scott Warren, an tial impact of future religious-freedom ect, it collects the stories of individuals Arizona teacher facing federal charges bills and lawsuits. But it ultimately from across the political spectrum who and a lengthy prison sentence for hav- arrives at a simple conclusion: what’s have in recent years sought legal exemp- ing provided temporary shelter to two fair for one is fair for all. tions to engage in otherwise unlawful migrants in the Sonoran Desert, was “The main takeaway is that we activities that they consider expressions acquitted by a jury after mounting a shouldn’t see religious liberty as a of faith. They include humanitarian religious-freedom defense. He admit- conservative value,” says coauthor workers who feed and clothe migrants in ted to knowingly breaking the law but Elizabeth Reiner Platt. “We must chart the American Southwest; physicians who argued that his spiritual convictions a path toward protecting the religious wish to be able to discuss abortion with demanded that he help anyone in need. beliefs and practices of all faith practi- women at federally funded health clinics “This was one of the first times that a tioners, with the respect and neutrality in Baltimore; social workers who want to federal judge in a criminal case has even that the Constitution demands.”

46 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_EXPL.indd.20_EXPL.indd 4646 44/20/20/20/20 33:50:50 PPMM STUDY Delegate like a boss Women in Th e hidden costs of the workplace are less likely than HALL men to delegate tasks to subordi- RESEARCH corporate tax breaks BRIEFS nates, which leaves less time for long-term strategic thinking and hen New York state and city offi cials could hold them back in their careers, according to new research by Modupe Akinola, an associate professor of announced in 2018 that they were prepared to management at Columbia Business School. Wgive Amazon nearly $3 billion in tax subsidies to build a new headquarters in Queens, pro- Wine shortage predicted If the planet continues ponents of the deal predicted an economic windfall for the warming at its current pace, the world’s wine-growing region. They argued that the company’s arrival would bring regions could shrink by as much as 56 percent by the end not only the twenty-fi ve thousand jobs that Amazon vowed of the century, fi nds a study coauthored by Benjamin to create but billions of dollars in revenue for local construc- Cook of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. tion fi rms, restaurants, retail shops, and other businesses. Critics countered that the $3 billion would be better spent Rotten news about the Big Apple About 20 shoring up the city’s public schools, physical infrastructure, percent of New York City residents are living below the and social services. poverty line at any given time, but a longitudinal study A new paper by economists Cailin R. Slattery of Columbia by researchers at Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Business School and Owen M. Zidar of Princeton University Social Policy provides a more nuanced view of the situ- suggests that the critics, who ultimately helped to derail Ama- ation: it shows that nearly half of all New Yorkers spent zon’s plans, may have been right. In a review of hundreds of at least one year impoverished between 2015 and 2018. tax-incentive packages awarded to US corporations in recent years, the researchers found that such deals rarely deliver the Touchy-feely technology Columbia engineers broad economic benefi ts they promise. Matei Ciocarlie ’10SEAS and John Kymissis, along with graduate students Pedro Piacenza and Keith Behrman, “It’s not as if they never have spillover benefi ts, but on have developed a new type of robotic fi nger whose average we don’t see any,” says Slattery. “Some projects will tactile sensitivity rivals a human’s. The researchers provide a bit of a boost to the surrounding economy, but that’s say that it will enable the creation of highly dexterous not the energetic result you expect to see, considering how prosthetics and robotics for use in industry. these deals are being promoted by the companies and govern- ments that make them.” C-sections linked to depression Women who According to Slattery, elected offi cials in the US have been have general anesthesia during C-sections are twice as relying heavily on tax abatements to lure employers to their likely to experience severe postpartum depression, districts since the 1990s. States and municipalities currently according to a study by Jean Guglielminotti, an sacrifi ce at least $30 billion annually — or 40 percent of their assistant professor of anesthesiology at Columbia potential corporate tax revenue — through such subsidies, her University Irving Medical Center. research shows. And while these tax breaks have proved to be a reliable, if costly, means of locking down jobs in particular Little thrill-seekers Columbia psychologist Nim locations, Slattery says that they may be having a detrimen- Tottenham has found that young children are driven tal impact on the US economy as a whole, since they siphon to seek out novel experiences, but only in a parent’s money away from public education and infrastructure proj- presence. She says that her study, which is based on ects that support long-term economic growth. laboratory experiments she conducted with preschool- There are potential solutions, though. Slattery points out ers and their parents, suggests that learning to take risks is a vital aspect of children’s psychological growth. that the EU has prohibited local and regional governments from granting tax subsidies to large companies; instead, such Good night, dragon By analyzing the neuronal activity incentives are awarded only at the national level, with the tax of the Australian bearded dragon (pictured here), Colum- relief going to employers that open facilities in economically bia biologist Maria Tosches and colleagues from the Max depressed areas. Planck Institute for Brain Research have discovered that a “The Europeans are using these kinds of tax incentives very tiny, poorly understood brain region called the claustrum is strategically, to help generate economic growth in places that responsible for “slow wave” sleep — the really need it,” she says. “But in the US, we have a situation deeply restful stage when neurons reset where cities and states are all competing against one another their connections and consolidate mem- and driving up the size of the incentive packages, which is very ories. The scientists say their work could

BAISHEV / SHUTTERSTOCK BAISHEV advantageous for fi rms but not necessarily for the public.” have implications for treating sleep disorders.

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 47

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YOUR ALUMNI CONNECTION

A rendering of MARSHA, the Mars habitat. Life on Mars Jeffrey Montes ’15GSAPP and Christopher Botham ’16GSAPP are designing your home — in outer space

magine your house — on Mars. It’s a multi- Miami. He says he was drawn to architecture level egg-shaped structure built by robots because it is a unique hybrid of fields, includ- with almost no human assistance. It can ing math, science, and art. “There’s so much Iwithstand the Red Planet’s low atmo- about the concept of space that satisfies my spheric pressure and temperature swings of inner philosopher,” Montes says. “That studio up to 100°C but is also designed with your was the first opportunity I had to think about well-being in mind. It blocks out harmful what it would mean to live in space. I was radiation but lets in natural light. There’s convinced it could be my career.” a rec room and even a garden, with exotic After graduation, Montes took an architec- houseplants and fresh vegetables. tural-engineering job but began moonlighting Sound like the stuff of an Andy Weir novel? as a space architect, working on freelance proj- Space architect Jeffrey Montes ’15GSAPP and ects for NASA and private companies. In 2015, technologist Christopher Botham ’16GSAPP together with a group of colleagues interested think it can be real. The two are employed by in the field, he entered phase one of the NASA AI SpaceFactory, a design firm that builds for challenge, which asked participants to produce both Earth and space, and they were part of an architectural concept for a 3D-printed the team that created MARSHA (from “Mars Mars residence. The group’s Mars Ice House, habitat”), which recently won the $500,000 a frozen habitat that takes advantage of the grand prize in phase three of NASA’s multi- abundance of water and low temperatures in year 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. Mars’s northern latitudes, beat out more than COURTESY OF AI SPACEFACTORY Montes, who was introduced to space 165 entries to win the contest. architecture in an advanced studio class at Botham had already been working at AI Columbia’s Graduate School of Architec- SpaceFactory for a few months when Montes ture, Planning, and Preservation, was born brought his space projects to the company in in Puerto Rico and grew up in Boston and 2017. Botham had earned his undergraduate

48 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_NETWORK-F.indd.20_NETWORK-F.indd 4488 44/21/20/21/20 22:51:51 PPMM degree at the University of “The more I get into Wisconsin–Milwaukee and robotics, the more I under- Pet Projects then spent fi ve years working stand what machines can do Four startups that help keep our for various fi rms in Chicago if properly integrated into four-legged friends safe and happy on large-scale offi ce towers. the construction industry,” After graduate school at Botham says. “When it comes Columbia, he continued to to architecture, we’ve essen- Ollie work on skyscrapers. But he tially been building the same Gabby Slome ’10GS, ’15BUS, was always interested in the way for thousands of years. a former equestrian and technical side of architecture, The materials and the meth- lifelong animal lover, got and moving to AI SpaceFactory ods have gotten better, but into the dog-food business allowed him to explore bigger we’re still basically building for the love of Pancho, her scientifi c challenges. with sticks and stones. This rescued Colombian street “The process of architecture feels like the next step.” dog. Pancho suffered from is quite conceptual,” Botham AI SpaceFactory has drawn itchy skin and digestive says. “But I’ve always had a on the lessons learned from issues, and Slome claims mind for the technical and MARSHA and recycled its that after she swapped her computational aspects of it.” materials to develop a new pup’s processed, preservative-fi lled kibble for healthy When Montes joined AI design called Tera, which home cooking, she saw a real improvement in his SpaceFactory, he thought they want to turn into a condition. In 2015, inspired by that success, Slome that Botham’s technical skills B & B here on Earth. Botham cofounded Ollie, a subscription service that offers would be a good fi t for his and his other MARSHA meals made from fresh, all-natural, “human-grade” ingredients and customized to the age, breed, weight, and dietary needs of customers’ dogs.

Pawlicy Advisor This website from Woody Mawhinney ’18BUS, a former risk consultant for the Department of Homeland Secu- rity and a father of two (dogs), compares, recommends, and sells pet-insurance plans based on customer needs and individual health risks. Targeted to dog and cat par- ents as well as veterinary offi ces, Pawlicy Advisor was launched in 2018 out of the Columbia Startup Lab. Christopher Botham (left) and Jeffrey Montes at their lab at AI SpaceFactory. Petnet team. Specifi cally, Montes was team members plan to print CofoundedCofounded inin 20132013 by engineerengineer CarlosCarlos HerreraHerrera looking for Botham’s scientifi c Tera in Garrison, New York, ’09SEAS,’09SEAS, tthishis Los Angeles–basedAngeles–based companycompany expertise to help manipulate on a site near the Hudson hashas broughtbrought highhigh technologytechnology to a basbasicic a robot that would 3D-print River. Meanwhile, Montes is itemitem ofof petpet paraphernaliaparaphernalia — thethe foodfood a prototype of MARSHA. working on securing grant bowl. Petnet’s signature “smart feeder,” Together with four colleagues, money for his next project whichwhich cacann bbee controlledcontrolled throughthrough a mobilemobile they were able to create — building a fully functional app or Amazon Alexa, automatically the model, at a third of the lunar city. dispenses meals at specifi ed times and house’s intended size. NASA “There are plenty of people customizes portions according to a dog found that the material they who dedicate their careers to or cat’s age, weight, and activity level. used in the prototype — a the problems of the present,” biopolymer-basalt composite Montes says. “I have found Diggs — was at least 50 percent that I am most valuable and Zel Crampton ’13BUS worked as a management and stronger and more durable engaged as someone who supply-chain consultant for nearly a decade before he than concrete, suggesting that thinks about the future. And started his own company, Diggs, in 2018. The New York– this might not be just a space it’s not the far future. I think based retailer, which manufactures and sells collapsible project but useful technology this is what’s next.” dog crates and accessories, says it prioritizes safety,

LEFT: COURTESY OF AI SPACEFACTORY; RIGHT: 5 SECOND STUDIO / SHUTTERSTOCK STUDIO 5 SECOND RIGHT: OF AI SPACEFACTORY; COURTESY LEFT: for building houses on Earth. — Kelley Freund sleek design, and easy setup.

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stArtUp spOtLIght One Size That Fits You

n 2015, Carly Bigi ’17BUS, then a oping Laws of Motion. She had planned custom-cut digitally, which takes about young consultant at Deloitte, went to return to Deloitte after graduation, ten minutes. “Because we make every- Ishopping for clothes with a male but once she had immersed herself in thing to order, we don’t have a ware- friend. Bigi spent most of the day Columbia’s entrepreneurship curriculum, house full of inventory sitting around,” shuttling between stores and trying she decided to pursue her idea full-time. Bigi says. “Our return rate is also signifi- on different outfits, none of which Bigi graduated in 2017, wearing Laws cantly lower than that of companies that really fit, but she watched in awe as her of Motion’s newly developed Alpha use traditional sizing, so we’ve been able friend went to a single shop and quickly dress — a classic knee-length, short- to essentially eliminate fabric waste.” bought clothes tailored to his body. sleeved shift — under her traditional Laws of Motion officially launched in “The difference was shocking,” she blue robe, and claimed a spot at the May 2019, starting with a single basic says. “Men’s clothes are all based on mea- Columbia Startup Lab. That summer, dress, the Alpha. (“It’s honestly appro- surements — collar size, inseam length, she focused on fundraising, bringing priate for every occasion, from work to a etc. Whereas women often have date,” Bigi says. “I would wear it to guess where they land on a every single day.”) The response mysterious and pretty arbitrary was overwhelming — Laws of numerical sizing scale.” Motion has been featured on the Bigi has always considered Today show and Good Morning herself a problem-solver. Grow- America and was named to Time ing up in Houston as the daugh- magazine’s list of the best inven- ter of two NASA scientists, she tions of 2019. The company has was raised to think critically now added a second dress as about the world around her and well as a blazer; all come in sev- to come up with practical solu- eral colors, and they’re designed tions when needed. So when it to work together. came to women’s clothing, she “Fashion may sound frivolous used the same skill set she’d to some, but research has found Laws of Motion’s Alpha dress. relied on since she was a child — that having a garment that fits math, science, and a lot of research — in over a million dollars in her first well can make an enormous difference to try to develop a better system. round. And over the next two years, in terms of confidence in the workplace,” The result is Bigi’s direct-to- she built her team strategically, taking Bigi says. “Women have made strides in consumer fashion line, Laws of Motion, the unusual step for a fashion company asking for equal pay and equal opportu- which uses data science and a propri- of bringing on two data scientists as nities. I see this as a small but vital piece etary algorithm to provide customers her first two hires. And she conducted in the puzzle.” with 144 “microsizes” that fall between extensive customer research, trying to Since the COVID-19 outbreak began, the traditional sizes 00 and 24. Custom- figure out how women shopped and Laws of Motion has taken on another ers answer a short “fit quiz” that takes what features were important to them. role: it has temporarily pivoted all pro- into account attributes like torso length, Based on what she learned, Bigi tried duction at its New York factory to make waist circumference, and bust size in to create a product that addressed all masks and gowns for local hospitals. addition to height, weight, age, and her customers’ concerns — down to the Additionally, it developed one new other factors. smallest details. For example, Laws of product — a silky bathrobe perfect for “Women carry volume differently Motion’s garments are machine-washable. lounging at home while on lockdown. on their bodies,” Bigi says. “Almost no The dresses have zippers with extra- The profits from the robe will help fund one is a perfect size two or twenty-two. long pulls, to make it easy for women its efforts to provide medical supplies to Statistically, we found that traditional to reach them, and they have sturdy first responders. COURTESY OF LAWS OF MOTION sizing only really fits 2 to 5 percent of reinforced pockets. “It’s a scary time, but morale on our the population.” It was also important to Bigi that team has never been higher,” Bigi says. Bigi had already been accepted into Laws of Motion practice sustainable, “We are focused on doing what we can Columbia Business School when she zero-waste manufacturing. After a to help the world get through this.” started thinking seriously about devel- customer orders an item, the clothing is — Rebecca Shapiro

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11.20_NETWORK-F.indd.20_NETWORK-F.indd 5500 44/21/20/21/20 22:51:51 PPMM ASK AN ALUM: TATTOO TRIVIA

Want a tattoo? Need to get rid of one? Norman Goldstein ’55CC, a former clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and an expert in the care and culture of body art, offers advice.

What would you say to someone who’s considering getting a tattoo? Think your ink through. A tattoo is permanent. Even if you get it removed, you’ll always have some kind of scar. I advise against names, especially of partners. After all, you might break up with that Tom, Dick, or Harry. Spell-check every- thing. You’d be surprised at how often tattoo artists misspell simple words like “beautiful” and “angel” — and be especially vigilant if your tattoo is in a language you don’t speak. Go to a licensed tattoo parlor, and if you have AIDS, sarcoma, or any severe medical problem, talk to your doctor fi rst.

What does removal usually cost? Does it hurt? Treatments aren’t that complicated but can cost thousands of dollars depending on the tattoo’s age and size. If the tattoo is older, the pigment will be deeper in your skin, so it will be harder to remove. Colored tattoos can also be more of a chal- lenge. If you want to get rid of a fi ve-year-old tattoo sleeve, for example, you’d need to get laser treatment about once a month for six months and that could cost $2,000 to $3,000. It doesn’t hurt, though. With an anesthetic, you don’t feel anything.

Why are tattoos so popular? They are an art form: living ink on living skin. You can learn a lot about someone by the choice and placement of a design Thank you Columbia on their body. Tattoos tell people who we are. I am seeing trends toward bigger tattoos and tattoos on younger women. and your awesome team of I also see more mothers and daughters getting matching staffers and alumni for having tattoos. Tattooed patients often ask me, “Should I get more?” the heart and synergy to provide I tell them it’s your skin. It’s your canvas. Life is short, so do what you want. unique opportunities for me Ìi>À]}ÀÜ>`yÕÀð What country has your favorite tattoo culture? Tattoos have been around for at least ten thousand years, Gratias tibi valde, and they are popular across cultures, but Japanese tattoos have always fascinated me. They’re slowly and carefully done. Deborah Romain I think they’re the most artistic body ink. Aside from their Founder beauty, they carry complex social meanings. For example, Japanese gang members have intricate total-body tattoos that symbolize belonging and power. We Design Your Vision You just retired after sixty years of clinical practice. Any plans to get your fi rst tattoo to mark the occasion? Probably not. I know if I got a tattoo, I wouldn’t stop. 718.208.8213 My body would be covered. debromain.com

— Rebecca Kelliher ’13BC Columbia Approved Task Order Vendor %GTVKƂGF/9&$'

11.20_NETWORK-F.indd.20_NETWORK-F.indd 5511 44/21/20/21/20 22:51:51 PPMM NETWORK Creative Space, Creative Mind

onald M. Rattner ’79CC, an architect and design consul- Dtant, believes that the way we organize and style our homes has a powerful effect on our happiness and productivity. Here Rattner shares tips adapted from his book My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation.

►open up your space Generally speaking, our minds oscillate between two cognitive styles. We sometimes refer to them as “right-brain” and “left-brain,” but more accurate terms are “creative” and “analytic.” We tend to use our cre- ative side when our surroundings feel open and expansive. Studies have shown that working in a room with a high ceiling, for example, can make us more receptive to new ideas and new ways of doing things. A constricted space, on the other hand, activates our analytic side — we become more rational, focused, and detail-oriented as we feel the space closing in on us. warm colors look like they’re advancing reasoning: one experiment found that Color can significantly impact how toward the eye. That’s why painting a people exposed to blue scored higher on we perceive space. Blue and other cool room blue will make it feel larger than creative-thinking exercises, while those colors are optically recessive, so they the same room painted red. There’s primed with the color red did better on appear to move away from us, while also evidence that color affects our analytical exercises.

bring nature inside Nature plays a huge role in how we think, feel, and act. This is unsurprising, given that human beings and their ancestors evolved in a natural environment. It’s TOP: ARNAUD MARTHOURET FOR REVELATEUR STUDIO; BOTTOM: STUDIOBUELL only in the last minute of the movie of our existence, so to speak, that we’ve pivoted to spending as much as 90 percent of our time indoors. When we’re deprived of natural stimuli, we’re less creative, happy, and healthy. Integrating elements of nature can help us de-stress and increase our capacity for problem-solving. Bring plants indoors, use natural materials like wood or stone, let in daylight, or incorporate natural sounds like running water. Even hanging a landscape on the wall can be restorative.

52 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_NETWORK-F.indd.20_NETWORK-F.indd 5522 44/21/20/21/20 22:51:51 PPMM NEWSMAKERS ►face outward Facing your ● Comedian and actress desk against a wall constricts your Amanda Seales ’05GSAS joined sense of space and perhaps your The Real, a nationally syndi- willingness to explore new ideas. cated daytime television talk It might even make you feel slightly show, as the fifth permanent anxious. The reason has to do with cohost. Seales is also a star of evolutionary psychology — early the HBO series Insecure. humans who chose habitats that allowed them to see what was in ● Ashley James ’09CC was front of them while protecting their named an associate curator of blind spots survived predators. contemporary art at New York’s Bottom line: to facilitate a positive Solomon R. Guggenheim mindset conducive to creativity, Museum, making her the first face into the room, with a wall or full-time Black curator in the solid element behind you. museum’s sixty-year history. James previously worked as a curator at the Brooklyn Museum. decorate wisely Despite the trend toward minimalism, less ● Robert A. Katzmann ’73CC won isn’t necessarily more. According the Vilcek Prize for Excellence, an to research, rooms that have visu- award that honors “champions ally arresting architectural features of immigrant causes.” Katzmann, and that are richly furnished with the chief judge of the United books, art, lamps, and personal States Court of Appeals for the mementos have a greater poten- Second Circuit, was recognized tial to inspire innovative thinking for his work broadening access to than pared-down, boxy spaces. legal representation for immi- grants in need.

● Morgan Parker ’10CC won the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for her collec- tion Magical Negro. Parker is the author of two other poetry collec- tions and a young-adult novel.

● The Financial Times named Roula Khalaf ’89SIPA as its editor in chief, making her the first woman to lead the 131-year-old newspaper. Khalaf has been with the paper for twenty-four years, most recently as its deputy editor. kick back and relax tion. It certainly worked for Mark ● Princess Francois ’11CC won A lot of creative people — especially Twain and Marcel Proust, both of the Milken Educator Award, writers — recline while working. They whom worked in bed. While your a $25,000 prize given to top say their ideas flow better this way. own bed probably isn’t an ideal mid-career education profes- Our brains function differently when place for creative problem-solving sionals. Francois is the assistant relaxed and lying down we’re — — you want to associate it with principal at Brooklyn’s Math, one study showed that people solve sleeping, not working — sofas and Engineering, and Science Acad- creative problems 10 percent faster in recliners are great additions to any emy, a charter high school.

TOP: LAURA MOSS; CENTER: ALEC HEMER; BOTTOM: KEITH CRONIN HEMER; BOTTOM: CENTER: ALEC MOSS; LAURA TOP: a recumbent rather than upright posi- creative space.

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UNIVERSITY NEWS AND VIEWS

Syrian refugee students get help with scholarship applications. SCHOLARSHIPS ESTABLISHED FOR DISPLACED STUDENTS

mong the tens of millions of people versity’s eighteen schools. It is open to foreign Aaround the world who have been forced nationals who are internally or externally from their homes in recent years by violence, displaced, with refugee status anywhere in persecution, or political instability are many the world, as well as people who have either young men and women who have had their received asylum or submitted an application education interrupted. for asylum in the United States. In response, Columbia University has “The program sends a powerful message launched a first-of-its-kind scholarship pro- about the role that colleges and universities gram for displaced students. Administered by should be playing to help young people whose Columbia Global Centers, the program will educations have been disrupted because they provide financial support for up to thirty stu- have been forced to flee violence and perse- dents annually, covering full tuition, housing, cution in their home countries,” says Presi- and cost-of-living expenses at any of the Uni- dent Lee C. Bollinger.

COLUMBIA TO CREATE CLIMATE SCHOOL resident Lee C. Bollinger, acting on the recommendation of a faculty task force set Pup to explore what Columbia can do to address global climate change, announced in January that the University plans to create a new school that will serve as its “central location for climate research and teaching.” While details of the new school’s structure and operation are still being worked out, TOP: SPARK / FLICKR; BOTTOM: EILEEN BARROSO a 104-page report issued by the task force suggests that it will initially focus on creat- ing climate-related courses for both undergraduate and graduate students. Most of its faculty will hold joint appointments with other Columbia schools and departments, and though it will not grant bachelor’s degrees at first, the school will likely offer joint master’s degrees in areas like climate and law, climate and journalism, or climate and the arts. Bollinger also announced that Columbia is creating the new position of chief climate officer to guide the University’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, with the goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050.

54 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_BULLETIN.indd.20_BULLETIN.indd 5454 44/23/20/23/20 99:20:20 AAMM GS LAUNCHES DUAL-DEGREE PROGRAM NEW PROFESSORSHIP WITH TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY HONORS HOWARD MCPARLIN DAVIS he School of General Studies is offering a new dual-degree Tprogram with Tel Aviv University in Israel, beginning this fall. ith a gift from an Students in the program, which is focused in the human- Wanonymous donor, the ities and social sciences, will spend two years at Tel Aviv University has established University before coming to Columbia to complete the Uni- an endowed professorship versity’s Core Curriculum and their major. They will receive a in honor of the late Howard bachelor’s degree from each institution. McParlin Davis, a longtime “By giving students the opportunity to study full-time at a Columbia teacher of Renais- top-tier university in the Middle East before bringing them to sance art. study in the Ivy League, we are ensuring that students will not The Howard McP. Davis only benefit from being immersed in a wide range of cultures Professorship of Art History and experiences but also make an immense contribution to will support a Columbia the Columbia undergraduate classroom,” says School of art historian of European Tel Aviv University General Studies dean Lisa Rosen-Metsch ’90GS. art and architecture in the period from 1300 to 1700. Davis, who passed away in THREE NEW MEMBERS APPOINTED TO BOARD OF TRUSTEES 1994, was a beloved professor to Columbia graduate and ean Dakolias ’89SEAS, from the Vagelos College of undergraduate students for DJonathan Rosand ’89CC, Physicians and Surgeons. more than four decades. He ’94PS, and Fermi Wang ’91SEAS The son of the late Columbia received several teaching have been appointed to the art historian David Rosand awards, including Columbia’s University’s Board of Trustees. ’59CC, ’65GSAS, ’14HON, he Mark Van Doren Award in Dakolias is the co–chief serves on the advisory council 1968 and the Great Teacher investment officer of the of Columbia’s Department of Award of the Society of Older credit-funds group at Fortress, Art History and Archaeology. Graduates of Columbia a New York–based firm that The Rosand family and their in 1970. A 1984 New York manages over $40 billion in friends endowed the David Times article about his retire- assets. While studying physics Rosand Professorship of Ital- ment that year called him at Columbia, Dakolias was a ian Renaissance Art History, “one of the finest teachers of member of the Lions’ light- and they support Columbia’s art history in the country.” weight crew team; he now study-abroad programs at The donor, one of Davis’s also serves on the engineering Casa Muraro in Venice. former students, seeks to school’s Board of Visitors Fermi Wang is the chief honor his legacy of rigor- and the University’s athletic executive officer and cofounder ous teaching. leadership committee. He of Ambarella, a company that Michael Cole, the chair of is cofounder of the Hellenic develops semiconductors for Columbia’s art history and Initiative, an organization use in the processing of digital archaeology department and that invests in the economic images and video, including a specialist in Renaissance renewal of Greece and helps video-security systems, and Baroque European art, refugees in that country. advanced driver-assistance will be the first recipient of Rosand, a neurologist technologies, and robotic the Davis Professorship. with expertise in the genet- applications. Wang earned his Cole, who joined Columbia ics of complex diseases, is a master’s and doctoral degrees in 2010, is widely considered professor at Harvard and a in electrical engineering at the leading American scholar member of the Broad Institute Columbia and received the of his generation in Renais- of MIT and Harvard. After engineering school’s 2018 sance art history. studying Greek and Latin at Thomas Egleston Medal “I am honored to hold a chair From top: Dean Dakolias, Columbia College, Rosand for his distinguished profes- Jonathan Rosand, and named in memory of such an

TOP: TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF COLUMBIA TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA COURTESY BOTTOM: UNIVERSITY; TEL AVIV TOP: earned his medical degree sional achievements. Fermi Wang. admired figure,” he says.

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 55

11.20_BULLETIN.indd.20_BULLETIN.indd 5555 44/23/20/23/20 99:20:20 AAMM BULLETIN COLUMBIA OFFERS NEW DUAL MASTER’S IN ISLAMIC STUDIES

olumbia University and Aga Khan University in London Care launching a dual master’s degree program in Islamic studies and Muslim cultures this fall. Students in the program will begin their studies at Columbia, finish at Aga Khan, and earn master’s degrees from both insti- tutions. They will receive intensive foreign-language instruc- tion in either Arabic or Farsi and design their own courses of study in areas like art and architecture in Muslim cultures, the Koran in Europe, and modern Muslim mobility. The program will be administered by Columbia’s Middle East Institute and Aga Khan’s Institute for the Study of Mus- lim Civilizations. Its inaugural director is the political scientist and sociologist Kathryn Spellman Poots, an associate professor Jianfei Zhu ’19LAW, Yuan Wang ’08LAW, and Yimei Lu ’14LAW prepare a at Aga Khan and a visiting associate professor at Columbia. shipment in Shanghai. “This partnership will foster the development of the theoretical and practical perspectives needed to understand ALUMNI ASSOCIATIONS IN ASIA OFFER how Muslim societies are responding to pressing global AID AND SUPPORT challenges,” says Ira Katznelson ’66CC, Columbia’s interim provost and the Ruggles Professor of Political Science and his spring, as word spread History. “At this moment in history, such an endeavor is Tthat hospitals in the especially important.” Northeast, including Colum- bia University Irving Medi- cal Center and its affiliates, THE LATTMAN LAW FIRM, LLC were experiencing a massive Advisors. Advocates. demand for personal protective equipment for doctors, nurses, 38 E. 64th St. #6 [email protected] New York, NY 10065 (646) 688 - 3999 and other personnel, members of Columbia’s vast Chinese alumni network quickly stepped forward to help. More than a dozen alumni Thomas Lo ’08PS associations across Greater Is youryour China, including the Colum- in-kind donations for hospi- bia Alumni Associations of tals in New York, New Jersey, estate plan Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Massachusetts. Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Amelia Alverson, executive inin order? Chengdu, came together to vice president for University donate millions of face masks development and alumni and thousands of goggles, relations, notes that there gloves, and protective suits. were so many offers of help Members of the Columbia that her Irving Medical It’s not always a comfortable question to ask. Alumni Association in Taiwan Center colleagues were However, it is a necessary one, especially now. also joined the efforts, helping overwhelmed by the volume to source and ship cases of of e-mails. The response not

Alumna Laura Lattman, CC’01, is pleased to offer COLUMBIA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION her firm’s estate planning and other services to the PDI Sani-Cloth AF3, a ger- only demonstrated altruism, Columbia Community at a courtesy discount during micidal disposable wipe that she says, but underscored the is in short supply. The alumni fact that “Columbia alumni these challenging times. Please get in touch and associations report that the are always ready to help solve allow the firm’s talented team to assist you. initiative has raised more real-world challenges and than $2 million in cash and engage on a global level.” LLF LLC

56 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_BULLETIN.indd.20_BULLETIN.indd 5656 44/23/20/23/20 99:20:20 AAMM ANIL K. RUSTGI NAMED INTERIM HEAD OF MEDICAL FACULTY

nil K. Rustgi, a prominent Aoncologist and cancer researcher who was recruited to Columbia last year to direct its Herbert Irving Com- prehensive Cancer Center, has been chosen to lead the University’s medical faculty on an interim basis, following Lee Goldman’s announcement

Sonalee Rau that he is stepping down after fourteen years in the position. ARMED WITH OVERDOSE MEDS, STUDENTS SAVE LIVES A search committee has been convened to find onalee Rau ’14CC was on her way to have intervened in the same way by Goldman’s successor. Smeet friends for a day of apple-pick- using naloxone, which is also sold as ing in upstate New York last fall when, Narcan. They learned to recognize the THE NORDIC PATH upon approaching the Metro-North train signs of opioid overdose and to admin- TO SUSTAINABILITY station at 125th Street in East Harlem, she ister naloxone in training sessions that saw a group of people gathered around a Columbia has been offering free to stu- anna Marin, Finland’s man lying unconscious on the sidewalk. dents, faculty, staff, and local residents Sthirty-four-year-old “I heard a woman yell, ‘I think it’s an since January 2018. prime minister, came to overdose,’” says Rau, a master’s student The training program was launched by Columbia to participate in in health policy and management at the Kellie Bryant, an associate professor at its World Leaders Forum on Mailman School of Public Health. the School of Nursing, who recognized March 6. In discussing her Rau, removing a container of the that the opioid crisis required a country’s aggressive efforts overdose-reversal drug naloxone that community-wide response in New York to become carbon-neutral by she had clipped to the strap of her bag, City, which has some of the highest rates 2035, she argued that, with bent down and administered a spray of of fatal overdoses. To date, the Univer- proper planning, economic the medication into one nostril while a sity, which works closely with the city’s prosperity and equality can bystander called 911. health department on the program, has be achieved in tandem with “Almost instantly, his eyes flickered,” distributed naloxone kits and provided environmental sustainability. says Rau. “I could see he was coming to, training to more than 2,500 people. “This is where the Nordic and I heard sirens, and FDNY was there.” Michael McNeil, the chief of admin- model comes to bear,” she Rau isn’t the only Columbia student istration for Columbia Health, says said. “I believe that open who may have prevented a stranger that researchers are also studying the markets, robust social from dying of an opioid overdose. In effectiveness of the program. He notes security, and a good-quality the span of less than a year, four others that while many overdose-prevention public health-care system are programs have been launched around just as essential to change as the US in recent years, there isn’t yet our energy [policy], taxation, a body of research to back up specific and carbon pricing. These intervention strategies. elements, together with free “Our team hopes to establish the education, help to ensure science that helps define best practices,” that during challenging says McNeil, who recently visited the times, one can focus on seek- White House with colleagues to pres- ing new opportunities.” ent key findings from the program. To watch video, visit A naloxone treatment kit. — Carla Cantor ’82SIPA TOP: BRUCE GILBERT; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF NYC HEALTH OF NYC COURTESY BOTTOM: GILBERT; BRUCE TOP: worldleaders.columbia.edu.

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 57

11.20_BULLETIN.indd.20_BULLETIN.indd 5757 44/23/20/23/20 99:20:20 AAMM BOOKS Until the End of Time By Brian Greene (Alfred A. Knopf)

hat we call science the Western outside their traditional intellectual stomp- world once called philosophy. ing ground” — a call, Greene says, that “in WBut when investigators of the decades since, as knowledge has become nature in the seventeenth increasingly specialized, a growing cohort of century realized that their observations were researchers has continued to sound.” jarringly at odds with the assumptions of the Greene’s new contribution to this move- ancient philosophers, they began calling them- ment surveys not only what we know of the selves “new philosophers.” Eventually, they history of the universe — the origin of its switched to calling themselves natural philoso- structures, elements, planets, and creatures phers and, later still, philosopher-scientists. — but how we think about those subjects, Even today’s plain old scientists, however, and how that tells us who we are. But who remain philosophers of a sort. “In the fullness are we? At this point Greene, like so many of time all that lives will die.” So begins Until interdisciplinarians, pauses. In his case, the the End of Time, Brian Greene’s ambitious pause refl ects the limitations of physics, attempt to reclaim science’s philosophical sub- including quantum mechanics, in addressing text and raise it to the level of conversational, the question — limitations Greene is happy often personal, and — despite that to acknowledge, if only because recognizing portentous beginning — witty text. them, cogito, ergo sum–style, is to be human. Greene, a Columbia professor Whatever his philosophical inclinations, of mathematics and physics, the Greene remains a physicist at heart, so cofounder of the World Science while his book leads us through myths and Festival, and a regular television religions, it also brings us to the extremes of guest expert, has been heading in space and time: to a solitary particle at the lip this direction throughout his writing of a black hole’s event horizon, the inscruta- career. His fi rst book, The Elegant ble balance in the cosmic equation. “Rerun Universe, popularized string theory the big bang but slightly shift this particle’s for a lay audience and established position or that fi eld’s value, and for virtually his ability to make sense of the any fi ddling the new cosmic unfolding will seemingly incomprehensible. His not include you or me,” Greene writes. Yet next books, The Fabric of the Cosmos here we are. “How spectacularly unlikely,” he and The Hidden Reality, sampled concludes. “How thrillingly magnifi cent.” the more amorphous subjects of Until the End of Time is a survey of the his- space, time, and parallel universes. tory and philosophy of science, not a radical In Until the End of Time he doesn’t quite rethinking of our relationship to the universe. abandon the confi nes of physics, but he does And so readers’ reactions will depend on how embrace pretty much every other science out they respond to their guide, who possesses an there, and he does so in the service of explor- unconventional mind that’s capable of recast- ing, as the subtitle says, “mind, matter, and our ing an eternal question as “Does a Roomba search for meaning in an evolving universe.” In possess the traditional quality of free will?” the manner of the natural philosophers of the When I asked myself what I thought of this eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Greene mind, I recalled an anecdote in a magazine has become a generalist. profi le of Greene. His then girlfriend inadver- Or at least an interdisciplinarian. He tently abandons him at a party, leaving him explicitly acknowledges the infl uence of listening to a boor for an hour, but when she What Is Life?, the 1944 collection of Erwin returns, he dismisses her apologies. “I was Schrödinger’s lectures. Schrödinger, Greene solving equations,” he says. writes, “encouraged thinkers to extend the I don’t know about you, but that’s my kind reach of their expertise by exploring realms of mind. — Richard Panek

58 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_BOOKS.indd.20_BOOKS.indd 5858 44/23/20/23/20 111:301:30 AAMM Teen Beat!

In recent years, the popularity of young adult, or YA, books has exploded. These three new YA novels by Colum- Th e Splendid bia alumni have everything that makes the genre great — escapism, fantasy, and the Vile romance, and a hearty dose of nostalgia. By Erik Larson ’78JRN (Crown) AGAIN AGAIN By E. Lockhart ’98GSAS E. Lockhart — a National Book Award fi nalist and the author of two YA rik Larson ’78JRN is known He details Churchill’s marriage, bestsellers — has established herself for looking at history through a capturing the quotidian squabbles with as a master of the jaw-dropping plot Enovelistic lens — for recreating his wife, Clementine. One day “Churchill twist. Her new novel follows Adelaide the intimate details behind piv- was unusually crabby,” writes Larson. Buchwald through a summer of uncer- otal moments. His 2015 bestseller Dead “The proximate cause had nothing to do tainty after a family crisis throws her Wake detailed “the myriad forces, large with the war or Roosevelt but, rather, life into upheaval. It’s best to go into and achingly small” that resulted in the with his discovery that Clementine had Lockhart’s books knowing as little as sinking of the Lusitania. The Devil in used his treasured honey, sent to him possible, but we can say that this one the White City recounted the true tale of from Queensland, Australia, for the friv- is full of love, possibility, and a lot of a serial killer at the 1893 World’s Fair. olous objective of sweetening rhubarb.” very good dogs. In his latest book, The Splendid and We witness Churchill’s delight in his the Vile, Larson turns his attention to youngest daughter, Mary; his disap- THE MALL By Megan McCaff erty ’95CC Winston Churchill ’46HON, examin- pointment with his son, Randolph, It’s 1991, those halcyon days when it ing his daily life during his fi rst year as an inveterate gambler; his passion for seemed like everything happened at the prime minister, when Hitler was leading entertaining; and his sense of playful- mall. Cassie Worthy has it all fi gured a devastating blitzkrieg against the ness. We also understand that Churchill, out — an acceptance letter to Barnard, United Kingdom. for all his bluster, was an empathetic a cute boyfriend, and a job at the food Inviting the reader into top-secret soul who cried easily and was fully court. But then a brutal case of mono meetings within the cabinet war rooms, cognizant of the burden of his position. ruins everything. Will Cassie be able Larson shows us how the British Larson writes of the time Churchill to pick herself up and fi nd new love Bulldog deftly emboldened a small visited the city of Bristol after a bomb- between the Sam Goody and the Orange nation to embrace its “fi nest hour,” ing: “Churchill waved at the crowd Julius? Megan McCaff erty departs from while simultaneously betraying enough from the windows, and kept waving her best-selling Jessica Darling series to vulnerability to forge a crucial alliance until the train was out of sight. Then, conjure this charming throwback. with Franklin D. Roosevelt ’08HON. reaching for a newspaper, he sat back We see the statesman climbing onto the and raised the paper to mask his LOVEBOAT, TAIPEI By Abigail Hing roof of 10 Downing Street to watch the tears. ‘They have such confi dence,’ he Wen ’04LAW Every summer, teens bombs fall and understand the Führer’s said. ‘It is a grave responsibility.’” from around the world travel to Taiwan frustration with the symbolic and actual Relying on sources that include the dia- for what their parents think is a strictly power of Churchill’s stubborn resistance. ries of Churchill’s personal secretary and educational language-immersion This is the Churchill most familiar to those of his daughter Mary, along with program. In reality, adult supervision us: a master orator, bellicose, belliger- a trove of letters and newly declassifi ed is rare, the sake fl ows like water, and ent, and bullying. A man with a tight government documents, Larson invites things quickly get steamy. For the elite grip on his cigar and his sense of destiny. us to take another look at the statesman teens of the Chinese diaspora, it’s a But Larson’s whole oeuvre is built on we thought we knew. He remains, as rare taste of total freedom. Abigail subverting the familiar, and though always, unerringly faithful to history, and Hing Wen’s fi rst novel — already being Churchill’s life has already been dutifully still he manages to puncture the hagi- called Crazy Rich Asians for the YA set recorded in multiple biographies and ography to create a fresh portrait of this — debuted at number nine on the autobiographies, Larson can still sur- courageous and complicated leader. New York Times bestseller list, and plans prise us with his tender insights. — Jeff rey Saks are in the works for a movie adaptation.

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 59

11.20_BOOKS.indd.20_BOOKS.indd 5959 44/23/20/23/20 111:301:30 AAMM BOOKS Sharks in the Time of Saviors

By Kawai Strong Washburn ’08SIPA (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

ainoa (Noa) Flores is seven gift, begins to buckle under the burden to intensify. When tragedy strikes, years old when his family of supporting his family’s fi nances and in a beautifully drawn but utterly Ntakes a boat tour in their his community’s health. And when his heart-wrenching sequence of events, native Hawaii — a common gift wavers, he wonders if it was ever they fi nd themselves banding together activity for tourists, but a rare treat there at all or just a story the family again, drawn to their homeland as if for working-class locals like them. told themselves. by a magnet. Then something remarkable happens Though the ancient legend provides But perhaps the most central myth that will change the family forever: the backbone of the book, Washburn of the novel is that of Hawaii itself. In Noa falls overboard into shark-infested expertly fi ts it into a very modern story, the American imagination, Hawaii is waters. But instead of mauling him, synonymous with vacation, a paradise the sharks carry Noa gently in their put on earth specifi cally to serve as a mouths, returning him to the boat respite from real life. Without seem- unharmed. “And this,” says Noa’s ing preachy, Washburn — a native of mother, Malia, “was when I started Hawaii’s Big Island who now lives on to believe.” the mainland — fi rmly lays that idea Malia — the matriarch of the family to rest. The author makes it clear that that Kawai Strong Washburn ’08SIPA Hawaii is full of the same real life that conjures in his standout debut novel, tourists (disparagingly called haoles, or Sharks in the Time of Saviors — is foreigners) are trying to escape: unpaid desperate for something to put her faith bills, mental illness, addiction, hunger, in. She and her husband have recently homelessness, squandered opportuni- moved the family from the Big Island, ties. Native Hawaiians are caught in where they worked as laborers on a a painful paradox, now utterly depen- sugarcane plantation, to Oahu, and dent for survival on the tourism that they are drowning in debt. Noa’s rescue stole their homeland. “The kingdom of is miraculous not only because his life is Hawai‘i had long been broken — the spared but because it echoes an ancient breathing rain forests and singing green Hawaiian legend that Malia remembers reefs crushed under the haole fi sts of from her childhood — one that suggests beach resorts and skyscrapers.” that Noa, now anointed, will be the Both the New York Times and savior of his family, perhaps even of his Oprah have heralded Washburn as an people. Initially that prophecy seems to exciting new literary voice, and with come true when Noa’s touch appears to full of its own kind of myths. For the good reason. A passionate climate heal a friend’s wound after an accident. Flores family, there is the myth of the activist, Washburn imbues his writing Soon the entire community is waiting mainland: the idea that opportunity is with an ardent respect for his native to see the “miracle boy,” hoping that just an ocean away. “I’m going to take land and a clear warning about the he’ll cure their ailments. For the Flores us all away from this,” Dean thinks. dangers of treating it, as mainland family, Noa’s blessing is the windfall “I’m gonna make it so that can’t no one America has done for a century, like they need: the people who come to see order us around for anything.” Amaz- a theme park. His prose is as lush as Noa will pay. ingly, they do all make it to that prom- the islands that he writes about, and But it’s also clear that the mira- ised land — Noa gets a scholarship to he uses it to create an opus that is cle will exact a price. Noa’s siblings, Stanford, Dean an off er to play college both deeply specifi c to Hawaii and despite signifi cant talents of their basketball in Spokane, and Kaui an full of universal themes — the own — his older brother, Dean, is opportunity to study science in San tensions between magic and reality, an exceptional basketball player and Diego — but of course their demons expectation and disappointment, his younger sister, Kaui, an accom- follow them off the plane. And with and, perhaps most importantly, plished student — grow up bitter in his the family fractured, strewn across exile and home. shadow. Noa, who never asked for his the West Coast, their struggles seem — Rebecca Shapiro

60 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_BOOKS.indd.20_BOOKS.indd 6060 44/23/20/23/20 111:301:30 AAMM READING LIST New and noteworthy AMERICAN HARVEST By Marie Mutsuki Mockett releases ’92CC Marie Mutsuki Mockett has spent most of her DEACON KING KONG life on America’s liberal coasts By James McBride — she was raised in a hippie ’80JRN Deacon Cuffy enclave in California and Lambkin — or Sportcoat, earned a degree in East Asian as he’s known around his studies from Columbia — Brooklyn housing project but her father grew up — is a “walking genius, a in the heartland, on a human disaster, a sod, a seven-thousand-acre wheat medical miracle, and the farm. When Mockett inherits greatest baseball umpire the land, she decides that she that the Cause Houses had needs to learn more about ever seen.” But one evening it — and more importantly, in September of 1969, about the people who work Sportcoat shoots the proj- the soil. Mockett accepts a ect’s biggest drug dealer, set- harvest-season invitation to ting in motion a convoluted travel along the “wheat trail” (and often hilarious) chain (a loop from Idaho to Texas) of events. Sportcoat is one with a group of evangelical of James McBride’s most Christian migrant workers. memorable characters, and The divide between Mockett’s SOME ASSEMBLY AND THEN THEY the world that he inhabits is America and this rural, REQUIRED STOPPED TALKING TO ME richly, perfectly drawn. conservative one is stark, but By Neil Shubin ’82CC By Judith Warner ’90GSAS Mockett creates a nuanced, There are some aspects When Judith Warner’s AMNESTY By Aravind empathetic portrait of a vast of evolution that, to the daughter entered middle Adiga ’97CC What happens region little understood by layperson, are difficult to school, it seemed like mother when an undocumented coast dwellers. parse. For example, how did and daughter were both immigrant must decide certain traits necessary for struggling — her daughter between his own fate IF I HAD YOUR FACE survival (such as lungs for with the social dynamics of and the common good? By Frances Cha ’11SOA land-dwelling animals or this new world and Warner Danny (born Dhananjaya In South Korea, nearly a third feathers for birds) develop with finding the tools to Rajaratnam) is a Sri Lankan of women between the ages slowly over time? And how help her. So the best-selling refugee living a quiet life as of nineteen and twenty-nine did ancient species survive author decided to learn a housecleaner in Sydney, have had some form of without them? Enter Neil more, interviewing parents, Australia. Then he learns appearance-altering surgery Shubin, a University of educators, scientists, and that one of his clients has or procedure. But what is it Chicago biology professor other experts. She found that been murdered, and Danny like for a young woman to who is uniquely talented at some adolescent struggles might have information live in a society with such explaining these challenging are biological — there is that could lead police to crushingly unrealistic stan- concepts to a general a second wave of brain her killer. But if he comes dards of beauty? Frances Cha audience. His latest book development between ages forward, he risks immediate explores that question in her takes readers through eleven and fourteen — but deportation. With his latest complex debut novel, which some of the big questions that many are exacerbated by book, Aravind Adiga — the follows four working-class of evolution and reveals well-meaning but overbear- Booker Prize–winning women living in the same how DNA technology has ing, often achievement- author of The White Tiger — apartment building in Seoul. completely changed the obsessed parenting. Her creates a fascinating parable For all the women, financial field over the last fifty years, book offers practical advice that exposes some of the stability hinges entirely on providing answers on how parents can avoid unintended consequences of beauty, a disturbing but to mysteries we once this path and work to raise draconian immigration law. fascinating premise. thought unknowable. caring, moral teenagers.

COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 61

11.20_BOOKS.indd.20_BOOKS.indd 6161 44/23/20/23/20 111:301:30 AAMM BOOKTALK How to Get Th at Dream Job Reynold Levy ’73LAW has led many infl uential nonprofi ts, including the Robin Hood Foundation, Lincoln Center, and the International Rescue Committee. In his new book, Start Now, he gives advice on building a career that offers both professional and personal satisfaction.

It requires frequent communication CM: Does that mean they need a new job? with current and former colleagues, RL: Perhaps, but for many that emp- classmates, friends, and acquain- tiness and drift is only tangentially tances. In the quest for that dream job, connected to their vocation. I often hustle eats strategy for breakfast, and advise people who feel as if they are connecting with people on social media in a professional rut to look outside of is not enough. My advice would be to work. How can you reconfi gure your look at your calendar every month and life to leave more room for personal ask yourself, “Who am I talking to this growth, social connection, and civic month? Who am I meeting with? What engagement? How can you contribute am I reading?” Give me the answers to to your community? those three questions, and I will predict Those who fi nd their jobs less than Columbia Magazine: We get the sense whether your career journey is going to fulfi lling may well fi nd that their par- that matching people with meaningful be a productive one. ticipation in church, volunteer work, work is something of a mission for you. mentoring, or some other public service Reynold Levy: It’s less of a mission and CM: Levels of job satisfaction are pretty delivers a great deal of satisfaction. more of a calling — and I mean that lit- low right now. Why is that? erally. As someone who’s been actively RL: Managing people — attracting CM: Any specifi c advice for fellow alumni? involved in several philanthropic them, recruiting them, and then RL: The alumni network is important, enterprises, I’m often called upon to motivating them with recognition and but I would encourage Columbians to off er advice. What I’ve learned over the professional development — is an art reach outside it to more diverse groups. years is that people want to lead a life form. It’s also hard work, and unfortu- They should indulge their intellectual that matters, and that includes fi nding nately many people aren’t very good at and social curiosity but also test them- meaningful, soul-satisfying, productive, it. Another factor is that in the last few selves by volunteering and consulting. and lucrative work. With Start Now my decades, the working and middle classes It’s not enough to fi nd out what you’re objective was to capture the lessons I’ve have not seen signifi cant wage increases. good at: you also have to fi nd out what learned and off er a thoughtful guide to If they are working hard but not enjoy- gives you gratifi cation. It’s easy to get fi nding not just a job but a job that fi ts ing the fi nancial benefi ts of doing so, too comfortable and slip into profes- you like a bespoke suit. they probably feel like they’re running sional ruts, so I encourage all types on a treadmill. of exploration. But I’m also a realist. CM: What’s the best way to fi nd There are limits to the number of peo- meaningful employment? CM: But many people who come to you ple we can meet, the organizations we RL: The key is to take control of your for advice are enjoying lucrative careers. can encounter, and the network we can career development. If you want to fi nd RL: Well, they could be in jobs that nurture. That’s why I also suggest pur- a better job, make a career shift, or get position them for success but not for poseful reading. Reading gives us a bet- a promotion you should be preparing social consequence. For example, a ter appreciation of the world and our for that transition well before you have lawyer might have wanted to make place in it. Exposure to personalities, to make it. The book is called Start senior partner, and now, fi fteen years ideas, and institutions in books and Now because the worst time to look for later, he or she might have reached that periodicals will help you in your pursuit a meaningful job is when you need one. goal and be looking around thinking, of a deeply informed and enriching “This can’t be all there is.” People often life. Fortunately, I have no reservations CM: So you should be building a network? start to feel burnout, boredom, and about recommending reading to my JONNY RUZZO RL: Yes, and building a network of stress because they know something is fellow alumni. Columbians are gluttons real relationships is time-consuming. missing from their lives. for intellectual punishment. — Sally Lee

62 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_BOOKS.indd.20_BOOKS.indd 6262 44/23/20/23/20 111:311:31 AAMM CLASSIFIEDS

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COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020 63

11.20_BOOKS.indd.20_BOOKS.indd 6363 44/23/20/23/20 111:311:31 AAMM RARE FINDS

WHAT IS IT? Joseph Pulitzer’s writing desk

WHEN WAS IT MADE? Early 1880s

WHERE CAN I FIND IT? Pulitzer Hall, seventh fl oor

A Prize of a Desk

he Wooton Desk Company of Indi- slant and attacking the robber barons who anapolis sprang up in 1870 at the orchestrated plunder from behind their own Tdawn of the Gilded Age, resulting wide-winged Wootons. Engaged in a circu- in expansive desks that seemed to lation war with Hearst’s New York Journal, express the limitlessness of America. Captains the World traffi cked in fake news: baseless of industry like oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller reports that Spain had bombed the USS and railroad magnate Jay Gould each owned Maine in Havana harbor helped to drum up one, and in 1883, Joseph Pulitzer, the new edi- an actual war. tor and publisher of the New York World, got a Chastened, Pulitzer retreated from yellow Wooton of his own. Pulitzer, who had come to journalism and became a philanthropic pro- America from Hungary at seventeen with little moter of the press’s role as the backbone of money or English, was now, at thirty-six, shop- a functioning democracy. He gave Columbia ping like a proper plutocrat. His hand-carved $2 million to start the nation’s fi rst graduate Patent Cabinet Secretary, with ten drawers, journalism school, which opened in 1912, ninety-nine compartments, and two mail slots, and also endow the Pulitzer Prizes, adminis- would sit in Pulitzer’s offi ce at theWorld for tered at Columbia since 1917. the next twenty-eight years. Pulitzer died in 1911, and after the World Truth be told, Pulitzer never spent much folded in 1931, his family sold his desk to time at the desk. Affl icted with multiple James Wright Brown, owner of Editor & ailments, he was more likely to be found on Publisher magazine. Brown donated it to his outsize yacht, the Liberty, in the care of Columbia in 1941. Today the desk sits on doctors. Still, from his sickbed he shaped the the seventh fl oor of the building that bears

World into a showcase of innovation (illus- Pulitzer’s name. It is still in excellent condi- LEN SMALL trations, sensationalism, comics, sports), tion — the desk of a man who was never cut honing the paper’s populist-progressive out for a desk job.

64 COLUMBIA SPRING/SUMMER 2020

11.20_RARE-FINDS.indd.20_RARE-FINDS.indd 6644 44/21/20/21/20 111:531:53 AAMM Mary J. Future Resident Solange R. Purchase College Student

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11.20_RARE-FINDS.indd.20_RARE-FINDS.indd 6655 44/20/20/20/20 44:11:11 PPMM Columbia Alumni Center Non-Profi t Org. COLUMBIA 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 U.S. Postage Paid MAGAZINE New York, NY 10025 Columbia Magazine

Columbia scientists work in a genomics lab. Photo: Alan S. Orling

Keith Goggin ’91JRN, Columbia Alumni Association (CAA) Chair

“I give because I’m inspired by the resilient students who are determined to make a positive impact on our world, despite today’s challenges.”

Giving through Columbia has an immediate impact on students and fuels the University’s mission of research, teaching, patient care, and global problem solving.

Make your gift now at giving.columbia.edu/resilience

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