Fred Moten Black-Studies Provocateur

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Fred Moten Black-studies provocateur

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Seeking great leaders.

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2017.11.17_ALI_Ivy_Ad_v1.indd180108_ALI.indd 1 1 11/17/1711/17/17 11:16 1:10 PMAM JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018, VOLUME 120, NUMBER 3

FEATURES 32 Botanizing in the “Mother of Gardens” | by Jonathan Shaw Seeking seeds and specimens in Sichuan

40 Vita: Henry Chapman Mercer | by Nancy Freudenthal Brief life of an innovative ceramicist: 1856-1930

42 The Low End Theory | by Jesse McCarthy p. 32 Fred Moten’s edgy approach to black studies

46 Prodigies’ Progress | by Ann Hulbert Parents and superkids, yesterday and today

JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL 14 The Kennedy School redux debuts, financial surpluses— and warning signs, enthusiastic archivist, a taxing time for endowments, the Medical School agenda, dean of freshmen to depart, Samuel Huntington as prophet, social-club penalties imposed, a Maharishi moment, a Harvardian teaches hip-hop in Hangzhou, the University marshal moves on, honoring authors and artists, an unexpectedly dreary football campaign, and a speedy swimmer p. 14 DEPARTMENTS 2 Cambridge 02138 | Letters from our readers—and thoughts on a changing Harvard Square 3 The View from Mass Hall

8 Right Now | The geopolitics of U.S. energy, a knee-pain epidemic, healthcare consolidation 12A Harvard2 | Winter events, celebrating bad art, Newport sans summer crowds, Asian-fusion dining with a quirky Western twist, and more 52 Montage | Jonathan Bailey Holland’s composed music, robotic hospitals, sketch artist, a novel on eternal life, the towering James Madison, an anthropological filmmaker, and more p. 56 62 Alumni | A monk who preserves the world’s treasured manuscripts 68 The College Pump | S.S. Harvard, M.B.A. margin calls, and Americanist Daniel Aaron p. 62 76 Treasure | Games to while away winter On the cover: Photograph by 69 Crimson Classifieds Robert Adam Mayer CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: JONATHAN SHAW/HARVARD MAGAZINE; PETER VANDERWARKER; MATILDE GATONI; WHITE HOUSE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION www.harvardmagazine.com

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746

LETTERS

editor: John S. Rosenberg senior editor: Jean Martin Cambridge  managing editor: Jonathan S. Shaw art director: Jennifer Carling Educational effectiveness, final clubs, enduring inequalities associate editors: Marina Bolotnikova, Sophia Nguyen staff writer/editor: Lydialyle Gibson digital media manager: Oset Babür UNEQUAL courses. Students gained a assistant editor: Nell Porter Brown UNIVERSITIES larger vision of what they berta greenwald ledecky I appreciated the use- might contribute as respon- undergraduate fellows ful selections from Charles sible citizens enjoying an en- Natasha Lasky, Tawanda Mulalu T. Clotfelder’s extensive re- hanced quality of life. search on inequality in Amer- I doubt that any appre- editorial intern: Sanya Sagar ican higher education (“The ciable progress will be College Chasm: How market made in reducing inequal- contributing editors forces have made American ity until we recover this John T. Bethell, Lincoln Caplan, John higher education radically generous vision, which de Cuevas, Dick Friedman, Adam unequal,” November-Decem- once made America great. Goodheart, Elizabeth Gudrais, Jim ber 2017, page 50). I was sur- Thomas M. Adams ’63 Harrison, Courtney Humphries, prised, nonetheless, to find Washington, D.C. Christopher S. Johnson, Adam Kirsch, only passing reference to the decline in sup- Colleen Lannon, Spencer Lenfield, Stu port by state legislatures for their own insti- EDUCATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS Rosner, Deborah Smullyan, Mark Steele tutions. In fact, many land-grant institutions “Measuring an Education,” In response to harvard magazine inc. receive only token financial support from the President Drew Faust’s latest View From president: Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. states that took the federal grants of land, first Mass Hall (November-December 2017, page ’69. directors: Peter K. Bol, Jonathan authorized by the Morrill Act of 1862, “ to pro- 5): As a former faculty member, academic L.S. Byrnes, D.B.A. ’80, Scott V. Edwards, mote the liberal and practical education of the dean, and college president, I have never Thomas F. Kelly, Ph.D. ’73, Ann Marie industrial classes in the several pursuits and seen a better understanding of education Lipinski, NF ’90, Lars Peter Knoth professions in life.” Escalating in-state tuition than that of Coleman Barks, the brilliant Madsen, John P. Reardon Jr. ’60, now excludes those of modest means. translator of Rumi, in his interview with Unfortunately, the will to fund public high- Bill Moyers. Bryan E. Simmons ’83 er education has withered under the force of “I believe it doesn’t really matter what the a spurious notion that higher education is teacher talks about. You remember all those Board of Incorporators strictly an individual business investment, classes you took in college? It doesn’t mat- This magazine, at first called the Harvard Bulletin, was whether the degree leads to portfolio manage- ter what was said. What we remember are a founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was char- ment or teaching English. Consider however: few presences. What was being taught was tered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s governance. The membership is as follows: Stephen J. a progressive tax on those who actually earn the presence of a few people, and there was Bailey, AMP ’94; Jeffrey S. Behrens ’89, William I. Ben- more could fund the next college generation a connection between the presence and us. nett ’62, M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. Bol; Fox more generously. We all benefit from public But we sat there and took notes and thought Butterfield ’61, A.M. ’64; Sewell Chan ’98; Jonathan S. investment in an educated citizenry. we were studying the French Revolution Cohn ’91; Philip M. Cronin ’53, J.D. ’56; John de Cuevas ’52; James F. Dwinell III ’62; Anne Fadiman ’74; Benja- The glory of the land-grant college was or duck embryos or something, when what min M. Friedman ’66, Ph.D. ’71; Robert H. Giles, NF that it combined practical training and a lib- we were really learning about was coming ’66; Richard H. Gilman, M.B.A. ’83; Owen Gingerich, eral education. Farmers, engineers, scientists, through the teacher.” Ph.D. ’62; Adam K. Goodheart ’92; Philip C. Haughey ’57; Brian R. Hecht ’92; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy ’68, Ph.D. accountants, and future professionals in all Thomas B. Coburn, M.T.S. ’69, Ph.D. ’ 77 ’75; Ellen Hume ’68; Alex S. Jones, NF ’82; Bill Kovach, spheres learned skills that served their com- Warren, R.I. NF ’89; Florence Ladd, BI ’72; Jennifer 8 Lee ’99; Ran- munities and with their professors took part dolph C. Lindel ’66; Ann Marie Lipinski, NF ’90; Scott in the advancement of knowledge. General I very much appreciated President Faust’s Malkin ’80, J.D.-M.B.A. ’83; Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. ’69, Ed ’77, L ’78; Lisa L. Martin, Ph.D. ’90; David education requirements introduced students letter. Education may be defined as the cre- McClintick ’62; Winthrop L. McCormack ’67; M. Lee to a broad range of learning in literature, his- ative use of knowledge. At the interface of Pelton, Ph.D. ’84; John P. Reardon Jr. ’60; Harriet Ritvo tory, philosophy, the arts, and the social sci- knowledge and creativity is that experience ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ences, as well as what we now call STEM known as education. This definition pro- ’98; Barbara Rudolph ’77; Robert N. Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78; Theda Skocpol, Ph.D. ’75; Peter A. Spiers ’76; Scott H. Stossel ’91; Sherry Turkle ’69, Ph.D. ’76; Robert H. Weiss ’54; Jan Ziolkowski. 2 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 THE VIEW FROM MASS HALL

Education as a Civil Right

n November, I had the distinct privilege of addressing some 600 Harvard alumni at the Smithsonian Institution’s Nation- al Museum of African American History and Culture. The event—the sixteenth in the Harvard Campaign’s “Your Har- Ivard” series that has taken me from Boston to Berlin to Dallas to Singapore, and concludes in February in San Francisco—included remarks from a personal hero of mine, Congressman John Lewis, LL.D. ’12, who in many ways willed the museum into existence with his lifetime commitment to civil rights and remembrance in America. A panel of Harvard faculty explored the evening’s theme: education as the civil-rights issue of our time. The museum was the perfect backdrop for this conversation. Its exhibition halls surround visitors with testaments to the liberating power of learning and the hard-fought struggle by African slaves and their offspring to gain access to education: the tattered bible that Nat Turner carried into a slave rebellion, prompting laws that made it a crime to teach enslaved persons to read; the hymnal Har- riet Tubman cherished, though it is believed she could neither read nor write; the Celtics jersey of basketball legend Bill Russell, LL.D. ’07, whose most prized childhood possession was his library card to the Oakland Public Library. Frederick Douglass once wrote, “Some men know the value of education by having it. I know its value by not having it.” Educa- education, and we make sure every graduate of the College can tion liberates the mind, even when the body is oppressed. It gives leave without taking on debt. us perspective as a passport to other times, other places, and other Advancing the critical role of education in promoting service, points of view, as well as a way to learn about ourselves and to re- achieving social justice, and widening opportunity is fundamen- imagine our lives in ways that alter us forever. tal to Harvard and the heart of the Campaign we launched in 2013. More than sixty years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Now more than ever these efforts are essential. In a nation where access to education is still not equal. I remember listening to that violence and threats are increasingly replacing rational discourse decision announced on the radio when I was seven—I glimpsed and exchange, we must champion equal access to education and then the aspiration toward justice through education that would foster discourse where facts and truth matter. come to shape my life. The National Museum of African American History and Culture Beginning with its first scholarships in 1643, Harvard has grad- powerfully reminds us that education and freedom are inseparably ually opened its community to one individual and one group af- intertwined. The hope and reality of what education can unlock ter another—widening its gates through financial aid, through its make it incumbent on us to redouble our efforts to open the gates, invention of merit-based testing and its merger with Radcliffe, and close the gap. through outreach and advocacy for first-generation, low-income, and undocumented applicants—all in an effort to attract students Sincerely, of talent and promise from every background, across the United States and across the world. Throughout our history, these efforts have advanced educational attainment at Harvard. Today, 15 percent of our students are the first in their family to attend college, and more than half of Har- vard College students receive need-based financial aid. More than 20 percent of students’ families are not expected to contribute to costs associated with tuition or room and board for their child’s

Harvard Magazine 3

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746

Letters vides a job description for a faculty person, tion transfer. The wonderful thing about my who must transfer knowledge (the easy graduate experience was that the faculty in- part, largely requiring memorization) and spired creativity. Their inspiration led me to inspire creativity (the hard part). experience a very successful academic career. When I started graduate work at Har- My concern with the use of student eval- publisher: Irina Kuksin vard, I came out of an undergraduate expe- uations is that they may reflect more about director of circulation and rience that was largely focused on informa- information transfer than creativity. For ex- fundraising: Felecia Carter donor relations and stewardship 7 WARE STREET pel Street. MIT has pursued fresh retail and manager: Allison Kern Square Deals? restaurant strategies in Kendall Square, en- director of advertising: livening a former office and laboratory des- Robert D. Fitta A Spectre is haunting Harvard Square— ert. These long-term, presumably expensive, new england advertising manager: the spectre of commercial real-estate de- efforts suggest that it is productive to hold Abby Shepard velopment. Karl Marx aside, the Square on to something good rather than try to re- classified advertising manager: faces significant change. The new owners of claim streetscapes and urban fabrics that Gretchen Bostrom the wedge-shaped building at the intersec- were made, or have become, uninviting. tion of Brattle and John F. Kennedy Streets, Under other circumstances, Harvard creative marketing director: aimed at the Red Line subway station, en- might inject itself into the refashioning Jennifer Beaumont vision a high-end retail mall. The trusts of the Square. Given its appetite for office production and design assistant: in control of the low-rise buildings across space, for instance, it might become the Lydia S. Carmichael Brattle, and down the block (beyond the redeveloper of some of those expandable web and technical support specialist: Coop’s annex), are now selling them; the lat- Brattle Street properties, taking the upper Walter Augustine ter site can accommodate multistory rede- floors and subsidizing the new retail footage gift processor and office manager: velopment. And a plan has been advanced to to attract unique tenants. Or the endow- Robert Bonotto replace the closed cinema on Church Street. ment could evaluate the opportunities for (Details and renderings appear at harvard- its real-estate portfolio—for office devel- ivy league magazine network mag.com/hsq-redev-17.) opment, a new hotel, or something else— director of operations: All this promised change reflects the again with some consideration of the home Heather Wedlake, Heatherwedlake@ normal workings of the market, within the team. (And one would hope that such an ivymags.com confines of Cambridge’s zoning and other intervention would yield something more editorial and business office regulations. But combined with retailing’s appealing than the blank, blocky mass of 7 Ware Street migration from family-owned stores to One Brattle Square.) Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 chains and online shopping, and Harvard’s Neither seems likely right now. The Uni- Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 Website: www.harvardmagazine.com global tourist appeal, much more than phys- versity’s major local investment is the re- ical renewal seems at stake. fashioning of Holyoke Center into the Smith E-mail: [email protected]

The Square’s identity resides to a large de- Campus Center—with eight food vendors: @harvardmagazine gree in its unique establishments—name your a significant addition to the Square’s ros- facebook.com/harvardmagazine favorite. Running such places is never easy: ter, but also more competition for existing the hours are long, the competition fierce, the establishments. Administrators have also Harvard Magazine (ISSN 0095-2427) is published bi- costs of doing business high. It has been dis- been focused on the development plans for monthly by Harvard Magazine Inc., a nonprofit corporation, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, maying to see the face of the Square presented Allston—particularly the design of the “en- phone 617-495-5746; fax 617-495-0324. The magazine is upon exiting the T station progressively ho- terprise research campus” about to reach supported by reader contributions and subscriptions, mogenized by bank branches (deadening to Boston regulators for review (see harvard- advertising revenue, and a subvention from Harvard University. Its editorial content is the responsibility of passersby, especially at night), a chain drug- magazine.com/erc-17.) And the endow- the editors. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Mass., store, and cookie-cutter food outlets. The ment, in the midst of substantial restruc- and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Circulation Department, Harvard higher rents that come with (needed) physi- turing, has been selling real-estate assets. Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037. cal redevelopment and catering to new kinds So the likeliest scenario is commercially Subscription rate $30 a year in U.S. and possessions, $55 Canada and Mexico, $75 other foreign. (Allow up to of customers accelerate that process. focused redevelopment, resulting in a place 10 weeks for first delivery.) Subscription orders and Does the University have a stake in this that is less distinctive and more homoge- customer service inquiries should be sent to the Cir- transformation? Certainly, it benefits from nous than the Harvard Square of yore. A culation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, or call 617-495-5746 or an inviting, distinctive front door. Yale, first-world problem, to be sure, and sure- 800-648-4499, or e-mail [email protected]. which suffered from New Haven’s woes in ly no different from outcomes elsewhere. Single copies $4.95, plus $2.50 for postage and han- dling. Manuscript submissions are welcome, but we the past, has invested heavily in the retailing Whether the result pleases, brings on waves cannot assume responsibility for safekeeping. Include along Broadway (L.L. Bean will be a ground- of nostalgia, or induces gnashing of teeth, stamped, self-addressed envelope for manuscript return. Persons wishing to reprint any portion of Harvard floor tenant in a new graduate-student resi- the market will work its magic, and some Magazine’s contents are required to write in advance for dence), and its renovated art museums have new Square will emerge from the current permission. Address inquiries to Irina Kuk- sin, publisher, at the address given above. attracted throngs, revitalizing much of Cha- dealings. vjohn s. rosenberg, Editor Copyright © 2018 Harvard Magazine Inc.

4 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters ample, I taught organic chemistry, which at Hooray for you, President Faust! These fledged members. If they’d rather fall on that time was required of the “pre-med” stu- clubs are a stain on the University and the their swords than do the right thing, so be it. dents. I always had some questions on my most distasteful aspect of my entire edu- Elizabeth Topp ’98 exams that required creative use of organic cational life. As a sophomore transfer stu- New York City chemistry. A student who had difficulty in dent in January 1996, I was so taken aback by dealing with this, and was failing the course, these sexist relics, I made an appointment I read with interest and frustration the let- came to me saying, “I know all this organ- my first week at Harvard with the dean of ters in the November-December magazine ic chemistry crap but I get clutched up on students (Epps) and the dean of coeduca- about single-sex (finals) clubs. The vehement your exams.” I responded, “I am glad you are tion, who directed me to the Lyman Com- defense of them from those who enjoyed, or failing this course because this means you mon Room in Radcliffe Yard for milk and whose children enjoyed, their benefits miss- will not get into medical school, and if you cookies. Shortly thereafter, I personally re- es an important point: the clubs’ exclusivity get ‘clutched up’ on something as simple as fused to attend the clubs after I was physi- is not based on any visible merit aside from organic chemistry, I don’t want you to be a cally barred from using the front door at the social connections. As a public high-school doctor.” The student’s response was, “Oh, Fly by a male Harvard student. What still graduate from Kentucky, I would have wel- but I am not going to be a surgeon, just a burns my britches is that I was more sophis- comed a place to feel I belonged on campus general practitioner.” How would one weigh ticated, witty, and charming than most of besides my House (then North House, a rath- this student’s evaluation? their members, yet I was barred from throw- er democratic one). I watched peers from East Leon Mandell, Ph.D. ’51 ing my hat in the ring by virtue of my sex. and West Coast big cities, from prep and pri- Temple Terrace, Fla. What would all these apologists say vate schools, going to the Bee and who knows if these clubs refused admission to black where else; I hardly knew the clubs’ names. FINAL CLUBS… people? Latinos? Gays? Come on. President I found the issue to be further fascinating, I write to you [President Drew Faust] to- Faust, you are on the right side of history! since one of the featured articles was about day, having just received my latest Harvard Please stay the course! Even snobby, old- the challenges of making a Harvard educa- Magazine, wherein I was quite shocked to world Princeton’s eating clubs were forced tion work for low-income and first-genera- find many letters attacking you and the ad- to go co-ed nearly three decades ago. tion students. If this is a legitimate goal, as I ministration for moving against final clubs It has always been my wish that the believe it should be, then the fact that clubs are at Harvard. clubs welcome women to apply as full- single-gender hardly touches the basic point; A Summer of Great Books and Big Ideas Read. Think. Discuss. This summer, outstanding young people from around the world will gather to read great literature and explore big ideas through college-style seminars.

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Harvard Magazine 5

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters nearly all these clubs are functionally single- are in school. The barely unspoken premise class: rich. The education available at Harvard that one can only obtain a top-flight educa- is only part of the point; we all understand tion at a supposedly top-tier school insults A that much of what makes a Harvard education those who did just that at other schools, valuable is the connections. Access to connec- which they attended for many reasons, such tions at Harvard is fundamentally inequitable. as a desire to be close to family or access a SURE Until I can see that Harvard takes this particular program. One does not need an goal seriously—making the education truly Ivy League education to be a pragmatic, THING accessible for all qualified students—my do- honorable, empathetic person—which goes nations will continue to go to Berea College, a long way toward success in life. Give and receive with a where I teach, and where every single stu- Even if there is some merit to the Forum Charitable Gift Annuity dent is low-income, and none pay tuition. author’s premise that there are vast differenc- Nancy Gift ’93 es in the quality of schools, this ignores the Berea, Ky. fact that inequality is inherent in many situ- CGA Rates: ations and that the most successful among 4.9% for age 60 …AND FIRST-GENERATION STUDENTS us are willing and able to work to overcome I suggest you ponder the irony of the such inequality. It also overlooks the fact 6.0% for age 70 “Strategically Speaking” column (Novem- that not everyone is well suited for the “best” 7.7% for age 80 ber-December 2017, page 7), lamenting the schools and that, as is true in so many fields, loss of faith of many Americans in higher a diversity of offerings is optimal. As Garri- Rates vary by age education, appearing near the article on sup- son Keillor can tell us, not everyone can be posedly special problems of first-generation above average or have the best of everything. Calculate your fixed college students (“Mastering the ‘Hidden Those who wish to muster more support income for life with our Curriculum,’” page 18) and “The College for higher education would do well to accept free gift calculator: Chasm” (Forum, page 50). In my view, the that inequality of outcomes is inherent in a free hms.harvard.edu/giftcalculator condescension and victim orientation re- society and acknowledge the greater impor- or call 1-800-922-1782 flected in the latter two go a long way to- tance of equality of opportunity and the many ward explaining the former. mechanisms we have to facilitate the latter. The search for victims, and endless de- Martin B. Robins, J.D. ’80 mands for accommodations for the supposedly Barrington Hills, Ill. victimized group, that many Americans see increasingly emanating from the academy, which WRITERS, SEEN HOLISTICALLY are typified by these articles, contribute to a I was glad to see a tutor viewing her stu- loss of faith in the value of higher education. dent as a whole emotional and writing per- Students Aiming for In every generation, there are many first- son, a unity rather than a stack of divisible Top Tier Colleges... generation and low-income college and Lego blocks (The Undergraduate, “Writ- university students. In prior generations, ing, Blocked,” November-December 2017, this was accepted as part of the American page 36). In the training I’m completing, in Dream, as such persons and their families a body-mind relearning field, we also are

Receive strategic advice, tools, and guidance from worked to improve their lot. Even with- taught to acknowledge the whole unitary the nation’s premier college consultants, helping out the special programs discussed here, person—a tensegritive and not a compres- students for over 20 years: many (perhaps most) succeeded in doing sive model. This has consequences. DR. MICHELE HERNANDEZ so. Suggesting that there is something un- In my field, students’ strong emotions can Former Assistant Director of Admissions at usual about today’s generation which neces- surface. We could even retraumatize a per- Dartmouth Author of A is for Admission sitates the sort of programs described does son. As part of our training we learn about the MIMI DOE them no favors and causes further skepti- hidden impact of well-intended efforts in our Parenting guru, educator & author of Busy but Balanced cism about the motivation of our learned field’s past, and even hear a presentation from class on the part of the citizenry at large. • Unparalleled success rate Similarly, the Forum’s apparently lament- SPEAK UP, PLEASE • Advising and facilitating every step of the way ing that colleges and universities come in Harvard Magazine welcomes letters • Lessen stress and increase college choices many flavors is insulting to many. Among on its contents. Please write to “Let- Join our small group of students for personal other things, the constant references to the ters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, admissions consulting. Call now for information. supposedly inadequate education being pro- Cambridge 02138, send comments by e- vided at the University of South Carolina is mail to yourturn@harvard.edu, use our devoid of support, other than the spurious website, www.harvardmagazine.com, references to grades and test scores. There is or fax us at 617-495-0324. Letters may toptieradmissions.com no discussion of how graduates of that insti- be edited to fit the available space. 781.530.7088 tution are faring in life, let alone while they [email protected]

6 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters a psychotherapist to learn what not to do. ly spotlight on the enormous gap between our primary and en- As a private writing tutor, I know I can the number of poor people who face unlawful during focus: direct reinjure my student, too, if not as severely, or eviction, domestic violence, consumer fraud, legal services for Visit harvardmag.com subtly discourage them. I’m sure that I have and other civil legal problems and the num- the most vulnerable for additional letters. done so at times, unwittingly—faces have ber of those people who have an attorney to community members told me what words have not. I wish I had advocate for them in their time of legal crisis. to achieve the fullest measure of justice. Bel- had more training to address this, as well as As members of the WilmerHale Legal Ser- low’s legacy lives on and is stronger than ever. to be better able to take care of my own emo- vices Center (LSC) of Harvard Law School Daniel L. Nagin tional-writer self. I would love the Writing (HLS), we salute you for tackling this top- Vice dean for experiential and clinical education Center to offer its tutors such support, to in- ic and its various complexities. At the same Faculty director, WilmerHale Legal Services tegrate the emotional literacy with the craft. time, readers may have been left with a mis Center & Veterans Legal Clinic I found the most impactful part of the ar- impression about the LSC. Our work does not Toby Merrill ticle to be the author’s transparency about her focus on “adequate access to justice,” however Lecturer on law own intense feelings in relationship to writ- defined. From our founding in 1979 by the vi- Cambridge ing. This sharing acknowledges the whole sionary professor Gary Bellow, we have dedi- person in the reader, and removes a wall, cated our work to impassioned, innovative, ERRATA rather than dividing us into separable teacher- community-based lawyering for people who We regret misspelling the last name of student blocks. It would be good to see more cannot afford representation; and teaching Thomas Ehrlich, LL.B. ’59, in “The Justice of this integration in academia—and, further, and mentoring clinical law students to be- Gap.” more integrated acknowledgment that we are come zealous, ethical advocates. To be sure, The caption for the photograph on page body along with emotion and words. we also embrace and teach students about 83 (Alumni, “This Land Was Made For…,” Joshua Myrvaagnes ’01 non-litigation tools such as policy advocacy, November-December 2017) incorrectly Somerville, Mass. community legal-education workshops, and identifies the rock formations behind Bill the enhanced use of law-related technologies. Hedden as the Six Shooter Peaks. They are LEGAL SERVICES As the thousands of HLS students who mesas. The peaks were visible in a differ- “The Justice Gap,” by Lincoln Caplan (No- have passed through the LSC’s doors can at- ent image of Hedden that did not appear vember-October 2017, page 61), shines a time- test, these tools complement—not displace— in the article.

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Harvard Magazine 7

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

DOMESTIC ENERGY, FOREIGN AFFAIRS partnerships, and above all, further its economic and political interests. The current boom is largely caused by ex- A Geopolitical Windfall? traction technologies that make it easier and cheaper to produce natural gas and oil, as well as new technology for liquefying natu- y most measures, the Trump ad- oil has been a dangerous strategic vulner- ral gas cheaply. (Because natural gas is much ministration’s first year in office ability since the Nixon administration. But less expensive to transport when liquefied, has been turbulent, but Meghan the situation has changed, she argues in her this once local commodity has now reached B O’Sullivan, Kirkpatrick professor of new book, Windfall: How the New Energy Abun- the vast global energy marketplace.) One of the practice of international affairs at the dance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens Amer- those evolving extraction technologies is Kennedy School, says the United States nev- ica’s Power. If the United States succeeds in fracking. O’Sullivan admits the method is en- ertheless occupies a unique position of po- “harnessing” today’s energy boom instead vironmentally fraught, but says, “I think our tential global strength. The former deputy of foolishly adopting isolationist policies in country is trying to find the right balance national security adviser for Iraq and Af- pursuit of total energy independence, it has between being responsible toward the en- ghanistan under President George W. Bush the chance to elevate its leadership position vironment while still reaping the economic says that America’s dependence on foreign around the world, forge new international and strategic benefits that come with being one of the world’s largest pro- ducers of oil and natural gas.” She advocates a “Goldi- locks solution” to fracking— one that does not involve so many regulations as to make production unattractive, but that does have sufficient regulations to mitigate the most serious environmental concerns. Decisions about whether and how to extract domestic energy supplies, she argues, should weigh not only environmental concerns, but also geopolitical relationships. “Energy is a huge benefit to the United States, and it’s not only economic, as something we feel at the pump or when paying to heat homes. We also need to factor in strategic interests.” One of those strategic interests relates to Russia. The energy boom’s lower prices have created a huge fiscal challenge

8 January - February 2018 Illustration by Sam Ward

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Wounded Warrior Project helped me reclaim my life.

WOUNDED WARRIOR SEAN KARPF

HELP MAKE AN IMPACT AT iamlivingproofwwp.org

WWP_Sean_ILMN_8.125x10.5.indd180103_WoundedWarrior.indd 1 1 10/23/1710/24/17 1:383:06 PM Right Now for the oil- and natural-gas-driven Russian nation’s best interest. She points to the af- If Americans are able to look beyond their economy. O’Sullivan connects Vladimir Pu- termath of Hurricane Harvey as an instance enduring obsession with energy indepen- tin’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy when being connected to international mar- dence and use the energy boom to further directly to that mounting challenge. “From kets was of critical importance: “When our the country’s international power, she de- a U.S policymaking perspective, we need to refining capacity went down on the Gulf clares, the benefits could be exponentially be prepared for Russia to try to compensate Coast, there were some hiccups, but pretty higher. voset babür for these kinds of losses,” she says. “The nat- soon after, we just started importing from ural-gas boom means Europe now has other other sources. Being connected to global meghan o’sullivan e-mail: options for meeting its energy needs if Rus- markets allows for us to be resilient.” [email protected] sia becomes too difficult to deal with.” This means that while Russia will remain a big exporter of energy to Europe, it will struggle PALEO-EPIDEMIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS to politicize this trade as it has in the past. As a result, Putin has had to adhere to Eu- ropean Union laws and regulations that he The New Rub previously had the leverage to avoid. As for China, another key foreign-policy interest, O’Sullivan argues that the United on Knee Pain States should capitalize on every opportunity for the two countries to work together constructively. “This new energy environ- an Wallace has traveled across the teoarthritis (OA), a painful and debilitating ment has led a lot of countries to question country examining skeletons in the base- disease caused by the femur grinding against how committed the United States is go- ments of museums and in the backroom the tibia. But Wallace, a postdoctoral fellow ing to be to Middle Eastern stability going I closets of medical institutes. He’s seen in human evolutionary biology, and his ad- forward,” she notes, and this worries the 2,576 of them, to be exact, driven by an in- viser, Lerner professor of biological sciences Chinese. They are increasingly dependent terest in just one thing: their knees. One-fifth Daniel Lieberman, wondered if OA had al- on external sources of energy, from the of the U. S. population suffers from knee os- ways been so common. Although clinicians Middle East in particu- who treat the disease have noted an increase lar, just as the United in the number of cases, which now typical- States is becoming more ly end with knee replacement, no one had self-sufficient. For this tried to quantify the prevalence of the dis- reason there is “an op- ease across centuries. portunity for us to have The two researchers realized they could a conversation about how study this public-health problem using an to work together toward approach dubbed “paleo-epidemiology.” a common end: achiev- The bone-on-bone rubbing that occurs at ing greater stability in a the end stage of the disease, when all the critical part of the world.” cartilage is gone, leaves a glass-like polish Although much of on bone surfaces that is unmistakable, Wal- Windfall focuses on the po- lace explains. It’s unambiguous and easy tential benefits if Ameri- to measure accurately, and is what he was ca realizes its position of looking for in the skeletons he studied. But energy strength, the book the magnitude of what he found was unex- is quick to warn against pected. By comparing skeletal evidence from what O’Sullivan calls the the prehistoric and industrial eras to that country’s dangerous “un- from the postindustrial era, and carefully requited love” for achiev- controlling for differences in the way the ing total energy indepen- skeletons from the various periods were col- dence. In order to become lected, Lieberman and Wallace found that truly independent and the prevalence of the disease had more than essentially function as doubled since World War II. an island economy, the “This is not a trivial change,” Lieberman United States would have says. “A doubling that fast can only be to enforce dramatic isola- caused by a change in environment. And tionist and protectionist that means that if we can identify what policies that she consid- An osteoarthritic knee, the polished femur ers inefficient, costly, and clearly visible, from a 600-year-old ultimately counter to the skeleton housed in the Peabody Museum.

10 January - February 2018 Photograph by Jim Harrison/© 2018 President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, PM# 968-10-40/N9174.0 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now those environmental shifts are, we can fig- in a 2017 paper in Pro- ure out ways to prevent the disease.” ceedings of the National 25 The common belief, he explains, is that Academy of Sciences, is knee osteoarthritis is unpreventable. Clini- that more and more 20 cians who treat OA typically cite cumulative people are getting the wear and tear on the knee joint as a principal disease in both knees. 15 cause of the disease. As people, on average, That suggests there is live longer and weigh more than in the past, something else going 10 the thinking goes, the prevalence of OA natu- on.” rally increases. But the new research shows Lieberman and this is wrong. Wallace don’t know 5 By controlling for factors such as age and what that “some- Knee OA prevalence (%) body mass index (BMI)—matching physi- thing” might be, but 0 cally and demographically similar individu- are testing the hy- 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 als across the industrial and post-industrial pothesis that physi- eras—the researchers were able to eliminate cal inactivity, which Age (Years) both increased longevity and obesity as causes increased with the After controlling for gender, ethnicity, and body mass index, of the spike they discovered. That doesn’t mid-twentieth-cen- the data clearly show an increased prevalence of knee osteoarthritis in post-industrial populations at all ages. mean obesity is not a factor: “It can increase tury shift to service- SOURCE: STEVEN WORTHINGTON/HARVARD INSTITUTE FOR QUANTITATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE your risk of osteoarthritis considerably,” ex- sector employment plains Wallace. But obesity can’t explain the in the American economy, is an important with guinea pigs, comparing rates of OA be- recent, sudden spread of the disease. factor. That theory might seem counterin- tween active and inactive animals. The level of OA didn’t shift, essentially, for tuitive for a disease thought to be caused by Underlying the research, Lieberman ex- thousands of years, Lieberman points out, wear and tear, but some potential mecha- plains, is a suspicion that OA is a case of among either prehistoric Native American nisms by which exercise protects joints human physiology being partly maladapt- hunter-gatherers and farmers, or industrial- are known: physical activity promotes the ed to modern environments. “We’re look- era workers. The spike came suddenly, in growth of hydrophilic proteins that store ing at osteoarthris as a mismatch disease,” the postindustrial period, and the pattern water and thus lubricate joints, Lieberman he says, “and trying to figure out how an of injury changed, as well. notes, and there is evidence that within evolutionary perspective leads to different Trauma to the knee joint often leads to OA. cartilage, such activity affects the produc- hypotheses than would a purely clinical “People fall off a cliff, get kicked by a horse, tion and turnover of collagen. (Exercised perspective.” vjonathan shaw snap their ACL, or get a meniscal tear,” says animals, for example, have more cartilage Lieberman, and these insults can increase the in their joints, older data show.) Further- daniel lieberman website: risk of OA as much as eightfold. “Most of the more, exercise strengthens muscles, protect- https://heb.fas.harvard.edu/people/ people we studied in earlier populations who ing joints from overloading at moments of daniel-e-lieberman had OA had it in one knee”—a hallmark of the strain, and also lowers inflammation. To test ian wallace website: traumatic case. “What’s happening increas- this, Lieberman and Wallace are currently https://heb.fas.harvard.edu/people/ ingly today,” he continues, “which we showed running a controlled experiment in the lab ian-wallace

HEALTHCARE MONOPOLY A New Challenge for Antitrust

n the last few years, a new type of finan- in the airline and banking industries. Now Ph.D. candidate in health policy at Harvard cial consolidation has caught the atten- a new analysis published in Health Affairs Medical School (HMS), have focused on for- tion of antitrust regulators. Institutional finds that this type of informal consolida- mal mergers—what people typically imag- I investors—big companies like Fidelity tion among investor-owners has nearly dou- ine when they think of companies exercis- and BlackRock—today own 70 percent of bled in at least one sector of the healthcare ing monopoly power. “We wanted to peel publicly traded stocks, according to some industry during the last decade. Between away that layer and see who the underly- estimates, which means that one big inves- 2005 and 2015, the percentage of acute-care ing investors are, and [ask if] there are any tor could own significant shares of the com- hospitals that share significant ownership ties across these sectors that we might not panies that nominally compete within the with post-acute facilities and hospices grew be able to immediately see, but that might same industry. Two 2016 studies found that from 24.6 to 48.9 percent. have implications for the care people re- this relationship may have had a causal effect Earlier studies of consolidation in health- ceive.” The team focused on common own- that produced higher prices for consumers care, says lead author Annabelle Fowler, a ership of acute and post-acute facilities,

Harvard Magazine 11

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now Fowler explains, because post-acute care facilities (including acute-care hospitals, is the source of a lot of variation in Medi- skilled-nursing facilities, home health agen- Explore More care spending; financial consolidation, the cies, long-term care hospitals, inpatient re- researchers speculated, might be a potential habilitation facilities, and hospice agencies) For more articles on Harvard explanation. via a common owner almost doubled during research, go online: The group (including co-authors David the study period. That might be in part be- Grabowski and Haiden Huskamp, pro- cause the share of healthcare providers with A New Cast for the Semitic fessors of health care policy at HMS, and any corporate investor increased significant- Museum Robert Gambrel and David Stevenson of ly during the same period (from just over A replica Dream Vanderbilt) pulled their data from the Pro- one-quarter to more than one-half), across Stele, part of vider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership each of the six types of facilities studied. In Egyptologist Peter System (PECOS): a database of every medi- other words, corporate investors’ share of Der Manuelian’s cal provider in Medicare, with granular in- providers has simply increased over time, efforts to revitalize formation about every investor owning a 5 just as it has in the economy overall. “Our the Semitic Museum percent or greater share in each provider results have potential implications for how harvardmag.com/stele-17 (though it doesn’t show how large a share we think about competition between and the investors hold—only that it’s at least 5 across sectors,” says Grabowski. “If an inves- Gut Health May Begin in percent). “What’s really novel about this pa- tor jointly owns several hospitals within a the Mouth per is the use of this dataset,” Fowler notes. market, are these hospitals really compet- Oral bacteria can lodge in the gut and HARVARD SEMITIC MUSEUM The team considered only institutional in- ing with one another on cost and quality?” trigger inflammatory bowel conditions. vestors in their analysis. They then looked at What might this mean for regulators? harvardmag.com/oralhealth-17 the financial links between healthcare pro- Common investor ownership, unlike for- viders within the same region—a hospital mal mergers, is not currently regulated, but “If you’re a particularly expensive patient,” and a skilled nursing facility (a type of long- can be deemed illegal if the behavior of in- Fowler explains, “then the hospital might term, post-acute-care provider) in a single vestors is construed to produce collusion [have an incentive to] refer you to a skilled- state, for example. An investor with shares among different companies. The analysis nursing facility that’s not under common in a hospital in Boston and skilled-nursing fa- doesn’t claim a causal relationship between ownership, because you’re sort of a burden. cilities in Seattle, for example, wouldn’t count common ownership and the quality or cost If you’re a patient with less risk, then a doc- as common ownership under their rubric. of healthcare, but financial consolidation tor might have incentive to refer you to a pro- The findings are striking: the percentage across the industry can create anti-com- vider within the same common ownership.” of hospitals with a link to other healthcare petitive incentives that are bad for patients. It’s not clear how a financial link between healthcare facilities could translate into this sort of decisionmaking at the level of individual doctors. But investors can influence companies in many ways—for example, through their votes on business decisions at shareholder meetings. Much work remains to be done, by academics as well as regulators, on the dynamic between investors and industry competition. At a minimum, Fow- ler and Grabowski suggest that there is a need for more transparency in these relationships; mandated dis- closure of large-scale common investors could be the best next step. That would benefit not just researchers and regulators, Grabowski says, but patients as well. Both groups, presumably, would want to know if there is any investor linkage among healthcare providers. vmarina bolotnikova

annabelle fowler website: scholar.harvard.edu/afowler/ home

12 January - February 2018 Illustration by Øivind Hovland

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 UNDERGRADUATES GRADUATES ADULTS & PROFESSIONALS

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12B Extracurriculars Events on and off campus in January and February

12D Nigerian Women Speak Out A.R.T. hosts “HEAR WORD!”

12F Tastemakers Exploring the Museum of Bad Art, in Somerville

12H A Wintry Jaunt to Newport, Rhode Island Experience the city’s elemental beauty, art, history, and food—without the crowds 12L Chinatown Chow Sho-jo-’s Asian-fusion tapas with a Western kick COURTESY OF DISCOVER NEWPORT

Harvard Magazine 12A

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared

Maps as Literary Illustration features more than 60 documents depicting imag- Extracurriculars ined places, from Thomas More’s Utopia to the Stillness supercontinent in N.K. Je- Events on and off campus during January and February misin’s The Fifth Season. (Opens January 16)

EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS tury France includes Olympe de Gouges, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Houghton Library author of the “Declaration of the Rights of https://carpenter.center www.houghton75.org Woman and the Female Citizen,” and Émilie Artist, writer, and filmmakerRenée Rethinking Enlightenment: Forgotten du Châtelet, translator of Isaac Newton’s Green’s two-year residency—spent ex- Women Writers of Eighteenth Cen- Principia. (Opens January 5) Landmarks: ploring perceptions of time, space, and place—culminates with a display of video From left: An image of diverse microbe colonies obtained from cabbage and grown in the lab, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History; Sumac with Snail, by James Reis, at the installations and screen prints. Arnold Arboretum; East Coker (2013), by abstract artist Joe Bradley, at the Rose Art Museum (Opens February 1) JOE BRADLEY/COURTESY OF THE ROSE ART MUSEUM FROM COURTESY LEFT: OF THE HARVARD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY; JAMES REIS/COURTESY OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM;

781.763.1333 | THECATEREDAFFAIR.COM/HARVARDARTMUSEUMS | THECATEREDAFFAIR Artwork: Triangle Constellation by Carlos Amorales

12B January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 180132_LuxBondGreen.indd 1 11/28/17 8:35 AM Harvard Squared Pioneering new-media artist and filmmaker tionships with machines in the context of with Art in the Age of the Internet: Lynn Hershman Leeson—known for the digital age—discusses her work. (Feb- 1989 to Today, opening at the Institute of exploring privacy, identity, and human rela- ruary 8) The lecture occurs in conjunction Contemporary Art on February 7.

Harvard Art Museums STAFF PICK: Nigerian Women Speak Out www.harvardartmuseums.org Inventur—Art in Germany, 1943-55 HEAR WORD! Naija Woman Talk True, directed by Ifeoma Fafunwa (a current highlights more than 170 works, many nev- Radcliffe Institute fellow), is a dynamic performance piece in- er before seen outside Germany, that were spired by a spectrum of true stories about women across Ni- created during a time of collective cultural geria. Nigerian actresses combine dances, songs, and spoken reckoning. (Opens February 9) word in intimate portrayals of struggles—for dignity, independence, and professional/meaningful engagement in African Harvard Museum of Natural History society. Themes both personal and universal are candidly www.hmnh.harvard.edu broached in an effort to break through a culture of silence. The Microbial Life: A Universe at the Edge production, hugely popular in Lagos, had its American premiere of Sight takes visitors on a multimedia jour- at the Harvard Dance Center in 2016, and returns for a two- ney from a typical kitchen countertop into week run at the American Repertory Theater. Fafunwa also the fascinating lives of earth’s first inhabit- discusses “Who Would ants. (Opens February 17) Choose to Be LGBT and Nigerian!?” at the insti- Rose Art Museum tute’s Knafel Center on www.brandeis.edu/rose February 7. The exhibit Joe Bradley features two dozen works by the New York-based artist Loeb Drama Center (who was born in Maine), from impromptu January 26-February 11 drawings to bold, layered abstract paintings.

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12D January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared LECTURES Wide Angle: The Norton Lectures on LBGreen.com 800.524.7336 Cinema www.mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu Three legendary filmmakers are slated to speak at Sanders Theatre: Frederick Wiseman (January 29 and February 5); Ag- Like snowflakes... nès Varda (February 26-27); and Wim Wenders (April 2 and April 9).

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study www.radcliffe.harvard.edu Physician Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate for governor in Michigan, discusses “The Epidemic of Poverty: The Government Imperative.” (February 12)

“Casting—When Character Meets Appear- ance.” Radcliffe Institute fellow Phillip War- LUX BOND & GREEN nell talks about his research on the metrics JEWELERS SINCE 1898 of screen-based acting roles. (February 21)

FILM EVERY BOX HAS A STORY Harvard Film Archive www.hcl.harvard.edu/hfa BOSTON WELLESLEY Norton Lectures in Cinema: Frederick WEST HARTFORD MOHEGAN SUN GLASTONBURY WESTPORT Wiseman. The retrospective includes Titi- cut Follies, Primate, High School, and Near Death, a six-hour chronicle of the medical intensive care unit at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital. (January 19-February 18)

Kevin Jerome Everson—Cinema and the Practice of Everyday Life. The artist re- HENRIETTA’S BENEDETTO REGATTABAR TABLE RESTAURANT JAZZ CLUB bukes mainstream cinema’s pat cultural de- pictions and insistence on action and melo- drama. Screenings include: Tonsler Park, Erie, Company Line, Ninety-Three, and Ears, Nose, and Throat, a film that reflects on the 2010 murder of Everson’s son. (February 2-26)

NATURE AND SCIENCE The Arnold Arboretum www.arboretum.harvard.edu Arboretum director William Friedman ad- resses the nuanced evolutionary ties be- 1 BENNETT STREET • CAMBRIDGE, MA • 800.882.1818 • CHARLESHOTEL.COM tween plants and the origins of human life in Replaying Life’s Tape Through the Lens of Plants. (January 22)

Close and Closer: Photographs of the Arnold Arboretum by James Reis reveals studied layers of the wondrous land- NOIR BAR & WELLBRIDGE CORBU SPA scape. (Opens February 9) COCKTAIL LOUNGE ATHLETIC CLUB & SALON

Events listings are also found at www. harvardmagazine.com.

Harvard Magazine 12E

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 EXPLORATIONS

Renegade Tastemakers A Somerville museum highlights art “so bad, it’s good.” by nell porter brown

his winter, an exhibit of contemporary paintings in the basement of Davis Square’s Somerville Theatre features animals. Medusa T Michael Frank and Louise Sacco with the Fries Fish, by Florida artist Christine House, is clearly symbolic—but of what? A wild- stylish doggie stars of Blue Tango (acquired from an Indiana thrift shop) at the Somer- haired lass in a slinky red dress stands with ville museum. Other highlights of the arms extended like pale noodles, bewitching collection: Woman Riding Crustacean, James (befriending?) a perky green fish, rendered (a doleful zebra), and the masterwork that in the Japanese Pokémon tradition, lying in a inspired it all, Lucy in the Field with Flowers pan over roaring flames. Yet the improbable enchantress is herself transfixed by a mys- It all began in 1994 with Lucy in the Field terious squiggled spiral in the twilight sky. with Flowers. Boston arts and antique deal- Nearby is the evocative acrylic Woman er Scott Wilson acquired the portrait of a Riding Crustacean. Here, an explanatory la- handsome grandmother, pensively poised bel suggests that the unknown artist might under an aggressively yellow sky in a wind- have been inspired by actress Debra Winger swept meadow, from a Boston trash heap. holding her own on “a mechanical bull in the works reflect either poor technique, or He’d wanted to sell its frame, but upon see- the 1980 filmUrban Cowboy,” even as the fig- expertise painstakingly applied to produce ing the painting, his pal Jerry Reilly objected, ure “appears to be a blow-up doll mounted hilariously overwrought results, or images using a phrase that would be repeated with atop a giant lobster” or “a study for a larger, that simply elicit a loud “Wow, what is that?” gusto through the years to come by those in- hopefully more erotically realized, work.” “It’s not kitsch,” he emphasized. “But what ducted into MOBA’s guiding renegade spirit: On display through February 25, “MOBA is tongue-and-cheek…is that we’re not mock- “You can’t do that! That’s so bad, it’s good.” Zoo” is the latest show culled from more ing the artists, we’re mocking the knitted eye- Reilly took the tribute to someone else’s el- than 700 works held by the Museum of Bad brows of the world of art criticism.” In es- der and hung it in his own West Roxbury Art (MOBA). “We collect compelling piec- sence, MOBA legitimately questions what, or home, said his sister, Louise Sacco, MOBA’s es in which something has gone wrong in who, makes a piece of art “important”—the current “permanent acting interim execu- the execution or the concept,” said MOBA’s idea that the “right person” has to say, “This is tive director,” during a tour of the gallery. curator-in-chief Michael Frank. Typically, good”—and it has a lot of fun in the process. Word spread of Reilly’s masterpiece, and

12F January - February 2018 Paintings courtesy of the Museum of Bad Art; photographs by Jim Harrison

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared

On display at others like it that he and Wilson and a few percent of what’s offered by others, and ac- MOBA: Medusa similarly inspired colleagues were soon quires most of the pieces himself through Fries Fish and Centaur and Biker scooping up from yard sales, thrift shops, the region’s thrift shops and other afford- (interpreted as and town dumps. But it wasn’t until “a bus- able venues. Garbage piles in May and June, “An obvious load of seniors from Rhode Island pulled up when local college students are preparing comparison of on his little residential street and got out to to leave town, have yielded some real trea- two bearded men and their come see these,” Sacco said, “that we real- sures. He also scouts around when traveling personal ized we had to do something bigger.” for his paid occupation, as a gig guitarist and horsepower”) Eventually they opened MOBA’s more or as family entertainer Mike the Hatman. “I’ve less permanent gallery in the Somerville The- been to Cuba a lot, and there’s a strong strain atre, itself an historic, and beloved, place; sat- of surreal imagery there,” he said in a phone ellite exhibit sites now exist in Brookline and interview from his Boston living room. “So I Weymouth. All the locales are donated space, recently picked up a piece, that I’m looking there’s no paid MOBA staff, and admission is at here now, that’s pretty damn bizarre.” He free. Donations and proceeds from the sale of guesses it’s some sort of Welsh corgi, with no postcards and a catalog pay for a telephone legs to speak of, in a rural landscape. line, website, and storage of any art that can’t A backlog of artwork awaits cataloguing fit into Frank’s house. and what can be his lengthy interpretation People from all over the world submit process. That might involve Google name photos of potential works, and sometimes searches for any signed pieces (although just mail the works themselves to MOBA, most MOBA works are by unknown art- Frank said, mostly because they’ve seen its ists), as well as research to contextualize Facebook page (which has 53,000 follow- a given painting by identifying other art or ers) or appreciate Frank’s 28 curatorial talks events that might have inspired the work. (of varying educational and entertainment Thus Mini-Marilyn En Pointe, in a show enti- value) on YouTube. tled “Dopple-hangers” at the Weymouth gal- Frank is picky. He accepts less than 25 lery, is a depiction of the American actress

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Harvard Magazine 12G

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared and sex symbol. But what may initially re- as well as in Canada and Taiwan. “It was Pollock—if that reputation wasn’t out there, semble pigs’ feet poking out from under her not my assumption that the irony of MOBA if he wasn’t a well-acknowledged genius— black dress are actually her own, attached would translate” to Asia, Frank said, “but the first time we saw his painting, we’d say, to unseen knees bent as she’s jumping up, it seemed to be very successful, because the ‘Oh, someone spilled the paint—that’s what smiling at the viewer. Frank knows this be- show was in Taipei and then moved to an- went wrong.’” cause the painting is clearly based on an im- other city and was extended to six weeks.” What’s often disconcerting in the MOBA age he found online by French photographer He’s currently planning for a MOBA show collection is the steroidal level of symbolism. Philippe Halsman, who, in the 1950s, cap- in Tokyo next fall or winter. The exhibit “MOBA Zoo” features a 24-inch tured a series of famous people in mid air. MOBA’s art is primarily representational. canvas titled Liberty and Justice that was donat- With abstract works, Sacco said, it’s much ed in 2015. Frank’s label reads: “Reminiscent Over the years, MOBA has had shows in harder to assess what artists intended to do, of Judith clutching the head of Holofernes, New York City, Santa Fe, and Minneapolis, and if they succeeded: “To look at a Jackson teary-eyed Lady Liberty celebrates her victo-

ALL IN A DAY: A Wintry Jaunt to Newport, Rhode Island

As winds whip off the Atlantic Ocean and waves crash along Newport’s famous Cliff Walk outside, visitors on the “Beneath The Breakers” tour meander through the labyrinthine bowels of the Vanderbilt family’s Gilded Age mansion. The tour covers the development of modern electricity and plumbing, which ran throughout the five-story, 70-room Italian Renaissance-style palazzo. It also explores the hand-dug boiler room, where two massive units once burned as much as 250

tons of coal a year. “But these are summer homes, why did they NEWPORT DISCOVER OF COURTESY need heat?” Raymond Roy, a guide with The Preservation Society A scene from Newport’s of Newport County, asks, then explains: the 5,000 feet of water dramatic Cliff Walk (above); billiards room at pipes snaking through 20 bathrooms could freeze. “From Octo- the Rosecliff mansion; ber 1 to May 1, there were men working The Breakers; a fetching in the boiler room around the clock, Pierre Cardin original on even though the family wasn’t here.” display at Rosecliff The depopulated winter season also With those properties offers contemporary Newport visitors open, Rodman adds, a far quieter and often more intimate more of the city’s restau- look at The Breakers, and at the three rants have added winter other estates owned and opened year- hours, especially in con- round by the preservation society: The junction with the annual Elms, Marble House, and Rosecliff Newport Winter Fes- (where “Pierre Cardin: 70 Years of In- tival (February 16-25). The event—packed with magic shows, novation” offers 42 original outfits from concerts, and children’s activities, along with fêtes featuring food the designer’s private archives through and drinks—traditionally culminates in the popular polo exhibi- February 28). “We don’t really want to tion on Easton Beach. Also open during the winter are the In- grow a lot more in the summer, when ternational Tennis Hall of Fame (worth a stop even if you’re the city is very, very crowded,” says not an avid fan of the sport), and the Newport Art Museum, John G. Rodman, M.P.A. ’93, director of where the photography shows “Lissa Rivera: Beautiful Boy” and museum experi- “Domestic Affairs: Domesticity, Identity, and the Home” open ence for the soci- on January 20. Food and drinks abound. The lively Brick Alley ety’s 11 proper- Pub has terrific comfort fare, or try the funkier Salvation ties, which draw Café; for a more refined dining option, head to the stylish new more than one Stoneacre Brasserie. million admissions The summertime hubbub and pervasive wharf-side tourist a year. “This al- trade can also overwhelm Newport’s elemental natural beauty. lows people to If the weather holds, suit up and get out on the three-mile Cliff see the homes in Walk and exult in the salty sprays and bracing chill of New a different way.” England’s iconic coastal clime. vn.p.b.

12H January - February 2018 Photographs courtesy of the Preservation Society of Newport County

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 1730 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, MA 02138 gailroberts.com [email protected] 617 245-4044

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180113_GailRoberts.indd 1 11/22/17 10:00 AM Harvard Squared ry over the en- mysteriously spring up, mountains arise tell us exactly what he was doing, what this emy and hopes from flat surfaces, and trees in a natural for- painting means to him.” peace can re- est march along in straight lines. Goofy de- Years after MOBA salvaged the six-foot- turn to the city. signs and strange objects, or blocks of col- square portrait Man in Puffy Disco Hat from In other news, or, crop up where artists seemingly “didn’t a Back Bay loading dock (thanks to a call her jaundiced know what to do with all that empty space from UPS driver Bob Bean), it appeared in bald eagle has on the canvas,” she says. Then there are the a newspaper article on the museum, and a caught a fish.” creative contortions to avoid rendering no- woman called to say, “You’ve got a portrait of That sums it toriously difficult hands and feet. my husband.” “She came over here to see it,” up, but omits In Safe at Home (which hangs in Somer- said Sacco, “she and her twin sister, two little the complex- ville), players’ hands are either roundish tiny ladies in their nineties, and told us that ity of the back- blobs of paint or obscured by mitts, and the when her husband died, she had this paint- The poignant exchange in ground scenes umpire’s protective vest is not on his chest, ing made of him, from two photographs, in Blue Face–Green Pepper of lower Man- but slung over his entire left arm. There are 1978. It had been hanging in her living room defies explanation. hattan with a other such juxtapositions. “Someone on the in the Back Bay and when she was downsiz- military aircraft Red Sox is sliding into home from first base,” ing she couldn’t keep it, so it went out into Document1Document1 11/20/03 runway 11/20/03 (from 11:51 which11:51 AM planes AM Page andPage a1 helicopter 1 Sacco pointed out, “which is as puzzling as the trash. She was thrilled we had it—it was are taking off), a ribbon of highway, and the whatever the beast is that’s eating him.” wonderful.” (The painting is on permanent Dali-style scales of justice dangling from the MOBA occasionally learns of an artwork’s display in Somerville because it is so heavy.) statue’s forearm. Frank resists discussing the provenance only after it has been displayed. Sacco also reported that a surprising num- work beyond the brief explanatory interpre- The strange, dream-like watercolor He Was a ber of artists offer to donate their own works. tation he’s attached to it. “To explain why it’s Friend of Mine, featuring an angry cat and a be- If turned down by MOBA, she surmises, they amusing or funny makes it stop being funny. I nign-looking husky looming in clouds over- may believe the piece is “not that bad.” If ac- prefer to present the stuff and either you get head, was painted by a homeless man and cepted, their creation has an audience. it or you don’t.” given to a benefactor who had provided him Bone Juggling Dog Wearing a Hula Skirt, in Sacco sees other themes within the with food and art supplies, Sacco said. “And “MOBA Zoo,” is among three works MOBA MOBA collection. In landscapes, waterfalls you know if the artist was here he’d be able to has accepted from Mari Newman, known in

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12J January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared Minneapolis for her Outsider Art. The panel vas. “The young woman’s head is slightly atilt by nonchalant offers to buy MOBA’s art. features a smiling ginger-bread-man-like dog, under the weight of impossibly orange hair in “From time to time people say, ‘I need this with brown fur overlaid with polka dots and this idyllic tableau,” he wrote in the accom- and I will pay a lot of money,’” he said. “And with his tongue sticking out, against a back- panying label. “A tiny songbird has alighted invariably, they offer about $150, and I say no. ground of dog bones, scores of white flowers, from the dwarf tree bearing two green apples We’re a museum, not a gallery,” he added. and swirling patterns of colors dabbed on in onto a one-dimensional chair, contemplating “They wouldn’t go to the MFA and say, ‘I real- minute strokes. “The artist is legally blind,” the coiffure as a potential new home.” ly want that,’ and make a silly offer and expect Sacco explained, “so her works have a lot of It’s a delightful image. Free-spirited, odd- to get anyplace. I mean, seriously, come on.” detail because she can only see when she’s ly Edwardian-look- very close up to the canvas.” According to Sac- ing: any number of co, Newman also has pieces in collections at people might like the Columbus Museum of Art and the New to hang it in their Orleans Museum of Art. own home. “It re- MOBA’s works do share traits found in ally bothers me Outsider Art, Naïve Art, and even folk art, when people say and sometimes it’s hard to tell what the dif- things like, ‘That’s ferences really are. That begs other ques- not bad, why is it tions about its overlaps with fine-art crite- here?’ ‘But, I like ria, Sacco said, “because we’re looking for this!’” Frank said. something that engages, that gets you talk- “Yeah, I like it, ing, that raises questions—you know, all of too—that’s why I those are things that any museum will tell collect it. We like you they are doing.” all these paintings. Malinkova, by Tatyana Lyarson (1998), was They are compel- Strangely found by Frank in a Boston thrift shop in 2012, ling, or we wouldn’t beguiling canines at with the title (Russian for robin redbreast), be doing this.” MOBA artist’s name, and date on the back of the can- He is also irked

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Harvard Magazine 12K

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared

TASTES & TABLES: Pork Bao and Bubble Waffles

Chinatown’s hip Sho-jo- serves addictive Asian-fusion tapas responsible for the ramen shop Ruckus (as in the Wu-Tang Clan with a quirky Western twist. Japanese sweet-potato tots are song, “Bring Da Ruckus”) next door, and the revamped BLR by dipped in miso tare aioli ($8). Chicken and Hong Kong bubble Sho-jo-. All have helped revive Chinatown’s Sho-jo- waffles (a popular street-food item) come slathered with five- reputation among a hip, young crowd. “Sho- 617-423-7888 spice butter ($16). And the resident hamburger, the “Sho-jo-nator,” jo’s a place to bring a fun parent,” one shojoboston.com is housed in a steamed bao-style bun and topped with smoked 20-something patron said, “not like my par- bacon and “kimcheese.” Sho-jo- is best known for its baos—pork, ents.” (Although anyone of any age averse to a loud, typically shrimp, and vegetarian versions—with a rich BBQ sauce, and a hip-hop, soundtrack is forewarned.) singularly delicious chili-cheese mess the kitchen calls “shadow- Japanese for school-aged girl, sho-jo- is also a reference to shojo less” duck-fat, hand-cut fries manga, the comic books and ($11). magazines targeting that demo- Fresh juices and stylized cock graphic—as the restaurant’s tails complement any dish—try graffiti-styled wall graphics, mu- The Loneliest Monk (aged rum, rals with warriors, dragons, mys- Frangelico, pineapple, and lime tical mountains, and other anime juices; $12). Sho-jo- also offers décor attest. Just how that fine Japanese spirits and a cra- theme links to the menu is not zy-long list of pricey whiskeys. so clear, but, when distracted by – JO People come to have fun. The – friends, drinks, pounding music, place is run by a young genera- and that first bite into a freshly tion of longtime Chinatown steamed pork bao (at left), it

restaurateurs: the team’s also SHO OF COURTESY doesn’t seem to matter. vn.p.b.

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If you would like to list a property in our March-April issue, contact Abby Shepard: 617.496.4032.

12L January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JOHNJOHN HARVARD’SHARVARD’S JOURNAL

Strengths—and • expense growth of $185 million (3.9 per- port) increased about 4 percent; nonfed- cent), to $4.9 billion, moderating from the eral support, principally from foundations, Warning Signs 5.3 percent growth in the prior year, increased about 8 percent, to $267 million. Revenue. The income engines included the That welcome growth is tempered slightly For the fourth consecutive year, Har- annual operating distribution from the en- because nonfederal research sponsors typi- vard has reported a financial surplus—and dowment (up $81 million, to $1.8 billion: 36 cally provide less “indirect” funding to pay its largest to date: $114 million for the fiscal percent of revenue); net tuition and fees (up for building, administrative, and related year ended June 30, 2017. And for at least $56 million, to just more than $1 billion: 21 overhead costs—and that was evident this the fourth consecutive year, the Universi- percent of revenue); sponsored-research year, when that indirect funding actually ty’s senior financial officers have cautioned funding (up $40 million, to $886 million: 19 declined modestly. against taking the good times for granted. percent of revenue); and capital-campaign- Expenses. Salaries and wages increased 4 They cited the significant boost resulting driven gifts for current use (up $29 million, percent, to $1.9 billion, reflecting annual from the refinancing of much of Harvard’s to $450 million: 9 percent of revenue). merit increases and growth in employe- debt in the fall of 2016, which bolstered the Undergraduate tuition revenue rose ment—the latter associated mostly with results for fiscal 2017. And they are mind- about 4 percent, and graduate- and pro- expanded sponsored research and those ful of the decision to hold the distribution fessional-degree programs yielded about 5 continuing- and executive-education pro- from the endowment, the largest source of percent more revenue, but with financial- grams. Benefits costs rose 7 percent to $569 operating revenue, flat in the current year aid scholarships rising just 4 percent, net tu- million, driven by interest-rate-related in- (reflecting weak investment returns), after ition revenue for these programs increased 6 creases in defined-benefit pension and post- relatively robust increases in prior years— percent. Consistent with recent experience, retirement healthcare costs (a factor expect- making it possible that the fiscal 2018 report tuition from continuing- and executive-ed- ed to reverse this year). will be more constrained. ucation programs lapped the field, rising 8 The debt refinancing and restructuring Highlights of the year included: percent; financial administrators hope that in the fall of 2016 trimmed interest expense • revenue growth of $222 million (4.6 per- momentum can be sustained, providing re- by $33 million in fiscal 2017—a benefit that cent), to nearly $5 billion—largely consis- lief elsewhere in schools’ budgets. will increase during the full 12 months of tent with the quarter-billion-dollar growth Funds for federally sponsored research the current year. (5.5 percent) in fiscal 2016; and (about 70 percent of total research sup- In the meantime, Harvard is conducting

14 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 CAMPUS RECONFIGURED: Harvard Kennedy School unveiled its renovated, reconfigured quarters to the public on December 1. In effect, a new ring of buildings has been inserted within the existing one, and below the prior courtyard. A view from the latter (left) shows the bridge structure created to partially enclose the pedestrian and vehicular entrance from Eliot Street. The aerial (above) reveals the layout, the bridge, and the link building that closed the gap facing the Charles Hotel complex to the upper right (west). A detail from within the courtyard; and a new social space connecting dining areas with the JFK Jr. Forum. Read more at harvardmag.com/ hks-redo-17. campus construction at an unprecedented $784 million the prior year (and $672 million attention. Gifts for endowment were $551 pace: such costs totaled $906 million in fiscal at the end of fiscal 2015). Most universities million in fiscal 2017, up smartly from the 2017, up from an already torrid level of $597 could not afford the luxury of holding a non- prior year, and should continue to flow in million in the prior year. (They are largely earning asset of that size; much is slated for as campaign pledges are fulfilled, but they, capitalized and therefore not directly re- future academic development, but it will be too, will peak at some point. flected in the annual operating results.) The interesting to learn the revenue-generating The known constraint is internal: the work encompasses undergraduate House plans in Harvard’s proposal for development decision to keep the operating distribu- renewal, the science and engineering com- of its envisioned “enterprise research cam- tion per endowment unit level with fiscal plex rising in Allston and Harvard Business pus,” on 36 acres of Allston Landing when 2017. The relatively tepid investment returns School’s new conference center nearby, the it is filed with Boston regulators in coming during the year, and the multiyear restruc- reconfigured and expanded Kennedy School months (see harvardmag.com/erc-17). turing of Harvard Management Company campus (see above), and renovation of Holy- In prospect. Building activity will continue (HMC; see harvardmag.com/hmc-sum- oke Center into the Smith Campus Center. at a high level through the duration of the mary-17), aimed at boosting lagging per- The fiscal 2017 total may have been some- marquee projects, necessitating some addi- formance, would have kept the distribution what elevated by a land acquisition, not tional Harvard borrowing in the future. The under pressure in succeeding years, too, ac- otherwise described: at year-end fiscal 2017, capital campaign concludes next June 30, so cording to the formula the University uses. Harvard held $968 million of land, up from the future flow of current-use gifts merits Accordingly, the Corporation has decided to adopt a “collar” for the next three fiscal years: it has told schools to plan for per-unit IN THIS ISSUE distributions to rise between 2.5 percent and 4.5 percent annually, starting with 2.5 16 Harvard Portrait 21 Yesterday’s News percent for 2019 (beginning July 1). That 17 Taxing Matters 22 The Undergraduate gives deans some budget guidance, while 18 “Cheaper, Faster, Better” 23 Brevia maintaining a relatively conservative pos- 19 University People 24 With Our Thanks ture during Harvard’s presidential transi- 20 Samuel Huntington, Prophet 25 Sports tion, the changes at HMC, and an uncer- 20 News Briefs tain economic and political environment.

Photographs © Peter Vanderwarker. Aerial photograph courtesy of Lee Kennedy & Co. Harvard Magazine 15

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal (More details are available at harvardmag. HARVARD PORTRAIT com/fas-octmtg-17. Endowment distributions are explained at harvardmag.com/ distribution-16.) A substantial unknown, revealed after the financial report was released in late October, is U.S. tax policy—including, for the first time, a proposed excise levy on endowment income (see “Taxing Matters,” facing page). Even before that news, Harvard’s financial leaders were cautioning the community not to expect the 5 percent to 6 percent revenue growth of the past two years to continue. Both economic growth (which has lasted for an unusually long time, with unusually low interest rates and robust financial markets) and the capital campaign are long in the tooth. Continuing and executive education and current-use giving are sensitive to economic conditions and to fundraising fatigue. A weaker economy would increase families’ need for financial aid, driving up those costs. And all that construction drives higher campus operating costs and depreciation, both of which are already rising. Given those factors, vice president for finance Thomas J. Hollister (the University’s chief financial officer) and University treasurer Paul J. Finnegan, used their message in the Thomas J. Megan Sniffin-Marinoff annual report to look past Hollister the bounty to the concerns that come natu- “Want to see some cool stuff?” asks University archivist Megan Sniffin-Marinoff rally to their species. The fiscal 2017 operat- with an expectant grin, reaching for a library cart loaded with treasures from the vault. ing surplus, they stressed, “may represent In one folder, a plaintive letter from then-undergraduate John Hancock to his sister in a high-water mark for the foreseeable fu- 1754 (“I wish you would spend one hour in writing to me…”); in another, pictured ture,” given revenue constraints through- above, an 1837 “class book” in which senior Henry David Thoreau reflects on his out higher education. The entire sector’s Harvard career (“those hours that should have been devoted to study have been spent business model, they maintained, “is under scouring the woods…”). There’s W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1895 doctoral dissertation, with his enormous pressure,” because a half-century PAIGE BROWN/COURTESY TUFTS MEDICAL CENTER handwritten corrections; a 1980s Lampoon letter jacket; a 1963 interview request to of growth (in enrollments, federal research Malcolm X from journalist Theodore White ’38. Harvard archivist since 2004, Sniffin- funding, and endowment-fueled investment Marinoff grew up on Long Island and studied journalism at Boston University; working income) has run its course. “Higher educa- at local newspapers afterward, she found herself a researcher more than a reporter. tion has matured as a industry….The indus- A master’s at NYU—in history, with a secondary focus on archives—led to a job at try is showing financial strain, even in these NYU’s archives. Stints at Simmons College and MIT followed, then the deputy direc- comparatively healthy economic times”— torship at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library, and, finally, the post at Harvard. Its vast ar- and even with the welcome complement of chives are the oldest of their kind in the country. She and her staff are finishing a a supernova capital campaign that has re- project to digitize and catalog half a million colonial-period records; soon they’ll tack- corded more than $8 billion in pledges and le the nineteenth century. Along the way, they’re finding long-buried stories of women receipts. and people of color indirectly documented in centuries-old diaries, letters, and ledgers. “Our deans and administrative staff are “We spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to ‘document Harvard,’” says first focused on mission excellence,” they Sniffin-Marinoff. One important answer: unearthing the hidden layers of a campus—and continued, “but they are also increasingly fo- a country—“that was always more complex than it seemed.” vlydialyle gibson cused on cost containment and newer sources of mission-related revenues.…We raise this

16 January - February 2018 Photograph by Stu Rosner

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 not as a matter of discouragement, but sim- (making those students liable for cash taxes long sought to mandate a minimum an- ply to signal to the University’s many friends, on imputed income; Harvard hasn’t yet been nual distribution, and Representative Tom supporters, alumni, faculty, students and able to determine if the precise language Reed (New York) has more recently sought staff that the University, and its schools and would affect its graduate students); and to mandate that 25 percent of endowment units, will need to further adjust to the envi- • ending the tax-exempt status of bonds income be spent on financial aid. That the ronment, change, and embrance new ways of routinely issued by universities, and other current proposal would target private in- extending Harvard’s excellence in the future.” nonprofit institutions, to fund buildings stitutions more or less follows: that’s where A detailed report appears at harvardmag. and construction projects (effectively rais- the money is; and recent polls indicate com/budget-17. vjohn s. rosenberg ing their costs). wide disaffection toward higher education Whatever their collective implications, if among Republican-leaning voters. Of note, enacted, for U.S. higher education and the The Chronicle of Higher Education’s most recent skills of future citizens, a separate provi- tally of selective colleges whose students in- Taxing Matters sion—to impose a 1.4 percent excise tax cur the least federal loan debt to pay for their The federal tax legislation being on the endowment income of several doz- educations overlaps almost exactly with the considered in Congress as of press time— en private colleges and universities—has list of those highly endowed institutions. drafted by Republicans without consulting prompted the greatest concern at Harvard. In Harvard’s fiscal year ended June 30, 2017, Democrats, and advanced without benefit It represents the first time a proposal to tax funds distributed from the endowment to of hearings—contains a lot of surprises for endowments has advanced this far; if en- support the academic enterprise totaled $1.8 higher education. At least one version of the acted, it would set a precedent for taxing billion, or 36 percent of revenue. Were the bills proposed: endowments more heavily. excise tax in effect, the University’s bill that • ending deductions for interest on stu- It is no surprise that the tax-bill authors year would have been about $40 million (see dent loans (which would affect the over- would seek any possible, politically pal- the calculations at harvardmag.com/endow- whelming majority of students who do not atable sources to offset the multi-trillion- ment-tax-17): slightly less than 1 percent of attend well-endowed institutions with dollar losses of revenue accompanying their revenue. Because the Corporation aims, over need-blind admissions that can extend aid proposed tax cuts (they seek to contain the time, to distribute about 5 percent of the en- for students’ full financial need); net 10-year cost to $1.5 trillion). Nor is their dowment’s value each year to support the • eliminating a tax-code provision many interest in tapping endowment wealth University’s operations, that tax payment institutions rely on to aid graduate students news: Senator Charles Grassley (Iowa) has has the same effect as wiping out nearly $1

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Harvard Magazine 17

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal billion of endowment value. to higher education for students of dependent excellence would be un- But the fiscal 2017 figure is based on a year all economic backgrounds who will surprising were it proposed by pro- of mediocre investment results; Harvard shape our future. gressives….Coming from Republicans, Management Company’s 8.1 percent return, Philosophically, the proposed excise tax it is acutely discouraging. net of expenses, yielded investment gains of on private institutions’ endowments ap- A Realpolitik assessment came from New $2.7 billion to $3.0 billion (depending on how pears at odds with conservative principles. York Times columnist David Brooks, who ob- the assets are counted). Had the University Republicans have, traditionally, sought to reserved, “This is the beginning of the full- matched peer institutions’ returns (MIT, 14.3 strain public spending (and many states with bore Republican assault on the private percent; Stanford, 13.1 percent; Princeton, Republican governors and legislatures have universities, which are seen as the power 12.5 percent; Yale, 11.3 percent), the new levy cut back public universities’ budgets consid- centers of blue America—rich, money- would have been $60 million to $70 million. erably during the past decade), and to en- hoarding institutions that widen inequal- This is real money—and the sums should courage the private sector. In this instance, ity and house radical left-wing ideologies.” grow if endowments grow, as they are in- obviously, the search for revenue leads to If Brooks is correct, the tax proposal, tended to. (And of course there is a down- proposed taxation of private, or at least non- whether enacted now or postponed for a side: Yale’s David Swensen, the leading light profit, institutions. Writing inThe Washing- future day, has two likely consequences: among university endowment managers, has ton Post, columnist George F. Will lamented: • fuller employment, at least for universi- recently talked about lowering expectations Time was, conservatism’s central ar- ties’ public-affairs staffers in Washington, for future returns to 5 percent or so; Harvard gument for limiting government was D.C.; and is typical in projecting long-term returns of to defend these institutions from be- • a strong incentive for higher-education 8 percent. If downbeat predictions come to ing starved of resources and functions institutions to rely more heavily on under- pass, endowment-dependent universities by government. Abandonment of this graduate tuition and fees, their best remain- will be severely squeezed, and a new excise argument is apparent in the vandal- ing source of unrestricted funds—presum- tax would exacerbate the resulting trauma.) ism that Republicans are mounting ably the exact opposite of the effect sought The Faculty of Arts and Sciences—which against universities’ endowments. by politicians who see endowments as a way doles out the undergraduate aid that mem- This raid against little platoons of in- to lower college costs. vj.s.r bers of Congress talk about, to the tune of $180 million in fiscal 2017 much( of that from endowed sources) relied on endowment dis- priorities for the school, focusing on the eco- tributions for 52 percent of its revenue that “Cheaper, Faster, nomic challenges facing medicine, from de- year. Harvard Medical School, the source veloping affordable treatments for patients of so much high-impact research, derived Better” to ensuring broad access to medical educa- only 28 percent of its fiscal 2017 revenue from Even as biomedical science is poised to tion—despite annual costs nearing $90,000 the endowment—but its mission has been deliver therapies and cures for countless per student. In meeting these challenges, he constrained by continuing, and rising, op- diseases, “There has never been a greater envisions a “transformation of the academic erating deficits (reaching $44 million, or 7 disconnect between the remarkable op- medical center into a vehicle that is more ef- percent of revenue, that year). No doubt, it portunities” to achieve those goals “and the fective at delivering treatments.” Realizing would love to shore up its finances and se- paucity of resources,” declared George Dal- that vision entails reorganizing the teaching cure its academic work with substantially ey, dean of Harvard Medical School (HMS), and research enterprise, revitalizing HMS’s more endowment income. Note to billion- in a November interview. Approaching his campus, and expanding the ranks of schol- aires: this is a naming opportunity—but first decanal anniversary, he discussed his arship-supported physician-scientists in its fundraisers must now add to their M.D.-Ph.D. program. pitch, “Please disregard pending “Harvard Medical School has always tax measures.” been at the cutting edge of fundamental Reponding to the proposed tax, discovery research,” said Daley, who has President Drew Faust said: himself made major contributions to the Harvard’s endowment is what understanding of blood cancers and the fuels our excellence, afford- use of stem-cell therapies (see harvard- ability for students of mod- mag.com/specialized-stemcells-08). At est means, our commitment to the same time, “The pharmaceutical in- discovery, and our impact in dustry has been remarkably effective at the world. This measure would delivering drugs: small molecules, an- disadvantage universities in tibodies, gene vectors, and now, at the the charitable sector, and—in vanguard, engineered cells. But the lat- targeting universities—weak- est immunotherapy for cancer, the CAR en the nation’s strongest con- T cell [personalized Chimeric Antigen tributors to medical cures, Receptor therapy that stimulates a pa- economic innovation, job cre- George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard ation, scholarship, and access Medical School

18 January - February 2018 Photograph by Stu Rosner

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 tient’s own immune system], is going to be priced at nearly half a million dollars a pa- New Zealander Ja- tient.” If other innovations come with similar University People mie Beaton ’17, S.M. price tags, he pointed out, this will quickly ’16 (applied math “bankrupt the system.” The drug-develop- Freshman Dean Graduates and economics); ment and -approval pipeline—with time- Six months after celebrating his fiftieth Zimbabwean Terrens Muradzikwa ’18, lines of 10 to 15 years and costs as high as College reunion (Commencement Con- of Dunster House and Mutare (econom- $1.5 billion per drug—needs to operate much fetti, July-August 2017, page 19), dean of ics); and Trinidadian Mandela Patrick more rapidly, with significantly lower asso- freshmen Thomas A. Dingman said he ’18, of Currier House and San Fernando ciated expenses, he said. “So we need to not will step down next June. Dean of the (computer science). Harvard’s sole Mar- only be innovative, but we need to be much College Rakesh Khurana made the an- shall Scholar is Elizabeth Keto, of Quincy more efficient: cheaper, faster, and better.” nouncement on Novem- House and Chevy Chase, Maryland (his- HMS’s role, he continued, is to move fun- ber 16, lauding Dingman tory of art and architecture); she plans to damental discoveries forward to the point for 45 years of Harvard study at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where the biopharmaceutical industry rec- service, culminating in in London. ognizes their value, and invests in them. his current responsibili- “Where we have a common mission”—to ties, which he assumed Erasmus Honorand develop therapies that will relieve suffering SNIBBE/HPAC KRIS in 2005, and citing “his Michèle Lamont, Gold- in patients—“that purpose drives us to work Thomas A. integrity, the calming man professor of Europe- together,” he said. In a recent survey, three- Dingman presence that he brings an studies and professor quarters of the school’s faculty members said to all situations, and the passion he has of sociology and of Afri- they are involved in research that could lead for helping students make the transi- can and African Ameri-

JON CHASE/HPAC JON to new therapies. The primary roadblock tion from home and high school” to their can studies, has been Michèle they identified was lack of funding. new Crimson community. Dingman has awarded the 2017 Eras- Lamont That is where Daley comes in. “When I overseen initiatives like the Convocation mus Prize, accompanied started my lab,” in the early 1990s, he re- ceremony, the freshman discussion ses- by a €150,000 honorarium. Her research called, “a senior mentor whispered in my sions on making life choices, and the pre- has probed the connections between in- ear, ‘If you control your funding, you con- orientation program being designed for equality and social exclusion and how trol your future.’ And as a nascent dean, I’m first-generation and low-income students stigmatized groups preserve their dignity. feeling the same way. If I can provide this entering Harvard this coming August. community with a wealth of resources that Dingman told The Harvard Crimson that he Morehouse Men it deserves”—he currently spends a third looks forward to more family and travel David A. Thomas, Fitz of his time fundraising—“I will be able to time, but he has also agreed to serve as an hugh professor of busi- make the community that much more effec- adviser to Khurana, in part to help raise ness administration, tive.” That is true whether faculty members funds to support the student experience. and the former dean work with industry, or independently tackle of Georgetown’s Mc- a rare disease that could never attract com- UK-Bound Donough School of Busi- COLLEGE MOOREHOUSE mercial interest. HMS “will stay focused on Four seniors have been awarded Rhodes ness, has been appointed David A. Thomas the mission of advancing human knowledge, Scholarships for study at Oxford Univer- president of Morehouse relieving suffering by developing new treat- sity: Tania N. Fabo, of Quincy House and College. He succeeds John Silvanus Wil- ments,” Daley asserted. “If we are true to Saugus, Massachusetts (a human devel- son Jr., M.T.S. ’81, Ed.M. ’82, Ed.D. ’85 that mission, success will come on all an- opment and regenerative biology concen- (profiled in “Morehouse Man, Redux,” gles”—including, ideally, “a stream of licens- trator); Harold Xavier Gonzales, of Win- November-December 2013, page 72). ing and royalty revenues that should sustain throp House and Houston (mathematics); the research enterprise into the future.” Samarth Gupta, of Lowell House and Prize Poet Within HMS, being effective and efficient Acton, Massachusetts (economics); and Frank Bidart, A.M. ’67, won the National means rethinking how fields are organized. Alan Yang, of Quincy House and Dresh- Book Award in poetry for his collection, “Academic departments arose because of er, Pennsylvania (molecular and cellular Half-Light. Complete coverage of Harvard their responsibility for educating medical biology). In addition, three Harvardians affiliates who were finalists appears at students,” Daley explained. Today, “Not all have won international Rhodes awards: harvardmag.com/natlbk-17. of them faithfully capture the dominant and emerging intellectual trends,” so a faculty- tive for pedagogical purposes, research may computational, “dry labs” for data scientists. led reevaluation of departmental structures be better organized around shared resourc- The tools of discovery are available, Daley and goals is under way. The rapidly expand- es, added the dean, such as expensive tech- continued, but “what we could do better is to ing fields of microbiology and immunobiol- nologies like a new center for cryo-electron organize those tools collectively around ther- ogy, for example, will become separate de- microscopy, which allows scientists to view apeutics-development programs.” He has con- partments; other fields will be consolidated. individual molecules at near atomic resolu- vened a faculty task force, chaired by Sabbagh And even though departments remain effec- tion, and conversions of existing space to professor of systems biology Timothy Mitchi-

Harvard Magazine 19

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal son and professor of biological chemistry and ing his public role. He is working with MIT News Briefs molecular pharmacology Nathaniel Gray, to and Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker consider “innovative strategies for thinking ’79—a former health-insurance CEO who Final Steps on Final Clubs? about where therapeutics development will “understands the medical marketplace”—on At the November 7 Faculty of Arts and be 10 and 20 years from now. Harvard Medical strategies for making the state friendly for Sciences (FAS) meeting, the faculty voted on School has to be a place that skates to where data-science entrepreneurs. And he recently a measure pertain- the puck is going to be,” he said. coauthored an article in The New England Jour- ing to final clubs, BREAKING NEWS Extending his analogy, his push to dou- nal of Medicine with dean of medical educa- fraternities, and At the December 5 ble, to 24, the number of fully funded phy- tion Edward Hundert, together with their sororities (unrec- faculty meeting, sician-scientists in the M.D.-Ph.D. program, counterparts at Johns Hopkins and Stanford, ognized single- President Faust run jointly with MIT, might be considered on the pitfalls of merit-based financial aid, gender social or- announced that she a very efficient hat trick. It is a program he which can have the perverse effect of mov- ganizations, or and the Corporation knows well (having been through it himself), ing scarce scholarship funds from students USGSOs, that do have adopted the May attracting “some of the most ambitious and with more financial need to those with less. not conform to the 2016 social-club creative students,” who work at the intersec- He is energized by the conviction that College’s require- sanctions. For a tion of discovery and clinical practice and are “biomedicine is likely to be, alongside re- ments for rec- preliminary report, see “disproportionately engaged in translational newable energy, one of the two great tech- ognized student harvardmag.com/ medicine.” The move, by slightly altering the nological revolutions of the next 50 years.” groups and clubs: implementation-17; composition of each incoming 165-member Public-private partnerships have made U.S. nondiscriminato- a full report will appear medical school class, will simultaneously en- biomedicine the envy of the globe, he said— ry selection pro- in the next issue of hance HMS’s effectiveness as a research insti- “and there is no community on earth that cesses, open mem- Harvard Magazine. tute, expand student access to medical educa- rivals Cambridge and Boston’s density and bership, and local tion, and support a renewed commitment to strength” in that area. “As dean, I want to governance). diversifying the pipeline of faculty members, capitalize on that to make us even more effec- In response to the sanctions for USGSO students, and scientific trainees. tive. We have got the talent to do it. We have student members unveiled in May 2016 by By all accounts, the new dean is embrac- a responsibility to deliver.” vjonathan shaw dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana,

Samuel Huntington, Prophet

Even by the relaxed standards of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences when the invevitable frus- (FAS), the interval between the death of Weatherhead University trations with reforms Professor Samuel Huntington (in late 2008) and the presentation would lead to calls for au- of the memorial minute on his life and services (at the November thoritarian efficiency.” 7 faculty meeting) was extraordinarily long. But it proved fruitful Turning to the book for for the content of the memorial, prepared by Malkin research which Huntington is per- professor of public policy Robert Putnam, Geyser University Pro- haps most widely known, fessor emeritus Henry Rosovsky, and Kaneb professor of national the memorialists put The security and military affairs Stephen Rosen, who presented it. Clash of Civilizations and the “American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony was perhaps his Remaking of World Order most original work,” the trio noted. “The observation that the into what they regard as its United States was defined not by blood but by a set of political proper context. The title, principles is commonplace. Huntington pointed out that every they noted, was “chosen by Samuel Huntington 50 years or so, American society was aroused by a renewed the publisher of the article commitment to the principles of liberty and equality and, in the that gave rise to the book and [was] not one that he particularly grip of what he called ‘creedal passion,’ Americans would attack liked.” Though today the work is often put to partisan purposes— the government by demanding that it actually live up to those viewed as a call for, or prediction of, tribal strife—the writers principles. Huntington noted these periods of passion: the Rev- maintained that “The core of the argument is that you cannot olution, the Jacksonian era, the anti-slavery movement of the understand what people want until you understand who they think 1850s, and the first wave of feminism and the call for direct de- they are. Religious beliefs shape identity but do not determine mocracy…at the turn of the twentieth century. Starting in the interests, much less behavior. Civilizations do not inevitably 1950s and contining into the 1960s, there were the civil rights clash.…If the events of 9/11 and after led others to see a world movement and the second wave of women’s liberation. On the locked in wars among civilizations, this was not Huntington’s con- basis of this cyclical understanding of American politics, in 1991 clusion. In that book and in his final years he was a strong advocate Huntington presciently predicted another wave of creedal pas- of international multiculturalism, a policy of live and let live and sion in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century, non-intervention in the ways of life of other cultures.” vj.s.r.

20 January - February 2018 Photograph by Jon Chase/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 and a subsequent proposal that future students be prohibited outright from joining such organizations, Gordon McKay profes- Yesterday’s News sor of computer science Harry Lewis and From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine like-minded colleagues advanced a motion that would proscribe either measure. They cited students’ right of free association in 1923 The Bulletin reports that Ar- 1963 Beginning in September, the Busi- legal activities, and objected both to fea- chibald MacLeish, LL.B. ’19, Alan Rinehart ness School announces, women may apply tures of the sanctions and to devolving de- ’21, and Roy E. Larsen ’21 are, respec- directly to its two-year M.B.A. program. cisions on policies governing student life— tively, education editor, associate editor, The one-year, non-degree Harvard-Rad- matters they argue are subject to faculty and circulation manager of a new maga- cliffe Program in Business Administration legislation—to administrators. When put zine due to appear February 24—Time. (previously required for any woman seek- to a vote, though, the motion went down, ing to join the M.B.A. program in the sec- 130 to 90—with about 25 percent of eligible 1928 Both Widener and the Harvard ond year) will be terminated. FAS members weighing in. An Undergradu- Union Library make special efforts to ate Council survey of students (not adjust- stock those books needed by undergrad- 1968 Signs of the times: Maharishi Ma- ed for the response rate) showed 61 percent uates during the College’s first “reading hesh Yogi packs both Sanders Theatre opposed to the sanctions on USGSO mem- period.” and—via public address system—Lowell bers. A detailed report is available at har- Lecture Hall; the required reading list for vardmag.com/fas-novmtg-2017. 1948 President Conant’s annual report History 144b (“England in the Twentieth What USGSO policies would finally be suggests decreasing University enrollment Century”) includes Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely put in place, however, remained unresolved. from its present 12,500 to its pre-war av- Hearts Club Band. The final report of a committee on the mat- erage, roughly 8,000, to avoid major inter, co-chaired by Khurana, laid out three creases in physical plant and staff and dras- 1978 The Blizzard of ’78 forces the options, rather than settling on one: the tic changes in teaching methods. University to close during full term-time sanctions regime (effective for the freshmen for perhaps the first time in its history. who enrolled this year, but not being imple- 1958 The University will open its first Snow sculptures rise around the Yard, and mented while deliberations continue); the dormitory for women graduate so many celebrants take to the roads on prohibition on membership (which would students in the fall. The cross-country skis that snow- presumably take effect for freshmen enroll- building at 1595 Mass. removal efforts are imped- ing next August); or some third course of Ave. will accommo- ed, and Cambridge is- action, possibly relying on education and date 80 students. sues a ban on skiing. suasion, intended to make participating in gender-exclusive social clubs unattractive. For a discussion, see harvardmag.com/ fasfractures-17. vj.s.r. Preventing Preprofessionalism At the same November FAS meeting, dean of undergraduate education Jay Harris introduced a proposal that would limit how many course credits undergraduates could take from other Harvard faculties, and have count toward the bachelor’s degree: eight out of 128. (Students would be free to take as many additional courses, uncredited, as they wished, and, as before, can still take an unlimited number of credits earned in courses offered by MIT.) There would be one exception to the eight-credit limit: any cross-registered courses that a department counts toward concentration credit would not count toward the new limit. This issue has risen in importance as barriers to

Illustration by Mark Steele

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal cross-registration have fallen; from the fall ies around preprofessional education. The College? The clearly preprofessional MIT of 2013 to last spring, the number of cross- risk is spelled out, too: the concentrations course “Corporate Financial Accounting”— registrations tripled, to nearly 300. with the largest numbers of cross-regis- an obviously useful bit of learning for the The rationale, explained in a handout, trants are those most professionally ori- (many) new graduates who still head off to is straightforward: to safeguard “the in- ented: economics, government, computer Wall Street or consulting. tegrity of the College’s liberal arts and sci- science, and social studies. And the most The proposal was adopted at the FAS meet- ences degree” by posting some boundar- popular option for enrollment outside the ing on December 5. vj.s.r.

THE UNDERGRADUATE Teaching Hip-Hop in China by tawanda mulalu

e flew into Hangzhou and harshly competitive. When they asked through pop culture, the Internet, and their with swampy armpits me about Harvard, I said that it is perverse- own Harvard aspirations. What they didn’t and jet-lagged eyes. Each ly exam-focused, somewhat interested in know is that it is also home to a deep and of us had our own class- students’ personal thoughts, and harshly historic black struggle and the rugged art Wroom dreamscapes, with syllabus titles like competitive.) We could teach anything we born from it. Going on a fast-forward ride “(Post)human Creativity: Art in the Digi- wanted. I was determined to teach my four through old school hip-hop to the current tal Age” and “Dances With Wolves: Animal classes, of 15 students each, at Hangzhou day, from Eric B. and Rakim to Nas to Kanye Psychology and Human Body Language.” No. 2 High School, how to rap. West to Kendrick Lamar, the class would The conceit of the Harvard Seminars for My class, “Africa, America; Hip-Hop, consider the political and cultural lessons Young Leaders in China (HSYLC) is that Poetry,” would be about black words from of these artists, and compare them to my the spirit of American liberal-arts educa- home and from here. “Home” is Botswana, students’ experiences growing up in China. tion can open up the minds of Chinese teens, but it would have been sinful to not teach One would assume, or rather one would long beaten stiff by a soul-sucking education Song of Lawino, the Ugandan epic poem whose hope, that the person teaching this semi- system. (Later, when I asked my kids about narrator fights to prove to her husband nar would be entirely at home in the fact Chinese high school, they told me that it is that their culture is just as meaningful as of his skin. I am not. I find the fact of it be- perversely exam-focused, not particularly that of their colonial oppressors. “Here” is musing. I have trouble reconciling the way interested in students’ personal thoughts, America, which the kids knew principally the world is definitionally absolute in what my blackness must mean, with the colorlessness of my writing. Hav- ing denied myself my native language, Setswana, by stubbornly gliding through the Western can- on as a teenager, I now cannot use the tones and textures of my forefa- thers’ speech. Having being denied, by virtue of being a foreigner, the same black experience as African Americans, I also cannot quite access the power of their own twists and turns of the English language. I marvel at the Pan-African poetry of some of my freedom-fighter-aspir- ing friends back home, thick with metaphors and sounds that I cannot find within my heart to try. My own attempts at it are clumsy approxi- mations of experiences that I am barely in touch with, despite having lived in the same continent in

22 January - February 2018 Photograph courtesy of Tawanda Mulalu

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MacArthurs Three elect of the University of Virginia, and Liz- Mehra Family professor of South Asian abeth Cohen, who is stepping down at the studies and professor of history Sunil Brevia Radcliffe Institute to resume teaching. Amrith has been awarded a no-strings- The advisory committees and channels to attached, $625,000 MacArthur Founda- forward ideas or nominations are detailed tion fellowship. Landscape architect at harvardmag.com/gseri-searches-17. Kate Orff, M.L.A. ’97, and Damon Rich, a 2007 Loeb Fellow at the Real-Estate Roundup Graduate School of Design, were Harvard has leased the entire also awarded fellowships. Details 61,000-square-foot property at are available at harvardmag.com/ 784 Memorial Drive—a land- macarthurs-17. mark building once occupied by Polaroid—to house information Diversifying Pre-orientation technology services staff mem- The freshman dean’s office is com- bers.…Cambridge City Council pleting work on a new pre-orien- has voted to approve MIT’s enor- tation program, planned to accom- mous redevelopment of a 14-acre modate up to 100 matriculants in site adjacent to Kendall Square, August, aimed particularly at stu- in which it has made an initial dents who are the first generation $750-million investment. After in their family to attend college, building new quarters for the fed- come from lower-income back- eral Volpe Transportation Systems grounds, or attended high schools Center, the institute plans to erect whose graduates are “typically un- 1,400 units of housing, hundreds of derrepresented in the Ivy League.” THE MARSHAL MOVES ON. Jackie graduate-student beds, and office Details are expected this winter; the con- O’Neill, who as University Marshal and laboratory buildings, plus street-level tent is likely to cover the transition from maintained timely order during retail and public spaces.…The renewal of home to college, making the most of the Commencement Exercises for the past Adams House, scheduled to follow the 14 years, retired at the end of Decem- College’s culture (by attending office ber. The rest of the time, the marshal two-year renovation of Lowell House, hours and building academic relationships welcomes international visitors to now under way, may be conducted over with professors, and so on), and navigat- Harvard: heads of state, academic a three-year span; given Adams’s multi- delegations, and more (847 visitors ing campus resources. For more on such from 52 countries in the most recent building structure, the College envisions programs, see “Mastering the ‘Hidden year). Her prior Harvard service, the work proceeding in stages—with the Curriculum’” (November-December 2017, begun in 1976, spanned roles in result that some students may remain in page 18). government relations, as staff director residence throughout, rather than all de- for the president and provost, and involvement in the University’s camping to swing spaces. On Other Campuses presence in Allston. By stepping down Three Yale scholars, reporting in Nature, now, O’Neill enables a successor to Nota Bene found that their campus’s pilot carbon- make ready for the next Harvard HBX unbundles. The Business School’s president’s inaugural hoopla—perhaps pricing scheme had been effective in re- next October; but it means that she three-course online Credential of Readi- ducing energy use; the program has now will not receive earned accolades for ness (CORe) program has been separated been extended to more than 250 buildings, conducting the proceedings on May 24, into three eight-week online certificate the last Commencement at which which account for nearly 70 percent of car- Drew Faust will preside and be programs (in business analytics, econom- bon dioxide emissions.…Kenneth Griffin applauded. Margot Gill, the Faculty of ics, and financial accounting), amplifying ’89, whose $150-million gift, principally for Arts and Sciences’ administrative dean opportunities to attract students. Each undergraduate financial aid, boosted the for international affairs, will serve as costs $1,500. interim marshal through June 2019. Faculty of Arts and Sciences early in the current capital campaign (see harvardmag. Social investing. The University’s re- com/aid-14), has now given $125 million to level, health-sciences institution, has an- tirement plan investment commit- the University of Chicago, where he is a nounced a $5-billion capital campaign— tee, responding to requests from faculty trustee, to underwrite faculty positions, with $3 billion already committed. members and others, is surveying plan research, and financial aid in economics. participants to determine whether they Separately, Chicago’s Booth School of Decanal Duo would like fund options incorporating Business announced a $75-million gift from President Drew Faust has initiated search- social criteria (such as labor practice, en- two of its M.B.A. alumni.…The University es for successors to Graduate School of vironmental impact, etc.)—and if so, of of California, San Francisco, a graduate- Education dean James E. Ryan, president- what sorts.

Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell Harvard Magazine 23

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal which Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart. police. “I personally haven’t experienced the was black, and one of the police officers was Meanwhile, in America, the soul and harsh- kind of life that a lot of the rappers we will black, so surely it had nothing to do with ness of its rappers move me with tales of their be studying have had to live through,” I ex- my skin? If I were sure that it did, then may- own black lives and their questioning of the plained to my students last summer, “so I’m be my own rapping would be as angry, as white political structures that dehumanize trying to be careful when talking about their righteous, as honest as Kendrick’s...wouldn’t them. Kendrick Lamar, in the unofficial but struggles. I want us to respect their stories, it? Our words would be the same and we de facto theme song of the Black Lives Matter especially because we haven’t lived the same would be the same. In the same song, Kend- movement, “Alright,” shouts out “and we hate lives they have.” rick chants, “we gon’ be alright, we gon’ be alright” po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho.” While Then, one cold afternoon this fall after the and I go wild at every party that I hear it at teaching this song, I thought of my mother’s China trip, the Harvard Advocate building was because I am alive, I am all right, and he and I warnings to watch out for the American po- suddenly raided by a group of campus po- are still not the same; so it is easier for me to lice as I prepared to come here for college. lice officers—guns pointed toward our three believe that we, and all black people, will be The campus police don’t bother me because bodies, mine and two other students’—who alright. And now I cannot help but wonder. I am a Harvard student, so I’d never worried told us to put our hands up in the air and much about what she said. After all, the inter- our faces against the wall. The back door While teaching it, I considered my ests of the campus police lie primarily in the was broken. A back window opened clean class more of a creative-writing seminar safety of its students. A lot of black Ameri- and full. The building a drunken post-par- than a class about politics, and so I assigned cans, and thus a lot of black rappers, do not ty mess. They worried that maybe there’d poetry and rap-composition homework in- feel that their interests align with those of the been a robbery. Of the three of us, only I stead of essays. I was curious to see where this would take my kids. Given that they were Chinese and neither African nor Af- With Our Thanks rican American, could they avoid the tension I felt, working as a colourless artist in It is our privilege to salute four outstanding contributors to Har- a medium of black art? Would they be able vard Magazine for their work on our readers’ behalf during 2017, and to bypass all this and just...write? I would and to confer on each a $1,000 honorarium. remind them before the end of class, snap-

Michael Zuckerman ’10, J.D. ’17—past president of the Harvard BROWN LESLIE ping my fingers, “One. Two. Three. Four. Law Review, now clerking for a federal judge in Ohio—combines ana- Michael One. Two. Three. Four. Never forget the lytical rigor with unusually fluid prose. We were fortunate to publish Zuckerman rhythm when you’re rapping and writing “Criminal Injustice” (September-October), his penetrating feature on public-interest down your lyrics. Always keep to the beat.” lawyer Alec Karakatsanis, J.D. ’08, and are proud to award him the McCord Writing This is good advice for any rapper. It is also Prize, honoring David T.W. McCord ’21, A.M. ’22, L.H.D. ’56, and his advice that I rarely follow. With my own rap- legendary prose and verse, composed for these pages and the Harvard ping, I feel as if I’m simply mouthing abstract College Fund. We recognized Zuckerman previously, with the Smith- whispers that occasionally match a beat. It is Weld Prize for 2014—a testament to his broad, deep strengths. difficult for me to follow the rhythm. All the Richard D. Kahlenberg ’85, J.D. ’89, a senior fellow at The Century longs and shorts confuse me and my mouth Foundation, is recognized nationwide for comprehensive analyses of gets filled with things I can’t understand,

COURTESY OF RICHARD KAHLENBERG D. affirmative action, admissions, and equity in higher education. “Har- cannot taste properly. My sense of rhythm Richard D. vard’s Class Gap” (May-June) combined that expertise with personal feels so separate from the flow of my words Kahlenberg insight in a feature strongly grounded in the University today. We that composing just four lines of rap can take honor his article with the Smith-Weld Prize (in memory of A. Calvert Smith ’14, a more than an hour. I fumble. I scratch out former secretary to the governing boards and executive assistant to failed verses in heavy black ink. I lisp. And President James Bryant Conant, and of Philip S. Weld ’36, a former I do not know how to engage the colorless- president of the magazine), which highlights thought-provoking writ- ness of my black experience with the crisp, ing about Harvard. dark textures of the great African poets and Davide Bonazzi provided exceptionally thoughtful, engaging illustra- American rappers. Yet I still tried to rap and tions to accompany “The Watchers” (January-February), a feature I still tried to teach rap. It was the closest I

on threats to privacy in the digital era—an unusually challenging as- COURTESY OF BONAZZI DAVIDE felt I was going to get to understanding the signment that required making tangible the abstract, Davide puzzle of my blackness. I loved my students, virtual concepts being reported. And the portfolio of Bonazzi their confusions and their enthusiasms. The images of refugees, featured in “In Flight” (January- lessons continued, and so did the teaching. February)—a sampling of the work of Warsaw-based documentary The final exam was an in-class perfor- photographer Maciek Nabrdalik, then resident as a Nieman Founda- mance of a piece of each student’s own cre- tion fellow—remains a haunting record of a continuing humanitarian ation. One shy girl who barely said a word tragedy. It is a special pleasure to work with such expert, consummate during class suddenly rapped aggressively WOJCIECH GRZEDZINSKI Maciek professionals, and to recognize their extraordinary craftsmanship. to a very bass-heavy trap beat. One boy who Nabrdalik vThe Editors had been the only one tapping his feet to the music I played performed a set of vers-

24 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 es that might as well get a professional re- Three. Four. One of the other seminar lead- impressed by my kids’ work. But I remained lease. Some of the kids stumbled over their ers started beat-boxing while we continued as confused about black words as ever, and rhythm; some decided not to bother with walking, and I joined him with my rapping. now that I am back at Harvard, my thoughts following a rhythm at all. I was indiscrimi- My students began to record a video and about this aren’t much clearer. I have tem- nately amazed by each of them, regardless of we drew a small crowd. We kept walking porarily suspended actual lyric-writing in a the quality of their writing. A bunch of Chi- and rapping, dancing, splaying black words small effort to get my academic life together, nese students with absolutely no rap experi- all over this place far from where they were though I still skip from one part of the Yard ence, with second-language English ability, born. A few days later, I watched that video to another, muttering freestyles to myself, absolutely killed it. In return, I showed them again and again as Hangzhou grew smaller between classes. If not too many people a little bit of my own rapping. Depending on by each second through the airplane win- are around, the words become audible and the individual class group, I did either a long- dow. I was confused by my pixellated self, I jump a little and wave my hands between form freestyle—letting the words rush out sailing through Hangzhou’s streets with the beats. I still do not have the rhythm per- of the top of my head, never really knowing a cool, lyrical breeziness. It didn’t feel like fectly together. I am still out of step. I am where the syllables would take me, but go- me—no, not exactly. still confused about my skin. I still speak ing on nevertheless—or I performed some The description for my class read, “Words these black words. pre-written songs with beats produced by define who we are. The better we are able a friend, another Harvard student. Normally to use them, the better we are able to un- Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow my favorite to perform is “Poet, Prophet,” a derstand ourselves, each other, and even the Tawanda Mulalu ’20 expects to fly back to Hang- nerdy little romp through metaphysics and world around us.” By the end, I was deeply zhou this summer.. literary spiritualism: Listen to the glimmers of the solar system Simmering murmurings stretching ’cross the universe, this is my vision SPORTS As a poet as a prophet with the lyrics, man I copped it Caught a wave, detected it, and to this beat I drop it During the very last class, though, I opted for “Trippin’,” the closest I’ve gotten so far to Not Our Year an explicit expression of my blackness. Typi- cally, right before the big beat drop I punch a black power first in the air and roar, “YOUNG A humbling defeat in The Game caps BLACK BROTHER FROM THE MOTHERLAND.” Harvard’s dreariest season in 17 years. I feel as if I perform another self when I rap, especially when I perform “Trippin.’” This rap persona is meant to be unabashed in the joy n the middle of the second quar- scooped up on the 19 by the Elis’ Malcolm and experience of his skin, intimate with the ter of the 134th playing of The Game, Dixon, who ran unimpeded into the end longs and shorts of the beats, and able to jump heavily favored Yale had just forged zone. When Alex Galland booted the ex- across the stage in wild freedom, entirely him- ahead of Harvard 7-3 on a nine-yard tra point, Yale led 14-3. The two touchdowns self. But I am not much of a performer. I am Itouchdown pass from always reminded—through a slither of light quarterback Kurt Rawl- or camera flash from the top of a balcony, a ings to wideout JP Shohfi. lyric that doesn’t quite fit comfortably in my Now freshman Crimson mouth, young black brother from the motherland— quarterback Jake Smith that I am playing at something that I don’t was looking to get those understand. Still, after each performance my points back. On second students clapped for me, impressed by my down and 17 from the play at black brazenness. Harvard 16, Smith ran an After the program ended, the Harvard option play to the left. Af- Seminar leaders and the Chinese teaching ter gaining a few yards, he fellows who’d helped us went on a little tried to pitch the ball to field trip through Hangzhou. We went to freshman halfback Aaron the famous market in Hefang Street and Shampklin—but threw happened upon some of our students. We it behind him. The ball walked around, bought green-tea ice creams bounded free and was and other treats. Then we heard a steady thump of large men pounding rice into mo- He’s gone! Against chi, heaving a huge wooden pestle back and Lafayette, junior Justice Shelton-Mosley scored forth between them while singing with deep on an 85-yard punt voices. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. return.

Photographs by Tim O’Meara/The Harvard Crimson Harvard Magazine 25

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal terback. The ferred to Atlanta’s Shepherd Center, which offense worked specializes in spinal-cord and brain-injury fitfully, and rehabilitation. The Harvard Varsity Club once foes began has responded by establishing the Benson to key on stel- M. Abercrombie ’21 Fund, which will help lar junior back defray the medical costs incurred by Aber- Charlie Booker crombie and by any future Harvard student- III, the running athlete who suffers a “severe or catastroph- game became ic” injury during College-approved practice predictable and or competition. (At season’s end the fund less productive, had raised $220,000.) gaining a pedes- The next two weeks seemed to promise trian 122.3 yards business as usual: a 45-28 victory over Brown per game in Ivy in the home opener, and a 41-2 thrashing clashes. (Book- of overmatched Georgetown at RFK Sta- er missed the dium in Washington, D.C. (see “A Rugged Yale game be- Start,” November-December 2017, page 38). cause of an in- Which is why it was a distinct shock the jury.) With the following week when the Crimson traveled rushing attack to Ithaca, New York, and came away with unable to keep a 17-14 loss to Cornell. In the Ivy preseason rival defenses poll, which had tabbed Harvard as co-fa- Happy return: Junior Adam Scott took the honest, opponents often were able to de- vorite with Princeton, the Big Red had been second-half kickoff against Lafayette for a vote double-coverage to the Crimson’s two picked to finish dead last. The early going touchdown. star wide receivers, juniors Justice Shelton- seemed to confirm that so-called wisdom. in 55 seconds set the tone for the game, in Mosley and Adam Scott. Shelton-Mosley, On Harvard’s first series, Jake Smith, mak- which the Elis cruised to a 24-3 victory. Only who had averaged six catches a game in 2016, ing his third straight start, took the Crim- a staunch effort by the Harvard defense kept averaged 3.6 in ’17. In ’16 Scott had averaged son 72 yards in six plays for a score. Harvard the margin from being greater. 6.4 receptions, in ’17, only 2.3. Sorely missed built its lead in the second period. Facing The loss dropped the Crimson to 3-4 in were two of 2016’s drive sustainers: solid se- a third-and-13 from the Big Red 36, coach the Ivy League, tying Harvard for fifth place nior running back Semar Smith (out for the Murphy ordered a timeout. What he drew with Cornell, and 5-5 overall. This was the season with a foot injury) and All-Ivy tight up worked brilliantly. On the next play, first season since 2000 that the Crimson had end Anthony Firkser ’17, the classic “posses- Smith found senior tight end Jake Barann not won at least seven games. Yale’s victo- sion receiver,” who made many eye-popping wide open in the middle of the field. Ba- ry—its second straight in The Game—gave catches on third downs. rann made a finger-tip catch and ran into the Elis a 6-1 league mark and a 9-1 overall The defense also suffered key injuries— the end zone. Harvard 14, Cornell 0. But finish. The triumph also allowed the Bull- most notably, to its best sacker, junior de- with 40 minutes left to play, the Crimson dogs to hold off Dartmouth and surprising fensive end DJ Bailey. But led by senior line- had scored its final point. Columbia and bring to New Haven Yale’s backer (and captain) Luke Hutton, and the As the Big Red tallied 17 unanswered first outright Ivy title since 1980. The Crim- redoubtable senior defensive back trio of points, the remainder of the game uncov- son did not score a touchdown in the final Tim Haehl, Tanner Lee, and Raishaun Mc- ered two weaknesses that would plague nine quarters of the 2017 season, the longest Ghee, the D hung in there valiantly. Harvard the rest of the season: the inabil- such stretch of futility since the 1986 sea- There were no easy games. Complicating ity to mount drives, and the failure to stop son, when Harvard suffered three straight matters was parity. The Ivy League was at the opponent’s elite runner. Chris Walker, shutouts. its most balanced ever, “the strongest top- the Big Red’s All-Ivy running back, did an “The bottom line is, Yale is a terrific foot- to-bottom in the 24 years I’ve been here,” impressive Ed Marinaro imitation, time and ball team,” said Harvard coach Tim Mur- said Murphy. With two weeks left in the again ripping through the line. He finished phy, whose record in The Game is now 17-7. season, seven teams (all except Brown) had with 93 yards on 19 carries. Those rushes “They’re by far the best football team in our a mathematical chance to share the title. For helped Cornell win the time-of-possession league. They have no real weaknesses, and all its difficulties, Harvard won a couple of battle by a staggering 36:50 to 23:10; on the they deserved to win.” games it probably should have lost. season, Harvard’s possession time In Ivy The Crimson’s opener, a 17-10 upset road games averaged a substandard 27:51. The This was a rackety, roller-coaster season, loss to non-league foe Rhode Island, gave a Big Red ran 77 offensive plays to the Crim- one replete with struggles. Murphy tried hint of what was to follow, but the score was son’s 44. The Harvard offense’s inability to two quarterbacks, Smith and fifth-year se- overshadowed by a traumatic spinal-cord stay on the field in the second half had a nior Joe Viviano. Each had his moments, injury to promising freshman defensive back fatal corollary on this unseasonably warm but mainly, the football adage held: If you Ben Abercrombie. After surgery at Rhode day: its hard-pressed defense wore down. have two quarterbacks, you have no quar- Island Hospital, Abercrombie was trans- It didn’t help that the Crimson was missing

26 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 three injured starters: Bailey, senior defen- the Stadium, Princeton obliterated Harvard for 35, for 421 yards and two touchdowns.) sive tackle Stone Hart, and junior linebacker 52-17. The 52 points allowed were the most Harvard’s Smith did his best to riposte, but Anthony Camargo. by an opponent in the Murphy era. The mar- it was like a good middleweight trying to gin of defeat was the largest since a 52-13 de- counter a superb heavyweight. The young- The next week brought the 700th game molition at Penn in 1988, and the largest loss ster kept on flinging, and finished a credit- played at Harvard Stadium, and the Crim- since 2002, when the Crimson was drubbed able-looking 20 for 31 passing, for 268 yards. son celebrated by whipping non-league foe 44-9 at Penn. It was also Harvard’s first de- Still, it seemed that Princeton was ready to Lafayette 38-10. Shelton-Mosley ignited feat in a Stadium night game after 14 wins. ramble not only to the Ivy title but to the Su- Harvard with an 85-yard punt return for a That evening, there score. In the first period, after the Crimson was no stopping the defense forced the Leopards into a three- quick-snapping Tigers and-out, Lafayette’s Michael Turk boomed and their quarterback a high, 50-yard punt to the Harvard 15. Shel- Chad Kanoff. In build- ton-Mosley fielded it and, sprung by a dan- ing a 31-10 halftime lead, dy block by junior Noah Reimers, wove his the Tiger senior was way upfield along the Crimson sideline, then scorching, completing outran the final pursuers to score. This was his first 20 passing at- Shelton-Mosley’s third career punt return tempts. (He added an- for a touchdown. On the second-half kick- other completion in the off, Scott produced another Harvard happy second half before his return—or, as Murphy refers to a kick re- string was snapped; at turn for a touchdown, “a house call.” Scott game’s end he was 31 grabbed the football on the Crimson 10. Keyed by a downfield block from Shelton- Mister Precocity: Mosley, he was off to the races. For one Sat- Freshman quarterback Jake Smith engineered a urday afternoon, all seemed back on track. comeback win against It wasn’t. The following Friday night in Dartmouth.

Photo: Jo Cush of FotoJOJO

Harvard Magazine 27

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal per Bowl. Instead, the Tigers unaccountably Smith finished 18-for-35 passing, for three came in and drilled a 29-yard field goal. Har- lost their next four and finished in seventh touchdowns and (significantly) no intercep- vard 3, Yale 0. place. Go figure. tions. He also ran nine times, many of them Thus pretty much concluded the Crimson A week later, concluding a three-game sinuous scrambles, for 64 yards. Said Mur- offensive portion of the day. Harvard was homestand, the Crimson fell behind Dart- phy afterward: “I’ve seldom been prouder limited to 164 yards gained, minuscule by mouth 14-0. The season was in danger of of a football team.” any standard. At the beginning of the fourth spiraling irrevocably south. Or, as captain The next week in New York City against quarter, the Bulldogs enlarged their lead to Hutton expressed it, “You can either fold, resurgent Columbia, though, Smith came a 24-3 on a two-yard run by Zane Dudek. The cropper, throwing four interceptions. day was Blue indeed. Saving the day was Viviano, who by The momentum of The Game, for nine all accounts had accepted his relief years in Harvard’s favor, has now swung. role with grace and class. The senior Likewise, after having dominated the league took over and guided the Crimson to for so long, the Crimson is 3-6 in its last nine three touchdowns while the defense conference games, and the overall victory held the Lions to two in a nail-biting total has fallen in successive years from 10 21-14 win. The victory was preserved to nine to seven to five. So in 2018 Harvard when reserve sophomore linebacker will face not only a more rugged league but Joey Goodman batted down two Co- also a challenge it has not encountered in lumbia passes in the end zone during some time: a bounce-back season. the final minute. “The defensive effort was just so heroic,” said Murphy, “and Tidbits: Defensive back Zach Miller ’18 those kids weren’t going to settle for (’19), of Houston and Winthrop House, was anything other than getting off that elected the 145th captain of Harvard foot- field with a win.” ball, for 2018. During the 2017 season Miller, whose field of concentration is economics, Amazingly, given all the Sturm and was credited with 8.0 tackles….Six Harvard Drang, Harvard still had a chance to players received All-Ivy recognition. Junior gain a share of the Ivy title. Those Justice Shelton-Mosley, the league’s top hopes were snuffed out by a lackluster punt returner, was a unanimous first-team home effort against Penn. The Quak- selection as a special-teams player. Junior Grab and go: Junior wideout Henry Taylor ers scored on their first offensive play—a running back Charlie Booker III was also went over Columbia’s Landon Baty for a 77-yard run by Tre Solomon—and dominat- named to the first team. Three seniors— catch that became a 65-yard touchdown. ed throughout a 23-6 victory. The game, in defensive lineman Stone Hart, linebacker or you can bounce back. Down 14-0, it’s all which Harvard’s only points came on two Luke Hutton and defensive back Tanner heart.” Behind the resourceful Smith, Har- field goals by sophomore Jake McIntyre, Lee—were named to the second team. vard bounced back, rallying for a 25-22 win. marked the first time the Crimson failed to Junior defensive lineman Richie Ryan re- The game turned on a freaky occurrence score a touchdown since September 19, 1998, ceived honorable mention….The 145th sea- near the end of the first half. Senior Zach when Harvard was shut out at Columbia son of Crimson football will kick off on Sep- Schmid punted to Dartmouth’s Danny Mc- 24-0. At the end of the third period, Mur- tember 15 at Harvard Stadium against San Manus, who fumbled the ball when hit by phy performed another quarterback shuffle, Diego. And mark your calendars: the 135th Crimson senior Jack Stansell. Harvard fresh- replacing Viviano with Smith, to little avail. playing of The Game—coinciding with the man Max Jones recovered at the Big Green “We never really had any great momentum golden anniversary of Harvard beating Yale 38. But Dartmouth protested, objecting that offensively,” Murphy said. For all that, the 29-29—will take place on November 17 at Stansell had interfered with McManus. The Crimson had its chances. “But we did not Fenway Park. vdick friedman officials conferred, then ruled that Stansell capitalize on our opportunities,” the Har- was blocked into McManus by a Dartmouth vard coach summed up. player. So the Crimson kept the ball, and The following week, in The Game, the Harvard an irate Big Green assistant coach punched Crimson’s high-water mark came on their out a press-box window. (Dartmouth sus- first offensive series. Smith engineered an Hardwood pended him indefinitely.) Smith took ad- 11-play, 55-yard drive that featured three Follow the men’s and vantage, guiding Harvard to a touchdown completions to Shelton-Mosley, the first women’s teams all in six plays. The biggest was Smith’s own for 21 yards, the second for nine, and the season long in reports 16-yard scramble on fourth-and-eight. The third for 18. (Shelton-Mosley finished with and analyses by Harvard capper was an eight-yard toss to senior tight a game-high seven grabs, for 77 yards.) This Magazine correspondent David L. end Ryan Antonellis with 13 seconds left in seemed like a plan, especially in the absence Tannenwald ’08, appearing online at the half. In the second half the Crimson put of Booker. But as so often happened late in harvardmagazine.com 19 more points on the board, then held on the season, the drive bogged down in the thanks to a last-ditch interception by Lee. shadow of the opponent’s goal. So McIntyre

28 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746

“No Secrets about How Building on last year’s record-setting to Get Faster” rookie season, Dean Farris is still finding out just how fast he can go. His childhood swim coach was always careful not to lay too heavy a burden on Dean Farris by telling him just how good he was going to be. But Mike Norment knew. Farris ’20—whose rookie season with Har- vard last year included a string of broken records, a fourth-place finish in the NCAA tournament, and one particularly beautiful, breathtaking win in the 200-meter freestyle at the 2017 Ivy League championships—was just nine years old the first time Norment saw him swim. Farris had been competing in summer leagues around Atlanta since he was seven, and he’d recently begun swimming year-round. “From the first lap, I was taken aback at how talented he was,” says

Norment, himself a former world-ranked HARRISON JIM swimmer and a member of the U.S. national was seven or eight years older. inches, and, in the year and a half since ar- team. Farris was a skinny kid, tall for his age, Under Norment, for whose club team he riving in Cambridge, he’s added more than a jumble of right angles. Still, Norment says, swam throughout high school, Farris won 30 pounds of muscle to his frame. In his first “He was very aware of his body. It’s like rec- two junior national championships and year, he found a prominent place on Har- ognizing a mathematical genius at nine years two Georgia state titles, and qualified in vard’s roster as a short- to mid-distance old. You could see he’d figured it out.” Farris four events at the 2016 Olympic trials. Now, swimmer, from 50-meter sprints relying on moved through the water like someone who a decade later, he’s grown to six feet, seven quick turns and bursts of power to 200-me-

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Harvard Magazine 29

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal terms of his ability to outwork and outthink Pounding out laps in an everybody that he’s trained against—he finds early-season practice, a way. He’s a quiet, low-key kid, but he’s a Farris works on on his freestyle stroke. fierce competitor, at all times. He’s willing to hurt more than the person in the lane next to him. That’s what makes him different.” Farris remembers the year he decided to go all in on swimming. He’d been splitting his time between the pool and the soccer field, where he played goalie. By the time he was 12, it got to be too much. His parents (athletes themselves, who’d played football and volley- ball in college) left the choice up to him. Farris loved soccer, but he suddenly realized that he couldn’t imagine his life without swimming. “It keeps me grounded,” he says. “What I love about swimming is that the hard work you put into it shows at the end of the year. There

JIM HARRISON JIM are no secrets about how to get faster.” That ter races requiring a little more pacing and the last day to win,” he says, with wonder fact buoyed him when he was 14 and 15, look- endurance. In the season’s first meet, he took more than swagger. “It was just incredible.” ing around at kids his age who were heftier individual wins in the 100-meter freestyle than he was, and suddenly just as tall. “Those and 100-meter butterfly against Dartmouth That’s the kind of joy that Ulen-Brooks were frustrating years—everybody else grew and Cornell; after that, he rarely failed to coach Kevin Tyrrell describes in his stand- and I kind of didn’t grow. But I had a good take first place anytime he was in the pool. out sophomore. “Dean is smiling on the pool work ethic, and so I kept getting faster.” And, He finished the regular season with 12 in- deck when he walks in at 6:30 in the morn- eventually, taller. dividual wins in dual meets. The Crimson’s ing,” Tyrrell says. “He’s happy to be there, he At a mid-November practice at Blodgett relay unit, on which Farris won a spot, never wants to learn, he wants to make good stuff Pool, two days ahead of the Crimson’s road lost during the regular season. happen.” Coaching him is as much a Socratic trip to Columbia for the second meet of this The climax, though, was last year’s Ivy exercise as a prescriptive one: “A lot of con- season, that work ethic was on display. So championships in February, which Harvard versations, a lot of questions”—about how was his speed. This was a “threshold prac- hosted at Blodgett Pool. The craziness of to be more efficient, how to generate more tice,” conducted at race pace, and swim- that week didn’t really hit Farris until later. power, how to fine-tune his form. “We’re mers pounded out laps, their shoulders In the moment, as he and his teammates trying to help him develop his own aware- heaving when they touched the wall and were winging their way from one end of ness,” Tyrrell says, “because he’s got to be lifted their heads out of the water to rest the pool to the other, dominating almost ev- able to think and make decisions out there or to listen for guidance from Tyrrell and ery opponent in almost every event on their based on the race that he’s in and the train- assistant coach Samantha Pitter. way to Harvard’s first conference title since ing that he can take advantage of.” Last year, Farris swam mostly backstroke 2014, a weird calm took over. “It just kind of Norment has similar recollections. In 2013, and freestyle, two strokes requiring espe- seemed normal,” Farris says, “because that’s having coached for several years at the club cially strong balance and the ability to stay how our season was going.” He won seven where he first saw Farris, Norment left to horizontal in the water. “That’s where I ex- events, including that 200-meter freestyle, start his own swim program, Metro Atlanta celled,” he says. But this season, he wants which he finished more than two seconds Aquatic Club. Farris and a handful of other to expand his range, compete in individual ahead of the second-place swimmer. By the swimmers followed their coach. The team medley races that use all four strokes; that’s second lap, the race was basically decid- was tiny at first. Five of them had grown up how he swam in high school, all options ed; after that, it was just a matter of seeing together in the pool, a tight-knit little unit. open. “It keeps the mind fresh,” he says. “I how fast he would be. His final mark was “And they all looked the same: they were think I’m going back to the mentality of 1:31:56—the fastest in college swimming bony, they were skinny, and they had no swimming everything, rather than focus- that season. (That earned Farris a top seed body strength,” Norment recalls. “Couldn’t ing on one or two things, because I think in the NCAAs a month later, where he fin- do a pull-up. But they looked really good in it makes me better. You don’t get burned ished fourth in the 200 free behind three the water.” And they showed up every sin- out.” In heat after heat with his teammates former Olympians.) gle day. “If the pool was closed for whatever at the November practice, Farris swam The Crimson walked away with 1,705 reason, they would immediately text me and the gamut: freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, points that week, the most in Ivy cham- say, ‘Coach Mike, can we go to the Y and do a breaststroke. Most of the time, he was out pionship-meet history and 370 more than workout?’ So they were committed, and their in front of the others, often by a body length runner-up Penn. Farris won the Phil Mo- families were committed.” Two years later, or more, arms slicing in and out of the wa- riarty Award as the high-point swimmer. four of those swimmers made the Olympic ter as he churned forward, arching toward “We basically didn’t even have to show up trials…“and Dean was at the center of that. In another finish. vlydialyle gibson

30 January - February 2018 www.gocrimson.com

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180112_House_Fundraising-full_v1.indd 1 12/6/17 10:47 AM Botanizing in the “Mother of Gardens” Pursuing seeds and specimens in Sichuan

by Jonathan Shaw

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 he first thing the explorers noticed when they tum’s keeper of the living collections, and Andrew Gapinski, man- reached the dam was that their guide was wearing ager of horticulture there; Wang Kang, director of education at the gaiters that stretched above his calf. Everyone knew Beijing Botanical Garden, and Quan Jian, assistant to Beijing’s man- what it meant: there would be terrestrial leeches on ager of living collections; and graduate student Li Huaicheng from this hunt. The second thing they noticed was the Chengdu’s Institute of Biology—gathered in Chengdu, the capital guide’s long, wood-handled tool, with a short, curved of Sichuan, on September 19: late enough in the season for fruit Tiron blade. He was leaning on it as the team exited the van, while he and seeds to have set, but before leaf- and snowfall. The next day, ran a critical eye over everyone’s attire. He said a few words in Chinese, after picking up supplies at the institute—portable plant presses, and Wang Kang, a seven-time veteran of these expeditions, relayed seed-collection bags, and a telescoping, 12-foot pole pruner that their meaning to the Americans. “Tuck your pants inside your socks, clips and then holds specimens—they drove north, stopping once and then put rubber bands around for gas at the last known filling the top. The leeches will try to get station on their route, where the inside your socks.” fuel had to be siphoned from oil Though it might seem like a drums. Their destination was a commission from another centu- 245-square-mile national nature ry, the hunt to locate and collect reserve in the heart of the Min rare plants from around the globe range, named after its highest so they can be grown for scientific mountain, 18,334-foot Xuebaod- study and long-term observation ing (Snowy Treasure Peak). is very much alive, and carries new In other words, the expedition urgency. One in five plant species team (with an observer from this on Earth is endangered. Chang- magazine) was about to enter the ing patterns of temperature and heart of hardy plant biodiversity. rainfall, competition from inva- The contemporary collectors had sive species, and loss of habitat are certain advantages over Wilson— spurring new exploration—par- airplanes, motorized vehicles, and ticularly in biologically rich areas. GPS mapping—instead of reli- Though only slightly larg- ance solely on foot, pack animals, er than the United States, Chi- and a 25-person entourage of hired na—spared during the Pleisto- laborers. But once in the botani- cene glaciation that ended 11,500 cally rich, undeveloped parts of years ago—has three to four China, twenty-first-century plant times North America’s botani- collecting is still rough work. cal diversity, making it a natural And so they shouldered their place to search for rare and un- packs, grabbed their equipment, usual plants. The prolific explorer and followed their guide, clear- Ernest Henry Wilson, who col- ing the way with his reaphook, lected on behalf of Harvard’s Ar- across the dam and into a bam-

nold Arboretum from 1907 to 1922 RIGHTAT AND OPPOSTIE SECOND PAGE FROM TOP RIGHT ANDREW BY GAPINSKI/THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM boo thicket. From the river’s edge, and is credited with introducing The Arnold Arboretum’s Michael Dosmann with a Rodgersia leaf the terrain rose sharply, requiring more than 2,000 plants from Asia and plumes of Astilbe grandis. Opposite page, clockwise from hand-over-hand climbing. After 25 upper left: the lake above the dam at Si’er Cun, with the Min to Western horticulture, called Mountains beyond; collecting a voucher specimen; fruits of the minutes of thigh-burning ascent, China the “mother of gardens.” He tea crabapple; climbing a ridge; fruits of Phoebe faberi; a planta- they reached the top of a ridge, elevated temperate Sichuan Prov- tion of Magnolia officinalis; Wang Yongming, the group’s first elevation 6,900 feet—where they ince, slightly larger than Califor- guide; Hydrangea bretschneideri; the end of the road for the van discovered that they’d taken this nia, a step further, calling it “the garden of China.” route because the guide believed they wanted to see a giant panda. So it was that a two-week expedition there last September brought The misunderstanding was amusing, but also fortuitous, because plant hunters—botanists in the North America-China Plant Explora- it led to several desirable plant collections. Atop the ridge, the fruits tion Consortium (NACPEC), including representatives of the arbo- of a lanky crabapple tree, reaching for light in a forest of bamboo retum—back to beautiful, challenging terrain. The group is part of a (a staple in pandas’ diet), immediately registered with Dosmann, larger effort focused on collecting wild specimens from across their who recognized Malus hupehensis, the tea crabapple. More than a cen- full geographic range, at altitudes high and low; the goal is to capture tury earlier, Wilson, the first keeper of the arboretum (Dosmann is the variation, and underlying genetic diversity, within species. Differ- just the second to hold the title), had discovered this tree in Hubei ences between one isolated population and the next range from the Province; he considered it the finest deciduous flowering tree he observable or aesthetic—the color of the bark, leaves, or flowers that had introduced to Western cultivation. In spring, deep pink buds might catch a gardener’s eye—to the functionally important: cold fade to white as the floral display crescendos; in fall, ornamental hardiness, heat and drought tolerance, or disease and pest resistance. yellow fruits tinged with red produce a second show, evident even The team on this particular trip—Michael Dosmann, the arbore- in the latticework shade cast by the bamboo canopy.

Photographs by Jonathan Shaw, unless otherwise noted Harvard Magazine 33

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 As the group deposited the tiny crabapples in a muslin collection The Pillared Forest bag, monkeys began calling. “Apparently, they like this species of As the group hiked upslope deeper into the forest, Dosmann Malus,” Dosmann wrote in his field notes, “and may not be happy noted species characteristic of this region: a smallish magnolia, that we are collecting it.” For each acquisition, he recorded place whose leaves when crushed smell like anise (Magnolia liliiflora); the name, GPS coordinates, elevation, habitat, slope, soil type, measure- common birch-leaved viburnum (Viburnum betulifolium, a species so ments, and a description of the plant (including bark, leaves, any highly variable that Wang made it the focus of his Ph.D. disserta- fruit or flowers), and other species growing nearby. tion); and a towering, thick-trunked specimen of Betula albosinensis, a While Dosmann logged these observations, Gapinski prepared birch that doesn’t like the extremes of the North American climate, five voucher specimens, or representative samples. After carefully se- he said. Amid such abundant botanical riches, knowing what not lecting characteristic terminal branches that included stems, leaves, to collect proved a critical skill. and fruit, he laid them on a sheet of newsprint labeled with the sci- Moving into progressively older, more densely shaded forest, the entific name and the collection number, beginning with 001. Then explorers found that the trees had grown so tall, they frustrated he covered them with another sheet, and sandwiched the whole sampling, and even Gapinski’s height—he is six-foot-five—com- between two pieces of cardboard. These he stacked and loaded into bined with the 12-foot telescoping pruner could not help. From a portable press resembling a bicycle courier’s pouch, cinched tight the ground, they stared longingly toward the remote canopy or in with straps, which he threw over his shoulder—the first step in a wonder at thick trunks of birch and larch so tall that it was hard journey to herbaria at Harvard, the National Arboretum in Wash- to connect them to their crowns, making it hard to identify the ington, D.C., the Beijing Botanical Garden, the Chengdu Institute, species. Even a climbing hydrangea they hoped to bring home had and a regional herbarium in Pingwu. grown so high that it had set no seed within reach. While they walked, Li Huaicheng, who had come to gain expe- A Broadened Scope of Field rience in fieldwork, shared some dried yak meat to stave off pre- Since 1991, a dozen Chinese and North American member institu- lunch hunger. tions of NACPEC have shared the costs and the rewards of these Eventually, they entered a light-filled glade beneath an opening in roughly biennial expeditions to China. The aims include conser- the dense canopy, where they saw a large, open-crowned tree with vation, evaluating and introducing ap- what looked like foot-and-a-half long propriate new species, selecting orna- streamers cascading from high branch- mental forms, broad sampling of the While they walked, es: a towering, large-winged wingnut wild genetic pool of species already in (Pterocarya macroptera), a relative of cultivation, improved understanding Li Huaicheng hickory. The streamers were actually of botanical diversity in China—and strings of connected, winged seeds. better national and international col- shared some dried Dosmann, who has curated the arbore- laboration among botanists. Wang, tum’s living collections since 2007, was an exemplar of this latter aim, has yak meat to stave off eager to acquire this tree because the brought deep knowledge of China’s specimen growing in Boston, collected flora, as well as logistical expertise, to in 1997 from Emei Shan, a mountain to seven such trips. For example, when pre-lunch hunger. the south, is not reliably hardy. an August earthquake upended the But repeated, powerful throws by original 2017 itinerary, which circled the Min mountains, he ar- Gapinski, attempting to rope a limb, fell just short. Unwilling to ranged a new route at the last minute: right to the middle of the admit defeat, one of the party wrapped his arms and knees around botanically rich range, for four days of collecting. Wang also did the moss-covered, branchless trunk and began inching his way up. all the driving. Blind corners on the road, mudslides, and washouts Seeing this apparent act of desperation, the guide intervened, indi- alike left him unfazed. cating that there was another specimen uphill with lower branches Although the arboretum has participated in plant-hunting ex- where they could collect seed without difficulty. peditions since the 1870s, including those to China, it has recently Along the way, they passed an enormous larch, the ground be- stepped up the pace, intensity, and breadth of its collecting, as part neath it strewn with cone-bearing limbs (thrown down by mon- of a 10-year effort targeting 400-plus species from around the globe keys, according to the guide). Dosmann decided to collect specimens (see “The Plant Prospectors,” July-August 2016, page 37). Recent and seed: this was the Sichuan larch (Larix mastersiana), a tree dis- expeditions have ranged from Idaho to coastal North and South covered by Wilson in 1908. The species once grew in large stands, Carolina, and from China to the Republic of Georgia. A visit to Ja- but was harvested for its wood and is now endangered in the wild pan is planned next year. and rare in cultivation. In the past, Dosmann might have been the sole representative After collecting from the smaller Pterocarya, the party headed collecting on the arboretum’s behalf—he has been to China eight back to the river, descending through a plantation of Magnolia of- times—but the scale of these broadened efforts has involved other ficinalis, a plant Wilson introduced to the West that is cultivated botanists on the staff. Gapinski, for example, explored the Republic for its medicinal bark. They arrived at the dam just in time to see of Georgia in 2016. And although he had been to China just once, he a poisonous snake being rescued from a sluiceway by a workman: is familiar with many of its plants as manager of the horticulturists scooped into a galvanized wire basket and released below. who care for the arboretum’s trees and shrubs, a quarter of which By then it was 4 p.m.; the guide mounted his motorcycle and drove hail from that country. off. But rather than ending their day as well, the collectors decided

34 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 to see what they could find along the single-track gravel road that laid seed on newspaper to dry in a hallway outside the bedrooms. climbed sharply to the northeast above the dam. They found Euptelea (Full drying would have to await the expedition’s return to an air- pleiosperma, a tree with attractive leaves and stunning reddish samaras conditioned space: the ranger station was located in a humid site (scarlet clusters of hanging seeds), a small ash (Fraxinus paxiana), and a directly above the Si’er River. Nothing, from socks to seed, would Chinese hemlock, where they narrowly avoided losing the cones to a dry completely here.) river at the bottom of a cliff (see “Hunting a Hardy Hemlock”). Rac- After dinner seasoned with the region’s distinctive Sichuan pep- ing against sunset after bagging their hemlock quarry, the explorers per (a species of Zanthoxylum), the group gathered in the office of were tempted by one final target: an Oliver maple Acer( oliverianum) station head Zhe Yue. Dosmann, armed with a magnifying loupe, that caught Dosmann’s eye, with its broad, palmate leaves in glorious began “keying out” species, making positive identifications of plants scarlet, orange, and yellow fall colors. This species—almost unknown he had not been able to definitively classify in the field, such as the in the United States—was one of the desiderata on the arboretum’s larch and the maple. Finally, at 11:00 p.m., the day’s tasks were done. master list. Although it would normally be marginally hardy in Bos- ton, he knew that a mountain specimen would have a good chance Riches of Roads and Rivers of surviving. (Later in the expedition, the group collected more seed The next three days of collecting differed markedly from the from a potentially hardier specimen at an even higher elevation.) first: there would be no more bushwhacking. In the fading light of As the light began to fail, Wang swiftly drove the group back that first day, the group had in two hours collected as many plants down the narrow road to their base, a forest-ranger station in the by the road as they had during the prior seven in the forest. As tiny village of Si’er. He did not want to drive these mountain roads, Dosmann explained, collecting from the slopes above and below easily blocked by rockslides, in the dark. (While driving up to Si’er paths, roads, and rivers can often be more productive than explor- from Mianyang, the nearest large city, on the previous day, the group ing a forest. Plants on the edges of open spaces have less competi- had counted more than two dozen slides, some still being cleaned tion, get more light, and are therefore more likely to set seed. They up.) What happened to E.H. Wilson—whose career as a botanical are also easier to spot and, absent competition for light, they tend explorer had nearly ended with a rock slide that broke one of his to branch lower, putting their seed within reach. legs as he hunted the Regal Lily (Lilium regale, which he called “a jewel Each day, the group would use flagging tape to mark species beyond price”)—began to seem less like a freak accident and more they wanted to collect during their ascent, then gather specimens like an occupational hazard. (For more about Wilson, see “Lilies as they retraced their steps on the way back down. This would cut for ‘Chinese’ Wilson,” March-April 1986, page 50.) Monsoon-like down on the weight they carried, and also lead to better decisions fall rains that coincide with the time that plants set seed, peppered about what to collect. With this strategy, the pace of collecting with the occasional earthquake, can set mountainsides in motion. would increase dramatically. And on their second day doing this, So it was no surprise when Dosmann had to leap from the van on they would find a treasure—a tree that hadn’t been collected in the descent to roll a large rock out of the road. more than a hundred years. Back at the ranger station, the collectors took stock. One of the The expedition resumed the next morning, when the collecting party had been bitten on the ankle by a leech, bloodying a sock and party met their guide at 7,000 feet beside a river in a valley east of the boot. But otherwise, though tired from the day’s hiking, everyone dam. Though the site was not far from the previous day’s explorations, was in good shape—and there was still work to be done. They the plants were completely different—a vivid illustration of Wilson’s

Hunting a Hardy Hemlock butt balanced, perfectly vertical, with the heavy cut end up. And then it wavered, teetering toward the river. “NO, NO, NO, NO, Toward the end of the first day of the 2017 NACPEC expedi- NO,” yelled Gapinski. The heavy butt, if it somersaulted, would tion to Sichuan, the collectors saw evergreens from across a res- pull the limb into the river—and all the cones with it. ervoir that they thought might be Chinese hemlock (Tsuga chinen- And then somehow, sis). Until the 1980s, specimens of this tree growing in the West as if defying physics, the could all be traced to a single E.H. Wilson introduction. In the butt slowly eased back 1990s, the species demonstrated resistance to an adelgid that had past vertical toward the begun wiping out hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) along the east coast tree. Below, Gapinski of North America (see “A Hemlock Farewell,” July-August 2014, grabbed a branch and page 8), making it a priority to acquire more of the Chinese variety. yelled, “Got it.” Upon closer inspection, although there were three or four hem- The next time I locks, just one had cones, and only on a single branch that grew was gripped by tree- beyond a slope ending in a precipice that dropped 50 feet to the climbing fever, when river below. The next thing I knew, I was up the tree with a hand- the stakes were much saw—7,500 miles from home and hours from the nearest hospi- higher, collecting seed tal—swept up in the thrill of the hunt. When half cut, the heavy from a rare beech (see branch swung slowly down within Andrew Gapinski’s reach, but main text), we took no just as the green fronds began to settle gently into the side of the chances—the limb was slope, the limb snapped. For a few precarious seconds, the freed roped in. WANG KANG/ BEIJING BOTANICAL GARDEN

Harvard Magazine 35

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 rapture about Sichuan’s unique diversity. Dosmann immediately spot- ambivalence stemmed in part from the prospect of bureaucratic ted Cercidiphyllum japonicum, or katsura (as it is known in Japan), growing entanglements when shipping seed home. from the rock wall on the opposite bank. He knew this plant better Back in Si’er that evening, the glowing coil of an electric hot plate than any other—he’d studied it extensively and written a thesis on took the chill out of the night air in the station head’s office, as the it—but, remarkably, given his wide travels in Asia, had only been able botanists removed seeds from collecting bags and placed them in to collect it from the wild once, in 1999. disposable paper bowls to dry. Into the evening, Dosmann focused Despite the cool weather, flowers were still blooming, including intently on his field notes, working out species identifications for yellow ligularia (a Wilson introduction to Western horticulture, the day’s collections before finally heading to bed. circa 1900). Along a path beside the river, the group gathered a dog- wood (Cornus bretschneideri), with its small blue-black fruits, then Hy- Tracking Wilson drangea bretschneideri, its late-season blooms held on delicate panicles. For the arboretum, one of the great troubles in attempting to Wang placed the whole hy- diversify the wild origins of drangea flower head in a bag, its earliest Asian plant intro- he explained, because hydran- ductions—ensuring that they gea seed are so small and light come from across the species’ that once dry, a single sneeze geographic range—is that no- could blow them all away. body has ever been able to ac- They gathered moisture-lov- curately reconstruct Wilson’s ing herbaceous species, too: a travels through China. Even six-foot Astilbe grandis; and Rod- Wilson himself, who wrote gersia, with large, horse-chest- about his journeys many years nut-like leaves that had spread after the fact, may not have re- almost like a ground cover be- membered exactly where he tween the path and the river. was when he collected each In the river’s floodplain, plant. Complicating the ef- the group collected Engler fort, many of the Chinese oak (Quercus engleriana), with place names that Wilson did unusual, elongated, lanceo- record—tiny villages, many late leaves; seedpods from a of them—have since been 6-foot-tall flower called cardi- changed, and forgotten. The ocrinum—narrowly avoiding a best hard evidence for placing poisonous caterpillar feeding Wilson therefore comes from nearby; and the toxic fruits of a the photographs he took. handsome phoebe tree (Phoebe Yin Kaipu, a professor faberi). Dosmann was skepti- emeritus at Chengdu’s In- cal that the phoebe, a broad- stitute of Biology who has leaved evergreen, could survive explored Sichuan exten- a New England winter. But it sively—on horseback—has held bewitching, midnight spent years identifying the blue fruits on bright vermillion sites Wilson photographed. stems, set off by rich, deep- He had presented a copy of his green leaves. The tree might book, Tracing One Hundred Years thrive at a NACPEC partner of Change, to one of the party. institution farther south. In it, Yin pinpoints the loca- After forming a human chain Wang Kang, Andrew Gapinksi, and Li Huaicheng with hard-won fruits of tion of 300 of Wilson’s pho- to hold Wang as he leaned over the dove tree. Seed pods of Cardiocrinum, or giant lily, a flowering bulb tographs, including one of a that grows six feet high. A poisonous caterpillar feeding nearby. a ravine armed with the tele- famous tree: a massive katsura scoping pruner, they clipped nutlets from a Chinese linden (Tilia chi- that Wilson photographed in the Dupingba valley on August 17, nensis). Like the American and European varieties, seeds of this linden 1910 (and perhaps the tree that he described in A Naturalist in West- attach to leaves that spin when they fall, helicoptering to the ground, ern China as being 55 feet in girth). to the amusement—especially—of children. The third day, though planned as a sort of pilgrimage to Duping Not far from the phoebe, the group collected a small-leaved holly ba, included some of the best collecting of the whole trip—and it (Ilex bioritsensis), notable for its hypodermic-like barbs. But Dos- was a different tree, not the katsura, that most captivated Dosmann mann turned down the prospect of collecting from a huge yew and Gapinski. (Taxus), though the seeds were strewn abundantly on the ground. From Si’er, the party drove northeast, up several switchbacks The plant is at risk because its berries have anti-cancer proper- and then along a river where a huge washout had taken two- ties, and is therefore protected by the Convention on International thirds of the width of the dirt road. The metal guardrail that Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Dosmann’s had formerly marked the road’s edge lay in the river below. As

36 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 everyone held their breath, the van fishtailed through the muddy es, the group moved briskly, crossing a river (where it had erased strip of remaining roadway, and then continued on, reaching a the road) by balancing on the trunks of young trees laid across the locked barricade. There they were met by a new guide, He Sixian, water. After climbing a muddy hillside, they reached a field with who knew this valley well. The legendary katsura was a brisk, several mature katsura trees before wading through a thicket and two-hour walk away. at last reaching the ancient specimen. Less than 10 minutes up the road, Dosmann spotted a seedling The tree had several trunks, all rotting from the inside; but even Cercidiphyllum. Then the group noted dove trees (Davidia involucrata) in decline, it was the largest katsura any of the group had ever everywhere, heavy with seed, and marked several with blue flagging seen. Dosmann, noting that the tree had been coppiced (cut back tape. Wilson considered this the most beautiful and interesting of to stimulate growth, usually for firewood) in the 1910 Wilson pho- all the temperate flora (the species produces white petal-like bracts tograph, guessed that it might be 500 years old. “But katsura are that resemble handkerchiefs), and raised thousands of seedlings. really good at basal sprouting” and could regenerate even after a But the tree that riveted Dos- rockslide. “This could have been mann was a beech. “This would a single trunk 1,000 years ago,” be the all-star of the collection,” he mused, “and have sprouted he said. Unlike most beeches, back.” this species (Fagus engleriana) After taking photographs to has multiple stems. The Chi- match Wilson’s, and collecting nese describe its growth habit seed (the pods resemble tiny as “chicken feet,” because the string beans), the group ate lunch stems form a cup like the foot of in a nearby field. Then they head- a chicken turned upside down. ed back. Pandas frequented that tree, On the way down, they col- their guide said, eating bamboo lected Enkianthus deflexus, a shrub while lounging amid the trunks. with brilliant red fall color, and But this specimen had no seed. admired a spruce growing be- “We have only collected this side a river at the bottom of a ra- once,” Dosmann said. “I have seen vine. Bathed in a constant mist, it once before growing with Acer its limbs had been colonized by griseum [the paperbark maple], hartstongue fern, whose bright but there was no seed. Wilson green leaves caught the afternoon collected a seedling in Hubei [a light. province to the east] in 1907,” he They collected a beautiful continued—perhaps the only time birch, which Dosmann later it has been introduced into culti- identified asBetula insignis, rare vation. Pulling out a range map of in western gardens. Plants of the species, he noted that this site this species now in cultivation, represented the northern edge of derived from a collection farther its native habitat. “Wilson collect- south in China, are marginally ed two beech species: one, longipeti- hardy in Boston. But this more olata, never made it out of the gate; northerly seed, collected at eleva- and this one, engleriana, named after tion, might grow well. “The short a famous botanist. The species is fat catkins are the female parts,” distinguished by grayish, almost Dosmann pointed out, while the warty, stippled bark, and it also pendulous ones, the longest and tends to have multiple stems. If Wang Kang harvesting seed and specimens of a giant katsura. The showiest of any birch, are male. we could get that…” 1910 photograph of the tree taken by Ernest Henry Wilson. Wang, He was pleased to collect a speci- Dosmann, and Gapinski recreate the historic photo. “We would sacrifice someone men with fine examples of both. for that beech,” declared Gapinski. Beeches are one of the arbore- Finally, they reached the upper of the two Engler beeches. Al- tum’s core collections: other institutions in the United States rely though they had seen no seed previously, they scanned it with bin- on the Boston site to grow and maintain a comprehensive swathe oculars a final time. On a single limb, reaching for light, there were of the genus, but the arboretum has just the one lineage. Writing beechnuts. about this tree, Wilson described it as having generally six to 12 The seed was too high to reach, so they decided to use a pocket trunks, slanting away from one another as they grow. He also noted chainsaw attached to a throw bag to cut the limb. From his back- that although he could find small plants, he could find no flow- pack, Gapinski produced a flat nylon square that, like a pop-up tent, ers, suggesting that the tree sets seed infrequently. But seedling sprang open to form a cube about 2 feet on a side, with an open top. collection is not an option for modern American plant hunters: Inside was a carefully laid coil of thin, strong rope, and a weighted since 1914, bringing soil into the United States has been forbidden. leather sack. If he could throw the sack and attached line over the After passing another of these apparently seedless special beech- limb, they could connect the jointed saw chain to one end and run

Harvard Magazine 37

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 it up for the cut. But the chain lodged tight in the notoriously hard of leeches were overwhelming, and the party retreated to the house wood, and the collectors had to climb the tree with a handsaw. The to remove them. Boots and socks came swiftly off. Dosmann pulled rope proved useful in controlling the limb’s descent. five leeches from his feet and ankles. Gapinski, too, had been bitten. After gathering seed of a mountain ash (Sorbus), they tried to The old woman disappeared and returned with cold wood ash reach a dove tree, but the most magnificent specimens all grew from an open hearth. The ash, she told Wang, would kill them. beyond the grasp of the telescoping pruner. At last they spotted a Was there snow in the winter? he asked, trying to get a sense of the specimen on a steep slope above the road. After heroic efforts by climate—important information for any plant scientist. Although their Gapinski, Wang, and Li, involving rope, limbs pulled low under elevation was above 7,300 feet, they were at the same latitude as Savan- tension, and the pruner, they managed to secure a sizable collec- nah, Georgia. With a gesture, she indicated that the snow reached a tion of large fruits. depth of one or two feet in winter. (Temperatures, the group learned The Road to Songpan later, drop as low as minus 5 de- That night, a heavy rain fell. grees Centigrade.) In the morning, the river ran half Then it was time to return to blue, half brown with mud. Driv- Si’er and clean seeds. ing past the entrance to the val- * * * ley they’d visited on the second Several weeks and 7,500 miles day, they could see that the wa- later, at the arboretum, Dos- ter in that tributary had turned mann and Gapinski celebrated. brown, a sign that there had been Their seed collection had made it a landslide. through customs. They had divid- This would be their last day of ed the shipment into three parts, collecting and they decided to ex- spreading the risk in case any of it plore the road above the reservoir, failed to clear U.S. Department of where they had turned around on Agriculture inspection. Dosmann the first day. Wang had learned carried some in his luggage to that it led to a trail to Songpan, Boston, declaring it at the airport. a small city about 18 miles to the Some went by post to inspectors northwest. in Jamaica, New York, and a third Much of the landscape, shrouded set to New Jersey. When inspec- in mist as they climbed, was under tors find something they don’t cultivation. The road curved up and like in a batch of seed, Dosmann up, until the reservoir was no longer explained, they might throw the visible below. Then, after rounding whole lot in the incinerator. Or a bend, the road dead-ended at a they might fumigate the seed, traditional farm house. As they ap- which can reduce its viability by proached it, a dog appeared, bark- half. When maggots are found af- ing, and a Tibetan woman followed. ter x-raying a single acorn, for ex- She and her husband, both 76, lived Dosmann holding a voucher specimen of Betula insignis. The fat ample, one inspector may remove there. Her cellphone, her only way upright catkins are this birch’s female parts, while the dangling the infested corms, where another catkins, the longest of any birch species, are male. Opposite of communicating with the outside page, clockwise from upper left: Deutzia flowers; preparing might reject the whole shipment. world, was not working. “Could we specimens at the mountain home of a Tibetan couple; pressing a Worried about this possibility, fix it?” While Wang spliced wires, stack of specimens; seeds arrived safely at the Arnold Arbore- Dosmann had, in fact, decided to the others looked around. Every- tum; nutlets of Chinese linden; teamwork to secure linden seeds; abandon the group’s oak collec- crossing a washout in the Dupingba valley. where, plants were hanging to dry, tions. He was taking no chances and food simmered in pots in rooms throughout the house: pumpkins, that the rest of the botanical treasures they had gathered might be rice, steamed bread, cabbage. Having repaired her cell-phone char- jeopardized. ger, Wang asked about the road to Songpan. “Ahhhh,” she said, and By mid November, it was clear he’d made lots gestured everyone to follow her—into the house, through a carved of good choices. Even as the first seedlings ap- doorway, and down a dark hall to another door, which opened to peared in the Dana Greenhouses, the arboretum Visit harvardmag. the backyard. She pointed. This was the road to Songpan—it passed was fielding numerous requests for seed from com to see additional through her house. other botanic gardens in North America, indi- photographs from The road beyond was in fact a narrow, overgrown path, and the cating strong interest, and ensuring wide dis- the expedition. group clipped their way slowly forward through heavy growth. But tribution of the plants they’d brought home. In the end, that is the they did not make it far. After collecting five-flavor fruitSchisandra ( measure of a successful expedition. chinensis), a vine with berries at once salty, sweet, sour, pungent, and bitter, and then Deutzia longifolia (a shrub with beautiful bicolor flow- Managing editor Jonathan Shaw ’89 accompanied the collecting expedition dur- ers, pink centered, rimmed with white), they had to stop. The scores ing six days in Sichuan. OPPOSITE BOTTOM PAGE RIGHT CARMICHAEL/HARVARD LYDIA BY MAGAZINE; BOTTOM LEFT WANG BY KANG/ BEIJING BOTANICAL GARDEN

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 VITA Henry Chapman Mercer Brief life of an innovative ceramicist: 1856-1930 by nancy freudenthal

n a june night in 1910, fire trucks raced through Doyles ramics, which he learned from one of the last redware potters in town, Pennsylvania, and found not a house in flames, but Bucks County. Working with clay sparked Mercer’s creativity; he Oa bonfire atop Fonthill, the fantastical 44-room concrete wrote of how his imagination was fired by “the manner in which home of Henry Chapman Mercer, A.B. 1879. That bonfire let Mercer mother earth grows out of the human touch into bowl or vase.” celebrate his birthday, maintain the tradition of fires on St. John’s Ceramics also drew on his artistic talents: he was an amateur Eve, and inaugurate his new home by demonstrating its fireproof painter and etcher, and at Harvard had studied art history with qualities. (The journal Cement Age duly noted: “This is the sort of Charles Eliot Norton. By 1898, he had founded the Moravian Pot story that is causing the insurance man to sit up and take notice.”) tery and Tile Works. All its handmade tiles were his original de Mercer was recognized by then as a leading ceramicist of the Arts signs or based on historical models he had adapted, and reflected and Crafts movement, a distinction he came to in a roundabout way. the Arts and Crafts movement, then an important influence on After college he studied, but never practiced, law. Instead, he trav American design. eled for almost a decade, pursuing art, history, and archaeology. By He soon earned major commissions, including the floors for Isa 1894, he had been appointed curator of American and prehistoric bella Stewart Gardner’s Fenway mansion and the rotunda of the archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, but he held Pennsylvania State Capitol, which he filled with almost 400 mosa that post for just three years, parting ways with museum authorities ics (one of his patented tile processes) displaying the state’s his as a result, in part, of his curmudgeonly personality. (A note in his tory, industries, plants, and animals. Recognition was both artistic copy of A Farewell to Arms hints at his style: “As convincing as a tape and commercial. His tiles won a grand prize at the 1904 World’s worm. As charming as a bottle of dead flies.”) Fair, and were sold in every state and overseas. The Pottery re Even before leaving the museum, Mercer had developed a new ap mained profitable even as the Arts and Crafts period waned, and proach he described as “archaeology turned upside down.” Rather still produces tiles while serving as a living-history museum. than beginning millennia before, he started with the recent past and Simple geometric tiles may have been the Pottery’s mainstay, but worked back to its historical origins. This grew from his fascination what was essential to Mercer was the artistic quality of his work. If with tools, made obsolete by industrialization, that he found dis plain tiles were all he produced, he told his workmen, he “might as carded or offered in penny lots at country sales. They “give us a fresh well make soap.” Instead, his tiles told stories from sources as varied grasp upon the vitality of the American beginning,” he wrote. “At as the Bible, folk tales, Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, and Wagner operas. first, illustrating an humble story, they unfold by degrees a wider Architects prized these decorative tiles, and Mercer, although meaning, until at last the heart is touched.” He created an elaborate untrained, was a sometime architect himself, designing both Font 13-part taxonomy for tools (broadly defined) and assembled a vast hill and the Mercer Museum while creating the methods used collection at the heart of the Bucks County Historical Society’s mu to build them. Each was medieval in appearance but modern in seum that now bears his name. construction: early examples of using reinforced concrete beyond That museum reflected two sides of Mercer: learned in its con industrial settings, built when Frank Lloyd Wright and Thomas tent yet creative in its presentation. Its systematically organized col Edison were also exploring its residential uses. He took pleasure lection served students of material culture—including Mercer him in the rough imperfections of concrete and chastised architects self, whose pioneering scholarship was so fundamental that his 1929 who tried to disguise them, “ashamed of the mold, the welts and Ancient Carpenters’ Tools, still in print, remains a basic text. Its displays, the boards which show that the walls were cast,…the richness of meanwhile, were extravagant and exuberant—an effort to capture the texture that, like the rocks of the world, reveals creative work the eye and the imagination. A central court rose five stories, sur to the geologist.” rounded in Escher-like profusion by small galleries, ramps, and At his death, the distinguished archaeologist David Randall-Mc stairs. On the ground floor were cigar-store Indians (Tools of Com Iver could refer to Mercer as “an extraordinary figure…straight from merce); hanging balanced in the air above were a Conestoga wagon the Renaissance.” His classmate J.T. Coolidge wrote in an obituary and several penny-farthing bicycles (Tools of Transport); at the very that he was a “man of unusual character and imagination. Hand top was a gallows (a Tool of Government). some, winning, interesting—and odd.” The reality can probably be Beyond building his collection, he wanted to understand how found in a combination of those two characterizations. those obsolete tools were used, and even to revive a dying or lost craft. Fearful that “so beautiful an art as that of the old Pennsylva Nancy Freudenthal, Ph.D. ’74, assistant provost emerita at The College of nia German potter…should perish before our eyes,” he chose ce New Jersey, volunteers as a guide at Fonthill. CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER COURTESY LEFT: OF THE MERCER MUSEUM & LIBRARY ALLURE (2); WEST STUDIOS; KEVIN GIANNINI/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; TILES HARVARD MAGAZINE /JC (2)

40 January-February 2018 Clockwise from upper left: Mercer and his beloved dog, Rollo; interior views of Fonthill Castle and the Mercer Museum; an exterior view of Fonthill; and two Mercer-designed tiles Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 THE LOW END THEORY Fred Moten’s subversive black-studies scholarship | by JESSE McCarthy

n 2013, a manifesto entitled The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & filling their coffers even as they prepare students, armed with lib- Black Study began making the rounds among the growing pool eral arts degrees and “critical thinking” skills, to helm a social and of nervous graduate students, harried adjuncts, un-tenured economic order in which, “to work…is to be asked, more and more, professors, and postdocs whirling through the nation’s faculty to do without thinking, to feel without emotion, to move without lounges. The Undercommons was published by the small anarchist friction, to adapt without question, to translate without pause, to press Autonomedia and made freely available for download; in desire without purpose, to connect without interruption.” practice, however, it circulated by word of mouth, copies of the For those with little or no knowledge of black studies, the text’s PDF forwarded like samizdat literature for those in the know. deployment of terms like “fugitivity” and “undercommons” may seem On the surface, the text is an analysis of alienated academic labor baffling. To those in the circle, however, this lexicon of continental Iat the contemporary American university. But it’s also more radical philosophy, remixed with a poetic and prophetic fire resembling Amiri than that: it is a manual for free thinking, a defiant call to dissent Baraka’s, bears the signature of one of the most brilliant practitioners within educational institutions that betray their liberal credos, of black studies working today: the scholar and poet Fred Moten ’84.

42 January - February 2018 Portraits by Robert Adam Mayer

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Black studies, or African American studies, emerged out of the from folks might say: ‘You want a bushel?’ And you’ll say, ‘Nah, I want revolutionary fervor of the late 1960s, as students and faculty mem- a mess.’ You know, like that great James Brown line: ‘Nobody can tell me bers demanded that universities recognize the need for departments how to use my mess.’ It’s a good thing to have. A mess is enough for a meal.” engaged in scholarship on race, slavery, and the diasporic history When he’s speaking before an audience, no matter the size, he and culture of peoples of African descent. Since its institutional- never raises his voice; a hush comes over the room and remains in ization, these departments have grown many branches of inquiry ambient tension, like a low flame. On the occasion of John Ashbery’s that maintain a rich interdisciplinary dialogue. One is a school of ninetieth birthday last July (just months before his passing), Moten thought known as jazz studies, which investigates the intersec- collaborated in a celebratory recording of Ashbery’s long poem, Flow tions of music, literary and aesthetic theory, and politics. Moten Chart. Ashbery was always a great reader of his own work, but it is arguably its leading theoretician, translating jazz studies into a was thrilling to hear the sly affection with which Moten took the vocabulary of insurgent thought that seeks to preserve black stud- verse uptown, bending its notes with his Lenox Lounge delivery. ies as a space for radical politics and dissent. In his work he has The same qualities come out when he reads from his own poetry, al- consistently argued that any theory of politics, ethics, or aesthet- ways brimful of quotations from the songbook of black America. His ics must begin by reckoning with the creative expressions of the poem, “I got something that makes me want to shout,” for example, oppressed. Having absorbed the wave of “high theory”—of decon- consists of riffs that build off quotations from a celebrated funk re- struction and post-structuralism—he, more than anyone else, has cord, each quote set off just enough and in just such a way —“I got refashioned it as a tool for thinking “from below.” something that tells me what it’s all about”—that when he lands Moten is best known for his book In the Break: The Aesthetics of the on the last line of the poem—“I got soul, and I’m super bad”—he’s Black Radical Tradition (2003). “The history of blackness is testament fully sublimated a James Brown groove. The line between poetry to the fact that objects can and do resist,” is the book’s arresting and song quivers, the “high” lyric gets down with the low, and the opening sentence, announcing his major aim: to rethink the way Godfather of Soul’s declamation of Soul Power boomerangs back bodies are shaped by aesthetic experience. In particular, he explores to us as poetry, which is what it always was. how the improvisation that recurs in black art—whether in the music of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, the poetry of Amiri Baraka A Cosmic Rent Party and Nathaniel Mackey, or the conceptual art of Adrian Piper—con- To understand how all the pieces that “make” Fred Moten come founds the distinctions between objects and subjects, individual together, one has to step back and see where he’s coming from. The bodies and collectively experienced expressions of resistance, de- autobiographical reference is a constant presence in his poetry, in sire, or agony. Since 2000, Moten has also published eight chapbooks which the names of beloved friends, colleagues, musicians, kinfolk, of poetry, and one, The Feel Trio, was a finalist for the National Book neighbors, literary figures, all intermingle and rub up against each Award in 2014. He is that rare literary figure who commands wide other like revelers at a cosmic rent party. “I grew up in a bass com- and deep respect in and out of the academy, and who blurs the line munity in las vegas,” opens one poem from The Feel Trio: “everything between poetics as a scholarly pursuit, and poetry as an act of re- was on the bottom and everything was / everything and everybody’s. bellious creation, an inherently subversive activity. we played silos. our propulsion / was flowers.” This past fall, Moten took up a new position in the department Moten was born in Las Vegas in 1962. His parents were part of the of performance studies at New York University’s Tisch School of Great Migration of blacks out of the Deep South who moved north the Arts, arriving from Los Angeles and a teaching appointment at and westward to big cities like St. Louis and Los Angeles. By the the University of California at Riverside. In early September, his 1940s and 1950s they were also being drawn to Las Vegas, and the office was still a bare room with a single high window looking out opportunities offered by the booming casinos and military bases over Broadway. He hadn’t had a chance to unpack his library, but al- established during World War II. “A lot of people don’t realize it, ready a small stack of books on jazz theory, performance, and quan- but Vegas was one of the last great union towns,” Moten says. Jobs tum mechanics rested in a pile near his desk. It soon became clear, within the gaming industry were protected by the Culinary Union, however, that he is the kind of thinker who keeps all his favorite and with a union check, even casino porters and maids could save books in his head, anyway. His Paul Laurence Dunbar is always at up to buy a house—“at least on the West Side,” the city’s largely his fingertips, and he weaves passages from Karl Marx, Immanuel segregated black community where he was raised. Kant, or Hortense Spillers into his conversation with equal facility. Moten’s father, originally from Louisiana, found work at the Las Ve- In someone else this learnedness could come off as intimidating, gas Convention Center and then eventually for Pan American, a large but in Moten it’s just the opposite. Something about his composure, subcontractor for the Nevada Test Site where the military was still his relaxed attentiveness, the way he shakes his head with knowing trying out its new atomic weapons. His mother worked as a school laughter as he pauses over the direction he’s about to take with a ques- teacher. (She appears often in his poetry as B. Jenkins, also the ti- tion, instantly erases any stuffiness: one can imagine the exact same tle of one of his finest collections.) Her path to that job was a steep conversation taking place on the sidelines of a cookout. And then climb. Her family was from Kingsland, Arkansas, and had committed there’s his voice: warm, low, and propelled by a mellow cadence that themselves against all odds to obtaining education. Her own mother breaks complex clauses into neat segments, their hushed, conspirato- had managed to finish high school, says Moten, who remembers his rial air approaching aphorism. At one point, Moten asked about my grandmother as a woman with thwarted ambitions and a great love dissertation, which I confessed, sheepishly, was kind of a mess. His of literature. She’d wake him up in the mornings by reciting poems by eyes lit up. He leaned back with a wide grin, his hands spreading out Dunbar and Keats she’d learned in high school. “And she was the one in front of him. “You know what a mess is?” He said. “In Arkansas, a who was really determined for my mother to go to college,” he says. mess is a unit of measure. Like of vegetables. Where my people come “She cleaned people’s houses until the day she retired, and in the sum-

Harvard Magazine 43

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 mer and spring she would pick cotton.” Kingsland is the birthplace this amazing nightlife on Jackson Street where you could hear ev- of Johnny Cash, and Moten’s family picked cotton on the property erybody.” Everyone, from headliners to pit-band musicians, came of Cash’s cousin Dave, a big landowner, to get the money together to to stay on the West Side. Moten’s mother was friends with musi- send his mother to college. cians, dancers, and singers; when jazz singer Sarah Vaughan came Jenkins attended the segregated University of Arkansas at Fayette- to town she would come by the house, cook greens, listen to music, ville, which housed her in the dormitory basement. She was keen on and gossip. “For me that was like school,” he says. His childhood doing more than just learning; she wanted to pursue knowledge for summers, meanwhile, seemed to revolve around listening to Vin its own sake, and for how it might serve to explain the world around Scully and Jerry Doggett doing the Dodgers broadcast: “My family her. “My mother totally believed in the value of education,” Moten were all rabid Jackie Robinson-era Dodgers fans.” says, “but she was scholarly in a certain way. She was invested in Moten also has strong memories of listening to KBOP, “The Cool learning in a way that was disconnected from the material benefits Voice of Vegas.” “It was one of those sundown stations, you know, it was supposed to get her, and I must have picked up on that.” She that shuts down for the night, and they had a disc jockey named was especially interested in sociology, and he grew up hearing her talk Gino B. Soon as the sun started getting low, he would put on a bass about figures like Horace Mann Bond, Hortense Powdermaker, Gun- line and start rapping to himself…bim bam, slapped-y sam, and remember nar Myrdal, and John Dollard, towering figures of the liberal school of everybody life is love and love is life...that kind of thing, and everybody American social science who were engaged in solving what was then in town would tune in just to hear what he was going to say, and commonly referred to as “the Negro Problem.” I loved that.” He also vividly recalls encountering certain LPs in Degree in hand, she went to Chicago to teach in the public the 1970s, like Bob Marley’s Rastaman Vibration and Stevie Wonder’s schools, but “someone basically told her she was too dark to get a Innervisions—“those double-gated record albums that had the lyr- teaching job in Chicago.” She hoped to have better luck in Vegas, ics printed on the inside, so you could sit and read while the music but the schools were segregated there, too, and no one would hire played overhead.” Aside from his grandmother’s love of it, he says, her. “They used to call Nevada the Mississippi of the West,” Moten his first experience of poetry was music. recalls. Jenkins took up domestic work, and it was only by chance that she found herself cleaning the house of a woman who was on From Harvard to the Nevada Test Site the local school board, who helped her get a job at Madison El- For a kid from a midsize Western city, the shock of going East to ementary School on the West Side, where she met Moten’s father. college at Harvard might have been overwhelming. Moten felt he The West Side was a tightly knit community. Moten likens it to was ready for the challenge. He was lucky to have folks looking out the village in the Toni Morrison essay “City Limits, Village Values,” for him, he insists—like David L. Evans, an admissions officer who where Morrison contrasts white fiction writers’ “Gopher prairie was “like a hero to us”: “Any black student from the late ’60s onward, despair” with the affection black writers typically express for the you can believe he had to fight like Mayweather, Ali, Frazier, and Joe intimate, communal life built around “village values”— even if that Louis to get us in.” Moten’s first surprise at Harvard was encounter- black village, like Harlem, say, is part of a larger city. “It seemed ing a certain kind of black elite. “My growing up was a lot more like like everybody was from one of these tiny little towns in Arkansas. Good Times than it was like the Huxtables, and now I was in a school My mom’s best friends—their grandparents were friends.” Nevada with a lot of Huxtables.” The even bigger shock was campus politics. was a small enough state, he says, that the West Side could swing “When I went to Harvard in 1980 I thought I was being trained for the Revolution. The Black Panther party in Ve- gas—they met in my mom’s basement. So I was Campus politics came as a surprise: ready to go, and I had foolishly assumed everyone there would be thinking like me.” “When I went to Harvard in 1980 I thought I Moten originally planned to concentrate in economics, taking Social Analysis 10 and a class on development economics that he vaguely imag- was being trained for the Revolution.” ined might lead to agricultural development tight elections, and much of Las Vegas politics in the early 1960s work in Africa. Freshman football helped him through his first was concerned with national politicans’ positions on civil-rights semester by providing a loose structure without too strenuous legislation. “So a few precincts in Las Vegas might make the dif- a commitment—but by the second, things were getting messy. ference between the election of a senator, Paul Laxalt, who prob- He was very influenced by Professor Martin L. Kilson, a scholar ably wouldn’t vote for the Civil Rights Act, or the election of a of black politics whom Moten describes as “a great man and a Howard Cannon, who would, and my mom was deeply involved close mentor,” and to whom The Undercommons is dedicated. He was in all that.” Through her, politics and music became intertwined also increasingly involved in the activities of politically minded in everyday life. friends—tutoring prisoners and working with civil-rights activ- Though the flashpoint of national politics at the time was school ists in Roxbury. After a while he got too busy to go to class. He was desegregation, locally it was also about desegregating the Vegas also awakening to a world of ideas and intellectual debate. “We Strip. “You know, you see all that Rat Pack shit in the movies,” Mo- were staying up all night, we were reading everything, just none ten says, “but the truth of it was that Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Elling- of it was for class.” The group discovered Noam Chomsky, and got ton, Count Basie—they could perform on the strip, but they damn deeply involved in exchanges between E.O. Wilson and Stephen sure couldn’t stay there. So when they came to town they would Jay Gould about sociobiology and scientific racism—“and we felt come to the West Side and stay in rooming houses, and there was like we were in the debate, like we were part of it, you know, we

44 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 were very earnest and strident in that way. But eventually it caught up to me that I had flunked three classes and I had to go home for a year.” This turned out to be a transformative experience that can only be described as Pynchonesque. When he got home, he ended up taking a job as a janitor at the Nevada Test Site, busing in through the desert each day. “The Test Site was the last re- sort for a lot of people. If you really messed up, you might still be able to get work there,” he says now. He worked pretty much alone, but for an alcoholic man from Brooklyn who’d somehow drifted west, and would regale Moten with stories about growing up in Red Hook. “I’ll never forget, he always called me ‘Cap’: ‘I wanna succeed again, Cap!’” “It was eight hours of job but two hours of work,” Moten recounts, “so mostly what I did was read.” He got into T.S. Eliot by way of seeing Apoca- lypse Now and reading Conrad. “‘The Hollow Men’ and ‘The Wasteland,’ those were very important poems for me. There was this scholarly apparatus to them, a critical and philosophical sensibility that Eliot had, that you could trace in the composition through wasn’t for the bosses.” He felt the same way about Derrida: “This is the notes.” He’d pore over a newly released facsimile edition to for the people who want to tear shit up. And we were ready for it.” “The Wasteland” that included Eliot’s drafts. “By the time I came back, I was an English major.” The Poet-Philosopher of Weird Back in Cambridge, it was an exciting and tumultuous time to be Moten went on to pursue graduate studies in English at Berkeley. jumping into literary studies. He took an expository writing class Even his earliest journal publications are intensely idiosyncratic. It’s with Deborah Carlin, who introduced him to Alice Walker and as if he were convinced he had to invent his own tools in order to Zora Neale Hurston and encouraged him to write; he took Helen take up the subjects that interested him—design his own philoso- Vendler’s “Modern American Poetry” class, where he first encoun- phy, his own theory. “I’m not a philosopher,” he says. “I feel like I’m tered Wallace Stevens, Frank O’Hara, and Allen Ginsberg, “And I a critic, in the sense that Marx intends in Private Property and Com- realized that I could read it, I could get it.” Reflecting, he adds, “I munism when he gives these sketchy outlines of what communism was glad that I had taken the class with Vendler and the class meant might look like: ‘We wake up in the morning, and we go out in the a lot to me, but I also already knew my taste differed from hers.” garden, till the ground, and in the afternoon we engage in criticism.’” At the same time, Moten was cultivating a relationship to campus In his criticism, Moten is especially attuned to a zone that Brent literary life, joining The Harvard Advocate, where he met its poetry Edwards (a close friend and interlocuter) has called the “fringe of con- editor, Stefano Harney ’85—forming a close and enduring friend- tact between music and language.” He’ll draw the reader’s attention ship that has also evolved into an ongoing intellectual collaboration to the “surplus lyricism of the muted, mutating horns of Tricky Sam (Harney is co-author of The Undercommons). Together, they took a Nanton or Cootie Williams” in Duke Ellington’s band, for example. class taught by David Perkins on the modernist long poem, reading Or, commenting on Invisible Man’s observation that few really listen to William Carlos Williams’s Paterson, Robert Duncan’s “Passages,” Louis Armstrong’s jazz, he’ll cut to an abrupt and unsettling assertion: and Ed Dorn’s The Gunslinger. “I was into that stuff, and Steve was, “Ellison knows that you can’t really listen to this music. He knows… too, so we could cultivate our resistance to Vendler together.” Par- that really listening, when it goes bone-deep into the sudden ark of ties were off campus at William Corbett’s house in Boston’s South bones, is something other than itself. It doesn’t alternate with but is End, where fellow poets like Michael Palmer, Robert Creeley, or seeing; it’s the sense that it excludes; it’s the ensemble of the senses. Seamus Heaney might stop in for dinner or drinks. Moten absorbed Few really read this novel.” the possibilities of the scene but his poetic sensibility is that of the In one of In the Break’s most transfixing passages, Moten reassembles a instinctive outsider, attracted to all those who dwell at the fringes new set of meanings, or understandings, of the photograph of Emmett and intend to remain there. Till’s open casket. Why should that image, out of all others, have so A decisive turning point came when literary critic Barbara John- much power—some even arguing, as he points out, that it triggered son, arrived from Yale to teach a course called “Deconstruction,” the mobilization of the civil-rights movement? Why has it remained so and he first read Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, and Ferdinand Sau- charged and fraught, so haunting? “What effect,” Moten asks, “did the ssure. At the time, in a class on James Joyce, he was also reading photograph of his body have on death?” His answer: captured within Ulysses. “It had a rhythm I was totally familiar with, but that I didn’t the image is the sexual panic occasioned by the sound of Till’s whis- associate with high art. I believed, I just sensed that it was radi- tling, “ ‘the crippled speech’ of Till’s ‘Bye, baby,’ ” forever bound up in cal; it felt instinctively to me like this was against the status quo, the moaning and mourning of a mother over her dead child. Looking that the reason they wrote this way was that it was like a secret, it at the photograph, Moten writes, “cannot (please turn to page 74)

Harvard Magazine 45

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 THE LOW END THEORY Susan Howe—who, he says, has a different lation and video art pieces, where they do (continued from page 45) understanding of how the sentence works. things like practice the (slightly nostalgic) “Miles [Davis] said: You gotta have a sound. I art of leaving voicemail messages for each be sustained as unalloyed looking but must knew I wanted to sound like something. other every day for two weeks without ever be accompanied by listening and this, even That was more important to me than any- connecting, just riffing off snippets from though what is listened to—echo of a whistle thing.” One could argue that Moten’s sound each other’s notes. In another video short or a phrase, moaning, mourning, desperate resonates with the “golden era” of hip-hop of directed by Tsang, Moten—wearing a caftan testimony and flight—is also unbearable.” the late eighties and early nineties, when it and looking Sun Ra-ish—is filmed in “drag- Millions have viewed the photographs of Till’s was still audibly a wild collage of jazz, R&B, frame” slow motion dancing to an a cappella open casket. His images have been infamously late disco and funk: “Styles upon styles upon rendition of the jazz standard “Girl Talk.” and controversially reproduced, looked away styles is what I have,” the late Phife Dawg raps By way of explanation, Moten recalls his from, gawked at. Moten does with extraordi- on A Tribe Called Quest’s celebrated 1991 al- old neighborhood. “I grew up around people nary care what most have never done for Till bum The Low End Theory. who were weird. No one’s blackness was (or for so many other sons and mothers), out One difficulty for outside readers encoun- compromised by their weirdness, and by the of ignorance, or fear, or shame—which is, of tering Moten’s work is that he tends to en- same token,” he adds, “nobody’s weirdness course, to listen. gage more with the avant-garde than with was compromised by their blackness.” The Moten is impatient with detractors who pop. It’s easy to see why the art world has current buzz (and sometimes backlash) over accuse him of difficulty and lack of clarity. embraced him: his taste gravitates toward the cultural ascendancy of so-called black Many writers once thought to be impenetra- the free-jazz end of the spectrum so strongly nerds, or “blerds,” allegedly incarnated by ble are now considered canonical, he points it’s as if he were on a mission, striving to ex- celebrities like Donald Glover, Neil deGrasse out. “The critics I loved and who were influ- perience all of creation at once—to play (as Tyson, or Issa Rae, leaves him somewhat ential to me were all weird: Empson, Burke, the title of a favorite Cecil Taylor album puts annoyed. “In my mind I have this image Benjamin, Adorno—they all had a sound, it) All the Notes. This spring, Moten is teach- of Sonny Boy Williamson wearing one of and it wasn’t like a PMLA, academic-journal ing a graduate course based on the works those harlequin suits he liked to wear. These sound.” The other critics who influenced him, of choreographer Ralph Lemon and artist dudes were strange, and I always felt that’s he continues, were poets: Charles Olson, Ami- Glenn Ligon. In recent years he has collabo- just essential to black culture. George Clinton ri Baraka, Nathaniel Mackey, and especially rated with the artist Wu Tsang on instal- is weird. Anybody that we care about, that

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74 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 we still pay attention to, they were weird.” Weirdness for Moten can refer to cultural His writings feel like a Charlie Parker practices, but it also describes the willful idiosyncracy of his own work, which draws freely from tributaries of all kinds. In Black and solo, or a Basquiat painting, in their attempt Blur, the first book of his new three-volume collection, consent not to be a single being (pub- to capture the profusion of ideas in flight. lished by Duke University Press), one finds essays on the Congolese painter Tshibumba not supposed to be satisfied with clear un- was that the United States without black Kanda-Matulu and C.L.R. James, François Gi- derstanding, but instead motivated to con- people is too terrifying to contemplate; that rard’s Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, tinue improvising and imagining a utopian all the evidence, on balance, suggests that a comparison between Trinidadian calypso destination where a black cosmopolitan- blackness has actually been the single most and Charles Mingus records composed in re- ism—one created from below, rather than humanizing—one could even say, slyly, the sponse to the Little Rock Nine, David Ham- imposed from above—brings folks together. only “civilizing”—force in America. Moten mon’s art installation Concerto in Black and Blue, For Moten, this flight of ideas begins in the takes strong exception. “The work of black Wittgenstein and the science fiction of Samu- flight of bodies: in the experience of slavery culture was never to civilize America—it’s el Delany, a deconstruction of Theodor Ador- and the Middle Passage, which plays a crucial about the ongoing production of the alter- no’s writings on music and a reconstruction role in his thinking. “Who is more cosmo- native. At this point it’s about the preserva- of Saidiya Hartman’s arguments on violence. politan than Equiano?” he asks rhetorically, tion of the earth. To the extent that black Sometimes the collision can happen within a citing the Igbo sailor and merchant who pur- culture has a historic mission, and I believe single sentence: “Emily Dickinson and Harriet chased his own freedom, joined the abolition- that it does—its mission is to uncivilize, Jacobs, in their upper rooms, are beautiful,” he ist movement in England, and published his to de-civilize, this country. Yes, this brutal writes. “They renovate sequestration.” famous autobiography in 1789. “People think structure was built on our backs; but if that Taken together, Moten’s writings feel like cosmopolitanism is about having a business- was the case, it was so that when we stood a Charlie Parker solo, or a Basquiat painting, class seat. The hold of the ship, among other up it would crumble.” in their gleeful yet deadly serious attempt to things, produces a kind of cosmopolitanism, Despite these freighted words, Moten capture the profusion of ideas in flight. For and it’s not just about contact with Europeans isn’t the brooding type. He’s pleased to be him this fugitive quality is the point. We are and transatlantic travel. When you put Fulani back in New York City, where he’ll be able and Igbo together and they have to learn how to walk, instead of drive, his kids to school. STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION. Publication title: Harvard Magazine. Publication no. 0095-2427. to speak to each other, that’s also a language He’s hopeful about new opportunities for Filing date: 10/1/2017. Issue frequency: bi-monthly. Number of issues published annually: 6. Annual subscription price: $30. lab. The historical production of blackness is travel, and excited to engage with local art- Complete mailing address of known office of publication and cosmopolitanism.” ists and poets. His wife, cultural studies headquarters or general business office of the publisher: 7 Ware Street, Cambridge MA 02138. Contact person: Felecia Carter, What can one learn from the expression scholar Laura Harris, is working on a study 617-496-6694. Publisher: Irina Kuksin, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge MA 02138. Editor: John Rosenberg, of people who refuse to be commodities, but of the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, who is Harvard Magazine Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge MA 02138. Man- aging Editor: Jonathan Shaw, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, also once were commodities? What does his- currently being “re-discovered” by American Cambridge MA 02138. Owner: Harvard Magazine Inc., 7 Ware Street, Cambridge MA 02138. Known bondholders, mortgag- tory look like, or the present, or the future, artists and critics. “I circulate babylon and ees, or other security holders: none. The purpose, function, on the go… and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt sta- from the point of view of those who refuse translate for the new times,” opens another tus for federal income tax purposes have not changed during the preceding 12 months. Issue date for circulation data below: the norms produced by systems of violence: poem in The Feel Trio, referring to a timely, or September-October 2017. Avg. no. copies Single issue who consent not to be a single being? These key maybe timeless, place where “secret runway Responsive. Clean. Intuitive. each issue nearest to preced. 12 mos filing date concerns course through the entirety of Mo- ads brush and cruise each other and / the A. Total no. of copies (Net press run) ...... 262,006 262,684 ten’s dazzling new trilogy, which assembles project runaway.” B. Paid and/or requested all his theoretical writings since In the Break. Moten is not in the business of promot- We have redesigned our mobile circulation 1. Paid/req. outside-county At a time of surging reactionary politics, ill ing optimism for the future, but he does not experience with you, our readers, mail subscriptions stated on Form 3541...... 259,515 260,875 feeling, and bad community, few thinkers feel imprisoned by the past or bogged down 2. Paid in-county subs ...... 0 0 in mind. Harvardmagazine.com is now a 3. Sales through dealers and seem so unburdened and unbeholden, so in the present. Instead he is busy prodding carriers, street vendors, counter sales, and other confident in their reading of the historical about the little edges of everyday life as it is fully responsive mobile site optimized for non-USPS paid distribution ...... 591 494 4. Other classes mailed moment. Indeed, when faced with the in- expressed by everyday people, the folkways of through the USPS ...... 0 0 smartphones and tablets, with a cleaner, C. Total paid and/or evitable question of the state of U.S. politics, the undercommons. As his writings circulate requested circulation ...... 260,106 261,369 sleeker look. Navigating between stories D. Free or nominal rate distribution by mail Moten remains unfazed. “The thing I can’t within and beyond the classroom, so too does 1. Outside-county as stated on Form 3541 ...... 238 171 stand is the Trump exceptionalism. Remem- his version of theorizing from below, always and discovering interesting content has 2. In-county as stated on Form 3541 ...... 0 0 ber when Goldwater was embarrassing. And seeking out sites where a greater humanity never been easier. Check out our new 3. Other classes mailed Reagan. And Bush. Trump is nothing new. might unexpectedly break through. through the USPS ...... 0 0 4. Free or nominal distribution This is what empire on the decline looks like. features on your mobile device today. outside the mail ...... 279 0 E. Total free or nominal distribution...... 517 171 When each emperor is worse than the last.” Jesse McCarthy previously profiled novelist Colson F. Total distribution...... 260,623 261,540 G. Copies not distributed...... 1,383 1,144 Whitehead ’91 in the September-October 2016 issue H. Total...... 262,006 262,684 * * * harvardmagazine.com Percent paid and/or A thesis that has often been attractive to of this magazine. His writing has appeared in The requested circulation...... 99.80% 99.93% black intellectuals (held dear, for example, New York Times Book Review, The Nation, I certify that the information above is true and complete. Irina Kuksin, Publisher by both W.E.B. Du Bois and Ralph Ellison) The Point, and Dissent.

Harvard Magazine 75

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Prodigies’ Progress Parents and superkids, then and now

by Ann Hulbert

Editor’s note: In her new book, Ann Hulbert ’77 explores the fascination with child genius over the past century in America. She probes the stories of 16 exceptionally gifted young people, including two precocious students who arrived at Harvard in 1909.

urs is an era, a popular parenting adviser has written, when Lake-Wobe- gon-style insistence on above-average children is “yesterday’s news,” over- taken by an anxious credo that “given half a chance, all of our children would be extraordinary.” Yet versions of today’s uneasy preoccupation with off-the-charts early achievement actually go back further than we think. Over Othe past century, the zeitgeist has swept different young marvels to special attention as emblems of social progress or as victims of worrisome pressures— or often both at once. Is this or that early bloomer a weirdo headed for burnout, true to popular lore? Or is the wunderkind bound for creative glory, as modern experts have hoped to prove? And what behind-the-scenes at 11 as a “special student” after strenuous lobbying by his father. forces other than his or her genius explain precocious mastery? Such The two superprecocious sons of two very upwardly mobile Rus- loaded questions lurk between the lines for lesser superkids, too. sian immigrants, outspoken men with accents and bushy mustaches, Prodigies exert the fascination they do precisely for that reason: inspired suspense. The arrival of these brilliant boys with unusual they invite scrutiny as auguries for the rest of us. They are the living, pedigrees fit the mission of Harvard’s outgoing president, Charles Wil- breathing, superbly high-performing evidence of what feats children liam Eliot, a liberal Boston Brahmin and staunch believer in equality may be capable of—and of how adult aspirations and efforts may of opportunity. He aimed to open the university’s doors to “men with help or hinder youthful soaring. What prodigies themselves make much money, little money, or no money, provided that they all have of their speedy progress, and the stresses they face, is a question brains.” And not just brains, Eliot warned complacent WASPs, who that has only gradually gotten the airing it deserves. mistook “an indifferent good-for-nothing, luxurious person, idling In the fall of 1909, when two wonder boys converged on Har- through the precious years of college life” for an ideal gentleman or vard—among the first, and for a time the most famous, prodigies scholar. Eliot had in mind an elite with “the capacity to prove by hard of the modern era—their parents proudly assumed a Pygmalion work that they have also the necessary perseverance and endurance.” role. Norbert Wiener, the nearly 15-year-old son of the university’s Boris Sidis and his wife, Sarah, had made it their mission to jolt first professor of Slavic languages, Leo Wiener, arrived as a gradu- turn-of-the-century Americans with a thrilling, and intimidat- ate student in (at his father’s direction) zoology. William James ing, message: learning, if it was begun soon enough, could yield Sidis (namesake and godson of the renowned Harvard psycholo- phenomenal results very early and rapidly. Russian Jews, they had gist who had been a mentor to his father, Boris Sidis) was admitted fled the pogroms in Ukraine for the garment sweatshops on the

46 January - February 2018 This article is adapted from the first and last chapters of Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies (Knopf, January 2018). Copyright © Ann Hulbert. Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 scorned rote learning and inspired by impassioned example. The prospect that anyone’s children could soar like these sons—and do so without undue strain, if parents were prompt enough and pursued the right methods—stirred great interest, but also wariness, on campus and beyond. A. Lawrence Lowell, El- iot’s far stuffier Brahmin successor, was said to worry that the “new immigrants” from Eastern and Southern Europe just didn’t mix well with the “Anglo-Saxon race,” whose ascendancy he assumed. “What will become of the wonder child?” asked a New York Times article announcing William’s debut at Harvard. The attention was tinted with suspicion: “Will he go the way commonly supposed to be that of most boy prodigies,” the Times went on, “or will he make a name for himself?”

When they arrived on campus in Cam- bridge, Norbert and William bore no physical resemblance. In a photograph that circulated in the avid newspaper coverage that fall, Norbert conveyed confidence, a bow tie setting off a sober yet open expression. William, in bangs and short pants, was still very much a child. Their backgrounds blurred, though, in the welcoming press accounts that greeted the unusual new students. That fit right in with their fathers’ overarching purpose. Which boy had accomplished what by when wasn’t the point: they were an amalgam of the wonder child hidden in every child. Leo and Boris presented their sons and themselves as readily imitable examples, cut from a common cloth. Their boys had started out no different from other “bright” children. The fathers’ new methods were neither customized nor complicat- ed—nor coercive. They opened “up to the human race vistas of possibilities and achievement un- reached in any epoch of the history of the world.” So announced the Boston journalist and popularizer When Norbert “Nubbins” Wiener (left) and William “Billy” Sidis matriculated at of psychology H. Addington Bruce, who claimed Harvard in 1909, they were 14 and 11, respectively. Press accounts often blurred prime magazine space at a time when compulsory their backgrounds, but their upbringings—and temperaments—differed sharply. schooling laws were spreading, along with “child United States’ East Coast in the mid-1880s. Within 10 years they study” groups and new interest in early development. The young mar- had worked their way to the top of American higher education. By vels in Cambridge were not to be compared with lopsided “lightning 1898, Sarah was a rare woman with an M.D. (from Boston University calculators” like Zerah Colburn, a Vermont farm boy born in 1804 School of Medicine), and Boris had racked up a B.A., an M.A., and whose father had toured him through Europe. Instead, Norbert and a Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard within four years. But inborn tal- William thrived on cutting-edge pedagogical insights that promised ent had nothing to do with their feats, or their son’s, they insisted. to banish old-fashioned fears of debilitating precocity produced by An as-yet-unimagined potential lay in every child, and it was time “forcing.” Children’s “minds are built with use,” Boris taught, their parents started cultivating it, Boris urged in an address called “Phi- brains undergoing rapid growth beginning in infancy. Seizing the listine and Genius,” delivered at Harvard’s summer school in 1909. window between two and three was crucial, and teaching must also The country, more than ever, needed “the individuality, the origi- appeal to their feelings. nality, the latent powers of talent and genius” too often wasted. Yet of course neither the men nor the boys—nor their families— Leo Wiener, whose American odyssey had blended odd jobs and were cut from the same cloth at all. Nor did their Harvard trajectories nature-loving idealism with fervent auto-didacticism, agreed. He unfold the same way. By the time they arrived on campus, William’s had mastered 10 languages by his teens back in the old world, and and Norbert’s experiences had already been strikingly different. Life en route to Cambridge discovered his calling as a teacher who in the Wiener household was a whirlwind, despite the best efforts of

Photograph of Norbert Wiener courtesy of the MIT Museum. Photograph Harvard Magazine 47 of William Sidis courtesy of the Harvard University Archives Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Leo’s wife, the very proper former Bertha Kahn that her son gave much sign of wanting a col- of Missouri. An insatiable learner who pored When William laborator. At around three, he found her old over books early, Nubbins—Norbert’s family Latin trot, and excitedly revealed his mastery nickname—had the freedom, and the inclina- graduated at 16, The to his stunned father and some visitors. Boris tion, to be as vigorous as he was intellectually supplied Billy with calendars to familiarize curious. He had a model: Leo, a tireless scholar Boston Herald him with days and numbers. By five, the hy- and farmer and mushroom hunter. As a small perfocused little boy had figured out by him- boy in Cambridge, Norbert eagerly sought out headline brimmed self how to calculate the day on which any friends. Chunky and full of physical energy, he date fell. Rules thrilled him; deviations from threw himself into neighborhood games, de- with mockery: routines upset him. At six, he headed off to spite his bad eyesight and coordination—and a Brookline primary school. There he was an more fearfulness than he cared to admit. In- “Harvard’s Boy impatient handful for teachers, according to a doors, the Wieners’ “house of learning” over- later press account, covering his ears when he flowed with visitors, conversation, books, and Prodigy…Has 154 was bored, irrepressible when he was inter- emotional outbursts. When eight-year-old ested. At recess Billy was a loner, avoiding all Norbert ran into math difficulties with a mean Rules Which games and “expounding the nebular hypoth- teacher in the fourth grade, Leo pulled him out esis” to less-than-attentive schoolmates. of school. Norbert got home-based learning, Govern His Life.” Might everything have turned out differ- much of it outsourced in wonderful ways— ently had the Sidises taken their cue from the a lovely Radcliffe tutor for Latin and German, a chemistry student Wieners’ decision to shield Norbert from the Harvard limelight? who helped set up a lab, and endless time in the Agassiz Museum at Instead, they pressed for Billy’s admission, and Harvard, overcoming Harvard, not to mention roaming with friends. its qualms about his lack of maturity, admitted him as a commuting Math studies, though, were another story. In public, Leo prided student at 11. William, the name he now went by, gave no sign of himself on setting store by “the blessedness of blundering.” Making being fazed that he didn’t fit into a world of polished young gentle- children “work out problems” gave them the chance to fumble, he told men. But mixed in with his social cluelessness was what could be journalists, and to “acquire that sense of mastery, that joy of triumph, taken for arrogance—and was, in his parents’ case. An impatient which is of itself an incentive to further effort.” But in his memoir writ- proselytizer, Boris not so subtly implied that those who didn’t match ten in middle age, Ex-Prodigy, Norbert’s description of algebra lessons the Sidises’ pedagogical success (and who could?) were hidebound with his father reveals Leo’s habit of thundering at his son’s mistakes, slackers. Under the circumstances, the plan to have William de- letting loose with brute, ass, fool, donkey. When at eight, eye trouble for liver a lecture on the fourth dimension to the Mathematical Club Norbert necessitated a half-year ban on reading or writing—doc- in January 1910—an event evidently facilitated by a family friend tor’s orders—Leo’s orders were to learn by ear. Those months spent of the Sidises—courted trouble. working out algebra and geometry problems in his head introduced The substance of the talk was impressively incomprehensible: that Norbert to a powerful ally: a highly unrote memory. In the bargain, was the gist of accounts by reporters ready to assume that what was he staked out a private inner sanctum and discovered his own un- over their heads was beyond the rest of the audience, too. (Norbert, usual skill. “I relearned the world,” Norbert later told a colleague. “My who was there, noted that the presentation didn’t rely on others’ mind completely opened up. I could see things I never saw before.” work, which he found quite remarkable.) It was William’s style that After two years came another “unorthodox experiment,” as Nor- entertained the press. He had his professorial act down—introduc- bert put it in Ex-Prodigy: he went to high school. There, he lucked tory patter, gestures, arcane vocabulary, diagrams, even a closing into an ideal mentor—or more accurately, maternal protector: Miss glance at his watch. And then on January 27, 1910, a front-page article Laura Leavitt, a classics teacher whom Wiener later described as in The New York Times reported that young William had been “weak- the “brains and conscience” of the school. She eased Norbert into ened recently by overstudy” and had been felled by a cold after his kid-brother status among the students, and made sure he connected lecture. He apparently was under the weather, but a bigger press with middle-schoolers who shared the building; her nephew be- backlash was under way, reviving old-style alarm about prodigies came his best friend. Three years later, in the fall of 1906, Norbert as exploited specimens, enfeebled by ill-advised precocity. Another graduated, fortified by “a sense of roots and security.” At almost story inside the paper diagnosed a “breakdown” and blamed Boris. 12, he became a matriculant at Tufts College, in Medford, on the With Boris opening a sanatorium for “nervous patients” in Ports- theory that he would be spared the full glare of the spotlight likely mouth, the family moved to New Hampshire, leaving William on his to be his fate on the Harvard campus. own as he entered adolescence. Under suspicion now of being men- William’s home world was a calm idyll—certainly by comparison tally unbalanced, he endured continued press hounding. The idea with the volatile Wiener scene. But his mother’s portrait of fam- was for him to try Harvard dorm life. But he was the dupe of pranks ily harmony, in an account she wrote years later, obscured a more that mostly turned on his awkward ignorance about girls; bullying unsettling reality: a little boy off in his own orbit, and two parents soon drove him to a rooming house on Brattle Street. When William too emotionally obtuse to recognize how isolated he was. Billy (as graduated cum laude at 16 in June 1914, The Boston Herald was ready he was then called) was deemed ready for grownup pastimes by with salutes to his record-breaking prowess. He was “mentally… five months old, observing and listening to everything at the din- regarded by wise men as the most remarkable youth in the world” ner table, learning to use a spoon by trial and error. Ever at hand, and was on his way to becoming “the youngest college professor in Sarah was ready to answer or help him research any question, not the world,” with an appointment to teach math at Rice Institute.

48 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 But the headline brimmed with mockery: “harvard’s boy prodigy had, into more than his studies (which soon shifted to philosophy). vows never to marry Sidis Pledges Celibacy Beneath Sturdy Oak, He dared to join in pick-up basketball games in the gym basement Has 154 Rules Which Govern His Life, ‘Women Do Not Appeal to but quickly realized his glasses couldn’t take the rough play even Me,’ He Says; He Is 16.” It wasn’t just romance and sex but anger if he could. A commuter, he mingled happily in the library of the that he needed to keep at bay, William told the Herald reporter. “I Harvard Union between classes, where the unclubbable sort hung have a quick temper; ergo, I will not mingle a great deal with the fel- out—generating murmurs of disapproval as anti-Semitism became lows around me, then I shall not have occasion to lose my temper.” more overt under President Lowell. But the anger he barely suppressed seemed to be aimed above all at his parents. William declared himself “not at all a believ- As a 17-year-old math teacher at Rice, William was yet again merci- er in home life.” In one puzzling and poignant swipe, he all but lessly teased by undergraduates older than he was. Enrolled after that abolished childhood: “No one should at Harvard Law School, he dropped be dependent upon the good-will of out in his third year, not the collector others for support when too young to of credentials his father had been. If his support himself.” He announced that growing interest in radical politics en- he was “in a way…a Socialist,” perhaps couraged any new bonding with Boris not such a surprising allegiance for a (an erstwhile tutor of Russian serfs), prodigy who was feeling sabotaged by a bitter break with his parents was in filial dependence, Harvard snobbery, store after William got arrested at a and media prurience—and loneliness. Boston May Day Socialist march in 1919 Norbert didn’t manage to forge any that dissolved into mayhem. real connection with William on cam- By now 21, he was sentenced to 18 pus. He briefly tried, though, and the months in prison on charges of riot- oddball loner seems to have inspired ing and assaulting a police officer, a fraught sense of fellowship in the though he had done neither. In Wil- young graduate student who came to liam’s later version of events, he was Harvard newly, and intensely, haunted “kidnapped” by his parents before he by predictions of failure for a “freak of could appeal the initial sentence. Their nature,” or nurture, of the sort the two idea of “protection,” he wrote, was to of them were. Norbert had spent the make him stay in the New Hampshire summer of 1909 in acute crisis after sanatorium for a year, after which three years at Tufts. He had thrived they whisked him to California—ea- there on the academic challenges, but ger to keep him not just out of court four decades later in his memoir he de- and prison but also out of touch with HARVARD CLASS ALBUM CLASS HARVARD scribed a teenager thrown off balance. fellow Socialists in Boston. Upon fi- Heading home each day to siblings nally escaping to New York and low- and neighborhood friends, he was level accounting work, William was “wholly a child for purposes of com- spooked, in flight from his parents’ panionship.” Meanwhile, hormones control, as well as from press atten- left him feeling guilty and confused. tion, his reputation (he promptly quit And his father’s refrain, in company if officemates learned who he was), and in the press, that Norbert was not and the legal charges. Writing under just average but lazy didn’t help. De- pseudonyms, he pursued a wide ar- pression closed in on Norbert when ray of topics: the collection of streetcar he didn’t make Phi Beta Kappa and transfers, the contributions various learned that the reason was “doubt Indian tribes had made to American as to whether the future of an infant colonists’ notions of democracy, col- prodigy would justify the honor.” lisions on highways, trivia about his By the time he started at Har- beloved city of Boston, and more. He vard, Norbert was armed with a so- put his name on his most ambitious cial awareness that William utterly endeavor, The Animate and the Inanimate, lacked. He was also intensely self-con- which was published (perhaps at his scious about his misfit status in a set- own expense) in 1925 to no notice. ting where, as he put it, “a gentlemanly It set forth his ideas about the pos- indifference, a studious coldness, an sible reversibility of the second law of intellectual imperturbability joined ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES thermodynamics, and was later judged William James Sidis (top, in the only image of him as an with the graces of society [to make] adult, taken for a Harvard class album) died in 1944 at by some—most notably, Buckminster the ideal Harvard man.” Norbert went the age of 46. Norbert Wiener (in a classroom at MIT, Fuller—to have anticipated versions ahead and threw himself, as he always circa 1949) became a pioneer in the field of cybernetics. of the big bang theory and black holes.

Harvard Magazine 49

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 In 1937, William was dragged back into the limelight in a pa- work helped usher in the computer, which one of his many suc- tronizing New Yorker profile that mercilessly mocked his still very cessors, Seymour Papert, heralded as “the children’s machine” and busy mind. He broke his vow of seclusion to sue for invasion of the key to a newly youth-driven “age of learning.” privacy and malicious libel. The judge dismissed the case, which has become a classic in privacy law, and William, who worked on When Norbert Wiener and William Sidis arrived on campus, the the briefs, lost the appeal. Once a public figure, always a public world was in ferment, and Harvard along with it. A new century figure, the judge ruled, even as he lamented the ruthless intru- of global migration and international tensions was under way. The sion. William persisted with his various causes, especially active pace of scientific progress had picked up. The fledgling field of in defense of pacifism and of limited government, alienating allies psychology was thriving (Freud visited the United States in 1909) again and again with his bullheadedness. In 1944, at 46, he died of and Einstein’s revolutionary papers of 1905 had stirred baffled in- a cerebral hemorrhage. terest. The university was reassessing its privileged student body, Norbert, who vented his outrage at the New Yorker article in his and President Eliot had made a point of challenging assumptions memoir, offered a stark but empathetic assessment of William (by about inherited talent and championing a more egalitarian em- then dead): a “defeated—and honorably defeated—combatant phasis on hard work. in the battle for existence.” Norbert himself had surged onward The basic contours of the flux are familiar. And in the face of a academically, though not exactly smoothly. He finished his Ph.D. similarly uncertain future, Americans now, as then, worry over early at Harvard in June 1913, writing a dissertation on Alfred North promise going to waste and also about youthful talents honed too Whitehead and Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica, and then fast. Yet this time around, off-the-charts children themselves have won a prestigious Harvard postgraduate traveling fellowship and some hope of weighing in with their views—a goal that stymied headed off to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, with Russell. William, and that Norbert didn’t dare tackle until much later in There was no chemistry between them. Russell complained that life. A century after Leo Wiener and Boris Sidis riled their contem- Norbert’s views were a “horrible fog.” Russell, Norbert complained poraries by touting their pedagogical secrets and phenomenal sons, in turn, was “an iceberg. His mind impresses me as a keen, cold, Yale law professor Amy Chua [’84, J.D. ’87] offered a reprise, fea- narrow logical machine, that cuts the universe into neat little pack- turing her more conventional superdaughters. In 2011, her memoir ets, that measure, as it were, just three inches each way.” His own Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother left parents across the country gasp- mind, Norbert was discovering, was more versatile in math than ing and gossiping at school gatherings and on soccer sidelines, in he had known. supermarkets and at dinner parties. He returned to the United States in 1915 to figure out what he The tiger mother’s guiding tenets echoed the Russian émigré might do next, at 21 jumping among jobs (some lined up by Leo). fathers’. Start the talent-building process very early; assume the His stint in 1918 at the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground was child is sturdy and full of energy; expect feats of mastery; value especially rewarding. Mood swings continued. Yet busy doing in- family loyalty above youthful autonomy or popularity with peers. valuable work on antiaircraft targeting with fellow mathemati- The twenty-first-century version of the credo dovetailed with a cians, he found the camaraderie and the independence he yearned demanding formula for exceptional performance that became a for. Soon, in a now-flourishing postwar academic market for the cultural catchphrase, thanks to Malcolm Gladwell’s pitch for the re- brainiacs needed in a science-guided era, Norbert found his niche. search behind it in his best-selling Outliers: The Story of Success (2008). At MIT, social graces and pedigrees didn’t count for much, and Starting with a study of elite violinists, the psychologist K. An- wartime technical experience like his did. He got hired. The latest ders Ericsson had surveyed pianists, chess players, athletes, and mathematical tools were much in demand as electronic communi- others to come up with what Gladwell coined the “10,000-hour cation technology took off in the 1920s. rule.” That was the quota of “deliberate practice”—effortful work, By then he was seeing the starting early and sustained as- woman he finally married in siduously—required for out- 1926 and with whom he had standing accomplishment by two daughters. Norbert was anyone in any field. Talent, Er- also deep into the prescient icsson boldly concluded, was endeavor of fathoming the beside the point. “The scien- endlessly elusive process at tific formulation of the Ameri- the heart of the computer age: can dream,” another psycholo- the flow of information. Cyber- gist called the rule. netics, “or control and commu- Meanwhile, Angela Duck- nication in the animal and the worth [’92], a psychologist at machine,” as Norbert summed the University of Pennsylvania, up his new pursuit, was a no- was at work exploring the idea tably hybrid undertaking—at of grit, which she defined as once theoretical and practical, “perseverance and passion for concerned with both mind and long-term goals” in an article in TIM KNOX / EYEVINE/REDUX matter. That a pioneering mod- the Journal of Personality and So- In her 2011 memoir, Yale law professor Amy Chua ’84, J.D. ’87, went ern prodigy had sired it seems public with the kind of exposé usually staged by prodigies themselves cial Psychology in 2007. Her focus particularly fitting. Norbert’s in adulthood. was on its importance to long-

50 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 term success rather than to precocious ac- ished precocity, as well as perseverance and complishment. But it was never too soon, she A century later, passion in pursuit of long-term goals: the suggested, to “encourage children to work blend, Chua suggested, just might amount not only with intensity but also with stam- Battle Hymn of the to a secret sauce, for East and West. ina”—whatever their gifts. “To me, the most Near the end of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, shocking thing about grit,” Duckworth said Tiger Mother left when Chua let Sophia ease up on the pia- in a TED talk in 2013, “is how little we know, no after acing her recital in a Carnegie Hall how little science knows, about building it.” parents across the auditorium, Lulu staged her revolt. Now 13, Her own Chinese father seemed to have hit she reamed Chua out in the middle of Red on one tactic, not that she was about to en- country gasping and Square—“I HATE YOU….You’ve wrecked my dorse it. He repeatedly told her, she wrote life….You’re a terrible mother. You’re selfish. in her book Grit (2016), “You know, you’re gossiping at school You don’t care about anyone but yourself. no genius!” What—you can’t believe how ungrateful I Amy Chua—also, as it happened, a daugh- gatherings and on am? After all you’ve done for me? Everything ter of Chinese immigrants—had a father who you say you do for me is actually for yourself.” goaded rather differently. When she won a soccer sidelines. Lulu cut back on the violin and took up ten- history prize but not the best-all-around- nis instead, ordering her mother to butt out. student award in the eighth grade, he warned her, “Never, never “I don’t want you controlling my life.” disgrace me like that again.” In her tell-all account of the grit- In the spirit of the parent ready, however belatedly, to acknowl- focused music training she insisted her daughters pursue, push- edge that she can’t call all the shots, Chua invited her daughters ing them toward virtuoso heights on the piano and violin, she hid to speak up in the memoir’s “coda,” as she struggled for a way to none of the conflict that roiled their household. Chua’s husband close the book. They weren’t inclined to help, but Sophia put a key and fellow Yale Law School professor, Jed Rubenfeld [J.D. ’86], a question to her: Was she after truth or a good story? To her moth- bemused bystander, noted tooth marks on the piano in their big er’s predictable answer, Sophia was ready with a wise response. New Haven house. Sophia [’15], their superconscientious pianist, “That’s going to be hard,” she told Chua, “because the truth keeps vented stress more quietly than did her younger sister, a natural on changing.” She might have added that, for superchildren and prodi- the violin. Lulu [’18] shredded music and shrieked in protest against gies alike, what truly matters is the cumulative sense they—not her mother’s tyrannical enforcement of “the diligent, disciplined, their parents—make of their accelerated quest for extraordinary confidence-expanding Chinese way,” which Chua promised would achievement. produce bold strivers—not “soft, entitled” American-style dilet- Like us, our predecessors over the course of a century have been tantes (and definitely not “weird Asian automatons”). thrilled by the thought that rapidly growing young bodies and flex- Shockingly honest about her tactics, Chua went public with ible brains are primed to meet new challenges in ways that adults the kind of exposé usually staged by prodigies themselves much can’t. Like us, our predecessors have also been unnerved by upstart later in life. She outed Chinese-style family pressure in pursuit of impulses and lopsided young lives, not to mention unknown vis- children’s high performance, “an inherently closet practice” in the tas ahead. The urge to domesticate prodigious children—to anoint United States, she noted. At the same time, she blasted the queasy them as marvels whose streamlined paths promise to realize our hypocrisy of American-style hovering: parents who panicked over ambitions—has proved hard for modern American strivers to re- missteps and signs of stress in their kids, all the while program- sist. Yet prodigies offer reminders writ large that children, in the ming them to overshoot every benchmark of success. Chua wrote end, flout our best and worst intentions. as a self-mocking iconoclast, an over-the-top “music mom” in a cul- In Ex-Prodigy, Norbert Wiener lamented that the only young mar- ture of mere soccer moms—not that she actually saw her girls on vels “the public ever hears of are those who ‘point a moral or adorn their way to soloist careers. She was “huggy” and goofy with them. a tale’”: “There is a tragedy in the failure of a promising lad which She also bossed and cruelly derided, and dictated grueling practice makes his fate interesting reading; and the charm of the success schedules and banned slumber parties. Her daughters were huggy story is known to all of us. Per contra, the account of a moderate back and also explicitly hostile (“you’re diseased”) as they sped success following a sensationally promising childhood is an an- along. Chua’s hyper regimen pulled no punches—far more openly ticlimax and not worth general attention.” Expectations, he felt, coercive than helicopter parenting and far more openly combative needed recalibrating. When he wrote down what he considered a than classic Asian parenting. prodigy’s crucial entitlement, he laid out modest terms that could Chua’s pursuit of excellence wasn’t simply about stamina or grit. be applied to any childhood: the “chance to develop a reasonably Somewhat paradoxically, she aimed to drum upstart drive into her thick skin against the pressures which will certainly be made on girls, who’d been blessed with meritocratic credentials in their cra- him and a confidence that somewhere in the world he has his own dles. (They could all but coast into the Ivy League on their parents’ function which he may reasonably hope to fulfill.” coattails, thanks to legacies at Princeton and Harvard and faculty pull at Yale.) So Chua was ready—in fact, eager—to explode the Ann Hulbert ’77 is literary editor of The Atlantic. She is the author of The In- filial piety so important to her forbears. She took bold satisfac- terior Castle: The Art and Life of Jean Stafford and Raising America: tion in doing what no prodigy-promoting predecessor would have Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice about Children. Her ar- dreamed of: broadcasting a defiant child’s bitter rebellion, letting ticles have appeared in many publications, including The New Republic, The her daughters’ voices be heard. Add pugnacity to stunningly pol- New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review.

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage Art, books, diverse creations

53 Open Book 54 Sketch Artist 55 A Novel Take on Eternal Life 56 America’s Little Giant 58 Chapter & Verse 60 Off the Shelf

bystander and dash-cam videos of some of these events in their entirety. Bent over his phone, playing footage of Eric Garner’s last moments on a Staten Island sidewalk, Holland eventually had to stop and look up. “The visceral quality of it…,” he recalls. “It’s difficult to take in.” With each repeat view and each new tragedy in the headlines, he felt increasingly entangled. Jonathan Bailey Holland “Simply because of who I am and what I look like, I could easily be on the other side of these stories,” he continues. “Sud- A Composed Response denly the music couldn’t be about anything but that psychological space.” Jonathan Bailey Holland’s meditations through music The resulting work, “Synchrony,” ex- by jennifer mcfarland flint plores the idea of duality, or two realities existing at once—for example, the Black Lives Matter movement taking shape dur- ne morning in the spring missioned to write a new work for the Ra- ing the country’s first black presidency, of 2015, the composer Jona- dius Ensemble, a local chamber group, and when “the notion of a post-racial America than Bailey Holland, Ph.D. ’00, ideas for the piece tumbled through his was thrown around,” says Holland. The O was riding the bus to Boston’s mind. Also weighing heavily on him was score is written for violin, cello, oboe, bas- Berklee College of Music, where he’s chair the crescendo of news stories about police soon, and piano—an unusual combination of composition, contemporary music, and brutality against African Americans. Hol- but beautiful in its symmetry, says Jennifer core studies. He had recently been com- land had challenged himself to watch the Montbach ’95, Radius Ensemble’s artistic di-

52 January - February 2018 Photograph by Robert Torres

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage rector. “There are two stringed instruments and two double reeds. Plus, with the simi- A former physician, now associate lar ranges of oboe and violin, cello and bas- o p e n b o o k clinical professor of medicine at Univer- soon, you have two pairs of instruments that sity of California, San Francisco, Victoria cover an entire timbral range, top to bottom. Sweet, G ’73, is appalled by the deperson- Piano is the anchor.” The piece opens with Robotic alization of healthcare in its technological, the gentle tonal sounds of the double reeds, institutional manifestations. In Slow Medi- and the music builds almost ceremonially Healthcare cine: The Way to Healing (Riverhead, $27), as the others join in. Throughout, Holland she recounts what transpired when her expresses duality through musical devices: father suffered a grand mal seizure and was call and response, repetition, dissonance, hospitalized—on the incorrect impression that it was his first such incident and that instrumentation, and so-called “extended he might have suffered a stroke. From the introduction: techniques”—unconventional ways of using an instrument. I’d known that healthcare was getting tronic health records, his stay in the hos- Holland decided to add documentary ever more bureaucratic; that doctors and pital looked 100 percent quality-assured. voices to underscore the idea of juxtapo- nurses…were spending more and more There was just something missing. And sition—of hope and despair, harmony and of their time in front of a computer it was hard to put my finger on it. discord. About two minutes in, President screen entering health-care data. I’d ex- Everything looked so good in the com- Obama’s voice intones over the music, “We, perienced it myself. But until that week, puter, and yet what Father had gotten the people, still believe that every citizen I had no idea how bad it had become. If I, was not Medicine but Healthcare—Med- deserves a basic measure of security and as a physician, couldn’t get appropriate icine without a soul. dignity.” From there the score becomes care for a family member in a lovely com- What do I mean by “soul”? fraught with tension, and Eric Garner is munity hospital with well-trained staff— I mean what Father did not get. heard repeating “I can’t breathe” through the who could? Presence. Attention. Judgment. chokehold of a New York City police officer. What had happened to medicine and Kindness. “There’s a very specific rhythm to how he nursing? I asked myself. Above all, responsibility. No one took says it, so I had the musicians pick up on To find out, I ordered up Father’s elec- responsibility for the story. The essence the rhythm, which they keep up even after tronic health records and went over his of Medicine is story—finding the right the audio clip ends,” Holland explains. The near-death experience. story….Healthcare, on the other hand, oboist and bassoonist remove their reeds The document was 812 pages long and deconstructs story into thousands of tiny and breathe into their instruments in that took me four hours to read. It began not pieces…for which no one is responsible. same pattern; the pianist reaches into the in- with the doctors’ notes but with hun- A robot doctor could have cared for strument to dampen the strings, hammering dreds of pages of pharmacy orders; then my father just as well. out the rhythm to produce a dull, percussive hundreds of pages of sound without pitch. These extended tech- nursing notes, which niques create a sound that’s both percussive were simply boxes and breathy, like the wheeze and punch pat- checked. Only the doc- terns of a hospital respirator. tors’ notes were narra- Then comes a second set of voices. First, tive, and mostly they actress Cicely Tyson is heard addressing were cut-and-paste. No the young women in the audience of the wonder no one could fig- Black Girls Rock awards ceremony: “The ure out what was really moment anyone tries to demean or degrade going on. Still, to be fair, you in any way, you have to know how great although I found mistakes you are. No one is going to bother to put in the records, Father you down if you are not a threat to them.” had, after all, gotten dis- Her words are countered by audio from charged….I had to admit,

the dash-cam footage of the arrest of San- judging by those elec- ISTOCK dra Bland. The instruments respond with gnashing sounds, and the piece ultimately closes in a decrescendo of dissonant whole that he wrote around the same time as “Syn- and earned his bachelor’s at the Curtis In- notes. This unresolved conclusion repre- chrony,” came from a similar psychological stitute of Music and his Harvard doctorate sents Holland’s view of the national con- space, sparked by the senseless deaths of in composition, didn’t take this approach versation about race. Tamir Rice and Michael Brown. “I had to from the outset. Early in his career, he had Reacting to the world around him in this write [it] as a meditation,” he says, “as a way hang-ups about “who I was supposed to be way is one of the artist’s responsibilities, he of using my art to work through the weight as a classical composer,” he says. “I didn’t says, but it’s also impossible for him not to. of all of those events.” want people to expect a certain kind of mu- “Dream Elegy,” a somber orchestral piece Holland, who grew up in Flint, Michigan, sic because I’m a black composer, I wanted

Harvard Magazine 53

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage people to come to my music without any troit Symphony Orchestra, influenced by Today, Holland tries to convey the same preconceived ideas about what the music Motown, R&B, soul, and other popular mu- message to his composition students: “If I’m was going to be.” At some point, he stopped sic genres he’d always listened to. It was, he not telling you who I am in a genuine way, I’m worrying about how to manage audience thinks, the first time he consciously decided not sure why you’d want to listen to what I perceptions. Soon after this realization, he to let that side of him come out clearly in his have to say,” he reasons. Without that, he says, completed a 2003 commission for the De- music. He wrote what felt true. “Who cares what I’m writing?”

stage, and I’ll think, ‘Oh, this will be great to Sketch Artist do on SNL,’ and I’ll try it at dress rehearsal and it will just not work at all. There’s this Colin Jost writes jokes for page, stage, and camera. special rhythm to being either at a club or by oset babür theater.” When developing a sketch for SNL, Jost often starts by thinking of a voice, and then writer’s style isn’t always New Yorker’s humor section, Shouts and Mur- deciding which actor could most naturally neatly captured in a single piece murs—“Oh, droit moral? It means ‘droid mor- embody it. He created the character Drunk of work, but with Colin Jost ’04, als.’ Like it’s such an obvious moral question Uncle, for example—meant to “sound like A his “Mocktails,” a collection of that even a robot would know the answer.” an uncle pretty much everyone has”—by cartoons scribbled on cocktail napkins, Jost has been writing comedy since his working with cast member Bobby Moyni- are especially telling. A JetBlue plane feels first year with the Harvard Lampoon, and han. Drunk Uncle makes comments rang- blue, lamenting that it misses its friends; a performing stand-up comedy for more than ing from cringe-worthy to downright rac- piece of jerk chicken rattles off some un- a decade. But transitioning between writ- ist, almost always circling back to how couth remarks. This brand of droll wordplay ing comedy and performing comedy isn’t America just isn’t the country it used to be, is Jost’s bread and butter. It comes through simple—and what’s more, he says, writing While dreaming him up, Jost and Moyni- in his stand-up performances (“I went to for stage, screen, and print all require differ- han thought about the character’s family, his Party City the other day, and it was totally ent techniques. “With stand-up, the rhythm pleasures, and his grievances, and slowly, his dead,” he joked during a show in Boston this really differs,” he explains. “I’ll try a sketch personality began to develop: sloppy, brash, fall) as well as in his contributions to The during a stand-up show, and it’ll work on old-fashioned. This technique is key to creating strong SNL characters, but Jost has found that it actually hampers his ability to write the kind of humor that appears only on the page. Ear- ly in his career, he had been keen to contribute Shouts and Murmurs because the columns struck him as similar to what he’d done for the Lampoon. But after years of working on the show, he found it difficult to switch back to magazines. “If I had someone’s voice in mind for a character that I was writing, other people didn’t necessarily hear the same voice,” he says. These days, Jost is best known for co-anchoring SNL’s Weekend Update, a segment that parodies a traditional news desk. It’s a big seat to fill: previous hosts have included Chevy

Colin Jost (left) with his co-host, Michael Che, at the Weekend Update desk for Saturday Night Live

54 January - February 2018 Photograph by Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage Chase, Seth Meyers, and Amy Poehler. But ald Trump’s leaked Access Hollywood tape to fault, either for hypocrisy or abuse of power. after years behind the scenes, Jost itched to interviewing memorable characters like “Those are the subjects you’re trying to deal put his stand-up skills to use. The Update Kate McKinnon’s Angela Merkel. with,” he explains. “You don’t want to col- desk turned out to be the perfect fit, despite Another screen comedy challenge that Jost laterally damage victims.” He also says it’s his initial anxieties. “I didn’t feel the self- regularly grapples with is specific to SNL, important to refrain from becoming pedan- confidence I had on stage as a stand-up at which, true to its name and trademark line, tic or turning the segment into a moral les- SNL, and that was a hard, hard transition,” airs live. This means Jost and Che have to son; this means considering whether a joke he says. “I knew that I either had to try and be strategic when joking about news items will land with the audience or only make make Weekend Update work, or I would that are breaking or still raw, because there it appear the show is taking a serious topic have to go somewhere else to perform.” His isn’t a chance for do-overs. There’s no short- lightly. Such comic license can be a burden, signature deadpan and smirk, along with age of hot topics, from the Harvey Weinstein Jost says, given how much material there is his palpable chemistry with co-anchor sexual-abuse scandal to the Trump adminis- to choose from, “but it’s also really lucky,” Michael Che, have helped shape some of tration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s dev- because it’s an opportunity to elevate topics the segment’s most successful recent mo- astation of Puerto Rico. In cases like these, that really matter. It’s all about picking and ments, from roasting then-candidate Don- Jost says the trick is to pinpoint who’s at choosing the right jokes for the right issues. A Novel Take on Eternal Life Dara Horn breathes life into classical Jewish sources. by marina bolotnikova

ara Horn ’99, Ph.D. ’06, would original subject in literature, but stories in suburban New Jersey and is now raising never choose to be immortal. In of eternal life, she says, “are almost never her family there, thought back to her own, her new novel, Eternal Life, this about fertile women.” In her novel, Hannah, repetitive domestic experience: “Who in D is the problem facing Rachel, a a gifted biologist who is researching life ex- their right mind would want to go through 2,000-year-old Jewish woman who made tension, discovers that her grandmother Ra- this again and again and again?” a bargain with the high priest at the Sec- chel has the telomeres of a teenager. While With Rachel’s life spanning Jewish so- ond Holy Temple: in exchange for the sur- reading about advances in anti-aging for cieties—continually dying yet reborn after vival of her sick son, she gives up her own the book, Horn, who spent her childhood each disaster—from the Roman Empire to death. “What reasons are there for Dara Horn modern Israel, Eternal Life reads as a being alive?” Rachel asks herself over metaphor for Jewish history. The nov- the centuries. None of them—to love el also reflects the contrast between God; to serve others; to feel joy, to the Judaic and American relation- build for the future—has any meaning ships to time, says Horn. “In the Unit- without the constraints of a normal ed States we have this mythology that human lifespan. As she watches her your past doesn’t matter—that’s the dozens of husbands and children die premise of the American experiment. before she does, her relationship with The premise of Judaism is exactly the God comes to feel “sadomasochistic.” opposite, because the founding my- Eternal Life might be the most fan- thology of Judaism is that when God tastical of Horn’s books, but it also gave the Torah to the Israelites at emerges most directly from her daily Mount Sinai, it wasn’t just that gen- life. “Something I’ve noticed was that eration of Israelites that was present, friends of mine with smaller families but all their future descendants were become very nostalgic as their chil- present. The most important thing in dren grow up and pass milestones,” your life happened thousands of years she says. “This is not at all my experi- before you were born.” ence. I’m a mother of four young chil- Horn moonlights as a professor of dren, and when you have that many Jewish literature (she has held the children, you keep going to preschool Weinstock visiting professorship in graduations over and over again. You Jewish studies at Harvard), and her just keep resetting the clock: ‘Oh, it’s novels, five in all, have been recog- the first day of kindergarten again!’” nized for their engagement with the Immortality is not a particularly texts she has worked on academically,

Photograph by Michael B. Priest Harvard Magazine 55

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage often colliding in funny ways with her mod- there are references to ancient Hebrew em- the present day. Unlike a Jonathan Safran ern characters. “The great thing about get- bedded in the work—you can’t avoid it. So Foer or a Michael Chabon, she fills the void ting a doctorate was that no one expects you many figuresof speech are linked to ancient of “Jewish identity” with a deep knowledge to finish it!” she says. “Every time I would get sources and the commentaries on them.” of Jewish sources. stuck on my dissertation I would procras- Horn didn’t start writing fiction until the Horn’s interest in engaging imaginatively tinate by writing my novel, and vice versa, year after college, while on a miserably lone- with Jewish texts extends to her personal so I never felt like I was doing any work.” ly postgraduate fellowship at the Universi- religious practice. “We have a Passover Sed- Growing up, she sensed what she de- ty of Cambridge (“England just wasn’t my er that’s extremely epic, where we put up scribes as a thinness to scene,” she says, laughing). a pyramid in the living room, I wear a pha- American Jewish literature. She had always been terri- raoh costume and my husband wears a Mo- “In the 1980s and ’90s, when fied of the genre, until the ses costume, we have ‘plague drops’ where you told someone you were realization that “books don’t stuff falls out of the ceiling, we have a ‘hail interested in Jewish litera- come out of nothing”—that cannon’ that fires Ping-Pong balls into the ture, they’d hand you a book they’re in conversation with room, and we have a drone strike for the last by Philip Roth. This whole other books—gave her the plague,” she enthuses. “What’s important to generation of Jewish writers confidence to make up stories us,” she emphasizes, “is less about the ritual from the last century were re- of her own, to fill the gaps in aspects, or that you have to believe x, y, and ally writing more about the modern Jewish literature. z. What’s important to my family is being first-generation American “When I first started writ- invested and creatively engaged with this experience, the experience ing my novels, part of my mo- tradition, which is of a piece with what I’m of Judaism as a social identi- tivation—in the way that doing in my books.” ty. And I was like, ‘This is so you’re massively ambitious She aims to make the Jewish tradition not what I’m looking for.’” Those authors when you’re younger and then realize, ‘Oh, welcoming not just to a Jewish audience, dwelled on questions about assimilation that was dumb’—was to ‘fix’ this problem,” but to a broader readership. “Is everyone and authenticity; Horn was uninterested in she says. “I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if going to understand every reference in that conversation (which she calls “annoy- we could have this in English? Contempo- there? No, but that’s not a problem. When ing”). Since her college and doctoral work, rary stories that bring alive these ancient I’m reading Salman Rushdie, I’m not sitting she has come to link this thinness to the dis- texts?” And so Horn’s 2006 novel The World here waiting for an explanation of why some appearance of Hebrew and Yiddish context to Come, written while she was avoiding her character is covering her hair. I don’t want from contemporary American Jewish writ- doctoral work, weaves the life and stories to read a book with footnotes—I want to ing. “When you’re reading modern Hebrew, of the Soviet Yiddish writer Der Nister into be welcomed into a world.”

she was called after her husband was elect- America’s Little Giant ed president in 1808) who made the role of first lady an influential and gracious posi- Revisiting the father of the Constitution in an era deeply divided by tion as one of the new capital’s most ebul- factionalism lient and popular hostesses. She founded a home for orphaned young girls while she by lincoln caplan and Madison lived in the White House, and as his widow and a beloved public figure, she was made an honorary member of Con- olley Payne Todd called her and three quarters, well proportioned, her gress, among other tributes, and chosen to soon-to-be husband, just before features pleasing though not remarkable in send the first person- she met him, “the great, little form except her mouth which was beauti- al telegraph message. D Madison.” She was about to turn ful in shape and expression.” He was three In James Madi- The Three Lives of James 26, a widow who had lost her first husband or four inches shorter, physically frail and son’s public career, Madison: Genius, Parti- and their baby son to yellow fever and had prone to severe migraines, and deeply intro- spanning four ex- san, President, by Noah been left with their toddler son and a small verted. He asked her to marry him because, ceptionally produc- Feldman ’92 (Random amount of money. James Madison Jr. was 43, quite unexpectedly after failing in one pre- tive decades, this House, $35.) a congressman from Virginia temporarily vious attempt at courtship and becoming a private passion of frustrated by politics, and a gentleman by bookish bachelor, he fell in love with her. his—what he called birth who would soon inherit more than 100 She accepted his proposal because he was “the sentiments of my heart”—is the most slaves and 4,000 acres. They met in 1794 in “the man who of all others I most admire.” visible evidence of the force that fueled him. Philadelphia, America’s temporary capital The marriage, she wrote, would provide As Noah Feldman, Frankfurter professor of while Washington, D.C., was being built. “everything that is soothing.” law, writes in his excellent, authoritative, In his estimation, she was “5 feet, 7 inches Dolley Madison was the presidentress (as and lucid reassessment of Madison, “Dol-

56 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage ley frequently expressed opinions and emotions that Madison hid from view.” He was known as a dispassionate man of reason, systematic and mild- mannered, who preferred the company of ideas and lacked the need for attention many politicians have. Yet his profound sense of purpose made him a statesman of enormous impact. He imag- ined the United States as a unified nation rather than a confederation of republics with diverging interests in agriculture and trade, and helped shape that country. Madison is rightly known as the father of the United States Constitu- tion. (Jack Rakove, Ph.D. ’75, the Stanford historian and political scientist Portraits of James Madison, 1816, by John Vanderlyn and of Dolley Madison, 1804, by Gilbert Stuart whom Feldman acknowledges as “the master of Madison scholars,” the Federalist Party. After it morphed into carrying out the will of the people by law, called him “the Greatest Lawgiver of Moder- Jefferson’s and his Democratic-Republican not force. Officials would do that by devis- nity.”) From 1776, when he was only 25, until Party, they led it to national power. Finally, ing domestic and foreign policies and enact- 1791, he was: the primary dreamer, designer, he established America’s place in the world, ing them into law, and by collecting taxes to and drafter of the nation’s fundamental law; as secretary of state and, during the War of carry them out. The basic risk of this form one of the chief publicists in getting it ratified; 1812, as president. Feldman presents these of republicanism was that the majority—no and its principal modifier as the proposer and chapters as a story of Madison’s intellec- matter how virtuous, self-restrained, or God- drafter of the Bill of Rights. He embraced the tual, psychological, and political growth, fearing—would violate the rights of minori- First through Tenth Amendments to protect starting with his college years at Princeton. ties. Madison’s first solution was “enlarge- individuals from government infringement (It was “the only institution on the conti- ment.” He favored a nation large enough that and stave off a second constitutional conven- nent where a diligent student could acquire the interests and factions within it would tion, which he feared would rip the northern the foundations of a truly excellent educa- be less likely to overlap and, if they did, it and southern states apart. (Rakove wrote that tion,” Feldman advises, since Harvard and would not be easy for them to come together Madison had the “capacity to think like a his- Yale were then “parochial in their teach- and form a dangerous majority. His second torian and predict like a social scientist.”) He ing.”) This growth was reflected in a series solution was checks and balances. He fore- is less well known and secondarily recognized of surprising and major about-faces in his saw factions, whether political, economic, for his accomplishments between the ages of thinking about the needs of the new nation. religious, or otherwise, checking each other. 50 and 67, when he served as Thomas Jeffer- Nineteen years younger than George Wash- He envisioned branches of government ex- son’s secretary of state (1801 to 1809) and the ington, 16 years younger than John Adams, pressly designed to balance as well as check country’s fourth (and first war-time) presi- and eight years younger than Jefferson, who each other, so the government did not set dent (1809 to 1817). led the American Revolution, he was in the up “an interest adverse to that of the whole Feldman’s important contribution is to group sometimes identified as the “young society.” In Federalist No. 51, Madison wrote: present the chapters as lawgiver and states- men,” including Alexander Hamilton, six “Ambition must be made to counteract am- man and what Madison did in the decade in years younger, whom the Revolution made bition,” with the Constitution giving “those between as “three distinct, contrasting pub- into leaders and who made the revolution- who administer each department, the nec- lic lives.” He was the genius behind the Con- ary era so creative. essary constitutional means, and personal stitution and the Bill of Rights. Then he was motives, to resist encroachments of others.” the partisan who invented the concept of a In Madison’s view, the basic purpose of Part of his design was to attract outstanding political faction in loyal opposition when he the Constitution was to create a national re- and ambitious people into government. As launched the Republican Party to challenge publican government with representatives Feldman writes, his goal was “to eliminate

Paintings courtesy of the White House Historical Association Harvard Magazine 57

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage in handbills and newspapers and was set to Other founders regarded Madison’s the tune of a popular song. A century-plus later, it became the national anthem. idealistic goal, “to eliminate the need for Madison gave his final message to Con- gress in December 1816—America’s fortieth political parties,” as naive. year as a nation. It was the Constitution’s twenty-fifth year of providing for what he the need for political parties.” sixteen-year odyssey to establish America’s called “a government which watches over It was an idealistic vision, which some place in a world shaped by the long war be- the purity of elections, freedom of speech other founders regarded as naive. Hamil- tween Great Britain and France.” Initially, and of the press, [and] the trial by jury.” The ton wrote that “Patricians were frequently his goal was to use power in the form of speech was about the Constitution because, demagogues” who could stir factions into economic sanctions to secure shipping to in Feldman’s assessment, “Constitutional a national majority, because an “influen- Europe—“and to do so without an army or freedom was the central core of Madison’s tial demagogue will give an impulse to the navy that could potentially subvert the re- legacy.” After designing the Constitution “to whole.” Hamilton was neither patrician nor public from within.” But sanctions did not preserve liberty,” Feldman writes, Madison demagogue, but as the secretary of the trea- work well enough and as president, “Madi- had “created the Republican Party to defend sury in Washington’s new Federalist gov- son gambled on decisive action. Overcoming constitutional liberty against subversion by ernment, he found meaning in the Constitu- his republican aversion to military action,” the Federalists,” and had maintained it “even tion that Madison hadn’t intended it to hold. Feldman writes, “he asked Congress to de- during the war he prosecuted.” He “truly For Hamilton, a strong national economy clare the War of 1812” and “when the Brit- believed that the Constitution would pro- was as essential to the new country as an ish turned the tables and tried to invade the duce domestic tranquility and friendship, effective national government. He convinced United States, the constitutional republic then spread those same values of peace glob- Congress to charter a national bank and to was strong enough to defend itself.” ally, creating a world of free peoples coexist- support a permanent national debt, which But barely. The British easily overran the ing peacefully and ruling themselves under Madison viewed (Feldman’s words) “as a nation’s capital, burning the White House to their own free constitutions.” But he never blatantly unconstitutional attempt to shift ruins. They then set their sights on Baltimore, extended that freedom to slaves. He main- power from the people to the capitalists.” the country’s third largest city and the last tained until his death (in 1836, when he was Hamilton prevailed, becoming the most stronghold preventing them from marching 85) his “lifelong contradictory views of the influential person in the nation’s founding up and down the coast. The battle for Bal- enslaved people on whose labor he depend- who never served as president, and “their timore lasted three nights and days. Francis ed,” Feldman explains. He thought of them brutal struggle over the meaning of the Con- Scott Key, a lawyer and poet from Maryland, as human beings and wanted to be seen as stitution and the future of the United States witnessed the bombardment of the city’s Ft. treating his slaves well. But he considered gave birth to American partisanship.” McHenry. In “the dawn’s early light,” when them property and said it was morally per- When Jefferson became president in 1801 he noticed a U.S. flag flying over the fort, sig- missible to own and use them. and made Madison his secretary of state, naling its survival, he started a poem called Madison (Feldman again) “undertook a “The Defence of Fort M’Henry.” It got printed In his preface, Feldman writes, “Above all, I hope to use Madison’s creativity, commitment, and political flexibility to shed light on the birth, development, and sur- C hapter & Verse vival of America’s distinctive form of con- Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words stitutional government.” In a TED talk last summer, he set out how he thinks Madi- son’s constitutionalism equips the United Chapter and Verse debuted in this magazine’s July-August 1979 issue in an effort States to survive its current acute partisan- to assist Robert B. Wood ’40, who had sent the editors a query they couldn’t answer, ship and extreme polarization. At the heart but hoped their readers could: “My sainted grandmother, born in Scotland, with some of this mechanism is free speech under the time in London before settling here in the U.S., sang a fine ditty—no doubt music hall First Amendment: if you are out of power, somewhere—which started, ‘Oh, what will be the outcome / If the income don’t come which about 60 percent of Americans think in?/Where from will come the money/To buy the food and gin?’ Good question! But they are today, you have the right to say that that’s all I remember. Where from, and what’s the rest of it?” the government is terrible and discuss how His question, though rerun in the digital age, remained unanswered until Eve Golden to fix it. Along with free speech comes free forwarded “What’s Gonna Be the Outcome If the Income Don’t Come In?” ©1935, with association: the First Amendment also pro- lyrics by Eddie Moran and music by Harry von Tilzer, uploaded by some kind soul to the tects “the right of the people peaceably to as- Internet. An older, British version may lurk somewhere, but with this serendipitous semble,” in organizations formed to help fix citation, C&V bows to the resources of the World Wide Web and becomes an oc- America’s problems, including the make-up casional item only. Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard of the government. Just as important, Feld- Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138 or [email protected]. man went on, is the separation of powers. If the president doesn’t follow the rules of the

58 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

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For more online-only articles on BRIDGE the arts and creativity, see:

A Transfor- Their Future mative Gift of Dutch Drawings George Abrams ’54, J.D. ’57, donates his collection to the Harvard Art Muse- ums. harvardmag.com/abrams-17

Father and Son, and E.E. Tuck Business Bridge is a total Cummings What one undergraduate learned immersion business program designed inviting E. E. Cummings to tea to prepare top liberal arts, science, and harvardmag.com/cummings-17 engineering undergrads for challenging careers in business and beyond. Past’s Presence John Wang ’16, winner of Radcliffe’s In just a few weeks, the Tuck Business public art competition, reflects on art Bridge Program®, held at the Tuck School and historical perspective. harvardmag.com/johnwang-17 of Business at Dartmouth College, delivers a comprehensive business curriculum taught by Tuck’s top-ranked MBA faculty, Constitution, federal judges have the author- ity to make him. He doesn’t rule as an auto- a capstone team project, recruiting, crat because he can only propose laws, not and one-on-one career guidance, to give pass them. The president needs Congress to students the tools they need to get a job enact his policies, but Congress must look to the center of the political spectrum to decide and succeed. whether a policy is acceptable. The center Scholarships are available! holds the power because elections for the whole House of Representatives come every 2018 Tuck Business Bridge Program two years. Feldman’s last line, elongated for emphasis, was: “It’s going to be okay.” Session 1: June 11–July 6 Another view, arguably more realistic, Session 2: July 16–August 10 is that this moment in American history 2018 December Bridge Program is gravely testing both the elasticity and November 25–December 14 strength of Madison’s constitutionalism. No voting expert believes in the purity of American elections these days. Digital elections are vulnerable to hacking from near and far. Even when they are not hacked, elections seem unfairly rigged as a result of the heavy sway of big money. Voter fraud is negligible in the United States, but, in the past two de- Dartmouth College . Hanover, NH cades, Republicans have made it much hard- 603-646-6459 er to vote in much of the country: 33 states enforce voter ID laws, 18 of them requiring [email protected] photo IDs, which are designed to reduce the bridge.tuck.dartmouth.edu number of minority voters and clearly do. And the obsolete Electoral College has twice in the

Harvard Magazine 59

IVY_TuckBridge Fall 2017 Ad_Mech.indd 1 10/16/17 4:27 PM Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage past 20 years awarded the presidency to the checks the president or serves the needs of included recognition that the Constitution loser of the popular vote. No expert on free- the American people. could evolve—and that its framers’ original dom of speech or of the press believes they are Feldman’s TED talk began with a neat sum- intention did not always control its meaning.” serving American democracy as well as they mary of the Madison-Hamilton feud as the (Mary Sarah Bilder, J.D. ’90, Ph.D. ’00, winner must, thanks to attacks from the president birth of partisanship in American politics of the Bancroft Prize for Madison’s Hand: Revis- and, more menacingly, assaults from bots and and moved quickly to how the Constitution ing the Constitutional Convention, wrote about the Web brigades. The latter engage in reverse provided a mechanism for resolving that di- Constitution, “In 1787, the framers were strug- censorship by weaponizing free speech— vide and many subsequent ones in Ameri- gling to save the United States from division, drowning out real speech with floods of can history. His book explains comprehen- potential invasion, and collapse. No one had propaganda and sabotaging real journalism sively how he thinks that happened. Using the luxury of even imagining that each and with fake news. No expert in law or political the constitutionality of the national bank as every word possessed an invariable, sacred science believes the separation of powers is an exemplary case, and almost as an aside, meaning.”) Madison had been certain the working as it was meant to. Congress rarely Feldman observes that “Madison’s legacy document he shaped didn’t give Congress

Ph.D. ’74, and Charles Warren ’69 president: “One of the most insidious as- (SUNY, $59, $35 paper). Critical ap- pects of being part of a wealthy, prestigious Off the Shelf praisals, copiously illustrated, of the institution is that the association can lead Recent books with Harvard connections work of the late, pioneering anthro- to a most unfortunate blend of pomposity, pological filmmaker (’48, A.M. ’58) smugness, and complacency. The assump- and founder of the Harvard Film tion of superiority is what gives elitism a bad Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity Study Center. name.” In face of pressure to be practical, and Free Expression in Education, by he continued, “colleges and universities John Palfrey ’94, J.D. ’01 (MIT, $19.95). The Alongside other contemporary interpreta- have always had an otherworldly side.” A author, previously Harvard Law’s vice dean tions of the Ur Founder’s applied intelli- useful gift, perhaps, for Harvard’s future for library and information resources, now gence (see the review at page 56), Stan- president. head of Phillips Academy, Andover, plunges ford’s Jack N. Rakove, Ph.D. ’75, revisits A into the fierce debate over “snowflakes” Politician Thinking: The Creative Digital World War, by Haroon K. Ullah, and calls to restrict speech. To reconcile Mind of James Madison (University of M.P.A. ’02 (Yale, $25). Social media, useful liberty and equality, free expression and Oklahoma, $29.95). He considers Madison in helping oppressed populations gain voice diversity, he makes the case for safe spaces less as persuader than as analyst, thinking against oppressive regimes, have been wea- (say, for LGBTQ students) and brave spaces his way into issues before, rather than ponized by Islamic extremists. The intro- (“learning environments that approximate when, making a case to others. duction—which describes a virtual, online the world outside” academia—where ro- beheading and its subsequent realization via bust, unconstrained debate in pursuit of Ever the Leader: Selected Writings an actual execution by machine gun—is a truth proceeds) and says the latter should 1995-2016, William G. Bowen [LL.D. vivid point of entry to a disturbing threat. envelop “the vast majority” of students’ ’73], edited by Kevin M. Guthrie (Prince- time during their education. ton, $29.95). Bowen, a past president of Crusade and Jihad, by William R. Polk Princeton and the Andrew W. Mellon ’51, Ph.D. ’58 (Yale, $37.50). An ambitious Looking with Robert Gardner, edited Foundation, was an authoritative voice for one-volume overview of what the subtitle by Rebeca Meyers, William Rothman ’65, higher education’s values, a powerful advo- calls “The Thousand-Year War between cate for diversity in the Muslim World and the Global North.” admissions, a sharp Given Americans’ cartoon understanding critic of athletic ex- of these forces, it is bracing, and maybe cesses, and an astute helpful, to be guided through such themes analyst of education- as “the Muslim recognition that, as prac- al technology. From ticed and conceived, Islam did not suffice an inaugural speech to stop the European powers from invading for a new Williams and occupying their lands”—giving rise to a nationalistic response. Thirty years after filming them for Dead Birds in 1959, Life without End, by Karl S. Guthke, Robert Gardner Francke professor of Germanic art and cul- returned to ture emeritus (Camden House, $99). As Indonesia to share images with biologists and computer scientists raise the members of the possibility of extended life or deferred aging,

SUSAN MEISELAS/MAGNUM PHOTOS Dani tribe. what has literature to say about immortality?

60 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage power to charter a bank, but after 20 years, enemies were “violating the core principles party’s candidate for vice-president. Federal- when each branch of the government had rec- of the republic” and vice-versa. From the ists in the House of Representatives refused to ognized the bank’s validity, he accepted it as vantage point of 200 years after Madison’s let Jefferson become president. Passion plain- constitutional. triumphant retirement as president, the ly crushed reason. The constitutional system Yet behind Feldman’s observation is the constitutional system he had a giant role in was in a grim crisis. It was serendipity, not knowledge and acknowledgment that Mad- shaping absorbed the hyperbole of his era principle, that led to Jefferson’s election on ison arrived at that moment of assent only and managed its fallout. Everything appears the thirty-sixth ballot, and then to 24 years of after decades of brutally partisan disagree- to have turned out okay. Republican rule, and ultimately to the Era of ment. During them, in Feldman’s words, he In the presidential election of 1800, how- Good Feelings. “Madison’s constitutional ma- set out “to destroy his enemies using the ever, electors from the 16 states gave 73 votes chine was working,” Feldman declares about tools of faction.” Madison constitutional- each to Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic- Jefferson’s election. But barely. ized this disagreement by charging that his Republican candidate, and to Aaron Burr, the When we sing the national anthem these

Lots, and much of it not good, Guthke the poor, and then applies the con- explains, in a survey sweeping in Swift, cept to contemporary problems of Barrie, Babbitt, Amis, Rushdie, and global consumption, inequality, and many more. Hopefuls may be brought social justice. back to earth by a section titled “Im- mortality and Its Discontents”—a Financial Decisions and Mar- problem addressed anew in a contem- kets, by John Y. Campbell, Olshan porary novel (see page 55). professor of economics (Princeton, $75). An exhaustive, mathematically In City on the Verge (Basic, $30), dense text based on the author’s journalist Mark Pendergrast ’70 returns graduate course, “Asset Pricing,” to his natal city, Atlanta, to see wheth- that provides academic underpin- er a 22-mile circumferential streetcar nings for investing. Campbell knows corridor, the BeltLine, can knit togeth- about practice, too: he is a founding er a sprawling, divided community that partner of Arrowstreet Capital ($89 is the de facto capital of the Southeast. billion under management) and a for- From the policy-analyst’s perspective, mer member of Harvard Manage-

Stephen Goldsmith, Paul professor of TONY MENDOZA ment Company’s board. Confronting the practice of government, and Neil Tony Mendoza: “April 20, 1993: The best the material, individual investors will expression I could come up with the day after I was Kleiman, of NYU, advance A New diagnosed with leukemia.” perceive that institutional investing City O/S (Brookings, $31.99 paper), is a different proposition entirely. proposing ways mayors (Goldsmith’s former forest’s simultaneous beauty and utility and occupation, in Indianapolis) can harness importance as a working scientific venue. Building the Intentional University: technology, data, and social engagement to, Essays by David R. Foster and Clarisse M. Minerva and the Future of Higher you know, make local government work. Hart, the forest’s director and its outreach Education, edited by Stephen M. Kosslyn and development manager, and by writer and Ben Nelson (MIT, $45). Kosslyn, for- The Year I Was Peter the Great, by and photographer Margot Anne Kelley mer professor of psychology and dean of Marvin Kalb, A.M. ’53 (Brookings, $24.99). complement Hirsch’s images. social science at Harvard, is now chief aca- A memoir of 1956: the USSR’s temporary demic officer of Minerva Schools, the inter- post-Stalin thaw, the crushing of the revolt Humanity without Dignity: Moral esting experiment in liberal arts profiled in in Hungary, and the suggestion that Russia Equality, Respect, and Human “An Educated Core” (July-August 2017, might have a different future. The journal- Rights, by Andrea Sangiovanni ’95, Ph.D. page 47) and explained in thought-provok- ist was then an attaché in the U.S. embassy ’06 (Harvard, $39.95). A philosophical in- ing depth here. in Moscow, fluent in the language, fortified quiry into the basic respect due fellow hu- by his Harvard studies, and able to travel mans advances the useful, if perhaps un- Pictures with Stories: A Memoir, by the country widely. comfortable, argument that it depends not Tony Mendoza, M.Arch. ’68 (Thomson- on intrinsic human qualities but rather on Shore, $27). In 1973, the author quit his job And Again: Photographs from the a negative: aversion to cruelty. Pursuing a as an architect “and became an artist.” His Harvard Forest, by John Hirsch (distrib- separate moral inquiry, Bruce Robbins ’71, newest collection of photographs and uted by Harvard University Press, $50). Ph.D. ’80, now at Columbia, examines, in quirky text (including some past favorites Useful for armchair visiting during the win- The Beneficiary (Duke, $23.95 paper), like Ernie the New York cat) demonstrates ter; a photo collection that captures the the literary idea of the prosperous helping the continuing felicitous result.

Harvard Magazine 61

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI days, we end with a declaration: “Oh say does bitter uncertainty as well and about the far- litical climate the book reads like a warning that star-spangled banner yet wave/O’er the reaching divisions among Americans. The about the sometimes-steep price of passion land of the free and the home of the brave.” national anthem is caught up in that turmoil and prejudice—not like a TED talk about the Francis Scott Key ended that stanza with and in vitriol about whether it’s more patri- once-reassuring reliability of reason. a question mark. His poem about the Brit- otic to kneel or stand during the anthem. ish siege of Baltimore reflected uncertainty Feldman’s optimistic book is consummate- Contributing editor and legal journalist Lincoln about the outcome and about the continu- ly well researched and well written. In many Caplan ’72, J.D. ’76, who is a senior research scholar at ing freedom of the country. That overlooked ways, it’s eye-opening and inspiring. Yet de- Yale Law School, wrote “The Justice Gap,” about civil question mark is a reminder about this era’s spite the author’s intention, in the current po- legal services, in the November-December 2017 issue.

ALUMNI From Here to Timbuktu A globe-trotting monk with the Benedictine “survival gene” seeks out treasured manuscripts. by nell porter brown

ow Father Columba Stewart ’79, of Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-540), Stew- who holds an Oxford doctorate in theology. a Benedictine monk from Minne- art says, Benedictines ultimately became “If we want to grow, the question becomes, sota, came to be hiding in a Tim- “leaders in the copying and transmission of ‘If we think the preservation of general cul- H buktu hotel during a jihadist at- texts.” In the last 15 years, he has taken that ture is valuable, then the growing edge of tack last summer is a story that begins in tradition to some of the world’s most vola- that for us is Islamic materials, not to men- the fifth century. tile regions—Syria, Iraq, Israel, and parts of tion East Asian stuff. Heritage is heritage. But the short answer is: he had flown to the Balkans—as well as India, Ukraine, and And the intellectual argument is, ‘Why not the medieval center of learning (and site of a Russia, to help conserve documents threat- get all the material, of all the sides?’” United Nations peacekeeping mission since ened not only by religious wars and geopoli- HMML is currently digitizing more than 2013), to start a new archival project—digi- tics, but also by poverty, natural disasters, 250,000 ancient Islamic manuscripts, books, tizing tens of thousands of documents in and climate change. “We’ve already done a and literary treasures smuggled out of Tim- the Imam Ben Essayouti Library. The col- lot of the Christian material,” says Stewart, buktu, in central Mali, in 2012 and 2013. That lection holds “ev- effort, the library’s erything from com- largest project to mentaries on the date, is centered Qur’an to letters, at a 12-camera scraps of poetry, studio in Mali’s land deeds, just the capital, Bamako. whole written cul- Catalogued mate- ture,” says Stewart, rials are accessible executive director through HMML’s of the Hill Muse- “virtual reading um & Manuscript room,” developed Library (HMML) and launched dur- at Saint John’s Uni- ing Stewart’s ten- versity, about 80 ure, where more miles northwest of than 25,000 com- the Twin Cities. plete manuscripts Christian monks from libraries have helped safe- across Europe, the guard cultural pat- Middle East, South rimony for more Father Columba India, and parts of than a millenni- Stewart the Balkans are um. As followers already online.

62 January - February 2018 Photograph by Guytano Magno/Hill Museum & Manuscript Library/Saint John’s University

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI HMML also holds thousands of rare books Signature Recovery Programs and Bibles, maps, and artwork reflecting Christian culture and theology. More recently, the library has been collecting early printed books (physical counterparts to Answers the virtual, digitized manuscripts online) in Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Syriac, for including important Qur’ans. addiction For his August trip to Mali, Stewart had lined up Swedish and British support and McLean Signature Recovery Programs seats on a UN plane to Timbuktu. Within empower men and women to reclaim their sense of self-worth and manage their active hours of landing, while eating lunch in the lives, free of alcohol or drug abuse. The clinical hotel courtyard, he heard gunfire. Ushered care and recovery methods used are evidence- into an interior room, he and two colleagues based treatments that result in positive learned by way of phone texts that terrorists therapeutic outcomes. had raided the UN headquarters, but that help would arrive. Let us help you today. Hours of waiting wore on. “We heard Call 844.454.1328 helicopters overhead, then sporadic shooting”—some of which seemed to come from the hotel garden—“then eerie quiet,” Stew- art recalls. “I don’t like just sitting there, not knowing what’s happening, not being able to control anything. We did pray, since all of us are Catholic…and, good news, there was a bottle of scotch in the room, and the McLean Fernside: McLean Borden Cottage: hotel people brought us food.” Around 9 Princeton, MA Camden, ME p.m. Swedish soldiers arrived and took the McLeanFernside.org McLeanBordenCottage.org group to a command post, where Stewart spent two days getting the digitizing project under way before returning to the bucolic campus on Lake Sagatagan and Saint John’s Abbey, where he’s lived for 37 years.

Stewart isn’t typically that adventurous. Each day, he rises at 5 a.m., swims for 35 minutes, and then, fussy about the strength of his coffee, grinds his own beans and brews a cup in his room. By 7 a.m., he’s in church for the first of four daily prayer sessions with his brothers. All 150 Psalms are recited in a monthly rotation, inspired by The Rule of Saint Benedict Calling All Harvard Authors! (its 73 pithy chapters range from “At What Hours the Meals Should be Taken” to “If a Brother is Commanded to do Impossible Things”), which was copied and used under Charlemagne and his son, Louis the Pious, THE DEADLINE IS: MARCH 14, 2018 to reform Western monasticism. to showcase your book in the May-June issue of Harvard Magazine After breakfast, Stewart gets to work at and reach 258,000 Harvard alumni, faculty, and staff. HMML, breaking for midday prayers and lunch at the monastery, finishing up gen- We’ve listened to your feedback and updated the format of our popular erally before the 5 p.m. Eucharist. He wears special advertising section. Your book ad either a black robe—although all that fab- will now include: a book jacket photo that’s 30% larger as well as an ric is cumbersome; it catches in the wheels of his office chair, he says, “so you have that additional line of text for a total of 8 lines. Your ad will appear both in Isadora Duncan thing where you’re sort of printHarvard and Authors’online. Go Bookshelf to: harvardmagazine.com/hauthors for pricing strangling yourself”—or a practical uniform and information, or call 617.496.6686, or email [email protected].

Harvard Magazine 63

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI where he met his “first Benedictine,” Stew- art began a doctoral degree in religious studies at Yale. There, he became friends with a second Benedictine, on leave from Saint John’s Abbey to study medieval history. In- trigued by the place, Stewart stayed there the following summer, learned some Ger- man, and joined the luminaries and theolo- gians then on campus to celebrate the ses- quimillenial of Saint Benedict’s birth. “I loved the community,” he says. “I liked all these really smart guys, hanging out together and doing serious things, but also having fun, and their being willing to accept me. I think for men the sort of team/ group thing is important…there was something about being embraced by the group that was very meaningful at that point in my human development.” The rich academic setting enabled Stewart to pursue scholar-

MATILDE GATTONI (2) ship and teach, and not worry about being Father Columba Stewart and re-assigned elsewhere. Benedictines’ vows Syriac monk Abouna Shimon are to their monasteries, not to the order, and Can pore over ancient manuscripts in the St. Mark’s each community, relative to parishes, oper- Syriac Orthodox Monastery ates with autonomy, setting its own liturgi- library, in Jerusalem (above) cal and other practices in line with the Rule. and talk in the courtyard; Stewart returned to finish a third semes- the Hill Museum has digitized the library’s early ter at Yale, earning a “consolation-prize mas- Christian texts. ter’s degree,” and moved to the abbey in early 1981. By July, he’d entered the novitiate (he were banned by the church), was ordained in 1990), received his robe, and and Stewart realized that “if taken the name Columba. Latin for “dove”— you are supportive of educa- evoking peace and the Holy Spirit, he says— tion and learning, it tends to it honors his ancestry: Saint Columba, the expand your horizons.” evangelist from Northern Scotland, not only At Harvard, he planned on left “the first recorded sighting of the Loch of jeans and a black mock turtleneck—his a law career until an expository-writing Ness Monster,” he’s also known as a man “Steve Jobs look.” teacher encouraged his penchant for books who loved books. Church bells rule the day: so much so that and language. Switching to history and lit- during the relatively freewheeling 2016-17 erature, he focused on nineteenth-century Saint John’s University was originally academic year that he spent as a Guggen- French prose and poetry and English church founded as a college by Benedictines from heim fellow at Princeton working on his history. A course with the late Peter Gomes, a Pennsylvania abbey who went west to forthcoming book, Between Earth and Heaven: Plummer professor of Christian morals and minister to German Catholic immigrants Interpreting the First Thousand Years of Christian Pusey minister in the Memorial Church, in central Minnesota; it moved to the cur- Asceticism and Monasticism, he wasn’t always helped inspire his lifelong interest in ear- rent 2,500-acre campus in 1866. Walking sure how to spend his time. “It was actu- ly Christian texts. At St. Paul’s, in Harvard trails wind through woods and along the ally hard for me, because there wasn’t a Square, and in his home diocese, Stewart lake, where motorized boats are prohibited. dang bell saying, ‘You do it now, then you’re talked with priests about the possibility of A restorative quietude pervades most of the done,’” he says. “I really need more external ordination, but already knew solitary life in campus, despite the presence of a preparato- framework.” a rectory wasn’t the right path. In writing ry school and about 1,700 male undergradu- That said, Stewart chose Saint John’s his senior thesis on early Anglican monas- ates. (About 1,900 women cross-register for Abbey for its “progressive, more open ap- ticism, he spent time with the brothers at classes, but reside at the sister school, Saint proach,” akin to the post-Vatican II Ca- the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, an Benedict’s College, down the road, where tholicism he’d grown up with in Houston. Episcopal monastic community on Memo- Benedictine nuns also live and teach.) His mother had been nurtured by “classy, rial Drive—making his mother “nervous be- The abbey is not cloistered. But it is a pri- amazing nuns” in Louisiana (her mentor cause she thought I was going to convert.” vate place, with a walled garden and polite once provided bus fare to the public library The fall after graduation, having spent signs posted to keep visitors at bay. The 115 so she could read works by Rousseau that the summer taking a Harvard Latin course, brothers have their own key to the universi-

64 January - February 2018 www.alumni.harvard.edu

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI ty’s gym and pool, and enjoy their own dock places where we’d worked that have been page, the pull of the press—I am the son of on the lake, “where we can hang out and not destroyed,” he reports. “It was very intense.” an engineer,” Stewart continued.“I learned be bugged,” Stewart quips—though he also In Montenegro and Croatia, a new project that Gutenberg had been a jeweler, which is means it. “Introversion—it sort of goes with recently began to digitize Church Slavonic how he knew how to carve a perfect letter, the territory, no question,” he continues. “I literary, artistic, and religious documents, dat- make a mold from it, and generate the hun- like people, but I really like being by myself. Af- ing to the thirteenth century, that are integral dreds, even thousands of ‘e’s or ‘m’s needed ter three hours of lecturing, I am just whacked.” to Serbian cultural history. This winter, Stew- to print a book.” (He teaches Christian asceticism at Saint art also plans to be in John’s small Graduate School of Theology.) northern India, to Neverthless, he has mustered the extro- work on 2,500 most- verted drive required to expand the manu- ly Arabic and Persian script library’s holdings exponentially, raise manuscripts, some funds, and network with donors, scholars, 500 years old, held by librarians, and project partners around the the family of the Raja world (including the British Library and the of Mahmudabad, who Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cul- ruled one of the larg- tures, in Hamburg) while extending the est feudal estates in boundaries of HMML’s founding mission. pre-independence Established in 1965, HMML first micro- India. “While there, filmed materials held by Benedictine monas- we’ll possibly zip up tic libraries in Europe, starting in Austria to Kathmandu,” he and Germany, because of fears that another says, to learn more world war, or a nuclear attack, would wipe about the effort to them out. In the Rare Book Room, Stewart conserve roughly has also found tomes that the earliest Saint 180,000 ancient man- John’s monks brought from European mon- uscripts in libraries asteries to the Midwestern frontier: “the damaged by Nepal’s Gospels printed in Arabic in 1590…Arabic! 2015 earthquake. The Here, more than a century ago. They were texts date from the investing in a future they could not know, ninth century to the and now at HMML we have digital images modern era, and cov- of thousands of Christian manuscripts from er topics from Hindu- the war-torn Middle East.” ism and Buddhism to In early 2003, the library director, then a yoga, poetics, and law. lay academic, called on Stewart, who’d once taken a sabbatical to live and study in East Ancient docu- Jerusalem and travel around the Middle ments like these and East, to help with a new project in Leba- the thousands of vol- non. “They needed a monk to deal with the umes in HMML’s church people,” he says: the robes tend to Rare Book Room—a engender trust, or at least scholarly objec- first printed edition tivity, he adds, when negotiations about the of the 1481 Latin Bi- fate of sensitive materials become politicized ble with the Glossa and contentious. Since then, in numerous Ordinaria that was in- A print of Thomas Ingmire’s Ten Commandments (part of the Saint trips to the Old City of Jerusalem, Stewart strumental in shaping John’s Bible) hangs in Father Columba’s monastery room. has worked with Christians and Muslims to Western Christian theology for generations; He owns one print from The Saint John’s digitize documents that belong to family col- leaves of a Coverdale Bible (1535), the first Bible, Ten Commandments, by California artist lections and historic communities, includ- modern English translation of the complete Thomas Ingmire, which hangs in his monas- ing St. Mark’s Syriac Orthodox Monastery. text—excite Stewart. “They can feel as fresh tery room. In it, the burning bush, the cross- In Iraq, HMML has worked since 2009 today as when they were printed,” he told an ing of the Red Sea, the first Passover, and with an organization founded by a Do- audience on campus last fall for the opening the 12 pillars at Mount Sinai are depicted minican friar to protect library collections. of a permanent library gallery for the Saint amid gold letters. In the lower half, black Stewart traveled through parts of Iraq in John’s Bible. The seven-volume illuminated and white letters spell out the Ten Com- May with a 60 Minutes camera crew, film- manuscript envisioned by British calligra- mandments and disperse incrementally, being a segment on HMML’s work that is pher Donald Jackson and created by artists coming abstract forms, before disappearing scheduled to air this winter, only to find under his leadership between 1998 and 2011. into white space at the bottom. that many of those materials are now hid- “I like the mechanics of printing, the cut- The work, Stewart says, is officially inter- den, or have been burned. “We visited all the ting and casting of type, the setting up of the preted from bottom to top, as “a progression

Ten Commandments, Thomas Ingmire, 2003, The Saint John’s Bible, Saint John’s Harvard Magazine 65 University, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI MATILDE GATTONI (2) In Jerusalem, technician Shaima Budeiry and librarian Dua’ Qirresh worked to photograph, digitize, and catalog documents, including Sufi, Islamic, and scientific manuscripts. through The Word, classic writers identify as a pretty impor- both sacred text and tant aspect of getting the prayer out of the Word Incarnate.” head and into the heart.” In that “zone,” he from empty wordlessness” to where God is Space, inner and outer, “is a good meta- simultaneously senses calm containment and perceived through full text, bold colors, and phor for how I live, and for my prayer expe- boundless expansion. gold-foiled designs,” he says. But he inverts rience,” he explains later. Each morning he When traveling, Stewart strives to pre- that, reading the image from top to bottom, prays in his room, alone. “It’s usually accom- serve some semblance of monastic life. He where “God is met finally in silence and spa- panied by a sort of, I won’t call it tears, but stays in the same hotels, recites prescribed ciousness, unbounded by form and words. a sort of moistening of the eyes. It’s a sense daily prayers stored on his iPad, reads from a But you have to get there through words, of touching an emotional depth, which the daily devotional published by the abbey’s Li-

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66 January - February 2018

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House-email-responsiveweb.indd 1 2/6/17 10:14 AM ALUMNI The world is awfully loud....“I’m not a delicate wiped out, barbarians come and go, and this year’s barbarians are next year’s educated, person who is freaked by people, but I also courtly princes. Where did Charlemagne come from, after all? They used to be hairy need that space. I think everyone does.” Goths; then they became rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. So, I think Benedictines have turgical Press. “We have a joke,” he adds, smil- tizing project. Still, the situation was scary. a survival gene and a capacity for reinven- ing: “A group of monks and nuns are traveling The worst moment, he says, came when the tion. We’re known as people who have a somewhere in a plane and the plane crashes shooting sounded so close it seemed an at- long-term view.” on a desert island. What do they do? They tacker could easily enter the hotel and dis- “The key to our survival as a species,” he get together, and the first thing one says is, cover the three foreigners; at dinner the night adds, “may well be small, sustainable com- ‘OK, what time are we going to have vespers?’” before, they’d been told of regional kidnap- munities. Monks and nuns excel at creating Another antidote: “I never turn on the pings, and of one Swedish prisoner recently such micro-environments. Some have spo- TV. Not once,” he says. The world is awfully traded for a multimillion-dollar ransom. ken recently of a ‘Benedict option’ as a way loud. “People are bombarded by it. Airport The violence left seven people dead. Such to save Christian values by retreating from TV stuff? Drives me insane. ‘Quit talking at outbreaks, the prevailing civil strife across the society. A clarion call of the Second Vatican me!’” He winces with irritation. “And those planet, and the erosion of “civilized disagree- Council was to recognize the modern world things in the taxis?”—mini-screens cycling ment and negotiating,” notably in the Unit- as it is, and then to work with it, [as] a leaven “edutainment” content—“I just turn those ed States, are “really troubling,” Stewart says. of reconciliation and kindness in the midst off.” Or he puts on his noise-canceling head- “And the over-consumption, the consumerist of rapid and dislocating change. That’s my phones. “I’m not a delicate person, or someone culture? How long is all of this sustainable? I kind of Benedictine life: open to all seekers, who is freaked by people, but I also do need can imagine civilizations collapsing. I mean, I meeting people where they are, inviting them that space. I think everyone does.” am an historian, it happens periodically, and it into the sanity provided by a structured life can happen with a natural catastrophe—will centered on gathering together throughout Hiding in that small hotel room in Tim- it be global warming? A disease? The decline the day to share the ancient wisdom of the buktu, Stewart tried to focus on more solv- of an economic engine?” Psalms and find a moment of quiet reflection. able problems, like how to salvage the digi- And yet, he points out, “Monasteries get It certainly works for me.”

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Harvard Magazine 67

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 THE COLLEGE PUMP

American Studies

and enrolled in a few business courses.…The vises that the 1936 diorama was restored and first…was called ‘Capital Markets.’ Not only is on display at Harvard Management Com- did I learn how to use an HP 12 calculator, I pany’s office, in Boston. The 1677 and 1775 learned that many business-school students editions are in storage—the former intact, were leveraged and highly sensitive to the the latter dismantled, and both in need of stock market….As a poor graduate student restoration and conservation: a project for “Your wooden arm you hold outstretched surviving on loans and part-time jobs, I had someone skilled in building miniatures, or to shake with passers-by.” no cash to invest in stocks, so the market in possession of some idle cash? was a foreign entity to me. “It was Monday, October 19, 1987, in one o, the ship of state isn’t sink- of those big semicircular classrooms at HBS. ing. Louise Greep Hogan ’57, Approximately halfway through the class, From the memorial minute on the life of the Ed.M. ’61, of Shelburne, Ver- someone handed the professor a slip of pa- late, great Thomas professor of English and mont, sent in this photo of per. He stopped the case study and made American literature, founding president of Nherself taken by her sister, Nancy Greep an announcement: ‘The stock market has the Library of America, who died in April ’66, of Santa Barbara, at just crashed and the Dow 2016 at the age of 103, presented to the Fac- that city’s Maritime Mu- is down 500 points. All of ulty of Arts and Sciences on October 3: seum. To make her mean- you who may have mar- “Serene, puckish, generous, and wel- ing clear, Hogan noted, gin calls are excused from coming, Daniel Aaron…known as Dan to “Harvard has indeed class.’ one and all, presided over, in the 33 years been a lifeline for many.” “I was sitting in the after his retirement, the longest running front row and was amazed open-door seminar and So- that almost half the class cratic conversation in his walked out.…[O]bviously English Department office. Getting ’em while there were some students Newer friends one-third his they’re young (HBS di- with leveraged long posi- age and long-term colleagues

vision). Richard Palmer, NANCY GREEP tions, or were they all and companions from more A.M. ’88, writing about the thirtieth anni- rushing out to call their brokers to place than a dozen countries were versary of “Black Monday,” recalled in an buy orders?… met with intellectual curios- email that he was then a second-year gradu- “That moment was formative in my ed- ity, warm good-natured interest, and a lively ate student. He is now a managing director ucation and helped me understand risk.… sense of play and relish. For the 40 previ- in Morgan Stanley’s private wealth manage- Maybe that’s why I am in finance today.” ous years of his professional life, Dan was ment operation, in San Francisco. a central figure and defining international “My thesis advisor, Professor Dwight Per- presence in the post-war world of American kins (economics), gave me some advice…. studies as he and the discipline he champi- MITCHELL/HPAC STEPHANIE During the spring, when I outlined my From Albuquerque, Dr. David R. Margo- oned explained to a newly attentive world thesis topic…he said he knew little about lin ’70, A.M. ’75, inquired after the dioramas the richness, diversity, and deep historical Chinese capital markets and finance as he of Cambridge once displayed on the first problems of American experience as seen in was an agricultural economist, therefore: floor of Widener Library, where he worked its culture, public life, and thought.” ‘You should go over to the Business School in the late ’60s. In light of current events, that last line in the fall and take a few finance courses….’ The resourceful Andrew R. Laplume, as- suggests that Aaron’s flame was extin- Not knowing a thing about HBS, I said okay, sociate director of FAS library facilities, ad- guished a few years too soon. vprimus vi

68 January - February 2018

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 TREASURE

Games of Old Amusements to dispel the winter blues

at midnight during the winter solstice, toral art and literature, evoking nature’s arranged as a game of astronomy, idylls and amorous Arcadian pleasures. for the use of young students in that The rules booklet proffers a different lure. science, was created by Alicia The game “will shew the variety and inno- Catherine Mant (1788–1869), cent amusement that may be derived from a writer of morality tales and a pack of cards: were the admirers of them children’s stories. The large as solicitous to acquire the useful lessons linen-backed paper board with which they are fraught, as they are to displays a galaxy of stars in- appropriate them to the destruction of each tended to spur the players to other’s fortunes, they would soon take pre- learn about the constella- cedence of every invention for the exercise tions as they move counters of the mind.” with a spin of the numbered Board games and curios found in the Z- teetotum. The young astron- closet remind us of how we lived, and raise a omers’ journey, explains the looking glass to how we live today. In our era accompanying booklet, be- of smartphones and streaming video, per- gins with Dubhe, the first haps it’s time to roll the die again and buy star in the Great Bear. After Park Avenue. Game night, anyone? touring the skies, vdiane e. booton the winner is the first to arrive at Al- ruccabah, the Pole Star. He then “re- ceives the reward [unspecified] of his perseverance.” Pastora; or, the Shepherdess of the Pyrenees, a diverting game calculated ow best to spend leisure time to kill care, and enliven the dreary hours of during the winter months? The winter, published in 1796 and played cold, dark days of yesteryear with counters and a pack of cards, called for story-telling, read- offers an engraved, hand-colored Hing aloud, and board games. In early nine- playing-sheet depicting the shep- teenth-century England, friends and fam- herdess, holding aloft a seven of dia- ily members played several such games now monds. At the corners appear the shelved in Houghton Library’s narrow, high- king of hearts, the knave of clubs, ceilinged Z-closet, described by accession- the queen of spades, and the ten of ing archivist Melanie Wisner as containing diamonds; on these figures, play- “things that didn’t fit elsewhere, physically ers use counters to place their bets. and/or intellectually”—from Henry David The object is to play all one’s cards Thoreau’s pencils to death masks. and collect the most counters. An 1814 board game, The Study of the Heavens The shepherdess winks at pas-

76 January - February 2018 Photographs by Harvard College Library Imaging Services

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