SUMMER 2011 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE Living Black History For Manning Marable, history wasn’t just a thing of the past C1_FrontCover.indd C1 7/15/11 3:50 PM COLUMBIA MAGAZINE MARK STEELE Visit Columbia Magazine at our digital home! At magazine.columbia.edu Check out what’s new at magazine.columbia.edu • View additional fencing images from Lois Greenfi eld’s photo shoot, as well as other Web-only features facebook.com/columbiamag • Comment on Manning Marable’s legacy and his reassessment of Malcolm X • Find recent Columbia community news twitter.com/columbiamag • “Like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter • Get up-to-the-minute bulletins via RSS and Columbia news feeds, and more C3_WebAd.indd C3 7/14/11 2:49 PM CONTENTS Summer 2011 12 00 28 20 DEPARTMENTS FEATURES 3 Letters 12 A Message for the World By Paul Hond 6 College Walk An explosive new biography of Malcolm X Lunch with the Pulitzers . Chemical is only a sliver of the late Manning Marable’s Bonding . A New Job at 99 . Feeding a legacy. And it might help change history. Poem to a Horse 20 The Untouchables 34 In the City of New York By Paul Hond By Leslie Hendrickson Legendary fencing coach Aladar Kogler, The head of Bike New York wants to get a sports psychologist, has trained dozens his fellow citizens into the saddle. of Columbians in the game’s fi ner points. But fi rst he had to teach himself how 38 News to survive. City approves new sports center . Naval ROTC coming back . Columbia and 28 Of Snakes and Butterfl ies Cornell join forces on autism . After 73 By Stacey Kors years at Columbia, Keene retires to Japan . When the Chinese-born composer Women Lions collect six Ivy titles Zhou Long won the Pulitzer in music this spring for his opera Madame White Snake, 46 Newsmakers he established himself not only as a prominent composer, but —— in his mind —— 48 Explorations as an American. 50 Reviews 62 Classifi eds 64 Finals Cover illustration by David Hollenbach 01-2 ToC.indd 1 7/15/11 1:29 PM IN THIS ISSUE COLUMBIA MAGAZINE Executive Vice President for University Development and Alumni Relations Fred Van Sickle Bel Kaufman ’36GSAS is an author, public speaker, Publisher and teacher, best known for her 1965 best-selling novel Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS Up the Down Staircase. Editor in Chief >> Page 9 Michael B. Shavelson Senior Editor David J. Craig CHESTER HIGGINS JR. / NYT REDUX HIGGINS JR. CHESTER Associate Editor Paul Hond Contributing Editors Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN Manning Marable (1950–2011) was an author, activist, Eric McHenry scholar, and the founding director of the Institute for Research Art Director in African-American Studies at Columbia. His last book, Eson Chan Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, was published in April. Assistant to the Editor >> Page 12 Nicole Brown Web Editor PHILIPPE CHENG Jacqueline Ballantine Editorial Assistant Hyatt Mustefa Mailing Address Kelly McMasters ’05SOA is the author of Welcome to Columbia Magazine Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, currently being Columbia Alumni Center 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 made into a documentary fi lm. She teaches nonfi ction writing New York, NY 10025 at the School of the Arts and at the journalism school. Tel. 212-851-4155 >> Page 58 Fax 212-851-1950 [email protected] www.magazine.columbia.edu Address and Archive Assistance [email protected] 212-851-4155 To update your address online, visit Jonathan Owen is an assistant professor in the alumni.columbia.edu/directory Department of Chemistry. This June, he was awarded a or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). fi ve-year research grant under the U.S. Department of Advertising: Energy’s Early Career Research Program. Publisher’s Representative >> Page 7 Bruce Ellerstein 917-226-7716 To download our advertising brochure or submit a classifi ed advertisement online, visit www.magazine.columbia.edu/advertise. Columbia Magazine is published for alumni and friends of Columbia by the Stephanie Staal ’93BC, ’98JRN is an attorney and former Offi ce of Alumni and Development. features reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger. She is the © 2011 by the Trustees of Columbia University author of The Love They Lost, a journalistic memoir about in the City of New York the long-term effects of parental divorce. >> Page 54 2 Columbia Summer 2011 01-2 ToC.indd 2 7/13/11 3:37 PM letters DRAMATIS PERSONAE from East Harlem, as a socialist. This is not Congress by offering him a place on the New The Spring issue really brought spring into my quite accurate. I wrote my senior thesis at York State Supreme Court. When Marcan- heart. Paul Hond’s article on Tony Kushner Princeton on Vito Marcantonio and inter- tonio turned them down, they all endorsed a (“A Sentimental Education”) is an incredible viewed his wife as well as several important single candidate to run against him in 1950 piece of writing. One sentence says it all: “I political fi gures of that time, including labor and redistricted to take away large num- wish I’d read more in college, devoured more, leader Alex Rose, the founder of the Liberal bers of people who had supported him. He been confused more” — and I would add Party of New York. lost, but still managed to get 40 percent of “and paid attention more.” More power to Marcantonio, a protégé of Fiorello the vote. After this, he maintained offi ces in both Hond and Kushner, and to Columbia. La Guardia, was elected to Congress as a East Harlem, planning to seek election again. Gloria Donen Sosin ’49GSAS Republican, but as he moved to the left, the While out on the street collecting petitions, White Plains, NY Republicans wanted nothing more to do with he died of a heart attack. him, so he joined the American Labor Party. It was brilliant of Tony Kushner in his Paul Hond’s interesting cover story makes Rose told me that the ALP was taken over latest play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s clear how Kushner’s art has seduced so many by communists during this period, which is Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a people, but the piece is deaf to the long tradi- why he left to form the Liberal Party. Key to the Scriptures, to invent the char- tion of art in the service of propaganda. The Marcantonio’s enemies always accused acter of Gus Marcantonio as a cousin of beautiful music, stained glass, and paintings him of being a communist or at the very Vito Marcantonio and have him be a com- carrying the Catholic message come to mind, least a fellow traveler, even though he never munist and a longshoreman. What Mar- as does the art of communism and fascism. All joined the party. He said he disagreed with cantonio’s defeat meant was that in New have been adept at expressing the “inevitabil- the communists, but defended their right to York, at least, third-party candidates of the ity” of their viewpoints. Common to them all participate in the political process. In 1948, Left would never be allowed to win. This is the dictatorial and condescending assump- after the Justice Department indicted the has greatly diminished political discourse tion that they know best how everyone should top 10 American communists, Marcanto- in New York, something Kushner’s play is live. These pernicious tenets are masked and nio, a lawyer, volunteered to defend them. clearly meant to revive. sold under the guise of general benevolence. Marcantonio lost his congressional seat Richard Cummings ’62LAW Dolores Dembus Bittleman ’52GSAS in 1936 but won it back in 1938 as the Sag Harbor, NY New York, NY ALP candidate. Because he was a thorn in the side of the New York political estab- I am impressed by Paul Hond’s report on Paul Hond’s article, which I read and lishment, and because of the tensions of his conversation with Tony Kushner, and admired, describes Vito Marcantonio, a long- McCarthyism, the Democrats, Republi- on Kushner’s making it, deservedly, to the time member of the House of Representatives cans, and Liberals joined to get him out of Spring cover of Columbia Magazine. The Summer 2011 Columbia 3 03-5, 60-61 _Letters.indd 3 7/7/11 3:53 PM LETTERS magazine refl ects the thoughts and feelings you failed to mention that the Polk Award — with its motto ending with the words of its readership, and I share in the pride. for Commentary was given to Juan Gonzalez “Jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah People who work hard to realize their ’68CC for his exposé of massive fraud sur- is our highest hope” is some sort of benign God-given talents are admirable, especially rounding CityTime, New York City’s com- bogeyman is a bizarre concept to anyone if, like Kushner, they can already see the puterized payroll-management system. This familiar with its history or aspirations. extraordinary fruits of their efforts. is the second Polk Award for Gonzalez, who Allon Friedman ’89CC By now, everyone is aware of the brou- was an active leader of the Young Lords in Carmel, IN haha surrounding Kushner’s almost not the 1960s and is now a columnist at the New receiving, and then receiving, an honorary York Daily News and a co-host, with Amy Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of degree from the City University of New Goodman, of Democracy Now! Arab Studies, responds: York. The argument in favor of CUNY’s Sol Fisher ’36CC, ’38LAW Polls are tricky things.