Works in Wood Architecture and Ecology in Japan

The U.S. Economy • Ian Frazier • Cleaning China’s Air

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008 • $4.95

Works in Wood Architecture and ecology in Japan

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2008 VOLUME 111, NUMBER 1

FEATURES 27 The Economic Agenda Six serious challenges facing the next president of the United States by Lawrence H. Summers JON CHASE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE page 51 32 Greening China DEPARTMENTS Social-science and public-health tools point toward market-based solutions for the fast-growing nation’s severe air-pollution problems 2 Cambridge 02138 by Mun S. Ho and Dale W. Jorgenson Communications from our readers 8 Right Now Teens’ developing brains, 38 Vita: Albert Bickmore

hidden math connections, O Brief life of a museum impresario: 1839-1914

M mongoose-guided de-mining, O Victoria Cain H T by L rushed judgment on U A P drug safety page 8 16 Montage 40 Seriously Funny Building with bales, Irish literary pages, Writer Ian Frazier combines the disciplines of historian untangling Enron, a facile forger, writing and humorist for young adults, and more by Craig Lambert 24A New England Regional Section A calendar of seasonal events, auction 44 Works and Woods page 54 action, wine and dining with an Italian An art historian finds a strong and long-lasting

accent connection between Japanese architecture and the archipelago’s forest ecology JIM HARRISON 67 The Alumni by Paul Gleason Women rabbis, HAA’s leader as a life-long learner, and more John Harvard’s Journal 72 The College Pump 51 Lowering the Lowell House bells, Medical School The hurricane-softened side of President Conant strategy, community doctoring, behavioral economist, 84 Treasure freshman wake-up call, the University’s first executive Murder and mayhem broadsides vice president, an action plan to reduce greenhouse-gas 73 Crimson Classiﬁeds emissions, balancing faculty expertise and students’ fields of study, early Audubon drawings, engineering On the cover: Art historian as a liberal art, Crimson outpost in China, Allston’s Yukio Lippit in the Japanese free-form science structure, the “Undergraduate” merchant’s house at the Boston Children’s Museum. resumes rookie status, soccer stalwart’s rugged style, Photograph by Jim Harrison and a preview of fall sports

ROBERT NEUBECKER page 27 Harvard Magazine 3 www.harvardmagazine.com LETTERS

Editor: John S. Rosenberg Senior Editor: Jean Martin Managing Editor: Jonathan S. Shaw Deputy Editor: Craig Lambert 02138 Associate Editor: Elizabeth Gudrais Cambridge Production and New Media Manager: Mark Felton Assistant Editor: Nell Porter Brown Tuberculosis, space and time, military matters Staff Writer: Paul Gleason Associate Web Developer: Blaise Freeman Art Director: Jennifer Carling Acting Art Director: Vera Leung INCOME INEQUALITY Berta Greenwald Ledecky “Unequal america” (July-August, page Undergraduate Fellows Samuel Bjork, Liz Goodwin 22, by Elizabeth Gudrais) suggests that Editorial Intern: some obviously bright, talented Harvard Kameron A. Collins scholars are proposing a solution and are Contributing Editors earnestly in search of a problem to justify their solution. The solution they propose John T. Bethell, John de Cuevas, Adam is a system of redistribution of wealth, Goodheart, Jim Harrison, Harbour Fraser Hodder, Christopher S. Johnson, and the problem they seek to posit as Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, justification is the gap between the most Christopher Reed, Deborah Smullyan, wealthy citizens and the least a±uent. Mark Steele, Janet Tassel The evidence they o≠er in support of Editorial and Business O≠ice their contention that this gap poses a seri- 7 Ware Street, ous problem ranges from slim to none. Nor Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 do they o≠er much support for their solu- Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 tion. They basically ignore the absence Website: www.harvardmagazine.com from the Constitution of any indication Reader services: that it contemplates such redistribution as the proposal would hardly be embraced by 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499 a goal, or that it has vested Congress with George Washington. HARVARD MAGAZINE INC. such power. They do candidly imply that The best evidence they can muster in President: Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98. Directors: Richard SOCIAL-SCIENCE SOLUTIONS H. Gilman, M.B.A. ’83, Leslie E. Harvard has formidable strengths in the social sciences (see “Harvard by the Greis ’80, Alex S. Jones, NF ’82, Bill Numbers,” page 58). In this issue, we highlight some of that expertise, inviting two Kovach, NF ’89, Tamara Elliott Rogers ’74, Kay Kaufman Shelemay, senior faculty members and a colleague to illuminate pressing current issues. A. Clayton Spencer, A.M. ’82, Richard Tuck Eliot University Professor Lawrence H. Summers o≠ers a synoptic overview of Harvard Magazine (ISSN 0095-2427) is published bimonthly the economic challenges facing the next president of the United States (“The Eco- by Harvard Magazine Inc., a nonprofit corporation, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, phone 617- nomic Agenda,” page 27). Drawing on a range of current data and research, and his 495-5746; fax 617-495-0324. The magazine is supported by own experience at the World Bank and U.S. Department of the Treasury, Summers reader contributions and subscriptions, advertising revenue, and a subvention from Harvard University. Its edi- vividly illustrates the value of the broader, longer-term perspective that the acad- torial content is the responsibility of the editors. Periodi- emy can lend to policymakers—even as he suggests priorities, ranging from up- cals postage paid at Boston, Mass., and additional mailing o≠ices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Circulation dated regulation to the embrace of globalization, that may discomfit public leaders Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cam- bridge, Mass. 02138-4037. Subscription rate $30 a year in from across the political spectrum. U.S. and possessions, $55 Canada and Mexico, $75 other Morris University Professor Dale W. Jorgenson and Mun S. Ho, a fellow of the In- foreign. (Allow up to 10 weeks for first delivery.) Sub- scription orders and customer service inquiries should be stitute for Quantitative Social Science, address China’s severe air pollution. Their sent to the Circulation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 article is the latest fruit of the University Center on the Environment’s interdisci- Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, or call 617- 495-5746 or 800-648-4499, or e-mail addresschanges@har- plinary China Project. That multiyear e≠ort, involving American and Chinese schol- vard.edu. Single copies $4.95, plus $2.50 for postage and handling. Manuscript submissions are welcome, but we ars, aims to understand China’s atmospheric environment, to quantify pollution cannot assume responsibility for safekeeping. Include and health e≠ects, and to find solutions. Jorgenson and Ho’s essay (“Greening stamped, self-addressed envelope for manuscript return. Persons wishing to reprint any portion of Harvard China,” page 32) showcases the use of current social-science and public-health Magazine’s contents are required to write in advance for permission. Address inquiries to Catherine A. techniques to devise e∞cient pollution-control policies—with clear implications Chute, publisher, at the address given above. for the larger problem of global warming as well. The Editors Copyright © 2008 Harvard Magazine Inc.

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133533_1_v1 1 5/6/08 7:48:02 PM LETTERS support of their proposal is the experi- ridiculously overpaid, such as many ence of the Scandinavian countries, yet CEOs, Wall Street investment bankers, they do not mention that these countries professional athletes, and entertainment have in recent years tried to step back celebrities, it loses much of its appeal from their extreme cradle-to-grave wel- when it’s applied to most of us and, I Publisher: Catherine A. Chute fare systems. should think, when applied to Harvard Finance and Administrative Manager The proposal for redistribution of faculty. I don’t have so much confidence Irina Kuksin Director of Circulation and Fundraising wealth is in e≠ect a proposal to soak the in the Congress that I want them decid- rich, a populist approach that most of us ing in e≠ect what each of us is worth. Be- Felecia Carter Integrated Marketing Director probably don’t get very excited about. sides, that has never been their purpose. Henry C. Roemer Jr. ’45 Cara Ferragamo Murray Unfortunately, experience teaches that Director of Advertising soaking the rich never brings in enough Winston-Salem, N.C. Robert D. Fitta revenue to satisfy the ever expanding, in- Advertising Account Manager “Unequal america” satiable needs of a tax-and-spend govern- dissects a growing Myha Danner ment—eventually the taxing authority problem that badly needs dissection! I Integrated Marketing Design Manager reaches ever deeper until it punishes all of hope it will lead to much less inequality Jennifer Beaumont us, just as is the case in Scandinavia. of wealth in the United States. Classified Advertising Manager It’s a pity these learned Harvard schol- The article did o≠er some ways to level Gretchen Bostr0m ars don’t seem to be applying their consid- the playing field: more college opportuni- Circulation and Fundraising Manager: erable skills to the solution of some of the ties for the poorer group and more living Lucia Whalen more obvious causes of inequality, and of locations that are more inviting than Office Manager: Sylvie Papazian poverty, in our society: dysfunctional par- “inner cities.” It did not touch on two Gift Processor: Sarha J. Caraballo enting; abuse of alcohol; illicit drug use; more that I would advocate, even though and our 25 percent illegitimacy rate (it I am a graduate of Harvard Business IVY LEAGUE MAGAZINE NETWORK seems axiomatic that having children School. One is the insu∞cient inheritance Tel. 617-496-7207 Associate Publisher, Sales without the benefit of a partner to help tax that permits children to acquire Lawrence J. Brittan, Tel. 631-754-4264 pay the bills is in most cases a virtual guar- wealth without any e≠ort on their part. I New York Advertising Sales antee of poverty). I pretermit altogether can’t go so far as to eliminate inheritance Beth Bernstein, Tel. 908-654-5050 such issues as crime, which is said by some by taxation, but I agree with Warren Buf- Mary Anne MacLean, Tel. 631-367-1988 to be the cause, and by others the result, of fett, of all people, that inheritance taxes Travel Advertising Sales poverty; prematurely dropping out of should be large enough to prevent instant Northeast Media Inc., Tel. 203-255-8800 school, which, while crippling, in some child multimillionaires, with a minimum Midwest Advertising Sales cases can itself be due to poverty; and a tax of 35 percent. This will reduce consid- Nugent Media Group, Tel. 773-755-9051 welfare system that many believe is fre- erably the wealth inequality. Detroit Advertising Sales quently an enabler and perpetuater of The other correlates with the above: an Heth Media Tel. 248-318-9489 poverty and inequality rather than a res- increase in the top levels of federal in- Southwest Advertising Sales cuer. come tax from the present 36 percent up Daniel Kellner, Tel. 972-529-9687 In sum, one has the feeling that what is to 50 percent in stair-steps. I remember West Coast Advertising Sales being promoted is not a solution for an when President Reagan reduced the Virtus Media Sales, Tel. 310-478-3833 identified problem, but a political move- higher levels of income tax considerably. West Coast Travel Advertising Sales ment built around the notion that some- A multimillionaire friend of mine could The Holleran Group, Tel. 707-935-9296 one, presumably the Congress, should de- not believe the lovely bonanza he was Board of Incorporators cide what each of us is worth. While that handed. Very wealthy people do not need This magazine, at first called the Harvard Bulletin, was may have some slight attraction when ap- any largess, as their tax accountants will founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was chartered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s gover- plied to people regarded by a lot of us as invent many ways to reduce their taxes. nance. The membership is as follows: Stephen J. Bailey, Proceeds from these two tax increases AMP ’94; Je≠rey S. Behrens ’89, William I. Bennett ’62, HEAR (AND SEE) ALL ABOUT IT M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. Bol; Fox Butterfield can go toward the improved education ’61, A.M. ’64; Sewell Chan ’98, Jonathan S. Cohn ’91; Harvard Magazine’s website o≠ers and nicer living areas for poorer people. I Philip M. Cronin ’53, J.D. ’56; John de Cuevas ’52; Casimir de Rham ’46, J.D. ’49; James F. Dwinell III ’62; Anne Fadi- multimedia content complementing expect and welcome much debate about man ’74; Benjamin M. Friedman ’66, Ph.D. ’71; Robert H. several stories in each issue. You can these changes, so let’s have at it! Giles, Nf ’66; Owen Gingerich, Ph.D. ’62; Adam K. Good- hear Ian Frazier (page 40) read from David E. Walling, M.B.A. ’40 heart ’92; Max Hall, Nf ’50; Philip C. Haughey ’57, Brian R. Hecht ’92; Sarah Bla≠er Hrdy ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Ellen his work, see images of the polluted air Two Rivers, Wisc. Hume ’68; Alex S. Jones, Nf ’82; Bill Kovach, Nf ’89; Flo- of Beijing (page 32), and more (look for rence Ladd, BI ’72; Anthony Lewis ’48, Nf ’57; Scott Malkin ’80, J.D./M.B.A. ’83; Lisa L. Martin, Ph.D. ’90; the icon). Elizabeth gudrais’s article reflects David McClintick ’62; John P. Reardon Jr. ’60; Christo- News updates and other Harvard’s institutional bias for engineer- pher Reed; Harriet Ritvo ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Henry Rosovsky, Jf ’57, Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98; Barbara Rudolph ’77; Robert N. contents also appear fre- ing equal individual outcomes regardless Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78; Theda Skocpol, Ph.D. ’75; Peter A. quently on line at www.har- of the e≠ect on long-term economic per- Spiers ’76; Scott H. Stossel ’91; William O. Taylor ’54; Sherry Turkle ’69, Ph.D. ’76; Robert H. Weiss ’54; Eliza- vardmagazine.com. formance. (The “hurt feelings” argument beth Winship ’43; Jan Ziolkowski. of relative deprivation, in particular, does

4 September - October 2008 LETTERS not seem to be a compelling basis for economic policy.) But as long as Harvard is promoting “fairness,” why stop at support for redis- tributing personal income? Maybe Har- “ I wished to pay back for all vard should encourage a compassionate government to redistribute the income from Harvard’s own endowment (if not the actual principal) to all those poor stu- of the wonderful things a dents and institutions that would otherwise be doomed to a life with less. In the same spirit, maybe all Harvard Harvard education provided students should be given the same grades, and all faculty tenure, regardless of the quality of their work. I’m sure lower achievers have hurt feelings. Shouldn’t for me, but I also needed to Harvard have the integrity to support “fairness” above academic excellence? Kathleen Bybee ’78 be sure I had enough money West Windsor, N.J.

Thank you for addressing the issue of “Unequal America.” As someone who has for retirement.” worked on both sides of the growing gap, I can attest to how deep it is. I was fortu- K. DANIEL RIEW AB ’80 nate enough to attend Princeton and Har- vard Business School and then work for McKinsey and a high-tech company in Silicon Valley. Six years ago I joined the nonprofit Boys & Girls Clubs of the Age Rate There are many ways to structure Peninsula in Menlo Park, where we serve 60 5.8% disadvantaged kids in the poorest neigh- a Harvard gift annuity—see if borhoods on the Bay Area peninsula. 65 5.9 The achievement gap between our di- 70 6.2 one can meet your charitable and verse schools and populations is a persis- 75 6.9 tent, widening, and complex problem. While media attention has been largely 80 8.0 financial objectives. on “failing schools,” the key to closing this gap is first closing the “opportunity gap.” For more information, please contact: To reduce the achievement gap, we Anne McClintock must look beyond the schools, teachers, Alasdair Halliday and curriculum to understand the John Christel di≠erent worlds students grow up in and Ericka Webb the di≠erent opportunities available to Lisa DeBenedictis them. Cash and culture both play a part. Many kids on the right side of the op- PHONE (800) 446-1277 portunity gap take three years of FAX (617) 495-8130 preschool to prepare for kindergarten. EMAIL [email protected] Their parents are college-educated, often WEB POST.HARVARD.EDU/PGO with advanced degrees, and highly engaged with school. Here in Silicon Valley, University Planned Giving some schools raise $2,000 per student for Harvard University supplemental instruction. 124 Mount Auburn Street For kids on the wrong side of that gap, Cambridge, MA kindergarten is their first exposure to or- 02138-5795 ganized instruction. Their parents are recent immigrants, often with only elemen- tary-school education, who work several

Harvard Magazine 5 LETTERS jobs to pay rent and struggle to navigate DESTINATION ANYWHERE the complexities of the educational sys- We know how to get you there. tem. They come from cultures where parents are not expected to engage with Business proposals, group schools. A clear path to success is not laid meetings, and 18-hour days; out for them; they cannot simply follow we know where you’re coming in the footsteps of those before them. After school, students in advantaged from and we know how to neighborhoods participate in enriching get you where you want to be. programs like sports, music, art, science and chess. They receive assistance with Since 1982 Commonwealth homework and tutoring if their grades Worldwide has provided falter. They have a quiet room in which to exceptional chauffeured study. In the summer, their love of learn- transportation services for a ing is enhanced through inspiring camps wide array of discriminating and travel. Students in disadvantaged clientele including: executives, neighborhoods too often end up watching professors, private aircraft TV, taking care of younger siblings, or just passengers, and hotel guests. hanging out. They don’t get adequate exercise and their health su≠ers. Often mul- Commonwealth Worldwide: tiple families live in one house without a luxury chauffered transportation private space to study. redefined in Boston, New York, For some teens, gangs and guns exist in and around the globe. a pretend world, cool to see on TV. For other teens, gangs and guns are a real part of their everyday lives, a daily temptation Reserve your next premier corporate and event travel with to resist. Academic expectations vary tremen- Commonwealth Worldwide Chauffeured dously as well. For many kids, attending Transportation and experience the college is a given. They have teams of ad- award-winning service you deserve. visors, coaches, and consultants to prepare them. Others are told college is impossible because it is too expensive. No one monitors their classes and grades to ensure they will have the opportunity to attend college. All kids need to feel a sense of belong- Proudly serving New York, Boston, and the world. ing—to be surrounded by peers who ap- preciate the importance of education, to be part of a reinforcing community of Five time Hall of Fame winner of the ICIC Top 100 Fastest Growing Inner City Companies in the U.S., Inc. Magazine. learners. They need to maintain the attitude of “I can” that all children begin with. And this is only possible through positive relationships. If we truly want to close the achievement gap, we need to address social-policy issues beyond education. We need to

Attention Harvard Authors and Publishers! SPEAK UP, PLEASE Harvard Magazine welcomes let- ADVERTISE IN OUR NEW ters on its contents. Please write to “Letters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware BOOK SECTION Street, Cambridge 02138, send com- ments by e-mail to yourturn@harvard.edu, use our website, www.- For details, go to: harvardmagazine.com, or fax us at harvardmagazine.com/authors 617-495-0324. Letters may be edited or call 617-496-6686. to ﬁt the available space.

6 September - October 2008 LETTERS invest in programs that partner with schools to provide opportunities for all of our students after school and during summers. It is impossible, we are ﬁnding out, to reduce the achievement gap while the opportunity gap is increasing. Peter Fortenbaugh, M.B.A. ’94 Palo Alto

If 42 percent of children of parents in the bottom quintile are still there as adults, then 58 percent are not. Maybe those adults and millions of other Ameri- cans would prefer not to have their income redistributed against their will. And maybe a large portion of those still in the bottom quintiles would prefer not to receive income taken from others; and would prefer, instead, to earn it themselves. The academics quoted seem to have no concept that liberty is fundamentally valuable to all citizens, e.g., keeping the fruits of one’s creativity, labor, and savings. Robert Carr, M.B.A. ’72 Lexington, Mass.

The article seems to have largely ignored one signiﬁcant factor in the pronounced trend towards growing economic inequality in America: the decline of organized labor since the 1970s. Despite the rhetoric of an “ownership society,” America remains, as it has been since before the Civil War, a society of wage earn- ers. The decline of union density in the economy has been a disaster not only for union families but for the working class as a whole. With the decline of union strength we have seen the decline of a social force broadly supportive of income redistribution and social equality. Harvard academics might well beneﬁt from talking with the average union shop steward who, from my experience (having been raised by one), has a fairly clear grasp that the promise of American life for the wage earner lies not in the dream of striking it rich, but in working together to achieve goals that cannot be realized individually. Thomas N. Ciantra, J.D. ’87 New York City

Virtually every paragraph in “Un- equal America” bristles with a “gimme, gimme” entitlement mentality and hostil- ity toward American capitalism. This paean to the gods of income redistribution ignores the incredible and tangible beneﬁts of capi- (please turn to page 80)

Harvard Magazine 7 Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

A WORK IN PROGRESS focuses on newborn-brain injury, and David K. Urion, an associate professor of The Teen Brain neurology who treats children with cognitive impairments like autism and attention deficit disorder, are giving lectures at sec- our teenage daughter gets remain unconnected. This leaves teens ondary schools and other likely places. top marks in school, captains easily influenced by their environment They hope to inform students, parents, ed- Ythe debate team, and volunteers and more prone to impulsive behavior, ucators, and even fellow scientists about at a shelter for homeless people. even without the impact of souped-up these new data, which have wide-ranging But while driving the family car, she text- hormones and any genetic or family pre- implications for how we teach, punish, messages her best friend and rear-ends dispositions. and medically treat this age group. As another vehicle. Most teenagers don’t understand their Jensen told some 50 workshop attendees How can teens be so clever, mental hardwiring, so Jensen, whose at Boston’s Museum of Science in April, accomplished, and responsi- laboratory research “This is the first generation of teenagers ble—and reckless at the that has access to this information, same time? Easily, accord- and they need to understand some ing to two physicians at of their vulnerabilities.” Children’s Hospital Bos- Human and animal stud- ton and Harvard Med- ies, Jensen and Urion note, ical School (HMS) who have shown that the have been exploring the brain grows and unique structure and changes continually chemistry of the adoles- in young people— cent brain. “The teenage and that it is only brain is not just an adult about 80 percent de- brain with fewer miles veloped in adolescents. on it,” says Frances E. The largest part, the Jensen, a professor of neu- cortex, is divided into rology. “It’s a paradoxi- lobes that mature from cal time of development. back to front. The last These are people with section to connect is the very sharp brains, but frontal lobe, responsible they’re not quite sure for cognitive processes what to do with them.” such as reasoning, plan- Research during the ning, and judgment. Nor- past 10 years, powered mally this mental merger by technology such as is not completed until functional magnetic reso- somewhere between ages nance imaging, has re- 25 and 30—much later than vealed that young brains these two neurologists have both fast-growing were taught in medical synapses and sections that school.

8 September - October 2008 Illustration by Leslie Cober-Gentry RIGHT NOW Time-lapse MRI images of human-brain development between ages five and ing in teen brains. Learning takes place at 20 show the growth and then gradual loss of gray matter, which consists of cells that process information. (Red areas contain more gray the synapses between neurons, as cells matter, blue areas less.) Paradoxically, the thinning of gray excite or inhibit one another and develop matter that starts around puberty corresponds to in- more robust synapses with repeated creasing cognitive abilities. This probably reflects stimulation. This cellular excitement, or improved neural organization, as the brain pares redundant connections and bene- “long-term potentiation,” enables chil- fits from increases in the white dren and teenagers to learn languages or matter that helps brain cells musical instruments more easily than communicate. adults. On the ﬂip side, this plasticity also makes adolescent brains more vulnerable to external stressors, as Jensen and Urion point out. Teen brains, for example, are more susceptible than their adult counterparts to alcohol-induced toxicity. Jensen high- There are lights an experiment in which rat brain also gender di≠er- cells were exposed to alcohol, which ences in brain develop- blocks certain synaptic activity. When ment. As Urion and Jensen ex- the alcohol was washed out, the adult plain, the part of our brain that processes cells recovered while the adolescent cells information expands during childhood remained “disabled.” And because stud- and then begins to thin, peaking in girls tunities ies show that marijuana (cannabinoid) at roughly 12 to 14 years old and in boys to reach them. use blocks cell signaling in the brain, ac- about two years later. This suggests that Meanwhile, the cording to Jensen, “We make the point girls and boys may be ready to absorb neural networks that help that what you did on the weekend is still challenging material at di≠erent stages, brain cells (neurons) communi- with you during that test on Thursday.

COURTESY OF PAUL THOMPSON/UCLA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE and that schools may be missing oppor- cate through chemical signals are enlarg- You’ve been trying to study with a self-

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Harvard Magazine 9 RIGHT NOW induced learning disability.” study showing how sensory overload can iors themselves. (“I have yet to meet a Similarly, even though there is evidence hinder undergraduates’ ability to recall pregnant teenager who didn’t know bio- that sleep is important for learning and words. “It’s truly a brave new world. Our logically how this transpired,” he says.) memory, teenagers are notoriously sleep- brains, evolutionarily, have never been By raising awareness of this paradoxi- deprived. Studying right before bedtime subjected to the amount of cognitive cal period in brain development, the neu- can help cement the information under input that’s coming at us,” she says. “You rologists hope to help young people cope review, Jensen notes. So can aerobic exer- can’t close down the world. All you can with their challenges, as well as recognize cise, says Urion, bemoaning the current do is educate kids to help them manage their considerable strengths. lack of physical-education opportunities this.” For his part, Urion believes pro- debra bradley ruder for many American youths. grams aimed at preventing risky adoles- Teens are also bombarded by informa- cent behaviors would be more e≠ective if frances jensen e-mail address: tion in this electronic age, and multitask- they o≠ered practical strategies for mak- [email protected] ing is as routine as chatting with friends ing in-the-moment decisions, rather than david urion e-mail address: on line. But Jensen highlights a recent merely lecturing teens about the behav- [email protected]

MYSTERIES OF MATH mately 1.6 to 1). Some analyses find the ratio in structures—most famously the Parthenon—built centuries before its Proof Positive first written formulation. More recently, scientists have found that the faces people find most beautiful are those in s academics work to under- of mathematics: curved spaces, from geom- which the proportions conform most stand the architecture of the etry, and modular arithmetic, which has to closely to the ratio. A universe, they sometimes un- do with counting. Taylor has spent his ca- The geometry-arithmetic connection cover connections in mysteri- reer studying this nexus, and recently explored by Taylor solves another puzzle ous places. So it is with Smith professor proved it is possible to use one domain to that has enticed mathematicians across of mathematics Richard L. Taylor, whose solve complex problems in the other. “It centuries. In 1637, French mathematician work connects two dis- just astounded me,” he says, “that there Pierre de Fermat scrawled in a book’s crete domains should be a connection between these margin a theorem involving equations like two things, when nobody could the one in the Pythagorean theorem (a2 + see any real reason why there b2 = c2), but with powers higher than two. should be.” Fermat’s theorem said such equations This is not the first have no solutions that are whole num- instance of finding bers, either positive or negative. Go ahead, in geometry an el- try—it is impossible to find three inte- egant explana- gers, other than zero, that work in the tion for a seem- equation a3 + b3 = c3. ingly unrelat- The French mathematician also wrote ed phenom- that he had discovered a way to prove enon. Schol- this—but he never wrote the proof down, ars during or if he did, it was lost. For more than 350 the Renais- years, mathematicians tried in vain to sance, seek- prove what became known as Fermat’s ing a math- Last Theorem. They could find lots of ex- ematical ba- amples that fit the pattern, and no coun- sis for our terexamples, but could not erase all conceptions doubt until Princeton University mathe- of beauty, fin- matician Andrew Wiles presented a gered the so- proof in 1993. called Golden His discovery made the front page of Ratio (approxi- the New York Times, but six months later,

M.C. Escher’s Circle Limit III illustrates the concept of hyperbolic space. Although the fish appear to get smaller toward the edge of the image, in the non-Euclidean world of hyperbolic geometry, the white lines along all the fishes’ spines are actually the exact same length. Each fish is the same size as all the others, and an inhabitant of this world would have to walk an infinite distance to reach the circle’s edge. ©2008 THE M.C. ESCHER COMPANY-HOLLAND/ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

10 September - October 2008 This type of unconventional clock is commonly used to illustrate problems in modular arithmetic. This particular clock has 7 “hours”; each “hour” position holds a set of numbers that are congruent modulo 7, or separated by multiples of 7. For one particularly elusive set of equations, earlier mathematicians located an ingenious but labor-intensive solution method in modular arithmetic. Richard Taylor’s work ﬁnds a shortcut in geometry.

the Times reported that another mathe- equation required counting one’s matician had found a mistake in the new way around the “clock” (see figure proof. In the spotlight and under pres- at right). In proving the conjecture, sure, Wiles called on Taylor, his former Taylor essentially mapped the direc- doctoral student, for help. Together, they tions for a massive shortcut. But the published the corrected proof in 1995, and proof was, as Taylor puts it, “a nice Wiles won the Fermat Prize for mathe- by-product” of his main work on the matics that year. Taylor won the same connection between arithmetic and prize in 2001, and last year shared the geometry. prestigious, million-dollar Shaw Prize for Taylor’s Shaw Prize co-recipient, mathematician Robert Langlands, had “It just astounded me been the first to realize, back in the 1970s, that instead of counting the number of that there should be a solutions for these equations, it would be from undergraduate calculus to advanced possible to get the same answer using graduate courses, his primary research is connection between geometry. Specifically, the shortcut lay in work on a kind of foreign-language dic- the symmetry of hyperbolic space, one of tionary that translates between these two these two things.” the mathematical concepts illustrated by mathematical domains—between the the artist M.C. Escher. In this weird, language of clocks and that of saddles. proving the 1963 Sato-Tate Conjecture, warped world, pairs of parallel lines Taylor describes the dictionary this way: which said that one could draw a curve break all the laws of Euclidean geometry “It says, ‘Here’s an equation. I’m going to that would predict the number of solu- and bend away from one another, and give you a problem about symmetry that tions for any equation describing an ellip- lines that, to the human eye, look wildly has the same behavior.’ ” He and other tic curve. di≠erent are actually the same length. number theorists are busily filling in more The conjecture itself was a brilliant in- The analogy commonly made is to a entries to illustrate patterns and perhaps sight, but applying it is labor-inten- horse’s saddle: viewed from above, a sad- solve still-unidentified mathematical sive—it relies on modular arithmetic, a dle appears as an oval, but its circumfer- mysteries. “We’ve done A and B so far,” he domain of mathematics that studies the ence is unexpectedly long because it says. “All the way up to Z is left.” relationships between numbers, often il- curves downward along the sides of the elizabeth gudrais lustrated using clock-like figures with horse’s body and upward toward the unusual numbers of hours (i.e., not 12). horse’s head and tail. richard taylor e-mail address: Counting the number of solutions for an Although Taylor teaches everything [email protected]

ANNALS OF DE-MINING Man, Mongoose, and Machine

tanding outside a Sri Lankan machines are too expensive. Dogs weigh harness to keep the mongoose under con- army base in the spring of 2007, enough to trigger mines, injuring or kill- trol and a video camera to record its ﬁnd- SThrishantha Nanayakkara mapped ing themselves and their handlers. ings. Although the mongoose walks a few an entire mineﬁeld without once Nanayakkara, a visiting scholar at the feet ahead, the robot with its eight metal setting foot in it. Nanayakkara held a re- School of Engineering and Applied Sci- legs sets the pace. During the test run, the mote control and periodically made a note ences and a 2008-09 Radcli≠e Institute pair went back and forth across a 10-by- on his computer. A mongoose hitched to a fellow, picked an indigenous mongoose 10-meter plot, stopping whenever the robot did most of the work. for its temperament, size (roughly 2.5 mongoose detected a mine, which it indi- This unorthodox de-mining team kilograms, light enough to step on a mine cated by sitting up (as it was trained to avoids most of the traditional pitfalls. without detonating it), and sense of smell do). In a morning’s work, the mongoose Metal detectors give too many false (able to detect explosives three meters found every mine. alarms, fooled by bullets or other debris. away). He equipped his robot (roughly a The land mines in Sri Lanka—and Hand-held ground-penetrating radar meter long and half a meter wide) with a other war-torn nations—are both physi-

Harvard Magazine 11 Above left: A trained mongoose sniffs the “Let’s say there are ﬁve land mines in engineers, he is perfecting at Harvard ground in search of mines. Behind the mon- Boston, and we don’t know where they what he once demonstrated in practice. goose is an impediment sensor, which tells the robots (right) if it has bumped into are. Immediately people restrict their Developed with a team of students at the something too solid to push out of the way. movements to the most essential errands. University of Moratuwa, the robot’s char- Above right: Two linked robots directly This worsens if we get the news that acteristics (such as size, speed, and sens- behind the sensor allow a human operator to direct the mongoose over the minefield with- somebody has been caught in a mine ing ability) have now been programmed out risk of personal injury. The robots move blast. The remaining four land mines can into a mineﬁeld simulation that includes by flexing their jointed bodies back and forth. freeze the economic activity of Boston.” obstacles like trees or rough terrain. By

In Sri Lanka, the land mines laid by both digitally tweaking the robot’s design, Na- COURTESY OF THRISHANTHA NANAYAKKARA cal obstacles and obstacles to economic the government and Tamil Tiger rebels nayakkara can determine how various me- growth. “To understand how de-mining number between 1.5 million and 3 million. chanical changes improve its e∞ciency. expands economic activity, it is good to Although Nanayakkara no longer Perfecting the machine’s locomotion, imagine the reverse,” Nanayakkara says. works directly with Sri Lankan military he believes, is the ﬁrst step. He is working

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12 September - October 2008 RIGHT NOW with students and professors at Harvard DEADLINE DOWNSIDE and MIT to develop a spring-loaded leg to help the robot move more easily over the soft dirt of the jungle floor. Prescription for Error? He trained his three mongooses mostly through trial and error: rewarding them for reacting to explosives held on a stick, n recent years, safety recalls of regulator. Rather, they are rooted in then covering the cage so that they would widely prescribed drugs like the pain- specific legislation intended to balance learn to identify their target by scent, Ikiller Vioxx have sent an unsettling the cost of ensuring public safety with rather than sight. At Harvard, he is taking message to consumers: Today’s super the need for prompt approval of benefi- a more systematic approach by collabo- cure may be tomorrow’s health hazard. cial medicines. In 1992, Congress passed rating with assistant professor of molecu- Many drug-industry critics believe the the Prescription Drug User Fee Act lar and cellular biology Naoshige Uchida, expanding financial influence of “big (PDUFA), a payment program under who is studying how rats learn to pick pharma” has compromised federal over- which pharmaceutical producers pay a out a single smell in a pungent environ- sight of new medicines, allowing unsafe “user fee” to the FDA to help cover the ment. Nanayakkara hopes that determin- drugs to reach the market and remain cost of reviewing new drugs, and the ing how another rodent’s brain sorts there for months or even years. At the FDA, in exchange, rules on applications smells will lead to improved training same time, patient groups and pharma- within a set period of time—12 months techniques that in turn will make his ceutical investors continue to blame the for “standard” reviews and six months for country a safer place to live. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for “priority” reviews. Congress revised the “Land mines write o≠ fertile farmlands slowing innovation through bureaucratic bill in 1997, shortening the “standard re- and destroy social structures,” he says. ine∞ciency and over-regulation. view” time to 10 months, while maintain- “E∞cient removal of mines helps the According to Freed professor of gov- ing a 6-month deadline for “priority” ap- a≠ected communities to return to a nor- ernment Daniel Carpenter, an expert on plications. When the law passed, its mal, productive life.” paul gleason the history of the FDA, the flaws in the detractors charged that it created a dan- U.S.’s drug-review system do not stem gerous conflict of interest within the thrishantha nanayakkara e-mail address: from a single culprit—whether profit- drug-review process by making the FDA [email protected] driven manufacturer or inept government overly dependent on pharmaceutical BETTERBETTER RETURNSRETURNS Savings come back to you faster when you open a Term Share Certifi cate from HUECU, which features our highest savings rates, and a variety of term options from 6 months to 5 years. And when you open a Sixty+ Account, you’ll receive an extra .50% on all Term Share Certifi cates. Sign up today.

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Harvard Magazine 13 RIGHT NOW for the drug’s primary indication) than drugs approved in earlier or later (i.e. post-deadline) months. Carpenter and his colleagues believe the study results reflect the negative impact of the user- fee law on FDA decision-making. In previous work, Carpenter and doctoral candidate in government Justin Grimmer developed a mathematical model that predicts the impact of deadline penalties on organizational behavior and outcomes. “We showed that the relationship between the size of the penalty and the probability of an error is non- linear,” Carpenter explains. “If you double the deadline penalty, you could quadruple, or more, the size of the error.” In the FDA’s case, he says, the Daniel Carpenter primary consequence of missing any one drug application deadline is not monetary, but rather repu- companies for funds. But no study has 2004, a new drug was 3.4 times as likely to tational. “The problem is that the FDA is e≠ectively tracked the law’s impact on be approved in the two months before the going to get criticized,” Carpenter ex- drug safety until now. deadline as at any other time in the re- plains. “Once deadlines come up, all sorts Carpenter and his coauthors, professor view cycle; and it was 2.7 times as likely of interested parties start to weigh in, of medicine Jerry Avorn and medical stu- to be approved in the two months before such as investors, financial analysts, and dent Evan James Zucker, set out to inves- deadline as it was in the two months af- patient advocacy groups.” Federal drug tigate whether the introduction of drug- terward. reviewers are constrained by the need to approval deadlines has had an adverse e≠ect on the rate of pharmaceutical safety Drugs approved during the two months prior problems. Using a data set showing the approval times for all “new molecular en- to deadline were three times more likely to be tities” reviewed by the FDA between 1950 and 2004, they looked for changes in the pulled from the market…. pattern of approval timing before and after enactment of the 1992 legislation. This “just in time” approval trend cor- avoid external criticism, even as they vie Then they compared drug-approval times responded to an increased rate of post- for internal status. “This wasn’t Con- with records of post-approval safety marketing safety problems. Drugs ap- gress’s intent,” he says. “But reputation problems, identified by the withdrawal of proved during the two-month “pile up” turns out to be a very big incentive for a drug from the market, the addition of a period were three times more likely to be agencies.” “black box warning” (the severest form of pulled from the market than drugs ap- The solution, Carpenter concludes, is labeling for a drug’s potentially adverse proved at other times in the review cycle, for legislators to focus on the quality of side e≠ects), or the removal of one or twice as likely to have one or more dosage the approval process, rather than exclu- more dosage forms (often a first step in a forms discontinued, and two to seven sively on its speed. Only by increasing drug’s “quiet exit” from the market). times more likely to receive a “black box funds for necessary FDA sta≠, he says, Their findings, published in The New warning.” The researchers were careful to will Congress ensure that the agency is England Journal of Medicine this past spring, rule out other factors that might explain able to fulfill its public obligations in a exposed some disturbing correlations. the pattern. For instance, they found that timely manner. “We all work under dead- Since passage of the 1992 legislation, ap- “new molecular entities” approved in the lines,” he adds. “The question is how proval times have tended to cluster in the immediate pre-deadline period were not much we should rely on deadlines versus two-month period immediately preced- inherently high risk: i.e., no more likely to other mechanisms to improve and accel- ing the congressionally stipulated dead- have undergone a pre-marketing advisory erate review.” ashley pettus lines—a configuration that does not ap- review, to be “first in class,” or to be asso- pear in the four-decade period prior to ciated with urgent consumer demand daniel carpenter e-mail address: the 1992 legislation. Between 1993 and (measured by high hospitalization rates [email protected]

14 September - October 2008 Photograph by Stu Rosner Anyone can give advice about investing. We suggest investing in advice.

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WEALTH MANAGEMENT Montage Art, books, diverse creations

18 “Anti-Dominant” Journal 20 Felonious Mayhem 21 Open Book 22 Off the Shelf 23 Chapter & Verse 24 A Tale of Two Detectives

Straw and Sustainability Green architect Joseph Cincotta flourishes in Vermont. by CRAIG LAMBERT n “the three little pigs,” Left: Julie Lineberger and Joseph Cincotta in the big, “Straw walls typically have an R factor the studio of their architectural firm. Right: bad wolf hu≠s and pu≠s and easily blows ranging from 30 to 50—and if you factor exterior of the Cincotta-designed house down the first piglet’s straw house. But in ‘air tightness,’ they can save energy on built with straw bales sheathed in plaster. Iwith rising energy costs playing the wolf the order of an R-70 fiberglass wall,” says JOSEPH CINCOTTA at the door, don’t dismiss straw houses architect Joseph Cincotta, M.Arch. ’88, lating material’s resistance to heat trans- too quickly. In southern Vermont, Dale and who designed the Vermont straw-bale fer.) The energy e∞ciency of the Dou- Michele Doucette and their two sons enjoy house and even helped sheathe the straw cettes’ straw-bale house has enabled a large, comfortable home made of straw in two layers of plaster. “The typical them to leave the power grid behind; they bales stacked to surround a post-and-beam wooden-stud wall has an R factor of meet their needs with solar and wind frame like a blanket. about 12.” (R factor is an index of an insu- power, backed up by propane tanks.

16 September - October 2008 Portrait by Jim Harrison MONTAGE Straw has other advantages: it contains Furthermore, the fact that straw bales trading even during a New York brown-out. a natural fire retardant, for example, mak- aren’t perfect cubes influenced the design. Closer to home, at the 50,000-square- ing it less flammable than wood. “It’s really “I was inspired by the straw to try things I foot Sonnax Industries warehouse and hard to light a bale of straw,” Cincotta ex- wouldn’t do in a wood home,” Cincotta headquarters in Bellows Falls, Vermont, plains. Yet straw, like wood, is subject to says. The front door, for example, is arched. Cincotta used foam-block construction. damage by moisture—rot. So Cincotta Cutting wooden arches, forming them, and (“They’re like giant Legos,” he says.) The took pains to keep rain water o≠ the walls, bending sheetrock are expensive and time- foam traps air and therefore insulates more widening the typical 12- to 18-inch roof consuming tasks, but arches are far easier than 20 times as well as a straight concrete overhang to 36 inches. “Sun and rain wear to build with straw bales, whose shape is wall. Sensors that monitor the internal and buildings down,” he says, “so good over- flexible, not rigid. And arches “tend to be a external environment of the Sonnax struc- hang is always good practice.” Nor did welcoming gesture,” Cincotta says. In- ture to adjust lighting and heating helped they put straw directly on the concrete fluenced by the softer curves of straw bales, make it “the most energy e∞cient building foundations, he says. “The first 16 inches of he also used curved lines on an outdoor in the state,” according to former Vermont wall are completely waterproof—concrete deck and a soapstone kitchen countertop. governor Howard Dean. and foam—raindrops splash up well Even the home’s plastered walls are not Though most Harvard-trained archi- below the first bale of straw.” Finally, they perfectly even and flat. “We embraced the tects join large firms in urban centers, took care to ensure that window sills and handmade feel of that,” says the architect. Lineberger and Cincotta (the firm’s name echoes the first syllables of their sur- names) settled in southern Vermont in 1988. Their small country town provides daily proof that the sustainable movement isn’t anything newfangled. “Active solar power means collecting energy from the sun to store and use, but ‘passive solar’ is simply taking advantage of sunlight coming through a window,” Cincotta ob- serves. “Our grandfathers used passive solar. In an 1860s farmhouse, they’d put most of the windows on the southern face, to take in the sun. Environmental sustain- Left: an entryway in the straw-bale house. ability has roots in good old Yankee inge- Above: the same arched nuity.” Lineberger adds, “They were heat- doorway during con- ing with wood, and it was precious. Once JOSEPH CINCOTTA struction, with straw there was cheap oil, we got careless. The exposed. Below: part of the second-floor ‘new’ sustainability is really hearkening kitchen/dining area, back to an earlier time, when the alterna- which opens onto a deck. tive was freezing in the cold.” In LineSync’s philosophy, pragmatic “Those walls have character, and give a considerations like sustainability trump sense of soul to the place.” architectural fashion. Cincotta’s father “We are the kind of architectural firm that was a craftsman who had a small con- was doing these kinds of things long before struction firm in Queens, New York; in sustainable architecture became fashion- his dad’s shop, the future architect able,” says Julie Lineberger, M.Ed. ’82, Cin- learned about construction at its most cotta’s wife and business partner in LineSync practical level. He is no worshipper of ar- Architecture (www.linesync.com) in Wilm- chitectural “styles.” ington, Vermont. “It is just the way you live “When I was at the GSD [Harvard’s your life. We have ‘green’ in our DNA.” Cin- Graduate School of Design], postmod- cotta adds, “To some firms, ‘green’ is an add- ernism was the rage,” Cincotta recalls. door openings would not trap water, and on, something you add to the process. I’m of “My sense was that it was a style that was that any water that did somehow enter the the view that it is integral to the process: going to come and go as quickly as it did. walls would not remain there, using lime you need to make the right decisions from “Everyone loves beautiful bridges,” he JULIE LINEBERGER plaster—an old type used in the 1800s— the very beginning.” Taking this approach to explains. “Bridges do what they do with a both inside and outside the stacks of the Manhattan o∞ces of R.G. Niederho≠er minimal amount of materials, and with- straw. “Lime plaster has more clay in it Capital Management (headed by Roy out froufrou. There’s a lesson there for than cement plaster, so it is more porous,” Niederho≠er ’87) meant building more than those who get confused by styles. Archi- Cincotta explains. “Moisture travels to 250 monitors into curved walls, in an energy- tecture shouldn’t be in the fashion busi- dryness like heat to cold, so plaster that e∞cient scheme that included power ness—it’s way too expensive! If you put breathes allows wet straw to dry out.” backup and enabled the firm to continue up a building and it goes out of fashion, 20

Harvard Magazine 17 MONTAGE years from now it looks like a bad joke.” At Harvard, such views got Cincotta into academic trouble: “Style is subjective, and I “Anti-Dominant” Journal resented being taught style as if it were established knowledge.” His vocal rebellious- A small home for good writing ness caused the GSD to ask him to leave after two years, even as his work hung on by PAUL GLEASON the honors wall. Soon, Cincotta got a job as a site engineer overseeing construction of a shopping mall in the sultanate of Oman. hristopher agee ’79 Applying what he learned from indigenous never took a poetry desert architecture, he eventually designed Cclass with Seamus the headquarters for Al Turki Enterprises, Heaney. “I shopped his the construction firm that built the U.S. seminar,” Agee recalls, “but when embassy there. The commercial/residential he was at Harvard I never mustered Christopher structure, now designated a national land- the courage to take any of his Agee mark in Oman, was completed after five courses.” Yet today, even the Nobel years in 1986, with Cincotta closely in- laureate sends poems to Agee, volved in all stages of the construction. founder and editor of what has When he applied to Harvard for re-admis- been called “one of the most impor- sion, the committee doubtfully considering tant cultural journals in Ireland.” his application wondered what Cincotta Agee’s biannual Irish Pages, now had actually done on the spectacular build- in its fifth year, publishes both lu- ing pictured before them. The answer, as minaries and lesser-knowns, Irish Lineberger says, was “Everything.” citizens and foreigners—anyone, Cincotta now works the faculty side of really, as long as the writing is the street himself, teaching courses on good. “You have to judge on the “Building, Energy, and Sustainable De- sole criterion of quality,” says Agee. sign” and “History and Theory of Modern “Not friendship. Not quid pro quo. Architecture” at Keene State College in Just the work itself.” The current New Hampshire. LineSync Architecture’s issue contains a short story by clients range from a sports-medicine cen- William Trevor, a Heaney poem, ter in Vermont to a retail chain in Amster- and a print version of “The Third Annual lecture in conversation and says that “the dam. Economics and politics have finally Irish Pages Lecture,” delivered by the essay- gist of the Birkerts essay is almost our joined environmental concerns to sup- ist Sven Birkerts at the Royal Academy in credo.” In Irish Pages, he seeks to gather to- JOHN MINIHAN port the firm’s “green” philosophy, and Dublin in December 2006. gether this sort of imaginative writing. aesthetics is also part of the deal. “What I Agee and Birkerts, a Briggs Copeland At Harvard, Agee studied poetry with love about the sustainability issue,” Cin- lecturer on English and American litera- Robert Fitzgerald and spent two sum- cotta says, “is that beautiful forms can ture and language at Harvard, both mers in Ireland as a research assistant for come out of a consideration of sustainable worry about the fate of reading and writ- Agee (no relation) professor of social materials and processes.” ing in a digital society. (Agee likens the ethics Robert Coles, who was studying Cincotta's design for the Manhattan di≠erence between what’s written on the e≠ects of Catholic-Protestant vio- offices of R.G. Niederhoffer Capital line and in print to the di≠erence be- lence on Irish children. After graduation, Management, headed by Roy Niederhoffer tween an industrial shed and a Roman the New England native decided to move ’87, called for embedding more than 250 monitors into curved walls. arch.) Birkerts’s lecture, entitled “The to Northern Ireland in part because he Drowning Signal: Self in the Information found the U.S. literary world “less than Age,” argues that we tend to lose our compact and coherent, a scrambled cul- sense of self when bombarded with in- tural landscape.” The poetry scene in formation, whereas good writing re- Belfast suited him better. “I’ve often said minds us of our own individuality. to myself that Irish literary culture is like “Imagination creates shape; informa- a large village,” he explains. “Everybody tion imposes shape. The former is the en- has a kind of place, as opposed to the ergy of self, the latter of the world,” Birk- balkanized schools and hierarchies of the erts told the attendees. “When it is American scene.” encountered in the right way, attentively, Agee’s place at first was at a community great art, ambitious, realized art, not only college, where he taught literacy skills to lifts us to its level, but…o≠ers an inward teenagers. He eventually met, and became integrity to help counter the dissipating friends with, Seamus Heaney. He also

LISA AND GARY HALL force of signals.” Agee readily quotes the wrote poetry and, in 1992, published a

18 September - October 2008 MONTAGE small collection, In the New Hampshire Woods. His growing reputation—and unusual status as an immigrant—brought an invitation to guest-edit an issue on American poetry for Poetry Ireland Review and, in 1995, another invitation to edit a double issue on contemporary Irish verse for the venerable Chicago magazine Poetry. In 2002, Agee saw an opportunity to apply his editorial experience to a magazine of his own when Belfast was furi- ously seeking to become “European Capi- tal of Culture” (an award bestowed annually by the European Union). “You don’t have a really good literary journal in the North,” he told a member of the bid council. Northern Ireland had great poets, but nowhere for them to appear readily in print, he explained: “Notwith- standing Heaney, and Paul Muldoon, there are only a few local journals with a very poor standard of writing.” The council gave him $7,000—enough to fund the first two issues. Suddenly, he had to figure out what sort of journal he wanted. He studied his fa- vorites: the New Yorker, Poetry, Orion (an environmental magazine), and the Bell, an Irish journal from the 1940s and ’50s. “How do they do it? How do they lay it out? It was like studying form in horses,” he recalls thinking. He decided an Irish journal should have selections in Irish Gaelic, and invited the poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh to become Irish-language editor. He settled on a Ikffehj>WhlWhZCW]Wp_d[ few regular features, including an editorial essay he or Ó Searcaigh would write and a section called From the Irish Archives, Your donations help sustain editorial excellence and independence. which reprints an author who Agee feels To donate, please visit: www.harvardmagazine.com/donate was unjustly neglected in his or her day. He or use the envelope included in this magazine. also wanted to focus on “primary,” rather than what he calls “mediated,” writing, meaning there would be no reviews. And he insisted on bringing it all together in a handsome volume with sturdy pages and vivid photographs, despite printing costs that threatened to swallow more than half his budget. That year Agee accompanied Heaney to a poetry festival in Macedonia and asked As a special thank-you him for a contribution; Heaney provided for a gift of $150 or more two poems and a printed version of the you will receive a beautiful festival’s keynote address. Agee built the new umbrella, available issue around those works and, after as- exclusively to donors. sembling more than 200 pages of text, threw a launch party. The first run of 1,200 quickly sold out, and Agee had to return to the printer for 800 more. (His regular print run now stands at 2,800; see

Harvard Magazine 19 MONTAGE also www.irishpages.org.) He subtitled down a large portion of the print world Pages, he hopes, will be part of the latter. the ﬁrst issue “Belfast in Europe,” and sub- during the next 30 or 40 years. “That’s in- “This journal, by preserving a kind of classic sequent issues have had themes ranging evitable. Unstoppable,” he says. The result, print culture and a classic belief in the from “The Homeplace” to “The Media” (in he believes, will be a stark choice: readers imagination and the written word on a which the Birkerts lecture appears). can choose to go deeper on line, or step complex level, becomes an anti-dominant,” Agee thinks that the Internet will bring back into a hard-core print culture. Irish he declares. “It becomes a dissident energy.”

Harvard, argues in his new volume that lessons from Enron’s rise and fall can Felonious Mayhem guide business leaders—and the rest of us—in pondering how to regulate the Enron and other capitalist calamities great engines of capitalism in a way that will generate jobs and income without all by PAUL M. BARRETT the felonious mayhem. As its title may suggest, Innovation Cor- rupted: The Origins and Legacy of Enron’s Collapse n ironclad rule of Ameri- and sold-o≠ investment bank Bear is not a brisk read; nor is it meant to be. can business is that eras of Stearns was charged with misleading in- Salter o≠ers instead A great profit give rise to fantas- vestors about the plummeting value of a sober case study Malcolm S. Salter ’62, tic excess in the executive complex securities linked to mountains that steers clear of M.B.A. ’64, D.B.A. ’68, suites, and then someone gets sent to the of home loans that should never have narrative thrills and Innovation Corrupted: The slammer. been made in the first place. Leaving the puckish personality Origins and Legacy of In June, while I was reading the book question of criminal liability to one side, portraits. His confi- Enron’s Collapse (Harvard under review, we witnessed the first it’s fair to say that Wall Street and the dence that better- University Press, $35) major indictments from the subprime mortgage industry conspired to inflate a constructed boards mortgage fiasco: once-mighty financiers housing bubble that inevitably, and vio- of directors following common-sense prin- shu±ed into federal court in Brooklyn in lently, exploded. As foreclosures prolifer- ciples will protect against future Enrons the tender grasp of deputy U.S. marshals. ate in California and Florida, and tens of strikes me as overly hopeful, if not down- This particular pair from the disgraced thousands are laid o≠ on Wall Street, right naive. But Salter’s heart is in the right many ask how we didn’t place, and his exceedingly rational dissec- realize sooner that a real- tion of Enron will be instructive for any estate market that seemed aficionado of big business and human too good to be true was… frailty. well, you know. Recent decades have Enron had its roots in prosaic nat- brought us the savings- ural-gas operations that merged in 1985 and-loan scandal, the and fell under the control of an amiable Michael Milken insider- and eggheadish executive named Kenneth trading skein, the first- Lay, a Ph.D. economist better known for generation dot-com frenzy, his enthusiasm for deregulating the en- and a series of corporate ergy business than for his managerial debacles related to the In- mastery. Lay hired Je≠rey Skilling, M.B.A. ternet boom of the late ’79, a brash and charismatic consultant 1990s. And who could for- from McKinsey & Company, to oversee get Enron: hands down, Enron’s expanding gas-trading business. the most byzantine saga in In the words of a former colleague, memory of hubris, greed, Skilling “could out-argue God.” and deceit? The tale of the In the 1990s, Enron grew into an innov- shiny Houston energy- ative and prosperous force in the newly trading juggernaut that deregulated natural-gas industry. It rode crashed in late 2001 has the Internet wave to create an on-line been told so often that it trading system that swiftly became the has entered the realm of world’s biggest e-commerce site. This mythology. But Malcolm S. digital system allowed producers and Salter, an authority on cor- users of natural gas to manage their risks porate management and more e∞ciently. Enron profited hand- Hill professor of business somely, as it should have. administration emeritus at Then Skilling and Lay let their success

Illustration by David Lesh MONTAGE blind them. They directed Enron’s traders to branch out into the buying and selling OPEN BOOK of wholesale electricity. Diversification into water utilities and trading broadband capacity soon followed. Skilling, who rose “A Liar’s Biography” to serve as Lay’s number two, exhorted his subordinates to exploit Securities and Ex- change Commission (SEC) and tax rules, An art forger’s success has less to do with “his prowess as a visual artist than with his squeezing every possible advantage from use and misuse of history.” So writes Jonathan Lopez ’91 in “A Liar’s Biography,” the in- the deals he struck at a furious pace. But troduction to his new work, The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Enron’s skill as middleman in the natural- Master Forger Han van Meegeren (Harcourt, $26). More from the astonishing tale: gas trade simply failed to translate to other realms. Skilling’s investment gam- t the end of World War II, Hitler and Nazism that, when the occupa- bles didn’t provide adequate cash to fund A shortly after the liberation of tion came, would provide him entrée to the commodity-trading operations, and by Amsterdam, the Dutch govern- the highest level of Dutch collaborators. 1997, profits were declining. ment threw wealthy artist Han van Art fraud, like other Rather than rethink and retrench, Lay Meegeren into jail as a Nazi collabora- fields of artistic en- and Skilling unleashed their chief financial tor, charging that he had sold a priceless deavor, has its own o∞cer, Andrew Fastow, to sell overvalued Vermeer to Hermann Goering during traditions, masters, and underperforming assets to o≠-the-bal- the German occupation. In a spectacu- and lineages. When ance-sheet partnerships, some of which lar turn of events, Van Meegeren soon Van Meegeren en- Fastow himself controlled in a blatant broke down and confessed that he him- tered the world of conflict of interest approved by a somno- self had painted Goering’s Vermeer.The forgery, he joined a lent board of directors. The plan, such as it great masterpiece was a phony. preexisting culture of was, involved “managing” the company’s While he was at it,Van Meegeren also illicit commerce that reported earnings, minimizing its reported admitted to forging several other pic- had thrived in Europe debt, and preserving its pumped-up credit tures, including Vermeer’s famed Supper and America for years rating and stock price. It all worked for a at Emmaus, the pride of Rotterdam’s while—the deception part, anyway— Boijmans Museum, a painting once An early fake: transforming Lay and Skilling into heroes hailed by the prominent art historian The Lace Maker, a forgery in the of the business press and heroically com- Abraham Bredius not merely as a mas- style of Vermeer, pensated icons of a supercharged, digital- terpiece, but indeed “the masterpiece of ca. 1926. Above, ized economy, circa 2000. Johannes Vermeer of Delft.” When the Han van Meegeren, 1945 You remember the rest. In 2001, Arthur news got out, it made headlines around Andersen, Enron’s auditor-turned-en- the world, and the forger became an in- abler, suddenly “discovered” accounting stant folk hero. In widely reported inter- irregularities related to the o≠-balance- views at the time,Van Meegeren claimed sheet partnerships. Massive charges to be a misunderstood genius who had against earnings and write-downs of turned to forgery only late in life, seek- shareholders’ equity ensued. Its trading ing revenge on the critics who had partners quickly losing faith, Enron col- scorned him early in his artistic career. lapsed into bankruptcy in what Skilling An ancient grievance redeemed; a described as an energy-industry version of wrong put right. It was a wildly appealing a “run on the bank.” Before they shut o≠ tale back in 1945, and indeed it remains the lights, he and Lay personally cashed in quite seductive today. In the Nether- more than $200 million from sales of lands…the story of the wily Dutchman and would continue to thrive through- Enron shares and exercised stock options. who swindled Hermann Goering contin- out the first half of the twentieth cen-

It took the Justice Department more ues to raise a smile. tury, a time when the market for old FROM THE BOOK than three years to sort out the mess and But the forger had one more trick up masters was booming….The picture start the indictment process, critically his sleeve: his version of events turns swindles with which Van Meegeren was aided by Fastow, who turned state’s evi- out to have been extravagantly untrue. involved during the 1920s were remark- dence. The sort-of-repentant ex-ﬁnancial …Van Meegeren worked for decades able both for their financial scale and for whiz admitted he had distorted Enron’s with a ring of shady art dealers promoting the numbers and types of people in- earnings and enriched himself at the ex- fake old masters, some of which ended up volved.…[H]e knew precisely how to pense of shareholders. Five major banks in the possession of such prominent col- seize on the zeitgeist and turn it to his that allegedly had colluded with Enron lectors as Andrew Mellon and Baron own ends; to match what people agreed to pay billions to settle civil suits. Heinrich Thyssen. All the while, Van wanted to hear with what he wanted Arthur Andersen, targeted by prosecutors Meegeren cultivated a fascination with them to believe. for obstruction of justice, closed its doors.

Harvard Magazine 21 MONTAGE Skilling and Lay denied any wrongdoing golden age of fossils in Amer- or even knowledge of fraud. In July 2006, Off the Shelf ica” from Thomas Jefferson (fas- 10 days after his conviction in federal cinated by mastodon fossils) court in Houston, Lay died from a heart Recent books with Harvard connections forward—150 years of pioneer- attack. Skilling was sentenced to 24 years ing and frontier paleontology. in prison, though his appeals continue. All told, more than 20 people were convicted Forgive Us Our Debts: The Intergenera- The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story in Enron-related cases, and a company tional Dangers of Fiscal Irresponsibility, of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest that once employed 31,000 vaporized. by Andrew L. Yarrow, M.P.A. ’94 (Yale, Hour, by Andrei Cherny ’97 (Putnam, $25). “[D]espite centuries of distaste for $29.95). A huge narrative of the 1948-9 In painstaking analysis of the forego- debt,” the United States government will effort that brought 4.6 billion pounds of ing, Salter identifies three central lessons. owe $10 trillion by election day—and supplies into then-divided Berlin, at a time The first is that a less drowsy board would has promised another $50 trillion or so of maximum Cold War tensions. The au- have blown the whistle on Enron’s shenani- of benefits. The unchecked debt spree thor, an editor of the journal Democracy, gans and prevented disaster. He points ad- threatens “night time in America,” the au- tells especially about the exploits of Gail miringly to the typically more vigilant di- thor suggests, and “morning in China.” Halvorsen, the pilot who, on his own, rectors he says are installed when buyout dropped presents of candy tied to hand- firms collaborate with management to take The (Un)happy Lawyer, by Monica kerchief parachutes. public companies private. (Salter averts his Parker ’92, J.D. ’99 (Sourcebooks, $14.95, gaze from the fact that so-called leveraged paper). An erstwhile lawyer herself, buyouts often result in companies crippled Parker now plies her trade as a coach for with debt while the private-equity boys those exiting the profession. Here is her make out like bandits, but that’s a topic for written “roadmap to finding meaningful another book.) Lesson number two is that work outside of the law” (presumably Enron executives, led by Lay and Skilling, while still complying with it). were paid too lavishly. The reckless spew- ing of company stock and options—cele- The Freedom Agenda: Why America brated by some compensation gurus as a Must Spread Democracy (Just Not the way to “align” management’s interests with Way George Bush Did), by James Traub those of the company—created an incen- ’76 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25). One tive for Enron’s leaders to prop up the share reporter’s take on promoting democracy price at all costs. Finally, Salter calls for the and why it would be good for the nation institution of stringent ethical checks and to “get caught…behaving in conformity balances to prevent executives from misbe- with our deepest principles.” having when they operate “in the penum- bra between clear rightdoing and clear City between Worlds: My Hong Kong, wrongdoing.” by Leo Ou-fan Lee, professor of Chinese Fair enough. But as Salter’s careful ex- literature emeritus (Harvard University position reveals, all the business-school Press, $29.95). An attractively illustrated theory in the world can’t cure the corrup- history, cultural guide, and sidewalk tour tion of a devious mind. Enron had codes of the author’s home city, where he now of ethics, but they weren’t worth the teaches at the Chinese University. CLIFFORD BOEHMER/HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS paper on which they were neatly pub- Making a living in the narrow alleyways and streets of Wan Chai, in Hong Kong lished. (Lay, who saw himself as an acade- High Performance with High Integrity, mic of sorts, even contributed a chapter by Ben W.Heineman Jr.’65 (Harvard Busi- Decorated Book Papers, Fourth Edi- to a book on business ethics!) The com- ness Press, $18). A brief, brisk book of tion, by Rosamond B. Loring, edited by pany had a risk-analysis group stocked guidelines for profitable, principled busi- Hope Mayo, Hofer curator of printing with quantitative geniuses who raised ness operations, by GE’s senior vice presi- and graphic arts, Houghton Library (Har- plenty of objections to questionable deals dent-general counsel from 1987 to 2003. vard College Library/Harvard University and dubious accounting. The objections There, he writes, “We weren’t going to Press, $50). With 80 lush samples, from were derided or ignored. As for what mo- repeal human nature, but we sought to when books were beautiful. tivates the troops, Salter quotes Skilling reduce improprieties to a minimum.” as having this to say before everything How the Wise Decide, by Bryn Zeck- unraveled: “I’ve thought about this a lot, The Legacy of the Mastodon, by Keith hauser ’93, M.B.A. ’01, and Aaron Sandos- and all that matters is money. You buy Thomson ’61, Ph.D. ’63 (Yale, $35). The ki, M.B.A. ’04 (Crown, $24.95). Among loyalty with money. This touchy-feely former director of the Oxford University other advice, leaders suggest,“Fill a room stu≠ isn’t as important as cash.” Museum of Natural History traces “the with barbarians”—to air diverse views. Come to think of it, would even our most august schools of business adminis-

22 September - October 2008 MONTAGE tration dispute Skilling’s blunt assess- Skilling, & Company were cheaters (as was “a deep commitment to ‘quality’ ob- ment? The fact is that money talks, and well as far less competent corporate jectives—compliance with the law, the achievers in corporations and on Wall strategists than they and a lot of other principles underlying the law, and high Street listen. That’s at least a big part of people thought at the time). Salter help- ethical standards—and thoughtful reflec- the reason they’ve chosen those pursuits, fully recounts an incident from as far back tion on how best to achieve those objec- rather than high-school teaching. as 1987, when Lay discovered a rogue oil- tives.” Well, yes. This is what tends to be And there’s nothing necessarily wrong trading team manipulating the ledgers to missing when investigators comb the with that. We all benefit, some more di- reap substantial bonuses. Rather than fire wreckage of a financial calamity. There rectly than others, when smart, competent the miscreants, Salter notes, Lay papered were countless individuals within Enron business people invent new ways of trad- over the situation. His response, widely who could have quit their jobs and alerted ing natural gas or, to choose another ex- observed at the company, “became part of regulators to what was going on. Brave ample of more immediate interest, finance Enron’s cultural lore.” souls were in short supply. home loans. We need entrepreneurs as The author puts great faith in rational What also tends to be missing—and well as algebra instructors. internal controls and company audit com- what Salter might have emphasized But cheaters, given a chance to bend the mittees. Almost as an afterthought, he more—is skeptical oversight from the out- rules, can weaken any enterprise. Lay, notes that what was also missing at Enron side. An overmatched, understa≠ed SEC

Thomas Engelsing would like Tobe Kemp seeks a provenance to learn the source of the fol- Chapter & Verse for his family’s longtime expres- lowing lines: “And now hear this, sion, “And I’m the dumpsy dido my ruder truth, thou art com- Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words that can do it.” posed of lust unchained and most vile flux.” Send inquiries and answers to to Mesopotamia to Greece, Rome, Eu- “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, Royall Moore hopes that someone can rope, and the New World)—a line he 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via provide a citation for the phrase “North heard on a radio broadcast by Robert e-mail to chapterandverse@harvard- northwest the path of culture” (i.e., Egypt Frost, who was reading from his poems. mag.com.

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Harvard Magazine 23 MONTAGE struggles to patrol the beat to which it has confess from within that fraternity, are human nature being what it is, we can ex- been assigned. Neither Congress nor the overly consumed with anointing corporate pect more Enrons, and more perp walks. White House—Republican or Democra- superstars. Too rarely do we have the forti- tic—seems inclined to strengthen the regu- tude to disentangle telling footnotes in se- Paul M. Barrett ’83, an assistant managing editor lators. Tepid reform legislation enacted in curities ﬁlings when it counts—before, at BusinessWeek, is the author, most recently, of the wake of Enron did little to deter the rather than after, the bankruptcy courts American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul reckless schemes that gave us the subprime take over and shareholders are ruined. of a Religion (2006), released in a paperback mortgage mess. Business journalists, I can Call me a pessimist, but my view is that version by Picador earlier this year.

Wall Street Journal (where, in her current job, she commis- BOOKS sions essays for the paper’s Friday leisure section)—Mechling says she doesn’t approach writing for teenagers as another A Tale of Two form of journalism.“I don’t hang out with teenaged girls,” she says. “I think it would come across as really fake and conde- Detectives scending if we sat down with our notebooks and watched One Tree Hill [a teen television drama] and said,‘All right, this is what the teens are into now. Let’s write about that.’” She While preparing to interview Cecile von Ziegesar, author of simply trusts that what she finds funny or touching will res- the wildly popular Gossip Girl series, for a London newspaper, onate with her readers. Lauren Mechling ’99 spent a week in the “young adult” corner Reporting and detective work both require keen powers of of a New York City Barnes & Noble. She hadn’t been in that observation, though, so Mechling describes Claire, the heroine section in a decade, by her estimate, and what she found sur- of her new novel, as a journalist who just doesn’t know it yet. prised her.The moralizing tone of the books she remembered “It’s about a girl who’s always noticing little things,” she ex- from her own teenage reading was gone. “It seemed like the plains.“And unlike in my life, where you notice little things and books were really being written for teenagers, not for their par- you file them away and that’s the end of it, in Claire’s case they ents to buy them,” she says. “There was something kind of actually end up leading her into the most fantastic adventure.” ‘Wild-West’-y about it.” But Claire does share one of her author’s childhood memories. Those visits prompted Mechling (pronounced meck-ling) While visiting grandparents in Florida, Mechling opted not to go and her friend Laura Moser to write a trilogy about a Texas girl to the beach with the rest of her family. Instead, she sneaked who moves to Manhattan. Their first book, The around the apartment building, putting an ear up against the Rise and Fall of a 10th-Grade Social Climber,has neighbors’ doors and taking notes on what sort of deli meat sold more than 30,000 copies since its publica- they wanted on their sandwiches. She ended up caught and in tion in 2005. In 2006, Mechling began writing trouble. So does Claire. her first solo novel, Dream Girl, the story of a Claire’s adventures, like those of many young-adult heroines, high-school student whose strange but predic- will continue in a sequel, Dream Life. Mechling notes that pub- tive dreams help her slowly unravel a mystery. It lishing houses often push authors to continue writing about was published in July. popular characters, but she sees another reason for creating a The young-adult section of a Barnes & Noble series as well, that gets to the heart of why young people read: is not a bad place for a book to be. While the “I think there’s a smaller space between their heads and the rest of the industry shrinks, page. I think they really dive into these imaginary worlds with a Lauren Mechling the Association of American greater sense of immersion and a greater sense of intensity. writes in the Publishers estimates that And I think they become personally attached to the characters thriving young- adult genre. sales of hardback juvenile ti- they’re reading about.” She suspects that teens would rather tles, which include young- read a dozen books by a beloved author than a book each by a adult and children’s books, dozen critically acclaimed yet unfamiliar writers. have grown 4.6 percent an- Mechling says that writing young-adult books has been im- nually since 2002. “I guess mensely rewarding. “You don’t do this for the money.You obvi- it’s really been in the last 10 ously don’t do it for prestige,” she explains.“I just do it because years,” says Mechling, “that I love the satisfaction that comes from writing something that I the average age of young- think is very funny, or something that I think is very sweet.” adult authors became a lot Even so, there are those who still ask her when she’s going to younger, and closer to that start her great American novel.“I definitely want to shake peo- of the readers themselves.” ple when they ask that,” she says, “to just sort of guide them by Although a former re- the hand and show them all these great books that are coming porter herself—first in out. If they understood, they wouldn’t say, ‘Why don’t you go Canada, and then in New write a 600-page meditation on isolation and dystopia?’ ” She

TOBIAS EVERKE York City for the Sun and likes her corner of the bookstore just fine. paul gleason

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cial and historic signiﬁcance of this jour- Extracurriculars ney to a site held sacred by the Hopi people, and o≠ers insight into the lives of the archaeologists themselves.

SEASONAL Saunter down to the river with a picnic to • Continuing: Fragile Memories: Images OF THE PEABODY The Farmers’ Market at Harvard watch athletes from around New Eng- of Archaeology and Community at Copán, www.dining.harvard.edu/flp/ag_mar- land—and the world—compete in the 1891-1900. The exhibit explores one of ket.html. Open through October. annual two-day event. the most important Maya sites and its in- In Cambridge: ﬂuence on the local community. • Tuesdays, 12:30-6 p.m. EXHIBITIONS Harvard Museum of Natural Outside the Science Center, at the corner The Harvard Art Museum History of Oxford and Kirkland streets. Please note: The Fogg and Busch-Rei- www.hmnh.harvard.edu In Allston: singer Museums are closed to the public 617-495-3045 • Wednesdays, 3-7 p.m. for renovations that are expected to last • October 16 at 6 p.m. Corner of North Harvard Street and about ﬁve years. Lecture and book signing with Eric Chi- Western Avenue. www.artmuseums.harvard.edu vian, director of Harvard’s Center for The markets, organized by Harvard Uni- 617-495-9400/9422 Health and the Global Environment, and versity Dining Services, o≠er fresh pro- • Opening September 13 coeditor of the new Sustaining Life: How duce, herbs, baked goods, and other de- Re-View, at the Sackler Museum, fea- Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. lights, plus cooking demonstrations. tures a wide range of selected works from • Continuing: Looking at Leaves: Photo- An Evening with Champions all three art museums. graphs by Amanda Means invites a www.hcs.harvard.edu/~ewc; 617-493-8172 • September 20, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. closer look at the natural world. • October 10 at 8 p.m.; October 11 at 7 p.m. “Community Day” at the Sackler; admis- The Semitic Museum Organized by Harvard undergraduates, sion is free. www.fas.harvard.edu/~semitic the annual ice-skating show includes Peabody Museum of Archaeology 617-495-3045 Olympic athletes and raises money for the and Ethnology Continuing: The Houses of Ancient Is- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy www.peabody.harvard.edu; 617-495-1027 rael: Domestic, Royal, Divine features a Fund. Bright Hockey Arena. • Opening September 25 full-scale replica of an Iron Age (ca. 1200- Head of the Charles Regatta Remembering Awatovi: The Story of an 586 b.c.e.) village abode. In Ancient Egypt: www.hocr.org; 617-868-6200 Archaeological Expedition in Northern Magic and the Afterlife, visitors may view • October 18-19 Arizona, 1935-1939, showcases the so- co∞ns, amulets, and funerary inscrip- Left to right: Blossom, 2007, by Sanford Biggers, at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts; The Mulatto, 1913, by Emil Nolde, at the Sackler;

Awatovi Archaelogists Dancing, late 1930s, at the Peabody Museum. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: COURTESY OF THE CARPENTER CENTER FOR VISUAL ARTS; HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS; MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY ©PRESIDENT FELLOWS HARVARD COLLEGE

Harvard Magazine 24A NEW ENGLAND REGIONAL SECTION tions that elucidate the Egyptian view of • September 18 and October 16 at 7:30 p.m • November 1 at 8 p.m. life after death. Visit the Harvard College Observatory The Harvard Krokodiloes and Harvard- for lectures and, weather permitting, Radcliffe Veritones give a fall concert. DANCE stargazing outdoors. www.fas.harvard.edu/~dance THEATER 617-495-8683. Harvard Dance Center, 60 FILM The American Repertory Theatre Garden Street. The Harvard Film Archive www.amrep.org; 617-547-8300 • September 27 at 8 p.m. www.harvardfilmarchive.org • September 12 through October 11 Salad Days is series of dances, choreo- Visit the website for complete listings. Written and performed by Anna Deavere graphed by Sara Hook, that satirizes ob- 617-495-4700 Smith, Let Me Down Easy, is a one-woman sessions with youth and glory. Admission • October 5-11 show about contemporary life that asks: is free. Lucrecia Martel, La Maestra celebrates how do we pursue kindness in a competi- the work of this Argentinean filmmaker, tive and sometimes distressing world? NATURE AND SCIENCE who will be present for the screening of Loeb Theatre The Arnold Arboretum her trilogy—La Cienega, The Holy Girl, and • October 18 through November 9 www.arboretum.harvard.edu The Headless Woman—which was recently The Communist Dracula Pageant presents a 617-524-1718 shown at the Cannes Film Festival. satirical look at the forging of a national Jamaica Plain, Boston. identity and the power of a president to Visit the website for details on upcoming MUSIC influence the news. Written by Anne lectures, events, and art displays. Sanders Theatre Washburn; directed by Anne Kau≠man. The Harvard-Smithsonian Center www.fas.boxoffice.harvard.edu Zero Arrow Stage. for Astrophysics 617-496-2222 www.cfa.harvard.edu/events.html • October 31 at 8 p.m. Events listings also appear in the Univer- 617-495-7461. Phillips Auditorium, 60 The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra per- sity Gazette, accessible via www.harvard- Garden Street. forms Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, and more. magazine.com.

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New England’s auctions thrive • by Nell Porter Brown

t’s a summer evening, and a crowd O’Neill; and a weathered tin sign for has gathered at the Sandwich Auction the old Libby’s restaurant in Wellﬂeet. IHouse for the weekly Wednesday sale. “They had a real mishmosh there,” says The windows and doors of the shed Sandy Rosenblith, J.D. ’70, who at- building are open wide to catch whatever tended the auction with her mother, fresh air comes along, and some people fan Judy Rosenblith, Ph.D. ’58, who lives their faces as they pick through the nearly nearby. “I like that diversity. I don’t 300 items to go on the block that night: a need antique things. I just prefer buying one could say, lifetimes, are emptied out, boxload of bulldog ﬁgurines; an oil paint- something unique, something that doesn’t their contents dispersed to new homes, to ing of dunes on Cape Cod; Hitchcock din- come from a chain store.” be emptied some day in turn. ing chairs; a few plastic Marilyn Monroe A longtime New England tradition, the “We’re estate liquidators—there are dolls (still in their original packaging); a local auction house is a communal gather- only one or two times in life that people nineteenth-century family Bible; some di- ing point, a commercial event that carries will need this service,” says Sandwich auc- amond rings; a signed photograph of Tip a certain poignancy: whole households or, tioneer Duncan Gray, who has been in the

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24D September - October 2008 The Sandwich Auction House has something for everyone; half the “best of” auctions: he expected a Sal- fun is pawing through items set for the vador Dali painting to bring in tens of block. Bathers in the Maine Woods (above), FRED FIELD by Ernest Hemingway’s friend Waldo Pierce, thousands of dollars. He says he grosses A.B. 1908, turned up at a Thomaston $1.5 million to $2 million annually. Auction House sale this summer, as did a Despite the advent of eBay, and the rel- miniature Russian kvosh (far left). ative newcomers Craigslist, iGavel, and COURTESY OF THOMASTON AUCTION HOUSE Artnet, more than a hundred locally what they don’t get on line: the social as- business since he was a teenager. “Most owned auction houses ﬂourish throughout pects, and the history of an item—where people don’t have time to deal with entire the region. Around 1998 “when eBay really the family purchased it, or how it came to estates by selling them on line, nor do they came in, attendance was slacking,” Gray be at this particular auction. There is a lot want to.” Thus many smaller auctioneers, allows. But he sees renewed interest “as of history—stories that drive interest in like Gray, hold general estate sales with a people realize that, while the Internet may the items, and only come with the point of huge range of items, most going, going, make our lives easier, the method of sale human contact in the exchange.” These gone for under $500. In addition, he holds depersonalizes the process. People know auctions, says Nick Thorn, vice president

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SM . They’re free and fun, and you can see your by INTERNATIONAL 800 727.3325 www.EmpyreanInt.com friends. It’s sort of a Saturday night activ- Sustainable Home Building Systems ity in a small New England town.” Indeed, because of the eclectic goods for sale and the engaging pace, it’s often hard to escape without buying something. Ros- enblith, an auction neophyte, unexpectedly spent nearly $200 on three “souvenirs” of her experience: a mahogany wall mirror, a lithograph, and a Western mountain scene that reminded her of childhood visits to her grandparents in California. She and her mother later Googled the artist, Raymond Ayers, and found that he had been a proliﬁc and celebrated community-arts promoter who sold his own work at a farmers’ market in Ventura county, Southern California. Their quest was not to ﬁnd the work’s monetary value. “It was important because someone created this painting in a certain environment, and was communicating to me and everyone else,” The rhythm of Rosenblith says. “I wanted to understand Harvard Square who was reaching me.” returns in autumn: She found the auction interesting on many levels, mostly because it was “like Let fine French cuisine being at a tennis match where suddenly you can hit the ball, you’re part of what’s be the melody going on in a direct way. I was intrigued by Vive La Class of 2012 ! who was going to win the item and how Try our new Bistro Menu with prices starting at $10 much it would cost. It was active. There are very few places anymore where that )PMZPLF4USFFUt$BNCSJEHF .BTTBDIVTFUUTt kind of social experience happens.”

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Most local sales are run by people ing,” he says. “And it’s a mental challenge recent auction, he came across a book- like Gray, who caught the bug as children to see if you can have more knowledge plate that had belonged to Edward Augus- and have never tired of the treasure hunt. about an object than everyone else and tus Holyoke, who, in his early nineties, be- Kaja Veilleux, a lifetime collector, runs the make money against them.” came founding president of the Essex Thomaston Place Auction House, in Local auctions attract a wide audience, Institute (which later became part of Thomaston, Maine, which produces a ranging from obsessive pack rats, bargain- PEM). “It has his signature and his coat of glossy catalog and holds general or hunters, and dealers to investors, curators, arms, and now, on my desk, I have some- themed auctions, including this summer’s and serious connoisseurs, all of whom thing related to my sometime predecessor, unusual antique-doll event. “To me, it’s tend to imbue things with more meaning who was president of the board almost the mystique of it all, not knowing exactly than other people do. “It’s why some peo- 200 years ago,” he says. Shapiro also has what you will see when you get there, the ple must have that piece; sometimes we call and still uses the ﬁrst item he ever bought

FRED FIELD excitement of finding something interest- it the ‘collecting gene,’” says seasoned as a boy at an auction with his father: a American art and antique collector brass trivet with a dragon design that cost Robert Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78, of Cam- him 75 cents. “Would that all my pur- bridge. “Sometimes people find they chases were in that price range,” he have to curb their love, otherwise they laments. Some people “are just hooked on find they have more love and less the auction process,” says Veilleux. “There money in their pockets.” are people who fly into Maine on Lear jets A trusts and estates attorney in and sail in on 100-foot yachts and come to Boston, Shapiro is also president of the our big August sale.” Thanks to the Inter- board of the Peabody Essex Museum net, where most auctions preview lots for (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts. Some forthcoming auctions with photographs objects hold particular resonance: at a and descriptions, people from all over the world now buy from local dealers. Even grownups like to bid on toys. This spring, Veilleux took on a Maine

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24H September - October 2008 NEW ENGLAND REGIONAL SECTION estate that included an enameled spoon- early ceramics. A separate like object with ﬂoral designs and a few marine and China-trade gemstones that was being used as an ash- auction, also in August— tray. “We knew it was pretty,” says his old-style, held outside un- marketing manager, Jessica Manbeck, der a tent—was for “big “but when questions came in, some inter- boys with big wallets,” national, and someone o≠ered to buy it says client services direc- outright, we knew it must be good.” It tor M. L. Coolidge, a self- turned out to be a miniature Russian described “auction junkie.” kvosh, a ladle/drinking vessel, made by Shapiro shops primarily master enamelist Feodor Rückert, who at Northeast, although he died in 1917. It ultimately sold to a phone now has scant room for bidder for $82,250, and will probably be new furniture, and has returned to Russia. nearly ﬁlled his walls with American art. This pine canning table, circa 1840, from The biggest auction houses in New He currently leans toward turn-of-the- the North Family Mount Lebanon Shakers of New York, was offered at Northeast’s England are Skinner, in Boston, and North- century paintings from Boston and Cape Shaker furniture sale in August. east Auctions, in Portsmouth, New Hamp- Ann, but in recent years has delved into shire. (Christie’s and Sotheby’s have re- Native American history, culture, and con- talks to scholarly auction experts. “It’s an gional o∞ces, but no sales.) Skinner has temporary art with annual trips to Santa applied version of going to a museum,” he multiple specialties, including wines and Fe. Collecting itself is a creative process, says. “And it’s a comparative learning ex- COURTESY OF NORTHEAST AUCTIONS twentieth-century decorative art and fur- he asserts, involving “research and learn- perience; there is a dialogue and a sharing niture. Northeast’s core business is Amer- ing and a whole cluster of aesthetic and of one’s passions about works of art and ican antique furniture, and in August it intellectual and economic and historic in- antiques. That’s the connoisseurship as- sold o≠ an important private collection of terests that come together.” pect.” And then there is the social piece: Shaker furniture, along with folk art and At previews, he picks things up and watching the drama unfold, the rhythm of

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Harvard Magazine 24I cisive, know when to be seri- auctions in real-time through eBay ous, when to be humorous, (though that business component will when to wait for bids, when to close at the end of December). That con- move things along. It’s the nection “has offered interesting exposure same skill as a master teacher, for us; it’s led us to embrace the Internet a skill in engaging people.” more, rather than less,” says Skinner vice

FRED FIELD Shapiro says that Northeast president Kerry Shrives. She is weighing Still life with vegetables, anyone? Sandwich Auctions’ owner, Ron Bourgeault, “plays other on-line auction venues, but not Auction House’s Duncan Gray at work the audience like a fine instrument.” iGavel, an Internet business that con- Northeast draws 600 to 800 people to its tracts with a few hundred auction the bids, the patter, the way certain items five major annual sales, and many more houses, dealers, and appraisers to sell build anticipation. “I find the experience through 14 phone lines; six other “estate their goods at continuous on-line auc- of bidding just plain exciting,” Shapiro residue” auctions (non-antique furniture, tions. “Part of this, for us, is making clear says. “Some people wave their paddles collectibles, and household goods) are that people are buying from Skinner,” frantically, others are the proverbial held in Dover, New Hampshire. “A big Shrives explains, “and having people be wigglers of the left eyebrow—or of the part of our success is the theater aspect,” confident about who they are purchasing pinkie finger that goes up half an inch agrees Coolidge. “We do well because Ron from. The on-line process should not be a and somehow the auctioneer sees it from creates excitement in the room.” completely di≠erent process than if you the podium.” When people enter the race That kind of performance and drama were in the room during the live. It is also interesting: some bid early and simply cannot be replicated on line, should be an extension.” (Rob Shapiro, steadily, while others swoop in, taking Coolidge and others assert. Partly be- for his part, notes that “the reputation of the last chance to steal something away cause of that, Northeast does not engage an auction house is everything.”) from a competitor. in e-commerce auctions, although Skin- On the other hand, Nick Thorn of Auctioneering itself is “a tremendous ner does. In the last four years, bidders Litchfield County Auctions says iGavel art,” he adds. “You have to be very fast, de- have been able to access Skinner’s live has been so helpful that his company no Premier Properties HURON VILLAGE Exclusive Carol & Myra Listing CAMBRIDGE Residential 12 Maple Avenue Real Estate Brokerage Buyer and Seller Representation

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24J September - October 2008 NEW ENGLAND REGIONAL SECTION longer holds local, live auctions: iGavel yields hammer prices that are, typically, Rediscover life at least 20 to 30 percent higher than those without worries. at a traditional auction. “It’s a major part Explore lifelong of our growth,” he notes. The first sign of that potential came when Sotheby’s interests and meet operated a short-lived, on-line auction new friends, all venture in the early 2000s on which Litchfield put up a Lalique glass vase. on the beautifully -Ordinarily, it would have fetched $400 to wooded campus of $600. On line, the price skyrocketed to RiverWoods at Exeter, $20,000. “The buyer was from London and we had competition from all over,” the Seacoast’s premier life care community. Thorn says. “It really opened our eyes to Riverwoods residents Tom and Mimi Adams Experience peace of mind while you live the usefulness of having that interna- your best life. Call today for your personal tional audience.” The most successful iGavel associates tour (800) 688-9663 or (603) 658-1500. still hold physical previews, as Litchfield does, which satisfies bidders’ needs to eyeball and touch merchandise. “The ex- hibition is still a necessary part of the process; it adds the human element,” says Thorn. “But now I think we have a good balance.” They also hold a tag sale of fixed-price estate items that “is like the running of bulls” once the doors open, he 7 RiverWoods Dr., Exeter, NH 03833 U www.riverwoodsrc.org says, o≠ering insight into a di≠erent human aspect of the marketplace. “People who come by and haven’t seen it before are Southgate at just shocked at what goes on.” That social component, iGavel cofound- Shrewsbury er Ben Turk Tolub points out, is not criti- Continuing Care cal to high-end collectors, who, in fact, Retirement Community strive for anonymity. Nor would such clients go to eBay, where goods are not guaranteed and sellers are relatively un- credentialed. Tolub and his business partner, Lark E. Mason Jr., a respected Asian art expert, both used to work at Sotheby’s and they guarantee the authenticity and condition of items. Thus, Tolub explains, iGavel fills a “specific middle-range niche, above eBay and below Sotheby’s.” Shapiro assumes there are on-line deals to be had, noting that plenty of collectors don’t bother with live venues, considering them too time-consuming, and do all of their acquiring via the Internet. In the -FTTUIBOIPVSGSPN#PTUPOt end, it’s a personal choice. 4FBUUIFBUSFt)FBMUIDMVCt*OEPPS “I’ve never wanted to buy on-line—it’s TXJNNJOHQPPMt'PVSMBOFCPXMJOH a di≠erent game that I haven’t learned BMMFZt8PPEXPSLJOHTIPQt'JOF how to play,” he says. “I love the theater of BOEDBTVBMEJOJOH'PSBCSPDIVSF the auctions more than anything. Even if I QMFBTFDBMM did not buy anything, I would still happily attend, just to observe and learn. They’re ! ! 30 Julio Drive, Shrewsbury, MA 01545 much better than going to the movies.” """ #$%#$ #&'($ &' www. southgateatshrewsbury.com

Harvard Magazine 24K TASTES AND TABLES

Wine...and Dine

An Italian restaurant on Beacon Hill o≠ers great food with its wine.

($15) looked like a pile of worms in red clay, but was absolutely delectable—especially washed down with the Gamay Do- maine du Vissoux “Cuvée Traditionelle” Beaujolais, 2006. Also rewarding was the thickly cut duck breast with snippets of rhubarb and cubed turnip ($27). The veg- gies were a bit undercooked, just as we like them, and the turnip’s earthy, bitter heart and the rhubarb’s springy sourness balanced the rich meat. So good was the “horsy, barnyard” essence (so said our waiter) of the accompanying Brucher Pinot Noir, Aubaine Vineyards, California, 2004, that we later went on line to order our own case. Downright airy (next to the duck) was Mediterra- nean sea bass ($29) grilled with lemon, thyme, and asparagus: an honest dish lured n Italian, enoteca denotes a special shop wines and o≠erings from small- to the wild side by a where patrons sample wines from er vintners, and the system al- seductive red-pepper I nearby vineyards by sni∞ng and sip- lows diners at any level of coulis. ping as they nibble on small meals or oenophilia to mix and match For dessert, don’t fail snacks designed to complement specific (and learn about) exquisite to try the chocolate vintages. Such is the idea behind Bin 26 wines. As wine appreciation in the United berry “stack” ($9): two squares of dense, Enoteca on Beacon Hill. The brother-sister States grows, Bina explains, “palates are mousse-like cake with a scoop of tangy team of Azita Bina-Seibel and Babak Bina understanding that there are so many raspberry gelato. (Let’s just say we licked (who own Lala Rokh, a very good Persian wines to enjoy without prejudgment.” (Be the plate clean.) The lime cream tart ($9) restaurant nearby) has crafted a convivial warned, though: numerous tastings can boasted a fine custard with shortbread, spot where boldly flavored Italian-inspired prove expensive.) accented with pine nuts and rhubarb food is served with 223 wines, including We began with a semi-fizzy Basque steeped with sugar and strawberries. more than 70 available by the glass. That’s country wine, Txakoli Arabako Txakolina The loving care taken with both food many more than most restaurants, thanks “Xarmant” Amurrio 2007, which played and wine is evident throughout this unex- to a machine that preserves shelf life by well to the crispy grilled sardines ($16) pectedly refined local bistro. The place filling a partly empty bottle with nitrogen wrapped in grape leaves and served with a seats about 65 people in two small rooms to preclude entrance of the dreaded rich mélange of orange and yellow pep- and a nicely incorporated front bar; it’s spoiler, oxygen. pers and onions (along with a particularly cozy, not overcrowded. But sparseness Somewhat confusingly, glasses come in tasty Tuscan olive oil). Another starter, rules; any decorative touches are wine-re- four sizes, from 750 milliliters (an entire the chef’s strangely cold and flavorless lated: coatracks of cork, a wall decou- bottle) down to 100 (about a third of a homemade pâté ($8), proved the only paged with hundreds of wine labels, and standard wineglass). The owners provide downside of the evening. wine racks a≠ording pri- a wonderful variety, including organic The fusilli with wild BIN 26 ENOTECA vacy. At Bin 26, even the Bin 26 décor is all about wine; the menu offers boar bacon, pancetta, and 26 Charles Street bathrooms are worth a ricotta gnocchi and baby squid in tomato sauce. onion in a tomato sauce Boston visit. Just look up. n.p.b.

617-723-5939, www.bin26.com PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF BIN 26 ENOTECA 24L September - October 2008 Reservations recommended. F O R U THE ECONOMIC AGENDA M

Challenges facing the next president

have been privileged to watch BY LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS the 10 previous presidential elections ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROBERT NEUBECKER Iclosely. In the course of each of them, it was said that this was a uniquely important Economic history suggests that there are two primary kinds presidential election—that the coun- of recessions. The recessions that were standard in the United try was at a turning point, that the de- States for most of the post-World War II period might be called cisions that were going to be made Federal Reserve inflation control: inflation got out of control, would shape the future irrevocably. Sometimes clichés turn out the Fed hit the brakes, the economy skidded, the Fed took its to be true. It is said that the current presidential election is foot o≠ the brakes, the economy recovered. In many ways, the uniquely important—and this time, I believe that is correct in more serious and profound source of economic instability is the economic arena. While the election will set a course for the asset-price collapse: credit-crunch recessions of the kind we are country on very fundamental issues of foreign policy—from Iraq experiencing now. This is the kind we experienced after 2001, to Iran to our approach to the Islamic world generally—and on the Japanese experienced in the 1990s, and we in the United fundamental domestic issues concerning civil liberties—as the States experienced during the 1930s. Because of the strains they next president is likely to appoint a significant number of place on the financial system—which at the same time loses Supreme Court justices—my focus is on the economic agenda. capital and loses the ability to lever the capital that it does There are half a dozen such issues today, each one of which is as have—such price-collapse recessions typically tend to involve important as the most important issue at the beginning of most protracted, painful recoveries. presidential terms. I say this with some sense of the economic is- Alan Greenspan has pointed out the resilience of the American sues that faced the country in 1993 and in 1997, and that would economy, highlighting the fact that our financial system has relied have faced a new Democratic president in 1988, 2001, or 2005. on two pillars, banks and capital markets. When one goes down, The critical issues facing the new president begin with the the other takes up the slack. It was capital markets filling in for cyclical situation of the real economy. While there are reasonable banks in 1990, and banks filling in for capital markets in 1998. arguments to be made about how far along we are with respect On the other hand, currently, because of the close integration to the current financial crisis, there is every reason to believe that between banks and capital markets, both are seriously inhibited, the distress in the real economy is only very partially advanced. raising real questions about the growth process. By the end of

Harvard Magazine 27 WE NOW KNOW THAT CONSUMPTION WAS TOO HIGH TO BE SUSTAINABLE, THAT HOUSING PRICES WERE TOO HIGH, AND SO ON. SO THAT SOURCE OF GROWTH HAS REVERSED.

this year, the best available estimates seem to suggest that even of the early 1990s—when problems in the financial system cre- after raising tens of billions of dollars of new funds, our banks ated a headwind to growth—is a greater risk than a return to the and capital-market institutions will have had a net loss of at stagflation of the 1970s, inflation is certainly more of a concern least $200 billion of capital; given normal leverage of that capital, now, even with a declining economy, than at any point in the last that implies that they will hold at least $2 trillion less in assets: decade. the loans to each other and companies and consumers that sup- If the new president is not successful in pursuing a set of poli- port economic activity. cies that maintain financial confidence, promote necessary ad- As if that were not enough, consumers are also su≠ering from justment, and assure adequate demand stimulus, the cyclical lost housing wealth on an unprecedented scale. Depending on performance of the economy is likely to be poor—with very ad- which measure is selected, housing prices have declined by 15 verse consequences for the federal budget, for Americans’ percent already, and may well decline by another 15 percent; very confidence in themselves, and for their willingness to provide likely there will be close to 15 million homeowners living in global leadership. Even a moderate recession would reduce aver- houses in which they have negative equity. Consumers are also age household income by $5,000 per family—a large amount. The su≠ering from a substantial reduction in spending power due to reality is that the new president does not get to the medium- and $4.00-per-gallon gasoline and to higher food prices and prices of long-term issues except through addressing the short-term ones. imported goods as the dollar declines. In percentage terms, con- So the next president will need to be prepared as a first priority sumption’s share of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) rose from to focus on the cyclical performance of the American economy. the high 60s to the low 70s during the past decade. We now know that consumption was too high to be sustainable, that A second and closely related issue is the health of the financial housing prices were too high, and so on. So that source of system. The American financial system has in many ways been a growth has reversed, especially with the other price pressures source of great strength for our economy. Financial services have consumers face. been a major source of jobs and profits. More importantly, the More generally, the inflation rate has been relatively high, and ability of the financial system to take capital from those who many are concerned with rising inflationary expec- can’t use it well and give it to those who can is an important tations. While I continue to believe American strength. As I was fond of remarking during the 1990s, that a return to the eco- America is the only country where entrepreneurs can raise their nomic pattern first $50 million before they buy their first tie. For all of its strengths, however, this financial system has produced fairly frequent, traumatic shocks: the 1987 stock market crash, the 1990 savings-and-loan debacle, the 1994 Mexican financial crisis, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 1998 Long Term Capi- tal Management drama, the 2000- 2001 bursting of the NASDAQ stock bubble, and now the current crisis. ity growth had been very slow for nearly two decades and so it It is more than reasonable to ask whether something more can was natural for policy to be focused on accelerating productiv- be done to contain these crises and the threats to economic sta- ity growth as a strategy for raising the incomes of middle-in- bility that they pose. This task is as di∞cult as it is important. It come workers. Doing all that we can to promote productivity would be tragic if the dynamism and the flexibility of the Ameri- growth through improved education, improved innovation pol- can financial system were to be sacrificed in an e≠ort to promote icy, and provision of appropriate infrastructure remains very, greater stability. At the same time, there is the very real di∞culty very important. that governments and public o∞cials are not able to predict dra- However, the very substantial gaps that have emerged in re- matic moves in financial markets with more accuracy than pri- cent years between productivity growth and growth in the in- vate-sector actors. come of average workers suggest an additional priority: assuring While it is tempting to suppose that regulators can make that the fruits of economic growth are reasonably shared. Here is problems go away simply by insisting that institutions hold a comparison that points up the stakes in a dramatic way. From more capital, the matter is considerably more complex. A great 1979 to today, those in the bottom 80 percent of the income dis- deal of financial activity has shifted from regulated bank entities tribution lost 7 percent of their real annual income. Those in the to nonbank institutions and intermediaries. It is hard to imagine top 1 percent gained 7 percent of their real annual income—and imposing capital requirements on all institutions, but the impo- 43 percent of all their income was attributable to the shift in in- sition of capital requirements on some is likely to drive financial come distribution—in other words, to greater inequality. The intermediation activity outside of the regulated sector. magnitude of the transfer is $640 billion for the top 1 percent— Then there is the problem that our regulatory system has tra- or a gain of nearly $600,000 per family—and a decline of $7,000 ditionally been oriented much more toward the protection and for each household in the bottom 80 percent of the distribution. prudential behavior of individual institutions than toward the pro- These numbers are enormous compared to the stakes in conven- tection of the system as a whole. What is safe for any one institution tional debates on distributional policies or discussions of assis- in the face of downturns—deleveraging its balance sheet and liq- tance for workers a≠ected by trade. uidating assets—can easily be destabilizing for the system as a That brings us to globalization. No responsible observer of the whole as many institutions sell assets into a declining market. U.S. economy could suppose that the trade agreements we have As in every major area of economic policy, there are no perfect entered into have had anything but positive overall economic answers. But it would be very valuable to work toward a new reg- e≠ects. They have benefited many American workers, and they ulatory blueprint that creates a system whose failures are less have benefited all of us as consumers able to purchase lower- likely to have consequences for those priced products. While certainly there has been some economic outside the world of finance than the disruption from trade agreements, the reality is that the jobs lost system we have today. due to trade agreements account for only a negligible fraction of job loss in the American economy. Had the dramatic cyclical and Unfortunately, in our political debates, trade agreements have financial events of the last year not become a proxy for the much broader phenomenon of globaliza- taken place, I would have expected tion. Let’s put that in context. The Industrial Revolution in Eu- that the set of issues surrounding rope two centuries ago resulted in perhaps 10 percent of the globalization and the rise of in- world’s people having their living standards increase one and a equality would be paramount in half times over their 45-year lifespans. Today, in China and India this election. and some other developing economies, the living standards of 40 When Bill Clinton percent of mankind are increasing 7 percent per year—that’s 100- ran for president in fold or more over their 70-year lifespans. The vast majority of 1992, productiv- globalization and increased global economic integration takes place as a consequence of the Internet and other technologies and as a consequence of the tremendous increases in the capacity of other nations to produce goods and services. Wages in the developed economies are many times those in the underdeveloped nations, reflecting di≠erences in factors such as technology, education, information technology, capital, and innovative- ness. But all of these are becoming more fungible and exportable today—suggesting pressure on those

NO RESPONSIBLE OBSERVER OF THE U.S. ECONOMY COULD SUPPOSE THAT THE TRADE AGREEMENTS WE HAVE ENTERED INTO HAVE HAD ANYTHING BUT POSITIVE OVERALL ECONOMIC EFFECTS.

Harvard Magazine 29 wage di≠erences. While it is to be hoped that wage di≠erences And it was suggested that the quality of healthcare in the will be eliminated through upward adjustments in developing- United States might well su≠er as a fragmented, fee-based sys- country wages, this cannot be guaranteed. tem operated to discourage prevention and integrated ap- It is globalization in this latter sense—and not trade agree- proaches to the provision of care. That has been borne out, too. ments—that is a potential threat to American workers. It cannot Particularly troubling is a recent Congressional Budget O∞ce re- be met with protectionism, as policies and e≠orts to resist trade port suggesting that the di≠erentials in healthcare and life ex- agreements are likely to be counterproductive: most trade agree- pectancy between those with lower and those with higher in- ments reduce foreign trade barriers by much more than U.S. trade comes have increased considerably. Indeed, the gap between the barriers are reduced. So even on mercantilist grounds, such most fortunate and the least fortunate Americans in life ex- agreements are desirable because they generate more U.S. expectancy has risen by almost two years over the last generation. ports to the rest of the world than U.S. imports from the rest of To put this in some perspective, complete elimination of cancer the world. would only add a little bit more than two years to Americans’ life But if we are not successful in fostering a more equal income expectancy. distribution at home, at least, and a greater sense that prosperity Another way of seeing the failure of our system is to look at is inclusive, through policies to reduce income insecurity, I sus- data on the treatment of certain conditions. Such research has pect it will be very di∞cult for us to contain protectionist pres- been done on quite an extensive scale by former Harvard profes- sures and to maintain a posture of global economic leadership. sor Christopher Murray (now at the University of Washington). His work, as I take it, implies that less than half of hypertension At the center of concerns about inequality and insecurity is in the United States is discovered, and of that half, less than half the set of issues surrounding national health insurance and the is controlled—for a disease whose costs and consequences are American healthcare system. Certainly, plenty of mistakes were great, and that we know how to detect and treat e≠ectively and made in the Clinton administration’s early e≠ort to universalize cheaply. As a country, surely we can do better. All these factors, healthcare coverage. and the increasingly shaky connection between adequate health But much of what was said at that time about problems in insurance and the existence of stable, long-term jobs, tie health- healthcare has been proven true. It was suggested that if we did insurance reform closely to the concerns about income inequal- not make care universal, the number of Americans without ity and workers’ insecurity in a globalizing economy. health insurance would steadily rise—and it has, to nearly 50 I have been emphasizing healthcare as a moral imperative and million today. an imperative for our competitiveness. It is now the principal It was suggested that healthcare costs as a share of GDP would fiscal issue facing the federal government, too. From the looks of steadily increase, placing an ever greater burden on American long-run projections of the fisc, Social Security and indeed the firms in international competition. And it has: healthcare spend- e≠ects of an aging society generally are a second-order issue, ing has risen from 13 percent to 16 percent of GDP, and there is compared to healthcare costs consistently growing far more some evidence that companies that move from the United States rapidly than GDP. to Canada or Mexico do so more to avoid U.S. benefits costs than I am not optimistic at all about purely individualistic ap- because of taxes. proaches that rely on people buying their own health insurance.

ALMOST CERTAINLY, NOW IS NOT THE MOMENT FOR DRAMAT- IC FURTHER PRICE INCREASES IN ENERGY. BUT WITH THE ECONOMY GETTING USED TO FAR HIGHER ENERGY PRICES, IT WOULD BE A GREAT TRAGEDY IF PRICES WERE ALLOWED TO DECLINE VERY SHARPLY WHEN THE CURRENT CRISIS PASSES.

30 September - October 2008 THE GAP BETWEEN THE MOST FORTUNATE AND THE LEAST FORTUNATE AMERICANS IN LIFE EXPECTANCY HAS RISEN BY ALMOST TWO YEARS OVER THE LAST GENERATION.

Whatever their merits today, I believe such insurance mecha- gets for controlling those emissions recedes. So that is a large nisms will become less and less feasible as more and more tests part of any energy policy the next president has to pursue. that individuals can use to predict their healthcare status become available. Some form of more collective approach will be This is obviously a large, challenging agenda. But I am con- necessary. Many of the leading models under consideration today vinced that all of these issues are susceptible to fixing by United are some variant on the Massachusetts state health-insurance States leadership. We do have the ability to stimulate the econ- plan. Perhaps these strategies will be availing, or perhaps more omy, to overcome the e≠ect on consumers of the continuing comprehensive change will be necessary. What would be a financial problems and of higher gas and food prices. More im- shame is if the country did not move forward on this vital issue portantly, beyond that, we do have the ability to begin to formu- during the next president’s first term in o∞ce. late a new theory of how to achieve sustained economic growth and development, like President Clinton’s plan of boosting pro- The final area of enormous policy significance is energy and ductivity and incomes by investing in human capital; that’s been the related question of the environment. Here I think our politi- missing in recent years. And we do have the ability to rethink our cal leadership has let us down. I am fond of asking those in- domestic financial regulations carefully. volved with the politics of energy a very simple question. Is the At the same time, we do have the ability to address the chal- basic objective of their program to raise energy prices to con- lenges of globalization. That will involve investing in international sumers so as to reduce use, dependence on foreign sources of institutions as we have in the past, and in international standards supply, and carbon emissions? Or is the objective of their policy for capitalization of financial institutions, for corporate-income to reduce the burdens of unfair prices that consumers are now taxation, and for labor standards and organizing. We can negoti- paying for energy? Without knowing the answer to this ques- ate such standards, imperfectly but better than what we have now, tion, it is hard to see how we are going to make great progress as to prevent corporate arbitrage—avoiding regulation or taxation a country going forward. by playing one country’s rules o≠ against another’s. Almost certainly, now is not the moment for dramatic further We have the ability to address inequality, in all its complex price increases in energy, given the situation of the economy and causes, from education to technology and more. Doing so requires the way in which consumers and many energy-using businesses recognizing the need for appropriate government services—and are reeling. At the same time, with the economy getting used to for appropriate revenues to pay for them. And as I have outlined, far higher energy prices than were considered plausible even 18 we can pursue the kinds of policies we need to address the chal- months ago, it would be a great tragedy if prices were allowed to lenges in healthcare and energy and the environment. decline very sharply when the current crisis passes. So the So this really is a turning-point election, with crucial priority will be to maintain the momentum and in- enormous challenges on a broad economic centive for savings caused by the current high-priced en- agenda. I believe America has the strengths ergy, whatever happens in the future. to make progress on these pressing issues— Right now, of course, the focus is on the spike in and powerful incentives to do so. energy prices. But greenhouse-gas emissions are closely related. Each year, the science on Eliot University Professor Lawrence H. Summers global warming becomes served as president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006, more sobering. Each year, Secretary of the United States Department of the our ability to hit the Treasury from 1999 to 2001, and chief economist Kyoto or other tar- of the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. Summers is a columnist for the Financial Times and a managing director of D.E. Shaw & Co., an investment-management firm. This essay is adapted from his remarks at a May 6 Har- vard Business School conference of faculty and alumni involved in real estate, updated in mid summer to reflect the current economic conditions and concerns. Market-based policies for air-pollution control

F O by MUN S. HO and DALE W. JORGENSON R hree decades U of rapid economic growth in China have been accompanied by severe environ- M mental degradation. In July 2007, the Financial Times headlined an article about a World Bank report on this problem, “750,000 a year killed by Chinese pollution.” Our estimate of the number of lives shortened by air pollution in 2002, described below, is very similar: 710,000. The World Bank report put annual health damages from air pollution in China at 3.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2003. The estimate of damages from rural water pollution alone was 1.9 percent of rural GDP. Both ﬁgures suggest huge pollution costs, in absolute terms and relative to other countries. Current levels of air pollution in China far exceed international environmental standards. Particulate matter from smoke damages health through ﬁne particles that lodge deep in the lungs. In 2003, the average

concentration of PM10 (particulate matter smaller than 10 mi- our analysis, China is also a significant and growing contributor crons) for 52 northern Chinese cities was 140 μg/m3 (micrograms to greenhouse-gas emissions, the culprit in global warming. The per cubic meter), compared to the World Health Organization’s policies we suggest could have a powerful positive impact there, healthy air guideline of 20 μg/m3. too—and wider application throughout the world. Historically, estimates of pollution concentration are expressed in terms of total suspended particulates (TSP). The average TSP The Context concentration in these northern cities, where coal is burned for It is instructive to contrast China’s pollution problems with heating, is 337 μg/m3. Although there has been improvement in those of other nations. Thomas Rawski of the University of Pitts- many areas since the 1990s, the concentrations of particulate mat- burgh has pointed out that comparable levels of air pollution ter far exceed China’s own standards. The average TSP concentra- were observed in the United States, Japan, and Korea in earlier tion of major cities in China in 1990 was 379 μg/m3 and by 2003 stages of development. In Pittsburgh, TSP levels above 300 μg/m3 was still 256 μg/m3, exceeding the Chinese national standard of were recorded even as late as the 1940s, while Tokyo had levels 200 μg/m3. By comparison, on the eve of the landmark Clean Air above 400 μg/m3 in 1968. Act signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970, the average TSP One major di≠erence between China and more developed concentration in the United States was 70 μg/m3. Even at the countries is the degree of urbanization. Even today, China is ninetieth percentile—the top tenth of most polluted areas—the much less urbanized than the United States, Japan, and Korea U.S. concentration level in 1970 was only 106 μg/m3. were in their periods of high pollution. As late as 2003, only 41 By any standard, then, China’s pollution problem is severe: percent of China’s citizens resided in urban areas; 74 percent of costly in lives and in economic impact. We want to put the prob- the U.S. population was already living in cities by 1970. The area lem in context, and to detail an analysis—using modern social- definitions are not identical, but these figures show the potential science and public-health tools—of how that nation can best ad- for much more urbanization in China, which could expose many dress it. We are impressed by China’s dynamism and economic more people to high levels of urban pollution. strengths, which hold out the potential for making significant Policy analysts assign a dollar value to environmental damages environmental progress. Though it is not directly the subject of in order to compare these damages with the costs of controlling

32 September - October 2008 pollution. As noted above, air-pollu- Old and new: Beijing’s tion damages are estimated by the rapidly expanding World Bank at 3.8 percent of China’s vehicle fleets, shown GDP. As its citizens’ incomes rise near the Temple of with the rapid economic growth, Heaven last November, reflect strong, sustained these valuations will rise. We project economic growth—and that air-pollution damages as a share contribute to worsening of GDP in China would double in urban air pollution. about 20 years under current policies, due to rising incomes, increased urbanization, and slow improvement in air quality. In the face of truly daunting environmental challenges, the Chinese government has developed relatively sophisticated institutions to address the problems. The U.S. Envi- ronmental Protection Agency was not established until 1970, when the country’s per capita income was $21,000 (in 2005 dollars). By 2005, when China’s per capita income was only $4,100 in comparable terms, the 17-year-old State Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies had acquired a high level of technology for dealing with these environmental issues. Traditional methods of controlling pollution in developed countries take the form of direct regulation and rigorous technology standards, such as mandatory scrubbing of power-plant emissions and pollution-control standards for automobiles. More recently, the United States has introduced market-based mechanisms, such as per- mit-trading programs for sulfur emissions, in order to reduce the cost of pollution abatement. Given the magnitude of China’s pollution problems and the expected surge in energy use, we believe that China should seriously consider market- based approaches to environmental protection. This paper describes an international e≠ort to study China’s air- pollution problem in an integrated fashion, incorporating the costs of reducing pollution as well as the beneﬁts of pollution abatement. The 10-year study involved more than a

dozen environmental engineers, epi- FENG LI/GETTY IMAGES demiologists, and economists from Tsinghua University in Bei- pollution, health e≠ects, and the economy that have made it pos- jing and Harvard University. The base year of 2002 was chosen in sible to analyze the impact of market-based approaches to envi- order to provide a comprehensive set of data on the Chinese ronmental policy in China. economy and environment. The research resulted in models of air The Harvard-Tsinghua study considers the impact of pollution-

Harvard Magazine 33 control policies on emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon Step 1. From economic activity and fossil-fuel use to pollutant emis- dioxide (CO2). But our research emphasizes local air pollution, a sions. We characterize the economic output of China’s 33 indus- major problem that ranks high on the Chinese government’s trial sectors, plus the household sector, and the consumption of agenda. We focus on how particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—by each. For each sec- nitrogen oxides a≠ect human health. Instead of examining specific tor, we then estimate emissions of three pollutants—total sus- technologies or traditional regulatory regimens to control local pended particulates (TSP), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen pollution, we consider “green taxes”—taxes proportional to the oxides (NOx)—from fuel combustion and other production damage caused by pollution. As we will show, these measures have processes. Fossil-fuel combustion yields most of the SO2 emis- substantial e≠ects on emissions of local air pollutants. sions, while production-process emissions are mostly TSP from the cement industry. Describing the Damages As an example of the data problems we face, the damages Formulating an integrated pollution-control program for caused by particulate matter depend crucially on the size of the China might appear to require a staggering amount of informa- particles (see step 3, below). Current epidemiological studies use tion about the formation of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, data on PM2.5 (particles finer than 2.5 microns) where such infor- and nitrogen oxides and the pattern of atmospheric dispersion mation is available. For China, however, comprehensive data are and concentration of the pollutants. Information on human ex- available only for TSP, which includes larger particles. We there- posure to pollution and the resulting health impacts, a valuation fore calibrate our estimates to the o∞cial national TSP data, and of the damages, and the cost of pollution-control policies would convert to PM10 equivalents, using data from six Chinese cities also be necessary. Obviously, it is not practical to model the dis- where both measures were available. persion from every source, even if emissions inventories were Step 2. From emissions to concentrations. The Harvard-Tsinghua available (and for many pollutants in China, they are not). study uses a relatively simple model for dispersion of emissions The Harvard-Tsinghua study is described in Clearing the Air: The within 50 kilometers and a more sophisticated model for re- Health and Economic Damages of Air Pollution in China, edited by Mun gional dispersion covering most of China. Researchers from the S. Ho and Chris P. Nielsen (MIT, 2007), and this essay provides department of environmental science at Tsinghua calculated the updated information. The goal of the study was to develop a con- dispersion of TSP and SO2 for a sample of more than 600 smoke- venient methodology that links emissions and human exposures. stacks and road segments in five cities, concentrating on cement, Using this information, we estimate health damages for a given iron and steel, and chemicals plants. level of emissions from each industry. We then incorporate these We exploit a national database on electric power plants in estimates into a model of the economy to generate an assessment China and estimate the dispersion from 160 smokestacks. For a of the benefits and costs of pollution control. Our methodology smaller sample of power plants, we also calculate the concentra- involves the following steps: tion of “secondary particles” (sulfates and nitrates) formed in the atmosphere from SO2 and Heavy industry: The Beijing Shougang Company’s blast NOx. The measured con- furnaces, photographed in January, are major sources of centration of TSP in any polluting emissions. Operations at industrial complexes particular location is due like this one were curtailed during the Olympics, and are gradually being moved away from urban locations. to the sum total of these secondary particles and the primary particles emitted from smokestacks. Al- though it is obvious that di≠erent industries produce di≠erent levels of emissions per unit of output, it is less obvious that each ton of emissions produces a di≠erent level of health damages—reflecting di≠erences in meteorology, smokestack characteristics, proximity to dense populations, and particle size dis- tributions. Step 3. From concentrations to human exposures. Given the concentration of pollutants, we need to estimate human exposure to each pollutant. The analysis is

©WANG JINGGUANG/XINHUA PRESS/CORBIS straightforward for a par-

34 September - October 2008 Different industries produce different levels the health e≠ects, evaluated in monetary terms and ag- gregated across all the e≠ects, give the value of dam- of emissions per unit of output. It is less ages attributable to that industry. Thus, the results from steps 1 through 5 enable us to estimate the dam- obvious that each ton of emissions produces ages per unit of output and per unit of fuel use in order to calculate green taxes. a different level of health damages. We assume that the incremental damage from an additional unit of output from an industry is equal to the ticular smokestack, but is impossible for millions of emission average damage. This is expressed in terms of yuans’ worth of sources. We therefore use a methodology developed by re- damages per ton of cement or per kilowatt hour of electricity searchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) to produced. Finally, we express this as damages per yuan of indus- approximate the emission-exposure relationship from a small try output in 2002 currency units. sample of sources. This involves estimating the “intake fraction”: The electricity, steam, and hot water industry has the highest the fraction of a pollutant emitted from a particular source that incremental damage, 7.6 Chinese cents per yuan of electricity is eventually inhaled by people before it is dissipated. For every output. This industry does not have the highest intake fraction, kilogram of SO2 emitted by our sample of cement plants, for in- but has very large emissions per yuan of output. stance, 4.41 μg are inhaled within 50 kilometers of the source. On the other hand, analysis reveals that—given Masked against the miasma: Protective facemasks are their higher stack heights and more remote locations— commonplace in cities, electric utilities have the lowest intake fractions, the least particularly where coal is damage per ton emitted. Such results show the impor- used for heating. This cyclist was photographed in tance of taking secondary particles into account when cal- February 2007 in Linfen, culating potential health damage, because the intake frac- Shanxi province, then tion for the sulfates produced by cement plants, for considered the most polluted example, is the same order of magnitude as for the TSP the city in the world, reflecting a concentration of coal plants produce. Studies that fail to take this into account mining, coking furnaces, will miss, for instance, the rapidly growing emissions of and iron foundries. nitrogen oxides from motor vehicles. Given the intake fractions from the sample of emissions sources, we estimate national intake fractions using information from national databases on enterprises. Step 4. From exposures to health impact. Next, we use air-pollution epidemiology to link the pollution exposures with adverse health outcomes—premature mortality, chronic bronchitis, and asthma attacks. We use a conservative estimate of a 0.03 percent increase in “acute” mortality per each microgram per cubic meter increase of PM10 and SO2. PETER PARKS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES This is equal to 1.95 excess deaths per million people annually per Electricity is followed by nonmetallic mineral products, such μg/m3 increase in concentration. We also calculate lesser e≠ects as cement (2.9 cents per yuan) and transportation and ware- (such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, and general respiratory housing (1.9 cents per yuan). Some service industries, including symptoms) attributable to the increase in each pollutant. Our commerce and real estate, have surprisingly high incremental study does not examine longer-term “chronic” e≠ects, as these damages because they still rely on coal heat. The total value of data do not yet exist for China. damages for all sectors is 213 billion yuan, equivalent to 1.8 per- Step 5. Valuation of health e≠ects. Finally, we monetize health cent of China’s GDP in 2002. Of this total, the electricity sector, damages using risk analysis in order to compare the beneﬁts and with its large TSP and SO2 emissions, contributes 28 percent, fol- costs of pollution reduction. We express the change in the num- lowed by transportation with 12.6 percent and nonmetallic min- ber of cases of chronic bronchitis, premature mortality, and so eral products with 7.8 percent. Some 89 billion yuan of the 213 on, in terms of yuan, the Chinese currency. We also brieﬂy con- billion total is due to primary TSP, the remainder is due to SO2, sider long-term chronic mortality e≠ects, because these are not or SO2 and NOx, transformed into secondary particles. very well understood yet for the Chinese population. Beyond damages per unit of output, we are also interested in the damages per unit of fossil fuel consumed. The result is an enor- Air Pollution Damages by Industry Output and Fuel Use mous 53.5 cents of damage per yuans’ worth of coal burned. By In our model, the intake fractions from step 3, combined with contrast, the marginal damage from cleaner, more expensive, oil is the industry emissions from step 1, yield the dosage of a given only 2.9 cents per yuan. Gas is relatively clean and generates negli- pollutant due to a particular industry. These dosages, including gible amounts of PM and SO2, although it does generate CO2. primary and secondary particulates, after being adjusted for the breathing rate, generate concentration equivalents. When linked Calculating Green Taxes with the coe∞cients from step 4, the concentrations yield the Informed by estimates of the damages associated with various health e≠ects due to emissions from each industry sector. Finally, industrial sectors and fuel sources, we have the basis for imple-

Harvard Magazine 35 menting green-tax policies. Ideally, emissions of The benefits of reducing air pollution far pollutants should be taxed directly. But it is infea- sible to measure the emissions from millions of exceed the cost of reduced consumption—— sources. Industry output and fuel consumption are much more easily measured. Accordingly, we and efforts to reduce local pollution will consider taxes on industry output, based on the damages per unit of output, and taxes on fuels, substantially reduce China’s large contribution based on the damages per unit of fuel consumed. In our model, Chinese economic growth is dri- to greenhouse-gas emissions. ven by labor-force growth, capital accumulation, and growth in productivity (or output per unit of input). We as- because personal income taxes are very low in China. The results sume productivity growth matches the current high rate of 3 per- of comparing the tax policies in the first year are given in the ad- cent per year before tapering o≠. Energy used per unit output de- jacent table (note that much of the specific industry-by-industry pends on the price of energy and changes in technology. We data has been omitted). project future changes in technology using information from the Output tax. The proposed output tax consists of a heavy tax on more mature U.S. economy. electricity, a modest tax on cement and transportation, and a In our model, energy demand consists of demand by enter- small tax on the other commodities. The initial e≠ect is to raise prises and demand by households and the government. House- the price of electricity by 4 percent and the prices of the other hold consumption depends on the price of energy and the polluting commodities by about 1.0-2.5 percent. These price changes in preferences that come with rising incomes. We pro- changes lead to a fall in the output of electricity by 4.7 percent in ject a rising share of total consumption allocated to automobile, the first year. The output of nonmetallic mineral products, trans- gasoline, and electricity consumption, based on patterns ob- portation, and metal smelting falls by 1 to 3 percent. The labor served in other countries. The model is calibrated to the 2002 and capital released from these sectors allow an expansion of the benchmark economic data, supplemented by energy-use data cleaner ones: trade, real estate, and electronic products rise by 0.1 from the China Statistical Yearbook 2006, and emissions data esti- to 1 percent. Coal consumption falls by 3.4 percent. mated by our partners at Tsinghua University. The environmen- The fall in fossil-fuel use and the change in the composition of tal module incorporates the five steps outlined above. output lead to a reduction in primary TSP combustion emissions Simulating the model, we obtain a base case with the economy of 3.3 percent and a 4.0 percent reduction in SO2 emissions. NOx growing at 6.8 percent per year during the next 30 years and en- emissions from transportation fall by 1.7 percent. The emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 fall by 2.7 percent—a little less than the Effects of green taxes on the economy change in coal consumption, because there is a shift to oil and gas. and environment, year 1 The e≠ect of lower emissions is to lower health damages by 2.6 percent, which is worth 0.04 percent of GDP. This is a modest im- Output tax policy Fuel tax policy provement in the environment compared to the revenues raised. Gross domestic product (GDP) 0.00% -0.02% Consumption falls by 0.2 percent in the first year, because Consumption -0.23 -0.17 households face higher prices but do not get tax relief. The new Investment 0.38 0.18 revenues allow a large tax cut for enterprises, which leads to Coal use -3.4 -12.0 higher retained earnings and investment. In this scenario, higher Oil use -0.77 -0.39 investment leads to a higher GDP in future years. By the twenti- CO2 emissions -2.7 -9.1 eth year, in fact, GDP is 0.6 percent higher, allowing both higher Primary TSP from combustion -3.3 -10.2 consumption and higher investment. There could be a “double SO2 emissions -4.0 -10.2 dividend” in some situations—that is, reduced pollution and in- NOx emissions (transportation) -1.7 -0.85 creased consumer welfare in all years. Although we do not have Premature deaths -2.5 -9.1 such a win-win situation here, we should note that current high Value of health damages -2.6 -8.9 taxes on enterprises are very distorting, so that reducing them Change in other tax rates -6.5 -2.1 contributes to the small welfare cost we have estimated. Reduction in damages/GDP 0.04 0.13 Why does the large tax lead to such a small improvement in Pollution tax/Total tax revenue 6.4 1.8 the pollution levels? This occurs because the tax on output does not encourage any pollution-reduction e≠ort or fuel-switching. ergy use rising at 5.1 percent. We then simulate the two policy Changes in coal consumption and pollutant emissions come en- cases. For the output tax, we add tax rates equal to the incre- tirely from the shift in the composition of output from polluting mental damage rates to existing taxes on outputs. For the fuel commodities to cleaner ones. taxes, taxes are imposed on coal, oil, and gas, proportional to the Fuel tax. The proposed fuel tax consists of a large tax on coal and estimated damages. a modest one on oil. This does encourage the switch from dirty Because green taxes raise new government revenues, the eco- coal to cleaner oil and gas and the substitution of capital for en- nomic outcome depends on how these revenues are used. Cut- ergy. (Because this does not directly penalize emissions, a fuel tax ting taxes has e≠ects quite di≠erent from giving transfer pay- does not replace pollution-reduction e≠orts like installing scrub- ments to households to compensate consumers for the higher bers on smokestacks or washing coal before combustion.) costs of their purchases. We chose to cut taxes on enterprises, As shown in the table, coal use falls by 12 percent in the first

36 September - October 2008 year and oil use by 0.4 percent, be- Constructing modern China: The nation’s frantic pace of cause the major users of these fossil building causes huge demand for steel and cement. Production fuels have to raise their output of the latter—shown here in 2003-2004 north of Dabancheng, prices to compensate for the tax, in Xinjiang province—is a significant source of air pollutants causing a reduction in demand for that adversely affect human health. their products and services. Elec- tricity is the biggest user of coal and output falls by 2.2 percent. Pe- troleum processing, metals smelting, and nonmetal mineral products fall by 1.0, 0.5, and 0.5 percent respectively. With the resources released from this contraction of the coal-intensive industries, the less energy-intensive sectors expand, including agriculture, food products, trade, and construction. Changes in output mix and fuel switching reduce both primary combustion TSP and SO2 emissions by 10 percent in the ﬁrst year. The modest tax on oil reduces transportation output and NOx emis-

sions by only 0.9 percent. Because ©BOB SACHA/CORBIS this green tax is narrowly focused, the new revenue raised is only ers, these could be mitigated by gradually phasing in green taxes. 1.8 percent of total revenues. These reductions in emissions lead to a Second, there are trade-o≠s between the e≠ectiveness of a tax large reduction in health e≠ects of pollution. Premature mortality, instrument and the ease of implementing it. A broad-based tax for example, falls by 9 percent. A relatively small, well-targeted tax may gain greater acceptance because the costs are shared by reduces health damages by 9 percent, triple the e≠ect of the output many, but it is unlikely to be e≠ective. A narrow tax, targeted at tax. This reduction in health damages in the first year is worth 0.13 the main polluters or fuels, is more e∞cient but requires larger percent of GDP, compared to 0.04 percent in the output tax case. adjustments. This calls for a careful consideration of compensat- With the fall in coal use, the emissions of CO2 fall by 9 per- ing policies such as displacement and adjustment assistance. cent. Such a reduction would be a substantial contribution to Third, because of the link to coal use, e≠orts to reduce local pol- the global goal of limiting climate change, given that China in lution will substantially reduce China’s large contribution to 2004 produced 18.2 percent of the world’s total CO2 emissions greenhouse-gas emissions. This outcome argues for from fossil-fuel combustion. international e≠orts to help China improve energy Finally, in the first year of a fuel tax, consumption falls because e∞ciency and reduce local pollution. This benefit is, households are not compensated for the higher prices. In the of course, in addition to reducing the dispersion of Visit harvardmag.com/extras fuel-tax scenario, the new revenues are much smaller than those SO2 and secondary particles to neighboring countries. to see images from an output tax, yielding a corresponding smaller tax cut for Finally, our integrated methodology for studying of the air enterprises. As a result, the impact on investment and, hence, fu- the costs and benefits of air-pollution control could pollution in ture GDP is small. be adapted for other countries. The intake-fraction Beijing prior to the Olympic Because per capita incomes are rising rapidly in China, the valu- approach is most useful where data are limited and Games. ation of health damages is also rising rapidly. This should lead to modeling air dispersion is costly. Although our inte- higher green-tax rates over time, inducing larger reductions in coal grated model retains all the uncertainties of its underlying com- use and emissions. By the twentieth year, coal use is down 15 per- ponents, our methodology allows for improvements as more and cent, compared to the base case, and health damages are down 11 better data become available. percent. This environmental benefit is equivalent to 0.34 percent of GDP, at the cost of a modest 0.04 percent fall in consumption. Morris University Professor Dale W. Jorgenson, Ph.D. ’59, and Mun S. Ho, Ph.D. ’89, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Conclusions Science (www.iq.harvard.edu), have overseen the research described in this The results of our simulations are sensitive to the assump- essay. Detailed information about the context of the project appears on tions we have made about price responses, the estimated health the website of the Harvard China Project (http://chinaproject.harvard.- e≠ects, and valuations of these e≠ects. Nonetheless, we conclude edu/primary-research/new-economic-studies). A technical report on the that the benefits of green taxes in China greatly exceed the costs. study, describing the results and including a comprehensive bibliogra- Several lessons stand out from our analysis. phy, will appear in a symposium on Chinese economic development and First, the benefits of reducing air pollution far exceed the cost the environment edited by Jorgenson and published by the Review of En- of reduced consumption. Although we have not modeled the vironmental Economics and Policy (http://reep.oxfordjournals.org), short-run adjustment costs, such as relocating laid-o≠ coal min- volume 3, issue 1, winter 2009.

Harvard Magazine 37 VITA Albert Bickmore Brief life of a museum impresario: 1839-1914 by victoria cain

lbert bickmore, S.B. 1864, started out cataloging speci- school teachers to help improve science education, still rare in city mens in the basement of Harvard’s Museum of Compara- schools. The next year, largely as a result of his enthusiastic, arm- tive Zoology (MCZ). He had come to study under Louis waving lecture style, his audience doubled. In a move that must Agassiz,A the strict, Swiss-born zoologist whose infamous program have both delighted and dismayed Bickmore, the museum turned tested stamina as much as intellect. One of its more famous rites two rooms reserved for research space into a lecture hall. of passage was a series of “trials by fish,” in which students were To make his lectures more e≠ective, Bickmore began to innovate, locked for days in rooms with dead marine specimens and told to using visual aids such as stereopticon slides, persuading guest comprehend their decomposing mysteries through close observa- speakers to discuss their specialities, and encouraging teachers to tion. “In six weeks,” Agassiz told Bickmore, “you will either be- take their charges on field trips—including visits to the museum. come utterly weary of the task, or…be so completely fascinated…as His audience tripled, then quadrupled; some talks were opened to to wish to devote your whole life to the pursuit of our science.” the public. Topics ranged from the exotic (“Through the Heart of Bickmore was fascinated, by the fish and by Agassiz, and left Asia,” “Pictures from Hindoo Life”) to the mundane (“The House Cambridge with considerably more than a degree in zoology. He We Live In,” “Colds: Their Prevention and Treatment”). Subjects had watched carefully as his professor wheedled Boston’s elite from art, geography, industry, and the uncategorizable rounded and the Massachusetts legislature into donating more than out the schedule. In 1894, some 18,000 teachers attended his Tues- $250,000 in two years to the MCZ, and he was soon determined to day-night lectures; hundreds more were turned away. Listeners sat build a great museum of his own. Like other zoologists of his time, on the floor to hear the graying scientist. he was committed to the idea of creating a great urban center to His methods won national acclaim. Museum leaders in other big explore the mysterious laws of the natural world. Entertainment cities, as well as curators of tiny natural-history collections in and public education were admirable, but secondary, goals. small-town libraries and high schools, copied his techniques, “[W]hen I journeyed for three years in Eastern Asia and over working with local public schools to develop natural science and Siberia,” he wrote later, “I carried with me everywhere two things, geography curricula using visual aids provided by the AMNH. By a Bible and a sketch plan for a museum in New York.” That city’s 1910, Bickmore’s brainchild had become the most influential source scientific elite was continually siphoned o≠ by Boston, London, of popular science education in the United States. and Berlin—all cities with better research institutions—and Bickmore, initially so committed to making museums into Bickmore knew this pricked the competitive instincts of New spaces for scientific research, ultimately succeeded in turning York’s upper crust. Armed with a letter of introduction from the them into palaces of popular education. By the mid 1890s, the head of the British Museum, he persuaded local politicians and AMNH department of public instruction received twice as much business leaders like J.P. Morgan to fund his venture. The Ameri- money as any other department. Trustees and politicians, de- can Museum of Natural History (AMNH) was chartered in 1869. lighted by the public response, increasingly diverted resources to The sole member of the scientific sta≠, Bickmore oversaw the educational outreach and crowd-pleasing exhibits. Researchers museum’s first wobbly decade. He spent wildly, trying to build up committed to more esoteric projects fled to labs and universities collections that would help researchers comprehend the relation- in search of funding and space. Bickmore, who would have been ships between species. Eager patrons and visitors donated what- discomfited by such a turn of events, didn’t live long enough to see ever they could: emeralds, spiders, corals, a stu≠ed long-nosed this schism between professional science and primary science ed- monkey from Borneo, carcasses of pets and animals from the Cen- ucation. He was a jack-of-all-subjects in an era that still cele- tral Park zoo. But public attention quickly flagged, and so did po- brated the passionate amateur. His e≠orts to raise public interest litical and financial support. To raise attendance, trustees sug- in natural history, combined with his unexpected gifts as a gested purchasing more spectacular specimens, rather than study teacher, were largely responsible for transforming the purposes collections. “We must sprinkle our wholesome bread with a little and practices of natural-history museums and bringing Ameri- sugar,” the board explained to the shocked curator. Desperate to cans a little closer to a rapidly receding natural world. keep the museum from becoming “a stu≠ed circus, with the chief task of the curators keeping it dusted,” Bickmore persuaded the Victoria Cain ’97, a Mellon Fellow in visual history at the University of board to let him try something new to win back popular interest Southern California, is completing a manuscript on the history of visual peda- and public funding. In 1880, he o≠ered free lectures to 30 public- gogy and coauthoring a book on the history of natural-history museums.

38 September - October 2008 4, 324743 (BICKMORE), 0362 PHOTOGRAPHS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ALL COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM NATURAL HISTORY LIBRARY, IMAGE NUMBERS 31136, 00047

Bickmore in the field (at the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland), and contemporary images of his innovative museum Photomontage by Naomi Shea. Photographs courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History Library Seriously

Ian Frazier combines an historian’s discipline with an original comic mind. Funny By Craig Lambert

n late 1945, when David Frazier, a freshly minted fieldwork (or play) behind this essay. Even more unlikely is Ph.D. in chemistry, went home to Ohio on leave from finding one who could spin a compelling story from such an odd the navy, he interviewed for a job with the chemical yet mundane pursuit, touching on friendship, urban vistas, envi- research department of Standard Oil of Ohio, known ronmentalism, litter, wildlife, and patent law. But Frazier “occu- as Sohio. He had to take a psychological test that pies a niche of his own,” says his friend and New Yorker colleague I asked, “What is your ultimate ambition in life?” Fra- Mark Singer. “The word unique gets used loosely or carelessly, but zier’s response was, “To drink up all the beer in the Sandy is truly an original.” world.” The Sohio department head later recalled, “I thought Indeed Frazier, who has written continuously for the New that was a good answer from a guy who had just walked o≠ a Yorker (excepting one notable hiatus) since joining its sta≠ in battleship. We were trying to get inventive people. I believed we 1974, holds a place in American letters unlike any other. He would get an invention from him.” This intuition proved sound. ranges from wildly imaginative satires through o≠beat reporting Frazier worked as a research scientist for Sohio for the rest of his pieces and outdoor writing to long books that plumb the career and obtained more than a dozen patents. breadth and depth of American history and explore undiscov- His eldest son, Ian Frazier ’73, nicknamed Sandy, also has an ir- ered reaches of the continent. “He’s one of the last inheritors of reverent sense of humor, but holds only one patent, for a “bag the great tradition of the New Yorker,” says Jonathan Galassi ’71, snagger,” a prong-and-hook device attached to a long pole that president of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, who has edited all of enables someone on the ground to remove a windblown plastic Frazier’s “serious” books. “You can see his roots in someone like bag stuck in the bare limbs of a tree, thus dispatching a common A.J. Liebling or John McPhee, though Sandy’s approach is more urban eyesore. In 2004, Frazier described this singular device, personal than McPhee’s. The thing most characteristic of his and his adventures in extracting stray bags from trees, in the New work is a certain intimacy. You find this very idiosyncratic mix- Yorker magazine. With two old friends, both fellow Midwestern- ture of humor, seriousness, and passion; it all comes out of his ers (one of whom shares the bag-snagger patent), Frazier formed personal digestion of everything he’s learned.” a vigilante group of sorts and cleared arboreal debris in all five Frazier’s voice has a clear directness, a kind of elegant simplic- New York boroughs, then went afield to Massachusetts, New ity long associated with the New Yorker. It is a prose style perhaps Jersey, and Rhode Island, and eventually captured renegade bags most readily identified with E.B. White, though it also shines along the Mississippi and even the Los Angeles River. through the poetry of Robert Frost, another plain-spoken New “Of course, the basic thing that gets in a New York City tree is Englander who qualifies as a modernist. “Simplicity is your aes- the white plastic deli bag,” Frazier wrote. “It reaches the tree thetic, and it neatly dovetails with modernism,” says Frazier. with the aid of the wind, or (as I sometimes think) by its own “I’m a traditionalist in that regard. The arts are conservative: power. With its filmy whiteness and its two looped handles, it you’re building on what’s already there.” suggests a self-levitating undershirt; we have named it the un- Many New Yorker readers recognize Frazier’s byline from his dershirt bag. It does not have a soul, but it imitates one, rising short humor pieces, collected in Dating Your Mom (1986), Coyote v. and floating on the exhalations of a subway grate like the disem- Acme (1996), and the current Lamentations of the Father. The latter, bodied spirits that poets used to converse with in Hell. Its pre- for example, includes “Researchers Say,” which informs us that hensile handles cling to any branch that comes within range, and scientists at Duke University have determined that “life is too then grab hold for eternity.” hard.” The author then straight-facedly ponders scholarly re- It is hard to imagine any other contemporary American writer search into life’s futility and frustrations, ranging from death to discoursing on such a topic, nor logging the years of intermittent “the mattress cover, or quilted pad, that goes over the mattress

40 September - October 2008 Photographs by Robert Adam Mayer Ian Frazier holds his patented bag snagger. before you put on the fitted sheet, and that pops loose from one “Ohio is interesting enough to keep you stimulated,” he says, corner of the mattress in the middle of the night 60 percent of “but boring enough so that you had to make up a lot of stu≠ the time, experts say.” In “Veni, Vidi, Vici, Etc.,” an excursion yourself. It once was a rural, quiet, farm-based Protestant cul- into faux-literary scholarship, Frazier reports that many of his- ture: it was strange to see a store open on Sunday when I grew up. tory’s pithy sayings are actually sound bites—a more venerable The food was pretty simple fare. Then someone started putting form than previously imagined. The original of “Veni, vidi, vici,” for spices in things. I recall having pizza for the first time, thinking, example, he asserts, was, in translation: “I came, I saw, I con- ‘This is great!’ In the 1960s, suddenly you had pop culture coming quered, I had a snack, I took a bath, and I went to bed, because I in with a flamethrower-like e≠ect. I remember seeing the was exhausted.” Shangri-Las singing Leader of the Pack on Cleveland TV—all black In pieces like “Your Face or Mine,” which takes its premise leather and leather boots, an ur-Cher look. They were so snotty from WE CAN KICK YOUR CITY’S ASS a slogan for New York City to the host, not even trying to be nice. The sexiest girls I’d ever that Mayor Giuliani embraced and the New York Daily News seen in my life; I remember being utterly incapacitated: there had o≠ered as a button, Frazier perfectly captures the voice of a hard- never been anything so attractive and so scary at the same time.” bitten New Yorker: Frazier has a keen ability to notice both the details and the First thing every morning when I sit down to eat, I get in broad brushstrokes of a culture as it changes. In Family (1994), he my breakfast’s face. I violate the space of that breakfast— scrolls deeply through American history by following the saga of the dry cereal, one-per-cent skim, fruit juice, what have his own family, tracking down life stories of relatives through you—I really get loud with it. I tell it what I want it to do painstaking research spanning two centuries. Some of the au- for me that day from a nutritional standpoint. Hey, I’m a thor’s ancestors founded the town of Norwalk in north central New Yorker—my food doesn’t give me ulcers, I give it ul- Ohio, about 70 miles from Hudson. His is a fairly typical white, cers. Then I eat it. I go at that breakfast one hundred per Anglo-Saxon Protestant, if old, American family, with a past ex- cent. And I don’t care what you’re havin’, eggs over, hash ceptionally well preserved in letters, diaries, newspaper articles, browns, grits like they got down South (grits! what a and other written memorabilia. Family retells much of American joke!), my breakfast can kick whatever you’re havin’ ’s ass. history in a voice both vernacular and personal. For example, Fra- It’s not what’s on the plate, it’s the attitude. With the zier follows his forebears’ lives in a Civil War regiment, the 55th right New York attitude, I can take my breakfast and beat Ohio Volunteer Infantry, showing how that war a≠ected both the your breakfast, then take your breakfast and beat my soldiers and those left behind in concrete, firsthand ways. breakfast. The list of the regiment’s casualties came to Norwalk via A word of warning here, in case you’re thinking that be- telegraph. A telegraph operator, George Kennan—brother cause I get in my breakfast’s face you can just come up and of the great-grandfather of George Kennan, the Russian get in my face. Think twice about that, my friend. You want scholar and diplomat—took the list over to [Frazier’s to get in my face, take a number. Let me explain: I’m a New great-great-great-grandfather] Frederick Wickham at the Yorker, so naturally I’m not going to hear you unless you o∞ce of the Reflector. As the war went on, the sight of a get in my face. In fact, I restrict myself exclusively to in- telegrapher walking to the newspaper o∞ce must have your-face people, places, and things, because that’s the filled people in Norwalk with dread. The large number of way I like it. Unfortunately, there’s just one problem. Re- wounded at Second Bull Run caused the U.S. Surgeon cently, I measured my face, and I don’t think I’ve got more General to ask that women and children scrape lint for than about seventy square inches of surface area there. bandages. The Norwalk Soldiers’ Aid Society said it would Think about it: not a lot of room. The Daily News gets in my forward immediately any lint left at the store of D.H. Pease face every morning, and that more than fills my face right in town. The society asked that all lint be packed there. So I guess, loving this ass-kicking city as I do, what I smoothly and close in paper boxes. really need is a hell of a lot bigger face. In the same section, Frazier describes the regiment’s experiences at the battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. After setting Those who have laughed repeatedly at Frazier’s comic ge- the stage with an account of how Confederate generals Robert E. nius might be surprised to know that the man himself has a quiet Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, greatly outnumbered, “made a plan and ease about him; he is shy, polite, patient, the polar opposite as bold as any in military history,” and ominously detailing a se- of a Robin Williams-style entertainer. At home in Montclair, ries of miscalculations by Union o∞cers, Frazier describes the New Jersey, the blue-eyed, gray-haired author wears jeans and a regiment’s situation just before Jackson’s attack from the flank: flannel shirt and works from an o∞ce that might belong to a By late afternoon, the men on the Union right were play- graduate student in history. Last year he walked more than a ing poker in the woods or resting. Some were cooking sup- thousand miles around his neighborhood and through neighbor- per and had their arms stacked….The 55th’s regimental ing towns, mostly for the exercise, though he once wrote an ex- band, in some pines across the road, was playing jaunty tended meditation in the New Yorker on the art of tromping on airs like “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Between five o’clock acorns—focusing, typically, on details like the best kind of boots and six, foxes, rabbits, and quail began to break from the for this purpose and the ideal technique for treading on the woods to the right. Then some deer emerged, and a cheer acorns to make them explode in the most satisfying way. went down the line as they ran by. Montclair may be a far cry from both Manhattan and Mon- In the next instant, History, that force which always tana, where Frazier has spent large chunks of his adulthood, but seems to choose people who are richer or poorer or in a it is closer to Hudson, Ohio, where the author’s roots go deep. di≠erent place, caught my relatives and the rest of the 55th

42 September - October 2008 Frederick lying in his co∞n looking ﬁne in his black suit, and holding lilies of the valley in his hand.

Frazier’s bestselling 1989 book Great Plains germinated during a 1,700-mile auto trip the author made from San Antonio, Texas, to West Glacier, Montana, to meet his friend and New Yorker colleague George W.S. Trow ’65. (Frazier was in San Anto- nio to research his 1983 New Yorker piece on Poncé Cruse Evans, author of the syndicated “Hints from Heloise” newspaper feature, which later became the title piece of Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody, a 1997 collection of essays and profiles.) “Mostly, the way you see America is East and West,” Frazier explains; on the road to Montana, he hit on the idea that one could also tell the story of this country on a north-south axis. The result is a sprawling, ambitious work saturated with the people, history, culture, and above all the feel of this vast prairie. (Frazier himself moved from New York City to Bigfork, Montana, in 1982, staying there until he returned to his loft in lower Manhat- tan in 1985. Bigfork is west of the Great Plains but was a convenient base for numerous road trips throughout the region.) Great Plains seamlessly mixes stories of Frazier’s own adventures with a nuanced, eclectic history of the area, touching on Lawrence Welk, Crazy Horse, and Mrs. Homer Lang of Turkey, Texas, who told Frazier, “My kids was pretty good-size before I ever got a refriger- ator and they was up great big before I ever got an air conditioner.” The paperback edition of Great Plains has a 211-page main text Those who have laughed repeat- with 65 pages of notes, and even these make fascinating reading. edly at Frazier’s comic genius might One note, for example, informs us that In 1910, C.W. Post, the cereal magnate, began an ambi- be surprised to know that the man tious rainmaking project on his 200,000 acres of the Texas plains. Post had noticed that in accounts of wars that he has a quiet and ease about him. had read, heavy rains had always seemed to follow artillery He’s the polar opposite of a Robin battles. He believed that with enough explosions he could produce rain. He blew o≠ boxcars and boxcars of dyna- Williams-style entertainer. mite around his town of Post City, Texas. The dynamite was laid out on the ground and fired at intervals designed square on the point of the chin. There was a crash of can- to simulate artillery barrages. Post and his sta≠ kept at it non down the road and the loud boom of a shell exploding for several years, and produced drizzles and one or two directly overhead. Fragments of hot iron rained all around. rainstorms, which encouraged him. Noncombatants—commissary o∞cers, clerks with arm- “Sandy has the discipline of an historian,” says Singer, “and he’s loads of papers, teamsters, o∞cers’ black servants on spare a truly wonderful historian. He’ll put himself through real physical horses—scattered. Bullets began to fly out of the woods, discomfort to get a fact.” (Frazier’s next big book, Travels in Siberia, clipping new leaves. due out in a year or two, has involved not only sev- Family is “a great book, an underappreciated book,” says eral trips, including a six-week drive across the Jonathan Galassi. Even so, many reviewers were quite vocal in Siberian swamp and tundra, but also learning to their praise. “It is a stunning book,” wrote Geo≠rey Stokes in the speak and read Russian.) For Great Plains, Frazier re- Visit harvard- Boston Sunday Globe, “written in sentences and paragraphs con- turned to the site of Sitting Bull’s cabin in South mag.com/extras cealing emotional depth charges that explode across the gap Dakota to confirm that he had correctly identified to hear Ian Frazier read from page to reader.” Here is one such depth charge, on the mar- some nearby trees as bur oaks. His car got stuck in from his work. riage of the aforementioned Frederick Wickham: mud, and Frazier caught a ride to the cabin with Frederick Wickham came to Norwalk one day in the some drunken young men who were joy-riding with a supply of early 1830s and saw Lucy Preston in her yard picking lilies beer, throwing empties out the window. Frazier took some leaves of the valley. She was about eighteen, small, blonde, with o≠ a tree: “Turned out I’d had it right all along.” sharp blue eyes. Lucy’s mother had died when she was For On the Rez (2000), Frazier came to know one of the poorest twelve. She ran her father’s household by herself. Freder- places in America, the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. ick was about twenty….The moment he saw Lucy he de- To research the book, he moved to Missoula, Montana, in 1995 cided to marry her. Their many descendents would tell and stayed until 1999, when he decamped with his family for New di≠erent versions of this first encounter. My grandmother, Jersey. With an Oglala Sioux friend, Le War Lance, acting as Vir- Cora, told me that when she was six years old she saw gil to his Dante, the author builds a (please turn to page 82)

Harvard Magazine 43 Works and Woods Architecture and ecology in Japan by Paul Gleason

hen you enter the Japanese house in the empty, the venerable house contains its own his- Boston Children’s Museum, says Yukio Lippit tory. “The interesting thing about a townhouse like ’92, “you feel a little bit Alice in Wonderland-ish.” this,” Lippit says, “is it stands at the intersection of Stepping into this nineteenth-century Kyoto almost every kind of architecture you can imagine.” merchant’s house does feel like going down the By focusing on the pillars and walls of the mer- rabbit hole. The color and clutter of the neigh- chant’s house (an example of the kyo-machiya style), boringW exhibits disappear. Aside from tatami mats on the floor Lippit is trying to understand Japanese buildings and a low table, the house appears empty. in a new context. “There is a way of narrating the But Lippit, who is Weston associate professor in the humani- history of Japanese architecture as changes in ties, sees more. In the timber frame, taken apart in Kyoto and re- style,” he says. “That’s not to be dismissed.” But built on the third floor of the museum during 1979 and 1980, he Lippit believes he can also approach the country’s points out the same sort of joinery that holds up thousand-year- architectural past in terms of the archipelago’s old temples and majestic castles. In an alcove made of nearly a ecology, most notably its history of deforestation. dozen kinds of wood, he finds in the interplay of wood grains a To do so, he studies both what he calls Japan’s “cul- subtle decoration that draws the viewer’s attention. Far from ture of building” and its “human-forest relationship.” The former, already evident in sixth-century architecture, refers to what materials builders used and how they procured and fashioned them. The latter, appearing more clearly in the early modern architecture of the sixteenth century, refers to what the builders’ choices said about how they saw their environment and themselves. “I don’t think it’s a matter of choosing one paradigm or the other,” he cautions. “But I think that the ecological

framework really needs to be considered.” In his re- JOCHEN SCHLENKER/MASTERFILE search and teaching, his new approach to natural materials and the built world has begun to blossom. If past generations of scholars have taken the ecological side of architecture for granted, Lippit says, this is partly because historical data, on both forests and the buildings they become, have been scarce. Master carpenters in Japan have rebuilt important temples and homes for centuries with particular attention to using the same woods and styles, but until a few decades ago, these restorations went largely undocumented. New restorations, with complete documentation, allow historians to determine what wood was used, how it was ﬁtted together, and even where it originated. Dendrochronological analyses, placing a sample of wood under a microscope, can date a building even more exactly, says Lippit. “I don’t think we had the same tools at our disposal even 10 or 15 years ago.” Fifteen years ago, Lippit wasn’t studying Japanese architecture at all. After growing up in Tokyo and in Riverside, California, near Los Angeles, he came to Harvard and concentrated in literature. He then won a two-year traveling fellowship, which he spent working at the Guimet in Paris, a museum famous for its Asian holdings. A newfound passion for Japanese art led him to Princeton, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2003, specializing in pre-

ULANA SWITUCHA / ALAMY modern painting. The path to temples was actually a short one.

44 September - October 2008 663HIGHLAND Left: A grove of cypress trees prepared for harvest. Above, left: Built in 607, Horyuji monastery is Japan’s oldest surviving example of monumental timber-frame architecture. Its five-story pagoda (top) enshrines relics of the Buddha. The pagoda’s main structural element, pictured in the cutaway (right), is its heart pillar, a single cypress tree that keeps the building steady during earthquakes. Above, right: More cypress pillars hold up the monastery’s outer ring and main hall. AMANA IMAGES INC./ALAMY “Architecture and painting,” he explains, “are actually closely re- After receiving his doctorate

lated in the Japanese context”: for instance, aristocrats not only (and a position at Harvard in the GARY CROSS/DORLING KINDERSLEY RF/GETTY IMAGES displayed artwork in their homes, they also turned the mansions same year), Lippit decided to teach architectural history. “Con- themselves into works of art with paintings on walls and sliding sidering, as I do, that it’s one of the most remarkable architectural doors. traditions imaginable,” he says, “premodern Japanese architecture

Harvard Magazine 45 Most of the Todaiji complex has disappeared, lost to natural disaster and civil war. When originally built, the Great Buddha Hall (above, as restored in the seventeenth century) rested on 48 structural pillars, each 30 meters tall and 1.5 meters wide. According to William Coaldrake’s The Way of the Carpenter, the project “employed 227 site super-

©CHRISTOPHE BOISVIEUX/CORBIS visors, 917 master builders, and 1,438 laborers. At peak periods over 1,000 cooks prepared meals for the different craftsmen and laborers at the site.” The Great Buddha itself (left) sits inside the hall. In order to cast it, bronze workers used about 163,000 cubic feet of charcoal—also derived from wood.

architecture and ecology, a relationship that goes back more than a thousand years.

Japan’s culture of building changed rapidly in the early sixth century, when Korean craftsmen brought the secrets of monumental timber-frame engineering across the Sea of Japan. Local carpenters already relied on elaborate wooden joints, rather than nails, to hold buildings together, but the Koreans taught them how to support enormous structures with heavy tile roofs (like the one on the merchant’s house) by funneling the buildings’ weight through brackets and sturdy foundational pillars. Suddenly, those Japanese master carpenters

KOICHI KAMOSHIDA/GETTY IMAGES who practiced the Korean techniques could build has been dramatically under-studied.” Drawing on scholarly on a previously unimaginable scale. work by Conrad Totman, Ph.D. ’64 (an emeritus professor at Yale Their tree of choice was Japanese cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa). who has written a history of Japanese forestry), and William Growing up to 40 meters tall, these trees initially covered much of Coaldrake, Ph.D. ’83 (the head of Japanese studies at the Univer- the archipelago. “Cypress from very early on was recognized as a sity of Melbourne, and a carpenter), Lippit designed a course that superior building material for timber-frame structures,” Lippit ex- explores, among other topics, the intertwined history of Japan’s plains. A cypress tree’s straight, tight grain makes it resistant to

46 September - October 2008 JOCHEN SCHLENKER/MASTERFILE ©MICHAEL S.YAMASHITA/CORBIS rot and easy for carpenters using Top: Himeji, known as the “White Heron,” is one of the hand wedges to split into long finest early modern Japanese castles still standing. The white plaster walls that hide its wooden structure—the beams. Cypress also has a rich, main building, or keep, has not one but two heart pillars creamy color and a scent that he de- —protected its interior (above) from gunfire, a relatively scribes as “very faint natural wood recent innovation in Japanese warfare. The undersides of the sweeping eaves (right) show the complex joinery typi- incense, with even a touch of euca- cal of the period. To build castle foundations, architects lyptus.” had to cut down forests to get at the rocks beneath. Its structural and aesthetic qual- “The stone you see here consumed more wood than the ities impressed the ruling elite, wooden structure on top,” says Yukio Lippit. “Despite the heroism, the grandeur” of Himeji, he adds, this represent- who lived in the Kinai basin (home ed “a moment of crisis in the human-forest relationship.” of modern-day Kyoto and Osaka). DARBY SAWCHUK/ALAMY These powerful clan leaders hired master carpenters to build basin. Cypress was plentiful, and the pace of building only in- palaces and sponsored the construction of Shinto shrines and creased. “There was a national campaign in the eighth century to Buddhist temples—one of which, Horyuji, still stands. By the build temples in every province in Japan under imperial control,” year 628, dozens of Buddhist monasteries already dotted the says Lippit. Although exact historical ﬁgures are elusive, the late

Harvard Magazine 47 Japanese historian Tokoro Mitsuo estimated that, between 600 water level and ferry their wood to the Inland Sea, where they and 850, monasteries alone used some three million cubic meters had to contend with local pirates. All this, Totman reiterates, of wood. And this monumental construction, Lippit notes, rep- was just for the pillars. The rest of the wood came from at least resented only a fraction of the wood that nobles and commoners 10 di≠erent provinces. “Reconstruction was completed during GLOW IMAGES/ALAMY were using for their fuel and homes. As Kinai’s old-growth the 1190s,” Totman notes, “but it still yielded a main hall only half forests were disappearing, carpenters had to push farther and as spacious as the original.” The old culture of monumental farther up into the surrounding mountains to find the cypress building, so reliant on a single material, was “proving di∞cult to their patrons craved. maintain.” In the case of the imperial monastery Todaiji, architectural as- piration confronted ecological reality. When it was first built in During japan’s medieval period (1050 to 1550), the scarcity the 740s, Todaiji included two nine-story pagodas and a great of high-quality wood forced carpenters to adapt. Around 1300, hall 50 meters tall and 86 meters wide. The temple required 84 deforestation spurred the invention of new tools. “Radical major cypress pillars and used up at least 2,200 acres of forest. It changes were precipitated by the medieval equivalent of the burned down during a battle in 1180, and a monk named Shun- modern-day energy crisis,” writes William Coaldrake in The Way jobo Chogen set out on a quest to rebuild it, soliciting contribu- of the Carpenter. “The Japanese began to run out of straight- tions from all over western Japan. His work crews had to travel, grained timber of structural dimensions.” Carpenters designed too, trekking hundreds of kilometers from the Kinai basin in new tools to handle red pine and zelkova. They borrowed tech- search of untouched groves. nology from those who forged samurai swords, adding a steel In The Green Archipelago, Conrad Totman describes the Her- coating to formerly iron tools. The flexibility of the steel made culean labor of finding and transporting suitable cypress. The the tools especially responsive, like “an extension of the wrist,” group of trees they finally chose “was well past its prime,” he says Lippit. “You could wield them like a brush.” The steel could writes. “But logging crews commenced felling anyway. Many of “cypress-ize” unruly wood to some extent, but more joints were the trees were found to be hollow, knotty, or untrue, and work- necessary to connect smaller pieces of timber, a change evident men had to fell several hundred to obtain the few score required in the appearance of medieval buildings. for pillars.” They then leveled a valley in order to winch the cy- Although master carpenters still could and did build large tim- press to a river that turned out to be too shallow for the logs to ber-frame structures, political power in the medieval period was float in, so they constructed a network of 118 dams to raise the too dispersed among quarreling warlords to sustain a national

48 September - October 2008 WERNER FORMAN/CORBIS

In the 1930s, the architect Bruno Taut proclaimed the seventeenth-century Katsura Villa a modernist ideal: it connected inside and outside (opposite page), had free-flowing spaces and modular rooms (top), and was, above all, austere. Lippit agrees with much of Taut’s assessment, but thinks he missed Katsura’s smaller decorative touches. According to a recent conservation report, the villa’s original builders put the structure

BILL BACHMAN / ALAMY together using 49 different kinds of wood, choreographing the different grains into

pleasing patterns (above and right). The conservation report also found that a special RAPHAEL AZEVEDO FRANCA

dyeing process had accentuated the contrasting grains, and that some of the wood had TIBOR BOGNAR/ALAMY not, in fact, been procured by local woodcutters, but had come from quite far away. Far from being austere, the entire villa invites attention to its minutest detail. able to extend their reach much beyond the basin, “Ironically,” Lippit points out, “it’s subverting its own rusticity.” but Hideyoshi, by unifying Japan, had the re- building program. But in the early modern era, which began in sources of the entire archipelago within his grasp and could the late 1500s, the upstart general Toyotomi Hideyoshi brought gather cypress and other rare trees from its remotest corners. the warring factions to heel. The rulers of Kinai had never been By the time Hideyoshi came to power, the golden age of Japan-

Harvard Magazine 49 humble woodcutter’s makeshift hut, the better. “The single-minded focus on certain species” like cypress was much more potentially harmful ecologically than the use of a variety of di≠erent types of trees that sukiya called for, Lippit says. Using di≠erent types of wood promoted selective cutting, for example, whereas loggers often used clear- cutting to obtain cypress. (Although regenerative forestry practices in the 1800s saved the archipelago from ecological disaster, Japanese builders still deal with shortages. Cypress, in particular, remains rare, In the Japanese merchant house at the and often has to be imported from Taiwan.) Boston Children’s Museum, Lippit points also changed forestry practices. Certain horti- out different wood types in the tokonoma Sukiya alcove (top right). A master carpenter’s cultural tricks, such as clipping a tree’s branches years tools (right) are also part of the exhibit. before cutting it down, could yield knottier wood. In one of the highest forms of teahouse aesthetic, the log that ese castle construction had already marked the boundary between a formal reception room begun, and with it came rapid urbaniza- and the tokonoma alcove, where the occupant knelt to tion. Formerly, castles had been little write or pray, would have precisely three knots: it was more than fortresses perched on moun- perfectly imperfect. “I don’t know if it’s bringing man taintops. The new castle was more ad- and nature together,” says Lippit, “but it’s deﬁnitely ministrative palace than inaccessible bringing man and the way he imagines the wilderness fortress. Although these palaces required together.” a staggering amount of timber (in some Despite its insistence on humility, sukiya was an elite cases around 2,000 acres’ worth), the real form of architecture, best exempliﬁed by the luxurious

ecological damage came elsewhere. “The JIM HARRISON Katsura Villa outside Kyoto. Built for friends of the imper- reason why castles are associated with forestry predation,” ex- ial family in the early seventeenth century, the villa is a series of plains Lippit, “is that they’re at the centers of large, sprawling modular rooms that open onto lush gardens. Inside, the variety of cities made out of wood.” Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hideyoshi’s successor, mismatched wood di≠ers markedly from the creamy walls of cy- oversaw roughly 260 domains, each with a warlord who wanted a press temples. (Some pieces are still covered in bark.) By employing castle of his own. “It’s probably safe to say that right around the these imperfections, the villa’s owners depicted the humble rusticity mid seventeenth century was a real low point in this larger man- they wanted to ascribe to themselves. forest relationship,” says Lippit. Not only aristocrats wanted to imagine them- While castle towns were putting unprecedented pressure on selves this way. Sukiya proved readily portable, Japanese forests, a new architectural style emerged. Sukiya archi- and city-dwellers, who couldn’t a≠ord country Visit harvardmag.- tecture, inﬂuenced by the sixteenth-century tea ceremony, imag- estates, incorporated its elements into their com/extras to watch a film clip showing ined the human-forest relationship very di≠erently. Previously, homes. “By the nineteenth century,” Lippit notes, the reconstruction of that relationship had been largely utilitarian (the right wood for “you can have your country living in your town- the Boston Children’s the right job). But in sukiya, wood was chosen not only for its house, with your garden and your sukiya e≠ects.” Museum’s Japanese house. structural properties, but also for its ability to communicate cer- The merchant’s house at the Boston Children’s tain values important to the tea ceremony: rusticity, imperfec- Museum, on closer inspection, is full of sukiya touches within its tion, and humility. “During Japan’s medieval period,” says Lippit, timber frame. In its own tokonoma alcove, tucked in a corner “there emerged among the elite an ideal of rusticity and reclu- near the back of the house, Lippit found no fewer than 10 types sion, one that was strongly influenced by Buddhist thought as of wood. The pine pillar separating the alcove and a small shrine, well. Those who embraced this ideal usually imagined a rustic with its knots and cutaways (places where a carpenter deliber- habitat to be the perfect antithesis to their monastic, aristo- ately chipped the wood to vary its appearance) is at once struc- cratic, or other urban obligations.” Where elite architecture had tural and decorative. He can trace the legacy of both ancient and prized straight grains, smooth surfaces, and uniformity, sukiya early-modern architecture on every wall panel and wooden brought to the fore tangled grains, hollows and knots (unthink- beam. Considered one at a time, these pieces add up to a com- able in o∞cial buildings), and the use of as many di≠erent kinds plete history. “You can really only understand a Japanese build- of wood as possible. ing,” he says, “by taking it apart.” Sukiya architecture, in theory, reﬂected the availability of local wood. The more the building put its occupant in mind of the Paul Gleason is sta≠ writer at this magazine.

50 September - October 2008 JOHNJOHN HARVARD’SHARVARD’S JOURNALJOURNAL IMAGES COURTESY OF HARVARD NEWS OFFICE: TOP, JUSTIN IDE; BOTTOM, JON CHASE Back, but Not to the U.S.S.R.

On the sweltering afternoon of July 12, more than 100 onlookers (cell-phone cameras at the ready) crowded Visit harvard- Winthrop Street to watch the Lowell House bells descend. mag.com/extras to hear a last After arriving at Harvard 78 years ago as refugees from ringing of Lowell Stalin’s anti-clerical campaign, the bells were returning to House’s old bells. Moscow’s Danilov Monastery. While monks conducted a service, the crowd also got a peek at Lowell’s new Russian bells, resting on a nearby truck bed, waiting their turn to ring out over Cambridge.

Harvard Magazine 51 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

quality of the students.” The program admits 10 or 11 students a year; other qualified applicants are admitted to the M.D.-only Medical Makeover program, but usually choose to go elsewhere. Federal funding covers the costs for current students, but admitting more (at the University’s own expense) will be costly, as will the master’s A new master’s program and expansion of the M.D./Ph.D. pro- program. Flier says, hopefully, “We think this will get a lot of gram are two among many changes to emerge from the Har- people’s attention from a philanthropic point of view.” vard Medical School (HMS) strategic-planning process, which New entities whose missions cross disciplinary lines, but align Dean Jeffrey S. Flier began last fall soon after taking office. closely with parts of HMS, are suddenly rife at the University— From the dozen reports produced and suggestions generated for instance, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, created in with the participation of more than 100 faculty members, re- 2003 to develop tools for genomics-based medicine, and the tooling educational offerings emerged as a top priority. The Harvard Stem Cell Institute, created in 2004. On the nascent All- one-year master’s program—leading to a master of medical sci- ston campus, opportunities for interfaculty collaboration are ence degree (M.M.Sc.)—debuts this fall on a pilot basis as an bound only to increase, but with those opportunities comes the extra-year option for first-year medical students and rising sec- responsibility to plan well for how, and where, such collabora- ond-year students. Nearly half of Harvard medical students al- tions should take place. With undergraduates clamoring for ready extend their education by a year to pursue a special in- courses in global health and bioengineering, and medical stu- terest or project, Flier notes,“but it tends not to be particularly dents hoping to capitalize on resources elsewhere at the Univer- organized.” sity, Flier decided it was time to appoint a dean with a particular The program, with its formal structure and thesis require- focus on matters interdisciplinary. Effective June 16, Thomas ment, goes hand in hand with a new mandate that all M.D. can- Michel, a cardiologist and professor of medicine who headed the didates—starting with the class that enters in 2010—complete strategic review committee on education, assumed the new po- a scholarly project. This change reflects the idea that Harvard sition of dean for education. (Walter professor of medicine Jules and its students should regard advancing medicine, and not just Dienstag will remain dean for medical education.) professional training, as a critical goal. Students will have almost Other faculty working groups considered topics including complete freedom of choice, but projects are expected to fall global health; microbial sciences; neuroscience; aging; bioengi- into three broad areas: basic biomedical research; clinical and neering; medical imaging; pharmacology; organizational struc- translational research; and medicine and society (encompassing tures; tools and technology; human genetics; immunology and health policy, global health, and the history of medicine, among inflammation; and the social sciences. The reports are all avail- other things).“Some students may elect to pursue only the min- able at http://hms.harvard.edu/public/strategy; together, they imum four-month scholarly project requirement by writing up constitute a wish list long enough to fill the duration of a dean- their work from a summer service-learning project,” members ship and beyond. Flier is still prioritizing, but he vows swift ac- of the education review committee wrote; for others, the pro- tion, in some format, on bioengineering (see page 59), pharma- jects will kindle a flame that grows into a master’s thesis (see ceutical development, and global health—and he predicts a above) or a lifelong research interest. major announcement this fall in the area of human genetics, a Another of the review committee’s recommendations, ex- field where, he says,“We have many of the leaders, internation- panding the M.D./Ph.D. program, was a no-brainer, says Flier: ally, at Harvard.They just haven’t been organized in a way that “We could easily double the size and not have any fall-off in the takes full advantage.”

Doing Community nected, but he had no leads on a cause. ers), diuretics, laxatives, and a widely The breakthrough came during a ses- banned amphetamine called Fenpro- Medicine sion with a 26-year-old female patient porex—none of them recommended for who had made several trips to the emer- weight loss under accepted medical A few years ago, instructor of medi- gency room for chest pains and dizziness. guidelines. Lab tests on the pills con- cine Pieter Cohen, a primary-care physi- A full battery of hospital tests had re- ﬁrmed that the mix of prescription ingre- cian at the Harvard-a∞liated Cambridge vealed no abnormalities, but during her dients causes potentially hazardous side Health Alliance (CHA), began noticing a visit with Cohen, she showed him a bot- e≠ects consistent with what Cohen had strange pattern of symptoms among tle of prescription diet pills from Brazil. been seeing in his patients. Once the some of his Brazilian immigrant patients. She hadn’t mentioned the pills during any women stopped taking the drugs, their A number of young women complained previous medical check-ups. Cohen, who symptoms abated. of anxiety, heart palpitations, sleep prob- speaks and reads Portuguese, saw that The discovery set Cohen on an inves- lems, and nausea, and some showed signs the tablets contained at least eight tigative journey. With support from fel- of abnormal thyroid. Cohen suspected di≠erent medications—including antide- low clinicians and community-health that their conditions might be con- pressants, benzodiazepines (tranquiliz- o∞cials, he surveyed 300 women (in one

52 September - October 2008 the city’s diverse low-income residents. The hospital became an a∞liate of Har- vard Medical School (HMS) in 1965, but retained its focus on the needs of the surrounding community, emphasizing primary and psychiatric care for vulnerable populations, rather than highly specialized tertiary care and biomedical research, the hallmarks of the University’s larger and wealthier teaching hospitals. In 1996, Cambridge Hospital merged with Somerville Hospital to form the alliance, and in 2001 it expanded to incorporate Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett. Today, besides the three hospital campuses, the system encompasses the Cam-

clinic and two church settings) in order Primary-care physician Daniel to determine the extent of pill use, the McCormick combines family medicine with “a passion for rate of side e≠ects, and the primary social justice.” means of access to the drugs within the Brazilian community in Massachusetts. advocate for the patient in Of the 15 percent of women who admitted front of you,” explains assis- using the drugs, two-thirds had su≠ered tant professor of medicine at least one adverse e≠ect, and more than Daniel McCormick, who su- half had acquired the pills in the United pervised Cohen’s residency States, either at a neighborhood conve- training and is a coauthor of nience store or from an acquaintance. the diet-pill study. “You need The findings, published in the Journal of to understand and try to im- Immigrant and Minority Health, received cov- prove the larger healthcare system.” At a bridge Department of Public Health and erage on National Public Radio and re- time when market pressures and shrink- operates 20 neighborhood health centers sulted in a state-wide campaign to edu- ing budgets have squeezed primary care in Cambridge, Somerville, and the metro- cate Brazilian women about the dangers around the country, the Cambridge model north communities of Everett, Malden, of imported diet drugs and to alert physi- o≠ers a view of what can be achieved Medford, and Revere. cians to the propensity of this patient when doctors are able to invest them- In recent years, public hospitals across population to resort to hazardous selves in the communities they serve— the country have been foundering as weight-loss techniques. An on-line med- not only as caring clinicians, but as re- healthcare costs have outstripped govern- ical reference for doctors now carries in- searchers, educators, and healthcare ment reimbursement rates, and patients formation about the ingredients in com- activists. with insurance have opted for better- pounded diet pills and their interactive equipped private hospitals. CHA is the e≠ects. The message has also made its CHA evolved from Cambridge Hospital, only remaining public-hospital system in way back to Brazil. Warnings about the a public facility long devoted to caring for Massachusetts, with 85 percent of its popular diet aids have appeared in a São Paulo-based scientific journal and, more IN THIS ISSUE recently, in a national newspaper. Cohen’s study reflects a unique form of 52 Medical Makeover 59 The Liberal Art of Engineering community-based academic medicine 52 Doing Community Medicine 60 Shanghai Central that is thriving at Harvard’s only publicly 54 Harvard Portrait 61 Brevia funded teaching hospital. CHA trains 55 Yesterday’s News 63 The Undergraduate physicians to understand their patients in 56 University People 65 Sports cultural context and to connect clinical 57 Environmental Action 67 Alumni observation and care to larger public- 58 Harvard by the Numbers 72 The College Pump health concerns. “Here it’s not enough to 59 Young Audubon

Photographs by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 53 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

funds coming from federal and state HARVARD PORTRAIT sources, including Medicare, Medicaid, Medicaid Managed Care, Commonwealth Care, and the state’s Health Safety Net Trust Fund (formerly the “free care pool”). Despite continuing ﬁnancial uncertainties, the system continues to provide a major safety net of services—not only physicians and nurses, but social workers, mental-health providers, and cultural interpreters—to large numbers of uninsured and under-insured patients who would otherwise have to rely on emergency-room care. Since its founding, Cambridge Hospi- tal, now CHA, has attracted a distinct breed of doctors: those who tend to be less interested in high-paying, medical- specialty career paths than in the chance to improve the well-being of those at the bottom of the healthcare ladder. Daniel McCormick joined CHA as a full-time faculty member in 1997, eager to combine his interest in family medicine with “a passion for social justice.” In his primary- care practice in Somerville, he treats a steady stream of low-income patients, many of them immigrants from Haiti, Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America, and the Middle East. With help from on- site interpreters employed by CHA, he takes time to discuss patients’ family situations, working conditions, and daily Alvin Roth habits—recognizing that much of the op- timal care of patients takes place outside Alvin Roth loves how open economics is to people and ideas from different fields. the doctor’s o∞ce. “Sometimes there’s The Gund professor of economics and business administration began his academic economic stress or a mental-health condi- career in a branch of applied mathematics called operations research, but in graduate tion that keeps patients from complying school at Stanford, a game-theory class refocused his interests. After earning his with a drug regimen or following up on Ph.D., Roth passed up jobs in math departments for a joint appointment in econom- appointments,” he explains. “Other times ics and business at the University of Illinois. He began studying market design, the it can be a matter of cultural resistance.” rules by which buyers and suppliers link up. “One of the things you look for,” he says, If a test or treatment sounds frightening, “is interesting examples of market failures, because they tell you something about some patients opt for home remedies in- how markets work.” Before arriving at Harvard in 1998, he discovered that identify- stead. McCormick works closely with pa- ing failures can sometimes lead to fixing them. Roth not only wrote about the prob- tients’ family members (many of whom lems plaguing the program for matching New York City public high schools and their are also his patients), and with sta≠ social students, but also was asked to redesign it. In 2003, when he wrote about kidney-ex- workers, to address the life issues that change programs—databases plus matching algorithms that bring together two in- may be impeding treatment. compatible donor-recipient pairs to make a mutually compatible group of four—he In lectures and in the clinic, Mc- sent the paper to surgeons all over the country, seeking ideas on how to encourage Cormick and his colleagues impart this more hospitals to participate in such programs. Frank Delmonico, a professor of “big picture” approach to students. surgery at Harvard Medical School, stepped forward to offer his expertise. A year “Those who choose to train here know later Roth, Delmonico, and three others founded the New England Program for Kid- that they are going to gain exposure to a ney Exchange.“Economics is about how the world works, and making it work better,” patient population and a teaching philos- says Roth. “It seems natural that we ought to fix markets when they’re broken.” ophy that di≠ers from other hospitals in the Harvard system,” explains Davidson

54 September - October 2008 Photograph by Jim Harrison associate professor of medicine David Bor, who heads the department of medicine at Yesterday’s News Cambridge Hospital. From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine Under new curriculum guidelines, all HMS students receive some instruction 1928 The University plans to give a Experience.” Meanwhile, a committee in the “social context of medicine”—in total of $350,000 in financial aid to its continues to examine African-American topics such as health policy, clinical epi- students, enough to pay the tuition of and African history as well as black life demiology, and medical ethics—and in the entire previous year's College class. on campus. “patient-centered” care. (The new “integrated clerkship,” for instance, allows 1933 After two months on the job, 1978 Radcliffe College celebrates its third-year students to follow an individ- President James B. Conant discontinues centennial on September 15 and 16. ual patient over a period of months; see the 7 o’clock rising bell in Harvard Yard, *** “The Pulse of a New Medical Curricu- ending a tradition that has long outraged For the first time in nine years, under- lum”, September-October 2006, page 64). sleepy freshmen. (In the earliest days of graduates elect representatives to a Col- But at CHA, these themes permeate all the College, the bell was rung at 5 a.m.) lege-wide assembly, and the class of ’82 levels of training and are geared in par- forms two political groups.The Hedonist ticular toward the challenges of treating 1943 On September 6, in a ceremony Party rallies around a platform of “con- underserved and “socially complex” pa- whose guest is kept secret until the day stant physical contact between genders, tients: the very poor, the homeless, re- before, Harvard awards an honorary de- oral surgery for Jimmy Carter, total use cent immigrants, political refugees, gree to Winston Churchill.The chance of beer, wine,Thai sticks, ganja cigarettes, those with substance-abuse disorders, to hear “the man whose character and Quaaludes,THC, and LSD as the bill of and those with a history of incarcera- eloquence have been the inspiration of rights.” The Mongol Party campaigns for tion. “This focus doesn’t replace the the free world in its darkest hour” leads the ideals of “rape, pillage, plunder, and teaching of traditional clinical medi- many professors to curtail vacations and rape.” The dean of freshmen calls the cine,” McCormick explains. “Rather, it many families to cancel Labor Day plans. Mongol agenda “moderate and sensible.” allows the medicine we teach to be e≠ective in the real world.” 1948 Responding to queries about a 1983 The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Fourth-year HMS student Jane Lowe military draft, President Conant suggests the University’s oldest music group, is was grateful to land a spot at CHA for that the country “apply the principle of invited to play in Russia—a first for any her second-year “Doctor-Patient” train- universal liability or obligation to every- Harvard organization. ing. “Cambridge is always oversub- one at 18 years of age or on graduation scribed, because of the unique popula- from high school.” tion it serves,” she says. Before entering medical school, Lowe spent summers 1968 Harvard offers its working as a patient interviewer at very first class on race Grady Memorial Hospital, a public relations in American safety-net facility in Atlanta. The Cam- history: Social bridge assignment o≠ered her the chance Sciences 5,“The to pursue her interest in healthcare dis- Afro-American parities and in “the social aspects, rather than just the scientiﬁc aspects, of medicine,” she says. “I learned things that I couldn’t learn elsewhere, like how to achieve medication compliance in homeless patients, how to work with interpreters, and how to interview and examine patients from other countries who may have had traumatic experiences.” The sta≠’s approach to medical care also sets the system apart, Lowe adds. “The doctors are uniquely engaged in their patients’ lives. They go way beyond the clinical complaint that may have brought the patient to the hospital, taking time to ﬁnd the right interpreter, referring patients for substance-abuse treatment, and fol-

Illustration by Mark Steele JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

board member at Harvard Management Communications Chief Company, which invests the endow- Christine Heenan, founder and president ment); previously, he served as chief ad- of Clarendon Group, a Providence, Rhode University ministrative o∞cer at Goldman Sachs. Island-based public and government rela- He has been actively involved in his Col- tions firm, will become Harvard’s new lege class’s reunions and gift commitee. vice president for govern- People ment, community, and Diversity Development public a≠airs, e≠ective Conant professor of education Judith D. October 1. She succeeds EVP Singer, former academic Alan J. Stone. Edward C. Forst ’82 has been named dean and acting dean at Heenan, who holds a Harvard’s first executive vice president, the Harvard Graduate B.S. in journalism from JUSTIN IDE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE e≠ective September 1. As the “principal School of Education, has Boston University, was a Christine ranking operating o∞cer” at the Univer- been appointed the Uni- business strategy consul- Heenan sity, he will oversee financial, adminis- versity’s senior vice tant. She then entered government, serv- trative, and human-resources functions provost for faculty devel- ing on the Domestic Policy Council sta≠ JUSTIN IDE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE (each run by a vice president) and ad- opment and diversity. In Judith D. during the first term of the Clinton administrative information technology. The that role, Singer, known Singer ministration, focusing on health and new position relieves somewhat the ad- for developing quantitative methods of women’s issues and writing speeches. She ministrative pressures on the president social-science research, will oversee and had communications roles at the 1996 and and provost, to whom monitor faculty-appointment processes; 2000 Democratic national conventions, seven vice presidents review junior-faculty appointments; ad- and was subsequently director of commu- and 11 deans, among oth- minister University funds used to ap- nity and government relations at Brown ers, now report. Forst, a point scholars who make the faculty University and Brown Medical School. Goldman Sachs partner more diverse; and gather data and report She founded Clarendon Group in 2000. since 1998, was most re- on the status of these e≠orts (see Her Harvard portfolio extends from cently global head of in- www.faculty. harvard.edu). She succeeds Boston’s review of Allston plans and con- HARVARD NEWS OFFICE Edward C. vestment management Evelynn Hammonds, who became dean gressional concern over university en- Forst (and now becomes a of Harvard College in June. dowments to news-media matters. lowing up with social workers to make ics,” McCormick explains, “so we decided the phone, start talking to reporters, hold sure patients don’t fall through the cracks.” to look at the actual data.” The numbers press conferences, and write editorials. were astounding: 1.8 million non-elderly Our view is: What’s the point of doing re- This level of patient involvement pro- veterans were uninsured in 2004—an search if you’re not going to do anything vides the basis for CHA’s brand of acade- increase of 290,000 since 2000. The re- with it?” McCormick himself teaches an mic activism. As director of the alliance’s searchers found that most uninsured vet- annual month-long seminar to medical division of healthcare policy and re- erans have middle-class incomes that dis- students on evidence-based healthcare search, McCormick is part of a working qualify them for Veterans Administration advocacy, providing some background in group of CHA internists and psychia- (VA) care, while others can’t a≠ord the biostatistics and epidemiology and re- trists committed to investigating and co-payments or don’t have access to VA quiring students to design a research publicizing a range of inequalities in the facilities in their communities. (The CHA study addressing a current medical-care country’s healthcare system. Many of the group has produced similarly high-im- problem. Jane Lowe focused on the short- group’s papers have been widely publi- pact studies addressing the steep rise in age of primary-care physicians in Massa- cized and have helped shape health-pol- emergency-room wait times, the distribu- chusetts: “The elective taught me the con- icy debates. A 2007 study led by associate tion of free drug samples to a±uent crete steps to take,” she explains, “from professors of medicine Stephanie Wool- rather than needy patients, and the lack recognizing a problem, to collecting data, handler and David Himmelstein, for ex- of knowledge among U.S. medical stu- to formulating solutions, and then reach- ample, revealed the rising numbers of dents about military medical ethics; see ing the audience that can make a di≠er- uninsured veterans in the United States www.challiance.org/news/news.shtml). ence in healthcare policy.” and led to Woolhandler’s testifying be- “Plenty of other places conduct re- At a time when community-focused, fore Congress on the issue. search on these kinds of public-health is- public hospitals are in short supply (there A simple clinical observation prompted sues,” McCormick says. “The di≠erence is are 300 fewer today than 15 years ago), the study. “We noticed that a lot of unin- that we don’t stop at getting our studies CHA provides a valuable training ground sured vets were showing up at our clin- into peer-reviewed journals. We get on for HMS students. “Municipal hospitals

56 September - October 2008 o≠er students the chance to learn about dents get to rub shoulders with faculty ergy and commitment of the people who disease in a population that they wouldn’t who are frankly making less money than drive the alliance’s mission. “The idea of ordinarily see,” says Ronald Arky, David- doctors in specialized ﬁelds at other hos- advocacy just wells up out of this place,” son Distinguished Professor of medicine pitals, but who are wholly dedicated to says David Bor. “There’s a strong belief and master of the Francis Weld Peabody serving the poorest patients.” here in the physician’s role to give voice to Society at HMS (charged with oversight The fate of CHA and other public those people whose voices are not heard, of the general medical-education experi- safety-net hospitals will largely depend and there’s a shared understanding of ill- ence at the school). “Today CHA is Har- on how the nation resolves the question ness and health that goes beyond clinical vard’s only thread to this population,” of universal healthcare. In the meantime, diagnosis to address the complexity of Arky points out. “At the same time, stu- ﬁnancial woes are unlikely to curb the en- patients’ lives.” ashley pettus

Environmental Action “high-quality carbon o≠sets” to achieve its goal. Given the di∞culty of ascertain- The university will cut its greenhouse- ing o≠sets’ legitimacy and reliability in gas emissions by 30 percent during the the current market, the authors said, Har- next eight years, President Drew Faust vard would be wise to look into creating vowed in a July 8 announcement. its own—by investing in a wind farm, to Harvard had already committed to am- give one example. This, Faust said, is bitious environmental goals for the new where the University might make its Allston campus (see “Growing Green,” November-December 2007, page 28E), but this was the first University-wide greenhouse-gas emissions pledge. In making it, Faust endorsed the recommendations of a task force (chaired by Brooks professor of international science, public policy, and human development William C. Clark) that she appointed in February to consider the issue. Using the University’s 2006 emissions—282,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCDE)—as a baseline, a 30 percent reduction would JON CHASE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE JON CHASE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE mean bringing emissions below 200,000 Harvard is already trying many MTCDEs by 2016, even as Harvard ex- green initiatives; it will need to do much more to meet its new green- pands significantly in size. house-gas emissions goal. Above: By some judgments, even this goal falls washing a car with rainwater that far short: the Canadian province of was recycled rather than lost as runoff. Top right: solar panels on the British Columbia is requiring publicly roof of the Business School’s Shad funded colleges there to be carbon neu- Hall. Right: recycling cardboard at tral—with zero net emissions—by 2010. the dining hall that serves Dunster But even a 30 percent reduction, Faust and Mather Houses. said, will require “extraordinary efforts”—and conservation won’t su∞ce on greatest contribution to combat- its own. The task force concluded that ing climate change. the University will also need to invest in But conservation is the initiative’s cornerstone nonetheless. Go to harvardmagazine.- “We can do all the renewable-en- KRIS SNIBBE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE com/extras to view a slide ergy production we want, but if we are Harvard’s properties vary so widely in show of ecophilic initiatives wasting the energy we’re using, we’re ac- their energy needs and conservation op- in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and tually not solving the problem at all,” says tions, the first step will be a building-by- to see the winning entries in the Har- Thomas E. Vautin, the University’s associ- building energy audit. Still, a few types of vard Green Campus Initiative cartoon ate vice president for facilities and envi- solutions are likely to apply to many contest. ronmental services, and vice chair of the buildings, and go far to conserve energy. greenhouse-gases task force. Because These include making lighting- and tem-

Harvard Magazine 57 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

perature-control systems more e∞cient and trimming energy use during o≠-peak hours (for instance, by programming The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) faces interesting challenges in maintaining expertise lights and computers to turn o≠ when no in current fields of knowledge, bringing in professors to pursue new frontiers, training future scholars, and educating undergraduates. As FAS dean Michael D. Smith illustrated one is around). with these figures, adapted from his annual report dated May 2008, social sciences (eco- To meet the 2016 goal, Harvard should nomics, government, history, and so on) attract the largest number of College concentra- earmark $10 million to $20 million a year tors, and account for the largest faculty cohort. Arts and humanities professors rank sec- for energy o≠sets and conservation mea- ond, but the number of concentrators (not the only students taking courses, to be sure), is much smaller, and diminishing. Graduate-student enrollments (importantly, the source of sures, according to the task force report teaching fellows) are largest in the sciences, but fastest-growing in engineering and applied (see www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/- sciences—the only group within the faculty to expand in relative size during the past 2008/07.24/pdfs/GHG_TF_ﬁnalreport.pdf). decade (see “A ‘Pause’ and Progress in FAS,” July-August, page 68). And Vautin is “quite certain” that the Uni- versity will need to increase its technical sta≠ in this area, either within central administration, at certain schools, or under the auspices of the Harvard Green Cam- pus Initiative (www.greencampus.- harvard.edu), which he co-chairs. Other schools have made similar com- mitments. Notably, Yale announced in 2005 that it would aim to cut emissions to 10 percent below its 1990 level—or 43 percent below the 2005 level—by 2020. Yale started with emissions nearly as high as Harvard’s, even though Harvard has 20,000 students to Yale’s 12,000, but Har- vard’s calculations do not include hospitals (the University does not own any), whereas Yale-New Haven Hospital factors into that university’s calculation. In a new Princeton Review ranking of colleges on “green” criteria, both schools made the 11-member “honor roll.” Analysis and goal-setting thus far have focused on so-called Scope 1 and 2 emissions: respectively, emissions Harvard produces directly (for instance, from a University-owned truck or power plant) and emissions produced indirectly as a result of energy Harvard purchases (for instance, by an electricity supplier). Not included in the present calculations are Scope 3 emissions—mainly those generated during business travel and employ- ees’ commutes to work. Faust called the current target “an initial short-term goal” and said the Univer- sity would set new goals on a rolling basis, with annual assessments and more intensive four-year reviews: “We live in a context in which energy costs, available technologies, regulatory requirements, and broader economic realities are shift- ing so rapidly that predicting the future is di∞cult and establishing ﬁxed goals becomes challenging.”

58 September - October 2008 Young Audubon vard Portrait,” July-August 2004, page 56), contributes an engaging Jean-jacques audubon did not essay on “Audubon the Scientist,” become the internationally cele- with an almost wistful review of brated John James Audubon of The his use of sources spanning prior Birds of America overnight. Indeed, his centuries—in contrast to modern early life was harrowing, and his science, when most papers “be- progress as an artist labored and come irrelevant after a few years.” fitful. Edwards also points out the qual- As it happens, Harvard’s collec- ity of Audubon’s field notes and tions contain some of his earliest documentation, and even the value works as a naturalist: 116 drawings of his work for documenting over held in Houghton Library and the time both vast habitat change (as Museum of Comparative Zoology America was de- and reforested) (MCZ). Harvard University Press and the rapidity of avian evolu- has just published them, in large for- tion. mat and full color for the first time, “The Sources of Audubon’s Art,” as Audubon: Early Drawings ($125). The by Richard Rhodes, author of John works are also available on line James Audubon: The Making of an Ameri- through the University Library’s can, rounds out the front matter archival search system (search for with a succinct account of the sub- “Audubon” at http://oasis.harvard.- ject’s eventful life. edu). Thus the one volume encom- Explaining the collection’s prove- passes the allurements of collect- nance in the foreword, Leslie A. ing, of science old and new, and of Morris, Houghton’s curator of mod- biography. The new perspectives ern books and manuscripts, high- on Audubon’s development will lights Audubon’s use of watercolor likely add to a fundamental passion and then pastels, and his evolution that, as Morris notes, the artist from “traditional ornithological presen- Top: A belted kingfisher, drawn in 1808, is himself described thus: tation, depicting the bird in profile and precise and detailed but stiff. Middle and bot- The study of ornithology must be a tom: A whippoorwill and a nighthawk, drawn with little or no background” toward the on successive days in May 1812, show evolu- journey of pleasure. Each step must prized “naturalistic style.” Among exam- tion toward more dynamic, lifelike poses. present to the traveler’s view ob- ples of the former, Scott V. Edwards cites jects that are eminently interesting, renderings of a black-bellied plover and a namic and lifelike poses” such as those of varied in their appearance, and at- hawfinch, with the “telltale shift in per- a gray catbird. tracting to such a degree, as to ex- spective between body and tail (body Edwards, who is professor of organis- cite in each individual thus happily viewed from the side, tail from the top),” mic and evolutionary biology and cura- employed the desire of knowing all that gradually give way to “more dy- tor of ornithology in the MCZ (see “Har- respecting all he sees.

The Liberal Art of in a redefinition of “liberal-arts educa- neering to founder (Venky cites, for ex- tion” in which engineering would appear. ample, development of the Mark 1 com- Engineering SEAS already plays an important part in puter, and expertise in water resources). linking schools and disciplines to each Today, in a world in which science and The 10-year tenure of Venkatesh other and to undergraduate education, a technology have come to play an increas- Narayanamurti, dean of the School of En- role exemplified in the University’s plans ingly central role in the dissemination gineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), to establish a major presence in the field and application of knowledge, Harvard’s will end in September—most likely with of bioengineering. As Harvard recruits a leadership in higher education is more the appointment of an interim succes- dean to succeed him, Venky hopes the closely linked than ever, Venky believes, sor—but Venky, as he is known, plans to University will demonstrate its commit- to the fate of SEAS. remain actively involved in shaping a new ment to the field by constructing a signa- One of the primary challenges facing curriculum and new pedagogical ap- ture building in Allston dedicated to the the school—Venky calls it “a strength and proaches in science. engineering sciences. In the past, Harvard a weakness”—is the breadth of activities More broadly, he hopes to participate has allowed exemplary e≠orts in engi- in which SEAS is involved, ranging from

Drawings from Audubon: Early Drawings, Harvard University Press Harvard Magazine 59 ©2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. other hand, must be aware of the societal consequences of what they do and the societal problems to be solved. Even the definition of a broadly educated person must evolve with the chang- ing times, Venky says: “You no longer have a liberal-arts education unless you have some feeling for technology.” After a sabbatical, he expects to help develop an undergraduate curriculum that reflects this view. Within the sciences, it is sure to include more experiential, hands-on learn- Venkatesh “Venky” ing. There may also be changes in the se- Narayanamurti quence of courses within engineering disciplines, which traditionally start with tough “rite of passage” classes. Venky be- applied mathematics and applied physics Citing two of the greatest challenges of lieves that introducing the joys of engi- to computer science and electrical, bio- the twenty-first century—promoting neering early on will help attract and re- logical, chemical, and other engineering human and planetary health—the July re- tain a broader range of students—all the disciplines. Schools and centers from port emphasized that “the future pre- more important because attrition among throughout Harvard are eager to work sents unprecedented opportunities in engineering students is a nationwide closely with SEAS; already, the school is bioengineering, which could lead to enor- problem even as engineering skills have linked in many ways to the Faculty of mous advances of potential societal and become more necessary than ever. Arts and Scences (of which it is techni- economic value,” and recommended that Harvard, Venky says, needs to attract a cally part) and administers a doctoral Harvard begin an international search dean with vision by constructing a signa- program with the Business School in sci- this September for the director for a Har- ture campus with SEAS as one of the pil- ence, technology, and management. In vard University Bioengineering (HUB) lars—a statement that says Harvard is se- view are joint appointments with the program. By next September, Harvard rious about science and engineering. School of Public Health, collaborations will have established a Ph.D. program and with the Law School on issues of privacy begun recruiting faculty members for fall and security raised by new technologies, 2010, coincident with the launch of an un- Shanghai Central and with the Medical School in bioengi- dergraduate curriculum and the enroll- neering. In part to facilitate such collabo- ment of the first class of doctoral candi- Harvard on july 1 opened the newest in rations, to enhance its role as a “linking” dates. (Although this schedule likely an expanding network of international of- school, and to strengthen the University turns on the hiring of a new SEAS dean, fices, in Shanghai, and is scheduled to as a whole, SEAS plans to grow by adding possibly delaying its implementation, launch another this autumn, in Beijing. The 10 positions in bioengineering and others Venky considers it appropriate that a outpost is intended to support faculty and in energy technologies, nanotechnologies, final resolution await his successor: student research, interns, admissions, col- sustainability, and information science. “Who knows? That person might be a laboration with local universities, and Closest to fruition is the joint program bioengineer.”) alumni relations. The o∞cial opening came in bioengineering, which a University re- Meanwhile, he will focus on curricular three months after a pan-Asian Harvard port, released in July, called “the natural reform. “I believe that the liberal-arts ed- Alumni Association conference in Shang- next step in the intellectual development ucation of the twenty-first century has to hai, keynoted by President Drew Faust, a of biology, medicine, and engineering…” be di≠erent,” he says, noting that infor- tangible sign of the University’s large and (see “On the University’s Agenda,” July- mation is no longer centered in Widener growing involvement in the People’s Re- August 2008, page 61). Bioengineering Library. “The library made Harvard—we public and east Asia (see “Connecting with plans include the creation of undergradu- have always had the rarest things, the best China,” May-June, page 67). ate and graduate curricula and the estab- repository of knowledge, [but] informa- The o∞ce (www.fas.harvard.edu/~hcf/ lishment of a “flagship” research institute tion now is digital; it is on the Web. chinaoffice.html) was inaugurated in a in biologically inspired engineering to be Widener Library is very valuable, but it is joint visit by Harvard Business School housed in the first Allston science build- almost a museum.” Social scientists, even (HBS) dean Jay O. Light and historian ing. (Bioengineering is now o≠ered to un- humanists, have to understand and ap- William C. Kirby, who is Chang professor dergraduates as a subfield within engi- preciate technology. Areas like economics of China studies, Spangler Family profes- neering science. The explosion of student and government are much more quantita- sor of business administration, director of interest is reminiscent, Venky says, of that tive and data intensive, he points out. En- the Fairbank Center for East Asian Re- for computer science a generation ago.) gineers and computer scientists, on the search—the locus for much of the Univer-

60 September - October 2008 Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News O∞ce New Dean for Public Health New Script for One L,” January-February Julio Frenk, who served as Mexico’s Min- 2007, page 59), the school has invested sub- ister of Health from 2000 to 2006, has been stantially in international programs, and appointed dean of the Harvard School of Brevia work has advanced on its huge North- Public Health (HSPH), effective next Jan- west Corner building (see March-April uary. He succeeds Barry R. Bloom, who 2008, page 54). More than 26,000 donors has been dean for contributed to the the past decade. campaign. Frenk, a specialist in health systems Arts and policy, is cur- Administrator rently a senior fel- Lori E. Gross, who low in the global- previously over- health program at saw arts initia- the Bill & Melinda tives at MIT, has Gates Foundation. moved upriver to In making the an- become Harvard’s nouncement on associate provost July 29, President for arts and cul- Drew Faust cited ture. She will Frenk’s experi- work with the ence “at the cross- Harvard Art Mu- roads of scholar- seum, American ship and practice” Repertory Thea- and his “strong commitment to reducing SCIENCE SETTING. The first Allston tre, Villa I Tatti, and the University Li- disparities in health.” The full text of science laboratories, now under construc- brary; participate in Allston planning for tion, will present a rectilinear face to the the announcement is available at surrounding streets (see rendering in arts and cultural facilities; and collabo- www.news.harvard. “Refining the Allston Master Plan,” rate with whatever new structure for the edu/gazette/2008/08.21/ January-February, page 60). Within the arts at Harvard is eventually recom- four-building complex, however, architect 99-hsph.html. The maga- Stefan Behnisch envisions a more free- mended by the president’s task force on zine will present inform approach. This drawing showed the the arts, whose report is depth coverage of the evolving design proposed for the interior expected in late fall. new dean and his priori- courtyard space as of early this summer. Gross succeeds Sean ties in a forthcoming , who became HARVARD NEWS OFFICE Buffington Julio Frenk issue. and Learning. His appointment partially president of the Univer- restores the structure prevailing until sity of the Arts, in Phil- Undergraduate Education Overseer 2003, when the formerly separate College adelphia, last year. STEPHANIE MITCHELL/HARVARD NEWS OPFICE Wolfson professor of Jewish studies Jay and undergraduate-education deanships Lori E. Gross M. Harris, who has chaired the Faculty of were consolidated; Harris now reports to On Other Campuses Arts and Sciences’ general-education College dean Evelynn M. Hammonds. Yale will increase undergraduate enroll- committee as new courses are introduced ment by about 15 percent, to 6,000, and to the undergraduate curriculum, has Law Largess will create two new residential colleges, been made responsible for the entire Col- Harvard Law School’s “Setting the Stan- expected to open in 2013, to accommodate lege course of study as the new dean of dard” capital campaign, launched in June the growth. It has raised the goal for its undergraduate education. Harris, who is 2003 (see “$400 Million for Law,” Septem- current capital campaign by $500 million, chair of the department of Near Eastern ber-October 2003, page 73), concluded on to $3.5 billion, to pay for the buildings and languages and civiliza- June 30, having “substantially exceeded” related growth in faculty, advisers, and tions, and master of its goal. Final figures were still being tal- support sta≠. Princeton has received a Cabot House, will now lied as this issue went to press; the cam- $100-million gift from alumnus (and Har- oversee general educa- paign will be formally celebrated in an vard M.B.A. ’54) Gerhard R. Andlinger to tion, freshman seminars, event on October 23. During the campaign, support research on energy and the envi- international programs, both faculty ranks and student financial ronment; it will fund a 110,000-square- writing, advising, and the aid have expanded significantly, the first- foot laboratory, faculty positions, and re- ROSE LINCOLN/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE Jay M. Harris Bok Center for Teaching year curriculum was reorganized (see “A search programs, anchoring a larger e≠ort

Rendering: Behnisch Architekten/Courtesy of the Harvard Magazine 61 Allston Development Group, Harvard University JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

CAMPUS CASUAL. Laptop? Check. Cell phone? Check. MP3 player? Check. And now, students gearing up for their autumn return to campus can stock up on a new variety of Harvard logowear, courtesy of the “Collegiate Collection” from the Victo- ria’s Secret PINK line. Although the 33 institutions participating are principally large state universities, Berkeley, Boston College, and UCLA were on the roster along with the Crimson. Shortly after the collection appeared on the PINK website, Har- vard items—properly licensed, the trademarks office assured, but for temporary of- fering only—disappeared, leaving only 32 schools’ stuff on display, and making browsers guess the identity of the missing institution. Harvard’s future participation is subject to “review of advertising and promotional materials.”

on energy and climate change. A $20-mil- expert on terrorism (see “Under- lion gift from another donor will fund a standing Terrorism,” January- new Princeton center to promote collabo- February 2002, page 36), has been Arts and Sciences’ ration among engineering and liberal-arts appointed prin- open-access pol- students. University of Pennsylvania cipal and vice icy on distrib- alumnus Jerome Fisher and his wife, Anne chancellor, the uting scholar- Fisher, have given $50 million for a center senior leadership post, of ly research (see for translational medical research. And the University of St. An- “Open Access,” the University of California, Berkeley drews, in Scotland, e≠ec- May-June, page has appointed a vice chancellor, previ- tive January 1. She is the 61); it may even- JON CHASE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE ously global head of mergers and acquisi- Louise ﬁrst woman to serve in tually serve the needs of all Har- tions at Citicorp, to lead public-private Richardson that capacity. vard’s faculties. Shieber was the lead partnerships and alliances that can sup- author of the policy proposal.…Bill Pur- Job guide’s new job.

port that institution’s research in an era of William Wright- cell, mayor of Nashville, Tennessee, from ©VICTORIA’S SECRET declining government budgetary support. Swadel, director of the O∞ce of Career 1999 to 2007, has been appointed director Services since 1995, has been appointed to of the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Nota Bene the equivalent post at Duke University. At Kennedy School; he succeeds former Humanities head. Rothenberg professor Harvard, he oversaw career counseling, congressman James A. of the humanities Homi K. Bhabha has preprofessional and fellowship advising, Leach, who served as in- been appointed senior adviser on the hu- employer recruiting, and internship pro- terim director during the manities, working with the president grams for students associated with the past academic year.… and provost—a new position. As direc- Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ schools. The Berkman Center tor of the Humanities Center, within the for Internet & Society, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (www. Miscellany. Diplomat and author ( founded and based at The HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL fas.harvard.edu/~humcentr), Bhabha has Places in Between, on Afghanistan, and Prince Harvard Law School as a Bill Purcell promoted interdisciplinary discussion of the Marshes, on Iraq) Rory Stewart has locus for research, has involving subjects ranging from medicine been appointed director of the Carr Cen- been elevated to University-wide status as (ethics, caring) to law (mercy) and ter- ter for Human Rights Policy (www.hks.- an interfaculty initiative (http://cyber. rorism—a role he expects to sustain at harvard.edu/cchrp), e≠ective January 1. He law.harvard.edu).…Brian C. Kenny, previ- both the center and in his new capacity. is currently based in Kabul, where he op- ously of Northeastern University and The erates a nonprofit organization.…Glaxo- Monitor Group, has been appointed chief St. andrews steward. Radcli≠e Institute SmithKline and the Harvard Stem Cell marketing and communications o∞cer executive dean Louise Richardson, an Institute (www.hsci.harvard.edu) have at Harvard Business School.…Harvard reached a five-year, $25-mil- Medalist and benefactor Katherine Bog- ICE-CREAM ICON. lion agreement to pursue re- danovich Loker, L.H.D. ’00, whose gifts Although John Harvard search at the University and underwrote renovation could be present only in spirit for President Drew a∞liated hospitals, exploring of the Widener Library Faust’s ice-cream social neurological, cardiac, and reading room, conversion for University staff other diseases.…Welch profes- of the Memorial Hall members on July 1, he sor of computer science Stu- basement into a student figured prominently in the electronic invitation art M. Shieber has been ap- “commons,” and restora- to the wildly popular pointed the first director of tion of Memorial Hall’s

event. Vice presidents KRIS SNIBBE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE the O∞ce for Scholarly Com- tower, died June 26, at age Katherine were pressed into duty munication, the implement- 92; her husband, Bogdanovich as “celebrity scoopers” Donald Loker in Harvard Yard. ing body for the Faculty of P. Loker ’25, died in 1988. UNIVERSITY PLANNING OFFICE

62 September - October 2008 Undergraduates from tury.” The Harvard China Fund itself the inaugural Harvard (www.fas.harvard. edu/~hcf) recently China Student Internship Program, at the made a second round of grants to support Shanghai Bund Center research on subjects ranging from village Office with staff mem- development to childrearing to the use of bers John Chen and medicines; all involve counterparts in Lillian Wei (front row, far right). China. Harvard participants come from the schools of design, education, medi- propriate to the new cine, and public health, plus the Faculty of o∞ce’s aims. With HBS Arts and Sciences. And Light noted that colleagues, Kirby has HBS would deploy a staff person affiliated sity’s research in the region—and chair of been developing a series of case studies on with its Asia Pacific Research Center, in the Harvard China Fund, a sort of acade- the evolution of rising state-owned and Hong Kong, in the Shanghai office. LILLIAN WEI mic venture-capital fund (see “Venturing private businesses in China (such as Kirby characterized the new physical into China,” November-December 2007, Wanxiang Group, now a multibillion-dol- presences in China as merely “initial page 77). lar global auto-parts supplier); the cases steps” toward further advancing Har- The multidisciplinary roles assumed by are used in a course he co-teaches, “Doing vard’s ambitious research and teaching those two Harvard representatives are ap- Business in China in the Early 21st Cen- missions in the region.

THE UNDERGRADUATE Rookie Redux by liz goodwin ’08

realized that college was over of extendable dead- when I opened up the large diploma lines. In fact, the let- case to show my family the product ter might as well of four years’ labor and found a suc- have said, “Welcome cinctI note informing me of an unpaid to the real world, debt to the University. I was still wearing kid. No excuses.” my polyester cap and gown, and had just Luckily, I made it back, walked across the stage. I saw a ﬂicker of diploma in hand, in time alarm cross my aunts’ and uncles’ faces, as for the afternoon Com- if they were momentarily wondering if I mencement speeches. Presi- had even graduated at all. I posed for pic- dent Faust had just started tures showcasing the empty diploma speaking when I arrived, and case, trying to laugh it o≠, but spent the though my recent experi- next two hours running around campus ence did not endear to me in my billowing black robe, frantically her message about the ne- trying to get the piece of paper that cessity of Harvard’s behe- proved I was a graduate. moth endowment, I was al- The levels of bureaucracy I had to sur- ready feeling less grouchy. wise as Dum- mount in order to pay o≠ the small sum When J.K. Rowling’s turn to talk came, bledore must have seemed a harbinger of a more compli- the people around me shifted in their a great deal of wisdom herself. So I asked cated, post-college life. Harvard’s im- seats, trying to get a better look at her. myself if I had the gifts Rowling said are placable and unadvertised stance on the Her point was simple: cultivate an active the most important. Imagination? Check. collection of chump change from its grad- imagination and do not be afraid to fail. I Courage to fail? On that front, I can be uates already seemed to belong to a took her words very seriously, as I think something of a wimp. I don’t like to put di≠erent world from the last four years that anyone who can write a character as myself in positions where I look silly or

Illustration by Joan Chiverton Harvard Magazine 63 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

Welcome, Fellows

Harvard Magazine’s Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergradu- ate Fellows for the 2008-2009 academic year will be Brittney Moraski ’09 and Christian Flow ’10, who were selected after a competitive evaluation of writing submitted by student applicants for the position. The fellows, who join the editorial staff during the year, contribute to the magazine as Undergraduate columnists and initiate story ideas, write news and feature items, and edit copy before publication. Moraski, of Bark River, Michigan (in the Upper Peninsula), and Dunster House, concentrates in history and literature, with a focus on gender in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and modern American intellectual history. A past Crimson reporter and current admissions-office tour guide and modern books and manuscripts assistant at Houghton Library, she spent the summer doing thesis research, beginning work Brittney with this magazine, continuing her job at Moraski, left, and Christian Houghton, and traveling to Shanghai. Flow Flow, of Baltimore and Eliot House, is concentrating in classics, with a focus in both Latin and Greek. A gram at Johns Hopkins University. He also planned to redis- Crimson reporter,he currently helps to cover the Faculty of Arts cover exercise, one of his great passions in a former, healthier and Sciences. During the summer, he helped shape young minds life. The fellowships are supported by Jonathan J. Ledecky ’79, as a residential assistant for the Center for Talented Youth pro- M.B.A. ’83, and named in honor of his mother. inept. I should take more risks, I told myself. I people could look at where I lived and petty I sounded. “Nobody said it’s an shouldn’t worry about looking stupid. A couple what I did as my identity, and judge me easy place to live,” he said. of weeks later, I was in New York City. for it. The thought was terrifying. I was so preoccupied, in fact, that I did- It is also not an easy place to work. In- They say one thing that compels peo- n’t notice the gathering rain clouds. I was terning at a small daily newspaper has ple to move to New York is the promise somewhere in the East Village when it tapped deep reservoirs of personal incom- of anonymity, a promise that suggests began to pour. My shopping bags became petence I did not even know I had. I find freedom and excitement. I wasn’t there soaked, and one handle broke o≠. I was myself getting lost no matter how de- 24 hours before I ran into someone I about three or four blocks from the sub- tailed my instructions are, or misunder- knew. An acquaintance from Harvard way stop when my flimsy sandals slipped standing small assignments to disastrous stood downtown with his father, look- and I fell down, scattering the groceries. e≠ect. I remind myself of the first-year ing at Ground Zero. I decided then that I would get a cab, compers at the Crimson, the most bashful After we were introduced, the father justifying the extravagance with my of whom had a way of being underfoot asked me where I was living and what I throbbing knee. When I finally hailed one without being useful. was doing. I said Bedford-Stuyvesant and successfully—a desperate process—and Once I stood in front of the wrong interning at a newspaper. He laughed: told the driver where I lived, he immedi- building for several hours, assiduously “Your parents must be shocked that you ately began to yell at me. I have rarely gathering comment from New Yorkers graduated from Harvard and now you’re seen a man more angry than this taxi dri- about a structure that had absolutely living in Bed-Stuy with an internship!” I ver when he realized he had to drive me nothing to do with the story I was sup- stammered out that my parents have al- to Brooklyn. He called me names and posed to help write. A few days later, I ways wanted me to do what makes me muttered and swore and finally dropped arrived 20 minutes late at a stakeout of a happy, but his derisive expression didn’t me o≠ about six blocks from my apart- closed meeting of the governor and change, and I didn’t sound convincing. ment. I trudged up the brownstone steps, mayor before realizing I had no idea what I excused myself and began walking an- ignoring cat-calls and struggling with the Mayor Bloomberg looked like. Another grily, turning over what the man had said locks, and finally collapsed in my room, time I stood attentively at a press confer- to me. How could someone already think crying. ence, brandishing my tape recorder in I was a failure? I worried that now, “Why are people so mean here?” I front of me without realizing I had not robbed of the equalizing “student” label, asked my dad on the phone, aware of how turned it on. In a conversation with a Na-

64 September - October 2008 Photograph by Stu Rosner tional Hockey League spokesperson, I “Sometimes my daily push to understand my asked if the “Redhawks” and the “Black Wings” would be playing at Wrigley surroundings when I feel so out of my element Field. At times, I’m able to recount these seems Sisyphean.” mix-ups to friends or family as humorous stories. Often even I see them that way. ately left for South Street Seaport to catch ter how many times you see it, right?” Yet it can be di∞cult to always narrate to the boat. Instead of champagne, there I just smiled, wanting to avoid yet an- the tune of “Liz’s Wacky Misadventures were bright blue, frozen-rum drinks in other person’s reaction to my admission in New York!” I’m too invested—too con- plastic cups, and beer. And instead of a fa- of being a foreigner—a newly arrived, scious of and concerned by my fum- mous journalist, I struck up a conversa- not-quite-employed New York rookie. blings, and others’ reactions to them—to tion with the mother of the boat’s man- I am at the bottom of a very large learn- laugh them o≠ all the time. I don’t want ager. She was from Minnesota, and after 10 ing curve, and sometimes my daily push to feel that I’m not doing well, and I don’t minutes of chatting, she tried to set me up to understand my surroundings when I want other people to think so, either. As with her son, whose two young children, feel so entirely out of my element seems Rowling had intimated, fear of failure is a she told me, “really need a mother.” Sisyphean. Yet I remember a time when I powerful force. I grabbed my neon-blue drink and es- felt just the same. As a freshman in col- caped to the top of the boat. The view of lege, the cloud of confusion around me Things began to look up when a re- downtown and the cool breeze (and per- would lift occasionally, like a morning porter who sits behind me overheard an haps the frozen drink) immediately made fog, and something perhaps quite simple unsuccessful phone conversation I was me feel more relaxed. The adrenaline that would become clear to me. Those small having with a source. I had hung up and keeps me going at work seeped away, and moments of understanding would be was staring at my computer screen when I felt exhausted, but happy. strangely sweet, a very specific feeling he leaned over and said, “You know, you “Ladies and gentlemen,” the tour guide that deserted me after I became more don’t have to tell them you’re an intern.” began. “Welcome to your tour of the one, versed in my environment. There are I carried these words like a banner into the only, New York City Waterfalls!” We benefits to finding yourself at the very battle. pushed o≠, and the noise of the boat bottom of what you must climb, and re- A few days later I was assigned a story drowned out the conversations of those wards to throwing yourself into some- about The Waterfalls, a public-art installa- around me. We soon pulled up to the thing entirely new: like speeding through tion that was opening that day. Although Statue of Liberty, one of the many tourist the New York Harbor and seeing it all for the story fell through, and I felt that I had attractions I had yet to see. People took the very first time. spent the day barking up a succession of out their cameras and snapped shots of wrong trees, the editor felt bad for me it, and we moved in even closer until the Liz Goodwin ’08, who has completed her Berta and let me go on a press run of a boat that sun was completely obscured behind her Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellowship visited each waterfall in the harbor. enormous green head. The boat manager with this column, will leave New York in Septem- I imagined myself sipping champagne squeezed next to me. “What do you ber for a four-month newspaper internship in with high-profile journalists, and immedi- think?” he asked. “Never gets old no mat- Costa Rica.

just getting back into shape—as if a doc- SPORTS tor hadn’t operated recently on his hip and told him he might miss almost all his senior season. Barlow asked if Fucito had mentioned Back on the Field that he was way ahead of his rehab schedule. “Months ahead,” he added. On paper, each of Fucito’s years in An injury endangers a striker’s season. crimson has been better than the last. As a freshman, he won the Ivy League Rookie of the Year award; as a sophomore, n a hot july afternoon in against the wall. About three-quarters of the team MVP; and as a junior, second- Harvard Stadium, just three the way around the ﬁeld, he slowed team all-American honors. He has tallied months after surgery, Michael down, and trainer Stacie Barlow mo- 23 goals and 19 assists. Along with fellow Fucito ’09 took o≠ running at tioned him back. He arrived red-faced standout André Akpan (see “Powers of Othe base of the stands, barely breaking his and dripping with sweat, to tell her that the Pitch,” September-October 2007, page stride as he kicked a soccer ball to himself the toughest part of his rehab would be 74), Fucito has led Harvard to one Ivy

www.gocrimson.com Harvard Magazine 65 ing out to collect a loose ball. Fucito poked the ball into the net, but the goalie, barreling in a step behind, Fucito’s speed sent him flying. At only five allows him feet, eight inches—small for to break away a forward—“he takes his from defenders. share of abuse,” says Jamie Clark, Welch head coach of men’s soccer. “But he probably gives out as good as he gets. You won’t find anyone League title and two consecutive national physically stronger.” tournaments. But even as public acco- His hip problems are not the result of a lades accumulated, Fucito’s injuries grew single, dramatic play. In soccer, the torque Michael Fucito worse. He has su≠ered a separated shoul- necessary for rifling a hard shot places an der, a slipped rib, back spasms, and com- immense amount of pressure on the hips. the Boston Bolts club team. Fucito started partment leg syndrome (swelling that re- Years of twisting his body before his bones for the Bolts during high school, then de- sults from unhealed bruising). He has also had developed fully made them grow out cided to continue playing for Kerr at Har- had surgery to remove an extra ankle- of shape. His doctors had to repair torn vard. Because all the teams in the Ivy bone. He once spent a night in the cardiac cartilage, grind down a bump on his femur, League are more or less evenly matched, ward after a ball hit his sternum hard and reshape his hipbone. “You never used says Fucito, each game is a “hard-nosed enough to make his heart bleed. His hip to see these [kinds] of injuries,” says Bar- battle rather than a game of pretty soc- had bothered him for six months when he low (who left Harvard over the summer). cer.” Without a year-ending tournament, finally decided to go in for surgery. According to her, young athletes used to a single loss can dash a team’s title hopes. These injuries have not been freak acci- play a di≠erent sport every season, giving In these conditions, Clark says, winning dents. Fucito admits that they are, at least their bodies a break from the particular is often a matter of “finding one or two in part, a consequence of how aggres- rigors of each. But Fucito began playing players who can pull you through tough sively he plays. His greatest weapon is his soccer early (“as soon as I could walk”) games.” speed, and he likes to run directly at de- and, after giving up baseball (he broke his It was Fucito’s toughness that im- fenders, the ball at his feet, rather than wrist twice), devoted himself entirely to pressed Clark when he was still a can- waiting to receive a pass in the penalty the beautiful but often brutal game. didate for the head coaching job. “Mike area. When defenders “can’t keep up with As a young speedster in Westford, was one of the guys I interviewed with,” me running,” he says, “they tend to kick Massachusetts, Fucito (pronounced few- he recalls. “He was one of the reasons I me or drag me down in some way to try see-toe) caught the attention of John Kerr, knew I wanted to coach here.” Clark had and stop me.” He separated his shoulder then head coach for both Harvard (he seen Fucito’s statistics but hadn’t known when he charged a goalie who was com- moved to Duke after the 2007 season) and about the young striker’s dogged, competitive personality. Fall Preview at Harvard, and first as head coach, with “I hate sitting out more than anything,” nine of 11 starters returning from a says Fucito. (After his night in the cardiac team that went to the first round of the ward, he showed up the next day expect- Football NCAA championships in 2007. Follow ing to practice.) The hip operation in May The footballers hope to repeat last sea- devastating scorers Michael Fucito ’09 left him unable to lie completely flat or sit son’s winning record (8-2; 7-0 Ivy), which (above) and André Akpan ’10 (see “Pow- up, but he went from being unable to pull culminated in head coach Tim Murphy's ers of the Pitch,” September-October on his socks to running almost full speed fourth Ivy League championship in 14 2007, page 74) at gocrimson.com. in three months. “He jumps back on the years on the job. Though the team lost field so quickly,” Clark marvels. Fucito nine starters to graduation, 22 return to Women’s Soccer dreams not only of returning to top form defend the title. A prospectus of the The netwomen look to improve on last in time for the season, but also of receiv- 2008 season appears at gocrimson.com. year's 10-6-1 (3-4-0 Ivy) record with the ing an invitation to the Major League Soc- assistance of sophomore sensations cer Combine, where professional coaches Men’s Soccer Katherine Sheeleigh and Gina Wideroff. scout draft prospects. Head coach Jamie Clark is green, but his The young team welcomes eight new “I think he’s pushing harder than any- team, which was 12-4-2 (5-2-0 Ivy) last players even as it retains all 11 starters one I’ve ever seen,” says Clark, not only to year, is not. Clark starts his first season from the 2007 campaign. come back, but also “to make it a special season.” paul gleason

66 September - October 2008 Photographs by David Silverman/DSPics.net term as president of the Reconstruction- ALUMNI ist Rabbinical Association—the first openly gay rabbi elected to head any rabbinical association, she noted at the start of her acceptance speech—and she gave “Open to Difference” her denomination credit for its courage and tolerance. She thinks the appointment led to Newsweek’s naming her one of Three alumnae rabbis help redefine an ancient calling. the 50 most influential rabbis in the by elaine yaffe United States in 2007 and 2008. For her, the rabbinate is a continuation of her work for peace and justice. “I cannot say, few generations ago, no partner and two step-children; when she ‘I take care of my community or I speak matter how strong their call- entered rabbinical school in 1992, she was out against the Iraq War,’” she explains. ings, Toba Spitzer ’86, Jennifer already “out” and was warned not to ex- “It is all about ‘What are we trying to (Kirsch) Flatté ’87, and Julia pect to find a job. But the world changed build in this world?’” AndelmanA ’97 would have been banned during her five years of study, and upon from the rabbinate. Although American graduation she took the job she still When she arrived at Harvard in 1983, women began demanding the right to be- holds: as sole rabbi of a congregation in Jennifer Flatté planned to be a science come rabbis in the nineteenth century, West Newton, Massachusetts, that wor- teacher, but an introduction to medieval not until 1972 was the first, Sally Priesand, ships in a Congregational church and Jewish folklore helped her realize that she finally ordained. (Today nearly one-third houses its religious school in the Unitar- wanted to teach Jews about Judaism. She of the rabbis working in the United ian church down the street. completed rabbinical studies in Reform States are female.) A closer look at these In 2007, she was named to a two-year Judaism several years after graduation, alumnae and their perspectives while her husband, Michael E. o≠ers insight into just how di- Flatté ’88, earned a doctorate verse and complex their experi- in physics. When they moved ences are, as women inhabiting a to Iowa City, where he had new role in an ancient religion taken a job at the University within contemporary society. of Iowa, she became the chap- lain at Grinnell College, about Toba Spitzer was a political an hour’s drive away. activist in Washington, D.C., in Two years later—although 1988, registering young people the mother of three children, to vote and working at the and a fourth soon after—she Jewish Peace Lobby, when she accepted an even longer com- heard, one January morning on mute: becoming a part-time her car radio, an old recording rabbi in Westminster, Col- of Martin Luther King Jr. in- orado. (The baby shared her veighing against the Vietnam weekend round-trip flights War. “That’s the language I for a year.) “They were very want to be speaking, not just full weekends,” she says of her political language,” she recalls five-year tenure. “My cell thinking. “I want it to be from a phone was a Denver number, moral place.” Though she came so people could call me with- from a non-observant family, she out having to make a long-dis- decided to become a rabbi. tance call. Without modern These days, she is a Recon- technology, it would not have structionist, the branch of Ju- been possible.” A modern hus- daism whose rabbinical college band was essential, too. “From has been open to women since the time our first child was its founding in 1967. (Spitzer born, my husband has fully herself worked to establish co-parented,” Flatté explains. women’s studies as an under- Toba Spitzer “The children ate, they got to graduate concentration at Har- their activities, they hung out, vard.) She is also a lesbian with a they played games. When my

Photograph by Stu Rosner www.haa.harvard.edu JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL son had a hockey tournament, my hus- picking the tile for the remodel of the changed the rabbinate and the religion in band loaded them all up and o≠ they men’s bathroom to preparing a sermon,” significant ways. For example, in Judaism, went to Kansas City. And that has cer- she admits. She works 24/7, has little time rituals have always existed for life-cycle tainly made all of this easier.” or energy for a personal life, and con- events and holidays. But women rabbis But not altogether possible. Being a fesses, “It is a lonely job.” have introduced and legitimized new congregational rabbi became too prayers and blessings for particu- time-consuming. Flatté says she Jennifer Flatté larly female life-events, including discovered, “as I guess most par- conception, pregnancy, abortion, ents do, that your children actu- miscarriage, child-birth, and the ally get more complicated when naming of daughters—o≠ering they get older, rather than less. women the opportunity to mark The last year I was in Colorado, I these moments in a Jewish way; was just missing too much.” Now they have encouraged women to she has what she calls “a free- improvise—to choose their lance rabbinate”: she o∞ciates at own readings, write their own weddings and helps colleagues prayers, invent their own bless- on holidays. Above all, she con- ings, rather than adopt what has siders herself a teacher, which is always been done. “Because of what “rabbi” means—whether who they are, and where they o≠ering biblical Hebrew at the stand, [women rabbis] have had University of Iowa’s extension the opportunity to bring Jewish school, introducing the Torah to feminism to America’s Jews…in sixth graders, leading an occa- the classroom, in the sanctuary, sional course at the local syna- over Shabbat dinner, and often at gogue, or inviting people inter- the most vulnerable moments ested in learning more about of their lives—as they wed, cel- Judaism into her home. ebrated their newborns, and mourned the dead,” notes histo- Julia andelman grew up rian Pamela S. Nadell, director of within a strong Jewish tradition the Jewish studies program at (her father, although American, American University and author has always spoken to her only in of Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A Hebrew), but she never consid- History of Women’s Ordination, 1889- ered becoming a rabbi until she 1985. traveled to Israel, during her “Women,” says Flatté, “are the post-sophomore-year summer, ones who get messy with life, on a trip sponsored by Harvard who deal with the blood and Hillel. Visiting Beersheba, where Abra- Originally she hoped to work in a guts, the emotions, the tragedies, the or- ham is supposed to have lived, and travel- yeshiva, but has found unexpected satis- dinary occurrences”—and so they come ing in the desert where the Israelites al- faction in the pastoral part of her job. to the ancient texts “willing to ask legedly wandered transformed her life. “What I am doing here is serving people’s di≠erent kinds of questions and be open Once back at Harvard, she kept to her vi- religious needs—which includes emo- to di≠erent kinds of answers. They are in- sual and environmental studies concen- tional and psychological needs,” she says. terested in looking for what is between tration, but also studied Jewish texts. “Our tradition teaches that every human the lines, what stories are missing. Read- She is now a Conservative rabbi in one being is made in the image of God—that ing these experiences into some of these of the oldest congregations in New York if you destroy one human life, you destroy ancient texts has opened them up for City, which she describes as the “capital the whole world. But I experienced this everybody” by allowing biblical heroes— of Judaism in the Diaspora.” There, she is for the first time when I reflected on the even Moses and Abraham—to be seen as not only the rabbi but the executive di- people I minister to and must be present fallible human beings whose lives and rector, program director, building man- for. I have been able to see the image of mistakes, she adds, o≠er examples for the ager, development sta≠, and public-rela- God in people I didn’t see it in before. rest of us. tions department. Meanwhile, the That has been a powerful aspect of reli- Even more revolutionary is the way diversity of her congregation requires her gious growth for me.” women have challenged the traditional to plan programs and write sermons that patriarchal role of the rabbi. Andelman appeal to a wide range of ages and levels Despite their individual di≠erences, all feels so strongly about the detrimental of observance. “It’s hard to switch from three alumnae agree that women have impact of hierarchy that she stands at the

68 September - October 2008 Photograph by Dan Videtich same level as her congregation and took a 10-month break. “I when she leads services, not was burnt out,” she says. “I felt on a raised platform looking going on sabbatical was model- down on them. Nor do these ing something for my congrega- women dictate to their con- tion, saying, ‘There are things gregants how pious they that are good to do for oneself.’” should be. “I don’t see my But even as some worshippers role,” Andelman says, “as in- are inspired, others find the structing people to do X or be- change in the pulpit harder to ac- lieve X. When I talk about cept. “Many congregants see a fe- God, I do so in a very open male rabbinate as gendered and a way—trying to keep it as gen- male rabbinate as neutral,” says eral as possible, to make room Andelman. When she was hired for everyone.” Flatté describes in 2006 by her present congrega- her attitude as “Live and let tion—in one of the most politi- live. I don’t consider it my life’s cally liberal enclaves in the coun- purpose to have every Jew liv- try—some people left because ing a halakhic life—following they didn’t believe a woman a lot of Jewish law or partici- should be a rabbi. And six weeks pating in every Jewish ritual.” into her job, during a sweltering Spitzer agrees: “If I can just get New York summer, a male con- someone to turn o≠ the com- gregant admonished her in a puter on Friday night and not three-paragraph e-mail for wear- turn it on again until Saturday ing open-toed shoes: a wardrobe night, that’s a huge step. I choice, he said, that left him don’t need them to become questioning whether she had the Orthodox.” Julia Andelman gravitas to be a rabbi. These alumnae continue to Such lingering resistance helps fulfill the traditional rabbinic these contemporary rabbis ap- obligations, but di≠erently, integrating notes. “I think people are starving for preciate their predecessors. “The first Jewish practices and values more directly meaning in their lives. We should be women who tried rabbinical school were into everyday life, including more per- o≠ering practices that can help change not shown concern or care by their class- sonal interactions on the religious jour- people’s lives.” mates and were not treated with respect ney. For Spitzer, this means creating Like many professional women (and by their professors,” says Flatté. “They what she calls “covenantal commu- men) today, the rabbis struggle to balance had to do it the man’s way, and because nity”—groups that cohere around a their public and private lives. (Spitzer re- they did, we didn’t have to as much. To shared vision of justice and compassion. fuses to have a cell phone. Andelman get ahead and be taken seriously, we did- Her work is formed of “concentric cir- doesn’t give out her cell number and n’t have to change who we fundamentally cles”: in her congregation, in her rabbinic turned down the BlackBerry o≠ered by were.” organization, in the world. “I see my goal her congregation.) “The connection be- as saying, ‘Judaism has really powerful tween a rabbi and a congregation is not Elaine Ya≠e ’59, a freelance writer living in New spiritual and ethical practices. If we take unlike a marriage,” Spitzer says. After York City, is the biographer of Radcli≠e’s fifth these on, it will make us better,’” she seven years, she needed some distance president, Mary Ingraham Bunting.

Harvard Proponent calls an HAA communications committee world. “I was in awe of the Internet’s meeting in the late 1990s during which reach,” Morris says, “to the point where I The harvard Alumni Association’s new cochair James Ullyott ’62, M.B.A. ’66, immediately purchased a personal com- president, Walter H. Morris Jr. ’73, M.B.A. demonstrated an intriguing new phe- puter for home use.” ’75, may have left the University’s class- nomenon: something called the Internet, This access to life-long learning is one rooms years ago, but he has never stopped which was related to a “World Wide of the main reasons Morris stays involved learning at Harvard. He often returns for Web.” The HAA, Ullyott explained, was with Harvard, and why he thinks others lectures, meetings, and presentations on planning to use this computer technology should, too. “We have been exploring a the latest developments in politics, the to broaden contact with alumni around variety of avenues to ensure that the Har- sciences, and technology. He vividly re- the country, maybe even around the vard educational experience does not end

Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer Harvard Magazine 69 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

HAA in 1995 (on its graduate schools committee) at the urging of executive director John Reardon, who was his freshman-year proctor and mentor throughout college. “Jack has provided a lot of guid- ance and perspective over the years,” Morris says, fondly. Since then, Morris has worked on numerous committees, and was an elected HAA director before serving as secretary, from 2004 to 2007. He is also active in the Harvard Club of Washington, D.C., serving as a director from 2004 to 2007. He and his wife, Cyn- thia Lowery Morris, and their son, Walter Morris III, live in Potomac, Maryland. Their daughter, Anne Morris ’04, helped organize two reunions of black alumni, in 2003 and 2006, and serves on the HAA’s nominating committee. As an undergraduate, Morris concentrated in economics; he recalls his junior tutorial as a “unique opportunity to study with one of Harvard’s leading economics Walter H. Morris Jr. professors, Robert Dorfman. Our group of roughly eight students covered his widely acclaimed research on ‘cost-benefit analy- at graduation,” he says. “Through the even current students from 31 countries, sis’ and its application to international de- Alumni College, on-line learning, and he reported, noting how impressed he velopment decision-making.” travel-study programs, as well as various was by the substantial number of younger That concentration helped pave the conferences and forums, the HAA is com- alumni living throughout Asia who par- way for his current career: after more mitted to bringing Harvard’s academic ticipated and had the chance to hold than two decades in banking and capital community to our alumni” worldwide. mini-reunions and network around issues markets, he is now a principal in the Morris is especially pleased by dra- of common concern. (The seventh gather- fraud and investigation and dispute ser- matic growth in Shared Interest Groups ing in the series takes place next March in vices at Ernst & Young, LLP, in Washing- (SIGs). There are currently 21 SIGs—or Cape Town.) In general, alumni have mul- ton. But one of his best memories is of a “clubs without walls”—representing tiple opportunities to get involved and freshman seminar with Mallinckrodt about 11,000 alumni, he told graduating contribute to University life going for- professor of physics Roy J. Glauber. “His seniors on Class Day in June. In contrast ward, he told his Class Day audience. goal was to expose freshmen with varying to the age-based cohesion of classes and “You now represent Harvard’s future as degrees of course backgrounds to highly the shared locales of the 181 Harvard clubs an alumni body, and your creativity, drive, advanced physics theory,” he says. “I still around the world, SIGs “bring together energy, intellectual curiosity, and diver- remember his illustration of the theory of people with common interests and pur- sity are essential to help guide Harvard light as both a wave and a particle. I was suits crossing geographic boundaries and and the HAA for decades to come.” thrilled when he was awarded the Nobel graduating class years,” he explained. His goals for the coming year include Prize in physics” in 2005. (The newest examples include the Har- pushing to increase alumni engagement; For Morris, such “personal bonds” be- vard Crimson Organization for Latter- he notes that last year the HAA changed tween students and faculty, among stu- day Saint Alumni, Harvard Crimson the name of the communications commit- dents, and between alumni and the Uni- Alumni/ae Professionals in Sports, and tee to the “Engagement and Marketing versity exemplify the strong learning Harvard-Radcli≠e Science Fiction Committee.” Its members, he says, have relationships that Harvard is all about. Alumni Networking Society; for further been instrumental in redesigning the “We can all recall those terrific friends details, visit http://post.harvard.edu/har- Post.Harvard website to increase usabil- and classmates from our days here while vard/clubs/html/SIGdir.shtml.) ity and access, in shaping alumni percep- attending Harvard,” he says. “The HAA Morris also introduced the seniors to tions (and addressing misperceptions), has o≠ered me a second chance to meet the HAA’s Global Series of alumni gather- and increasing alumni awareness of HAA and get to know personally more of our ings. The most recent, held in March in activities and programs. wonderful alums, many of whom have be- Shanghai, drew 600 alumni, faculty, and Morris first became involved with the come dear friends.” n.p.b.

70 September - October 2008 Photograph by Jim Harrison Aloian Scholars Memorial for Henry C. Moses Amanda fields ’09, of Lowell House and Vista, California, and John She∞eld Alumni, faculty, staff, and friends are invited to remember Henry C. Moses, dean of ’09, of Pforzheimer House and Fayette- freshmen at Harvard College from 1977 to 1991, who died on April 16,at a service in ville, North Carolina, are this year’s David Memorial Church on September 19 at 2:30 p.m. A reception will follow. Aloian Memorial Scholars. They will be honored at the fall dinner of the Harvard Hiram Hunn Awards school; since 1989, she has continued that Alumni Association in October. The service in the Washington area. Her scholarships, established in 1988 in honor Six alumni will receive this year’s nephews and niece are current Harvard of the late David Aloian, a former HAA Hiram S. Hunn Memorial Schools and undergraduates and, she notes, “future executive director and master of Quincy Scholarships Awards, presented by the interviewers, whether they know it or House (1981-86), and his wife, Mary Harvard College O∞ce of Admissions and not.” “Mimi” Aloian, are awarded to two se- Financial Aid. Hunn ’21 recruited and in- Philip Koch ’78, of Bel- niors who have made unique contribu- terviewed prospective students for more laire, Texas. Koch “learned tions to their Houses and to undergradu- than 55 years in Iowa and Vermont; this the ropes” through his ate life. year’s winners, who are recognized for early interviewing experi- As an elected sophomore representa- their work on schools and scholarships ences in Los Angeles, and tive and events-committee cochair for the committees worldwide, have collectively even recruited interna- Lowell House committee, Fields has performed more than 192 years of service. tional candidates while helped organize many social gatherings, They are to receive their awards at an Oc- Philip Koch working for a year in including two large formals, alcohol-al- tober 17 ceremony. Malaysia. Since 1995 he ternative events, panel discussions, movie Elinor Bernstein Balka has served Harvard in the Houston area, screenings, and cultural programs. Be- ’62, of Forest Hills, New which has seen a rapid rise in applicants; sides working on the first-ever o≠-cam- York. Balka first inter- he is a current committee cochair. Koch, pus retreat held to help student leaders viewed for Radcli≠e Col- who is also co-secretary of his class, says form an overall vision for the House, she lege in Washington, D.C., he expresses a≠ection for Harvard by giv- initiated a student survey to better gauge in the late 1960s, then caring what he values the most: his time. whether current House activities were ried her experience to Stanley E. Niebruegge truly meeting community needs. Elinor New York City. She also ’50, of Franconia, New Bernstein She∞eld views House life as “a valuable Balka promotes the Harvard Fi- Hampshire. For nearly reprieve from the routine and responsibil- nancial Aid Initiative in four decades, Niebruegge ity of the daily grind,” and has worked high schools that have had few, if any, ap- has encouraged and in- hard to ensure that activities at Pforz- plicants to the College over the years. terviewed applicants, heimer build informal social ties that pro- Jonathan Baskin ’61, of and in recent years has mote House cohesion, rather than merely San Marino, California. focused on those from the Stanley E. bolster résumés or foster competition. He Having served the admis- St. Paul’s School, in Con- Niebruegge has been instrumental in organizing many sions o∞ce as an inter- cord. He marvels at the quality of the stu- initiatives, including the popular House viewer in Southern Cali- dents who apply, and trusts that Harvard chili cooko≠ for the Harvard-Yale tailgate fornia for nearly three will continue to attract “these hopefuls party. He has also served as a floor prefect, decades, Baskin is a cur- with their infinite variety.” attended every House Committee meet- rent cochair of his local Jonathan Elsie Wilson Thomp- Baskin ing, and presided as PfoHo “War Minis- schools and scholarships son ’72, of Charlottesville, ter” during an inter-House tournament of committee, through which he helps over- Virginia. Three decades the board game Risk. see more than 700 alumni interviewers in ago, Thompson was men- the Los Angeles area. He still takes great tored in schools commit- Comings and Goings pleasure in the “exuberance and joy of ad- tee work while living in mitted applicants as they describe their the Houston area; since Harvard clubs offer a variety of social reaction to getting the 1984, she has shared her Elsie Wilson and intellectual events, especially dur- big news.” wisdom with interview- Thompson ing the academic year. For information Deborah Gelin ’79, ers in her current hometown. Because on club programs for the coming fall, M.B.A. ’83, of Washing- Texas and Virginia both have excellent contact your local club directly, call the ton, D.C. Gelin began in- state-university systems, Thompson has HAA at 617-495-3070, or visit www.- terviewing applicants in enjoyed the challenge of wooing talented haa.harvard.edu. New York City shortly students for this private college in “chilly Deborah Gelin after finishing business New England.”

Harvard Magazine 71 THE COLLEGE PUMP

Conant in the Blow

superintendent of buildings and grounds ble to see if it could pick up word of us.” died while trying to remove a tree that The dean got as far as the top of a moun- fell on Fay House. tain two towns south of Ware and stayed The storm hit just as freshmen were there for more than a day, receiving and due to arrive in Cambridge, and only sending messages. When the state police about two-thirds of them could present finally got him through, he found his wife “Your wooden arm you hold outstretched themselves at Memorial Hall on the 23rd working as a cook to feed emergency to shake with passers-by.” to register. The New York Times reported workers and his son pitching in as a lines- that one group of freshmen traveling from man, a wood chopper, a truck driver, and eventy years ago, on September New York arrived late because they were a policeman—both greatly enjoying 21, came the New England Hurri- aboard a train “three cars of which were themselves. “There are those,” Ruth Han- cane of 1938: a.k.a. the Long Island swept away by the tidal wave at Stoning- ford wrote, “who maintain that Mr. Co- Express, owing to the unprece- ton, Connecticut.” Yet, despite these in- nant is too much the scientist to be sym- Sdented forward speed (60 mph) with terferences, “the freshman program of pathetic in his human relationships. I which it made landfall there at 3:30 in the conferences and addresses by President have seen nothing of the sort.” afternoon; a.k.a. the Big Blow, with the Conant and members of the faculty con- Blue Hill Observatory near Boston mea- tinued according to schedule.” suring sustained winds of 121 mph and The dean of the College, Chester Han- gusts to 186 mph. In hours, the tempest ford, had a role in these proceedings, but Crimson wins gold: Four chefs from killed more than 600 people and de- he was much distracted. His wife, Ruth, Harvard Dining Services, captained by di- stroyed many thousands of buildings. and son George had gone to Ware, in cen- rector for culinary operations Martin T. It was mighty. The late Alistair Cooke, tral Massachusetts, to help her brother in Breslin, finished second and won gold G ’34, wrote that the storm surge lifted a a political campaign and now were cut o≠ medals in an American Chefs Federation- cinema in Westhampton, New York, and by the floods—without drinking water, sponsored competition June 20 at the carried the building, 20 people watching a electricity, telephones, or fire protection. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. matinee, and the projectionist two miles To mark the storm’s anniversary, Presented a basket of surprise ingredi- out into the Atlantic to their deaths. George Hanford ’41, M.B.A. ’43, has writ- ents, the competitors had 40 minutes to Winds and water brought New York, ten an article about it for his retirement plan a three-course meal for four and a Connecticut, and Rhode Island the worst community’s in-house magazine that bu≠et for 12, using up the ingredients with natural disaster in recorded history. The quotes from an unpublished memoir by tact. The Crimson team scored 36.4 points Connecticut River Valley was awash. his mother. The calamity revealed to her out of a possible 40; only food-service Swollen by up to 17 inches of rain, the that President James Bryant Conant was company Delaware North did better. river rose to 10 feet above flood stage at not the cold fish many thought him to be. The chefs had three hours to cook and Springfield, Massachusetts. Residents of When she and George became incom- 15 minutes to plate their meals, without Ware, in the central part of the state, municado, she wrote, “my husband com- benefit of an oven and using only four were marooned by water for days and re- pletely lost his calm, and no one sympa- burners. They dished up seafood chow- lied on air-dropped food and medicine. thized more with his dilemma or was der; a salad of pan-seared strawberries, The storm devastated New England’s more helpful than Mr. Conant. He was goat cheese, greens, and almonds; pan- forests, downing, for instance, 70 percent the one who urged Chester to leave his roasted duck; and pork medallions with of the trees in the Harvard Forest in cen- work and try to get through to his family. fruit stu∞ng on crispy eggplant with a tral Massachusetts, damage still dis- He it was who ordered a car equipped Dijon Chardonnay cream sauce. cernible in the canopy. Harvard College with a short-wave radio transmitter to Applause, please, undergraduates. got o≠ relatively lightly, but Radcli≠e’s proceed as near to the lost town as possi- primus v

72 September - October 2008 .

...... LETTERS (continued from page 7) government to do that much.” If indeed TUBERCULOSIS that had been their intent they utterly The map on page 40 of “A Plague Reborn” talism, such as the fact that today’s failed, given present budget allocations (by Jonathan Shaw, July-August) indi- “poor” in America routinely possess ma- for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, cates that Taiwan shares China’s elevated terial comforts that would have been food stamps, public housing, and many tuberculosis rate. The map is unsourced, deemed middle- or upper-class just a few other social safety net protections. but I assume that it is based on World short generations ago (air-conditioned It is true that top nominal tax rates Health Organization (WHO) statistics. residences, cars, color televisions, com- have been reduced significantly since the Taiwan is no longer a member of WHO puters, cable and Internet access, cell 1950s, but what matters is not the nomi- (due to pressure from China), and WHO phones, MP3 players, etc.). The article to- nal rate but the e≠ective tax rate, i.e., tax recognized China’s sovereignty over Tai- tally ignores single-generation upward obligation as a percent of income, which wan. But Taiwan is widely reported to mobility. So perhaps the reason that has changed much less. have an excellent healthcare system. Americans are less demanding than Euro- And Filipe Campante attributes the Therefore, I question whether the map ac- peans that the government concoct and lack of a sufficiently e≠ective redistribu- curately reflects Taiwan’s situation, or is enforce income-redistribution schemes is tion policy to our campaign-contribution merely an artifact of WHO politics. enlightened self-interest, rather than the system, claiming that, because this relies James Cole ’66 political payo≠s the authors suggest. on the wealthy, it leads to the election of New York City The authors are brazen about beating candidates who oppose redistribution. the class-envy drum, e.g., the discussion This is backwards, in that left-leaning Jonathan Shaw replies: The map, created in of “relative deprivation,” use of a Gallup Obama’s campaign contributions are house, is based on one generated by Poll “asking people how much income more than double right-leaning McCain’s. WHO’s on-line map-making tool. TB is they need not to feel deprived,” inclusion William H. Nickerson ’61 the leading killer among communicable of a race-baiting quote that the U.S. Con- Greenwich, Conn. diseases in Taiwan, although the mortal- stitution was “approved by a minority of ity rate has dropped sharply during the wealthy white men in 1776,” proposing No doubt a slew of harrumphers will past six decades. There are 15,000 new that “the rich favor protecting property, respond bitterly about liberal claptrap, cases each year, and aboriginals are par- while the poor care more about prevent- our freedom and opportunity—but a crit- ticularly susceptible. Taiwan belongs in ing and punishing interpersonal violent ical fact not mentioned is that by Educa- the dark yellow, rather than orange, cate- crime,” to cite just a few examples. tional Testing Services’ public numbers, gory on the map, but the incidence of the Harvard Magazine would perform an im- the money parents make is by far the best disease there is 14.5 times the rate in the portant service to the target audience of predictor of SAT scores: the rise in scores United States. this article by revisiting the seven deadly correlates almost perfectly with $10,000 sins, and publishing some practical point- rises in salary. Everyone can of course cite TIME TRAVEL? ers about how to curb one’s envy as one a counterexample about personal success The “pillars of creation” photo- climbs the American economic ladder. via hard work—especially Harvard graph taken by the Hubble telescope Larry Yelowitz, M.A.T. ’65, Ph.D. alums. The brutal fact is that America has (“Eye on the Universe,” July-August, page Sunnyvale, Calif. once again become a plutocracy, not a 30) shows the pillars as they were 7,000 democracy. And we should be ashamed. years ago, because that’s how long it took Editor’s note: Several correspondents ob- Grant Wiggins, Ed.D. ’87 for the picture to get here. The caption served that the Constitution was drafted Hopewell, N.J. says “recent discoveries indicate these in 1787, and the Declaration of Indepen- pillars…were destroyed…some 6,000 years dence in 1776. All editors who read proofs Editor’s note: In an oversight, the graph ago.” How did these discoveries get here failed to catch the error, which originates published on page 26 of “Unequal Amer- so fast? How did we learn of their de- in Alberto Alesina and Edward L. ica,” reproduced here, lacked an explana- struction so soon? Glaeser’s Fighting Poverty in the U.S. and Eu- tion of the vertical axis. In fact, these Vincent M. Jolivet, M.B.A. ’54, D.B.A. ’57 rope (Oxford University Press, 2004), at trends in family income, by percentile, Kenmore, Wash. page 9, as quoted in the magazine’s article. represent indexed real income, with 1973 P.S. The issue, with “Unequal America,” as the base year equal to 100. We apolo- the Hubble photos, the Gorky Vita, and The recent article urging expanded gize for the omission. the tuberculosis article, is by far the best federal government e≠orts to redistribute ever for Harvard Magazine. income is well wide of the mark. It has long been bipartisan U.S. policy Jonathan Shaw replies: In January 2007 a to urge developing countries to move team led by Nicholas Flagey of the Insti- away from a static statist economy to- tut d’Astrophysique Spatiale in France ward a dynamic market economy, but the announced that it had seen a destructive article urges the U.S. to do the opposite. cloud of interstellar dust, possibly from It is claimed that the Constitution is an a supernova, advancing on the “Pillars of obstacle to redistribution policy because 1973=100 Income, Real Indexed Creation.” An infrared image from the “the founding fathers didn’t want the Spitzer Space Telescope showed this de-

80 September - October 2008 structive shockwave was about 1,000 prompted me to say that in my (only light years from the “Pillars.” Since the mildly lucrative) legal practice I have infrared light revealing this impending met up with colleagues and clients in drama had taken 7,000 years to reach the lucrative finance profession, and they Earth, that meant the “Pillars” were ac- all have been swept up in the complex tually destroyed 6,000 years ago—but challenges of a highly intellectually they will nevertheless appear intact to stimulating profession and have not human eyes for another thousand years. dwelt on the money rewards to any greater extent than the rest of us, and FINANCE VS. HUMAN SERVICE when they slow down, many of them en- I was very disheartened to read in gage in significant philanthropic activi- “Flocking to Finance” (May-June, page 18) ties. These don’t seem like unfulfilled 5 about the tremendous percentage of Har- people, perhaps less so than people with vard undergraduates entering finance-sec- boring jobs, and any lack of fulfillment Reasons to visit tor jobs upon graduation. Many of my probably stems from sources other than harvardmagazine.com own former roommates and friends are their jobs. I suspect that Davison’s day- now consultants and investment bankers, dreams of rich bankers seeking her help but I had not realized the trend was so are designed to help her accept having widespread. In this field, the majority will chosen a low-paying profession. Louis Tiger Jr. ’53, LL.B. ’58 be promoting further wealth among cor- 1. Hear the Last Ringing porations and a±uent individuals, in- Warrenton, Va. of the Lowell House Bells creasing the disparities between rich and Enjoy the sounds of the poor, while the number of students enter- MATTERS MILITARY ing law and medicine dwindles. I was disappointed, though not sur- Danilov bells just before they In the article, Professor Claudia Gold- prised, as I scanned the ballots for the were returned to Moscow. harvardmagazine.com/extras in compares this to the shift away from Board of Overseers and Harvard Alumni the clergy that took place 100 years ago. Association (HAA) directors. Not one of This comparison is ridiculous, however, the nine Board candidates or nine HAA 2. Be the First to Know since the current shortage of physicians hopefuls noted military service. Nor were Subscribe to Editor’s Highlights, and subsequent lack of access to health- any military leaders among the professors, a bi-monthly e-newsletter, care among our nation’s poorest and doctors, lawyers, NGO executives, and covering selected articles from middle classes is a far more serious con- CEOs of the 30 current Overseers. None the current issue and additional cern than a shortage of spiritual shep- graduated from a military academy. (The Web-only content. herds. Rather, this trend mirrors that HAA ballot had less information for sitting harvardmagazine.com/highlights taking place within the field of medicine directors, but still no indication of any mil- itself; an increasing number of students itary a∞liates.) Perhaps none of the candi- 3. Test Your Puzzle Skills at top-tier medical schools, including at dates have served; alternatively, a few may Try our cryptic Harvard puzzle, Harvard, are entering “lifestyle” special- have, but don’t believe that service will en- by contributing editor John de ties such as dermatology or ophthalmol- hance their electoral prospects, even in Cuevas ’52. ogy. In doing so, they opt for heftier pay- wartime, so remain in the closet. harvardmagazine.com/puzzles checks and fewer hours than their Whichever is true, the Harvard commu- colleagues in primary care who are nity reiterates that it does not value ser- 4. Stay In Touch working in the trenches to improve pub- vice, following the lead of the University’s Visit our class notes section to lic health for all. four-decade desertion of ROTC (the exile, see what your peers are up to I am disappointed in those individuals a concession to undergraduate Jacobins in or to submit news of your own. who make such self-centered decisions. ’69, predated the current sexual-preference harvardmagazine.com/classnotes We are a privileged group, and with great controversy and will most likely endure power comes great responsibility. I also beyond Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell’s inevitable 5. and More... hold Harvard itself responsible, for failing denouement). Either Harvard has decided Click on Web Extras for Web- to impart the values of social conscious- that it can no longer influence our nation’s only recordings and stories. ness to students, whether through course- war fighting, or that our nation (or at least harvardmagazine.com/web work on poverty and disparities or by the portion at war) is no longer worth its promoting a culture of humanitarianism. attention. The former suggests a humility Rita Hamad ’03, M.P.H. (UC, Berkeley) ’07, uncharacteristic of Harvard. The latter M.D. (UC, San Francisco) ’10 confirms the suspicions of those in uni- Berkeley, California form and much of the nation—the Ivy harvardmagazine.com Tower prefers perfect abstinence to uncer- Learn. Connect. Access. Lindsay davison’s letter (“Unfulfilling tain sway over an imperfect fight. Finance,” July-August, page 2) has Shift your rudder, Crimson. Alums,

Harvard Magazine 81 don’t wait for the University, for it won’t SERIOUSLY FUNNY The road began to descend, and at lead. Consider electing a vet or two in the (continued from page 43) the turn of each switchback an- future, who might eventually lead a re-in- other mountain range would disap- tegration of ROTC back on campus. As textured portrait of a tribe that can claim pear, like scenery withdrawn into the country battles for a seventh year, the Crazy Horse and Black Elk, but whose the wings, while the sky that re- University and the military could learn current situation embodies some of the placed it grew larger and larger. We much from each other. worst fallout of the settlers’ genocide of left the park and turned onto U.S. Henry Nuzum ’99, Lt., U.S. Naval Reserve Indians. “Most everybody wants to be Highway 89. A driver coming down Washington, D.C. rich, millions want to be famous, but no this road gets the most dramatic one wants to be mistaken for a hero,” first glimpse of the Great Plains I’ve I was disheartened to read President writes Frazier near the beginning of On the ever seen. For some miles, pine Faust’s speech made at the ROTC cere- Rez. “This recent change in our psychology trees and foothills are all around; mony on June 4 [http://harvardmag- is ba±ing to me. It is also profoundly un- then, suddenly, there is nothing azine.com/web/commencement/comm- Indian….For many tribes, life revolved across the road but sky, and a sign 2008]. Implying that our current wars, around heroism.” So he locates a heroine says HILL TRUCKS GEAR DOWN, and arguably illegal, “are supporting and de- at the center of his story, “a girl athlete you come over a little rise, and the fending the United States Constitution,” who died just before she turned eighteen. horizon jumps a hundred miles she glorified military service as the She starred for the Lady Thorpes, the girls’ away in an instant. My friend’s supreme accomplishment of the Emanci- basketball team at Pine Ridge High jaw—her whole face, really—fell, pation Proclamation and women’s School, from 1987 through 1991. I have only and she said, “I had no idea!” su≠rage. Moreover, in an America that heard about her and read local news sto- now witnesses a resurgence of xenopho- ries about her, but words fail me when I In secondary school at the all-male bia, her assertion that the military has try to say how much I admire her. Her Western Reserve Academy in Ohio, Fra- served immigrants as a “foundation for name was SuAnne Big Crow.” zier and his friends were “addicted to citizenship” gives pause. This amounts to In addition to his prodigious field re- being funny.” He told his family as a predicating our democratic ideals upon search, Frazier’s books build on volumi- young boy that he would go to Harvard. blind obedience to authority, an e≠ace- nous reading, much of it done in the main “We were like swamp Yankees,” he says. ment of both the Declaration of Indepen- reading room of the New York Public Li- “I always aspired to Shaker Heights.” dence and the Constitution. brary, a building he loves and spends end- Watching the televised Young People’s Surely we can do better in our “com- less hours inside. “He showed me his call Concerts hosted by Leonard Bernstein ’39 mitment to the pursuit of truth.” slips from the New York Public Library was what pulled Frazier toward Harvard: Ira Braus, Ph.D. ’88 for his Siberia book,” says an awed Singer. “I thought Leonard Bernstein was the West Hartford, Conn. “The pile was as thick as a couple decks of coolest guy I ever saw.” cards.” In Cambridge, he studied little and AMPLIFICATION A signature element of a Frazier book is moved from classics to English, graduating Joanna aizenberg, the July-August the way the big picture dissolves smooth- with honors in general studies, but found a Harvard Portrait subject (page 59), is ly into an anecdote from the author’s own home at the Harvard Lampoon, where he both McKay professor of materials sci- experience, and back. In the first chapter befriended a fellow Midwesterner, James ence and professor of chemistry and of Great Plains, for example, Frazier ob- Downey ’74, who went on to become the chemical biology and Wallach professor serves that “America is like a wave of paterfamilias of comedy writers at Saturday at the Radcli≠e Institute, where she is higher and higher frequency toward each Night Live. (“The Lampoon had been a a fellow this fall. Harvard Magazine re- end, and lowest frequency in the middle.” preppy, raccoon-coat thing,” Frazier ex- grets omitting her Radcli≠e professor- This comes shortly after we have learned plains, “but then some Midwestern guys ship; her fellowship was announced that at his sister’s wedding reception in got on.”) For three years, Frazier drew car- too late to report then. Cleveland, to entertain the bridesmaids, toons for the Lampoon, then began writing Frazier ate “a large black cricket the size material for its parodies of Cosmopolitan and ERRATA of my thumb.” A couple of pages later, he Sports Illustrated. The work was fun, excit- Professor of physics and astronomy notes that “anyplace I move, I ruin. Look ing, and highly collaborative, but “when it Christopher W. Stubbs was correctly at the north side of Chicago. Look at was time to say who did what, I didn’t like identified in “Eye on the Universe” (July- SoHo. I move in, the rents go up, co≠ee that part,” Frazier says. “I wanted to know August, page 30), and then improperly shops become French restaurants, useful what I had done, to be a voice myself right awarded a new middle initial later in the stores close. Don’t ask me how I do it— from the get-go. For me, writing is a soli- same story. He knows who he is. it’s just a talent I have.” tary thing.” Harvard Divinity School advises that Very soon, we are driving eastward He soon got his chance to practice that Elizabeth Siwo-Okundi (photograph, from Glacier National Park in Montana solitary craft professionally. Right after July-August, page 47) earned a master with Frazier and a West Indian friend college, Frazier got in touch with New of theology degree, not the M.T.S. it re- (Jamaica Kincaid, now a visiting lecturer Yorker editor Robert Bingham ’48, who ported earlier. at Harvard) who had never seen the had much enjoyed a Lampoon parody of a American West, apart from California: Pauline Kael film review that Frazier

82 September - October 2008 wrote with Downey and Tony Carroll ’74, J.D. ’79. “Every sentence began elegantly,” Frazier’s father’s reaction to his son’s new job Frazier says, “but they all ended with was, “This is like throwing the football around something like, ‘but unfortunately, this movie bites the big one.’” The problem with your boy in the backyard, and next thing was that there already seemed to be too you know, he’s playing for the Miami Dolphins.” many Harvard people on the New Yorker sta≠, including five young writers from York City. “To go fishing, Sandy used to writing for the show, at a pay scale vastly the classes of 1965 and 1966—Hendrik take an Adirondack Trailways bus up to higher than what he was earning at the Hertzberg, Tony Hiss, Jacob Brackman, the Catskills and hike into the woods,” New Yorker. “I went in to Mr. Shawn and Jonathan Schell, and George W. S. Trow. says Singer. “He was too cool to have a told him I had an o≠er from Saturday “That annoyed me, because I had never knapsack. He probably brought a suitcase Night,” Frazier recalls. “He said, shaking thought of myself as a Harvard person at just to make it more inconvenient for his head, ‘Many good writers have been all,” says Frazier. “I thought of myself as himself.” lost to television.’ That was it for me. I someone from Ohio.” Notwithstanding such excursions, the thought about the writers I admired— Around that time, a letter arrived at the New Yorker has remained Frazier’s home Joseph Brodsky, Robert Lowell, Flannery Lampoon announcing the launch of a throughout his career, with the exception O’Connor. I was doing two humor pieces more sophisticated, European-toned of one six-year period in the 1990s. Condé a year for the New Yorker. For Saturday Night, spin-o≠ from Playboy called Oui, and ask- Nast acquired the magazine in the mid it would be two per show. ing if any young writers there might want 1980s and in 1992 installed Tina Brown as “Television and literature are two to apply for a job. Frazier moved to editor. Though Frazier says Brown was di≠erent things,” Frazier continues. Chicago to write copy for pictorials of “very well educated and knew what good “With TV, there are too many variables naked women. “It was an extremely writing was,” he felt “scandalized by the outside the control of the writer. I love di∞cult job,” he recalls. “There are people influence of the business side, and I reading Jim [Downey]’s stu≠ and admire who can write really excellent ‘girl copy.’ thought a lot of the stu≠ [published] was the work of my friends who write for TV, I did not have that skill and only lasted terrible. Some of it was exciting, but most but I don’t think that writing for TV is two and a half months.” of it ill considered. I felt that even [Rich- writing. Books, plays, poetry—these are He returned to New York and again ard] Avedon pictures were out of place in works of literature. No one has ever come called Bingham, who suggested that he the New Yorker—a full-page photo of Barry up to me with a screenplay and said, ‘This write some trial Talk of the Town stories. Goldwater in a work shirt? is a great work of literature.’ ” He did one on a professional ice-cream “Some other magazines were giving Traditionalist Frazier writes on an scooper that never ran, but led to an in- celebrities the right to veto cover photos, Olympia typewriter, and stores several terview with editor William Shawn. or having celebrities interview them- portable Olympias in a closet; he enters his “Shawn was this weird little guy who selves,” he continues. “We were all backing text on a computer only at the very end of wore subdued, elegant suits,” says Fra- o≠ and letting celebrities take over. Then it the process. “I like to revise and retype,” he zier. In the interview, Shawn asked what was announced that Roseanne Barr was says. “A lot of bad writing is because peo- Frazier had been writing at Oui. “Mostly going to ‘guest-edit’ a special issue of the ple don’t have to retype. I like retyping.” the leather-fetish stu≠,” came the reply. New Yorker, on women. That was too much. The typewriter clicks on in Frazier’s “Women in leather corsets, boots.” I faxed in my letter of resignation. I didn’t third-floor home o∞ce in Montclair. (He Shawn responded, “Oh,” but o≠ered Fra- dislike Roseanne, I just didn’t think she has not had an o∞ce at the New Yorker for zier a job as a Talk reporter at $200 per should be editing the New Yorker. Eventu- 26 years.) Though he lived for 13 years in week. He started in March 1974, at age 23. ally she ‘consulted’ on that issue, and they Manhattan and six years in Brooklyn, and “I had never been so happy,” he says. “It never tried that again. For that alone, I knows the city well—there is even a was incredible.” Frazier’s father nearly made a contribution to journalism.” In book, Gone to New York (2005) that chroni- worshipped the New Yorker, reading each 1998, David Remnick replaced Brown as cles his adventures there—he’s now per- issue from cover to cover. His reaction to editor, and before too long, contacted Fra- fectly content sharing suburban life with his son’s new job was, “This is like throw- zier. “I looked at the magazine he was edit- his wife, novelist Jacqueline Carey, whom ing the football around with your boy in ing and read his book Lenin’s Tomb and his he married in 1983. Their daughter, Cora, the backyard, and next thing you know, New York Review of Books pieces,” says Fra- is a rising Harvard sophomore; son he’s playing for the Miami Dolphins.” zier, “and decided that he was a pretty rea- Thomas attends the local high school. Frazier has also contributed regularly sonable person to come and work for.” Such mainstream demographics gave Fra- to the Atlantic and Outside, which has pub- So Frazier returned to his first home as zier some bemusement when a reviewer lished many of his fishing articles. His a journalist and has been writing happily once referred to him as a “contrarian.” “I book The Fish’s Eye: Essays about Angling and there since 2001. Though he once wrote live in Montclair, New Jersey, and write the Outdoors (2002) collects 17 of Frazier’s 50,000 words of a novel, he has stuck to for the New Yorker,” he says. “If I’m a con- fishing pieces, many of them drawing on humor and nonfiction. When his first trarian, this society is in trouble.” stream-based research in Montana, al- humor collection, Dating Your Mom, came though the lead essay, “Anglers,” explores out in 1986, Saturday Night Live producer Craig A. Lambert ’69, Ph.D. ’78, is deputy editor of the little-known world of fishing in New Lorne Michaels approached him about this magazine.

Harvard Magazine 83 TREASURE “Launched into Eternity” Broadsides and hangings in old England

and so terrified her that she confessed. Because she had murdered her parents, her right hand was cut o≠ before she was hanged. The etching at left was made for street sale with a broadside about the case of Captain William Moir. Hot-tempered, he shot and killed a trespassing fisherman. The law school’s collection also includes such ephemera as God’s Revenge Against Mur- der, a short-lived true-crime periodical. One could be put to death in Britain at the time for a wide range of acts, including attempted murder, rape, arson, rue-crime fans, rejoice! A example at top right, from 1836, is typical. robbery, house-breaking, and counterfeit- new website puts up virtual It tells of Margaret Joyer and Katharine ing. James Pratt and John Smith were shelves of murder and may- Rentner, who poisoned many of their near “launched into eternity, amidst the yells hem for your reading pleasure. relatives. They might have gotten away & groans of the spectators,” for commit- T“Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders: with it, but a specter appeared to Joyer ting “an unnatural crime.” Crime Broadsides Collected by the Har- Gentle readers who find this ma- vard Law School Library” may be found terial disheartening are not the first at http://broadsides.law.harvard.edu. to do so. The law school began col- At public executions in eighteenth- lecting “dying speeches” in 1932 and nineteenth-century Britain, hawk- when it acquired a scrapbook of 280 ers sold, usually for a penny, single- of them compiled by one “G.S.” in sheet guides to the event, much like a England about 90 years earlier. G.S. program at a football game today. wrote in an introduction that he These broadsides, known generically made the scrapbook to demonstrate as “dying speeches” or “bloody mur- the barbarity of public executions. ders,” luridly described the criminal Indeed, it was time, he passionately and his or her villainy and comeup- declared, to entirely abolish “the pance, often including pious verse. The Punishment of Death!”

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