Princeton M Alumni

Weekly February 8, 2012

Alumni compete in race to the moon Princeton’s changing restaurant scene Occupy Princeton

Ellie Kemper’02

Web exclusives and breaking news @ paw.princeton.edu Princeton Alumni Weekly

An editorially independent magazine by alumni for alumni since 1900

FEBRUARY 8, 2012 VOLUME 112 NUMBER 7 President’s Page 2 Inbox 3 From the Editor 5 B E T

George F. Kennan ’25, T

Campus Notebook 12 M A N

whose papers are in N Occupy Princeton • ’11 career choices / C O R

Mudd Library; page 44 B I

• Report findings shed light on S student perceptions • Farewell to a Firestone tradition • University pays more to towns • BREAKING GROUND: Funny Girl 26 3-D sound • Changing restaurant From Princeton’s stages to television and film, actress and writer scene • Historical photos online • Ellie Kemper ’02 brings a fresh voice to comedy. ON THE CAMPUS: Women’s leadership, By Mark F. Bernstein ’83 redux • Funny scientists • FROM

PRINCETON’S VAULT: Tiger, Tiger • More Sports 24 Fly me to the moon 32 A special bond in basketball • EXTRA Two Princetonians are competing in a race to the moon — and with POINT: Reversal of fortune for wrestling a $20 million prize, there’s more than ego at stake. A Moment With 37 By Kenneth Chang ’87 Professor Maurizio Viroli, on Italy and Berlusconi Alumni Scene 38 Kate Finn ’06 works on behalf of What’s n ew @ PAW ONLINE assault victims • STARTING OUT: Emma Bedard ’11 • TIGER PROFILE: History Bowl HISTORY QUIZ Rally ’Round the Cannon founder David Madden ’03 • READING Test your skills with five Gregg Lange ’70 looks at ROOM: Alan Lightman ’70 considers zingers from History Bee a concrete symbol of

science and G od • Max Gomez ’73 founder David Madden ’03. 20th-century Princeton. organizes Vatican conference • Bradley Martin ’64 on North Korea • Alumni Day preview CAMPUS SCENES View more historical images Perspective 44 from the Archives’ Grounds In Mudd Library, a poignant encounter and Buildings collection. R I with a famous diplomat C A R D O

B A

Class Notes 45 INTERVIEW R R O Read the full Q&A with S Memorials 65 journalist and North Korea Princeton Exchange 70 expert Bradley Martin ’64. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is posted every Final Scene 72 NEW EDITIONS IN VISUAL ARTS Wednesday @ paw.princeton.edu ON THE COVER: Actress and comedian Ellie Kemper ’02. Students at the Lewis Center Photograph by Josephine Sittenfeld ’02. create books for their junior- year independent work. BUZZ BOX Inbox Kim *93’s reform ideas “We applaud the students of Occupy Princeton for for schools win support challenging Princeton’s dominant culture of political Every story, letter, and memorial at disengagement.” paw.princeton.edu offers a chance to comment — Aaron Harnly ’99, Aaron Michels ’00, and others Readers voiced their support at PAW Online for Earl Kim *93, superintend- ent of a New Jersey school district, students considering a career in finance. The University and Wall Street whose role in the The University administration battle over educa- When we were at Princeton, we often should support those students who are tion reform was were reminded that Princeton’s motto attempting to bring Princeton into a profiled in the is “In the nation’s service and in the much-needed national conversation Dec. 14 issue. service of all nations.” Despite this about income inequality and economic “Those in New ideal, we realize that to many within injustice. Moreover, we urge the admin- Jersey who don’t and outside the Orange Bubble, Prince- istration to stop providing institutional like Earl Kim *93 ton symbolizes something much less support for recruiting on campus by don’t like him noble: greed, privilege, and elitism. We the worst offenders of the financial because he has believe that part of this perception industry. Instead, Princeton should the evidence to stems from Princeton’s strong institu- redirect its resources to support career back up his argument, won’t be swayed tional support for financial-service options that look beyond the pursuit of by ideology, and isn’t going to stoop to firms that have manipulated the politi- profit and allow the University and lower levels in a debate,” wrote DONNELL cal systems and economies of nations University graduates to show true lead- BUTLER *09. “As an early childhood edu- around the world to the detriment of ership and social responsibility, whether cator, this article had touched my those societies and the stability of the in finance or in any other field. heart,” said PAULA HOGAN p’04. global financial system. Lastly, we call on fellow alumni to “PAW has finally profiled an educa- We applaud the students of Occupy join us in making it clear that “In the tion reformer who understands and Princeton for challenging Princeton’s nation’s service and in the service of all P respects public education,” commented dominant culture of political disengage- nations” must include everyone, not 3 TOBIN HAHN ’94. “It is a shame that Kim ment. Princeton graduates have the just the wealthiest 1 percent. was not granted respect in return, and opportunity to choose their own career AARON HARNLY ’99 will be taking his talents to a private paths. If they do choose to work in AARON MICHELS ’00 school.” finance, they should know they are and 108 other alumni Noting Kim’s plans to become head- entering an industry with a reprehensi- master of a school in Hawaii, NICOLE ble historical record of breaching public Completing b oth a call to my broker VELASCO ’08 wrote that the public educa- trust and engaging in prac tices that ru n an d my third Chivas, I began to con- tion system in that state “is one of the directly counter to Princeton’s motto. sider PAW’s piece, “For most, business worst, and it will require thoughtful We believe that the Occupy Princeton as usual despite Wall Street protests” analysis by the likes of Kim to take it protests send an important message to (On the Campus, Dec. 14). Although out of the mire.” these financial institutions about the the drink was excellent, I had forgotten University’s values and serve to educate to remove the silver spoon and almost

WE’D LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU Catching up PAW ONLINE EMAIL: [email protected] @ MAIL: PAW, 194 Nassau Street, Suite 38, PAW on YouTube Princeton, NJ 08542 Looking for a video highlighted in a previ- PAW ONLINE: Comment on a story at paw.princeton.edu ous issue of PAW? You can find many of PHONE: 609-258-4885; FAX: 609-258-2247 our recent offerings on the magazine’s YouTube channel. Follow the link on our Letters should not exceed 275 words, and may website, paw.princeton.edu, to browse the be edited for length, accuracy, clarity, and video archives. Readers with suggestions civility. Due to space limitations, we are for our new “videos by alumni” list can unable to publish all letters received in the print magazine. Letters, articles, photos, and send links to [email protected]. comments submitted to PAW may be pub- lished in print, electronic, or other forms.

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly choked on it; however, Soames, my but- cally deceptive covert cloaks, such as Princeton ler, saved the day. “collateral damage” and “reduction in Good old Soames! I make it a prac- force.” What is there to hide? Alumni tice never to encourage intimacy in ser- This engaging article by Tara Thean Weekly vants, but unbidden, he advised me not ’13 includes the observation that some to fret about those dirty hippies with investment-banking-bound seniors An editorially independent magazine their generalized complaints. “It’s sim- deemed Occupy Wall Street protesters by alumni for alumni since 1900 ply a circus,” he whined, and I felt as “not credible enough to be taken FEBRUARY 8, 2012 Volume 112, Number 7 much better, especially since my grand- seriously.” Yet considering that it was EDITOR son, Parvenu III, who doesn’t need to those controlling the money who con- Marilyn H. Marks *86 work at all, recently secured a posh tributed to the tribulation trifecta of MANAGING EDITOR position (without pressure, I promise!) our real-estate bubble (the mortgage W. Raymond Ollwerther ’71 via the Ivy-to-Wall-Street pipeline, bankers), our painfully protracted wars ASSOCIATE EDITORS Jennifer Altmann which isn’t oily at all. (the defense industries), and our market Katherine Federici Greenwood “Don’t let a little something like a debacle (the investment firms), these DIGITAL EDITOR protest movement upset you, Master,” pro tests by no means are totally un - Brett Tomlinson SENIOR WRITER Soames purred. “After all, you’re due at founded and completely without credi- Mark F. Bernstein ’83 the club soon. Remember that weekly bility. Something is clearly not right in CLASS NOTES EDITOR dinner for 60 you’re hosting. You the scheme of things in this, our great Fran Hulette haven’t much time to taste the ’45 land, and there is nothing to lose and ART DIRECTOR Mouton, you know.” everything to gain through a thorough Marianne Gaffney Nelson That really got me thinking. Should I scrutiny of the instability of our system. PUBLISHER introduce discussions of poverty and ROCKY SEMMES ’79 Nancy S. MacMillan p’97 inequality at my dinner? We all, of Alexandria, Va. ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Colleen Finnegan course, need a little levity in these try- ing times. But speaking of time, I don’t What a relief to read the comments by STUDENT INTERNS have enough of it to bother with Professor Stanley Katz in the Dec. 14 Taylor C. Leyden ’12; Jenna I. McCarthy ’13; Allison S. Weiss ’13; Briana N. Wilkins ’12 quaint protests by lawless demonstra- On The Campus column! However, the tors, especially if they didn’t go to good same column left one with the unset- P PROOFREADER 4 Joseph Bakes schools. It’s enough to make me wash tling impression that Princeton exists WEBMASTER my hands, one washing the other, as we to serve and to perpetuate the 1 per- River Graphics often amusingly remark. cent, and that current undergraduates PAW BOARD Taking to the street indeed! How have no problem with the shamefully Annalyn M. Swan ’73, Chair déclassé! Sliding into the Bentley, I worsening wealth gap in the United Richard Just ’01, Vice Chair Constance E. Bennett ’77 poured another drink and sensed how States. It was déja vu for me when I *James Barron ’77 like a surgeon I am, healing fellow club read that Princeton is a “far less politi- Anne A. Cheng ’85 *Robert K. Durkee ’69 members via commodity allocation, cal” campus these days. When President *Margaret Moore Miller ’80 especially when my Comet cognac gets Robert Goheen ’40 *48 addressed the *Nancy J. Newman ’78 David Remnick ’81 passed around. incoming freshmen in 1966, he told us William W. Sweet *75 RUSS STRATTON ’60 we would be too busy with our studies Charles Swift ’88 *ex officio Hattiesburg, Miss. at Princeton to get involved yet in the wider world. That’s not how things LOCAL ADVERTISING/PRINCETON EXCHANGE Colleen Finnegan There is something disconcertingly worked out. Telephone 609-258-4886, [email protected] disingenuous in economics professor The previous tradition of apathy at NATIONAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Elizabeth Bogan rationalizing the Princeton gave way to intense political Lawrence J. Brittan Telephone 631-754-4264, Fax 631-912-9313 desire to participate in “allocation of involvement in protesting the Vietnam

Princeton Alumni Weekly (I.S.S.N. 0149-9270) is an editorially resources” as a major reason that finan- War, Princeton’s investments in independent, nonprofit magazine supported by class subscrip- tions, paid advertising, and a University subsidy. Its purpose is to cial services are among the most popu- apartheid South Africa, etc. Yes, there’s report with impartiality news of the alumni, the administration, the faculty, and the student body of Princeton University. The lar of employment options for no doubt that facing the draft awak- views expressed in the Princeton Alumni Weekly do not necessarily represent official positions of the University. The magazine is Princeton seniors, while in the same ened some of us from our apathetic published twice monthly in October, March, and April; monthly in September, November, December, January, February, May, June, breath — almost parenthetically — she slumbers. Still, I don’t agree with and July; plus a supplemental Reunions Guide in May/June. Princeton Alumni Weekly, 194 Nassau Street, Suite 38, Princeton, notes that “it is high income.” It is her Vladimir Teichberg ’96 (A Moment NJ 08542. Tel 609-258-4885; fax 609-258-2247; email [email protected]; website paw.princeton.edu. choice of euphemism in using “alloca- With, Dec. 14) that “all of our institu- Printed by Fry Communications Inc. in Mechanicsburg, Pa. Annual subscriptions $22 ($26 outside the U.S.), single copies $2. tion of resources” instead of “control- tions have become completely corrupt.” All orders must be paid in advance. Copyright © 2012 the Trus - tees of Princeton University. All rights reserved. Reproduction in ling the money” that suggests some Not Princeton! whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Periodicals postage paid at Princeton, N.J., and at additional mailing offices. suspect level of insincerity. It brings to RICHARD M. WAUGAMAN ’70 Postmaster: Send Form 3579 (address changes) to PAW Address Changes, 194 Nassau Street, Suite 38, Princeton, NJ 08542. mind other unrelated but euphemisti- Potomac, Md.

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu Inbox PAW’s Dec. 14 On the Campus column FROM THE EDITOR was dismaying enough. How best to respond? Occupy Princeton did it best, delightfully deconstructing Wall Class Notes in this issue includes the last Street’s crimes in its YouTube video. To column from the Class of 1930. The final surviving member of the Occupy’s eloquent statement, I’d add class, Jacob Christian Myers Jr., died Dec. 11, at 103. Before the class the subheads in investment adviser leaves our pages, we recall the mark it made. Leland H. Faust’s op-ed, “Wall Street is The men of 1930 arrived at Princeton at the height of the Jazz a raw deal for the 100 percent” (San Age, graduated months after the stock market crashed (though early Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 29). reunion books make no mention of that), and lost nine members to World War II. They are: the cult of a Wall Street As freshmen, classmates spent evenings at meetings of the evangelical Philadel- superstar, gambling disguised as invest- phian Society, where they “debated on the degree of necking which constitutes sin, ing, the bail-me-out syndrome, enor- and were instructed in the technique of clapper-stealing,” the Nassau Herald reports. mous conflicts of interest, leverage on a Prohibition did not seem to dampen the mood: The class congratulated itself on grand scale, failure of regulators and establishing “a noble record in the campaign against the 18th Amendment.” the reform law, misappropriation of Nonetheless, Dean Christian Gauss chided the students for being overly solemn. client funds, worthless rating agencies, Ben Hedges ’30, chosen “most respected” by his classmates, won a silver medal in golden parachutes soaring high, and the high jump in the 1928 Olympics. That year, students of voting age attempted to breakdown of morality. cast presidential ballots but were turned away, leading to tension between town Perhaps, before graduating, Prince- and gown and a student disturbance on Nassau Street. Princeton’s new chapel ton seniors should take a cautionary opened at the end of sophomore year, though classmates surveyed called for the refresher course in ethics, to be taught end of compulsory chapel and chafed against restrictions on women and cars. “We by professors Peter Singer, Cornel West have disregarded a few traditions, but they were ones that only served to make life *80, and Robert George. needlessly hard for the freshmen,” the class history recalls. KEN SCUDDER ’63 “Time brings changes to all things,” the class concluded, “and many critics of San Francisco, Calif. American universities say that our attitude is all for the best.” — Marilyn H. Marks *86

Teichberg ’96’s politics P 5 Vladimir Teichberg ’96 (A Moment With, Dec. 14) may have moved to the United States at the age of 10, but he has somehow managed to develop or maintain a very Russian take on the world. Hey, how’s that system working out? GERRY SHOWSTACK ’70 Omer, Israel

Wow! Loved your story on Occupier Vladimir Teichberg. Where do I sign up to join this amazing individual, for- 1/6 V 1/6 V merly a mild-mannered derivatives trader and now a fearless fascism Cruise One Durkee fighter? Just imagine how idyllic it could be if we just ditch representative B/W B/W government for Vlad’s “people-driven committees” with their “consensus based on complete equality” (I hope that, since this is Princeton-inspired, we’ll all be rated above average). I mean, since “all our institutions have become completely corrupt,” what else could we possibly do? I promise I’ll sit tight and wait for further instructions from the “local assemblies,” the

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Inbox

“national structures,” or whatever. foreign entanglements, and honesty. I am sure if you comb through the DOUG SPROULL ’72 RICHARD WEEDER ’58 p’92 alumni rolls, you will find flat-earthers, St. Louis, Mo. Lawrenceville, N.J. Holocaust deniers, Wiccans, foot fetishists, alien abductees, and cultists Vladimir Teichberg is “right on.” Money Just what we need is a Russian former of every kind, all of them with beliefs is behind most politics today, and the derivatives trader telling us we have to and programs as worthy of attention as middle class is being starved out. His- scrap our system of government. Teichberg’s and none of them openly tory tells us, time and again, that the Vladimir Teichberg complains that espousing sedition. If Vladimir doesn’t loss of the middle class results in OWS protesters have been “marginal- like our constitutional form of govern- tyranny and loss of freedoms. The ized” and “delegitimized” by the press. ment, let him by all means move back Republicans have shown themselves to How laughable, especially in view of home and see how the collectivist be “the best that money can buy.” They the faux legitimacy given him by PAW movie ends. have abandoned their values of 30 years in devoting a full page to his anarchist JACK OLSON ’71 ago — fiscal conservatism, avoidance of nonsense. Cedarburg, Wis.

Perhaps this spoiled intellect should spend more time in his homeland protesting the incredible fraud of its leadership and the notion that hierar- chies are abhorrent. Yes, they are, but 1/6 H I’m embarrassed that Princeton is cater- ing to this type of mind. Mahoney We protested in the late ’60s some- thing that was morally corrupt and universally opposed by the vast major- 2/C ity of our population. Today’s struggles are borne of the notion we are “enti- tled,” resulting in laziness, unwarranted P expectations, and open criticism of 6 those who appear to be “better off” than they are. Hard work, accepting that not everyone is entitled, and recognizing that without individual initiative, no 1/12 society has ever prospered: Perhaps Vladimir Teichberg should have stud- ied history of civilizations. Too bad Stockton Princeton was used to spread his mes- sage — appalling. B/W JIM BINCH ’70 New Canaan, Conn.

1/6 V Note to Vladimir Teichberg: There is nothing wrong with the form of gov- Princeton ernment that we already have. It has given the world the most representative Corkscrew and long-lasting democracy it has ever known. I agree there is rampant cor- ruption, but the solution is not to B/W 1/12 replace it with “people-driven commit- tees” (the world has been down that Authors road before: Vladimir, talk to your par- ents about how that worked for them. 4/C If it had, you wouldn’t be in America today). No, the answer is to return to the vision of our Founding Fathers: limited government, a free-market eco-

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu nomic system, grounded in a moral vision of self-control and personal responsibility. As to Occupy Wall Street’s vaunted goal of reducing inequality (a goal I am all for), it would do well to examine the drivers of said inequality. Are Wall Street bankers more greedy than they used to be, or are other factors involved? I submit that the government itself has been an enabler of inequality, heavily favoring Wall Street with its bailouts and stimulus packages. And what impact has the influx of millions of unskilled undocumented workers had on the labor market? Might not this be a factor in depressing wages overall? Finally, we should consider the effect of the collapse of intact families. The explosion of out-of-wedlock births and of children living outside of two- parent households has widened eco- nomic disparity. Social scientists routinely find that individuals raised in 2/3 V intact families generally are better equipped to thrive in the economy. A Gift Planning growing number of our population have been deprived of a stable and lov- 4/C ing family life, compromising their P earnings potential as a result. 7 ROBERT BEEBE ’75 RH Little Falls, N.J.

Base admissions on merit

Racial balancing for incoming molecu- lar biology grad students (Campus Notebook, Dec. 14)? The very idea in saner times would have been consid- ered an outrage — and an injustice to all those better-qualified applicants from “overrepresented” groups who lose out in the racial-balancing game. There was a time not long ago when Americans who considered themselves the most liberal and most advanced segment of the community believed that discriminating against people because of their ethnicity or race was deeply offensive. It was almost universally believed that our premier research universities, especially in their natural-science pro- grams, should only seek out “the best and the brightest” regardless of race or ethnicity, letting the demographic

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly 1 1/3 pp Camps P 4/C 8

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu Inbox

chips fall where they may. If Asians and often quote myself, but what I wrote Phillips Exeter Academy Jews were grossly “overrepresented,” and about selective social organizations on Summer School other groups substantially “underrepre- campuses in a forthcoming book, July 1-August 4, 2012 sented,” then that’s just the way it is. In Growing Up: Limiting Adolescence in a academia as in other areas of American World Desperate for Adults, seems perti- Five weeks of exploration life (cf. professional basketball and pro- nent: “Walls that exclude are as high and discovery . fessional ice hockey), merit-only selec- from the inside as they are from the tion systems work that way. And that’s outside, and the danger for the insiders why little Caltech, organized exclu- is to become decreasingly aware of and sively on the merit-only principle, often ultimately uninterested in any way out, is ranked ahead of Princeton in rank- failing to grasp the extent to which ings of world-class universities. social exclusivity arrests them emotion- When are we going to end this mad- ally and intellectually.” We offer Residential/Day programs for ness of racial-quota thinking and The vaunted freedom Mr. Robinson motivated students. You will enjoy full return to the naive idea that talent, offers is a Trojan horse. Exercising the access to our campus with its state-of- hard work, and achievement should be freedom to narrow our lives — a right, the-art Phelps Science Center, the the only criteria for advancement in certainly, but not a particularly good world’s largest secondary school library, and expansive athletic facilities. academia? idea — ultimately prevents us from Our UPPER SCHOOL program is for RUSS NIELI *79 becoming all we might be. That, as the students who have completed grades 9, Lecturer in politics University well understands, is where 10, 11 or 12. ACCESS EXETER, a pro- Princeton University true freedom lies. gram of accelerated study in the arts THE REV. FRANK C. STRASBURGER ’67 and sciences, is open to students who Brunswick, Maine have completed grades 7 or 8. Taking advantage of diversity www.exeter.edu/summer William Robinson ’51 writes with obvi- Another school-reform path 20 Main Street Exeter, NH 03833-2460 ous pride in his leadership in reintro- Tel 603.777.3488 ducing Greek life to Princeton and It is with sadness and frustration that I suggests that the University’s “dispar- read about privileged Princeton under- P agement” of fraternities and sororities graduates taking up the cause of school 9 in Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities reform (Campus Notebook, Nov. 16), “should offend every Princetonian who which now has become synonymous believes in student freedom of associa- with union-busting, standardized test- tion” (letters, Dec. 14). ing, charterization, and the diversion of Unfortunately, Mr. Robinson fails to taxpayer money into charters and recognize that Princeton isn’t just a vouchers that serve a select few. Train- Join our community this summer! social community but, above all, an ing “a new generation of school-reform educational institution whose mission leaders” to spearhead Wall Street’s THE HUN SCHOOL is the growth of knowledge and the attack on teachers no doubt will pro- OF PRINCETON development of extraordinary young vide lucrative and prestigious manage- minds. rial positions for young Princeton Mr. Robinson’s clear assumption, alums, but it won’t do a thing for with which I agree, is that students pre- America’s underfunded and under- fer to associate with people like them- staffed schools. selves. But despite the enormous effort As an alternative, I’d suggest that the University has made since the early Princeton grads who want to make a ’60s to attract a diverse student body, difference should commit themselves few students take full advantage of it, to training real teachers, or better yet much to their detriment. It’s a sad state- — since the pay and benefits are appar- ment that pre-orientation is by far the ently so good — to spending 10 or 15 most diverse social experience most years themselves teaching in public THE HUN SCHOOL Princetonians have in their four under- schools. OF PRINCETON graduate years. JONATHAN GREENBERG *02 And why does Princeton care so Associate Professor and Director of much about diversity? Because it is Graduate Studies through association with people differ- Department of English ent from ourselves that we grow. I don’t Montclair State University

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Proving a sexual-assault case PRINCETON UNIVERSITY I was happy to read in the Nov. 16 issue (Campus Notebook) that despite the statement of a law-school professor that “preponderance of the evidence is a nonnegotiable standard of proof for all harassment based on sex — including sexual assault,” the University has adopted rules requiring “a clear and persuasive case.” When I was a young lawyer serving for a short time as a Voluntary Defender of destitute people who had been accused of committing crimes, it was the settled law that sexual assault was a crime and that the degree of proof be “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It is beyond the scope of this letter to dis- cuss what the University should do in such cases, especially in view of the recent events at Penn State, and what right the federal government has to dic- tate how a university should conduct its disciplinary proceedings, but I am glad that Princeton is at least to some degree standing up for basic rights. I should add that my wife (magna P cum laude, Bryn Mawr) agrees with this 10 letter. GEORGE SCOTT STEWART III ’51 Philadelphia, Pa.

Bad drivers in ‘Gatsby’ I very much enjoyed, and was saddened by, W. Barksdale Maynard ’88’s “Inva- sion of the devil wagon” (feature, Nov. 16). For a Fitzgerald scholar, it’s inter- esting to see a possible original for Dick Humbird in Hinman Bird 1906 — and to see the campus carnage that was a constant during and after Fitzger- ald’s time in Princeton, that doubtless informed not only the fatal car acci- dent in This Side of Paradise, but the incessant automotive disasters of his finest novel, The Great Gatsby. Cars trump commuter trains as the way to get around in Gatsby, are an easy and public indicator of wealth, and Susan Gordon Ingela Kostenbader Sales Associate Sales Associate who’s driving what shapes the course of 609.688.4813 609.902.5302 the novel. From the drunken man who RESIDENTIAL BROKERAGE wrecks his car after a party of Gatsby’s, PrincetonRealEstate.net • PrincetonHome.com to Gatsby’s being stopped for speeding as he sails his car “with fenders spread

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu like wings” through Astoria; from George Wilson’s sad, dusty garage to (spoiler alert) Daisy Buchanan’s killing of her husband’s mistress with Gatsby’s “circus wagon” of a car after an after- Shopping & Dining noon of quarreling and drinking at The Plaza, Gatsby is littered with Shop Here Aerosoles wrecks and wreckage. Ann Taylor Ann Taylor Petites Jordan Baker is right: Not only she, Au Courant Opticians and our “honest” narrator Nick, but all Banana Republic Berlitz Language Center the characters in the novel are bad driv- Bluemercury Bucks County Dry Goods ers — an integral part of Gatsby’s fabu- Cranbury Station Gallery Dandelion lous fatality. Design Within Reach ANNE MARGARET DANIEL w’86 *99 J.Crew jaZams New York, N.Y. kate spade new york Kitchen Kapers Lace Silhouettes Lingerie Lacrosse Unlimited lululemon athletica The reality of Social Security !; 8!r Luxaby Baby & Child M9k0 A7(BC9Di Origins !"r 9@@+v(rs9ry Palm Place, A Lilly Pulitzer Signature Store Paul Matten ’84 is mistaken when he The Papery of Princeton includes Social Security in his polemic PNC Bank Ralph Lauren against unfunded entitlements (letters, Salon Pure Silver Shop Dec. 14.) Spruce Talbots Can we have a reality check here? Talbots Petites Over its history, the Social Security Urban Grace The Walking Company Administration has taken in more in Zoë payroll deductions than it has paid out t7? Specialty Food & Drink =>0 l9 The Bent Spoon ; t< i!@s Carter & Cavero Old World in retirement benefits. That surplus gap Sto: + c%.le) 7ign(r Olive Oil Co. is now closing, and it generally is d Halo Fete P agreed that Social Security has to be Halo Pub Lindt Chocolate 11 amended if it is to remain solvent for Olsson’s Fine Foods Princeton Corkscrew future retirees, but it won’t take rocket Wine Shop science to do this. Thomas Sweet Chocolate Dine Here There may be government programs Chez Alice Gourmet Café & Bakery P4c& "5 2 b6l7 8!r '9rty Mediterra that are legitimate targets for criticism, Princeton Soup and Sandwich Co. but by any reasonable measure, Social Teresa Caffe Winberie’s Restaurant & Bar Security should not be one of them. Yankee Doodle STUART G. HIBBEN ’48 Tap Room Swarthmore, Pa. In praise of proofreading

Judging by the frequent errors in some ) *+t, of the newspapers and magazines I # l$%& '(rfe W!"l ac& 2r3 read, I was beginning to think that -y .+/l0 1l proofreaders were extinct. Not so: PAW not only has a proofreader (Joseph Be inspired by our 40+ stores and Bakes), but also includes his name in restaurants in the heart of downtown the masthead — a well-deserved honor. Princeton. For our events calendar, promotions I cannot remember the last time I and parking info visit www.palmersquare.com. detected an error of any sort in PAW. JAMES D. SHEPPARD ’50 Greenville, S.C.

Every story, letter, and memorial at paw.princeton.edu offers a chance to comment.

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Campusnotebook Web exclusives and breaking news @ paw.princeton.edu Occupy Princeton protests create a stir on campus After a slow start, Occupy Princeton has stepped up its presence on campus, interrupting recruiting sessions by two investment banks and defending its positions dur- ing a Whig Hall debate. But it’s not the only voice being sessions given by JPMorgan Dec. 7 and heard on issues of the economy, the Goldman Sachs the next day received influence of Wall Street, and the role widespread media attention, thanks to washes the crooked dealings of Wall of government regulators. Competing the popularity of the financial industry Street as a prestigious career path,” and opinion columns in The Daily Prince- as an employer of Princeton graduates the statements were repeated in unison tonian have offered advice to the pro- and the posting of videos of the events by other group members. testers and condemned their tactics, on YouTube. By mid-January, the videos After each mic check, the protesters while attracting dozens of comments had been viewed more than 125,000 left the event. According to the Prince, of their own. And the Princeton Corpo- times. Occupy Princeton was booed by other rate Finance Club, which promises to About 20 members of Occupy students attending the Goldman Sachs educate students about financial Princeton attended the sessions, ques- event. P careers and “give you an edge in land- tioning recruiters and conducting a “We are obviously not going to con- 12 ing a job,” has attracted 400 members “mic check” at each one: A leader read vince all of the [students at the] info since it was launched in March. a series of statements such as “We session to agree with us,” said Derek The protests at campus information protest the campus culture that white- Gideon ’12, a protest leader. “But we did

S Where the Class of 2011 found jobs educational, health care, and civic organizations. Eighteen graduates joined Teach for America, 16 entered

W Jobs in finance and management consulting continue to be professional sports, and six joined the military. By J.A. top draws for Princeton graduates, with 35 percent of mem- E bers of the Class of 2011 who had jobs six months after grad- JOBS OF THOSE WHO OF THOSE CONTINUING uation working in those fields. WERE WORKING: THEIR EDUCATION: N The annual Career Services survey of the graduating class found that the field of finance alone drew 161 graduates. The Finance 22% Doctoral-degree studies 29%

E Class of 2010 had reported 143 members with jobs in finan- Education/health care 20% Master’s-degree studies 25% cial services three months after graduation (the timeframe H for the survey changed this year). Management consulting 13% Post-baccalaureate, 18% fellowships, and other T Nearly 62 percent of the Class of ’11 entered the working Professional, scientific, 13% world, while 22.5 percent of the graduates were continuing and technical services Medical school 13%

their education by heading to graduate school or post- S T E V F E baccalaureate programs, roughly the same as last year. More Services and public 9% Law school 8% N

V E A C

than 10 percent of the graduates still were seeking jobs. administration H O Applying to grad school 7% The average salary for graduates who were employed (Inc. civic/social-advocacy groups) fulltime was more than $62,000, a 5.5 percent increase from Information services 8%

P last year. Top average salaries were in computer program- (Inc. media, Internet, publishing) ming ($94,700), hardware/software development ($93,000),

O and financial sales/trading ($82,500). Thirty-one percent of Other 15% those working were in the nonprofit sector, which included T Figures above include internships.

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu Campusnotebook

Christian Fong ’14 of everyone’s minds is the impending critiques Occupy political race.” MORE ON THE PROTESTS Wall Street during Camille Framroze ’12, the executive a Jan. 13 debate. editor of the Princetonian’s opinion sec- @ paw.princeton.edu Listening are Kevin tion, said Occupy Princeton’s impact VIDEOS: The Henneck ’13, left, had been “very positive” in arousing a of the anti-Occupy Occupy Prince- campus that tends to be politically apa- ton “mic side and Peter thetic, but added that “students are Favaloro ’12, right, more likely to criticize Occupy Prince- checks” that of the pro-Occupy ton than to support it, particularly after interrupted team. the mic checking.” campus information sessions by Robert Joyce ’13, an Occupy Prince- JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. ton member, said he hoped that the group’s demonstrations had stirred dis- ESSAY: Michael Lewis ’82 looks cussions of the ethics of accepting a job at the Occupy Princeton protests on Wall Street. “That’s not to say that against Wall Street firms and offers no one should go, but they should raise lessons for the 1 percenters in and grapple with the ethical issues a humorous essay written for before they do,” he said. Bloomberg. “That Princeton students present an alternate view that will hope- Beverly Hamilton-Chandler, director are now identifying their interests fully change the culture on campus.” of Career Services, said she was unaware with the Lower 99 percenters” Students quickly weighed in on the of any data to indicate a change in stu- is an ominous sign, Lewis writes. demonstrations in the pages of the dents’ career plans based on the Princetonian. Occupy movement, nor of changes in “It is true that the Princeton students plans by recruiters to visit Princeton. drawn protests at a number of college of today traditionally become the Joyce said about 10 Occupy Prince- campuses related to working condi- Goldman partners of tomorrow, but ton members also conducted a mic tions at HEI’s hotels. chanting at them repetitively only check before an Orange Key campus Politics professor Mark Beissinger serves to alienate them, not to change tour group. The protest targeted the said he noticed “significant resonance R

E P F E A their minds,” wrote Aaron Applbaum University’s investment in HEI Hospi- H of the issues raised by Occupy among C 13 S

Y L ’14. “If we really want to make a differ- tality, an investment group that special- students, but far less student interest in R E V E B ence, what ought to be on the forefront izes in hotel turnarounds and that has the movement than this resonance

Being uninformed is Civil-rights pioneer: Focus on schools Fishy analogy? a good thing. Civil-rights leader Bob Moses, a visiting A recent Princeton study fellow at Princeton, called on young found that the uninformed people to work on unfinished business voter is a big fish in the from the civil-rights era during the Uni- political pond. “Why a versity’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. democracy needs unin- Day celebration Jan. 16. formed people,” crowed one headline. “Vote for apathy?” Inviting some 90 schoolchildren to asked another. But the study, led by Princeton biology profes- join him on the stage in Richardson sor Iain Couzin, was not about voters. It was about fish. Auditorium, Moses, who was a key fig- Couzin’s decision-making experiments were performed ure in the 1964 Mississippi Summer with a schooling fish called the golden shiner. When “unin- Project to register black voters, said, formed” fish — those not trained to go to any target — were “We were able to get segregation out introduced into a group, all the fish increasingly swam S N O

I of three areas of the country’s life: public accommodations, the right to vote, toward the majority-preferred target, giving the uninformed T A C I

N and the national Democratic Party. But we did not get segregation and Jim

U fish a crucial role in achieving democratic consensus by M M O

C Crow out of education, and that’s going to be your job. You are going to have diluting the influence of strong minority factions. The find-

F O

E

C to do that in this century.” ings were published in the journal Science on Dec. 16. I F F O / A E MLK Day Journey Awards were presented to Miguel Centeno, a sociology pro- The analogy to humans was too fishy for some political L T I V H I N W

E E fessor who founded the Princeton University Preparatory Program, which helps scientists, including Larry Bartels, who just retired from

L S P T P A A F

F E low-income high school students prepare for college; and Sandra Mukasa ’12, Princeton. He penned a piece for a political science blog A S I N N / E G D who has been a leader in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues on cam- E

titled “Silly Science: Aquarium Democracy Edition.” T T Y

I pus and has worked for women’s rights in Africa. By J.A. But Couzin had bigger fish to fry. “I think it’s always won- M A G E derful for people to take an interest in science,” he said. By J.A. S Campusnotebook

Occupy Princeton continued from page 13 would seem to suggest.” He said Princeton students are trying Student survey raises ‘red flag’ to understand the goals of the Occupy movement — not “for the sake of for USG on mental-health issues creating a counterculture, but for hav- ing some real impact on issues of African-American and female students at Princeton were significantly more likely inequality, injustice, and poverty.” But than other students to report feeling depressed, while athletes were less likely to do the group has been hurt by failing to so, according to the results of an Undergraduate Student Government survey con- spell out its program clearly and by its ducted last summer. And students who identified themselves as gay or lesbian, leader less structure, he said. bisexual, queer, asexual, or “unsure” were more likely to report feeling depressed Many of the points raised by than heterosexual students were. Beissinger were cited during a Jan. 13 More than 1,850 students — 36 percent of Percentage of students within debate in Whig Hall in which five undergraduates — completed the online sur- each group who reported Occupy Wall Street supporters squared vey, which asked students about their mental feel ing depressed “sometimes” off against three students who took well-being, social life, academics, extracurric- or “often” in the past year: opposing viewpoints. ulars, and post-graduation plans. Pro-Occupy speakers attacked New USG president Bruce Easop ’13 said All survey respondents 44% corporate greed and growing income that working with the administration to Black students 59% inequality, saying that the movement’s address mental-health issues will be “a top White students 42% goal is to end social injustice caused by a priority.” The survey results represent “a red system that favors the rich. “Wall Street flag to students and administrators alike that Athletes 36% has used money to influence govern- mental health deserves our full attention and Non-athletes 53% ment policy in its favor, crippling real resources,” he said. Females 49% legislation that is meant to protect the Anita McLean, director of the University’s Males 36% consumer,” said Maria Krupenkin ’14. counseling and psychological services, said Heterosexual students Anti-Occupy panelists and some of the survey data on mental health reflect the 42% the 50 students in the audience called trends seen on most college campuses. Each Non-heterosexual students 64% P the demands of the protest movement year about 18 percent of Princeton under- 14 “scattered” and confusing. One audi- graduates use her office’s services, which include individual psychotherapy, group ence member complimented the pro- counseling, and other programs, McLean said. Occupy team, however: “I think what The survey results are being used as a guide for new USG projects, including a you’re saying is a lot smarter than what mental-health initiative to address issues such as stress, depression, and sexual the Occupy movement is spewing as a assault, said Jess Brooks ’13, who is helping to organize the effort. whole,” he said. The debate was sponsored by the AMONG OTHER SURVEY FINDINGS: Corporate Finance Club. Anastasia • Women lagged behind men in their assessment of their leadership skills: 44.7 Auber ’13, the club’s vice president of percent of women reported feeling “above average” or in the “highest 10 percent” education, said that while she thought in their leadership ability compared with the typical Princeton student, while 58.1 Occupy raised valid concerns, the two percent of men chose those responses. Rating their intellectual self-confidence, problems facing the movement are “its 30.6 percent of female students scored themselves in the two highest categories, excessive focus on Wall Street, as while 56.6 percent of men did. opposed to the government, and its dis- • Students from rural backgrounds were twice as likely as those from other back- organization, which keeps it from grounds to feel their high school left them unprepared for coursework at Prince- accomplishing much.” ton, and were twice as likely to choose their major based on its future financial Wilson School Professor Stanley prospects. Katz, who moderated the debate, said • Students who identified themselves as other than heterosexual were more he was encouraged to see how many likely to take a year off from school. Princeton students are thinking about • Athletes, who made up about a third of the responding students and included the issues raised by the Occupy move- participants in varsity, junior varsity, and intramural athletics, rated their emotional ment. “I think there is growing concern health, social self-confidence, and leadership ability in the highest 10 percent or on this campus over the issue of the above average more often than non-athletes. They were more likely to hold leader- asymmetry of wealth in this country,” ship positions in eating clubs, fraternities, and sororities. Athletes also felt more he said, “and I hope the most con- comfortable networking when pursuing internships or job opportunities, and a cerned students will find ways to put higher proportion were inclined to pursue business degrees. the concern to responsible use.” π By • Women were significantly more likely to bicker a club, and to be rejected, than Woody Hines ’12 men were. π By J.A.

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu Campusnotebook

FYI: FINDINGS

Firestone carrels, circa 1948. Discovering an extraterrestrial A rare mineral — the world’s only known sample of a naturally occurring quasicrystal — was identified by an After six decades of thesis use, international team of researchers led by Princeton scientists. The mineral is Firestone removing metal carrels thought to be 4.5 billion years old, per- haps older than the Earth itself, and They were cramped, poorly lit, and, well, kind of ugly. But Firestone Library’s study likely traveled to Earth on a meteorite. carrels still evoke nostalgia in alumni who spent countless hours toiling inside The rock, which was discovered in the those metal walls. remote Koryak Mountains of Russia, P More than 140 of the two-person lockable carrels have been removed from was identified by a team, led by physics 15 Firestone as part of the library’s 10-year renovation. Eventually all of the original professor Paul Steinhardt, among a col- carrels — there were about 500 when the building opened in 1948 — will be lection of 10,000 minerals that had replaced by 500 single-person open wooden carrels with modern lighting and been acquired by a museum in Italy. wireless connections. The results of the project were pub- The new carrels, which will be distributed throughout the building, will not lished online Jan. 3 in the Proceedings of lock or be assigned. Instead, students will be assigned lockable storage units with the National Academy of Sciences. shelf space comparable to the old carrels that are near the resources they need. Library staff found in recent years that the Tracking disease from above carrels were not used enough to justify the It is difficult to track the movements of “enormous real estate” they required, according migratory workers in developing to University Librarian Karin Trainer. Cur- nations, complicating efforts to carry rently, 490 seniors and 231 grad students are out large-scale vaccinations against registered for carrel space, which also includes measles and other diseases. But new rooms that hold up to seven people. research, published Dec. 9 in the jour- 2 0 ’ A faculty steering committee recommended nal Science, has found that using satel- D L E F N

E eliminating Firestone’s carrels, which, if kept, lite images of nighttime lights can help T T I S

E would have needed individual smoke detectors track disease by revealing the popula- N I H P E

S and sprinkler heads to conform to modern tion boom that typically coincides with O J

; S

E building codes. seasonal epidemics. Unlike existing sur- V I

H Nicolas Dumont ’02 C R

A “They [the locked carrels] just are not appeal- veys and census data, satellite images

Y at work in his carrel. T I S

R ing to contemporary students,” Trainer said, were able to provide frequent measures E V I N U

although alumni frequently have “a sentimen- of population density throughout each N O T E

C WHAT’S YOUR VIEW? tal attachment and want to see their carrel” season and over many years in Niger, N I R C P

O : while back for Reunions. the subject of the research, according to U

P Share your Firestone R O T T

E S M lead author Nita Bharti, a postdoctoral There are no plans to remove carrels from Y O carrel memories

R L F U

, C S any other campus libraries, all of which have researcher in ecology and evolutionary A O at paw.princeton.edu

T B O I N H D P

or email [email protected] some type of individual study space. π By F.H. biology. I

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Off-campus eateries: Here today, chain tomorrow? There have been many changes to the Nassau Street restaurant landscape, with the 56- year-old Carousel becoming the latest eatery to close. It will be replaced by a chain restaurant, one of several that have opened in recent years. Here’s a snapshot of selected eating spots along Nassau Street, past and present. Compiled by Jennifer Altmann

RENWICK’S (CLOSED) ZORBA’S BROTHER THE BALT (CLOSED) 50 Nassau St. 80 Nassau St. 82 Nassau St. 1901–1970 Opened 2003 1920s–1963 Now: Ralph Lauren ᕢ This classic Greek diner serves sal- Now: Paper Source ᕡ Known as Wicks — and ads and souvlaki to its many fans, includ- ᕣ This tiled-wall classic located at various loca- ing members of the University’s staff. (full name: the Baltimore tions along Nassau Street Dairy Lunch) was a student in its 70-year history — this haunt for more than four Princeton landmark started decades. Now it’s a fancy as an ice cream parlor and stationery shop. hosted hamburger-eating contests in the ’50s. ᕡ ᕢ ᕣ

P 16

ᕨ ᕩ ᕫᕾ ᕫᕵ

QDOBA MEXICAN GRILL PJ’S PANCAKE HOUSE 140 Nassau St. 154 Nassau St. PANERA BREAD Opened 2011 Opened 1962 NAKED PIZZA 180 Nassau St. 136 Nassau St. ᕫᕾ This newcomer — a national ᕫᕵ Students huddle in line under heat Opened 2011 Opened 2001 TRIUMPH BREWING COMPANY chain — dishes out huge burritos lamps on weekends; once inside, they ᕫᕶ This chain calls its ᕨ This spot finds students 138 Nassau St. to students on a budget. carve their names in the wooden tables, pizza “all-natural” with munching muffins and check- Opened 1995 if they can find an empty spot. “no freaky chemicals”; ing email using the free Wi-Fi. ᕩ Behind the lively bar — a students perch on outside favorite hangout for Princeton benches, since there’s no staffers — is the seven-barrel, seating. stainless-steel brewery where craft beers are made.

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu WHAT’S YOUR VIEW? Tell us about your favorite place to eat in Princeton, then and now, at paw.princeton.edu or email [email protected]

LAHIERE’S (CLOSED) STARBUCKS MASSIMO’S 5 Witherspoon St. 100 Nassau St. 110 Nassau St. 1919–2010 Opened 1996 Opened 1973 Now: vacant ᕥ The coffee mecca competes ᕦ Decorated in orange and ᕤ Albert Einstein ate with local favorite Small World Coffee black — and festooned with lunch here, and it was the on Witherspoon Street. banners from Princeton and its place your parents took Ivy League brethren — Mas- you for shrimp cocktail simo’s dishes up pizza and and rack of lamb when pasta to hungry students. THE ANNEX (CLOSED) they visited. It closed in 128 Nassau St. 2010. No word on what 1930s–2006 will replace it. Now: Princeton Sports Bar & Grill (shown above) ᕧ The beloved Annex — with its stained-glass roaring tiger and old football-team photos — was replaced first with Italian restaurant Sotto, and is now a burger-and-nacho joint. ᕤ ᕥ ᕦ ᕧ

ᕫᕶ ᕫᕷ

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF NASSAU STREET ... UP NASSAU STREET ... P H W O E T E O K HOAGIE HAVEN S L :

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paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Campusnotebook Exhibition puts Princeton’s Gothic revival in context When Princeton was building its rep- the now-gone Marquand Chapel utation as a modern school of inter- and a biological-sciences laboratory. national stature around the turn of The exhibit also includes models of the 20th century, its trustees and stained-glass windows that were in administrators looked back — at the Marquand Chapel and an early traditions and architecture of watercolor design for the large C R P A Oxford and Cambridge — to look stained-glass window in Procter Hall. A M P E

A R N

( D forward. Key to sending the message At the same time the University 9

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G 6 8 to its students that they were part of was erecting buildings in the colle- U . S 6 O

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A an academic elite, they believed, was giate gothic style, which revived .

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the creation of buildings in the col- medieval architecture, the new art E 2 C 7 T

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legiate gothic style. museum and Department of Art B )

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( S F I L T . Y Gothic Revival: 1870–1930” at the collect art objects from the medieval 1

A 9 1 R 5 C – H 1 Princeton University Art Museum period. Included in the exhibition I V 9 E 4 S 1 , )

D explores the development of Gothic are several of these early objects, P E R P O A P R O T S

revival architecture on campus, the including an English alabaster relief M E E D N

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changing nature of the understand- and two sculptures of the Virgin T F E

R R I O A R ing of the term “Gothic,” and how Mary and Christ child. R

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the American Gothic revival move- Accompanying the exhibition in K I N S

C A E N T D ment was tied to Prince ton’s under- the art museum will be an illustrated O

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P U E N C I V standing of itself as the “modern catalog (distributed by Princeton I A E L R

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inheritor” of the architectural and University Press) and a mobile tour L Y L

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A watercolor of the University Chapel prior to its construction. P

peda gogical tradition of Oxford and accessible by smartphones. The tour O E N L S ,

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Cambridge, said curator Johanna will take visitors to nine campus N R D I N A C T E E D Seasonwein. sites. At some of those spots people can listen to audio narra- T O .

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A U T N

Most of the 40 objects in the exhibition, on view Feb. 25 tives — for example, Dean of Religious Life Alison Boden E I R V C

18 E O R S L O through June 24, come from the art museum, Firestone talks about her connection to the Chapel, and Rockefeller I T R Y

O L N I B

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Library, and the University archives, including watercolors College master Jeff Nunokawa observes how students inter- R A O R V Y and drawings of the Chapel, Holder and Hamilton halls, and act with the architecture of Holder Hall. π By K.F.G. E University contributions to borough, township rise In the wake of zoning approvals from establish a $500,000 trust fund to tions influenced the decision by local Princeton Borough and Princeton address transit and traffic issues and officials. Township for the proposed arts will spend up to $450,000 to install Elected officials offered differing and transit project, the University three Nassau Street crosswalks. views of town-gown relations as the announced that it would increase its year ended. “The best way to make our voluntary contributions to the two The University will community better for all of our resi- municipalities for 2012. establish a $500,000 dents is to have a collaborative relation- The borough will receive $1.7 mil- ship with Princeton University,” said lion, up $500,000 from last year, with trust fund to address township mayor Chad Goerner. an additional $250,000 to prepare for transit and traffic issues. A contrasting tone was taken by the consolidation of the borough and David Goldfarb as he stepped down the township on Jan. 1, 2013. The town- The University also will contribute after 21 years as a borough council- ship will receive $500,000, up $25,000 $300,000 toward expanding the Prince- man. Goldfarb said officials should from last year, plus $250,000 toward its ton Firehouse on Wither spoon Street. not have “capitulated” to President share of consolidation costs. A group of area residents filed a law- Tilghman’s “ultimatum” on the arts As part of a separate agreement with suit in early January that seeks to block project a year ago, and that he hoped the two municipalities that was negoti- the zoning approvals for the $300 mil- both sides would work to restore a ated amid concerns about the move of lion arts and transit project, saying mutually respectful relationship. π the Dinky station, the University will that the University’s financial contribu- By W.R.O.

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu Campusnotebook IN MEMORIAM BREAKING GROUND

SIN-I CHENG *52, professor emeritus of mechanical and Unlocking the key to 3D sound aerospace engineering and a pioneer in rocketry and aerodynamics, died Dec. 6 THE INVENTION Audio in Princeton. He was 89 technology that allows and had served on the University’s fac- the listener to experi- ulty for 41 years. In 1956, Cheng pub- ence true three-dimen- lished an influential monograph on sional sound. Unlike fluid dynamics and chemistry that surround-sound sys- advanced the reliability of early rockets tems, this invention — just as the United States was entering called BACCH 3D the space race. He continued research Sound — enables you in fluid dynamics and, as an industry to hear with precision consultant, helped develop designs for where each sound on a intercontinental ballistic missiles. An recording is coming early proponent of using computers to from. Listen to a solve problems in aerodynamics and to recording of a fly understand turbulence, Cheng often circling your head, and lectured on computational aerodynam- you can detect exactly ics in China. where that fly is located. Listen to a symphony, and you can hear the viola coming from the left and CORNELIA N. BORGERHOFF, an the bass coming from a spot on the back right. The technology works with any assistant dean of the gradu- pair of loudspeakers, but not with headphones. ate school from 1969 to 1979, died Dec. 19 in THE SCIENTIST The moment he perfected his invention — at 3 a.m. — Edgar Princeton. She was 91. She Choueiri (pronounced “Shu-WAY-ri”) *91, professor of mechanical and aerospace P engineering, woke up his wife to listen to a recording of Bach’s “Mass in B Minor.” combined “a strong sense of 19 fairness with an equally deep sense of (BACCH 3D Sound stands for Band-Assembled Crosstalk Cancellation Hierarchy compassion for graduate students,” said and is a tribute to Bach, Choueiri’s favorite composer.) Choueiri created a way of David Redman, associate dean of the designing a filter that accurately cancels a sound recording’s crosstalk without graduate school. At a time when black changing the tonal quality of the sound. Recordings have 3D cues, slight differ- students first were being admitted in ences in timing and volume between the sound reaching the left ear and the right significant numbers and there were few one. The key to creating accurate 3D sound is canceling the crosstalk, which is the women in most fields of study at the sound meant for the left ear that spills over to the right ear and vice versa, without graduate school, Borgerhoff supported affecting sound quality. black and female students through her An engineer who develops plasma rockets for spacecraft propulsion, Choueiri counseling and encouragement. has been an amateur audiophile since childhood, when he lived in his native Lebanon. After dropping in on a conference for audio engineers in 2003, he became MARGARET FELS, a longtime captivated by the technical difficulties of 3D audio. His lab was funded by Project X researcher and faculty — established by Lynn Shostack in memory of her late husband, David Gardner member who helped create ’69 — which provides funds to Princeton faculty members in engineering who the field of energy analysis, want to pursue unconventional ideas or those outside of their area of expertise. died Nov. 12 in Princeton. She was 70. The first woman WHERE YOU’LL BE SEEING IT Choueiri’s BACCH 3D Sound is available in a I L L

portable wireless speaker called Jambox and will be available in 3D televisions. U

to receive a Hertz Foundation fellow- S T R A

Sony has given Choueiri $3 million to fund his lab for the next three years and do T ship and one of the first women on the I O N :

P E

research on headphones. Choueiri also is exploring how to adapt the technology H C University’s engineering faculty, Fels I N L E ; Y

I S T Y I C C L I S S

for use in hearing aids. By J.A. H

R

M served for 20 years as a research staff E D E A U E V F I E I

L R F N P ; F U

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member at the Center for Energy and P O A H N H

O O R D T E T N E O G A

C Environmental Studies. She created a : R

N F O G

I BRINGING 3D SOUND TO YOUR EARS R B N R I

A P R Y N

, E S still-used system called “scorekeeping” K P E E

O T N W I T R

Watch a video of Edgar Choueiri *91 G O U M J N O C

E that allows businesses to analyze the O C

I R

E F ; F C O S

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H E L S explaining how his 3D sound technology works O V I O effectiveness of energy conservation O W T H O S C O H K R H C I P A S methods. π @ paw.princeton.edu

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Campusnotebook An online trove of historical campus scenes

The newly digitized Grounds and Buildings historical photograph collection of Mudd Manuscript Library makes about 7,000 photographs of the campus available to the public on the Web. Photos range from the late 1850s to the present. Visitors to the site can page through the alphabetized collec- tion or refine their searches by photog- rapher, topic, or genre. It is easy to search for a specific topic or building: Select “Chancellor Green,” for example, and 128 photos are displayed. “This set of photos is consistently the most used of all of the Archives’ photo collec- tions,” said University Archivist Daniel Linke. More than 25,000 photos should be available online in coming years, he said. P To visit the collection, go to the 20 Princeton University Digital Library site at pudl.princeton.edu. Click on the “Collections” tab, then scroll down to “Historical Photograph Collection: Grounds and Buildings Series.” π By Allie Weiss ’13

THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: An 1884 photo shows four buildings that no longer stand: the School of Science; the dynamo building, a source of power; the biologi- cal laboratory; and the original Dickinson Hall • Crew members prepare for practice in front of the original campus boathouse in 1875 • An onlooker assesses damage outside East Pyne after a storm in the 1950s

OPPOSITE PAGE, FROM TOP: Students play a game of ball behind Wither- spoon Hall, circa 1930–50 • A snowstorm circa 1890 keeps horse-drawn snowplows work- ing in front of Blair Arch • The Dinky station near Witherspoon Hall, circa 1880

VIEW: More photos from the Grounds and Build- ings historical collection @ paw.princeton.edu

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu 1/3 Brown B/W P 21

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Campusnotebook ON THE CAMPUS Mixed verdict for report on women’s leadership By Tara Thean ’13

At Princeton, as in many places, big demic prizes news often has a short shelf life. The and in the most March 2011 Steering Committee on visible leader- Undergraduate Women’s Leadership ship positions. (SCUWL) report, which examined The year that whether Princeton’s men and women followed were pursuing academic and extracur- marked several ricular opportunities at the same levels, noteworthy was no exception — the stream of events in campus extracurricular and Marshall scholar Emily Rutherford op-ed articles and discussions that fol- academic leadership. ’12 said the report was an important lowed its release died down in a matter The Quadrangle Club, for example, factor in her decision to seek the fel- of days. But nearly a year later, some elected a female president for the sec- lowship. At a reception in November students said they felt the committee’s ond year in a row. In November, male for Rhodes and Marshall scholarship findings still underscore campus and female candidates vied to become finalists, she said,“it was definitely on dialogue about leadership and gender. Undergraduate Student Government everybody’s minds that there had been “Even though the newness of the president, a position not held by a a change, and a positive change.” report has worn off, I think that it’s still woman in a decade (Bruce Easop ’13 Andrew Blumenfeld, the USG’s Class in the back of many people’s minds,” defeated Catherine Ettman ’13 by 84 of 2013 senator, said he had drawn Allison Daminger ’12 said in an email. votes out of more than 2,000 cast). On upon the report’s findings in drafting P Last year, the SCUWL study reported the academic side, three out of four new USG election policies. “At the 22 a decade-long trend of undergraduate Princeton winners of the 2012 Rhodes most basic level, it raised a level of women at the University being under- scholarship were female, as were four of awareness,” he said. represented as recipients of major aca- the University’s five Marshall scholars. This awareness extended all the way

“Sometimes there are deliberate Zombies, fires, chaos, destruction: attempts to create jokes that incorpo- rate science in them, but very often the Mol-bio videos spoof life in the lab ideas come up naturally,” said Alejandro By Angela Wu ’12 Ochoa GS, who keeps a web database of the skits and videos (http://viiia.org/v /molbio/?l=en-us). If you had walked through Lewis “We got to do crazy stuff that we Nikhil Deshmukh GS said he and Thomas Laboratory one day last don’t usually do as scientists,” Bassler Donnell “were hanging out one night, December, you might have seen an said. “Plus, Zach made us the good and we were like, what if our depart- unusual sight: molecular biology pro- guys, and we got to conquer the evil vil- ment were overrun by zombies?” The fessor Ned Wingreen taped to an office lains down the hall.” result: the 2010 video “Molbiohazard.” chair — and on the move. Wheeling The video was a hit at the holiday Deshmukh and Donnell took notes 2 1 ’ him down the hall was his department party, an annual gathering with skits on zombie movies, recruited volunteer

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H colleague, Professor Bonnie Bassler. and games that attracts hundreds of zombies (including four professors), C

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A The two were filming a video for the guests. The main event for years, how- and shot the 11-minute film in one H

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T department’s annual holiday party: “Dr. ever, has been student-produced videos afternoon. The experience encouraged O H P

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A Crime,” directed by Zach Donnell GS. that feature undergraduate and gradu- Donnell to take a leave of absence to T N E L

A In this story of scientific espionage, ate students, postdocs and professors, launch a visual-media business. W

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A Bassler discovers that Professor Zemer who perform songs, cause chaos and “It humanizes the department,” said M O T

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N Gitai has recruited Wingreen to be his destruction, and poke fun at life in a Deshmukh. “You get to see professors O I T A R

T mole in the Bassler lab. In response, she lab coat. A 2009 video even had a acting and being silly, being them- S U L L I gleefully sets the Gitai lab on fire. cameo by President Tilghman. selves. That goes for the students, too.”

WATCH: “Dr. Crime” and other short February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu mol-bio videos @ paw.princeton.edu Campusnotebook to Princeton’s newest members — those who first stepped through From FitzRandolph Gate in September. “I was impressed that there were a num- Princeton’s ber of freshmen this year who had read the report,” said Ettman, who was a vault member of the SCUWL committee. That the report has made students Why tigers? more aware of women’s leadership as an institutional concern does not mean it has escaped criticism — many stu- dents remain unconvinced by the report’s findings, or at least find its messages problematic. Rutherford said the report relied on survey-based and anecdotal evidence for a number of findings, particularly those pertaining to student experiences with leadership on campus, which “could have made people discredit it.” Professor Nannerl Keohane, who led the study group that produced the report, noted in an email that the study had produced a “mixed” reaction: Some students were delighted to have their views of campus leadership patterns confirmed; some paid little attention to it; another group “dismissed it as Founded in 1912 by the Class of paternalistic and wrong-headed; others What: 1894, the Society of the Claw honored P worried that it would make women 23 students sound somehow inferior.” prominent Princeton men with real claws She added that “whatever is happen- from tigers hunted in the British Raj. ing on campus, it’s surely having some impact more generally in higher educa- When did the tiger first become our feisty tion,” noting that she had been invited emblem? Orange and black team colors to appear at two conferences last (from the House of Orange and Nassau in month to discuss the report’s findings. Holland) preceded it by several years. As Overall, the SCUWL report seems to late as 1879, a graduating class gave have penetrated the consciousness of statuary lions to adorn Nassau Hall, a the student body. It “reignites conversa- mistake that later needed correcting. tion,” according to associate dean of undergraduate students and SCUWL Nobody seems to have thought of us as Tigers until after the founding of subcommittee chair Thomas Dunne.“It Tiger, the humor magazine, in 1882. Its name was a play on the nonsensical causes people to think in more sophis- “Princeton Tiger” cheer from Civil War days: “Hooray! ... Tiger! ... Sh-sh-sh- ticated ways about how leadership boom-ahhh!” functions on campus — what are the opportunities, what are the challenges,” The Yale football team had a chance to “beard the tiger in his den,” a letter to he said. The New York Times said in 1886, in perhaps the earliest off-campus reference. But Easop, the USG’s new president, said he felt that current discussion of Online newspaper databases suggest that the feline association didn’t start to the report, while productive, is missing become universal until 1890 – some years later than usually assumed — with something. “We need to celebrate lead- the extensive coverage of the Yale game that year. “The Princeton tigers come ers who don’t have traditional high- running out on the field,” said The New York Tribune. It’s been Tigers ever since. profile positions,” he said, adding that R I C A R leadership is “all about the contribu- Collection AC53, Princeton University Archives D Where: O

B A tion you make, and in that sense really R R O anybody can be a leader.” π By W. Barksdale Maynard ’88 S

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Sports

Niveen Rasheed ’13, left, and Lauren Polansky ’13 hope to lead their team to its third straight Ivy League title.

Polansky’s talents were harder to pin- point in the box score: In her rookie Bond of longtime teammates season, she scored the fewest points per P minute of any player in the Ivy League. 24 gives women’s basketball a bounce But her competitiveness impressed Banghart so much that Polansky was Long before Lauren Polansky ’13 and Player of the Year in 2010 –11, leads the named the starting point guard as a Niveen Rasheed ’13 shared the basket- Ivy League in steals. Center Devona All- freshman for a team that went unde- ball court in Jadwin Gym, they played good ’12 and guard Lauren Edwards feated in conference play and finished against each other as preteens on the ’12 also have continued to be major 26–3 overall. This season, Polansky has California Bay Area’s soccer fields. In factors in the Tigers’ success. shown flashes of improved scoring, net- 2008, they became teammates on a “It’s a great experience to come ting 12 points in a big win over Marist. top travel basketball team and realized in when a program’s low, to turn it Banghart says she rarely puts that playing together was better than around and make it your own,” Rasheed and Polansky on the same facing each other. “From the get-go, we Polansky said. team in practice “because they just win automatically had chemistry,” Rasheed In 2008, when head coach Courtney all the time.” Their chemistry is said. Banghart was recruiting Polansky and enhanced by their complementary Four years later, that chemistry is Rasheed, she suggested they visit styles — Polansky knows where and a key element of the success of the campus together. Rasheed never had when to deliver the ball, Rasheed women’s basketball team, which entered expected to leave California for college, knows how to finish it, and each player league play as the heavy favorite to win but soon after Polansky committed to will rebound the other’s missed shot or a third straight Ivy League title. Before the Tigers, Rasheed followed. “There is cover any assignment on defense. the arrival of Polansky and Rasheed, no other person I would have wanted Facing one of the toughest non- Princeton never had reached the to be my point guard,” Rasheed said. conference schedules in the nation this NCAA Tournament. An athletic and physical forward, season, the Tigers went 10–4. There’s a After missing last season’s conference Rasheed led the Tigers in scoring and long Ivy League season ahead, but the games with a torn ligament in her right rebounding as a freshman and unani- team already has routed Penn 83–48. If knee, Rasheed is back in action this sea- mously was named the Ivy League Rasheed and Polansky, still juniors, can son as arguably the best player in the Rookie of the Year. In her truncated help Princeton win two more league R E F E

A championships, their class may go H Ivy League, averaging 17.1 points and a sophomore year, she averaged 16.4 C S

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L league-high 8.9 rebounds per game. points per game, a pace she has resumed down as one of the best in Ivy League R E V E

B Polansky, who was named the Defensive this winter. history. π By Kevin Whitaker ’13

READ MORE: Men’s basketball and other February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu winter updates @ paw.princeton.edu EXTRA POINT Wrestlers go from flat on their backs to a comeback By Merrell Noden ’78

Merrell Noden ’78 is a former staff writer at Sports Illustrated and a frequent PAW contributor.

The reversal is one of wrestling’s sweet- est moves. It’s even more satisfying when an entire program pulls off a reversal. This year the Princeton wrestling team placed fourth in the From left, Garrett Frey ’13, Daniel Keystone Open; beat Old Dominion, a Kolodzik ’12, and near-Top 25 team; and placed two Tony Comunale ’12, wrestlers in the top eight at the presti- co-captains of the gious Midlands Championships. wrestling team. That might not sound earthshaking, but it’s a long way from 1993. That was more than club status. A spotty roster — is wiry and focused, popping with the year the University, citing financial meant the team often would travel to intensity. “I feel like wrestling is sport and admission pressures brought on meets knowing they would have to for- at its rawest, purest form,” he says. by the implementation of Title IX, feit three or four matches. Despite The coach has sold recruits on the announced plans to cancel the sport. wrestling mostly Division II and III idea that they can be part of a rising Outraged, Princeton’s wrestling com- schools, the Tigers lost every meet they program, and it has worked. “A lot of P munity sprang into action. The team contested from 2006 to 2008, winning people had written us off. Now, we 25 organized a 24-hour wrestle-athon in just 11 individual matches out of 198 make people nervous,” he says. Firestone Plaza, and more than 100 in Ayres’ first season. That was espe- Princeton’s wrestlers are relentless wrestling alumni raised $3 million to cially tough for Ayres, who had set a scrappers, and they are making the fund a bare-bones program. The team school record for career wins as a stu- most of the program’s second chance. π was in limbo, and conditions were dent at wrestling powerhouse Lehigh grim: With the wrestling room in the University. Extra Point explores the people and issues bowels of Jadwin Gym already con- Co-captain Daniel Kolodzik ’12 in Princeton sports. verted to a weight room, the wrestlers recalls the tough losses in his first years found themselves banished to Dillon. with the team: “Chris would be pretty Each day they had to roll out the mats bummed on the bus ride home. But on for practice and put up with volleyballs Monday he’d come in with all sorts of Football star suffers stroke bouncing over their backs. great ideas. He’s really good at focusing The program was scuffing along on the future.” Football standout Chuck Dibilio ’15 suffered a three years later when iconoclastic Kolodzik, it should be noted, didn’t stroke Jan. 19, the University said. feminist scholar Camille Paglia was even have a team in high school. As the He was taken to Thomas Jefferson Univer- invited to campus to debate the topic only wrestler at Miami Valley School in sity Hospital in Philadelphia, where doctors “Wrestling is good for Princeton Uni- Ohio, he had to travel to nearby removed a clot in the main artery of Dibilio’s versity.” In a swashbuckling perform- schools just to have someone to work brain, according to the student’s father, Chuck ance, Paglia praised the sport for its out with. This season he is 18–7, with Dibilio Sr. He said doctors were uncertain about “pagan principle of the strength of the an eighth-place finish at the Midlands. his son’s long-term prognosis or the cause of body” and lauded its “ethnic diversity,” It was Adam Krop ’14 who stunned the stroke. which, she said, brings “blue-collar the crowd at the Midlands by nearly Dibilio, a tailback, was the breakout star of students” to campus. The debate got beating the nation’s top wrestler in the the Ivy League during the 2011 season. He national press, and the University gave 141-pound weight class, Iowa’s Montell rushed for 1,068 yards, the most by a non- R E F E A

H up on eliminating the sport. Marion, and finishing third overall. transfer student in Ivy League history. C S

Y L When Chris Ayres took over as head Garrett Frey ’13 — Princeton’s top R E V E

B coach six years ago, wrestling had little point-winner for the last two seasons

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly P 26 2 0 ’

D L E F N E T T I S

E N I H P E S O J

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu In the comedy world, where women remain outnumbered, Ellie Kemper ’02 gets the laughs BY MARK F. BERNSTEIN ’83 Funny Girl To hear Ellie Kemper ’02 tell it, her rise to fame and fortune began in the P front hallway of her childhood home in 27 suburban St. Louis. When they were little girls in the late ’80s and early ’90s, she and her younger sister, Carrie, would write skits and per- form them for the family. In addition to an annual Christmas extravaganza, there were shows with such titles as “Marcia Clark for the Prosecution,” often done with a boom box tape providing the soundtrack. The girls had an appre- ciative — and captive — audience. As their mother, Dorothy Jannarone Kemper ’72, recalls, perhaps slightly tongue-in- cheek, “Critics raved: Delightful! Interminable!” Soon, the Kemper girls grew more ambitious, filming skits with the family video camera, forcing their baby brother and a playmate next door to fill out the cast. In their basement “studio,” Ellie Kemper says, they managed to hook up two spare VCRs and do their own editing. (One early horror short, called “The Man Under the Stairs,” is a YouTube hit.) “I suppose I encouraged them WATCH: A young Ellie Kemper ’02 in “The in this,” their Man Under the Stairs” @ paw.princeton.edu mother admits, “if you don’t count my constant admonishments to ‘Be careful with that — for cryin’ out loud, it’s not a toy!’ ” Elizabeth Claire Kemper continues to perform in front of the camera, and to the same sorts of rave reviews, albeit from a much broader audience of people who aren’t all her blood relations. She is best known as Erin Hannon, the sweet-

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Kemper, second from left, with “Office” co-stars, from left: Brian Baumgartner, Oscar Nuñez, Kate Flannery, Zach Woods, and Mindy Kaling, photographed at an NBC Universal party in Beverly Hills in 2010. P 28 tempered receptionist on the hit TV show The Office. Last career: She began as, and continues to be, a writer as well as year, she appeared on the big screen as Becca, the sweet- an improv performer. In comedy, at least, it has been relatively tempered friend of the bride in the hit movie Bridesmaids. unusual for a woman to fill both roles, but that seems to be (She’ll soon have personal wedding experience — in changing before our eyes. We are living in a Golden Age of December, she announced her engagement to writer women who write comedy as well as perform it: Tina Fey, Michael Koman.) Things have turned out pretty well for Amy Poehler, Chelsea Handler, Whitney Cummings, Sarah both Kemper girls: Carrie now writes for The Office, and the Silverman, Wanda Sykes, Amy Sedaris, Mindy Kaling two are collaborating on a comic novel. (Kemper’s Office castmate), and Saturday Night Live’s Kristen Mel Brooks, who knows from neurosis, once said that Wiig, who co-wrote Bridesmaids with Annie Mumolo, to humor is just another defense against the universe. But what name only a handful. Is there a distinctive female voice in to make of someone from a functional, well-to-do family comedy? Just listen. who is building a career playing nice, sweet-tempered char- acters? And Ellie Kemper is — let’s not mince words here — On a Sunday night while “The Office” is on a filming hiatus, nice. Upbeat. Positive. Easy to work with. Patient with auto- Kemper can be found in the tiny theater of the Upright graph seekers. And no doubt kind to animals. She is, in fact, Citizens Brigade in West Hollywood. It may be as unglam- the first to acknowledge that Erin the receptionist is pretty orous as theater gets. Kemper is appearing in a show called much just “an exaggerated version of myself.” Sometimes life “Gravid Water,” as she does about once a month. It is a vari- imitates art, but it works the other way, too. ety of long-form improvisational comedy known as “on Don’t mistake sweetness for naiveté, though. If you think book/off book.” An actor (in this case, Kemper), who is “on Ellie Kemper can’t get a little edgy, you must not be one of book,” memorizes a scene from a play that she must recite the 18 million people who have downloaded the viral without any deviation from the script. The other person on Internet video she wrote and stars in, the one in which her stage, who is “off book,” knows nothing about the scene but character enthusiastically describes to her boyfriend a partic- plays off whatever the actor gives her. And the actor, in turn, ular technique for a certain intimate act she would like to must then reply to the improviser’s line with whatever the perform, one that, um, definitely wouldn’t be enhanced by next line in the script happens to be. From that juxtaposi- the use of teeth or sandpaper. tion, the two build a scene.

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M PAW, a family magazine, cannot provide the link, but the Kemper, in jeans and without makeup, has just flown I E R I

W video helps to highlight another dimension of Kemper’s back from St. Louis, where she emceed a gala at the Peabody

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu Opera House. She starts out her scene by declaring that she With those war stories in mind, when Kemper decided to has just French-kissed a boy. The improviser, Stephnie Weir quit sports at the start of her sophomore year, she auditioned from MADtv, plays it easy at first, trying to figure out where for Triangle and Quipfire!, the improvisational troupe, and the scene will go. To Kemper, this is the key to successful got in to both. She performed in Triangle as a sophomore, improv. It is a “yes, and ... ” skill. Let her explain: then tried her hand at writing the following year, contribut- “If you give me a piece of information, I can never negate ing an all-female skit about curling that, she says, “everybody it. [Whatever I say] has to help advance the scene.” In other hated.” The skit was dropped from the show in the last week words, if the actor asks about the improviser’s mother, the of rehearsals. improviser can’t reply, “My mother is dead.” That puts the On the other hand, a 10-minute mini-musical, “Where’s scene in a corner it can’t escape. “I think that rule is just Walrus?,” which she wrote with Adam Ruben ’01 (now a good manners,” Kemper continues. “That’s how you make a molecular biologist who does standup comedy), did make conversation.” the show. It’s the story of a boy Even though she has a full- Kemper in her role as Erin, the named Little Willie (played by receptionist, on “The Office.” time job on The Office and con- Jarrod Spector ’03, who since tinues to audition for movie has starred on Broadway in the roles, Kemper makes it a point show Jersey Boys), who desper- to do the occasional improv ately wants a walrus to protect show, in part to keep in prac- him from bullies. The skit was tice, in part because that is a hit even though, Ruben says, where her professional roots neither he nor Kemper had are — other than in the front any musical experience, and hallway, that is. they later discovered that the tune to two of the three songs Kemper went to Princeton as they wrote essentially was a a field hockey player, not as a variation on The Beverly comedy writer or performer. Hillbillies theme. Her major acting experience in There were a few women high school was a theater class writing for Triangle at the taught by a returning alumnus, time, Kemper recalls, but she P Jon Hamm, now the heartthrob doubts that they brought 29 lead in the TV series Mad Men. either a different perspective “Everyone,” she recalls, “was like, or a different sense of humor ‘Yay, we get this really hand- to the show. “It was my first some, tall theater teacher.’” time writing comedy,” she She has been asked many explains. “I felt very intimidat- times to name her childhood ed, but I don’t think it was comedy idols but says, “My because, ‘Oh, I’m a girl; I’m answer always disappoints me.” intimidated by all these guys.’ I That is because she didn’t really think it was, ‘I don’t necessarily have any idols. Like everyone know what I’m doing, and I’m else, she loved Seinfeld and around all these guys who watched Saturday Night Live, but was never more than a have been writing for a longer time.’” casual fan. Although she admires Woody Allen, she admits Tommy Dewey ’01, now a successful actor, remembers it a sheepishly that the first Allen movie she ever saw was his little differently. He met Kemper in auditions and “knew 2005 drama, Match Point, which is something like saying that that she had that special X factor.” In comedy, he thinks, “a your first Bruce Springsteen song was “Santa Claus is girl has to be willing to go to the mat in terms of making a Coming to Town.” fool of herself,” a recklessness he believes men possess natu- One comedic role model may have been her mother. In rally. Kemper, though, was game for anything. “She could be addition to being one of the first women at Princeton, Dotty innocent in ridiculous situations.” Jannarone was one of the first women to write for and per- In her senior year, Kemper auditioned for her only form in the Triangle show. She and another female class- straight dramatic role, in Theater Intime’s production of the mate, Carey Davis ’73, contributed lyrics for the 1972 show, Tom Stoppard play The Real Inspector Hound, which conflicted Blue Genes. After graduation, she performed in amateur with Triangle rehearsals. She did, however, continue to work C

musicals at McCarter Theatre and closed her career as Miss with Quipfire!, and that has had a more lasting impact on H R I S

Adelaide in Guys & Dolls while her husband (now chairman her career. The group rehearsed weekly in the Wilcox com- H A S T O and CEO of Missouri-based Commerce Bancshares) was in mon room and performed at Theater Intime four or five N / N B graduate school at Stanford. times a year, adding a road trip to Hawaii. Blythe Haaga ’05 C

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Kemper won raves for her comedic role in the feature film “Bridesmaids.” Here, she walks past the movie poster as she arrives at the premiere in Los Angeles in April.

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recalls performing in her first skit with Kemper. “I almost landed an unpaid internship on Conan O’Brien’s late-night caught myself laughing at how funny she was,” she says. TV show, writing and performing in a few small roles in Kemper acknowledges that she is a born performer. She skits. remembers thinking, “This is enjoyable, and I feel like I have A performer who also can write always has a leg up, a handle on it. That was a great realization.” Kemper says, so soon after returning to New York, she and After graduation, however, she spent a year studying her then-apartment mate, Scott Eckert ’03, began writing English at Oxford, with the vague plan of becoming a skits and shows of their own. Over the next few years, they teacher, but decided to return to New York and try the much put on more than half a dozen shows. On their best days, riskier life of comedy instead. Contrary to what one might they felt like Elaine May and Mike Nichols. expect, she had her family’s full support. “I would never have “We wrote sketches together that were funny to us,” had the gumption to consider theater after college,” Dotty Kemper says. “I don’t know if they were structurally correct, Kemper says, “and I can’t tell you how much I admire Ellie but we had so much fun doing that.” for her self-discipline, determination, and hard work.” “It’s paying your dues,” Eckert adds, “just performing in Kemper started taking classes at the Upright Citizens small spaces for a few people.” The shows would run for a Brigade and the Peoples Improv Theater. Performing with month or two or three, and then Kemper and Eckert would S

E other students in group shows, Kemper did well enough have to come up with something new. “The problem,” he G A M I early on that she was able to get an agent who in turn got adds, “is that no one will pay you until you’re a success.” Y T T E G

/ her auditions for TV commercials. She quickly landed a Improv proved a perfect training ground for the kind of R E N K

C string of them, for Dunkin’ Donuts, Kmart, Cingular, and performing Kemper is doing now. “How do you find what’s U B

L E others, and residuals provided her with enough income to up in a scene?” asks Eckert, who continues to write and per- A H C I

M pay the bills and continue doing improv at night. She also form. “How do you take a character and do something with

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu it? In improv, you have to be very comedic bits, including when Kemper ditches her polite present, and listen to every word reserve to lock another bridesmaid in a passionate kiss when your partner says.” It is not surpris- they think their airplane might crash. On the movie poster ing that many cast members on and the DVD box, all the bridesmaids strike gangsta poses in The Office, which sometimes is matching pink dresses. And there is Ellie Kemper, looking loosely scripted, come from improv tougher than any of them, front and center. backgrounds. Kemper also branched into writ- This has been an adjustment season for “The Office,” the ing for humor publications and first since the departure of star Steve Carell. While she hopes websites. After a year of sending to remain on the show as long as it runs, Kemper says, she badgering letters, emails, and sug- would like to broaden her range. She recently finished play- gestions, she landed a job writing ing a teacher in a film adaptation of the old TV series 21 for The Onion, and also has been a Jump Street, which will be released later this year. regular contributor to McSweeney’s “If and when [The Office] ends,” she says, “I think I would (where her essays included, “Listen, want to be in a place where I could be in more movies, Kid, The Biggest Thing You’ve Got where I could write some movies, and if possible, do that Going For You Is Your Rack”) and from New York,” where she feels more at home. CollegeHumor.com. (She wrote for With her level of success, it might seem odd to ruminate PAW, too: Read her “Ode to Wawa” about the challenges women still face in comedy, but for in the Jan. 19, 2011, issue.) some reason, women still are less likely than men to forge But as she freely admits — and careers being funny. As recently as 2007, the late Christopher as her mother would have pointed Hitchens wrote a column in Vanity Fair titled, “Why Women out had Kemper not — her first Aren’t Funny.” His rather tortured answer had something to love is performing. “It’s more fun!” do with the biological imperative of women’s role as moth- she explains. Starting in 2007, she ers, and men needing to be funny to attract women, but the began to land a few small roles in piece, on the whole, came across as an anachronism. cable series and made-for-TV In a rebuttal article, several female comedy writers movies. explored why women finally may be cracking what author That work earned Kemper some Alessandra Stanley called the “crass ceiling.” Nora Ephron P industry attention, but it also attributed the rise of women writers to cable TV, which pro- 31 forced her to move to Los Angeles vides countless more outlets. Fran Lebowitz theorized that because, as Eckert says, “that’s today’s female comedy writers were lucky enough to come where the jobs are.” Still, it took a along at a time when the culture had changed. As Tina Fey three-cushion bank shot around put it, “You still hear people say women aren’t funny. It’s just the NBC casting department to a lot easier to ignore.” land her part on The Office. It Maybe it reflects a generational divide, but if that crass worked this way: In 2008, Kemper auditioned to be a cast ceiling does exist, Kemper professes not to have seen it, at member on SNL, but did not get it. She next tried for a part Princeton or since. “I do think that there are a smaller num- on a new NBC sitcom, Parks & Recreation, but did not get ber of female writers,” she acknowledges, “but I don’t feel that, either. She was impressive enough, though, that the that it’s underrepresented, at least in Hollywood.” Parks & Rec people recommended her to the producers of Eckert says that the odds may be stacked against women The Office, which along with 30 Rock is the flagship of the comedy writers, but “there are outliers, like Ellie, who defy network’s comedy lineup. them. She’s a winning performer, very talented on stage, a At first, her character was slated to be in only four episodes, good writer who can create her own content, and very filling in when the show’s regular receptionist, played by smart. That combination is extremely rare.” Jenna Fischer, was promoted to sales. Those four episodes True, being smart can help. Still, although The Office relies were expanded to six episodes, which were expanded to a on a dry, arch, maybe even intellectual brand of humor, regular part in the cast. In the fictional purgatory that is the Kemper’s Princeton degree hardly sets her apart on the set. Scranton, Pa., office of paper company Dunder Mifflin, Just among the show’s cast, Mindy Kaling went to Kemper more than holds her own. One reviewer praised the Dartmouth, John Krasinski to Brown, and B.J. Novak to “infectious joy and sweetness” she brings to the show, while Harvard, to say nothing of the writing and production another called her “appealingly goofy.” At the end of her first crews. Even the character of Andy Bernard, the new boss full season, Variety named her one of 10 “comics to watch.” played by Ed Helms, went to Cornell. Success in her Office role enabled Kemper to land her first “It doesn’t come up that much,” Kemper jokes about their movie roles, including a small part in Russell Brand’s Get Ivy League background, “but we all understand a capella.” π Him to the Greek and then a much more prominent role in Bridesmaids. Her Bridesmaids character has some choice Mark F. Bernstein ’83 is PAW’s senior writer.

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Flymetothemoon Princetonians compete for a lunar landing – and the $20 million that comes along with it BY KENNETH CHANG ’87

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GETTING TECHNICAL William L. “Red” Whittaker ’73 sits Videos from three Lunar X Prize in front of the lunar lander in his teams explain their plans in detail lab at Carnegie Mellon University. @ paw.princeton.edu.

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu The new race to the moon has none of the geopolitical, military overtones that drove the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. It’s more like Silicon Valley startups rushing to get the Next Great Gadget to market.

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paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Twenty-six teams from around the world — with Prince - benchmarks, such as visiting one of the Apollo landing sites tonians playing key roles on a couple of them — are chasing or surviving a frigid two-week lunar night. a $20 million grand prize put up by Google to become the For the competitors, getting to the moon will not be easy, first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon. but technology is not the biggest hurdle. After all, both the This time, there won’t be any footprints. No astronauts. United States and the Soviet Union landed robotic space- Instead, it’ll be tread marks. The robots are going. craft on the moon more than 40 years ago. The harder part Which is fine for William L. “Red” Whittaker ’73, a profes- is squeezing the technology into a shoestring budget. For a sor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, NASA mission, just the rocket to lift a spacecraft to space who has little interest in the current debates over the future costs well over $100 million. of NASA’s astronauts. Over the past four decades, Whittaker’s One of the hopes of the X Prize Foundation is that the robots have cleaned up the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor competition will draw young engineers into the space indus- in Pennsylvania, discovered meteorites in the icy expanse of try the way that Apollo and the moon landings once did. Antarctica, mapped dark and dangerous tunnels of aban- And indeed, most of the work at Carnegie Mellon is done by doned mines, and navigated an obstacle course to win a mil- undergraduates and graduate students. lion dollars. Now he wants to win Google’s $20 million and Last summer, Peter Davison ’12, a Princeton senior major- then establish an Earth-to-moon transportation system. ing in mechanical and aerospace engineering, was an intern “I have a very robot-centric view of the universe,” he says. assigned to a Lunar X Prize team called the Rocket City “My life is robots, robots, and robots.” Space Pioneers, based in Huntsville, Ala. Davison and several other interns were asked to design a system that would Eighty-five years ago, a promised $25,000 reward spurred mimic the lesser gravity of the moon in testing the algo- Charles Lindbergh to fly nonstop from New York to Paris; rithms that are to safely guide the lander to the surface. several other aviators had died or were injured in their (Because of the round-trip delay of about 2.5 seconds for attempts to win the money. Similar prizes helped fuel design radio signals going between the Earth and the moon, a advances that made the airline business profitable. spacecraft has to make quick decisions on its own.) Already, the X Prize Foundation, which is running the During the 10-week internship, the students came up with Google Lunar X Prize contest, has a track record of spurring something that brings to mind an air hockey table on an new commercial ventures into space. A decade ago, the first angle. “We think it’s a really sound, really good idea,” says X Prize offered $10 million to the first private company that Tim Pickens, the leader of the Rocket City Space Pioneers. P could send someone into space — officially defined as more 34 than 62 miles above the surface — and repeat the same Whittaker was not the only Princeton alum to take up the undertaking within two weeks. challenge. Mike Brown ’87 is competing, too. Brown is not a Burt Rutan, a legendary aerospace engineer, designed a roboticist. He had never designed or built a spacecraft. He is space plane called SpaceShipOne, which was financed by an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology best Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. A Princetonian, Brian known — infamous, actually — for discovering Eris, the ice- Binnie *78, was at the controls for the second, X Prize- ball in the outer solar system bigger than Pluto, which set clinching flight in 2004. off the domino of events that culminated with astronomers Richard Branson, with his Virgin empire of airlines and kicking Pluto out of the planet club. media companies, invested in SpaceShipOne to create a new Two years ago, Fred Bourgeois, the leader of Lunar X team company, Virgin Galactic, that built a bigger space plane, with FredNet, visited Brown to recruit him. Brown was skeptical room for half a dozen passengers; commercial flights to the that this group — which bills itself as an “open source” col- edge of space might begin this year. “Clearly the X Prize lection of scientists and engineers — could compete against accelerated the state of the art in space transportation by at more experienced and well-financed teams. “I had heard least 10 years,” says George Whitesides ’96, president and about this Google X Prize and I thought, there’s no way you chief executive of Virgin Galactic. (Read about White sides could do this,” Brown recalls. “It’s ridiculous.” and other space entrepreneurs in the April 27, 2011, PAW.) But Brown, who has known Bourgeois since his high In 2007, the X Prize Foundation — which also offers school days in Huntsville, warmed up as Bourgeois prizes in the fields of education and global development, explained it. Huntsville was where Wernher von Braun and energy and environment, and the life sciences — announced the early rocket scientists built the Saturn V rocket. Brown’s a follow-up space competition, financed by Google. The father, an engineer, had worked on those Apollo missions. Google Lunar X Prize would go to the first team to put a Bourgeois already had enlisted a small company called Masten spacecraft on the moon, move it 500 meters along the sur- for the lander. He wanted Brown to put together the rover. face, and send back video images. (The prize drops to $15 Brown agreed. He is undaunted by a late start or the fact million if a government-funded mission beats the X Prize that other teams can tap into decades of aerospace expertise teams back to the moon — and both Russia and India have that he doesn’t have himself. “It’s either going to be a very spacecraft headed to launching pads.) The second team to well-thought-out team,” he says, “or it’s going to be a bunch accomplish that goal will win $5 million. Another $5 mil- of really scrappy people with baling wire and bubble gum.” lion would be divided and allocated for achieving specific Brown clearly sees himself as a baling-wire guy.

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu the moon with wheels, it would satisfy the conditions for win- ning the X Prize,” Brown says. A month into the class, Brown had his design — a closed sphere so no moon dust could get in to foul up the gears. It looked like a hamster exercise ball. It was a hamster ball — more precisely, a hollow, plastic exercise ball, built for a slightly larger rodent, like a chinchilla. To get the sphere rolling, the class first used a radio-controlled car‚ “not a particularly great solu- tion,” Brown says. Then, the team worked out a more sophisticated design, tearing apart the radio- controlled car and reusing the parts. Members added an axle through the hamster ball, with a motor hanging on a rod from the axle. When the motor turns, it swings itself and the rod upward; gravity then pulls the motor down, and the sphere rolls. To turn left or right, the rod tilts to the side, which tilts the ball. At each end of the axle is a P clear bubble to house a camera. 35 Brown has been using it to chase around the cats at home. The class never did build its final prototype by the end of the semester because the students wanted to attempt something more ambitious: an inflatable roving sphere. (Think of a beach ball on the moon.) That would allow the rover to be larger — Mike Brown ’87 holds his lunar 3 feet in diameter instead of 8 rover on the roof of Caltech’s inches — and more capable of historic solar observatory. rolling over obstacles while still fitting into the tight confines of “It’s a fun experiment in doing things that seem impossi- the lander. “If we can make it and make it work robustly, it ble and deciding you’re going to do it,” he says. “It may not would be a great solution,” Brown says. work. I would say there’s a good chance it won’t work.” But The students will keep working on the prototype, though he also convinced himself that success is not completely they no longer will get course credit. Brown said in impossible: “If it were totally wacko, it’s not worth your time.” December that he would argue they should return to the Brown’s attempt to build a rover got under way in a less-ambitious hamster-ball design, so that FredNet would Caltech course, “Roving on the Moon,” which met for the have something to use in the competition. (He was consider- first time at the end of September. The goal for the seven ing invoking his veto power, if needed, over the students’ class members — a mix of undergraduates, graduate stu- choice: “I also learned not to try to design by democracy.”) dents, and fellow faculty — was to have a working prototype And Brown figures that it will take up to two years and P E T by the end of the quarter, or in just two months. millions of dollars to build a space-worthy version, with E R

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Brown wanted to build the smallest, simplest rover to radiation-hardy and vibration-tested electronics and struc- M B E meet the X Prize requirements. “If we sent my cell phone to tures. “In the end, none of this will happen without any R

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly funding,” Brown says. “I’m not that guy to figure out how to of liftoff. Big beachballs covered in gold foil are temporary do funding. I’m a scientist.” stand-ins for the fuel tanks. The large lander would be able to carry 240 pounds of pay- Brown’s team, FredNet, ranks eighth among the Lunar X load, and if Astrobiotic can successfully sell that cargo space to Prize competitors on a list compiled by writer and technolo- scientists and space agencies for a planned $820,000 a gist Michael Doornbos, who has been keeping a scorecard pound, that’s $200 million in revenue, which would more based on criteria including funding, innovation, and progress than pay for the lander, the rover, and the Falcon on which to date. Leading the pack is Astrobotic, the company founded Astrobotic already has made a down payment. Whittaker’s is and led by Whittaker for the competition. the only team that already has booked a rocket. Growing up in a small town in central Pennsylvania, The Astrobotic rover looks like a pyramid on wheels. Whit taker spent much of his childhood rummaging through Solar cells will cover the sloping sides. The challenges have a junkyard for parts for his projects. He built a treehouse. He been designing a rover to handle the temperature extremes resurrected radios. He scavenged an engine and built a go- of the moon — hotter than 200 degrees Fahrenheit at high cart. “It was a lot faster than it should have been for safety,” noon, colder than minus-200 in the depths of the two-week he recalls. night — and to keep the moon dust from clogging the He received a civil-engineering degree at Princeton (he left wheels and gears. to serve in the Marines, then returned and completed his But before it can reap the profits, Astrobotic needs degree) and continued in graduate school at Carnegie Mellon. investors, like Matt Griffin ’73 and Bill Lewis ’74, former But even as he was winding up his thesis on soil mechanics, Princeton roommates who live in Seattle. Griffin admits he Whittaker was spending more and more time talking with has not dissected Astrobotic’s business plan in detail. His colleagues about an intriguing new field: robotics. investment, he says, is “about the jockey and not so much At that time, 1979, robotics still was more the realm of sci- about the business plan. I look at Red as that kind of guy.” ence fiction — Star Wars and R2-D2 — than reality. The par- tial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant Space is one of the few frontiers where Red Whittaker has that year led to Whittaker’s submitting a grant proposal to not yet found success. None of the missions he has proposed build robots that would be able to safely clean up the to NASA ever got a green light and money. Partly, he radioactive contamination. He won the grant. He built the believes, that is because some of his ideas were too far ahead robots. They cleaned up Three Mile Island. of their time. For example, he wanted to send a rover into a P For Whittaker, the robotics field offered challenging lunar lava tube — a tunnel formed by an ancient lava flow. 36 research problems coupled with the opportunity to build But no one had seen a lava tube on the moon, so NASA did machines just like in his childhood junkyard days. “We are not quite see the need for a rover to explore one. not just academics,” he says. “We are craftsmen.” Two years ago, scientists looking at lunar images taken by A sign in Whittaker’s office reads: “Still plays with trucks.” a Japanese orbiter spotted a hole — a “skylight” — leading When Whittaker signed up for the Lunar X Prize competi- into a lava tube. tion Sept. 13, 2007 — the day the contest was announced — Even as NASA turns away from the moon — with the his Carnegie Mellon team had just won $2 million in a chal- Obama administration’s cancellation of the program to lenge by the federal government’s Defense Advanced return to the moon, NASA now is focusing on asteroids — Research Projects Agency, or DARPA — for an automated the Google Lunar X Prize could open the possibility of low- car that could navigate a 60-mile obstacle course through an cost scientific missions headed to the moon without NASA. abandoned Air Force base, while avoiding other vehicles and Whittaker acknowledges that “one of the great concerns in obeying traffic laws. (A Princeton team also competed.) this prize is whether there’s any winner at all.” Still, he’s The Planetary Robotics Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon confident. “We’ll get the lander on the rocket, on the moon,” looks like a huge garage with a built-in crane. A 15-foot he says. “Our business plan has to succeed with or without model of the Falcon 9 rocket that Astrobotic plans to use winning the prize, because there’s no way to predict with stands next to a wall. Hanging nearby is a poster of a smaller surety that you’re going to be a winner.” rocket that had been under consideration. Like Brown, He is, of course, thinking about what he would like to do Whittaker first thought that small, cheap, and quick would on post-Lunar X Prize moon missions. One idea is to cir- be the winning strategy. cumnavigate the moon. He imagines a rover that would But after trying that approach for a couple of years, keep pace with the sun overhead so that the solar cells con- Whittaker came to believe that while the plan worked on tinually could generate energy; in a month, it could make it paper, it called for several risky maneuvers and would not be around the moon. He is looking for what he calls “Magellan useful for much other than winning the prize. “Everything routes” — obstacle-free paths where the rover could keep about it was either hard or unrealistic,” he says. He tore up pace with the spinning moon and thus remain in sunlight as the plans and decided on the opposite strategy: Build big. it goes all the way around the moon. On the floor of the laboratory is the basic structure of the He hasn’t found one yet, but he probably will. π lander that is to go to the moon, which already has passed the shake tests to ensure it will survive the rough vibrations Kenneth Chang ’87 reports on science for The New York Times.

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu First Response Action board member Alumni scene and legislative liaison Kate Finn ’06, third from left, at the White House as President Obama signs the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011 into law Nov. 21.

one of six board members. “I knew that I needed to speak up to make sure that other women didn’t have to have that same response,” she says, and to ensure that “other women were able to speak their stories and know that it KATE FINN ’06 wasn’t just them.” Finn realized that the Peace Corps’ response to assaults on volunteers An advocate for victims could be a systemic issue. According to the Peace Corps’ data, says Finn, in the Kate Finn ’06 was a Peace Corps whose first question, says Finn, was, last decade more than 1,000 volunteers volunteer in a village in Costa Rica, “Should I feel sorry for you?” The offi- reported being sexually assaulted. A teaching children and working with cer offered no counseling or medical 2010 survey of Peace Corps volunteers women’s groups, when a man raped assistance, says Finn, and at that point, found that nearly half of sexual-assault P her in 2007. The attacker’s family “I knew that my story was not going to victims that year had not reported the 38 worked on the local police force, so she be treated with sensitivity or compas- attacks, she says. didn’t feel she could report the crime sion.” Finn decided to leave her post Finn and the other FRA board safely. and return to the United States. members have put a spotlight on the Her Peace Corps handbook had no Several years later, she read an article issue — meeting with Peace Corps offi- helpful information on how to report about First Response Action (FRA), an cials, attracting media attention, and an assault, she says, and she lived seven advocacy group founded in 2009 that lining up allies in Washington who hours from the nearest Peace Corps was working to promote a stronger wrote legislation, the Kate Puzey Peace

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February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu Alumni scene requirement that the Peace Corps Tiger establish clear guidelines for reporting David Madden ’03 assaults, set up a sexual-assault advisory profile History Bowl founder committee, improve training for Peace Corps volunteers and staff members so that they will better understand rape David Madden ’03 has established trauma and reporting requirements if history competitions for students. an assault occurs, and implement a confidentiality policy to protect the identities of those who report crimes. The bill was named after a Peace Corps volunteer who was murdered after reporting a crime. The bill “provides a great foundation for victim assistance in the Peace Corps” and will help the organization to make sure that its response is “con- sistent and comprehensive worldwide,” says Finn. As the FRA’s legislative liai- son, she kept track of the bill as it moved through Congress and connect- ed congressional staffers with experts in sexual-assault education, prevention, and response. (Finn’s day job also involves work with victims: She is pro- HISTORY OF THE HISTORY BOWL While working gram coordinator for the Victim to become a history teacher through Prince ton’s Résumé: Executive director and Services Network at the Denver district teacher-preparation program in the fall of 2009, founder of the National History attorney’s office.) David Madden ’03 organized a high-school history Bowl and National History Bee. Nineteen-time Jeopardy! champion. Most Peace Corps volunteers return competition, “almost for the fun of it,” he says. “I P Former bicycle-tour guide, free- with “amazing stories from their Peace spent hundreds of hours writing questions and 39 Corps experience,” says Finn, but “my contacting 500-odd schools in the New York area,” lance genealogist, and art story ended so dark and so abruptly.” he says. He pulled off the Tri-State History Bowl, researcher. Master’s degree in Even though the bill has become law, with 140 students on 34 teams, in May 2010 at his international relations from the FRA’s work is not done, she says. The former high school in Ridgewood, N.J. Free University of Berlin. Woodrow group will keep track of how the law is Wilson School major at Princeton. implemented, continue to be a resource BIGGER AND BIGGER He realized that he was on for victims, and look at how it can sup- to something. He put his teacher-training pro- port the Peace Corps in making the gram on hold and dug into expanding the com- required changes. π By K.F.G. petition. He organized 32 tournaments during READ MORE: Test your history the last school year, incorporating a history bee knowledge @ paw.princeton.edu for individual competitors with the team-based Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner bowls. A producer at the History Channel soon found out about Madden’s com- and serve on the National Economic petitions, and representatives attended the national championship last spring. Council. Powell, a visiting scholar at Madden says they told him that the average viewer wouldn’t be able to relate to the Bipartisan Policy Center, served as the students because the questions they were answering were too hard, so he undersecretary of the treasury for added a middle-school bee (with easier questions), whose finals — with a $50,000 finance under Presi dent George H.W. scholarship grand prize — will be televised in the spring. The winner of the high- Bush. ... Two alumni were recognized school bee will earn a trip to the French Riviera to compete in the championship by New York Times columnist David of the European division he launched in 2011. Brooks with 2011 Sidney Awards for their magazine essays: PETER HESSLER PUTTING THINGS IN CONTEXT Many of the questions in the bowls and bees are ’92, for his New Yorker essay, “Dr. Don: paragraph-length, moving from obscure to familiar facts about the topic as the The life of a small-town druggist,” and question progresses. Competitors can buzz in at any time. This “pyramidal” format F R A

rewards students who can place facts in a historical context, so those who study N

ALAN LIGHTMAN ’70 for “The accidental K

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broadly gain an edge. Madden hopes studying history for the competitions opens J uni verse: Science’s crisis of faith,” in C I E C H

Harper’s. students’ eyes to new subjects. “History is so much more than names and dates O W S K and battles and trees,” he says. π Graham Meyer ’01 I

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Alumni scene READING ROOM: ALAN LIGHTMAN ’70 Channeling God in a new novel

The main character of Alan Lightman novel because it presents a view ’70’s latest novel, Mr g: A Novel About of God that probably does not the Creation (Pantheon), wakes from a accord with the views of most nap in the Void and decides, out of religions,” says Lightman, a physi- boredom, to create the universe: First cist and novelist who is an time, then space, and eventually count- adjunct professor of humanities less universes, but he focuses on one at MIT. But his novel, he says, universe in particular. While Nephew does present a view of God that — as Mr g is called by his Uncle Deva is compatible with science, and Aunt Penelope, the other celestial because Mr g does not intervene beings in the Void — has set every- in the universe, though at times thing in motion, he he wants to is not all-knowing WHAT HE’S READING NOW: Tao Te do so out of and doesn’t antici- Ching, an ancient Chinese text compassion. pate all the conse- about Buddhist philosophy. Lightman, whose has had a longstanding interest in quences of his novel explores the bringing together science and the actions. What he likes about it: intersection of the- humanities. (Lightman, who calls him- J E

“It’s a thoughtful commentary A

“Most religious ology and science self a “spiritual atheist,” wrote an essay N

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on how to live in the world.” H

people will not be as well as philoso- for Salon in October titled “Does God T M A comforted by the phy and morality, exist?” that explored the meeting N P 40

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February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu AAllumni scene

ground of science and religion.) NEW RELEASES BY ALUMNI public recognition to people without Mr g, the novel, was inspired in part damaging the social fabric of a com- by Cosmicomics, a collection of short “With the exception of munity in The Ajax Dilemma: Justice, stories by Italo Calvino about events Franklin Roosevelt, Fairness, and Rewards (Oxford). He that happen on a cosmic stage. Light - Dwight Eisenhower explores questions such as whether the man was fascinated by the author’s use was the most success- superstar with great ideas should be of celestial beings that view creation ful president of the rewarded instead of the worker bee. on a grand scale yet “care about the 20th century,” argues While there will never be a perfect sys- small details of being human.” JEAN EDWARD SMITH ’54 tem for distributing rewards, he says, The God of Lightman’s novel doesn’t in Eisenhower in War and Peace respect and compassion among com- have any grand ideas at the beginning, (Random House), which Publishers munity members encourage a sense of sometimes learns by trial and error, Weekly called an “engrossing biogra- justice. ... Few Americans have ever and has human qualities. “My God is a phy.” A senior scholar in the history heard of Franklin D. more humble god than the gods por- department at Columbia University Roosevelt’s plan to trayed in most religions,” he says. Mr g and the author of FDR and Grant, a install a military gov- worries that if he creates intelligent 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Smith ernment in France at beings, they will suffer. And he feels traces Eisenhower’s life from his the end of World War sorry for them when he observes their youth in Kansas to West Point, to his II, yet many French are anguish — particularly when a young service in the Army aware of it and believe woman is faced with a moral dilemma and during World War that an Allied occupation was immi- after her mother asks her to steal food II, and through his two nent, writes CHARLES L. ROBERTSON *59 in for her family. Uncle Deva and Aunt terms as president. ... When Roosevelt Planned to Govern Penelope urge Mr g to give his crea- MICHAEL GRABELL ’03, France (University of Massa chusetts tures some awareness of him. And a reporter for Press). A retired professor of govern- Mr g has interesting discussions about ProPublica, looks at ment at Smith College, Robertson good and evil, free will, and whether what happened to the taxpayer- explores whether Roosevelt really did the end justifies the means with a mys- financed stimulus package — the intend to occupy France, why the plan terious, intelligent, and somewhat sin- American Recovery and Reinvestment never came to be, and why Roosevelt ister stranger he meets in the Void. Act of 2009 — in Money Well Spent? objected to de Gaulle’s P The novel raises longstanding theo- The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar being in power. ... 41 logical and philosophical questions: Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery LIZZIE HUTTON ’95 Does an individual life have meaning? Plan in History (PublicAffairs). He explores the “various Do you need to have evil to know examines the program’s effects on the identities of childhood, goodness, or ugliness to know beauty? economy by focusing on three cities: adolescence, and moth- Why is there suffering? If there is a Elkhart, Ind.; Aiken, erhood,” she says, in God, does he intervene in the material S.C.; and Fremont, her debut poetry collection, She’d world? Those kinds of questions — Calif. ... JONATHAN M. Waited Millennia (New Issues Press). with no definitive answers — reflect a LADD *06 explores why “Rose Gold and Poppies,” one of the theme that runs through Lightman’s the public has grown poems, won the Wabash Prize from the work: that science probes questions to distrust the media Sycamore Review. Hutton teaches at the that are knowable, while the humani- and how that attitude University of Michigan. ... A health ties often raise questions that we never affects voting decisions in Why journalist, ROBERT J. DAVIS ’86 looks at will be able to answer. π By K.F.G. Americans Hate the Media and How It the veracity of some of the most com- Matters (Princeton University Press). mon diet and nutritional claims — An assistant professor of government ranging from “green MORE ALUMNI AUTHORS and public policy at Georgetown tea promotes weight @ paw.princeton.edu University, Ladd observes that as loss” to “milk is neces- recently as the 1970s the news media sary for strong bones” The Lives of Margaret Fuller were among the United States’ most — in Coffee is Good for by John Matteson ’83 trusted institutions, but by the 1990s You: From Vitamin C that trust had and Organic Foods to dissipated. ... A Low-Carb and Detox Diets, The Truth philosopher at the About Diet and Nutrition Claims University of Texas at (Perigee). Austin, PAUL WOODRUFF ’65 examines how to READ MORE: New books and media by I K S

K distribute rewards and alumni and faculty @ paw.princeton.edu N I L E I Z

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paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Alumni scene PAW ASKS Bradley Martin ’64: Max Gomez ’73 brings adult stem-cell research talks to Rome Might relations between the two Koreas improve?

Few Western journalists have written as much about North Korea as Bradley K. Martin ’64, who has made numerous reporting trips to the country since 1979. He is the author of the 2004 history Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, and holds the Snedden chair in journalism at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Martin spoke with PAW’s Mark F. Bernstein ’83 about the death of Kim Jong Il and the succession of his son, Kim Jong Un. Read the full interview at PAW Online. Max Gomez ’73 and Pope Benedict at a conference held at the Vatican in November. So far, the North Koreans have been P saying very loudly that they won’t deal A few years ago, Max Gomez ’73 sary, to translate the technical material 42 with the South Koreans. They are try- received an unusual phone call. An for a general audience. Gomez recruited ing to influence the South Korean peo- official at NeoStem, a biopharma - speakers, put together the agenda, and ple to elect a more congenial replace- ceutical company, told him that the served as moderator of the conference. ment for the current southern presi- company was considering partnering For three days, close to 250 scientists, dent, Lee Myung-bak, who is anathema with the Vatican to promote adult theologians, and church officials gath- to the north. The South Koreans are stem-cell research. ered in Rome to discuss the future of due for a presidential election in “I said, ‘No, really — you’re kidding, adult stem-cell research. The keynote December. In any case, until North right?’” recalled Gomez, who is on the address was delivered by Tommy Korea builds up its economy, it would board of directors of Stem for Life, a Thompson, the former U.S. Secretary be virtually impossible to reunify those nonprofit foundation sponsored by of Health and Human Services, and countries. The difference in living stan- NeoStem aimed at educating the pub- the discussion ranged from the philo- dards is so wide that the North lic about adult stem-cell research. sophical to the densely scientific. One Koreans would have to be reduced to To some, the Vatican might seem panel looked at the uses of stem cells being servants of the southerners, and like an unlikely partner. But while the derived from bone marrow and umbil- they would never stand for that. Catholic Church is a strong critic of ical cords, while another conversation embryonic stem-cell research, which it centered on the question, “Will the considers unethical because it requires Advance ment of Life Sciences Change the destruction of human embryos, Our Vision of Man?” Speakers from church officials say adult stem cells both Catholic and secular institutions offer the same promise, without the attended. 4

6 ethical drawbacks. A former PAW board member, ’

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R The Vatican recently donated $1 mil- Gomez acknowledged that “there was A M

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E lion to the Stem for Life Foundation, some wariness” among some scientists L D A R B

which convened a meeting on stem- when he first began recruiting speakers L Y ’ S O E S T S R

cell research in November at the for the event. In the days before the E U R O V C A T

Vatican. Gomez, a television medical conference, some scientists criticized O R E

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reporter, was asked by NeoStem to the Vatican for what they perceived as O READ MORE: The full Bradley Martin ’64 M A N interview @ paw.princeton.edu coordinate the event and, where neces- an attempt to draw away support from O

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly embryonic stem-cell research. Sean will lend respectability to the field of Morrison, a stem-cell researcher at the adult stem-cell research. (Gomez is University of Texas, told NPR that working with NeoStem and the “until we do the research, we won’t Vatican on a book about adult stem- know” which form of research will cell research.) lead to medical treatments. The November conference is part of “[P]atients in this country won’t a five-year collaboration between the take any comfort from the idea that Vatican and the Stem for Life Founda - people are trying to close off avenues tion. Among the goals is to promote of research that could potentially adult stem-cell technology, Robin connectconnect help them,” Morrison said. Smith, the CEO of NeoStem, told the While hesitant to speak for the National Catholic Reporter. Based in Catholic Church, Gomez said he New York, NeoStem finances stem-cell believed the church wants “a voice research and allows individuals to bank at the table” and that its financial adult stem cells for future therapeutic and moral commitment to the issue use. π By Maurice Timothy Reidy ’97

Alumni Alumni Day packed with events headliners,headliners, Alumni Day is expected to campus news,, draw about 1,200 people to campus Feb. 25, with pro- sports,sports, gramming that ranges from the lighthearted to the heart- and more,more, felt: faculty lectures, athletic allall in youryour events, exhibitions, perform- ances, and the annual FacebooFacebookok P Service of Remem brance in 43 the University Chapel. news feedfeed The centerpiece of Alumni Day is the luncheon Robert Mueller III ’66 Lisa P. Jackson *86 and awards ceremony in Jadwin Gymnasium. This year, FBI director Robert Mueller III ’66 will receive the Woodrow Wilson Award, the highest honor given to an undergraduate alumnus, and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa P. Jackson *86 will receive the James Madison Medal, the University’s highest graduate-alum award. Mueller has headed the FBI since 2001 and has been a leading figure in the nation’s fight against terrorism. Jackson, who has held her post since 2009, is New Jersey’s former commissioner of environmental protection. Jackson will begin the day’s events with a 9 a.m. talk in Richardson Auditorium. Mueller’s lecture, “Leadership, Humility, and Service: The Princeton

S E Tradition,” follows at 10:15 a.m. in Richardson. G A M I

Y Six faculty members will speak on topics that include immigration, children’s T T E G / literature, and motorcycle design. Family-friendly events include rock-climbing N O S L I

W and bouldering workshops sponsored by Outdoor Action, chemistry demonstra-

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A Admission Janet Rapelye’s popular talk on the college-application process. M I

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F the annual TigerLaunch Startup Challenge, and undergraduate teams will vie for A / N A

G the Class of 1876 Prize in a debate focused on current events. N

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D Alumni, faculty, and staff members who have died during the past year will be N A M

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F facebook.com/facebook.comm/ E L

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S For registration information and a complete schedule of events, go to O T O H P alumni.princeton.edu. π By F.H.

paw.princeton.edu • February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly Perspective Contending with Kennan, personally: A writer encounters the famous diplomat at Mudd Library By Todd S. Purdum ’82

Todd S. Purdum ’82, a former chairman of PAW’s advisory board, is national editor at Vanity Fair. His article about George F. Kennan ’25 is available at www.vanityfair. com/politics/2012/01/Todd-Purdum-on- National-Security.

It would be nerdy hyperbole to say that the afternoons I spent researching my senior thesis in Mudd Library 30 years ago this spring were among my happi- est times at Prince ton. I’m sure there were other moments — singing with the Katzenjammers, clowning in Triangle, or talking far into the night with roommates — that made my heart leap higher. But it is no exaggera- P tion to say that the hours I spent rum- 44 maging through the Dulles and Eisenhower papers for my thesis on the McCarthy-era State Department’s loyal- ty-security program helped me appreci- ate the art of long-form storytelling, and gave me the notion that I might have a future as a writer, even if I didn’t completely believe it at the time. The cool hush of the Mudd reading George F. Kennan ’25 in 1957. room, with its sturdy light-oak tables, rolling carts laden with archival treasures, and quietly friendly returned to Princeton — and to Mudd — last fall for a staff, was an oasis of calm in the onrushing storm of a couple of days to do research in the voluminous papers of Princeton senior year. Poring over documents that were then George F. Kennan ’25, for an assignment from my employer, just 30 years old — some of which had been opened only Vanity Fair, about the dangerous durability over the past 50 recently for review — gave me a thrilling sense of the imme- years of the American military-industrial complex. While I diacy of historic events, proof of Faulkner’s maxim that “the am always eager for any excuse to return to Old Nassau, I past is never dead — it’s not even past.” There was no such was wary of making this particular foray. For me, Kennan, thing as a laptop then — at least not in my life — so it didn’t who was very much alive and working at the Institute for seem a particular sacrifice to have to take notes in pencil on Advanced Study during my undergraduate years, was a tow- paper, and I don’t know whether I’m chagrined or chuffed ering figure, an intimidating Olympian presence as diplomat, that all these years later, those notes are still in my basement, scholar, writer, and thinker. He was the father of the doctrine safe in a plastic storage box along with the copy of the man- of “containment” of the Soviet Union and one of the princi- uscript that I typed on a self-correcting IBM Selectric rented pal architects of the Cold War. Tackling the huge range of from an office supply store on Route 1. (My second reader, his intellectual output as it concerned America’s role in the

professor — later dean of the college — Nancy Weiss world, and our enduring shortcomings both at home and B E T T M

Malkiel, gave me a generous grade but was moved to com- abroad, was the work of better, brighter men than I, I felt A N N / C

ment, “There are rather a lot of typographical errors.”) sure. O R B I I had occasion to ponder these pleasant memories when I continued on page 64 S

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu Class notes Perspective continued from page 44 end — as when he wrote on a flight to After all, it was my classmate and California in the 1950s, “My only friend Bart Gellman ’82 who, as a mere thought, as we approach it, is: throughout undergraduate, had undertaken a compre- the length and breadth of it not one sin- hensive critical analysis of the Tao of gle thing of any importance is being said Kennan. He won that year’s thesis publi- or done, not one thing that gives hope for cation prize, and the insights in the discovery of the paths to a better and Contending with Kennan: Toward a firmer and more promising human life; Philosophy of American Power, the book not one thing that would have validity that resulted, drew the admiration of the beyond the immediate context of time great man himself, as Professor John and place in which all of it occurs.” Two Lewis Gaddis of Yale notes in his guys on the ground named Hewlett and sparkling new authorized biography of Packard who were doing some pretty Kennan. “I don’t in the least mind the crit- important things might have begged to ical reflections,” Kennan wrote Bart. “I am differ, just for starters. grateful to you for having put forward But Kennan also loved poetry, sailing, such a brilliant effort to make sense out Russian literature, and the guitar; enjoyed of my scattered and so often cryptic utter- the life of a gentleman farmer near the ances, and congratulate you most heartily improbably named town of East Berlin, on the success of that formidable effort.” Pa.; and forged an enduring marriage and So who was I, all these years later, to a gratifying, if sometimes complicated, paddle around in the waters where my family life. And, of course, he spent fully old friend Bart, by now a Pulitzer Prize- half a century living in Princeton, the winner, long ago had made such a splash? scene and source of such youthful But when, with the help of University ambivalence, so something about the Archivist Dan Linke, I finally waded in to place must have comforted him, after all. the contents of the 330 boxes in the In sum, it would be hard to imagine a Kennan files (after reading extensively in more human figure. his shelf-full of published works), I made It could be argued that Kennan was, by a surprising and heartening discovery: virtue of his long life alone, something P Kennan was not always a figure ready- like the essential Princetonian of the 20th 45 made for the Hall of Fame. He was once a century. His firsthand acquaintance with lonely and comparatively impoverished Russian leaders ranged from Stalin to Princeton freshman, a motherless son Gorbachev, and his huge correspondence from Milwaukee who endured some mis- files are a who’s who of the great and erable times in the Jazz Age Ivy League in merely fascinating figures of his age. which he suddenly found himself. He was Could anyone have known all this when a compulsive, and often quite depressed, he arrived at Princeton? I doubt it. diarist who confided his darkest inner- In the 30 years since my own gradua- most thoughts to ordinary stationery-store tion, I never have stopped being grateful datebooks in lieu of therapy, only to buck for my Princeton education. I sometimes himself up at the end of most entries as if have wished I could do it all over again, to say, “Come, now, let’s get on with life!” because I can’t shake the feeling I some- He lasted so long, dying at 101 in 2005, how would appreciate it more, or have a that he found himself apologizing to better idea of the courses to take. I cer- Gaddis, who had signed on to write his tainly often think that I might well have biography in 1981 but promised to pub- accomplished more, given the huge lish it only after his death, for continuing advantages I’ve received. to live. But part of contending with Kennan, Kennan spent much of the last half for me, has been the real- of his life regretting the uses (and abuses) ization that even the to which his notion of containing the greatest of men are not Russians politically had been put in all great, all the time, and R I C A

that there remains hope R

American military enterprises from Korea D O

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through Vietnam, and on to Iraq and for any of us who keep R R O Afghanistan. He also could be plain wrong an inquiring mind, and a S — a refreshing thing to learn about a leg- right spirit. π Todd S. Purdum ’82

paw.princeton.edu • November 16, 2011 Princeton Alumni Weekly 72paw0208_FinalSceneRev1_64paw0707_Moment 1/24/12 12:27 PM Page 72

Final scene

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Oval with Points Blair Hall, as seen through Henry Moore’s famous sculpture after a January snowfall. Photograph by Ricardo Barros

February 8, 2012 Princeton Alumni Weekly • paw.princeton.edu