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MAy-JUNE 2011 Volume 113, number 5

features 27 Fathoming Metabolism A new way of studying humanity’s inner chemistry promises deep insights into

ose L incoln health and disease R page 45 by Jonathan Shaw

32 Vita: Leverett Gleason departments Brief life of a comics impresario: 1898-1971 4 Cambridge 02138 by Brett Dakin Communications from our readers 9 Right Now 34 World’s Best Blogger? Safe crossings for four-footed Andrew Sullivan, fscal conservative friends, the power of proximity, and social liberal, navigates modern malaise the changing media landscape 8A Commencement and a k stern by Jesse Kornbluth a Reunion Guide “The best day of the year,” the

essence of the occasion in images, 40 Why Whales? oods Hole O ce a nogr aph ic I nstitution a graduate’s commitments, lots of

courtesy of Ann a P of courtesy A surprising discovery about whales’ role in the luncheon choices, events of page 18 ocean ecosystem complements a scientist’s the week, and more winn/ W jeremy reexamination of the Endangered Species Act page 40 15 Montage by Joe Roman Harvard’s Indian College in fiction, honeybees on the move, street-level ballet, Gandhi’s unresolved struggles—and John Harvard’s Journal India’s, poetry to the people, a paean to 45 cities, and more ROTC formally recognized again, bioengineering blossoms, Harvard Yard’s caretakers, the University prepares to celebrate being 375 years young, reenact- 60 The Alumni ing early action—and admissions A writer’s resonant Central Valley roots, comings and goings, rethinking classes and and tuition data, thoughts on reunions, choristers reconvened, and teaching, public perspectives on Overseer and director candidates social-science priorities, polic- 64 The College Pump ing a prohibited plant, building Presidents Everett, Lincoln, and Washing- community for graduate students, ton, and William James’s salary woes remembering the Reverend Peter 72 Treasure J. Gomes, the Undergraduate and An exotic coconut the meaning of life, a lefty pitcher 65 Crimson Classiﬁeds and his grips, and a basketball

On the cover: Photograph by Jim Harrison F red field breakthrough

page 27 www.harvardmagazine.com LETTERS

Editor: John S. Rosenberg Senior Editor: Jean Martin Managing Editor: Jonathan S. Shaw Cambridge  Deputy Editor: Craig Lambert Associate Editor: Elizabeth Gudrais Quotable Harvard, Vietnam, polygyny Production and New Media Manager: Mark Felton Assistant Editor: Nell Porter Brown

Art Director: Jennifer Carling Partisan Perspectives college students by Matthew Woessner, Berta Greenwald Ledecky Observing that 90 percent or more of April Kelly-Woessner, and my late col- Undergraduate Fellows Harvard graduates in Congress are Demo- league at Smith College, Stanley Rothman. Madeleine Schwartz, Sarah Zhang crats, Peter McKinney ’56 concludes that Among their findings: seniors leave college Editorial Intern: “the development of independent and with virtually the same political affiliation Maya E. Shwayder critical thinking…is not happening at Har- that they had when they were freshmen vard College” (Letters, March-April, page (31 percent and 32 percent Democrats, re- Contributing Editors 7). But according to polls, vast numbers spectively). The authors deem the belief John T. Bethell, John de Cuevas, Adam of the party McKinney favors believe that that college professors turn their students Goodheart, Jim Harrison, Courtney global warming is a hoax, that evolution into liberals “a popular misconception.” Humphries, Christopher S. Johnson, is a fraud, that Barack Obama is a Muslim Richard Olivo, Ph.D. ’69 Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, born in Indonesia, and that the moral high Boston Christopher Reed, Stu Rosner, ground belongs to serial adulterers. One Deborah Smullyan, Mark Steele wonders who really missed out on a Har- Peter McKinney’s comment rests on Editorial and Business Office two false assumptions. vard education. 7 Ware Street, Charles M. Epstein ’69, M.D. ’73 The first and less egregious fallacy is Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 Atlanta that Harvard students are susceptible to Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 faculty indoctrination. I recall most of my Website: www.harvardmagazine.com Peter McKinney might be interested in college classmates as being politically so- Reader services: a recent national survey of thousands of phisticated and established in their views 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499

Harvard Magazine Inc. Harvard at 375: Your Experiences and Expectations President: Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, Harvard’s 375th anniversary is fast approaching; see page 48 for a report on the Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98. Directors: official festivities planned for this fall and beyond. As Harvard Magazine prepares its Suzanne Blier, Robert Giles, NF ’66, coverage of the University’s recent past (focusing on the past quarter-century, from Leslie E. Greis ’80, Alex S. Jones, NF ’82, before you used the Internet or recognized China and India as rising economic pow- Thomas F. Kelly, Ph.D. ’73, ers), and its prospects (up to the fourth-century mark), we invite you to reflect on: Randolph C. Lindel ’66, Tamara Elliott Rogers ’74, A. Clayton Spencer, A.M. ’82 • how your experiences and education in the College or the graduate and profes- Harvard Magazine (ISSN 0095-2427) is published bimonthly sional schools shaped your life, work, and perspectives; by Harvard Magazine Inc., a nonprofit corporation, 7 Ware • how those experiences and your Harvard edu- Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, phone 617-495-5746; fax 617-495-0324. The magazine is supported by reader contribu- cation could have been more effective; and tions and subscriptions, advertising revenue, and a subven- • how you would improve Harvard for the tion from Harvard University. Its editorial content is the responsibility of the editors. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, future, if you were returning to the University Mass., and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Circulation Department, Harvard Magazine, today to prepare for the rest of your life, or ad- 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037. Subscription rate vising a young person—your child, a relative, a $30 a year in U.S. and possessions, $55 Canada and Mexico, $75 other foreign. (Allow up to 10 weeks for first delivery.) Sub- friend—embarking on that stage of growth and scription orders and customer service inquiries should be sent to the Circulation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware learning. Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, or call 617-495-5746 or Please share your thoughts, and comment on 800-648-4499, or e-mail [email protected]. Single copies $4.95, plus $2.50 for postage and handling. Manuscript those of your fellow correspondents, at www. submissions are welcome, but we cannot assume responsibility for safekeeping. Include stamped, self-addressed envelope harvardmag.com/375th. We look forward to for manuscript return. Persons wishing to reprint any por- incorporating some of the most vivid accounts tion of Harvard Magazine’s contents are required to write in advance for permission. Address inquiries to and ideas into future issues. ~The Editors Irina Kuksin, publisher, at the address given above. Copyright © 2011 Harvard Magazine Inc.

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HARVARD HARVARD MAGAZINE MAGAZINE HMS ALUMNI BULLETIN ALUMNI HMS HMS ALUMNI BULLETIN ALUMNI HMS MAGAZINE HARVARD HARVARD MAGAZINE letters when they arrived, and far more likely to planations. In my grandfather’s GOP, a modify or adapt those views because of in- degree from an “elite” university was an teractions with their fellows than because asset: it was evidence that a politician was of what they heard in the lecture hall. This smart, or hard working, or, sadly, that he was even truer of my law school class- was at least from the right sort of family. Publisher: Irina Kuksin mates. Decades of interviewing applicants In Sarah Palin’s GOP, “elite” is an insult. Director of Circulation and Fundraising to the College has impressed me with how What’s more, in Palin’s faith-based GOP, Felecia Carter politically precocious they are even be- candidates are all but required to espouse Director of Advertising fore they are admitted, and how well de- the view that the world is 6,000 years old, Robert D. Fitta veloped their sense of civic commitment. that the “theory” of evolution is false, and New England Advertising Manager Abigail Williamson Indeed, this last is one of the few rays of that anthropogenic climate change is a Designer and Integrated Marketing hope I see in the present downward na- sinister liberal myth. I certainly hope that Manager: Jennifer Beaumont tional spiral. very few Harvard graduates share these Classified Advertising Manager The second and greater fallacy is the views. Twenty-six years ago, Ronald Rea- Gretchen Bostr0m assumption that because there are two gan invited the Reverend Peter Gomes to Circulation and Fundraising major political tendencies in this country, speak at his second inauguration. While Manager: Lucia Whalen properly educated people should divide Gomes was in some ways a conservative Office Manager roughly equally between them. This pre- Christian, he supported a much more nu- Katherine Dempsey-Stouffer sumes that both are equally possessed of anced view of the Bible, and of Christian- Ivy League Magazine Network rational arguments, and this is unfortu- ity, than the current GOP tolerates. Given Associate Publisher, Sales nately not true. Although the Republican the state of today’s GOP, I’m surprised Lawrence J. Brittan, Tel. 631-754-4264 Party, within living memory, disposed that any Harvard graduates, however con- New England and Mid-Atlantic of leaders and ideas that could be called servative and qualified, have won GOP Advertising Sales rational, for the last 30 years to be a Re- nominations for Congressional seats. Robert D. Fitta, Tel. 617-496-6631 publican has increasingly meant to deny Robert Stafford ’86 New York Advertising Sales Beth Bernstein, Tel. 908-654-5050 scientific truth, to subscribe to patent Belmont, Mass. Mary Anne MacLean, Tel. 631-367-1988 fantasies regarding our national history, Travel Advertising Sales recent or more distant, to espouse social While Peter McKinney’s letter raises Northeast Media Inc., Tel. 203-255-8800 and economic theories whose bankruptcy the question whether Harvard’s liberal at- Midwest Advertising Sales was demonstrated 80 years ago, to work mosphere is an explanation of why most Nugent Media Group, Tel. 773-755-9051 for the enrichment of the few and the im- Harvard degree holders are Democrats, I Detroit Advertising Sales poverishment of the many, and generally have a different take on this. I think it is Heth Media Tel. 248-318-9489 to substitute magical thinking for reason. fair to assume that most Harvard gradu- Southwest Advertising Sales That so few Harvard graduates enter Con- ates are of above average intelligence and Daniel Kellner, Tel. 972-529-9687 gress as Republicans can only be seen as education and tend to believe in such West Coast Advertising Sales a confirmation of the soundness of their things as evolution and global warming. It Virtus Media Sales, Tel. 310-478-3833 education. seems most Republicans do not. Board of Incorporators Joel Z. Eigerman ’63, J.D. ’67 Edward G. Shufro, M.B.A. ’58 This magazine, at first called the Harvard Bulletin, was Cambridge New York City founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was char- tered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s governance. The membership is as follows: Stephen J. Peter McKinney suggests that the Peter McKinney implicitly assumes that, Bailey, AMP ’94; Jeffrey S. Behrens ’89, William I. Ben- strong Democratic skew among Harvard’s absent bias, the distribution of political nett ’62, M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. Bol; Fox alumni in Congress might be due to “the affiliation among alums elected to Con- Butterfield ’61, A.M. ’64; Sewell Chan ’98, Jonathan S. Cohn ’91; Philip M. Cronin ’53, J.D. ’56; John de Cue- ideological imbalance of the faculty.” Per- gress would be horizontal, with an equal vas ’52; Casimir de Rham ’46, J.D. ’49; James F. Dwi- haps he should spend a few minutes re- number of Republicans and Democrats nell III ’62; Anne Fadiman ’74; Benjamin M. Friedman viewing the current Republican Party or, perhaps, even skewed in the opposite ’66, Ph.D. ’71; Robert H. Giles, NF ’66; Richard H. Gil- man, M.B.A. ’83, Owen Gingerich, Ph.D. ’62; Adam K. before looking for more complicated ex- direction. He believes that students in Goodheart ’92; Philip C. Haughey ’57; Brian R. Hecht fair and full exercise of truly independent ’92; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Ellen Hume ’68; speak up, please and critical thought could not possibly be Alex S. Jones, NF ’82; Bill Kovach, NF ’89; Florence Ladd, BI ’72; Jennifer 8 Lee ’99, Anthony Lewis ’48, Harvard Magazine welcomes letters more Democratic than Republican in their NF ’57; Scott Malkin ’80, J.D.-M.B.A. ’83; Margaret H. on its contents. Please write to “Let- party affiliation. Evidence, please? Marshall, Ed.M. ’69, Ed ’77, L ’78; Lisa L. Martin, Ph.D. ters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Alison A. Sommers ’71 ’90; David McClintick ’62; Winthrop L. McCormack ’67; John P. Reardon Jr. ’60; Christopher Reed; Har- Cambridge 02138, send comments by e- Louisville, Ky. riet Ritvo ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, Ph.D. mail to yourturn@harvard.edu, use our ’59, LL.D. ’98; Barbara Rudolph ’77; Robert N. Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78; Theda Skocpol, Ph.D. ’75; Peter A. Spiers website, www.harvardmagazine.com, After a moment’s consideration, it is ’76; Scott H. Stossel ’91; William O. Taylor ’54; Sherry or fax us at 617-495-0324. Letters may obvious that the party distribution of Turkle ’69, Ph.D. ’76; Robert H. Weiss ’54; Elizabeth be edited to fit the available space. alumni in Congress is a ridiculous estima- Winship ’43; Jan Ziolkowski. tor for the party distribution of alumni in

4 May - June 2011 Letters general: The members of Congress chose their party before they were elected. Per- haps alumni who are Republicans feel they have better things to do with their time than run for and serve in Congress. Perhaps alumni who are Republicans are reluctant to be associated with the contemporary Republican Party, whose lead- WEALTH IS ing lights include such nitwits as Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, MEASURED BY DOLLARS. Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck. Perhaps the alumni who ran as Democrats were just better campaigners than those who YOUR LEGACY, ran as Republicans. Perhaps alumni generally prefer to live in cities, and hence run in districts that tend to vote Democratic. BY GENERATIONS. Michael Anderson ’64 As wealth adds up, it changes perspective. Goals become more far-reaching, Bellevue, Wash. vision longer-term. Rockefeller Financial traces its origins to 1882, when John D. Rockefeller created The news that not one of the Har- an independent firm to manage his financial legacy. Today, we are uniquely vard matriculants now in Congress is a qualified to help manage your wealth. As a private firm, we align our interests woman caught my attention, reminding me of the summer between my freshman with yours. Our advice and service are shaped by objectivity, innovation and and sophomore years, spent working on a access to best-in-class financial strategies. woman’s campaign for the Massachusetts Call to learn what Rockefeller Financial can do for you. legislature and discovering the challenges that face women running for office. Near- ly four decades later, many barriers have fallen; perhaps the greatest impediment to expanding women’s representation is the paucity of women who put themselves forward as candidates. Approach- ing a once-in-a-decade opportunity—the Rockefeller Wealth Advisors Rockefeller Capital Partners Rockefeller Asset Management Rockit® Information Management first election after redistricting and reap- portionment, when open seats are most NEW YORK BOSTON WASHINGTON, DC common—this alum has shifted from the Reuben Jeffery III Elizabeth P. Munson Mark J. Panarese Paul G. Veith micro view (one woman’s campaign) to Chief Executive Officer Rockefeller Trust Co. Managing Director Managing Director the macro, helping the nonpartisan 2012 212-549-5100 212-549-5400 617-375-3311 202-719-3010 Project ask baby-boomer women to con- [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] sider running, and then pointing them toward resources they need to win. If you’re a woman who’d like to see a Congress (or state legislature) that looks more like you, www.rockefellerfinancial.com [email protected] please consider this your invitation to run! For details, visit www.the2012project.us. Kathy Kleeman ’74, Ed.M. ’77 Center for American Women and Politics Kendall Park, N.J. Celebrate with us! More on Quotes In “Quotable Harvard” (March-April, page 30), Bob Shrum is cited for his hilari- Harvard at ous observation that the Republican Par- ty’s idea of a diverse ticket is “Presidents Find out how your business can of two different oil companies.” Here’s participate in Harvard Magazine’s another quote for your collection: the special keepsake issue. Coming this fall. Democratic Party’s idea of a diverse ticket is “Lawyers who went to different law For details contact: [email protected] | Deadline: July 15, 2011

Harvard Magazine 5 Letters

The Harvard Chairs! schools.” All 11 Democratic candidates for Smith, who said, “There’s nothing to writ- Traditional president or vice president since Jimmy ing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter Carter—eight election cycles and 31 years and open a vein.” ago—went to law school and all but Al Edward Tabor ’69 Gore received their law degrees (Michael Bethesda, Md. Dukakis and Barack Obama from Har- vard). Not only were the three finalists Fred Shapiro responds: When I compiled the for the 2008 nomination—Obama, Hillary Yale Book of Quotations, the earliest evidence Clinton, and John Edwards—lawyers, but I had for this quote was the attribution to Thomas their spouses were lawyers as well. Further, Wolfe. However, prompted by Tabor’s letter, I have of the 11 Democratic attorney nominees, now found earlier evidence, and it indeed points to only Geraldine Ferraro and John Edwards Red Smith. In Walter Winchell’s column, printed in practiced much law: the other nine em- the Logansport (Indiana) Pharos-Tribune, barked on public careers within two or April 8, 1949, the following appears: “Red Smith A Coop Exclusive! Used by generations of Harvard three years of their degree. Whatever was asked if turning out a daily column wasn’t students and alumni. Available in all School and one’s political predilection, a fair assess- quite a chore….‘Why, no,’ dead-panned Red, ‘You House Shields. ment would be that Republican candi- simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, Purchase Reg. $625/Member Price $56250 dates over the same period have had much and bleed.’” Each chair sale supports the Harvard Alumni Association. more diversity of education and career. D. Allan Gray, M.B.A. ’79 On Vietnam k Downers Grove, Ill. I am a graduate of Harvard Business Standard School. I am also a graduate of the Unit- The quotation “Writing is easy. Just ed States Military Academy ’68. HBS was put a piece of paper in the typewriter and a remarkable experience, and I have re- start bleeding” is incorrectly attributed mained active in fundraising for Harvard to Thomas Wolfe. The correct attribution for over 30 years. I value the institution. should have been to the sportswriter Red My view of Harvard Magazine is

The Quotes Queue Alongside the March-April cover story, “Quotable Harvard,” compiled by Fred Shapiro, we asked readers to forward their own candidates for this informal canon. Selections from the resulting nominations appear here; read the full roll, and contribute to the conversation, at http://harvardmag.com/quotations. ~The Editors

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6 May - June 2011 Letters not as favorable. The article on Bao Lu- Corporation isn’t paying adequate atten- ong (Vita, March-April, page 28) is a case tion. in point, and could only have been writ- The new plan, which expands the Cor- ten by someone who was either indiffer- poration’s alumni affairs and develop- ent to the Vietnam War or ignorant of the ment roles, underscores a common but circumstances. I was an infantry company misguided view that the trustees’ job is to commander in the 173rd Airborne Brigade raise money, spend money, and get out of in RVN in 1970-1971. The atrocities I saw the way. conducted by North Vietnamese and Viet The new Corporation intends to ad- Cong as a matter of policy make those of dress academics as a committee of the TRAVEL THE WORLD WITH FELLOW other wars pale in comparison. To eulo- whole and to defer to the visiting com- ALUMNI AND HARVARD STUDY LEADERS. gize an individual who supported and mittees of the Overseers. In other words, A 2011 TRIP SAMPLING perhaps participated in such behavior is it intends to do in the future for education a disgrace to those who value human val- what it’s done in the past. According to ues. To characterize the NVA invasion of the article, the new Corporation will of- South Vietnam as a revolution rather than fer the opportunity for trustees in differ- the brutal conquest that it was is a willful ent stages of their careers. Perhaps, too, it misreading of history. might offer the opportunity for a differ- Harvard Magazine should consider ent kind of trustee: one who would raise whether such editorial decisions reflect urgent matters concerning the education the spirit of Veritas. and lives of Harvard College students— THE TRANS-CAUCASUS: AZERBAIJAN, GEORGIA & ARMENIA Craig S. Carson, M.B.A. ’75 a coherent core, renewed emphasis on SEP 21 - OCT 5, 2011 | with TOM SIMONS: Plainfield, Ind. teaching and learning, promotion of free Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Davis Center for speech, and formal recognition of ROTC. Russian and Eurasian Studies Professor Hue-Tam Ho Tai responds: The read- Anne D. Neal ’77, J.D. ’80 er accuses me of committing a willful misreading President, American Council of of history. Unfortunately, his letter amounts to a Trustees and Alumni willful misreading of the article. The Vietnam War Washington, D.C. took place a good 30 years after Bao Luong was active in politics (from 1927 to 1929). At the time of Editor’s note: See page 45 for news on ROTC. her arrest, the Indochinese Communist Party was just being formed; she was not part of it, let alone Polygyny Perspective ETHIOPIA part of the invasion of South Vietnam by the North I look at the issue of polygyny from OCT 5 - 20, 2011 | with KAY SHELEMAY: or a member of the National Liberation Front. The the viewpoint of a woman who wants Professor of African & African American Studies Vita presented a young woman—she was 20 at the more choices. I would rather be one of time of her arrest—who yearned for more educa- several wives of the man I liked best, tional opportunities for women and for indepen- than the only wife of a man I liked less. dence from French colonial rule. These two themes I should be able to ask any man to father seemed to me appropriate for Harvard Maga- my child (and he should have the right to zine since Harvard is an institution of higher say no); I believe the incidence of child learning that was deeply involved in America’s own neglect and child abuse would decrease if struggle for independence. women had this choice. Our marriage forms are those of the EXPLORING VIETNAM & CAMBODIA Governance ReconceiveD people who happened to have the guns, NOV 4 - 18, 2011 | with MARK VAN BAALEN: Associate in Earth & Planetary Sciences The January-February 2011 issue de- germs, and steel; they are not forms se- tails the reformation of the Corporation lected for by evolution; much less were WITH OVER 50 TRIPS ANNUALLY! (“The Corporation’s 360-year tune up,” they ordained from on high. Monogamy, page 43). While the changes are newswor- the socialism of women one per man, may VISIT US ONLINE AT thy, aren’t the Fellows missing something? have originated in prehistory when men WWW.ALUMNI.HARVARD.EDU/HAA/TRAVEL Governance is about more than as- fought because they were bribed with the signing committees and adding trustees. promise of a captive woman: see Euripid- Boards are fiduciaries of the financial and es’s The Trojan Women. academic health of their institutions. They Divorce is not necessarily an evil; how ultimately ensure the academic excel- else are the captives to escape? lence that will empower students—and The whole issue of marriage needs re- make alumni proud. But many alumni are thinking. We need socially acceptable BOOK YOUR NEXT TRIP concerned that undergraduate education forms of association and responsibility at Harvard can be improved and that the that promote the happiness of men and 800.422.1636 [email protected]

Harvard Magazine 7 Letters

women and children. Present forms do not. Diana Avery Amsden, Ed.M. ’56 Santee, Calif.

Those (not me) who wish to justify poly gyny could refer to Darwin (where the strongest male with, presumably, the best genes has the most females) or the Bible (where there are often references to multiple wives, explicit and implicit, e.g., “He had 70 sons”). In the contemporary world, as others have often noted, there is serial polygany and polyandry and concubines are now mistresses. Elroy LaCasce, A.M. ’5o Brunswick, Me.

Wallace Shawn Craig Lambert’s article on the wonderful Wallace Shawn (“Famous Comedi an, ‘Dangerous’ Playwright,” March-April, page 35), quotes playwright and author Robert Brustein: “I don’t know why he isn’t more respected, because his work is as intelligent as anything being written today.” I believe Brustein has answered his own question. Joseph E. Sullivan, M.B.A. ’72 Del Mar, Calif.

Wheelchair Stigma I was disappointed to find language and images straight out of Dickens in “The Gene Hunter” (March-April, page 22). Wheelchairs are instruments of liberation, not confinement, and they have come a long way since the ungainly model pictured in the article was designed in the 1950s. No one is wheelchair bound any- more, if they ever were. If you were sitting naked in an outsized and ill-fitting wheelchair you’d be pretty unhappy, too. Do doctors usually require kids to strip down to their under- Celebrate with us! wear to demonstrate how they stand up? Approaching70Ǧ80? Doctors and writers can do the most for the well-being of those with Duchenne Joinfellowalumnifor Harvard Muscular Dystrophy by giving them re- TheRestofYourLife spect. See www.levelwithme.org for some simple ideas that go a long way. Finestmedicalcare. at Gus Reed ’71 MildSantaBarbaraclimate. Find out how your Pittsboro, N.C. Outstandingfacilities.Affordable. business can participate in Harvard Magazine’s special Editor’s note: The images for the article were not CASADORINDA keepsake issue. Coming this fall. intended as a comment on wheelchairs or those who 48beautifulacresinMontecito. rely on them. The illustrations were selected to de- Forourbrochure:805Ǧ969Ǧ8079 Contact: [email protected] Deadline: July 15, 2011 pict the disease as clearly as possible.

8 May - June 2011 Commencement Commencement harvardharvard Magazine’sMagazine’s && ReunionReunion GuideGuide 20112011

Undergraduate Joy

College seniors celebrate as their degrees are conferred (here, in June 1998—but the emotions are timeless). See more from three decades of graduation moments in “The Essence of Commence- • “The Best Day of the Year” ment,” page 8H.

• The Essence of Commencement Photograph by Jim Harrison • In the Valley • Pleasing Palates • Ambitions Realized • Commencement Calendar Harvard Magazine 8A Commencement & reunion guide

Welcome, Harvard Friends & Family! “The Best Day of • Complimentary hot breakfast buffet • Complimentary shuttle service to and from Harvard Square the Year” • Special Harvard Rates The Commencement emcee on keeping the ceremonies festive while making the trains run on time

Document1Document1 11/20/03 11/20/03 11:51 11:51 AM AM Page Page 1 1 Document1 11/20/03 11:51 AM Page 1 he ritual of Harvard’s Com- campus throughout the year), and plays mencement exercises has re- a central role as organizer and emcee of mained virtually unchanged for Commencement. “The art is to have it T more than a century. Perhaps look festive and joyful while still making nobody knows this as well as Jacqueline the trains run on time,” she reports. To “STATUS MATCH NO CATCH® PROGRAM - A. O’Neill, who has attended the annual that end, she arrives at work at 6:30 a.m. Match your ELITE status in any other event for more than 30 years and now, on the fateful day and confers with Com- hotel loyalty program, FREE of charge” as University marshal, presides over the mencement director Grace Scheibner morning program. before putting on her robes and heading www.hoteltria.com As Harvard’s chief protocol officer, over to Massachusetts Hall. There, the 617.491.8000 or 866.333.Tria O’Neill oversees care of the honorands honorands—whose names, with the ex- (and all other important visitors to the ception of the Commencement speaker’s,

Jacqueline A. O’Neill

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have not yet officially been made public— have gathered to don their own regalia and prepare for the ceremony. At precisely 8:45 a.m., O’Neill steps into Begin your own tradition. place at the head of the procession of honorands, alongside University president Drew Faust, and walks, with appropri- ately measured tread, behind the sheriff of Middlesex County from the Old Yard into Tercentenary Theatre and on to the dais set up in front of Memorial Church. There she stands and awaits the sign from three faculty members charged with assuring that students, their families, and all others in attendance have entered the theater and are settled enough for the pageantry to begin. With a tilt of her baton, O’Neill signals Commencement electrician Rob- ert Brown to ring the bell of Memorial Church, and then, stepping to the center of the stage, she utters that age-old request to the sheriff, “Pray, give us order.” “The sheriff, who in years past rode in on a white horse, proceeds with a giant staff and bangs it on the floor three times,” O’Neill explains, and declares the meeting “in order,” as scripted in the official Commencement instruction guide, The Annual Calendar Form of Conferring Degrees. “I loved the bom- Ref. 5396G bast of the late sheriff, James DiPaola,” she adds. “It set the whole very serious and also tongue-in-cheek tone.” With the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner” (introduced to the program in 2002), followed by the opening prayer (to be given this year by Bernard Steinberg, director emeritus of Harvard Hillel), the annual rite that draws more than 30,000 people is off and running. “It is the only time of the year,” O’Neill notes, “that all of the Harvard family gathers together in one place, which is a very special thing.” The rest of the day, she says, “I am off the hook.” This is not exactly true—she Celebrate with us! still has honorand duties and returns to the dais as a guest for the afternoon’s alumni exercises: the annual meeting of Harvard at the Harvard Alumni Association, during which President Faust and the Com- Find out how your business can mencement guest speaker address the as- participate in Harvard Magazine’s sembly. The final recession does not take special keepsake issue. Coming this fall. place until around 4:30 p.m., at which point O’Neill takes a slow walk back to her of- For details contact: [email protected] | Deadline: July 15, 2011 fice at Wadsworth House, “enjoying the

8D May - June 2011 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

Commencement & reunion guide chance to revel in the remains of the day, watching the proud graduates connect with their families, pose for pictures, and say goodbye to friends, and, if all has gone well, feeling grateful for participating in yet another Commencement, the best day of the year at Harvard.”

All the rest of the year, O’Neill’s role Lux Bond & Green at the University is 8 Locations in New England not entirely dissimilar from her Com- O’Neill radiates joy on the dais during 800-524-7336 mencement Day efforts. She and her office the 2008 Commencement. www.lbgreen.com coordinate upwards of 150 visits to Har- Church). “Under this system, students can vard annually by heads of state and other stand up and ask a head of state a ques- high-level international and American of- tion—and they do,” she notes. All visi- ficials: most come from Asia and Europe, tors also sign the official Harvard guest but an increasing number are African. “As book. O’Neill hosts people when Faust is Harvard becomes more global in its reach, unable to, and oversees Harvard’s official we have seen an increase in the number of presence at other institutions’ events, co- visitors from around the world,” she says. ordinating Faust’s off-campus forays or She is the tenth University marshal, finding suitable delegates to stand in for a job that dates from 1896, when it was her. “It takes weeks and months to orga- determined that someone needed to be nize visits and schedules,” O’Neill says, Canyon Ranch in charge of arranging and directing the especially for guests requiring tight secu- Health Resort ceremonial aspects of University gather- rity. “Visits are very prescribed,” she adds: Lenox, MA Tuscon, AZ ings. Previously, O’Neill was chief of staff guests cannot just run off to see the glass Miami, FL to then-president Lawrence H. Summers, flowers. 866-284-4847 who appointed her marshal in 2004. She The marshal’s office also holds a wealth www.canyonranch.com has also served as a senior University com- of information on Harvard and general is- munications and community-relations of- sues of protocol, including proper use of ficial and oversaw external relations for academic regalia, the correct way to ad- the Allston initiative. She now reports to dress a dignitary, flag etiquette, or appro- President Faust. priate gifts for international visitors (visit Autumn brings the most guests; it’s not www.marshal.harvard.edu/gifts.html to unusual for Harvard to see half a dozen see what’s on offer). heads of state within several weeks. “We It is such protocols and rituals that make them all feel welcome and appreci- O’Neill says many people find comfort- ated,” O’Neill says. “People leave here feeling—and that mark the communal life at ing about this place that it is a human in- the University. So when Commencement Encore Antiques stitution, not just a big name.” rolls around again this year, she will be 492 King Street – Guests invited to campus by the Uni- ready to play her part in enacting the an- On the Common versity or a Harvard division—a step Littleton, MA 01460 nual drama. “There isn’t anything else like 978-486-8500 involving its own protocol—are gener- it,” she asserts. “It’s the celebration of the ally asked to give a free public talk, typi- promise of the future with a wonderful cally open to the Harvard community (if mix of tradition and ancient ceremonial Save with special offers for sometimes only by lottery, as happened meaning that launches the next genera- Harvard Readers. For details, visit: when the Dalai Lama spoke at Memorial tion. I never get tired of it.” v n.p.b. harvardmagazine.com/springmarket

Photograph by Jon Chase/Harvard News Office Harvard Magazine 8E Re ond al E m st m a a t e H

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The Essence of Commencement

A photographer captures three decades of graduation moments and emotions. • by Jim Harrison

time in this small quadrangle, sharing a bond to Harvard—and to each other. For despite the very public nature of Com- mencement, and its seemingly overwhelming scope, it is the countless private, personal moments—three young raduation morning unfolds places, while the stu- friends hugging each with moments that range dent speakers inspire other and crying; a rela- from solemnity to frivolity. with the sincerity of tive beaming with pride, From every direction, seniors their rhetoric. In the his camera at the ready; enterG the Yard with their House-mates, end, the band plays, a University president some marching to the mournful sounds the “Harvard Hymn” is showing his surprise as of bagpipes, others dancing in step to the sung, and everyone marches off to respec- a head of state breaks for a pinch of snuff— staccato beat of a ragtime combo. After tive futures (or just to lunch). that photographs ex- the requisite photos of the honorands are Yet beyond all the tradition, costumes, press so well. And it taken, the faculty members begin their and kinetic energy of the proceedings, what is these moments that Visit harvardmag.com/ slow parade through the rows of immi- has most impressed me in the 31 years I have give this centuries-old extras to see additional images of Commence- nent graduates lining the walkways. Dur- photographed this annual rite of passage rite its freshness: they ments past. ing the exercises, the assembly clutch are the more than 30,000 people who at- cut through both the their programs in an effort to follow the tend—the wonderful tapestry of faces and momentousness and the levity to reveal the Latin oration and laugh in all the right emotions all gathered together for a short very human meaning of it all. vjim harrison

8H May - June 2011 Photographs by Jim Harrison Commencement & reunion Guide

Facing page (clockwise, from left): Eliot House roommates Rulonna Neilson of Salt Lake City, Alexandra Brown of Los Angeles, and Gouita Bozorgi of Lake Forest, Illinois (1991); President Derek Bok and honorand Jacques-Yves Cousteau observe West Germany’s chancellor, honorand Helmut Schmidt, pause for a pinch of snuff (1979); Junichi Hayami traveled all the way from Kyoto, Japan, to see Naomi Fukumori ’91, of Lowell House and Hastings, Nebraska, graduate. This page (clockwise from top): Honorand Stephen Hawking (1990); Professor John Kenneth Galbraith and his wife, Catherine (Atwater) Galbraith (1991); Olympic swimmer David Berkoff ’88, of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, in his merman wig; carrot-top Ana Vollmar ’08, of the Dudley House Co-op and Hamden, Connecticut; and a contemplative Richard Busby, M.B.A. ’92, of Scarsdale, New York.

Harvard Magazine 8I Commencement & reunion Guide

Clockwise from left: Exuberant M.B.A.s wave the flags of many nations; after delivering the Commencement afternoon address, retiring President Bok is hugged by president-elect Neil Rudenstine (1991); Maria V. Mavroudi, Ph.D. ’98, of Berkeley, California, caps her son George. 2377 Lg Harv Mag May_sp:Layout 2 3/3/11 12:02 PM Page 1

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8J May - June 2011 Commencement & reunion guide

In the Valley A path to public service—and to Harvard by Michael Zuckerman

Harvard graduations don’t occur only in May—degrees are conferred in November and March as well. With more and more undergraduates taking semesters off to study, work, and volunteer far from Cambridge, the College hosts a special mid-year observance for degree recipients who can’t make the spring ceremony. Michael Zuckerman ’10, of New Brunswick, New Jersey, a social studies concentrator from Lowell House, delivered this graduation address at that celebration on December 9, 2010. vThe Editors

ongratulations on making knew, I was in the passen- Michael it to this day. ger seat of a 1992 Mercury Zuckerman

Twelve years ago, I stepped station wagon, watching s ne r Ro Stu away from playing an auto- my mother speed through red lights like ing lot, I learned that my father was dead. racing C computer game with a friend to one of the characters on the computer I was 12 years old, almost exactly half the answer a ringing telephone. The call was screen. Fifteen minutes later, as we pulled age I am today. from my parents’ doctor. The next thing I into an inner-city emergency-room park- At the time, that seemed like a pretty

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Harvard Magazine 8K Commencement & reunion guide rotten thing for the universe to do. And, What I didn’t realize at the time is Likewise, if I hadn’t kept getting into for a long time, I didn’t talk about it that if my father—a man who almost trouble, an important adult in my life much. My thoughts on the subject were never brought his work home with him— would have never told me I had to start mostly expressed through my actions, hadn’t died, I never would have been at doing community service after school, which, during my career as a middle- his funeral to hear the story of an 80-year- which means I never would have had to school student, were likely to wind up old African-American woman he’d helped do art projects with a six-year-old boy with me in front of a principal, a police sue a racist cop who’d pushed her down named Tyshawn, who lived in the mo- officer, or even a judge. Which, in turn, I a flight of stairs. Or that his payment for tels outside Trenton, New Jersey—and took as further evidence that the universe the years of pro bono litigation had been who’d had a much worse life than I’d had. heldW&F somethingHarvard AdF:Layout deeply against 8 me. 1/18/11 10:48a sequence AM Pageof sweet-potato 1 pies. Which means I, at age 14, never would have become a friend to Tyshawn, and he, at age six, never would have become one Charlie Haydock, CFA Adrienne Silbermann, CFA of the greatest teachers in my life. Chief Investment Officer Director of Research A.B. 1974 If those things hadn’t happened, I might never have come to the knowledge that domestic public service ran in the family, or, more importantly, had the epiphany that it was something I could take great joy in doing. And if those rev- elations hadn’t come, I probably would never have had the opportunity to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Harvard with all the extraordinary people who populate Lowell House, or help get a president elected with all the extraordinary people who populate the state of Ohio. I certainly wouldn’t have had the opportunity to share this happy afternoon with all of you. There is a trite version of what I’m saying, which is that “when God closes a Knowing wealth. door, She opens a window.” There is also an elegant version of what The more you get to I’m saying, which is that “Even in our Knowing you. know us, the more sleep, pain that cannot forget, Falls drop you’ll know why the bond we have with by drop upon the heart, And in our own our clients is so long-lasting. It’s because we despite, against our will, Comes wisdom create deep and trusting relationships with to us by the awful grace of God.” each client. After all, we’ve been right here in I don’t know who came up with the first the heart of Boston for nearly two centuries, personally guiding generations of New Englanders one. The second one comes from the an- with conservative, yet forward thinking, invest- cient Greek tragedian Aeschylus, though ment management advice and sophisticated tax, the line was more famously used by Bob- trust and estate planning. by Kennedy on April 4, 1968, when fell to If you’re attracted to the true value of an him the heartbreaking task of informing individual relationship with highly personalized service, please call Charlie Haydock ‘74 at a huge African-American crowd at one of 617-557-9800. his campaign rallies that Dr. Martin Lu- AtWelch & Forbes, we know wealth. ther King Jr. had just been assassinated. And we know you. That was in Indianapolis, Indiana, the only major American city that didn’t erupt into riots that night. Perhaps the looting and burning and killing didn’t come to Indianapolis be- 45 School Street, Old City Hall, Boston, MA 02108 Jay Emmons, CFA cause Kennedy had reminded the city of President T: 617.523.1635 | www.welchforbes.com an ancient truth: that in the midst of great

8L May - June 2011 Commencement & reunion guide hardship is often born the seed of great in- sight, and even success. The reason I am sharing this with you today is that we are entering a phase of our lives in which at least some of the things we love will be taken away from us. They may be loved ones, or things we hoped were true about ourselves, or dreams we had about who we planned to become. Though many of us have survived childhood with a lot of these things in- tact, there has never in the history of humanity been a person who didn’t have to lose at least one thing that he or she cared about. I hope for all of us that these things Atlifecare Brookhaven living is as good as it looks. will be weathered by the years as little as Brookhaven at Lexington offers an abundance of opportunities for possible. But I also hope that, when the intellectual growth, artistic expression and personal wellness. Our residents storm clouds do inevitably gather over share your commitment to live a vibrant lifestyle in a lovely community. some part of our lives, we will be quick to locate the shards of light that just as in- Call today to set up an appointment for a tour! evitably will pierce that darkened sky, and A Full-Service Lifecare Retirement Community follow them up to new heights. www.brookhavenatlexington.org It may be, as Thomas Mann once wrote, (781) 863-9660 • (800) 283-1114 that happiness and success often signal decline because they need time to reach us, “like the light of an overhanging star, which, when it shines most brightly, may well have already gone out.” Whether or not that is true, I have come to trust that sorrow and despair often signal the beginning of a great ascent. And that is because they leave us in the valley beneath a great mountain. And it’s in the climbing that we learn to see again—as Custom designed Team Building & for the first time—everything it is that we Leadership Development programs love about living. That’s the end of my speech. But be- with Thompson Island fore I go, there is a larger point I need to make: that no one survives alone. Outward Bound Professional Somewhere sitting in the audience is Create positive lasting change for your organization my mother, who not only kept food on the table and kept me in school, but also (617) 328-3900 ext. 114 stuck with me and continued to love me [email protected] even when I seemed to be doing every- www.thompsonisland.org thing I could to make her life as difficult as possible. So thank you, Mom. You’re an inspiration and I wouldn’t be here without you. And thank you all, for four—well, more than four—wonderful years, and for let- ting me speak to you today. And congratulations, class of 2010-11. Thank you.

Harvard Magazine 8M Commencement & reunion guide Pleasing Palates

Harvard Square offers plenty of lunch spots.

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8N May - June 2011 Commencement & reunion guide food buffets ($8.95 per person) at either noodles and macaroni and cheese ($7 to cheese at Oggi’s Gourmet Food (617-492- Cafe of India (52A Brattle Street; 617- $12 range). 6444). A great new entry is Otto’s (1432 661-0683), which has front windows that Pizza lovers should try the yummy su- Mass. Ave.; 617-499-3352), with its unusual open from floor to ceiling, orTamarind per-thin crust variety ($8 to $19) at Cam- toppings (such as cheese tortellini, apple Bay (75 Winthrop Street; 617-491-4552), bridge 1, a modern-style, sit-down place and bacon, or pulled pork with mango). set in a homey lower level. with low lights, beer and wine, pasta And of course, there’s still Pinocchio’s (74 Also speedy is the self-service salad dishes, and thoughtful salads (27 Church Winthrop Street; 617-876-4897) to fulfill bar (hot and cold food) at Market in the Street; 617-576-1111). Or duck into Holyoke that hankering for a saucy, doughy Sicilian Square (60 Church Street; 617-441-2000). Center Arcade for a crispy slice topped square; it’s always good—even when you’re You can eat your lunch on a blanket in the with garlicky eggplant, spinach, and feta not swinging by at 1:30 a.m. vn.p.b. sun at the adjacent Radcliffe Quadrangle. Other picnic items are available at Car- dullo’s, which is filled to the brim with European and American chocolates, fine wines, and other gourmet delicacies. Deli sandwiches, including an Italian imported meats special and a luscious caprese (moz- zarella, tomatoes, and basil) start at $8. 8 Brattle Street; 617-491-8888. Or you may walk five minutes from the Square to Darwin’s (148 Mount Auburn Street; 617-354-5233), where what could be the best sandwiches for miles around are named for local streets. Among our favorites is “The Longfellow,” made with ham, sliced green apple, aged cheddar, Dijon mustard, lettuce, and tomatoes ($7.35), which may be eaten under shady trees at nearby Longfellow Park. For earnestly healthy food, try Dado, where you can talk over pots of all kinds of tea while munching a carefully prepared pesto tofu salad and a choice of fruits ($7.25), or the Korean rice dish with vegetables known as bi bim bap ($10). Dado is one of the only cafés that also serves beer and wine, always a pleasant alternative to a hectic bar. 50 Church Street; 617-547-0950. For additional vegetarian options, try a newcomer to the Square, Clover Food Lab (7 Holyoke Street), which offers a small menu of fresh, cheap, perky comes- tibles. Some of us are hooked on the in- house French fries with rosemary ($3), and love the falafel-like chickpea fritter and the sweet potato sandwiches ($5 each). Veggie Planet at Club Passim (47 Palmer Street, 617-661-1513; the club dou- bles as the dining room during the day) churns out delicious homemade soups prepared in what some consider an older, hippie style, salads, and flat-bread pizzas with too many combinations to name, along with entrées like peanut udon

Harvard Magazine 8O Commencement & reunion guide Ambitions Realized In a straitened era, landmark construction projects advance academic goals. uring an extended period in legal education. An unusually complex ing to Harkness Commons, provides room of construction constraint, as project—a quarter-million square feet for both student legal organizations and America—and academia—re- of space sited atop much subterranean socializing. And the Clinical Wing, on D cover from irrational exuber- parking (it displaced a former garage on Everett Street, will sensibly organize the ance both fiscal and physical, it can be too the site)—its ungainly name re- The Law School’s “Northwest Corner” easy to forget first principles. New facili- flects a multifaceted program: ties, informed by a thoughtful intellectual Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen program and executed with superb crafts- Student Center, and the Clini- manship, can transform a place—in a uni- cal Wing. The first is the major versity, raising research and learning to block of space, on Mass. Ave., new levels. Harvard’s two current mega- containing modern classrooms projects, the last of their kind for a while, that better accommodate the are useful reminders of the value of such school’s smaller first-year course ambitions. sections, and the burgeoning of- Harvard Law School’s “Northwest Cor- ferings in a course catalog now ner” project—at the intersection of Mas- brimming with international sachusetts Avenue and Everett Street— and other new subjects of inter- will make tangible fundamental changes est. The Caspersen space, link-

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8P Skanska_Harvard_Ad_11.inddMay - June 2011 1 3/22/2011 4:38:51 PM Commencement & reunion guide P P operations of nearly 30 in-house hands-on programs—an essential element in profes- MARTHA’S VINEYARD sional training. As a whole, the structure PERFECTION redefines the entry to the school’s campus, while creating, away from the street, an attractive new quadrangle. It’s too soon to tell, from the work- site, how the wholesale reconstruction of the Fogg Art Museum into a new museum and teaching complex will appear to future pedestrians and visitors. In the meantime, the extremely delicate work (if Je rey Dodge Rogers© an 85,000-pound crane can be called deli- This 4 br., 3 bth. home is ideally situated on an acre bordering conservation land. Quality built OBSERVATORY HILL cate) of stripping the old building to its with floor to ceiling windows, two master suites, Immaculate 1895 Victorian near Harvard Square. façade, shoring that viewpoints_envelope_Layoutgourmet kitchen, 1basement, 1/6/11 4:58 PMand Page expansive 1 decks, Meticulous 2006 rehab. 4 bedrooms and 3.5 up, and then excavat- this home is turnkey! Exclusive, $1,350,000 baths. Expansive open oor plan. 2 bedrooms ing deep underground Visit harvardmag.com/ 2011 Summer rentals available islandwide en-suite. Enclosed patio. Basement rec room. for new space—with- extras to see more Masterful carpentry. Gas replace. Energy e cient systems and windows. O street parking for out bringing the images of the Fogg VIEWPOINTS renovation. R E A L E S T A T E HISTORICtwo cars VINEYARD in tandem. HAVEN SEA $1,795,000CAPTAIN’S HOME whole thing tumbling Bobbi Reed Box 877 | Vineyard Haven, MHistoricA 02568 district 5 BRCarol colonial Kelly has & Myraharbor von peeks Turkovich , classic sunroom, office /library Broker, Realtor®, CRS, GRI down—is a feast for sidewalk superinten- w/ 1/1/2 baths and large livingVice roomPresidents, with traditional ABR fireplace. Garage attached dents and a refresher course in the highly o 508.693.0222 ext 1# to office/[email protected] Beautifully updated decor, 3 baths, original hardwood floors, c 508.737.3339 • f 508.693.5888hand detailed woodwork.www.HammondRE.com Newly listed. Exclusive $1,925,000. skilled, dangerous work that construction [email protected] 617.497.4400 entails. Hard hats, indeed. www.viewpointsmv.com (508) 693-0222 • [email protected] LINK None of this comes cheap. The law VBox 877 • 71 Main Street, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568 carolandmyra.com school’s building, which began with the AVON HILL VICTORIAN MOSS HILL RENOVATION relocation of historic houses from the CAMBRIDGE site, and the Fogg work are both high- end, long-life institutional undertakings carried out in difficult, dense, congested spaces (Robert A.M. Stern is lead architect for the law school, Renzo Piano for the re-envisioning of the Fogg). Together, the projects will ultimately cost an esti- mated half- to two-thirds of a billion dollars when occupied this fall (law school) and two years later (the museum). But Beautifully renovated, energy efficient, single each promises to redefine the institution Tastefully renovated with all modern family located on Moss Hill. Only minutes around it—and to reawaken academic as- conveniences. 9' ceilings, 3 fireplaces, original from downtown Boston and surrounded by pirations around Harvard. period detail. 9 rooms with 5 bedrooms Larz Anderson Park, Allandale Farm, and the and 2.5 baths. On a side street close to Arnold Arboretum, this 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath Porter and Harvard Squares. Convenient to home is the perfect oasis from everyday life. The Fogg Art Museum transportation, shopping and restaurants. Price available upon request Exclusively offered at $1,195,000 Barbara Currier 617-593-7070 [email protected] BarbaraCurrier.com Aurel Garban, Realtor, Green Designation Agent 617-875-1914 | [email protected] Ask me about The Harvard Real Estate Assistance Program! www.AurelGarban.com 171 Huron Avenue • Cambridge, Mass. 02138 1290A Beacon Street, Brookline, MA 02446

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47804-10_10CTC145_WM_Ad_FP4C_v04.indd 1 7/27/10 6:42:35 AM BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN 47804-10_10CTC145_WM_Ad_FP4C_v04.pgs 07.27.2010 06:39 Commencement & reunion guide

The Week’s Events The Signboard Visit harvardmagazine. ommencement week includes with Chris Anderson, curator of TED, fol- Medical and com/commencement for addresses by Harvard president lowed by a reception. Gund Hall. Dental Schools news of SIG gatherings. Drew Faust and Liberian presi- Divinity School Multireligious Service Class Day Cere C dent Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, M.P.A. of Thanksgiving, 4:30. Memorial Church. mony, at 2, with HMS professor and au- ’71. For details and updates, visit www.har- Harvard University Band, Harvard Glee thor Atul Gawande. HMS Quadrangle. vardmagazine.com/commencement. Club, and Radcliffe Choral Society Con- * * * cert, at 8. Tercentenary Theatre. Friday, May 27 Tuesday, May 24 Radcliffe Day Luncheon, 12:30, with Rad- Phi Beta Kappa Exercises, at 11, with poet Thursday, May 26 cliffe Medal recipient Ela Bhatt, founder of Henri Cole and orator Joyce Carol Oates. Commencement Day. Gates open at 6:45. the Self-Employed Women’s Association. Baccalaureate Service for the Class of The 360th Commencement Exercises, Radcliffe Yard. 2011 at 2, Memorial Church, followed by 9:45. Tercentenary Theatre. * * * class picture, Widener steps. Senior Luncheon and Diploma Cer For updates on Harvard reunions, Rad Senior Class Family Dinner and Party, emonies, 11:30. The Undergraduate Houses. cliffe Day, and events for graduating se at 6. Athletic complex. The General Alumni Spread, 11:30. The niors, visit www.commencementoffice. Old Yard. harvard.edu, or contact the Harvard Alum- Wednesday, May 25 The Tree Spread, for College classes of ni Association (124 Mount Auburn Street, ROTC Commissioning Ceremony, at 11, 1919-1960, 11:30. Holden Quadrangle. Cambridge) at 617-495-2555; haa@harvard. with President Drew Faust and a guest Graduate School Diploma Ceremonies, edu; or www.haa.harvard.edu. For infor- speaker TBA. Tercentenary Theatre. from 11:30 (time varies by school). mation on all other professional or gradu- Kennedy School Commencement Ad Alumni Parade, 1:45. The Old Yard. ate school events, visit their respective dress by Kolokotrones University Profes- The Annual Meeting of the Harvard websites. sor Paul Farmer, M.D. ’88, Ph.D. ’90, fol- Alumni Association, 2:30, with speeches The Harvard Information Center, Holy- lowed by a reception. Time and place TBA. by President Faust and President Sirleaf. oke Center, is open every day except Sun- Senior Class Day Exercises, at 2, with Tercentenary Theatre. day, 9 to 5 (telephone: 617-495-1573). the Harvard and Ivy Ora- tions and actress Amy A Special Notice Regarding Commencement Exercises Poehler. Tercentenary Thursday, May 26, 2011 Theatre. Morning Exercises Law School Class Day, To accommodate the increasing number of those wishing to attend Harvard’s Commencement Exercises, the follow- 2:30, with actor Alec Bald- ing guidelines are proposed to facilitate admission into Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement Morning: win, followed by a recep- • Degree candidates will receive a limited number of tickets to Commencement. Parents and guests of degree candi- tion. Holmes Field. dates must have tickets, which they will be required to show at the gates in order to enter Tercentenary Theatre. Seating Business School Class capacity is limited, however there is standing room on the Widener steps and at the rear and sides of the Theatre for view- Day Ceremony, 2:30, with ing the exercises. Kathy Giusti, M.B.A. ’85, Note: A ticket allows admission into the Theatre, but does not guarantee a seat. Seats are on a first-come basis and can founder and CEO of the not be reserved. The sale of Commencement tickets is prohibited. • Alumni/ae attending their reunions (25th, 35th, 50th) will receive tickets at their reunions. Alumni/ae in classes be- Multiple Myeloma Re- yond the 50th may obtain tickets from the College Alumni Programs Office by calling (617) 496-7001, or through the an- search Foundation, fol- nual Tree Spread mailing sent out in March with an RSVP date of April 29th. lowed by a reception at 4. • Alumni/ae from non-reunion years and their spouses are requested to view the Morning Exercises over large-screen Baker Lawn. televisions in the Science Center, and at designated locations in most of the undergraduate Houses and graduate and pro- Masters’ Receptions fessional Schools. These locations provide ample seating, and tickets are not required. for seniors and guests. The • A very limited supply of tickets will be made available to all other alumni/ae on a first-come, first-served basis through Undergraduate Houses. the Harvard Alumni Association by calling (617) 496-7001. Graduate School of Afternoon Exercises Education Convocation The Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association convenes in Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement at 3. Radcliffe Yard. afternoon. All alumni and alumnae, faculty, students, parents, and guests are invited to attend and hear Harvard’s Presi- dent and featured Commencement Speaker deliver their addresses. Tickets for the afternoon ceremony will be available Graduate School of through the Harvard Alumni Association by calling (617) 496-7001.vJacqueline A. O’Neill, University Marshal Design Class Day at 4,

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MJ11_HSBA_Section.indd 2 4/6/11 11:59 AM Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

WHEN SPECIES COLLIDE highway has increased and regional development has claimed more habitat, more animals have died in collisions with vehicles. Throughways for Wildlife To counter this trend, a group of transportation and wildlife agencies in the n the Rocky Mountains of Colora- south between Denver and Glenwood United States and Canada launched a do, Interstate 70 cuts from east to west Springs. The corridor is a major through- competition last year to design wildlife across what wildlife biologists call the way for mountain goats, bear, Canada lynx, crossings for the nation’s roadways. The I Mountain Corridor—a 144-mile-wide moose, deer, fox, and other animals roaming organizers chose a crossing site near West swath of mixed habitat flowing north and in search of food and mates. As traffic on the Vail Pass—one of the deadliest stretches of I-70 for animals—and challenged landscape architects and engineers “to reweave landscapes for wildlife using new meth- ods, new materials, and new thinking.” Designs arrived from 36 teams in nine countries, representing more than 100 firms. Chairing the five-member international jury that reviewed the five finalists was Charles Waldheim, Irving professor of landscape architecture, chair of that department at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), and a leader in the emerging field of landscape urbanism. “Wildlife crossings, which are common in Europe, are a long-overdue response to the ecological damage the…interstate highway and civil defense systems have done in this

The winning wildlife-crossing design distills multiple habitat types from the surrounding landscape into parallel bands that act as corridors for various animal species. Wide bands provide an open field of view, while narrow forest and shrub bands provide enclosed corridors. Below: A site cross section

caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption caption

Images courtesy of The ARC International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition/ Harvard Magazine 9 HNTB and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates right Now Advertisement OnCe A HARvARD gRAD, ALWAYs A HARvARD gRAD. When you graduated, it said something about you. it still does.

The HNTB and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates design uses pre-cast modular t es vaults for ease of construction. tion of the common pre-cast concrete country,” he says. Cities, he notes, began beam, he explains: “Each vault serves as ssocia to redress the social costs of routing high- abutment, pier, beam, and slab, all in a urg h & A ways through neighborhoods decades ago, single, repetitive element.” The team de- but the public has yet to stem the destruc- signed the low-cost, modular structure kevin jennings ’85 tion of wildlife habitat and populations by as a prototype that can be easily modified highways in more remote areas. and replicated in a regional network. Background: Kevin Jennings serves as the Department of Education’s Assistant In January, the jury unanimously chose The design does more than simply knit Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug- a design called hypar–nature, submitted by together the natural landscape on both Free Schools. As a high school teacher, HNTB Engineering, of New York City, sides of the highway to facilitate wildlife nb n Valke HNTB a n d Mic h ael Va Jennings founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to teamed with Michael Van Valkenburgh crossing passively. It end anti-LGBT bias in K-12 schools and Associates (MVVA), a landscape archi- also distills and inten- make schools safe for every student. tecture firm founded by the GSD’s Eliot sifies the four main Visit harvardmag.

Under his leadership, GLSEN increased professor in practice in the department of types of surrounding com/extras to view the number of Gay-Straight Alliances images from the other in schools from under 50 to 4,300+. landscape architecture, with input from habitat—scree, forest, four finalists. t io n / ecology consultants Applied Ecological shrub, and meadow— Harvard gave Him: Jennings grew up living below the poverty line. A Harvard Services. The winning design takes its into discrete corridors that induce animals scholarship made him the first in his name from its lightweight, super-strong to cross by providing protective tree cov- family to attend college and created “hypar (hyperbolic parabaloid) vaults”— er, areas with open sightlines, and thick limitless opportunities. “Harvard gives

V-shaped concrete ribs, bent obliquely plantings of favorite food sources (grasses, t ure D esig n C o m pe i t ruc people a chance to succeed, to not stay poor and marginalized forever,” he and pinched at each end—that span the sedges, and fruiting shrubs) that extend explains. Harvard’s commitment to equal highway. “A wildlife crossing must sup- across the bridge. To keep creatures from opportunity and access to education for port loads five times greater than conven- straying over the sides, an exposed hypar all has inspired his life’s work. tional bridges, due to the combination of vault borders each side of the landscape, A Harvard grad gives Back: Jennings soils needed to support landscape, plus an creating a V-shaped concrete barrier eight serves on the board of the Harvard allowance for snow and robust landscape feet deep with a 60-degree slope.

Alumni Association, and as a co-chair for n g In fras Wildlife C rossi t io n al undergraduate relations. Why? “Harvard growth over time,” explains Ted Zoli, an At its southwest end, the bridge forms changed my life, and I am so incredibly HNTB vice president who is an expert on a level plateau between the mid-slope of a

grateful. I will always be proud to be a bridges. The hypar vaults are an adapta- ridge and the overpass. The northeast end ARC Int er n a Harvard man and help the university be a strong and vibrant place.” BMW of descends to a seasonal wetland that cap- north America is pleased to support A design from Zwarts & Jansma Archi- tures water to attract wildlife. Here ani- kevin and his efforts with a donation tects (below) emphasizes curves as a mals as large as lynx and coyotes can enter T h e of t esy to Harvard’s Open gate. design principle; a design from the Olin Studio (bottom) uses preplanted mod- a tunnel to cross beneath the road. Atop

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X CS5 CS4 right now into the surrounding wild landscape, fol- Pros of Propinquity lowing routes where ecologists have identified existing animal activity. “Along the edges of these corridors we proposed to The “Water fell existing pine trees that have been affected by the pine beetle [a prolific pest],” Zoli explains. “The felled trees are then Cooler” Effect arranged along the edge of the corridor to serve as both habitat and as a natural hatting around the water still matters—even in an age of e-mail, obstruction, eliminating the need for con- cooler may yield more than of- social networking, and video conferenc- ventional fencing.” fice gossip; it may help scien- ing. (Their analysis, “Does Collocation MVVA, Van Valkenburgh says, was Ctists produce better research, Inform the Impact of Collaboration?” ap- “essential in merging the imperatives of according to Harvard Medical School peared in the online journal PLoS ONE in structural design with the imperatives of (HMS) investigators. December.) ecological systems.” In particular, his firm The benefits of collaboration are well ac- “Our data show that if the first and last “provided the landscape framework for cepted in the scientific world, but research- authors are physically close, they get cited the structure developed by HNTB, found ers with the HMS Center for Biomedical more, on average,” says research assistant low-impact ways to accommodate the Informatics wondered whether physical Kyungjoon Lee. As that distance grew, grade change on both sides, and created proximity affects the quality of those col- citations generally declined. (Typically, the appropriate conditions for plants and laborations: Do scientists who have more the first author is a graduate student or trees to thrive and grow.” MVVA had not “face time” with colleagues produce higher- postdoctoral fellow and the last is a more designed a wildlife bridge before, he says, impact results? To test the hypothesis, they senior faculty member; they are often af- but is often called upon to build landscape examined data from 35,000 biomedical sci- filiated with the same lab, but do not nec- connections across infrastructure, mini- ence papers published between 1999 and essarily work closely together.) The effect mize environmental impact, and work 2003, each with at least one Harvard author. didn’t hold true for other author combina- creatively within ecological parameters: The articles appeared in 2,000 journals and tions, such as first and third; in fact, the “The unusual part was that these con- involved 200,000 authors. middle authors normally don’t interact cerns were much more in the foreground, After analyzing the number of cita- much on a project, Lee notes. The team whereas the social and cultural use of the tions each paper generated (a standard also found that, on average, a paper with landscape, which is usually very impor- way to gauge article quality) and the dis- four or fewer authors based in the same tant to the projects we undertake, was not tances between coauthors, they conclud- building was cited 45 percent more than really a determining factor.” ed that personal contact, especially be- one with authors in different buildings— Outwardly, the five final designs looked tween an article’s first and last authors, “So if you put people who have the poten- strikingly similar. But the winning pro- tial to collaborate close together,” he says, posal, one juror wrote, “is not only emi- In this 3D representation of the relation- “it might lead to better results.” nently possible; it has the capacity to ship between collaboration and mean Lee was first author on the study; the citation impact in the Longwood Medical transform what we think of as possible.” Area, each building’s height reflects the principal investigator was center co-direc- Specifically, Waldheim says, the HNTB number of citations of papers originating tor Isaac Kohane, the Henderson professor design “prioritized the flora and fauna in the building, while the color gradient of pediatrics and health sciences and tech- over the other considerations, yet the (from gray/low to blue/high) represents the nology. Kohane had long suspected that proportion of publications originating from transportation engineering was equally that building in which both first and last proximity promotes collaboration, despite a strong and thoroughly integrated—you authors work in the building. lack of hard evidence, so he secured funding didn’t see a compromise in which wildlife was secondary to bridge design, or vice versa. The outcome was greater than the sum of individual components.” vjane roy brown michael van valkenburgh e-mail address: [email protected] michael van valkenburgh associates website: www.mvvainc.com charles waldheim e-mail address: [email protected] arc competition finalists’ designs 5, e14279; 2010 o S O N E 5, e14279; www.arc-competition.com/finalists. php al. PL al. L ee e t K . 12 May - June 2011 right now

and recruited Lee and others for the study. study. Then they built a three-dimen- up chatting a lot in the center’s kitchen- Gathering data was much harder than sional image of authors’ locations, calcu- ette. “I became more active in exchang- Lee expected. A team of 15 undergradu- lated the distances separating them, and ing ideas because of this experience,” Lee ates used floor plans, staff directories, evaluated the relationship between cita- recalls. “Science is all about communi- and their feet to track down the specific tions and distances. cating your ideas so others can build on office and laboratory addresses of the More research is needed to explain them.” vdebra bradley ruder 7,300 Harvard authors why proximity seems to enhance sci- across several Harvard entific productivity, the group says, but isaac kohane e-mail: Visit harvardmag. campuses and Massa- Lee knows firsthand the difference it can [email protected] com/extras to see a chusetts General Hospi- make. Early on, he worked on the fourth kyungjoon lee e-mail: map of collocation tal, as well as addresses [email protected] and collaboration floor of Countway Library, while Kohane at Harvard Medical for the non-Harvard sci- was one flight above. Eventually, Kohane interactive map: School. entists included in the moved to Lee’s floor, and the two wound http://healthmap.org/coco

mining “whoosh” moments cial hierarchy, that meant people had very few, if any, existential choices to make. But today, the burden of choice has been The Dilemma of Choice thrust upon the individual. The problem is how to choose in such a way that one constructs a worthy life. n Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Cap- ing matters. “The contemporary threat of Kelly believes it is possible to train our tain Ahab pursues a great white whale nihilism is different from the one faced by characters to respond reflexively dur- that years earlier bit off his leg. Ahab, nineteenth-century Victorians,” he says, ing meaningful moments in life. His first I says Sean Dorrance Kelly, is on a mono- because never before have people had so book for a lay audience, All Things Shining: maniacal quest to answer an existential much individual autonomy. Until relative- Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in question: Did the “inscrutable” whale act ly recently, shared culture largely dictated a Secular Age, draws on the traditional can- unthinkingly, or with calculated malice? how people would live their lives: there on of Western literature, from Homer to Caught up in “monotheistic fanaticism,” was a system of beliefs, reinforced by so- Dante to Melville, as a means of laying out Ahab wants to know a solution to the problem if there is purpose be- of contemporary nihilism: hind what happened the cultivation of a knowl- to him—and, by exten- edge or understanding so sion, in the universe. deep that when the need to But Ahab is asking the choose is called for—how- wrong kind of ques- ever unexpectedly—its tion, Kelly believes: the possessors will act correct- kind that can never be ly almost without thinking, answered. drawing from their com- Kelly, chair of Har- munity or cultural heritage vard’s philosophy de- the knowledge of what to partment, is embarked do. One of the few such sa- instead on a project cred or “whoosh” moments to understand how, in (as Kelly calls them) left in what he characterizes modern life occurs, he says, as a largely post-mono- when a crowd rises spon- theistic world, one can taneously to cheer a great live a meaningful life. play in a sports arena. Most In a society without people can identify with widespread belief in that reaction, and he hopes God, and increasingly awareness of this visceral without a shared set understanding can lead to of common cultural the development of other values, he sees the po- kinds of consequential, tential for nihilism, the shared experiences. rejection of all religious “We’re a bit like Mel- and moral principles ville’s Ishmael,” Kelly says to the point that noth- of his coauthor, Hubert

Illustration by Neil Brigham Harvard Magazine 13 right now

Dreyfus of the University of California, Berkeley, and himself. “We’re taking readers through the history of the West, look- Leavitt ing for places where they might find or recognize some way of life that’s worthy of admiration” so they “can decide wheth- & Peirce er to appropriate any of that for themselves.” The book adopts “a master-ap- prentice” model of learning, “except that 1316 Massachusetts Avenue Freshman Smoker. Reprint of lithographer some of your role models can be literary Cambridge, MA 02138 Close, Graham & Scully’s 1911 depiction characters...who recognize distinctions of 617-547-0576 of Harvard “club life” and its “price to pay”. Reprinted on heavy matte stock. 34 1/16” x worth in the world” that make “their lives 19 1/16”. Shipped tubed; $39.95 (plus $9.95 S&H). become meaningful.” Although the book’s argument is grounded culturally in the Western tradition, “the general strategy of finding texts Harvard College John Harvard recaptured in Bookends. that you can relate to” applies to other this famous U.S.A. – made cultures as well, he points out. During Tercentenary and exclusively a recent speech in China on general edu- map by Edwin designed for cation, he recalls, he told the story of his J. Schruers ’28. Leavitt & Peirce. wife’s 92-year-old grandmother, whose Painstakingly Antiqued brass reproduced on over zinc. 7” h x education from the age of seven consisted quality “antique” 4”w x 6”d. Over primarily of memorizing enormous quan- stock 33 5/8” x 5 pounds each. tities of classical Chinese literature and 24 1/4”. Shipped $150.00 per philosophy—500 lines of poetry a day as tubed; $39.95 statuette (plus (plus $9.95 S&H). $12.95 S&H). she grew older. “At a certain point she asked her mother, ‘Why do I have to do this? These poems don’t mean anything to me,’” Kelly relates. “And her mother said to her, ‘It is true they don’t mean anything to you now. But Support Harvard Magazine someday, an event will occur in your life and the moment it occurs, a line of poetry will pop into your head, totally unbidden. As a special thank-you And the event will make sense in terms for a donation of $100 or of the line of poetry and the line of poetry more, you can receive Memorial Church will make sense in terms of the event, and in that way, the meaning of your life will be the newly designed Weld Boat House Harvard Stadium tied up with the history of your entire culture. You will become a person who lives 2010 Edition Harvard The College Pump Glasses, satin-etched on the shoulders of the great culture that you have been brought up in.’” with four new Kelly believes everyone has “the abil- Harvard ity to cultivate in ourselves the skills re- scenes. quired to let us be grabbed by distinctions of meaning and worth” in the same way. Individuals have to work hard to become open to such revelatory moments, to learn to see and respond to the world in the context of cultural history. But humans, he believes, “are the kind of being that has the capacity to bring ourselves and everything around us out at its best.” vjonathan shaw To donate, please visit sean dorrance kelly website: www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~sdkelly/ www.harvardmagazine.com/donate index.html

14 May - June 2011 Montage Art, books, diverse creations

16 Open Book 18 Street-level Ballet 19 Do or Die 22 Poetic Paschen 25 Off the Shelf 26 Chapter and Verse

Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks at home on Martha’s Vineyard, one setting in her new novel

These days, now a mother of two, she works from the quiet of her home on Martha’s Vine- yard—the source of inspiration for her newest book. Caleb’s Cross- ing, appearing this May, tells the story of Caleb Cheeshahteau- mauk, a member of the Vine- yard’s Wampanoag tribe, whom Brooks first discovered on a map marking the birthplace of Harvard’s first Native American graduate. “I thought it would be really in- Pride of the Indian College teresting to talk to him about that experience, because I was thinking civil-rights A new novel stars Harvard’s first Native American graduate, A.B. 1665. era, maybe 1965, kind of vintage-y,” Brooks recalls. “And then I learned it was 1665 and by amelia atlas that was an incredible sort of mind-shift experience…I started to wonder about ot every novelist can of Sani Abacha’s military regime. “To cut Harvard and what it was like in the seven- say she owes her career to a long story short, they didn’t like report- teenth century. ” the Nigerian secret police, ers looking into that, and they threw me It’s those austere beginnings that Caleb’s but the Pulitzer Prize-win- in the slammer in Port Harcourt,” she says. Crossing endeavors to recreate as it covers ning Australian writer Ger- Her first reaction wasn’t fear of prison but Cheeshahteaumauk’s journey from the aldine N Brooks, RI ’06, likes to give credit of her biological clock: “I thought, ‘Oh, Vineyard wilderness to the rigid world where credit is due. While investigating gee, if they keep me for too long I’ll be too of English Puritanism. Narrated by Be- Shell Oil malfeasance in the Niger Delta as old to get pregnant,’” Brooks recalls, ex- thia Mayfield—a precocious minister’s a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street plaining her decision to trade journalism daughter whose frustrations with Puritan Journal, Brooks ended up on the wrong side for the relatively risk-free world of fiction. life find an outlet in Caleb—the novel un-

Harvard Magazine 15 Montage earths a little-known chapter of Harvard The Harvard of 1661 is as alien to Caleb history: the establishment of an Indian College, funded by idealistic missionaries as it would doubtless be to recent graduates. (who aimed to expand the reach of their faith among Native Americans) and abet- tilities between the Wampanoags and the the college building too gorgeous for a ted by administrators (who hoped to milk English settlers in King Philip’s War of wilderness. But the grace of its design the missionaries for funds during Har- 1675-76, this aspect of Harvard’s founding cannot have been matched by skill in its vard’s leaner years; Brooks quotes then- mission all but disappeared.) construction, for its shingle roof sagged president Charles Chauncey lamenting The Harvard of 1661 is as alien to Ca- woefully in several places and the sills “the loud groans of the sinking college”). leb, newly arrived in Cambridge, as it showed signs of well-advanced rot.” The Harvard’s 1650 charter specifies that the would doubtless be to recent graduates young scholars, only a handful per class, College’s purpose was to provide for “the accustomed to luxurious dining halls and survive on carefully rationed meals, some- education of the English and Indian youth manicured athletic fields. Bethia vividly times even paying their tuition with an of this country, in knowledge and godli- describes the down-at-the-heels institu- all-too-rare side of beef. “I was laughing ness.” (Alas, with the escalation of hos- tion: “I had heard that some had deemed because everybody was up in arms about

The more scientists study the social insects, they more they are amazed. o p e n b o o k Thomas D. Seeley, Ph.D. ’78, professor and chair of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell, combines vocation and avocation, most recently in his delightful new book, Honeybee Democracy (Princeton, $29.95). He has the Honeybee confidence and good humor to include a photograph of himself in 1974, longer of hair and more casual of dress, studying a swarm of his favorite House Hunting species. The author note on the book jacket advises that he is “a passionate beekeeper.” His writing, beginning with this excerpt from the prologue, does his subjects honor.

eekeepers have long observed, will do something truly amazing; they consensus-seeking assembly is certainly and lamented, the tendency of their will hold a democratic debate to choose important to behavioral biologists inter- Bhives to swarm in the late spring their new home. ested in how social animals make group and early summer. When this happens, This book is about how honeybees decisions. I hope it will also prove impor- the majority of a colony’s members—a conduct this democratic decision-making tant to neuroscientists studying the neu- crowd of some ten thousand worker process. We will examine the way that ral basis of decision making, for there are bees—flies off with the old queen to several hundred of a swarm’s oldest bees intriguing similarities between honeybee produce a daughter colony, while the rest spring into action as nest-site scouts and swarms and primate brains in the ways stays at home and rears a new queen to begin exploring the countryside for dark that they process information to make perpetuate the parental colony. The mi- crevices. We will see how these house decisions.… One important lesson that grating bees settle on a tree branch in hunters evaluate the potential dwelling we can glean from the bees…is that even a beardlike cluster and then hang there places they find; advertise their discov- in a group composed of friendly individu- together for several hours or a few days. eries to their fellow scouts with lively als with common interests, conflict can During this time, these homeless insects dances; debate vigorously to choose the be a useful element in a decision-making The author in 1974— best nest site, then rouse the process. That is, it often pays a group to already infatuated with entire swarm to take off; and argue things carefully through to find the Apis melllifera—studies finally pilot the cloud of air- best solution to a tough problem. a swarm choosing its home. borne bees to its home. This is My second motive for writing this typically a hollow tree several book is to share with beekeepers and miles away. general readers the pleasures I have ex- My motive for writing this perienced in investigating swarms of hon- book about democracy in honeybees. I can thank these beautiful little eybee swarms is twofold. First, creatures for many hours of the purest I want to present to biologists joy of discovery, interspersed among and social scientists a coher- (to be sure) days and weeks of fruitless ent summary of the research and sometimes discouraging work. To on this topic that has been give a sense of the excitement and chal- conducted over the last 60 lenge of studying the bees, I will report years…. The story of how hon- numerous personal events, speculations, eybees make a democratic de- and thoughts about conducting scientific

john g. seeley john g. cision based on a face-to-face, studies.

16 May - June 2011 rightMontage now not getting a hot breakfast,” Brooks jokes, Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, A.B. 1665, as imagined by referring to the 2009 scandale in which Stephen Coit ’71, M.B.A. ’77 Harvard’s dining-hall cutbacks made the New York Times. “I was like—hot breakfast?!” “It was intriguing to take Like her previous works (Year of Wonders, the scant evidence and try to People of the Book, and the Pulitzer-winning build a portrait of somebody March), Caleb’s Crossing borrows liberally who is plausible,” Brooks ex- from the historical record. Brooks has a plains. Still, the depth of her journalist’s zeal for fact-finding, but tries research is more than evident: not to let her reportorial impulses over- Bethia’s musings take her on take the imaginative work. “I like to let the detours into everything from story tell me what I need to know. I love the grammar of the Wampa- libraries and archives but I try not to get noag language to the dangers carried away to the point where some fan- of colonial midwifery. tastic bit of research I stumbled on is going Fittingly, Brooks began to shape the plot rather than vice versa.” researching the novel while Because very few letters and diaries from a fellow at the Radcliffe In- seventeenth-century American women stitute. Although she found survive, the process of conjuring the narra- few remaining traces of tor’s voice became one of the pleasures and seventeenth-century Cam- challenges of Caleb’s Crossing. Whereas Ca- bridge to inspire her, Har- leb, his friend Joel Iacoonis—who would vard archaeologists have tephen Coit have been a fellow Indian graduate had he since excavated part of the S not been murdered by seafaring marauders foundation of the Indian College in the about recovering this lost part of his- on the way to Commencement—and even Yard, near present-day Matthews Hall tory is palpable: “My dream is, they find Bethia’s family are drawn from real-life (see “Pay Dirt in Yard Dig,” July-August a shard of pewter with CC carved in the figures, Bethia herself is wholly fictional. 2008, page 80). Brooks’s excitement bottom of it.”

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Harvard Magazine 17 Montage Street-level Ballet A woman, some orphans, and some dancers in Panama

nlike teaching or medicine, director of the National Ballet of Panama, the arts don’t offer an obvi- who had recently launched her own NGO ous mechanism for commu- to connect social service and dance and nity service. Yet Anna Else was encouraging her dancers to volunteer tend- PasternakU ’07, who grew up as both a with youths at risk. ed. “The California surfer and a versatile dancer Reflecting on “what a huge difference U.S. embassy (ballet, modern, jazz, Afro-Cuban, Afro- dance had made in my staff were beside Brazilian) educated at San Francisco’s life, in things like themselves—they got a School of the Arts, had long hoped to self-esteem and huge amount of great publicity,” find a way to combine dance with body awareness,” Pasternak says. “And the best part of it some form of social outreach. Pasternak felt a click all was the growth rate in the kids. You Last spring, she launched when she learned of the could see it backstage in things like trust.” Movement Exchange (www. century-old Malumbo (The original volunteers, who lived both movementexchanges. Orphanage outside Pan- at the orphanage and in the city during org), and attracted an ama City, housing mostly their visit, formed continuing relation- international group girls, many HIV-positive, ships, now kept up on Facebook, with the of volunteers to Pan- between the ages of nine and Panamanian dancers.) ama to teach dance 17. Recognizing an opportunity, Donations made at the performance, to orphans and she invited members of a Califor- and received from other sources, gener- other at-risk youth; nia dance network she belonged ated enough revenue to pay local teach- on July 4, the artists to down to Panama to teach the ers to maintain weekly dance classes at performed with their orphans dance. Panama’s minis- the orphanage. In January, Indiana Uni- students at Panama’s ter of culture donated use of the ba- versity sent a second National Theater. Paster- roque, century-old National Theater wave of dancers, who nak speaks Spanish fluently, for a community dance event, the U.S. lived at the orphan- Visit harvardmag.com/ but “The amazing thing about embassy’s cultural-affairs department age and worked each extras to see videos of doing this with dance,” she helped fund necessities like security at night with two oth- Anna Pasternak’s works. explains, “is that the language the theater. er groups of at-risk barrier doesn’t exist. People connect.” Fourteen volunteers joined Pasternak youths. “We put together a kind of flash After college, Pasternak did some globe- that June; ranging in age from 17 to 48, they mob in a square in the old district of the trotting—traveling in the Middle East, came from both coasts of the United States city—bringing dance to the streets,” Pas- for example, and teaching surfing in the and even Singapore, and included modern ternak says. “We did a huge performance Basque region of Spain—and fetched up dancers, ballerinas, a tap dancer, and a Chi- in public.” Last year’s volunteer group, in Panama, where she ran a volunteer nese ribbon dancer. “What united them plus many additions, will return and program with European and Ameri- was their belief in dance as a way to prepare another National Theater perfor- can students for a nongovernmental foster cross- mance this July 4. organization (NGO), Global Brigades. cultural un- “I feel like I did it backwards,” Paster- Meanwhile, she wondered how to keep derstanding, nak says. “I’ve talked to people in Silicon up her dancing. (In college, she had trav- self-esteem, Valley who are social entrepreneurs— eled to Cuba to pursue that passion, and and youth they have this idea, then they build this also took time off to perform as a Brazil- empowerment,” website and try to find funding, and then ian passista—those samba-dancing wom- Pasternak says. implement the idea. I did all the imple- en in spectacular, skimpy cos- The Na- mentation first, and all these things hap- tumes celebrating Carnaval in tional Theater pened—but I didn’t have a website, Rio—for three months in Ja- event on July 4 didn’t write a mission statement, or plan

pan.) Fortuitously, she put more than 70 things out.” Even now, Pasternak lives asternak met Lila Troitiño, dancers onstage; “nowhere—I have no home base.” She is A nna P for many of the applying for a Fulbright Scholarship in Anna Pasternak orphans it was Mexico City, and is in love with the idea leaps, flies, and their first public of international travel and “building com- does what can look like performance. Ad- munities through dance,” she says. “I also advanced yoga mission was free, and need to figure out how I’m actually going poses as she dances. more than 250 people at- to make a living at this!” vcraig lambert of c ourtesy photographs

18 May - June 2011 rightMontage now Do or Die The enigma of Mahatma Gandhi by Sugata Bose

hen India won inde- myriad differences of religion and caste. It pendence at the famous is the latter struggle that forms the sub- midnight hour of August ject matter of this absorbing new book by W 14-15, 1947, Mahatma Joseph Lelyveld ’58, A.M. ’60, the Pulitzer Gandhi stayed away from the festivi- Prize-winning former executive editor of ties in New Delhi. Instead, he fasted in a the New York Times. predominantly Muslim neighborhood of “I merely touch on or leave out crucial Calcutta, quietly mourning the great hu- periods and episodes,” Lelyveld tells us in man tragedy that accompanied what he his author’s note, “in order to hew in this called the vivisection of his motherland. essay to specific narrative lines I’ve cho- The “great soul,” having been unable to sen.” The spotlight is trained on Gandhi prevent the subcontinent’s partition into the social reformer, rather than on “the two countries along ostensibly religious generalissimo of satyagraha,” as the Mahat-

lines, was afflicted with a sense of failure. ma described himself—especially satyagra- Bettmann/Cor b is The supreme leader ha (his technique of passive resistance) in A formal, undated portrait of Gandhi as a Joseph Lelyveld, Great of India’s struggle the sense of a quest for truth through mass young man Soul: Mahatma Gandhi for freedom from political activity. Lelyveld’s journalistic Gandhi’s life that spanned two widely sep- and His Struggle with India British rule had postings in New Delhi and Johannesburg arated shores of the Indian Ocean. (Knopf, $28.95) struggled with In- sparked an intellectual curiosity that en- V.S. Naipaul once described Gandhi as dia to transcend its ables him to probe the deep connections in the least Indian of Indian leaders. Lelyveld

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Harvard Magazine 19 Montage

deftly explores this paradox, focusing on the ways in which JOIN US! Gandhi’s early South African experience formed the later Enjoy these coming events Mahatma. It was a slow trans- for the formation. The young man who arrived in South Africa as friends of a lawyer in 1893 to represent harvard magazine an Indian Muslim mercantile firm did not take up the cause of the hapless Indian inden- tured laborers in that coun- Spring Event try until 1913. It took time for this campaigner for Indian may 11, 2011 rights to shed the racial preju- A reception and book signing dice that he harbored toward with joanne chang ’97, Africans. Gandhi’s views on chef, restaurant owner, the evils of caste-based un- and author of touchability took shape in

Flour: Spectacular Recipes from South Africa. His first politi- via G etty I mages K eystone amma- Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe cal speeches were delivered within the precincts of South murr center lounge Africa’s mosques, a sign of the Harvard University commitment of this Hindu F ran c e/ G K eystone- leader to making common cause with the Gandhi (center) as a practicing Muslims. attorney in South Africa. That Gandhi honed satyagraha, and his ians to their land from 1919 onwards. approach to crafting Indian unity across The satyagraha of 1913 leading to the lines of caste and religion, in South Africa repeal of the £3 annual tax on inden- between 1906 and 1913 is well known. He tured workers provided the perfect fi- would deploy both on a much wider scale nale for Gandhi’s two decades in South in India from 1919 onward. What is new in Africa, firmly establishing, on the eve of Lelyveld’s treatment of Gandhi’s South Af- his return to India, his reputation as a rican years is the analysis of “the most in- leader of passive resistance. As an expa- timate, also ambiguous relationship of his triate patriot himself, Gandhi was quite lifetime”: with Hermann Kallenbach, an comfortable with a conception of India architect of German Jewish background, that transcended the territorial limits of Fall Event with whom Gandhi set up Tolstoy Farm the subcontinent. Lelyveld ably recounts in the Transvaal, leaving his wife behind. the story of Gandhi’s ascent to the lead- 2011 Sifting through the letters that “Upper ership of the Indian National Congress Check our website: House” (Gandhi) wrote to “Lower House” with the support of Indian Muslims harvardmagazine.com/friends (Kallenbach), Lelyveld seeks to answer distressed about the fate of the Turk- for details about our fall the question, “What kind of couple were ish Khilafat (Caliphate) and the loss of friends event. Coming soon! they?” He devotes an entire chapter to this Ottoman territories at the end of World relationship, but its relevance to the over- War I. The Mahatma fused the symbols all aim of the book is unclear. Key cultural of Indian nationalism and Islamic uni- differences between American and Indian versalism—the spinning wheel and the For more information about the attitudes to same-sex friendships make crescent—together in the anti-colonial friends of Lelyveld’s suggestion of a homoerotic and mass movement of non-cooperation be- harvard magazine, possibly homosexual relationship specu- tween 1920 and 1922. Mohammad Ali Jou- please contact Felecia Carter lative at best. Whatever its nature, it is a har, the votary of a transnational Islamic at 617-496-6694 or visit us at: huge exaggeration to see the relationship movement with a lasting legacy, was his harvardmagazine.com/friends as the “most intimate” of Gandhi’s life. closest Muslim comrade in those years. After parting ways in 1914, Kallenbach Lelyveld notes that the remote cause of briefly returned to India in 1937 to make the Khilafat was important in the rise an unsuccessful attempt to enlist Gandhi’s of Gandhi, even though he adds the un- support for the Zionist cause. Gandhi con- necessary clarification that “it would be sistently supported the rights of Palestin- simply wrong, not to say grotesque, to

20 May - June 2011 Montage set up Gandhi as any kind of precursor possessed ‘do or die’ Gandhi, the fervent A Unique to bin Laden.” During later years of reli- commander.” “Your president,” Gandhi gious conflict, Gandhi would often look had said to Louis Fischer, a young Ameri- Employee Benefit back nostalgically on the “glorious days” can journalist and future biographer, in of Hindu-Muslim unity during the non- June 1942, “talks about the Four Free- Program for cooperation and Khilafat movement. doms. Do they include the freedom to be Gandhi led mass agitations against the free?” The fervent commander of the Quit All Faculty, Staff British raj in roughly decennial cycles. India movement (described by Gandhi Lelyveld mentions the civil disobedience as “the biggest struggle of my life”) is not and Retirees of movement launched in 1930 with the salt the person of primary interest to Lelyveld. satyagraha (protesting the government’s He turns quickly instead to the struggle Harvard University tax on salt) as its centerpiece, but his nar- within and Gandhi’s final efforts to grap- rative thread for the Depression decade ple with the Hindu-Muslim question. and its Affiliated is supplied by the debates on the caste Gandhi was prepared to be more gener- issue between Gandhi and B.R. Ambed- ous toward Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Hospitals. kar, a member of and spokesman for the Muslim political aspirations than his erst- “Depressed Classes.” Ambedkar, who while lieutenants, Nehru and Vallabhbhai stood for the destruction of the caste sys- Patel, who by then were at the helm of the With the Real Estate Advantage tem, found Gandhi’s attitude toward the Indian National Congress. Yet by the sum- Program, you will receive a cash- “untouchables”—Harijans, or children of mer of 1946, once the British had decided back bonus, outstanding service, God, as he dubbed them—a trifle patron- to quit India, Gandhi was not needed any and the support that you need izing. Lelyveld skillfully unravels the story more and those who had for decades been throughout the buying, selling, of Gandhi’s fast in 1932 against separate his “yes-men” had turned into “no-men.” downsizing and moving processes. electorates for the “Depressed Classes,” “If he’d pushed his case forcefully and pub- For more information about our his anti-untouchability campaign of 1933, licly,” Lelyveld argues plausibly, “the Con- program and to find out about and his stunning characterization of the gress might have found it difficult to pro- upcoming real estate seminars Bihar earthquake of 1934 as divine chas- ceed without him.” But Gandhi chose not and webinars, please contact Gandhi would often look back nostalgically on Beth Duncan at 800-874-0701 x4932 the “glorious days” of Hindu-Muslim unity. [email protected] Harvard Real Estate Services at tisement for the sin of untouchability. The to do so. Instead, in the autumn and winter 617-495-8840 unreason inherent in that statement elic- of 1946, he put himself “almost as far in an ited a rebuke from none other than Rabin- eastward direction as he could get in what www.facultyrealestate.harvard.edu dranath Tagore, the poet who had granted was still India from the center of political ©2011 Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. Coldwell Banker is a registered trademark licensed to Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. An Equal Opportunity Employer. Equal Gandhi the “Great Soul” epithet. decision making in Delhi.” This was the Housing. Owned and operated by NRT LLC. 23287RL 03/11 Lelyveld’s analysis of Gandhi on caste district (now in Bangladesh) of Noakhali, and of the vexed Gandhi-Ambedkar rela- where the Muslim majority had attacked tionship is brilliant. But his lack of inter- Hindu inhabitants in October 1946, and est in covering what he describes as “the where Gandhi wished to prove the two political ins and outs of the movement” communities could still live in amity. entails a loss and a missed opportunity Lelyveld gives the reader a moving de- to explore Gandhi’s ties with younger scription of a tragic lonely figure walk- radicals like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas ing for peace from village to village in Chandra Bose. Gandhi was, after all, pri- Noakhali. Gandhi’s trial by fire in restor- marily the leader of India’s anti-colonial ing a semblance of Hindu-Muslim unity, movement and had vigorous debates with which had been one of his life’s missions, these compatriots on the social and eco- was connected in complex ways, Lelyveld nomic reconstruction of free India. contends, to a renewed experiment with Lelyveld is right on the mark in sug- his vow of celibacy. (This experiment gesting that Gandhi was “never more elu- took the form of his sharing a bed with his sive or complex” than in the final decade grand-niece Manu, much to the conster- of his life, as he sought to balance his val- nation of some of his devoted followers.) ADMINISTERED BY ues with “the strategic needs of his move- By “any secular this-worldly accounting,” ment.” The decision to call upon the Brit- Gandhi’s four months in Noakhali did not Harvard Real Estate Services ish to “quit India” in August 1942 reveals, yield any political or social gain. He could IN PARTNERSHIP WITH in Lelyveld’s words, “a flash of the fully not avert partition. Yet Lelyveld is right in Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage

Harvard Magazine 21 Montage observing that in a more intangible way, signed to pressure the government of in- pro-Muslim. The “great soul” fell with the the Mahatma’s final stand remains to dependent India to be less mean-spirited name of the god-king Ram on his lips. this day a source of inspiration—as was in sharing assets with Pakistan, and to brought home to Lelyveld during a visit to treat its own Muslim citizens with digni- Sugata Bose is Gardiner professor of history. His Bangladesh in 2008. In Dhaka and Noakh- ty and honor. The Mahatma had long had books include A Hundred Horizons: The In- ali, Lelyveld found people who remem- a premonition that he would be killed by dian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire bered the Mahatma with reverence. an assassin’s bullet. When that moment fi- and the new His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Gandhi’s final fast wasnot directed nally came, it was a Hindu extremist who Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against against the British raj; rather, it was de- pulled the trigger, believing Gandhi to be Empire, a study of his great-uncle. Poetic Paschen The Chicago poet has spread the good wordings via book, CD—and subway.

oet Elise Paschen ’81 certainly admires is Richard grew up in an artistic home. Her Wilbur, A.M. ’47, JF mother, Maria Tallchief, was the ’50 (see “Poetic Patri- Pfirst American prima ballerina: arch,” November-De- from 1947 to 1960 the beautiful daughter cember 2008, page 36); of an Osage Indian father and a Scots- he returns the regard, Irish mother was the star of the New writing that Paschen’s York City Ballet. Tallchief and principal poems “draw upon a choreographer George Balanchine were dream life which can married from 1946 to 1952, but Paschen deeply tincture the is the only child of Tallchief and her sec- waking world.” He ond husband, Chicago contractor Henry observed of “Okla- “Buzz” Paschen. As a girl, Paschen did try homa Home”—a quiet, ballet, briefly, but “knew at a young age haunting verse that that I wanted to be a writer,” she says. She draws on the poet’s recalls reciting Blake’s “The Tiger” for her Osage ancestry—that mother at the age of eight. “I lived in my it “magically and mov- Elise Paschen imagination,” she says, “and loved writing ingly enters the con- poems, short stories, plays.” sciousness of another person in another 1991 she secured an international grant As author of the collections Infidelities time and place.” from the National Endowment for the (1996) and Bestiary (2009), Paschen has Paschen also helped bring the poetic Arts to send two poets, both Native evoked poignant moments, feelings, and art to millions of listeners and readers American women, to England on a reading J ennifer G irard ideas in lines crafted with lapidary care, through her work as executive director tour, and went with them. While traveling working in traditional meters and forms of the New York-based Poetry Society of by Tube in London, Paschen looked up to and often using rhyme. Among poets she America (PSA) from 1988 until 2001. In see a seventeenth-century sonnet by Mi- chael Drayton—“Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part”— displayed in the car, and imagined something similar in New York City subways and buses. She dismissed the idea as unrealistic, but several months after her return a to New York, got a call from New York City Transit: its president had been traveling in London, seen the Poems on the Under- ground displays, and wondered This Poetry in Motion poster offers a Chicago-specific version of Paschen’s poem “Taxi.” iety of ameri c so c iety of the P oetry of c ourtesy

22 May - June 2011 Harvardnew books from Press

his maJesTy’s undersTandinG The field noTes on enVironmenTal opponenT Global Trade park chunG hee era science and naTure healTh Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s elhanan helpman The Transformation of South Korea edited by Fourth Edition Struggle against Empire edited by michael r. canfield dade W. moeller “Elhanan Helpman is among the suGaTa bose byunG-kook kim & “If there is a heaven, and I am foremost trade theorists of his ezra f. VoGel “This eminently readable book, “Beautifully explores the generation. In this splendid allowed entrance, I will ask the outgrowth of a course character and charisma of “This remarkable book will book, he demonstrates that for no more than an endless taught by the author at Harvard, the man, while providing an establish itself as the most he can also write successfully living world to walk through provides a modern and up-to- elegant and incisive account significant work on the Park for the public. This is welcome and explore . . . Along the way I date overview of the broad of one of the most important period.” news for those who value an would expect to meet kindred field of environmental health. phases of the struggle for — Stephan Haggard, University informed democracy.” spirits, among whom would be An excellent work.” Indian independence.” of California, San Diego — Jagdish Bhagwatil, the authors of the essays in — Ronald L. Kathren, $55.00 —Homi K. Bhabha author of In Defense of this book.” Washington State Belknap Press / $35.00 Globalization — E. O. Wilson, University (review of Belknap Press / $23.95 from the Foreword previous edition) $27.95 $79.95 now in paperback

surGical anaTomy of The The idea of naTural The head and neck Generalissimo JusTice experimenTs of edited by Chiang Kai-shek and the amarTya sen hisTory parViz Janfaza, m.d. Struggle for Modern China h An Economist Best edited by Joseph b. nadol, Jr., m.d. Jay Taylor Book of the Year Jared diamond & roberT J. Galla, m.s.i. h A Financial Times h A Globe and Mail James a. robinson richard l. fabian, m.d. Best History Book of Best Book of the Year William W. monTGomery, “A short book packed with the Year h A New Statesman m.d. huge ideas.” Belknap Press / $19.95 Top Ten Book of the harVard uniVersiTy press $350.00 Decade — Nature WWW.HUP.HARVARD.EDU Belknap Press / $22.95 Belknap Press / $18.95 BLOG: HARVARDPRESS.TYPEPAD.COM TEL: 800.405.1619

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if the PSA might help start an analogous Attention Class of 2012... initiative. Poetry in Motion, launched in New York in 1992, went national in 1996, spreading to more than 20 cities. By 2001, ENROLL NOW! Paschen says, “We were reaching more than 13 million people a day with poetry in subways and buses across the country.” COLLEGE APPLICATION When she ran the PSA, Paschen’s ambition was “to put poetry at the crossroads BOOT CAMP of American life, to make poetry visible, to make poetry accessible.” Since then, Intensive 4-day workshop in Cambridge, MA she has edited a series of print antholo- gies: Poetry Speaks, Poetry Speaks to Children, Summer 2011 and the most recent, Poetry Speaks Who I Complete your college applications with admissions pros: Am; all three include CDs of poets reading “We reached more than 13 million people a day with poetry.”

their works, as well. The first two made the New York Times bestseller list, “which is unheard-of for poetry,” she says, and each sold more than 100,000 copies. Since 1999, she has continued her poetry-fostering mission by teaching in the Writing Pro- gram at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschen was fortunate in her mentors. At Harvard she studied with Sea- mus Heaney and Robert Fitzgerald, and was poetry editor of the Harvard Advocate. “You should go to Houghton [Library] and look up Yeats’s manuscripts,” Heaney told Paschen at one point. She did. “I discovered how extensively Yeats revised his work,” she recalls. “At the time, as a sophomore, I would write a poem and I thought I was finished with it—that was it! Seamus very gently nudged me to realize that I had to work on my poem and craft it. That moment influenced the rest of my life as a writer—I revise copiously. But it also awakened in me a passion for William Butler Yeats. I went to Oxford after Harvard and did an M.Phil. degree 2011 Commencement & Reunion Guide in twentieth-century literature and wrote Go to www.harvardmagazine.com/commencement my D.Phil. dissertation on Yeats’s revi- sions.” With Fitzgerald, she studied ver- for a complete schedule and live coverage of events. sification, which she compares to a pia- nist practicing scales. “Everything I write brought to you online by is in some form, or meter, or rhythm, like iambic tetrameter,” she says. “I’m now ex- perimenting with prose poems, but it is challenging; I enjoy writing in a set form because it allows me to work in a confined

24 May - June 2011 montage

ment, and Dan Ferber (Califor- Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Re- nia, $29.95). The bad news about framed, by Howard Gardner, Hobbs Off the Shelf the effects of climate change on professor of cognition and education (Ba- Recent books with Harvard connections water supply; favorable habitats sic, $25.99). Daring to invoke the classi- for disease-bearing ticks; and why cal virtues anew, the author continues his warmer oceans promote cholera. quest to influence twenty-first-century Impressionist Children: Childhood, With ideas for better outcomes. education to nurture values and ethics as Family, and Modern Identity in well as information-age pizzazz. French Art, by Greg M. Thomas, Ph.D. Give Smart, by Thomas J. Tierney, M.B.A. ’95 (Yale, $65). Analyzing works iconic and ’80, and Joel L. Fleishman (PublicAffairs, In the Valley of the Shadow, by otherwise from afar (he is chair of fine $23.99). The authors—a Bain leader and James L. Kugel, Starr professor of He- arts at the University of Hong Kong), the then founder of Bridgespan Group, and a brew literature emeritus (Free Press, author decodes art to “illuminate adults’ Duke scholar of philanthropy, respective- $26). The author of How to Read the imaginings” about the little ones’ lives. ly—provide a primer on “philanthropy Bible and teacher of “The Bible and Its that gets results.” Interpreters” (see “Final Architect,” Justice for Hedgehogs, by Ronald January-February 2004, page 36) uses Dworkin ’53, LL.B. ’57, LL.D. ’09 (Harvard, Confederate Minds, by Michael T. Ber- his cancer diagnosis to explore the $35). The legal and moral philosopher (of nath, Ph.D. ’05 (North Carolina, $39.95). wellsprings of religious belief. NYU and University College London) de- In this Civil War sesquicentennial year, the livers perhaps his most imposing book: a University of Miami historian delivers a Triumph of the City, by Edward wide contemplation of value and skepti- sweeping overview of the neglected intel- Glaeser, Glimp professor of economics cism, in which he broaches basic, hard is- lectual and cultural currents accompany- (Penguin, $29.95). A zesty explanation of sues: “It is always appropriate to ask why ing the Southern struggle for political and why, “On a planet with vast amounts of morality requires what we say it does, and national independence. space…we choose cities.” The author never appropriate to say: it just does.” celebrates the great urban invention as Heat & Light: Advice It Happened on the Way to War: A for the Next Genera- Marine’s Path to Peace, by Rye Bar- tion of Journalists, by cott, M.P.A.-M.B.A. ’09 (Bloomsbury, $26). Mike Wallace and Beth From founding a nongovernmental orga- Knobel, M.P.P ’87, Ph.D. ’92 nization in the Kibera slum of Nairobi to (Three Rivers/Crown, $14 serving as a marine intelligence officer in paper). A veteran journal- Iraq and elsewhere, the author vividly de- ist and a Fordham Univer- scribes a young life bridging radically dif- sity assistant professor of ferent kinds of service. communication and media studies merit some at- Sex and the River Styx, by Edward tention—if only for their Hoagland ’54 (Chelsea Green, $27.50; hopeful subtitle alone. $17.95 paper). This tenth collection of essays (and that’s but half his output) finds The Elusive West and the author again exploring subjects from the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763, Mumbai, India’s commercial hub, exem- his interior state of mind to the world’s by Paul W. Mapp, Ph.D. ’01 (North Caro- plifies urban life—even as it juxtaposes wild places and people, from a more aged lina, $49.95). As European powers jostled a luxury golf course and slums. perspective: “There’s a flutter to society for primacy across the Atlantic Ocean, the center of innovation, of environmen- now, a tremulousness,” one piece begins. they knew little about the western two- tal benefit, and of cultural gain. thirds of North America. Mapp, of the Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism College of William and Mary, pioneers a In the Shadow of Slavery, by Judith A. in America, by Margaret Morganroth diplomatic and continental history that Carney and Richard N. Rosomoff ’78, G b erg/ G etty I mages E ells/Bloom Sc ott Gullette ’62, Ph.D. ’75, RI ’87 (Chicago, extends far beyond the Eastern seaboard. ’79 (California, $50; $18.95 paper). The $29). A full-throated analysis of and at- African slaves worked the cotton and tack on a pernicious new “ism.” Sample All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, by tobacco fields, but planted crops they chapter title: “Hormone Nostalgia.” Lan Samantha Chang, M.P.A. ’91, RI ’01 brought with them: millet, sorghum, cof- (Norton, $23.95). In her third book of fee, okra, and watermelon, as freshly ex- Changing Planet, Changing Health, fiction, the director of the Iowa Writers’ plained in this journey through “Africa’s by Paul R. Epstein, associate director, Workshop creates a novel about a writing botanical legacy,” winner of the Frederick Center for Health and Global Environ- school, a poet-professor, and her students. Douglass Book Prize.

Harvard Magazine 25 Montage

space—knowing where Your source for I have to break my line.” Visit harvardmag.com/ Those lines tend extras to see more Commencement to be few in number. images from Poetry Paschen’s poems are in Motion and to hear harvardmagazine.com Paschen read some of sharp arrows piercing her poems. some target in her personal landscape. Infidelities explores both the pleasures and hazards of eros, while the poems in Bestiary take animal life as both their ruling metaphor and, quite often, subject. In traditional forms like the sonnet, villanelle, and even the ancient Eastern ghazal, she plumbs primal themes: birth, death, sex, parenthood, aging. At times the poet’s Osage heritage shines through the words, and one finds in her language the kind of hard-won grace her mother achieved in dance. vcraig lambert Make harvardmagazine.com your one-stop source for Commencement and c hapter reunion information. & verse } Event listings. Get the details on dates, times, and Correspondence on speakers for the week’s events—updated continuously as new information comes in. not-so-famous lost words

}Live coverage. Check back during Commencement More queries from the archive: week for up-to-the-minute coverage of principal events “The dawgondist skaw/that a man and speeches, with audio and video. ever saw/I saw on Vesuvius side/as I wandered one day/in the middle of May.…” (From a poem, possibly by CAST YOUR VOTE 3 the American artist and writer Peter } Tell us your pick for the best Commencement and Class Day speakers in Newell, describing the 1872 eruption Harvard history! Visit harvardmag.com/commencement to vote in our poll. of Mount Vesuvius.) “What was Karl Marx but Macaulay with his heels in the air?” “What the rugged soil denies/The harvest of the mind supplies.” (Attrib- uted to “a sweet New England poet.”) “Reflecting one night on the pains RELIVE GREAT MOMENTS and toils…encountered by those in }Find audio and video of memorable Commencement and Class Day speeches search of what this world calls Plea- from recent years, and scanned coverage of historic addresses from the Harvard sure…I had resolved to quit my native Magazine archives. Plus, memorable student speeches. land forever…and in some remote country…to establish a new charac- SEND US YOUR PHOTOS ter.” (A passage copied into a com- }View “The Essence of Commencement,” photographer monplace book kept by a merchant Jim Harrison’s photo essay on documenting 30 years seaman from 1849 to 1852.) of Harvard pomp and circumstance. Then send us your favorite photo memories from Harvard Commence Send inquiries and answers to “Chap- ment. The best entries will be compiled in an online ter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 slide show, and all submissions will be entered in a Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via sweepstakes to win a set of etched Harvard glasses. Find e-mail to chapterandverse@harvard- information at harvardmag.com/commencement. mag.com.

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26 May - June 2011 fathoming The study of metabolites does an end run around genomics to provide telling clues to your future health metabolism

thimbleful of your blood. To Robert Gersz- there were very few human studies.” But ten, that’s like a window on your well-being. In a steep increase in the number of pub- some cases, it may even let him see into the future lished papers demonstrates how the field of your health. Gerszten and his colleague Greg has grown exponentially since. Im- Lewis work at the leading edge of an emerging new provements in technology and les- field—metabolomics—that promises powerful in- sons from genomics, proteomics, sights into the mechanisms of human health and and transcriptomics—other disease. They study blood metabolites: circulating small mole- broad, data-intensive Acules, such as amino acids, lipids (fats), nucleotides, and carbo- disciplines of bio- hydrates, that are involved in metabolism. Metabolites not only logical science reveal much about your current health—how well you burn fats and engineer- or how deep you can dig when exerting yourself physically—but ing—have fueled can provide hints of what’s to come. Research on the major meta- the pace of dis- bolic killers—diabetes, kidney disease, and heart disease—re- covery. veals critical signs of systemic dysfunction at the molecular level Unlike genom- years before clinical symptoms appear. ic and proteomic In their efforts to understand the human body and cure dis- strategies for prob- ease, scientists thought knowing all the 20,ooo to 25,000 genes in ing human disease, the genome would lead to answers. But the genome encodes—as metabolomics may make a rough approximation—more than a million proteins, each with an almost immediate clinical a special function. Even more frustrating, changes to those pro- impact by allowing doctors to teins (from bonding with lipids, carbohydrates, and so on) lead deliver personalized medicine, to more than 10 million functionally distinct modified proteins. based on metabolic profiling Compared to unraveling the effects and associations with illness of patients. In an astonishing of these numerous entities, metabolomics has a decisive edge: breakthrough published in there are only, at current best guess, about 3,000 to 6,000 metab- Nature Medicine in March, olites of interest. for example (see “The Metabolomics, so named because it describes the metabolic products of the human genome, has existed—at least as a modern scientific concept— since Linus Pauling proposed in the 1950s that one could study breath condensates in order to capture human physiology. But the field has taken off only recently, explains Lewis, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospi- tal (MGH) and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School

sen/getty i m ages (HMS). “If you look back to 2002,” he says, “there were very few cited papers in the world literature, and many of those [looked] only at the metabolites contained in a single r k A nde r ball/Ma Rubbe cell. Even as recently as 2005, By Jonathan Shaw

Harvard Magazine 27 Robert Gerszten man disease.” “Say you go to the doctor and have a blood test,” he continues. “What do we capture in terms of metabolism? Not a ton”: cholesterol, triglyc- erides, and glucose. He points to a densely lined, heavily an- notated chart on his computer that looks as if someone has been twisting strands of spaghetti into patterns with a fork (see illustration). “That’s every known metabolic pathway,” he explains. “Ideally, that is what we would be tapping if we had the tools.”

The Exercise Effect Last year, Gerszten and Lewis ran an experiment to examine the effects of just 10 minutes of exercise on about 200 common metabolites. The pair had asked a group of patients that included healthy people—the “worried well”—to run for approximately As the most proximal reporters, 10 minutes on a treadmill. Blood metabolites capture what is samples were taken before exercise, at peak exercise as the test actually happening in the body. ended, and again an hour later. Both men knew that exer- Fingerprints of Diabetes…,” page 29), Gerszten and colleagues cise confers many health benefits, and Lewis, a former Olympic describe markers that identify people likely to develop diabetes rower, has a background in exercise physiology—the study of more than a decade before any sign of the disease itself appears. the physical changes that take place in the body in response to Gerszten, the director of clinical and translational medicine exercise. Fit individuals, for example, have greater blood volume, in MGH’s cardiology division and an associate professor of more efficient hearts, and a better ability to extract oxygen from medicine, explains: “A gene makes transcripts, transcripts make the blood for the use of working muscles; even their mitochon- proteins, and proteins (or enzymes) make metabolites.” Many dria (the energy-producing organelles within cells) are more steps separate a gene from its ultimate expression, perhaps as abundant. Finally, after adjusting for age, peak exercise capacity a disease, meaning that someone with a gene variant linked to is the most powerful known predictor of the risk of death among heart disease may never become sick. But because metabolites are healthy people and those with cardiovascular disease. Even

“downstream of genetic variation, transcriptional changes, and among those with cardiovascular disease, Gerszten notes, those KEGG post-translational modifications of proteins,” Gerszten says, they capture what is actually happening in the body: “They are the most proximal reporters of any disease status or phenotype.” They also capture the environment. “If you eat some noxious metabolite in your Big Mac,” your blood will reflect that, he says. Genes won’t. For these reasons, A map of the known metabolic Gerszten believes the pathways in the metabolome is “equally, human body shows if not more, important in dizzying com than the human ge- plexity the chem ical reactions that nome” for capturing occur within cells to “the fingerprint of hu- form metabolites.

28 May - June 2011 The Fingerprints of Diabetes...and Other Diseases If exercise is such a bellwether of health, and one’s metabol- bar as high as you could raise it” by excluding thin, fit people ic profile reflects fitness and well-being, might the opposite outright from the study population. “People who develop dia- also be true? Could there be metabolic signatures associated betes are also likely to have a higher fasting glucose level but with human disease? To find out, Robert Gerszten of Harvard we wanted to make glucose equal” to see if anything else was Medical School (HMS) teamed with fellow associate professor affecting the response. of medicine Thomas J. Wang, a cardiologist at Massachusetts “We were struck by what we saw,” he reports. “There were General Hospital affiliated with the Framingham Heart Study, some unbelievably significant differences at baseline in the to see whether metabolic signatures might presage the onset of blood.” Six amino acids were higher in the people who became disease. They began with diabetes, the most metabolic of dis- diabetics than in the controls. Isoleucine, leucine, and valine, as eases, in which the body loses its ability to control blood sugar. well as phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan, were elevated. “The Framingham study, the seminal study that identified “It turns out that these are the most greasy, hydrophobic amino risk factors associated with heart disease, was begun in 1948,” acids,” Gerszten says. Individuals in the top quartile—those in Gerszten explains. “Researchers followed these people epide- whom these amino acids were highest—were more than 400 miologically: participants would come religiously every couple percent more likely to develop diabetes. In contrast, the com- of years, give blood, and be subjected to a number of different mon genetic variants associated with diabetes risk represent tests.” Such longitudinal studies are considered the gold stan- just a 20 percent increase in the chance of getting the disease, he dard in research because they follow a large population over a explains. “This is an order of magnitude more.” long period of time and eliminate “selection bias”: in this case, “These changes [later replicated in a population from the participants were chosen solely on the basis of geography Malmö, Sweden] are occurring a dozen years before people (they all lived in Framingham, Massachusetts), not because of develop diabetes, says Gerszten, who justifiably refers to the preexisting health conditions, race, gender, or some other fac- findings as the highlight of their biomarker research so far. tor. In 1948, none of the participants knew whether they would “Many people have realized the importance of metabolism. But develop a disease. to use it on an equal footing with genetics? Not so many people In 1972, more than 3,000 of the original participants’ offspring think so yet.” He and his colleagues are now trying to dupli- were also enrolled in the study. “Over time, the phenotyping or cate the diabetes research using lipids (circulating fats) rather characterization of these people got more and more sophisticat- than amino acids. And they are working to find markers that ed,” Gerszten says. Researchers had begun to do “CT scans, ex- will identify individuals at risk of developing heart and kidney ercise tests, and so on. What Tommy [Wang] pointed out to me disease in the future. was that in 1994 everyone underwent a stress test for diabetes.” This is important, Gerszten notes, because if the results The OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test) delivers a high dose prove generalizable, physicians will know where to intervene. of sugar in the form of glucose and then measures the body’s For example, a study by professor of medicine David M. Na- ability to respond. Although glucose is “one of the last things than demonstrated that either intensive lifestyle interventions to go wrong” during the onset of the disease, the test is still the (including diet and exercise) or use of the drug metformin can best way to diagnose prediabetes and diabetes. Using blood prevent diabetes. “Now,” says Gerszten, “you could identify samples taken in 1994 from 200 people who later developed and focus on those populations most at risk, and get more bang diabetes, and a matched group who shared all the same risk for your buck.” factors but did not develop the disease, Gerzsten and Wang Gerszten and his colleagues believe that they can now iden- tried to detect differences in the metabolic responses of the tify at least one representative metabolite from every known two groups to the oral glucose challenge years before any of the metabolic pathway in humans. But the library of metabolites diabetic group became ill. They hoped that one or more of the and metabolic signatures of disease that he and his colleagues amino acids in the blood samples would reveal a difference that are assembling is not what intrigues him most. Each metabo- might identify those individuals who were going to get diabe- lite is a stepping stone in a pathway that leads to health or dis- tes a decade or more later. ease, and Gerszten is less interested in the biomarkers them- “We matched [the prediabetic subjects] to controls cho- selves than in finding pathways leading to new insights that sen on the basis of age, body mass index, fasting glucose, and might cure diseases. “We still don’t really have a clue, for exam- whether or not they had hypertension,” says Gerszten. “This ple, why diabetes leads to heart disease,” he points out. “These was by design. We didn’t want to compare fat people to thin amino acids are altering some fundamental metabolic response people, because that would not add information. We raised the in cells and we just don’t know what it is—yet.”

individuals who nevertheless can exercise intensely on a tread- the body’s ability to burn fat, was up. Glucose-6-phosphate, an mill have the same risk of sudden death as “the guy who has never indicator of the use of energy stored as glycogen in the liver and had a diagnosis of heart disease.” The challenge is to understand muscles, increased. So did pantothenate, a modulator of fatty why exercise counteracts disease. acid oxidation, and allantoin, a marker of oxidative stress. The Despite the brevity of their treadmill challenge, Gerszten and human body turns on the systems of energy utilization and the Lewis discovered that profound changes took place in the bio- mechanisms for dealing with the potentially harmful by-prod- chemical profiles of their patients’ blood. Glycerol, a marker of ucts of oxidative processes (free radicals) very quickly.

Photographs by Fred Field, unless otherwise noted Harvard Magazine 29 questions than it answered. Fit participants, defined as being in the upper half of the sample, burned fat twice as well as the less fit. “There was more than a 100 percent increase in glycerol in more fit individuals,” reports Lewis, “compared to less than a 50 percent increase in the less fit.” When they extended the study to include runners in the Boston Marathon, they discovered that participants’ post-race lipolysis—the rate their bodies burned fat—was 11 times the rate of the least fit group. The marathoners had run for three and a half hours, but Gerszten believes that even if they had run only for 10 minutes, they would still have been in the highest quartile. The researchers also noticed that levels of niacina- mide, a compound that can help prevent or alleviate the symptoms of diabetes, rose most in the leanest individuals. “Now all of sudden we have these markers that distinguish what is happening in the more fit versus the less fit,” says Gerszten. “The million-dollar A technician scans a cardiac question is: Is that because of training, genetics, or patient’s heart before and after diet? Those answers are what we are working toward.” exercise to detect physical changes. Similarly, measur What they do know is that the metabolites that increase with ing metabolites in the blood exercise are not just markers of health—they actually promote it. reveals metabolic changes that They found that sprinkling muscle-cell specimens in a petri dish offer a snapshot of both cur with a cocktail of the six metabolites that had multiplied the rent and future health status. most activated a gene program involved in energy balance. They The study not only validat- are now testing the dietary effect of this combination by feeding ed the usefulness of circulat- metabolites to laboratory mice. ing metabolites as a snapshot They have also devised a human experiment to discover where of metabolism, it demonstrat- the metabolites are created and how they are distributed during ed that metabolic changes exercise. All organs and tissues in the body generate metabolites, can be persistent. “Take-away but “our working hypothesis is that exercising limbs are sending message number one,” says Gerszten, “is that the blood is a beau- global signals to the body to do certain things,” Gerszten says. tiful place to sample.” That had not been entirely obvious, he “We now have to prove that.” As a first test of this theory, the re- says, because the by-products of many metabolic processes were searchers catheterized 10 individuals pedaling a stationary bike, thought to be retained within cells. But with “exquisitely sensi- in order to sample blood simultaneously from two different ar- tive new techniques” being pioneered at the Broad Institute of teries: one tied to the general circulation and one more closely MIT and Harvard, where Gerszten helped launch the metabolo- tied to the working muscles in the legs. This allowed them to mics program, “we can now pick them up outside cells.” compare the concentration of metabolites from the two locations Take-away number two is that “an hour after exercise, more and to discover that they are enriched in blood from the legs, things had changed than at peak exercise”—as though exercise probably generated during muscle contractions. had initiated a cascade of signals throughout the body. After 10 minutes of exercise, heart rate and Genome Transcriptome Proteome blood pressure return to normal Genes mRNAs Proteins Modified in five or 10 minutes, but the meta- (2x104) (>106) (>106) proteins Transcription Translation (>107) Enzymatic Phenotype bolic changes persist. The study Cellular reactions supports epidemiological claims processing that three spells of exercise a day, From Genome each of as little as eight to 10 min- to Metabolome Metabolome utes’ duration, are enough to con- The amount and complexity of data increase from the genome Environment Metabolites fer health benefits. “These are the to the transcriptome to the (3-6x103?) quintessential metabolic data,” proteome. The metabolome is Gerszten says, “suggesting that not only simpler and more • nucleotides reflective of health status, it • amino acids even short bouts have unanticipat- also incorporates environmen • organic acids ed prolonged effects.” tal influences, for example, • carbohydrates But the study also raised more from exercise and diet. • lipids

30 May - June 2011 Their findings in the exercise test are “just an initial description,” Gerszten emphasizes. They have no idea why these metabolites cause ben- eficial changes, or why they work only in combination, or even how long the effects of these metabolic changes last. Further research will answer these questions, but Lewis already sees the potential for using metabolic signatures to help his heart patients track their health progress as they follow a prescribed regimen of weekly physical activity. He has embarked on studies of the effects of exercise training among a broad spectrum of individuals, including employees of the hospital, seeking to define normal metabolic signatures by age, sex, ethnicity, and fitness level. “It may be that people have different responses to training,” he explains, and that might affect their metabolic profiles dif- ferently. Some people quickly lose weight when Gregory Lewis they exercise, for example, while others cannot. But even though metabolic signatures may vary, Lewis sus- have conducted such studies before and after weight loss, be- pects that the chronically overweight can still become fit, and fore and after the administration of drugs (to track drug levels that detectable metabolic changes occur to some extent in every- and observe the metabolic changes they cause), and even be- one. One metric commonly used to measure whether individu- fore and after planned heart attacks (used to reduce the size als are benefiting from exercise, he points out, is whether they of enlarged hearts), in which they identified metabolic mark- lose weight—and “some people get discouraged if their weight ers associated with the death of cardiac muscle. Ultimately, doesn’t change after six to eight weeks of a training program, and they hope to develop metabolic profiles for patients that will they quit. If you could show people tangible evidence—‘These allow them to identify physiological factors that limit perfor- six metabolites that predict the future onset of cardiovascular mance. Is it the skeletal muscles? The heart? The lungs? Know- disease changed 35 percent by virtue of doing this exercise’—that ing the metabolites involved might lead to interventions that is potentially powerful” as a motivational tool. range from something as simple as putting supplements in a drink (Gerszten and Lewis are exploring a pill that could substitute the potential of so-called nutraceuticals, and have been in touch with a sports drink for exercise? “How could you?!” manufacturer) to new ways of investigating some people ask. pathways involved in disease, to gain better understanding and, eventually, cures. And Manipulating levels of metabolites to improve health—to use because some dietary metabolites appear to be harmful, Gersz- them as drugs— may also be possible, Lewis says. “These are ten is feeding them to mice to learn whether they lead to ath- naturally occurring small molecules already in your body, not erosclerosis and diabetes. potentially caustic drugs that may have side effects we will find Researchers today recognize that the relative contributions of out about only 20 years after people are exposed to them.” In fact, genetics, behavior, and environment to maintaining health, on he has a bottle of one particular metabolite, glutamine, on a win- the one hand, and triggering metabolic dis- dowsill in his office. A white powder that can be purchased at any eases (even including some cancers), on the health-food store, it is metabolically active if ingested, and has other—remain unclear. “Part of me wants to Visit harvardmag.com/ the potential to regulate glucose tolerance.“Some people,” he says, believe that there is some precise molecular extras for video clips with Robert Gerszten and “have this angry response to the idea of creating a pill that could pathway and an enzyme that we are going to Gregory Lewis. substitute for exercise: ‘How could you?!’ they ask. Nobody is in- identify and make a drug for,” Gerszten ad- terested in dissuading people from exercise. But if we can have a mits. “But then the other side of me slaps my head and says, ‘Wait better understanding of what is happening in response to exercise, a minute. Let’s hope it is not a molecular pathway, but something then we can truly embark on a pathway of individualized pro- where we can intervene in a much easier way.” A silver bullet grams that will optimize the health status of each patient. I think would be nice, he agrees, but most likely, the metabolic disorders it is really hard to argue with the merits of doing that, particularly will turn out to be complex. “Watching what you eat can help a for people with diseases that preclude them from exercising.” hell of a lot,” he says, “but for some people, there will be a genetic component as well.” Metabolomics, he predicts, will help to pro- The Future of a Field vide those answers. Gerszten and Lewis’s exercise research is a “perturbational study,” in which participants serve as their own controls. They Jonathan Shaw ’89 is managing editor of this magazine.

Harvard Magazine 31 Vita Leverett Gleason Brief life of a comics impresario: 1898-1971 by brett dakin

uly 1941. In his bunker, the Führer and his henchmen final- of Congress in 1947. In 1950, he felt the need to declare “I am not ize schemes for world domination. Hitler peers into a crystal a Communist” in his own publications. “We are in a period of a Jball. “Blitzkrieg!” he proclaims. London is about to be leveled. reactionary swing in this country…which holds many of the ele- Hope is lost. But wait—who is that, crouching on the other side ments of potential fascism,” he wrote. “There must be no denial of the wall? It’s Daredevil, infiltrating the Nazis’ inner sanctum to of civil liberties to anyone….Any drive against the rights of one is learn their plans. “I’ve a message for the Fuehrer!” he cries, burst- a threat to the rights of all.” Opponents responded with voting re- ing through the door and landing his first punch. Then, leaving cords showing that he had registered as a Communist in the 1930s. Hitler and his cronies to nurse their wounds, the superhero flies Meanwhile a boom in comics’ popularity—and a perceived off to warn Churchill. All in a day’s work. spike in juvenile delinquency—had raised concerns about their Daredevil Battles Hitler, a bold call for U.S. intervention in Europe, effect on children. Gleason, as president of the Association of was a rare comic book with an overtly political message. The man Comics Magazines Publishers, came to the defense of the indus- responsible was Leverett Stone Gleason ’20, a Harvard dropout try. In the New York Times, he decried “the insidious effort in some and one of this country’s first, and most controversial, comic- quarters to set up an intellectual dictatorship over the reading book publishers. Most of his peers were hardscrabble New York- habits of the American people….Millions of American adults pre- ers, many of them Jewish; he had grown up in a comfortable fer [Westerns], for example, to the finest production ofMacbeth. Protestant home near Boston, attending Andover before entering This is their privilege.” Gleason asserted that many comics read- Harvard. When the United States declared war on Germany in ers were adults, and in Today’s Health stated, “Comics…can actu- 1917, he dropped out to fight in France; when he came home, he ally help mold their young readers into happier, more intelligent tried magazine sales before taking a job in New York with East- adults.” Then came the rise of horror comics and publication of ern Color Printing, where the modern comic book was born. psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s 1954 bestseller, Seduction of the In- Gleason saw money in comics, and in 1939 started his own nocent. At U.S. Senate hearings on comics that year, Wertham was firm, releasingDaredevil and then Crime Does Not Pay, which chroni- the star witness, and the only publisher called to testify was Wil- cled the real-life adventures of convicted criminals. Crime Does Not liam Gaines of Entertaining Comics, purveyor of titles like Tales Pay was soon beating out Captain Marvel and Superman, attracting from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and Haunt of Fears. Gleason pleaded in readers wary of the aw-shucks wholesomeness of men in tights. vain for a chance to testify and tore into Wer- Daredevil Battles Hitler reflected Gleason’s politics. Arriving in tham as a “Freudian fanatic…creating utterly New York in the depths of the Depression, he was stunned by the false fears among parents.” Although he per- Visit harvardmag.com/ Hoovervilles in Central Park. And he became convinced that his suaded his fellow publishers not to ban the extras to see more country had an obligation to stem the rise of fascism. New Deal word “crime” from comics outright, the in- examples from Lev Gleason comic books. support for New York’s artists created a powerful anti-fascist dustry’s revised self-censorship code accepted movement that Gleason relished. He published screeds like Sabo- Wertham’s view that comics were strictly for kids. It outlawed tage: The Secret War Against America, about domestic fascism, and The stories detailing criminal planning, dooming Crime Does Not Pay. Incredible Tito! Man of the Hour. His business approach reflected his By late 1955, the offices of Lev Gleason Publications were closed. convictions. Although comics artists generally were paid poorly So abrupt was his departure, some speculated he’d fled to Alaska and had little control over their content, Gleason established a or Cuba. In fact, he became a small-time real-estate agent, selling profit-sharing arrangement with his editorial team, giving them patriotic ornaments to make ends meet. He remained an activist. partnership status and substantial autonomy. “My greatest satisfactions have been doing what I can politically After Pearl Harbor, Gleason re-enlisted, serving stateside for to make ours a better country and the world a little more peace- two years. But postwar, as fears of domestic subversion grew, his ful,” he wrote in his fiftieth-reunion report. “I have been strongly activism and his business came under fire. By December 1945, the opposed to the Vietnam War since the outset. And I do hope for New York World-Telegram had labeled him a “pro-Communist fellow- better things. Probably because of the efforts of today’s youth, es- traveler.” The House Un-American Activities Committee named pecially the militant ones, who have more guts than we had.” a group he supported, formed to aid Spanish Civil War refugees, a “communist-front organization.” For refusing to name names, Brett Dakin, J.D. ’03, author of Another Quiet American: Stories of Life

Gleason and fellow board members were convicted of contempt in Laos (Asia Books), is writing a biography of Lev Gleason, his great-uncle. author the of Kriegsmann/courtesy J. James by photograph

32 May - June 2010 Lev Gleason and some of his publications. The photograph probably dates from the late 1940s. World’s Best Blogger? Andrew Sullivan’s views are predictable in only one way: always stimulating.

Andrew Sullivan by Jesse Kornbluth in his “blog cave”

34 May - June 2011 t was noon in Washington, D.C., when the shooting be- partner of a website with five million monthly readers. But when gan in Tucson. Across the country, reporters and media ex- the writer in question has a blog that’s more popular than the ecutives rushed to cover the story of the gunman, the Con- websites of many publications, it’s clear that Newsweek/Beast got gresswoman he shot at close range, and the 14 other victims. something equally important in this deal. But the news couldn’t reach one of the Internet’s most impor- “The Dish has twice as many readers as the New Republic and tant writers. For Andrew Sullivan, M.P.A. ’86, Ph.D. ’90, the more than National Review,” Sullivan says. And on the Atlantic site, editor of a blog called TheDish.com, the weekend is a time the Dish also ruled. Some days, according to Alexa.com, which for rest, and having teed up on Friday afternoon a half-dozen measures site traffic on the Internet, the Daily Dish accounted for evergreen posts for Saturday, he had turned off his communi- more than half of the visitors to TheAtlantic.com. In cold num- cation devices and was sleeping in. bers: Andrew Sullivan—one blogger, with a small budget and a Sullivan had been lightly ill that week, so he slept unusually minimal staff—has presented Tina Brown with a gift of about 1.3 Ilate, until almost two in the afternoon. Before he was quite ready million Internet readers. to deal with the world, he checked his mailbox—and woke up fast. Along with the news of the shooting was an urgent ques- Blogging Brahmin tion from readers: Andrew, where are you? American media have three castes. At the top is “The Vil- Sullivan winced. He e-mailed his four young assistants: “We lage,” a term created by a progressive blogger who calls herself have to go cable”—that is, pump out blog posts 24/7. Then he “Digby” to describe a rarefied league of highly paid bold-faced climbed four unpainted wooden steps to what anyone else would names—think David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Howard Kurtz— call a large windowed closet and he calls “the blog cave.” He who move easily between print columns and television pun- pulled a velvet curtain shut to seal himself off from his husband ditry. In the middle is the working press, a stressed-out group and their beagles, settled into an armchair with his laptop, and of reporters and columnists employed by increasingly desperate began a siege of blogging that would last six days. newspapers and magazines; to their daily tasks has been added Sullivan and his team had worked like this before. During blogging on their publications’ websites. At the bottom are blog- the 2010 protests in Iran, they had scoured Facebook messages, gers. Twitter bleats, Al Jazeera dispatches, and Iranian blog posts. Most of the Internet’s 150 million blogs serve up highly per- The eclectic charm of the Dish (formerly TheDailyDish)—poems, sonal dispatches, the equivalent of those year-end letters that ar- philosophical and religious speculation, photographs from the rive in Christmas cards. Very few of those bloggers post news and windows of readers, the latest Sarah Palin outrage, and videos by views as a primary activity—there’s no money in it. So blogging The Pet Shop Boys—disappeared. The site became all Iran, all the as a professional journalistic activity really involves at most a few time, and the Dish quickly became the Web’s go-to site for news thousand independent writers. and context. In the process, the site’s traffic spiked. These elite bloggers are serious and knowledgeable, but they The Dish’s coverage of the Tucson shootings paralleled its Iran are often described as the untouchables of American media—un- coverage. While other bloggers ascribed blame, Sullivan filtered employed, unemployable pajama-clad slackers who live with their new reports, asked important questions, grieved for the vic- parents and tap out overwrought screeds on basement computers. tims—and avoided partisan speculation. Once again, his audi- That view is not the verdict of critics who have visited the sites of ence grew. elite bloggers; it’s a media god’s throwaway line. (NBC News anchor But this round of blogging was different. Andrew Sullivan is a Brian Williams, for example: “All of my life, developing credentials lifelong asthma sufferer. He has sleep apnea, and at night wears a to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named mask connected to a machine that regulates his breathing. And Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the since 1993, he has been HIV-positive. Although Sullivan isn’t the efficiency apartment in two years.”) Beyond a general disdain for only writer with HIV to have survived for almost two decades, the Internet, the reason is often personal—bloggers don’t just write no other HIV-positive writer publishes anything like 300 blog about politicians, they also attack the media. And because media posts a week, year after year; he needs to monitor his health. potentates don’t welcome criticism, they lash back. Shortly after the week of Tucson, the Internet’s Iron Man Andrew Sullivan also moves easily from blogging and print faltered—exhaustion and an unusually cold winter created so journalism to TV, but his resemblance to the Villagers ends there. much bronchial distress that his doctor ordered him to take to For one thing, his views are ever-changing and all over the map; his bed. During his unprecedented two-week silence, govern- a TV producer can’t count on him to speak for any one constitu- ments toppled in the Middle East. While his assistants did great ency. For another, although he has a résumé that qualifies him as work, friends teased Sullivan: “Andrew, you’re missing an entire a media elitist, he has dramatically redefined his idea of success. revolution.” At 47, his concerns are no longer those of the overachieving won- When Sullivan returned, he had news of his own—he was der boy he used to be. leaving the Atlantic website, his home for the last four years, to Sullivan earned a first-class degree (equivalent to a summa) in join TheDailyBeast.com and Newsweek magazine, both edited by modern history and modern languages at Oxford, where, in his Tina Brown. In the traditional media paradigm, it’s a promotion second year, he was president of the Oxford Union, the debat- for a writer to move from the website of a highbrow monthly ing body that claims to be “the most illustrious student society magazine like the Atlantic (circulation: 400,000) and the occasion- in the world.” He won a Harkness Fellowship to the Kennedy al article for that publication to America’s second-largest weekly School in 1984; back in London, he interned at the think tank of news magazine (circulation: 1.5 million) that has just become the one of his idols, Margaret Thatcher. He returned to Harvard in

Photographs by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 35 He had made a mistake—“the darkest political misjudgment of my life.” Now he had to pay for it.

1989 to write his doctoral thesis, “Intimations Pursued: The Voice said, ‘Screw it.’ I knew I wanted even more to be happy, have love of Practice in the Conversation of Michael Oakeshott,” which and sex.” won the government department’s Toppan Prize, for the best He had, by his account, a great deal of sex. In 1996, when he dissertation “upon a subject of Political Science.” In 1991, when revealed he had contracted HIV, a friend asked whom he had he was just 27, he was named editor of the New Republic; under his unprotected sex with. In Love Undetectable, his 1998 book about leadership, the magazine grew impressively in both circulation “friendship, sex, and survival,” Sullivan writes that he admitted and advertising. He left the New Republic five years later, “at the it could have been anyone. His friend was incredulous: “Anyone? tail end of a series of differences,” saysNew Republic owner Martin How many people did you sleep with, for God’s sake?” Peretz, Ph.D. ’66. Sullivan moved on to write books and become a In the book, Sullivan held nothing back. “Too many. God contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a colum- knows. Too many for meaning and dignity to be given to every nist for the Sunday Times (of London). one; too many for love to be present at each; too many for sex to To see such precocity is to be mystified—why would a writer be very often more than a temporary release from debilitating with such impeccable credentials cast his lot more with bloggers fear and loneliness.” than with people of his own kind? That is classic Sullivan: the unsparing candor, the over-sharing, “He’s Catholic and gay and an exile,” says the writer and femi- the spiritual afterthought. Three years later, when he started to nist historian Naomi Wolf. “That’s all very helpful—his back- blog, that kind of writing would become his signature—and, for ground forces him not to be confined in any single identity.” all its outsider status, the first really comfortable identity he’d Sullivan is bald, bearded, and bespectacled; in photographs he known. has an intellectual’s intensity. At the same time, he’s quite ad- ept in social settings, and has immense personal charm. Hendrik Neocon Renegade Hertzberg ’65, IOP ’85, who knew him in Cambridge and preced- When Sullivan launched a website in 2000, he thought of ed him as editor of the New Republic before joining the New Yorker, it as nothing more than an archive of his magazine articles. He recalls Sullivan as “a strikingly beautiful young man…who had knew nothing about technology—every time he wanted to add to fend off the women with a cricket bat.” David Frum, J.D. ’87, another article, he had to ask a friend for help. Sullivan is a pro- a Harvard colleague who went on to become a speechwriter for lific writer; for his friend, this routine quickly grew old. “Do it George W. Bush, M.B.A. ’75, describes Sullivan as a social pow- yourself,” he advised. erhouse: “Over drinks, Andrew dazzled a table of teaching assis- Self-publishing was liberating. Under a “Daily Dish” headline, tants with his knowledge of pop bands. We knew nothing, but it Sullivan started adding short posts. Readers sent suggestions. wouldn’t have made a difference—we were spellbound.” Soon he was updating his site several times a day; if a blogger is The motivation behind Sullivan’s accelerated trajectory and defined as a single writer who regularly posts news and commen- outsized personality is grittier. He may have seemed sophisti- tary, Sullivan was among the first. And, from the beginning, he cated in Cambridge, but he was raised in Sussex by parents who was popular; within a year, his request for contributions brought hadn’t gone to college; their marriage in $27,000. Sullivan circa 1992 was less than happy, and his mother bi- The creation of a community was polar. “I had to be independent quite thrilling. So was the absence of an edi- early,” he explains, “and I had to get out. tor. But that freedom can be a trap for The escape was my brain.” a writer who prides himself on writ- At 11, he commuted three hours a ing from the heart as well as the intel- day to attend a school for gifted boys. lect. Sullivan made what he has come to His protection was his Roman Catho- consider his first significant, sustained lic faith. He’d been an altar boy; now he blunder after the attacks of September drew crosses in the margins of his books 11, when he compared antiwar dissent- “to ward off evil” and, in art class, re- ers and liberals to traitors: “the enemy fused to draw anything unrelated to the within the West itself—a paralyzing, Bible. His ambition could not have been pseudo-clever, morally nihilist fifth col- more conventional—to become a Tory umn that will surely ramp up its hatred member of Parliament. in the days and months ahead.” Sullivan was 23 when he acknowl- That was the start of a new Andrew edged his homosexuality and jettisoned Sullivan: a Brit applauding every es- his virginity. Years later, when his byline calation of White House rhetoric and started to matter, he went public. “Every cheerleading the invasion of Iraq. “I was day, you have to say who you are, or live caught up in emotion,” he says, begin- in fear,” he explains. “I thought, ‘If I do ning a monologue that has not become

this, I’ll never get to be a Tory MP.’ And I andrew sullivan of courtesy less painful with the passage of years.

36 May - June 2011 Sullivan (right) at home with his husband, actor Aaron Tone, and their two beagles

“We had every reason to be outraged, and I had a desire to match military,” he says, deadpan, but official recognition of gays in the the magnitude of the event with words of the same magnitude. armed forces made no headway in those years. In the ’90s, long Sending a few Special Forces units to take out a criminal didn’t before most gay men thought gay marriage was a possibility, Sul- seem serious enough.” livan had been an activist in that cause; he was furious when the Toppling a dictator in Iraq did. Sullivan was committed to president advocated a constitutional amendment defining mar- that idea—even more committed, he says, than his friend Donald riage as a heterosexual partnership only. And as a fiscal conserva- Rumsfeld. tive, he disagreed with the Bush administration’s enthusiasm for “The son of one of Rumsfeld’s closest friends was a friend of off-the-books funding of expensive wars and medical programs. mine,” Sullivan says. “We met in a gay bar. That’s how I came to But the breaking point was, first and always, torture. In 2006, have dinner with Rummy and stay at his house in Taos. He liked John McCain—who had once sponsored legislation to ban Amer- to rag me about the blog: ‘You’ve done this for years and made no ican military personnel from using torture—abandoned his op- money. When will you make money?’ And we fought about gays position and supported the Military Commissions Act, which in the military. But when it came to war in Iraq, I was more bel- gave the president the right to torture. Sullivan was shattered. licose than he was.” “That night, I got on my bike and rode to the Jefferson Memo- Here Sullivan was right in sync with other neo-conservatives. rial,” he recalls. “I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t believe And he stayed in sync until he saw the photographs from Abu America had done this.” Ghraib: “That was the heartbreaker—torture destroyed all moral When Andrew Sullivan changes his mind, he often goes from basis for the war.” one extreme to another. Not long ago, he was the subject of one Sullivan’s Catholicism didn’t allow for situational morality. of those interviews that, for most, is an opportunity to display Neither did his boyhood hero, George Orwell. He had made a some wit and warmth. Sullivan did—to a point. Then the Politi- mistake—“the darkest political misjudgment of my life.” Now co.com interviewer asked: “You’re president of the United States he had to pay for it, and because he was a blogger, he had to pay for enough time to make only one executive decision. What is it?” in public. Without hesitation, Sullivan replied: “Announce a full Justice “When you write as I do, there’s nowhere to hide,” he says. “I Department investigation into the war crimes ordered by and ad- had gone so far that I faced a crisis as a writer. So, first, I had to mitted by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.” stand up, acknowledge my error, and make a good-faith apology. Then I needed to analyze what went wrong. And that’s when my Relentless Heterodoxy doubts about neo-conservatism began.” Andrew Sullivan did not support John McCain in 2008. The institutions that Sullivan believed in disappointed him so The torture flip-flop would have been enough of a reason. Then greatly during the Bush administration that in 2004, for the first McCain added Sarah Palin to the ticket. The combination of time, he endorsed a Democrat for president. “I’ve met so many her scant government experience and “raw political talent” gay soldiers I wasn’t aware there were any straight people in the terrified Sullivan—and with only two months between her

Harvard Magazine 37 nomination and the election, he started hammering. the heated conversation that surrounds all things Palin, nuance “I was told: ‘Don’t touch this, it will hurt your reputation,’” has been lost—and Sullivan has been cast as a crank who takes he says. During a campaign when most pundits were, at worst, pleasure in badgering a woman who may have no political future. quizzical about Palin, Sullivan filled his blog with questions she His response: “Early on, I figured out that anything I write about was never going to answer. Did he pay a price? “I have become her can only help her, but I don’t care about that. The job of a more of an outlaw in this town because I couldn’t hide my amaze- journalist is to find the truth.” ment from my peers—I’ve definitely become more alienated from This relentlessness has led to continuing analyses of other mainstream media.” issues that most media avoid. Once a strong supporter of Is- Since the election, Sullivan has continued to press for clarifica- rael, for example, Sullivan came to question its settlements in tion about a rumor the mainstream media won’t touch: that Trig Gaza. His language is not always temperate: “It staggers me to is not Palin’s son. Sullivan hasn’t flung any accusations at Palin; read defenses of what the Israelis have done. They attacked a he’s just pounded her ever-changing stories about Trig’s birth, civilian flotilla in international waters breaking no law. When and her unwillingness to provide a birth certificate for him. In they met fierce if asymmetric resistance, they opened fire. And

and hooding of prisoners. Hypothermia? Sleep deprivation? From the Blog Cave Bush signed a memo removing the most baseline protections for all human beings under the Geneva Conventions. Water- ON BLOGGING boarding? Bush knew full well.….Bush’s crimes are far greater A blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with than Nixon’s—because war crimes are far graver than burglar- that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even ies. And there is no statute of limitations for war crimes. more pressing—and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater….Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme SARAH PALIN sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less I asked an intern to go back and double fact-check the 12 doc- formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud. umented lies that Sarah Palin has told on the public record. These are not hyperbolic claims or rhetorical excess. They are THE LIMITS OF BLOGGING assertions of fact that are demonstrably untrue and remain un- I’m pretty protective about the people in my life. I never write corrected. Every single one of the lies I documented holds up about Aaron without asking his permission, and normally it’s a after several news cycles have had a chance to vet them even very, very discreet mention…. I can’t write about my private life further….So for the record, let it be known that the candidate without mentioning my husband. for vice-president for the GOP is a compulsive, repetitive, de- monstrable liar. GAY MARRIAGE The core difference between those LIBYA who favor marriage equality and those This is the worst decision yet made by who oppose it….we see this as both- Barack Obama as president. I watched and; they see it as either-or. I love and the president stand idly by as countless revere heterosexual marriage and want young Iranians were slaughtered, im- it defended and celebrated alongside prisoned, tortured, and bludgeoned by my own; they regard my civil marriage government thugs by day and night. I as an abomination to be banned and believed that this was born of a strategy kept inferior to their own. I think that that understood that, however horrify- core difference is why we’re winning— ing it was to watch the Iranian blood- because, in the end, Americans like to bath, it was too imprudent to launch see freedom expanded, not curtailed, military action to protect a defenseless and they are adult enough and secure people against snipers, murderers, and enough to live with those they disagree torturers. Now I am told that “we can- with. not stand idly by” as tyrants tell their people they will be given no mercy…. ABU GHRAIB This administration is willing to throw The person who authorized all the out its entire strategy and principles in abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib, the this period of Middle Eastern revolt— man who gave the green light to the in defense of rebels about whom we abuses in that prison, is the president know almost nothing, whose strategy of the United States, George W. Bush. is violence, not nonviolence, and whose Those ghastly pictures of naked, hood- ability to resist Qaddafi even with ed prisoners? Bush approved nudity Western help is unknowable.

38 May - June 2011 On the Dish’s first morning, “Our traffic grew sixfold in a moment. It was like Hoover Dam had broken.” we are now being asked to regard the Israelis as the victims.” accidental visits to the New York Times,” Bradley says. On the Dish’s Unsurprisingly, he has provoked others to respond in kind. first morning, the publisher had his laptop open: “Our traffic A few years ago, Sullivan had a dustup about his Jewish “prob- grew sixfold in a moment. It was like Hoover Dam had broken— lem” with Leon Wieseltier, JF ’82, a former colleague at the New we were awash with traffic.” Republic and a friend. Wieseltier wrote long, and he wrote harsh, Bradley and Sullivan talked frequently and intimately, and in concluding, “And this is not all that is disgusting about Sullivan’s one of those conversations, Sullivan shared a deep truth about approach.” Asked to comment for this article, Wieseltier wrote himself. “All my life,” he said, “I’ve been disappointed by power- back: “Sorry, I’m sick of the subject.” ful men.” Bradley took that to heart. “I made a private vow that, Martin Peretz takes a longer view: “I’m curiously soft on An- whatever happens, I’m not going to be his next disappointment.” drew. I don’t really understand his attitude toward Israel and Zi- He wasn’t. Sullivan and Bradley had their differences about onism. I hope these turbulent days in the Arab world will help money—the Dish may have accounted for as much as $2 million him grasp that the Jews of Israel live in a very dangerous environ- in advertising revenue each year, and Sullivan has long wanted a ment and that one can’t contemplate peace treaties here the way cut—but Bradley says he was quite willing to share equity. The they’re contemplated in other regions.” catch: Sullivan would have to broaden the site, so its success Sullivan’s impassioned prose is matched only by his willing- didn’t depend only on him. But in the end, the issue really was ness to change his mind. When Sullivan supported Barack Sullivan’s innate restlessness. Obama in 2008, it was the final break with his former allies. Of These days, that restlessness is limited to Sullivan’s profes- a dozen prominent neo-conservative writers contacted for this sional life. A few years ago, he was in “one of the sleaziest clubs profile, only one responded—to decline. His onetime allies have, in Washington at 3 a.m.” when he spotted Aaron Tone. “It was the however, been quite willing to deride him in their blogs, like thunderbolt—a total cliché,” he says. “I didn’t want to believe it.” Jonah Goldberg, writing in National Review: “Once a voice of re- In 2007, the short blogger and the tall actor got married in straint and reason, Sullivan now specializes in shrill panic: mer- Provincetown, where they spend two weeks each summer, to curial ranting full of operatic arguments, steeped in bad faith, get off the grid. The rest of the year, they live with two beagles in aimed at people he once praised.” the large studio apartment that Sullivan bought in 2000 with his Sullivan’s reasoning exasperates his former friends because it’s profits from day trading. It’s a quiet life; their biggest social event as much psychological as it is political. “When I read Dreams from is usually their weekly hosting of the new South Park episode. My Father, I read it as a gay book,” he says. “That is, Obama dis- In 2005, an exhausted Sullivan thought he needed to quit the covered he was black at the same age that others of us learned we Dish. When he thought that again in 2010, the hiring of assistants were gay. The world had no place for him. He had to make a place changed his mind. Now there seems to be nothing that makes for himself.” him dream of slowing down. Sullivan continues to praise Obama, though as a fiscal conser- “I have a profound professional admira- vative, he has some grievances with the president—and with ev- tion for the Dish as an editorial enterprise,” erybody else in Washington: “We all know what the Congress Hendrik Hertzberg has blogged. “It’s a kind Visit harvardmag.com/ should be doing about the debt right now, don’t we? It should be of internet gyroscope. I find that it orients me extras to watch videos debating which mix of long-term entitlement and defense cuts in cyberspace. It fends off motion sickness. It of some of Sullivan’s TV and the least economically damaging tax increases would lower gives pleasure. I almost always feel a little bet- appearances. the long-term debt, restore global confidence in the long-term ter after paying it a visit, even when the news solvency of the U.S., and thereby ignite more business confidence of the day is unusually depressing. There ought to be a name for and job growth.…What do we have instead? A president too cal- what the Dish is—‘blog’ doesn’t capture it, somehow. There are culating to take a stand and an opposition so focused on drastic many excellent blogs out there in blogland...but Andrew’s ‘The cuts to discretionary spending and overreaching on collective Daily Dish’ is the best.” bargaining that it is already making independents and moderate Andrew Sullivan is an intellectual diva, prone to epic battles. Republicans queasy.” He’s a showman; call what he does a show. But he performs in Sullivan doesn’t just criticize. He proposes solutions. He the open, without rehearsals, and he reveals everything to his dreams of a Republican candidate who is “a real fiscal conserva- readers, never sparing himself. And then, because he has an acute tive, socially inclusive, open to serious tax reform and politically sense of pacing, he varies his posts with features that have noth- adult conversation to regain the center ground.” Currently he is ing to do with politics, torture, or Palin. extremely enamored of Indiana’s Republican governor, Mitch So be warned: Sullivan sometimes posts dozens of times a day. Daniels, who is not, as of this writing, a presidential candidate. If you’ve never read him, it might be better not to start. A curiosity can lead to a habit, and a habit to an addiction. And then, “Intellectual Diva” without quite knowing how it happened, you may find yourself David Bradley, owner and publisher of the Atlantic, courted beginning a sentence with, “As Andrew said….” Andrew Sullivan for six years. When Sullivan signed on, The- Atlantic.com had 200,000 unique visitors a month—“less than Jesse Kornbluth ’68, a New York-based writer, edits HeadButler.com.

Harvard Magazine 39 A humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae

Why Whales? On learning from nature and the Endangered Species Act by joe roman

40 May - June 2011 Among the environmental-protection and natural-resources laws sies. An advocate, he has nonetheless crafted sympathetic portraits of the issues enacted in the United States during the 1970s, the Endangered Species Act at stake, while making the case for the value of nature and of species protec- (1973) suffers from a uniquely bad reputation. Why should the mighty Tennes- tion. The result is his second book, Listed: Dispatches from America’s see Valley Authority’s Tellico Dam be held up by a nondescript fish called the Endangered Species Act (to be published in May by Harvard University snail darter? What self-interested North Carolina landowner wouldn’t Press). In this excerpt that draws on his own research, he presents a surprising clear-cut longleaf pines after learning that red-cockaded woodpecker habitat discovery about the vital role whales (some species endangered, others not) might be rendered undevelopable? In such cases, where tangible rewards ap- play in maintaining the biological productivity of their ocean habitats. pear to conflict with protecting species that have no known economic constit- Unlike snail darters, of course, whales are reasonably familiar and well uency (often, indeed, creatures no one has even heard of before), conservation known, even beyond their past economic significance (and controversies over doesn’t count for much. continued hunting). That Roman, now at the Gund Institute for Ecological Eco- Joe Roman ’85, who earned his Ph.D. in organismic and evolutionary bi- nomics at the University of Vermont, could make such a basic finding about ology in 2003 (with a master’s in wildlife ecology and conservation from the these popular mammals suggests what may be at stake throughout nature for the University of Florida in between), set himself the task of visiting the scene of thousands of other endangered species that are studied scarcely, if at all. some of America’s most heated, and revealing, endangered-species controver- vThe Editors

stood on the bow of the Nereid, a 27-foot research vessel, algae along the surface at night, then migrate down the water as it crossed the Bay of Fundy. There were no whales in sight column to escape predators by day. When they go deep, the am- on the choppy sea, one of the last known feeding grounds of monia they excrete takes nitrogen away from the surface. Their the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The late-sum- fecal pellets sink. Their own deaths take nitrogen, phosphorus, mer I sun lifted slowly over Nova Scotia. My mind started to wan- carbon, and iron away from the surface layer, reducing primary der: what would the bay have been like 500 years ago, before com- productivity. As it is too dark at the bottom for phytoplankton to mercial whaling began? Hundreds of rights were probably feeding grow, the nutrients are considered lost. This pattern is known as on copepods, minute planktonic crustaceans, leaving their bushy the biological pump, as if all living beings contribute only to a down- V-shaped blows at the surface. There would have been finbacks, ward flow. humpbacks, minkes—and maybe, just maybe, an occasional gray. But watch a whale long enough, and you’ll see a different pat- The disappearance of the gray whale from the Atlantic remains tern. Many whales feed at depth and poop at the surface. (In case a mystery. Was it hunted to extinction? Had it already you were wondering, right whales often produce brown or red disappeared before humans took to the sea with logs, which float at the surface before breaking up. Humpbacks lances and harpoons? and many other fish-eating whales tend to release broad plumes.) There was a slick on the chop, and Their upward movement is obligatory—they have to come to the then the enormous head of the first right surface to breathe. By releasing nutrients there, they could be cre- whale broke through. Right whales are ating a whale pump. But did they transfer enough nitrogen to make incredibly buoyant; that they floated af- a difference? Jim McCarthy, professor of biological oceanogra- ter death made them more attractive to phy and co-adviser on my Ph.D. committee at Harvard, suggest- whalers—made them the “right” whale to ed that we look at all the air-breathing vertebrates in the Gulf kill and now among the most endangered. Some of Maine. Our work showed that whales, along with seals and rose with their rostrums covered in mud from a seabirds, transfer thousands of tons of nitrogen to the surface in deep foraging dive in search of large patches of areas where they feed: they are, in a sense, fertilizing their own zooplankton. Before they fluked, a few mud-brown garden, bringing more nitrogen into the gulf than all rivers in the logs were released at the surface: whale turds. They floated region combined do. out of view. A few researchers welcomed the idea. Marine mammalogist A couple of months later, when I started my master’s degree Sam Ridgway and a colleague had written in the 1980s that ceta- at the University of Florida, I read that grizzlies played a role in ceans could lift nutrients from deep waters, in a process that re- dispersing marine nutrients into the forests surrounding salmon sembled oceanographic upwelling. He told me that when he had streams. When the fish returned to their natal streams to spawn, watched dolphins from an underwater acrylic chamber in the Pa- most died, releasing nitrogen into the waterways and thus to riv- cific their feces came out and disappeared “in a cloud within a erine plants and trees. Bears preyed on them and then spread the very few meters and very few seconds.” The nutrients appeared nutrients even farther when they defecated and peed. About a to be released immediately, close to the surface. sixth of all the nitrogen found in spruce trees surrounding salmon Others resisted the concept, suggesting that large-bodied and streams comes from the sea; bears release the great majority of it. relatively rare animals couldn’t have much impact on ocean pro- That night, an idea floated up through the beery haze of a bik- ductivity. And there were major policy implications: as marine er bar, where my master’s adviser held informal lab meetings late mammals have recovered from being overhunted, some countries into the night. What about those whales diving for energy-rich have insisted that whales and other predators should be culled to crustaceans, then rising from the depths to breathe, and poop? reduce competition with human fisheries. This position is cham- The classic story in the ocean is one of sinking. In many areas pioned by the Japanese government, in part to justify its “scientif- of the Gulf of Maine, nitrogen levels at the surface are so low ic” whaling program and resume commercial whaling: If whales in the summer that they approach zero, limiting the growth of eat “our” fish, the thought goes, then killing them is an efficient age bank/getty i m ages bank/getty Michael Melford/i m age phytoplankton. Copepods and other zooplankton often feed on way to protect fisheries and harvest some high-pricedkujira, or

Adapted from Listed: Dispatches from America’s Endangered Species Act, by Joe Roman, to be published in May 2011 by Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved

arthy; arthy; fs afsc; afsc; n m fs clark, noaa ay es J. Mc C m es J. and Ja o m an,

Left: Joe Roman with a sample of whale feces; his oopnarine, Joe R research demonstrated (center) that whales play a critical role in recycling oceanic nutrients because, unlike fish, they excrete

waste at a level in the wa- j wilson/ m att j ect; pro m esa A d m inistration ter column different from In July, I boarded the Nancy Foster their preferred feeding

zone. Above: Phytoplank- t m ospheric on its first leg, up from Woods Hole A ton (top), the base of the to Stellwagen Bank, an underwater

ocean food chain, and a u tion oods H ole O ceanographic I nstit plateau north of Cape Cod, where copepod. Lower left: A every summer several hundred hump- humpback at the water’s backs come to feed. Also aboard the surface, where ships put ont; P eter R ver m ont; of u niversity m Upper left: fro C lockwise ceanic and O ceanic N ational the whales at risk. winn/ W j ere m y ship were a group of scientists, two whale observers, and a crew of 22. On the horizon, a container ship made its way into Boston Harbor. For years, the shipping channel had gone through the productive feeding grounds of humpbacks and right whales, putting dozens of them at risk of being run over. For years, Wi- ley and his colleagues had collected data, showing the shipping whale meat, in the process. Several recent studies have shown patterns and where and when the whales fed. The ships passed that marine mammals have a negligible effect on fisheries. And right through some of the densest feeding areas for whales and the whale pump hypothesis suggested that cetaceans actually in- seabirds. Rather than bringing his work to a government agency, creased productivity in areas where they feed. The relationship Wiley took his charts and graphs directly to the shipping compa- between whales and their prey was far more complicated than nies. “We showed them that by moving the channel slightly to the whalers would have you believe. north,” Wiley said, “we could avoid potential collisions.” It was a One of our reviewers had had a good point: there were feeding straightforward argument—it wouldn’t cost all that much in fuel aggregations of whales not far from the lab at Harvard where we or time. With the shippers on board, it was easy to persuade the had done some analyses—why hadn’t we gone out there and test- Coast Guard and other federal agencies to support the idea; the ed our hypothesis? I e-mailed Mason Weinrich, who has studied International Maritime Organization confirmed the move, and humpbacks off the coast of Massachusetts for years, asking if he the lane was shifted in 2007. Whale collisions have decreased. had any humpback poop available. Within a few minutes, he re- Off the stern, a huge vertical spout rose, deep as a foghorn, plied: “I have several samples sitting on my desk, actually—pre- then glints of stainless steel flashed off a slate-blue flank that served in alcohol—and we carry a ‘pooper scooper’ net with us arched above the water: a finback, large and fast—more stream- wherever we go.” When did I need them? lined than the humpbacks—passed like a racehorse, ending with Great. But the trouble with analyzing ammonium is that you a relatively tiny dorsal fin, the mammal so big that even the time really need fresh feces. How quickly does the dung break down? it had taken to surface had seemed enormous. How long does it stay at the surface? Do phytoplankton use it? Near the horizon, a humpback breached, twisting 360 degrees. A I’d have to go to sea to find out. After a few months of discus- calf began to lob tail, moving its dark fluke in the air. Humpbacks sions, Dave Wiley, a whale biologist and research coordinator are the splashy ones, playful, interactive. To Melville they were “the on Stellwagen Bank off the coast of Massachusetts, offered me a most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more berth on a 187-foot research vessel. As chief scientist on a project gay foam and white water generally than any of them.” To at least to learn everything about humpback whales—Where do they one biologist, they were cute but exhausting, like three-year-olds or feed? What do they eat? How much time do they spend in busy, puppies. “They’re always like, ‘Look at me. Look at me.’” risky shipping lanes?—he thought our nutrient work, while ad- And then there were the right whales, the first cetacean I had mittedly quirky, would complement his team’s research. One of got to know, rare and brooding, plying the waters with an enor- the great joys of science has to be turning a thought that sur- mous scowl and a train wreck of cornified skin covered in whale faced one night over a few beers into a full-blown field project. lice—callosities. They had already left for the more productive

42 May - June 2011 One biologist has likened the intersection of ships serving busy ports with whales to raising your kids on the interstate.

deep waters of the Bay of Fundy by the time we arrived on Stell- ples, I would get seasick aboard the Nancy Foster, which rolled, if wagen. These surly Goths of the North Atlantic had recently not exactly like a well-greased pig, then like one in clover. But been dubbed the urban whale—they feed near Boston and raise humpback feces came up roses compared to that of right whales. their offspring off Jacksonville, Florida, one of the busiest ports Roz Rolland, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium, in the country. One biologist has likened it to raising your kids has used the samples to check lipid levels, revealing the nutri- on the interstate: to the enormous 800-foot ships in the region, tional status of each whale; to test for protozoan parasites; to as- these 40-foot whales were little more than possums to an eigh- say hormone levels, which reveal sexual maturity, pregnancy, and teen-wheeler. Right whales, greatly reduced by overharvesting stress; and to measure biotoxins found in harmful algal blooms— a hundred years ago, have been protected since the 1930s—but paralytic shellfish poisoning may be curbing the whale’s ability until recently, only against intentional hunts. to recover from centuries of exploitation.… As Michael Moore of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, who has done more than his share of whale necropsies, likes to Dave Wiley didn’t start at Stellwagen. His first offshore as- say, the United States is still one of the biggest whaling nations signment after graduating from the University of Massachusetts on Earth—but we do it through negligence, with ships and com- was as a marine-mammal observer—off Dumpsite 106. Back then, mercial fishing gear, rather than with harpoons. When caught New York City and New Jersey shipped their sewage 12 miles in a net or line, humpbacks relax and let a team get to work, but offshore, dumping an average of eight million tons each year on right whales, Moore has discovered, need sedation. Both whale the continental shelf. Bacterial levels rose. Heavy metals con- species are subject to the same risks, but humpbacks have re- taminated the seafloor. Were the dolphins and other whales in bounded to more than 10,000 in the North Atlantic, with estimat- the area affected? There weren’t many in the area, but Wiley had ed growth rates of more than 3 percent a year. For a large-bodied, learned something critical to my analysis: the sludge sat above long-lived species, that was quite good, testament to the success the thermocline, the border between the nutrient-rich bottom of the moratorium on commercial whaling put into place in 1986. waters and the light-filled upper surface, exactly as I suspected As we floated over Stellwagen Bank, Boston nothing more than whale poop did. Whale feces could enhance biological activity— a callosity on the horizon, suddenly there was a spout of coral, but the millions of tons of concentrated and contaminated hu- then rust. Up ahead, a whale rose, arching her back and kicking man sludge created a hypoxic environment, a “dead zone,” where with her flukes. Somebody called out, “Poop!” It was as big as oxygen levels were so low, many fish and invertebrates couldn’t our Zodiac, a plume of weak green tea. This cloud of unknow- survive. Shellfish beds were closed. Fisheries were closed. New ing descended several meters down the water column. I eased a York City finally stopped dumping its sewage there in 1992, but plankton net through the plume and captured a bit in the cod around the world, dead zones are still growing, caused in many end, stowing it in a cooler. I had worried that, collecting and processing fetid fecal sam- Right: A diving humpback shows its flukes—a favorite sight for whale watchers. Below right: Yearly, some 2,000 large commercial vessels serving Boston harbor cross the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (below), intersecting with these mammals. (The map’s dots show right whales; the colors, the density of baleen whales.) T ho m pson/noaa iley and Michael W iley avid avid y winn/whoi; noaa; D noaa; winn/whoi; j ere m y m u pper right: fro C lockwise

Harvard Magazine 43 cases by the runoff of excess fertilizer. The discharge from the darker they turned, the higher the concentration of ammonium. I Mississippi River has created a hypoxic area that at times grows ran the spec—ammonium levels were through the roof for those as large as New Jersey. that were deepest blue. Although the ambient levels approached Away from these dead zones, the upper layer of many coastal zero, the water from the fecal plume had a concentration of more systems becomes nitrogen depleted as the growing season pro- than 30 micromoles: the humpbacks were releasing plumes of ni- ceeds. In the spring, plankton bloom as temperatures warm, and trogen more highly concentrated than the rich bottom waters a boundary layer is formed between the cold, nutrient-rich wa- where they fed. Here was our first field evidence that whales ters and the upper surface. Only in this upper layer—the eupho- were fertilizing their gardens. tic zone—is there enough light for photosynthesis. There, phy- Just as trees had become more than board feet or timber, toplankton, the base of the marine food web, grow until they use whales were far more than the number of barrels inscribed in up much of the nitrogen, iron, or other essential nutrients. a logbook or the number of pounds of kujira or hvalkjøtt on the Meanwhile, the cold dense water nearer to the bottom remains market. Whales could increase primary productivity in the rich in these nutrients. Here’s where the whale pump comes into gulf, helping to sustain fisheries and even, perhaps, fight cli- play: after this boundary layer has formed, many cetaceans active- mate change by pumping iron, a limiting nutrient, to the surface ly feed at the bottom, rising to the surface to breathe—and poop.… of the southern oceans. Despite attempts to show that whales were our competitors—they eat our fish, therefore they should Back in the ship’s wet lab, my fears of seasickness proved be caught—it looked as if, in fact, more whales meant greater unfounded. The humpback specimens smelled mostly of brine; productivity and more fish. Just increasing the standing stock of there was the slightest bit of ash—some sand lance scales and whales could help, their massive bodies sequestering carbon after bones—at the bottom of the liter jar. I filtered the fecal samples they died, like fluking forests in the seas. and added reagents to measure the nitrogen in the plumes: the Maybe it is better to watch whales than to eat them.…

zines and guidebooks. This passion for simply watching nature Endangered Species Economics resulted in more than a million jobs. Whale watching is big business: tourists spent more than A common complaint is that wild areas reduce the tax base $125 million on tickets and travel to Stellwagen in 2008. They in a community—I heard it in Boiling Spring Lakes. I heard it spent about $2.1 billion to see cetaceans around the world. Ac- in Florida. But the Departments of the Interior and Commerce cording to whale biologist Roger Payne, it is essential that such and the Census Bureau have been gathering data since 1955. visitors “become awestruck by whales.” Whale watchers, not The most recent study showed that wildlife watching brought scientists, are going to determine their fate. in almost $9 billion in tax revenues to state and local govern- Here are a few things that endangered species have done for ments. And this doesn’t even include other local services such local communities. Manatees attract hundreds of thousands as storm protection or the provision of fish and freshwater, or of visitors to Florida each year, where they spend more than global ones like climate regulation. $23 million to see the sirenids in Blue and Homosassa Springs. The figures for bird-watchers alone are staggering: there are Reef-based tourism around the Florida Keys is almost entirely 48 million in the United States, compared to about 33 million dependent on the dominant (and federally listed) staghorn and anglers and hunters. Most birders just enjoy keeping an eye elk-horn corals; the industry employs more than 43,000 peo- on their feeders and the birds that visit their backyards; but ple whose annual wage income totals $1.2 billion. Reefs supply around 20 million travel each year to see birds, averaging about more than half a billion people with food and work, buffering two weeks on the road. That’s a lot of birders, and a lot of cash. coastlines from waves and producing sand for the beaches— Just as cities compete for stadiums and factories, communities each hectare of reef generates up to $130,000 of ecosystem ser- should vie for parks and charismatic fauna. Whooping cranes vices, the benefits that nature provides for free. The bad news: in Aransas and Necedah, bald eagles at Mason’s Neck, and more than 200 species—a third of all reef-building corals—are ivorybills—well, maybe in Arkansas. at risk (from bleaching and other diseases), and the buildup There’s always the risk that visitors will outnumber—or

of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels is likely to change the out-race—their subjects. As dolphin tourism grew in Shark entire chemistry of the seas. Only amphibians appear to be in a Bay, Australia, the number of dolphins declined. A single tour tighter death spiral. operator had no discernable effect; but once a second boat be- Americans spent more than $120 billion hunting, fishing, and gan operating, one in seven dolphins left the bay, calving rates wildlife watching in 2006. That’s more than the Super Bowl. declined, and areas with no tour boats showed an increase in It’s more than professional football. It’s more than was spent these small cetaceans. So the Minister of the Environment re- on all spectator sports, amusement parks, casinos, bowling al- voked one of the licenses as a necessary sacrifice to keep the leys, and ski slopes combined. Hard to believe, until you con- dolphins—and the tourists—in the bay. Shark Bay, remote and sider that more than 71 million Americans spent more than small, was a pretty easy call. On Stellwagen, more than a dozen $45 billion just on observing and photographing wildlife. They whale-watching companies have agreed to voluntary guide- spent the money on food, lodging, and transport, on guides and lines created to avoid whale strikes and to keep whale-watch- fees to access public and private lands, on bird food, binoculars, ing vessels from pursuing, tormenting, or annoying them. Will spotting scopes, and backpacking equipment, on nature maga- that prove good enough for the whales?

44 May - June 2011 John Harvard’s J o u r nal

Done deal. U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and President Drew Faust sign the ROTC agreement as (left to right) Vice President and General Counsel Robert Iuliano, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Juan M. Garcia III, Dean of Harvard College Evelynn Hammonds, and Vice Admiral Mark E. Ferguson III look on.

ROTC Returns (NROTC) program to return to Harvard’s ration dating from the Vietnam War era. campus once the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” The agreement provides for: An agreement signed on March 4 by (DADT) policy’s repeal—enacted by Con- • appointment by the University of an President Drew Faust and U.S. Secretary gress in December—takes effect. That is NROTC director at Harvard, with office of the Navy Ray Mabus clears the way for expected to happen as soon as this sum- space, and access to classrooms and ath- the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps mer, ending nearly 40 years of formal sepa- letic fields (for drilling and military exercises) for participating students; and In this Issue • resumption by Harvard of direct financial responsibility for the costs of stu- 46 Designing from Life 52 Beyond Ramen Noodles dent participation in the program (such 47 Harvard Portrait 53 Brevia costs have been covered in recent decades 48 Harvard’s 375th 56 The Undergraduate by alumni donations). 49 Reenacting Early Action 58 Sports Harvard Navy and Marine Corps mid- 50 Learning about Teaching 59 Historic Hoops Season shipmen will continue to take their 51 The Public’s “Hard Problems” 60 Alumni NROTC classes at MIT, home to the 51 Yesterday’s News 64 The College Pump courses and faculty who have trained

Photograph by Rose Lincoln Harvard Magazine 45 John Harvard’s Journal area students enrolled in the program re- Twenty undergraduates now partici- tions just downriver at MIT—in gaining cently. (Military leaders have indicated it pate in ROTC programs, including 10 in an ROTC presence on campus so quickly. is uneconomical to expand the number of NROTC. In addition to Faust’s interest Other institutions that have taken steps to ROTC programs to multiple campus sites in restoring the program, Harvard may be re-establish ROTC in the wake of DADT’s that each serve a potentially small number enjoying a bit of geographic luck—in the repeal, including Stanford and Yale, are less of students.) The news release announcing proximity of the current ROTC opera- fortunately situated. the new arrangement noted that maintaining the current consortium arrangement is “best for the efficiency and effectiveness” Designing from Life es—transferring ideas from academia into of the operations. From Harvard’s per- the hands of private industry. The two- spective, this means that issues of faculty As a piece of engineering, the hu- year-old institute has a growing project appointments and class credit for ROTC man body is a marvel. It maintains its bal- portfolio and institutional and corporate courses within the College curriculum— ance even while executing complicated partnerships that have the potential to ex- potential deal-breakers—do not arise now. movements; it senses and adapts to heat pand Harvard’s research in new ways. Its Faust had previously indicated strong and cold. Every 20 seconds, it circulates applications range from vibrating insoles support for renewing ties to ROTC once blood through even its most far-flung ex- that could help prevent falls in the elderly the prohibition on military service by tremities. It has cells capable of replacing to a device that rapidly diagnoses sepsis, a openly gay men and women was abolished. wounded tissue, finding and destroying potentially fatal condition. She attended commissioning ceremonies dangerous invaders, and interconnecting The institute grew out of a larger ini- during Commencement week, and seemed to produce thoughts and emotions. Utiliz- tiative at Harvard to develop a vision for to establish a strong rapport with General ing all these functions, our bodies—and all bioengineering. One faculty proposal was David H. Petraeus (now leading U.S. mili- living systems—can accomplish tasks far an institute for biologically inspired engi- tary operations in Afghanistan) when he more sophisticated and dynamic than any neering; that received seed funding from spoke at the 2009 exercises. In the news artificial entity yet designed by humans. the University in 2008. The following Jan- release, Faust said, “Our renewed relation- Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologi- uary, the program received an enormous ship affirms the vital role that the members cally Inspired Engineering (wyss.harvard. boost when Swiss entrepreneur Hansjörg of our Armed Forces play in serving the edu) is taking on the ambitious task of ap- Wyss donated $125 million to launch the nation and securing our freedoms, while plying the astounding capabilities of liv- institute, the largest gift in Harvard histo- also affirming inclusion and opportunity ing systems to better engineer artificial ry (see “Life Sciences, Applied,” January- as powerful American ideals. It broadens ones. Its projects range widely: robots that February 2009, page 34). the pathways for students to participate self-organize, materials that adapt to the “My goal has always been to improve in an honorable and admirable calling and environment, medical devices that sense patient care,” Wyss says. An engineer by in so doing advances our commitment to and respond to subtle biological rhythms, training and chairman of the medical-de- both learning and service.” engineered cells that use nature’s build- vice manufacturer Synthes, he became in- Mabus called the agreement “good for ing blocks to manufacture fuel or attack terested in the effort while meeting with the University, good for the military, and a disease. But beyond pursuing research several leaders in biology and medicine at good for the country. Together, we have in these areas, the institute focuses on Harvard; he saw an opportunity to create made a decision to enrich the experience transforming its discoveries into devic- an institution that would help engineers open to Harvard’s undergraduates, make the military better, and our nation stron- Donald ger.” The decision may have resonated for Ingber Mabus on several levels: he rose to the rank of lieutenant during his own navy service; holds a Harvard Law degree (J.D. ’75); and was in Cambridge at the start of junior parents’ weekend (daughter Elisabeth is a student in the College). Harvard is also pursuing discussions to renew formal ties with ROTC programs serving other military branches. And Faust will form an ROTC implementation committee chaired by Cabot associate professor in applied science Kevin (“Kit”) Parker, an army major who has served three tours in Afghanistan. (His bioengineering research has recently been expanded to include traumatic brain injury,

prompted by his military experience.) N ews Office H arvard Mitchell/ stephanie

46 May - June 2011 and biologists work together and connect multiple disciplines to solve practical harvard portrait problems. The intention was to build an entirely new organization at the University: not a traditional research center producing discoveries and scientific papers alone, but a place focused on creating new technologies and applications that—thanks to industrial collaborations—can directly benefit both human health and the environment. Don Ingber, Folkman professor of vascular biology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and professor of bioengineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), was named founding director. (He and David Mooney, Pinkas family professor of bioengineering, were instrumental in developing the original vision for the institute.) The resulting Wyss Institute is, Ingber says, like “a start-up in the midst of the world’s greatest academic environment.” Wyss himself says Ingber “has done a fantastic job” in moving the institute’s work forward. The institute is not housed within any Harvard school; its research

The Yard Crew

Every spring, after the desiccating winds of winter, lush green grass sprouts in the Yard, reaching maturity just in time for Commencement—when throngs of jubilant students and proud parents promptly trample it again. Harvard Yard is a tough environment for plants of all kinds because it is so well loved and used. The team that An early design concept for a vibrating tends this urban oasis on behalf of the institution and its barefoot summer scholars, insole to improve balance and sensation. its Frisbee players, and its casual passers-by works year-round to sustain the invit- staff includes 16 core and several associate ing plane of green that spreads beneath high-branching trees. Pictured in this Feb- faculty members representing the Faculty ruary photograph, from left to right and front row to back, are foreman Art Libby, of Arts and Sciences, HMS, and SEAS, as with Donald Ford and Ryan Sweeney; Ray Pacillo, Frank Lemos, and John Patti; Tia- well as Boston University, the University go Pereira, arborist Mark Muniz, and the crew’s supervisor, associate manager for of Massachusetts Medical School, Beth Is- grounds Paul Smith, who has been caring for Harvard Yard for 19 years. “Winters are rael Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham tough,” Smith says, “but the other eight months are great.” Come spring, they work at and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Can- a whirlwind pace, mulching and mowing, sweeping walks, fixing irrigation lines, prun- cer Institute, and Children’s Hospital Bos- ing shrubs and trees. When Smith started at Harvard, it took tons of fertilizer to ton. The institute also has its own techni- revive the Yard’s viridescent lawns each year. But today, he reports, the landscape is cal and administrative staff, and office and maintained organically: leaves and trimmings are raked and vacuumed up each fall, So luti o n N exus Co llins/ rendering by m es J. o f Ja Co urtesy lab space in both the Longwood Medical shredded and chipped, and later returned to the soil as “compost teas and humates.” Area and Cambridge. Earthworms, once scarce, are now abundant (although the crew still needs to aerate). Smith confesses he would never have believed how much more natural activity there The institute’s work aims to use les- is underfoot. His crew likes “working to make the grounds of a worldwide institution sons learned from biology to develop engi- look nice. Within a city, it’s a tough thing to do.” neering innovations, Ingber says, because

Photograph by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 47 John Harvard’s Journal science has recently generated a great deal bridges traditional departmental di- metic Microsystems platform that creates of fundamental knowledge about how liv- vides—through fields such as genomics, microchip-like devices containing living ing systems work. “We’re really beginning tissue engineering, synthetic biology, and cells that can mimic the functions of real to understand how nature builds,” he ex- robotics—the institute offers opportuni- organs. Last June, the team announced plains. Those insights can be brought to ties for unexpected collaborations that that they had made a flexible, coin-sized bear on a wide array of disciplines, includ- can advance research even more. And chip containing chambers of human cells ing materials science, architecture, medi- rather than housing investigators’ individ- that reproduce the workings of a lung, cine, computer science, and engineering. ual work in separate labs, Wyss projects even “breathing” by stretching and re- New engineering tools, meanwhile, make are organized into six Enabling Technol- laxing in response to changing air flow. it possible to interface with biological sys- ogy Platforms, each focused on developing Pharmaceutical companies are beginning tems in novel ways. new technology capabilities that could to partner with institute researchers to Perhaps most important, by bringing have numerous applications. explore whether these devices can be used together scholars whose work already Ingber is leading a project in the Biomi- to develop drugs and perform toxicology screenings without relying on laboratory animals. Meanwhile, the team’s system for You’re going to see plenty rapidly diagnosing sepsis is a significant more of this logo, as Harvard pre- advance beyond current practice, where pares to commemorate its anni- identifying this dangerous condition de- versary in the next academic year. finitively can take days. Plans for celebrating the Uni- Not all applications have a medical fo- versity’s journey since 1636, and how it will evolve, are still in the making, but reflect “the opportunity to bring the members of our community together not just to mark our history and traditions but also to celebrate what is distinctive about Harvard today and what we aspire to be in the future,” as University marshal Jackie O’Neill puts it—while maintaining a suitably reserved tone. A 375th anniversary is not a 400th, and the economy does not justify extravagance. The aim, O’Neill says, is to showcase contemporary Harvard—a place that has become progressively “more diverse, global, and outward-looking” since its A microchip that last milestone, in 1986—in ways that emphasize exciting work by faculty members, mimics a human lung engage students, and connect alumni. Likely elements include: could screen drugs or test for toxins. • A birthday party. It wouldn’t be a proper occasion without merrymaking. Accord- ingly, Friday, October 14—coinciding with freshman parents’ weekend, the Harvard Alumni Association’s fall meeting, and the Harvard College Fund assembly—has been cus—others will affect the environment reserved for festive dinners and receptions for students, faculty and staff members, or improve industrial design and manufac- and alumni in the Houses and other sites, followed by processions, led by student turing. The Bioinspired Robotics platform,

performers from diverse cultural traditions, to Tercentenary Theatre. There, further for instance—building on work by assis- institute o leau/wyss artistic performances, a light show, and other entertainments are scheduled, along tant professor of electrical engineering with socializing encouraged by dessert buffets and a community dance. Robert Wood, its co-leader—is designing R ichard gr • Academic perspectives. Faculty panels on various subjects will be convened small, delicate robots that look like house- throughout the year, emphasizing the work of younger professors whose research, flies; such devices could help pollinate ideas, and teaching will shape the University and the world at Harvard’s fourth-centu- crops in places where bees are threatened ry birthday. A presidential forum may, separately, examine universities’ roles in society. (see “Tinker, Tailor, Robot, Fly,” January- • Alumni experiences. The University communications and development staffs are February 2008, page 8). Berylson professor collaborating on “Harvard Stories,” an interactive online library of video recordings of materials science Joanna Aizenberg is of graduates talking about their formative experiences at the University, momentous leading efforts in the Adaptive Architec- memories, and more (inspired in part by National Public Radio’s Story Corps series). ture platform to develop materials with • A speaker series. Prominent alumni from various walks of life are expected to special properties inspired by objects in participate in campus lectures and perhaps panel discussions. nature; lotus leaves, for instance, are ex- Reflecting continuity with tradition, a new Harvard picture book is being produced tremely efficient at repelling water, and for the occasion (to be published by Harvard University Press). Reflecting change the Wyss team seeks to capitalize on this during the past quarter-century, this year’s events will be coordinated through a property to develop a material that could dedicated website, launching in the summer. Reflecting the eternal verities, O’Neill prevent ice formation on airplane wings. (who worries about such things at each Commencement) is trying to assure clem- Ingber explains that the platforms—the ent weather on October 14. President Drew Faust is expected to unveil anniversary others are Anticipatory Medical Devices details during this year’s Commencement exercises, on May 26. (developing electronic devices to detect and prevent medical problems before

48 May - June 2011 sequence is that some students who really want to make their college decision as Reenacting Early Action early as possible in their senior year apply to other schools early, even if their first choice is Princeton.” Starting this fall, students will again have the option of apply- Under the restored early-action option, students who apply to ing to the College under a nonbinding early-action program. Harvard College by November 1 will receive a decision and finan- In 2006, the College decided to eliminate early action for ap- cial-aid information by December 15. Students who apply by the plicants as of the fall of 2007 and move to a single January 1 regular deadline of January 1 are notified on April 1; the deadline deadline. Administrators voiced concerns that early action fa- for all students to declare their intent to attend is May 1. vored students from affluent families and communities; then- (Meanwhile, on March 30, the College announced that it had president Derek Bok said students of lesser means tended to offered admission to 2,158 applicants to the class of 2015, out wait for the January deadline to apply, so that in April they could of 34,950, for an acceptance rate of 6.2 percent.) compare financial-aid offers from all schools that accepted them. • Term bill. In conjunction with the announcement, the Col- Although Princeton and the University of Virginia made similar lege released the tuition, room, and board costs for the 2011- changes, no other prominent institutions followed suit. Mean- 2012 academic year: a total of $52,560, an increase of 3.6 per- while, the number of applications to selective schools continued cent from $50,724 this year. Undergraduate financial aid will to swell, making admissions ever more competitive and increas- increase 1 percent, to $160 million. (Since 2008, the College ing applicants’ interest in an early option (and swamping admis- has borne the full cost for undergraduates from families with sions offices with thousands more files to review by the single incomes of $60,000 or less; from that level to $120,000, the an- spring deadline). Last November, Virginia announced it would nual cost scales up from 1 percent to 10 percent of family in- reinstate early-action admissions beginning this fall. And after come, and remains at that upper level for those with incomes analyzing trends during the four intervening admissions cycles, up to $180,000.) Harvard said it had found that students from families across the Peer institutions have announced diverse tuition and financial- income spectrum were showing greater interest in early admis- aid strategies for next year. Princeton—citing the economy and sions given the uncertain economy and competitive conditions. its own strong endowment and fundraising results—will raise “Many highly talented students, including some of the best- undergraduate costs 1 percent (its lowest increase in 45 years), prepared low-income and underrepresented minority stu- to $50,689. Yale, on the other hand, raised its term bill 5.8 per- dents, were choosing programs with an early-action option, cent, to $52,700, while boosting its financial-aid budget 8 per- and therefore were missing out on the opportunity to con- cent (to $117 million) and redirecting that aid: students from sider Harvard,” said Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean Michael families with incomes of $65,000 or less (formerly $60,000) will D. Smith. Princeton announced a similar policy change the now receive full scholarships, while those with incomes from same day: “In eliminating our early program four years ago, we $130,000 to $200,000 will now pay an average of 15 percent hoped other colleges and universities would do the same, and of their income (up from 12 percent previously); those in the they haven’t,” President Shirley M. Tilghman noted. “One con- cohort between these ranges pay about 10 percent of income. they happen), Programmable Nanomate- work demonstrating that a small amount projects.” Moving beyond proof of princi- rials, and Biomaterials Evolution—create of noise introduced into certain systems ple requires a complete prototype that can a structure in which projects can build can enhance the detection of a signal; in be demonstrated to companies. on one another; one platform may enable this case, providing faint random vibra- “The Wyss is incredibly well positioned many different types of applications or tions to the feet—so faint they are un- to fill this gap,” Collins says. He and a fields of research. In choosing projects, detectable—actually boosts the sensory team there are working to transform the the institute’s leaders emphasize high-risk system’s ability to detect balance cues. He technology into a product, create a com- ideas that might not obtain support from has found that elderly people exposed to mercialization plan, and reach out to shoe conservative funding agencies that typi- these vibrations can maintain their bal- and insole companies. Meanwhile, David cally emphasize incremental advances. ance as well as much younger adults. Paydarfar, a Wyss associate faculty mem- Wyss points to Collins’s project as ber based at the University of Massa- The wyss is meant in particular to help an example of how the institute can be chusetts Medical School, is using related speed to market new products that might transformative; a project like this, he says, scientific techniques to develop a vibrat- otherwise languish in research laborato- “needs more than just a professor.” Col- ing mat for newborns that could prevent ries. An early example is a project initiated lins explains that the technology, though sleep apnea, a potentially fatal problem in by James Collins, a professor of biomedi- promising, had fallen into a gap where which breathing stops. cal engineering at Boston University: vi- many academic projects stall: funding To turn ideas into commercial applica- brating insoles that can help prevent falls agencies support basic scientific work, he tions, the institute draws on professionals in the elderly. Collins had developed the says, whereas “companies and investors from various sources. Its administrative technology in his lab, based on 15 years of generally want to invest in products, not leadership has experience working in in-

Harvard Magazine 49 John Harvard’s Journal dustry, and its staff includes an “advanced grants and write scholarly papers, the goal necting people at multiple institutions, technology team” of more than two dozen will be to generate intellectual property, nonprofit and otherwise. To promote technical experts drawn from both aca- royalties, and investment opportunities. collaboration, the contract requires that demia and industry who can guide the A key innovation facilitating the Insti- work take place on site. transformation of technologies into mate- tute’s work was the creation of a universal To further the applications it develops, rials and devices. Although faculty mem- contract for all collaborations, stream- the Wyss has actively courted partner- bers at the Wyss will continue to solicit lining the often onerous process of con- ships with industry. In November 2010,

of a Complex Variable.” Each was an extremely concentrated learning experience; the amount of material covered and the Learning about Teaching expectation of mastery were in each case much greater that those in other courses. In “Tackling Teaching and Learning” ers, regardless of teaching technique, be- Each was taught by a tenured professor (March-April, page 42), about the Fac- cause they were so intellectually alive in who was expert in the material and thor- ulty of Arts and Sciences’ renewed focus the classroom. If the same thing is true oughly organized the presentation and on pedagogy and educational outcomes, today, Harvard needs more faculty who homework. However, in both, the lecture we asked readers to share examples of are actually doing their best work while was only a small part of the educational teaching that had worked for them, and they are at Harvard and with the time to process. In Russian, the homework, expla- to suggest improvements that Harvard pay attention to teaching. nations by the teaching fellow, and pro- might consider. Here is an edited sam- Gregory Miller, A.M. ’76 nunciation drills by a native speaker were pling of the responses; read the full con- by far the most important content. In the versation, and contribute to it, at http:// Our learners no longer want to be told, math course, almost all learning resulted harvardmag.com/teaching-and- they want to discover. Rather than lec- from the challenge of the homework; we learning. vThe Editors tures and sound bites, give them the tools students met together and jointly puzzled they require to find answers on their out the challenging assignments. I’m con- In the late fifties, I was fortunate enough own. The modern educator is more of a vinced that a gram of example—a well- to enroll in Charlie Slack’s and Sarnoff guide than an expert. Steve Hearst ’88 taught course experienced—is worth a Mednick’s experiential courses in psy- kilogram of pedagogy training. chological research and mental health. In Harvard can enhance its teaching-learning Lyle McBride, Ph.D.’64 the research course, we had a lab, human process by relating the subject matter subjects, and equipment, and were ex- being taught—whenever possible—to During my senior year, I wrote a thesis on pected to turn out a formal research pa- present-day situations. Indeed, doing so The Tempest and directed a production of per a week. In the mental-health course, will make the subject much easier to un- the show on the Loeb mainstage. My the- each student cared for a patient for an derstand, and more relevant and effective sis adviser (a Ph.D. candidate) spent hours academic year. From there I went on to a as it relates to today’s society. talking with me about the play, about my research job at the Med School for which A second way [to] enhance the edu- struggles to bring the play to life, about Harvard gave me a lot of academic cred- cational process is by subdividing classes how the production had turned out, it. I learn best by doing things and tying into groups of four or five students, with about how much I hated the play at times, book-learning to the enterprise at hand, each group specializing in a critical area about how I missed it once the show was and Harvard made that happen for me, of the subject. After extensive research over, and about how what I had planned getting my undying gratitude. in a specific area, each group member can to say in my thesis had changed because Jonathan Brown ’57 then present a 10- to 15-minute report to my understanding of the entire class in an area [where] he or the play was altered Most Harvard faculty in my day (GSAS, she has acquired exceptional knowledge. by the process of For coverage of 1970s) were either desperate to publish A third way to enhance the learn- staging it. I thought faculty conversations so they could get on a tenure track at ing process is for instructors to provide I already knew a lot about teaching in a global context and using some other university, or else well past students with exams that require a great about Shakespeare, but University collections, the time they did their best work (also amount of critical thinking…rather than I learned much more see harvardmag.com/ often at another university). One group objective (or one-word) exams. through directing the teaching-learning- had no time to focus on teaching, most George Patsourakos show and talking about conversations. of the other group lost whatever interest it during my senior tutorial than I could they had long ago. The best teaching ex- Looking back on my four-plus years as a have imagined. I am now a law professor, periences were with “prime of life” facul- Harvard graduate student, I see two cours- and I try to offer my students that same ty working with their students to develop es that were outstanding in the amount of kind of active learning experience that their most creative ideas. This very small useful knowledge I learned. They were “Be- helped me so much as an undergraduate number of faculty were excellent teach- ginning Russian” (accelerated) and “Theory at Harvard. Molly Shadel ’91

50 May - June 2011 for example, it announced a multiyear partnership with Agilent Technologies; Yesterday’s News the company will support the development of tools and technologies in three From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine platform areas: Biomaterials Evolution, Programmable Nanomaterials, and Biomi- 1921 The Commencement audience special effort to look intelligent.” (Clas- metic Microsystems. witnesses for the first time a “consider- sics professor emeritus Mason Ham- “I think this is a terrific opportunity able group” of women standing to be mond informs bemused nonclassicists for Harvard,” Wyss says. He believes that declared graduates of a relatively new that boustrophedonic is a Greek term other universities are already seeking to department of the University, the School meaning “as the oxen turn at the end of replicate the institute’s approach, both in of Education. a plowed furrow.”) bringing disciplines together and in emphasizing commercial applications of its 1936 The United States Senate has 1991 Derek Bok leaves office and work. For Ingber, the excitement clearly approved a bill providing for a series of donates his 1969 red, semi-automatic, lies in having such resources and expertise Harvard Tercentenary postage stamps as sun-roofed VW bug, with 45,718 miles in one place, in order to move projects for- the University continues to prepare for on it, to the Phillips Brooks House Asso- ward quickly. He says that faculty mem- its forthcoming anniversary. ciation. PBH ultimately decides to auc- bers have been drawn to the Wyss be- tion off the car. cause of the promise of accelerating their 1961 College diplomas are printed in work, taking on riskier projects, and see- English for the first time, rather than en- 1991 The new head of University ing them move more quickly beyond the graved in Latin, provoking protest from Dining Services, Michael P. Berry, im- laboratory into the real world. students and alumni. President Pusey presses undergraduates with such culi- vcourtney humphries compensates by conferring the degree in nary initiatives as themed dinners, more Latin for the first time since 1895. vegetarian options, and environmental awareness: “Cereal now comes in bulk 1971 What is believed to be the first dispensers instead of wasteful ‘snack The Public’s campus drug raid carried out by Cam- packs.’” A grateful senior class honors “Hard Problems” bridge police occurs after a potted mari- him with a pic- juana plant is sighted on a dormitory ture of them- A year ago, prominent social scientists windowsill. selves. gathered at Harvard to highlight what they saw as the most pressing problems 1971 Susan Cochran ’73, manager of in their disciplines. Asked to choose the ski team, becomes the first Radcliffe problems that were either very urgent, student to win a Harvard H. very difficult, or both, these 12 eminent thinkers formulated a list of nearly three 1986 Professor Walter J. Kaiser, mar- dozen “hard problems in the social sci- shal of Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa chap- ences,” then put the problems to the pub- ter, instructs his charges to enter lic for a vote (see “ ‘Hard Problems’ in the Memorial Hall “boustrophedon Social Sciences,” July-August 2010, page ically.” Brandishing his silver- 60). The subsequent online forum also so- tipped baton, he adds, “I should licited suggestions of important problems tell you that Life magazine that hadn’t made the scholars’ list, and 10 will be taking pictures of the problems submitted by the pub- of the procession. lic—including world peace, improving So do make a relations between Islam and the West, and defining humans’ purpose—were also thrown into the voting mix. The level of public interest and attention surprised even the organizers. The project’s website attracted 7,000 visitors per month last April and May; a Facebook page drew 11,000 fans; and more than 500 people voted in the poll to decide which problems were truly the most urgent and most difficult. As conscientious social scientists, the organizers subjected the poll results to

Illustration by Mark Steele Harvard Magazine 51 John Harvard’s Journal rigorous analysis, parsing the responses The idea for the “hard problems” sym- Facebook ads, targeting in numerous ways—and the problems posium and follow-up originally came users in countries and submitted by the public scored well. “I from Nick Nash ’00. As an undergraduate regions that were un- Visit harvardmag.com/ hard-problems to read thought it was fascinating to see the dis- chemistry and physics concentrator, he derrepresented among about the original “Hard connect between what the academics was inspired by “Hilbert’s problems”: a poll respondents. The Problems” symposium thought were important problems and list of 23 hard problems in mathematics as- response, says Nash, and find links to websites what the non-academics thought,” says sembled by mathematician David Hilbert was thrilling: “We’d to learn more. Stephen M. Kosslyn, one of the organizers. in 1900. Eleven decades later, 10 of those post a problem and ask, (Formerly Lindsley professor of psychol- problems had been solved; four had been ‘What do you think?’ We’d have a woman ogy and dean of social science within the classified as unsolvable; and all but two of in India opine, followed by a man in Nigeria, Faculty of Arts and Sciences [FAS], he now the rest had been partially solved. Nash— and then a teenager in Brazil would respond. directs the Center for Advanced Study in now a vice-president at General Atlantic, What a fascinating way to get the whole the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.) an investment firm based in Greenwich, world humming and buzzing about ideas.” Once the poll had closed, John Mure- A parallel but independent effort by sianu ’74, Ph.D. ’82, then a fellow at the The public sees the the National Science Foundation may Berkman Center for Internet and Society, indicate that the time is indeed ripe for analyzed the results using both traditional forest (world peace), aligning academic efforts (and public measures (such as overall high score and funding for them) with public priorities. how many voters gave a high score for while scholars examine The foundation’s general call last August each problem) and the less-orthodox “Zec for “decadal-scale ideas” on directions score,” an algorithm he designed based individual trees. for research in the social, behavioral, and on the assertion by symposium presenter economic sciences drew 252 white pa- Richard Zeckhauser, Ramsey professor of Connecticut, began to wonder whether pers from scholars (the abstracts are now political economy, that in deciding which a similar list of problems could be assem- viewable online). The NSF sometimes problems social scientists should address bled for the social sciences, for possible so- finds itself “stuck in this year-by-year first, extreme difficulty should actually lution during the coming century. budget cycle,” explains assistant director count against a problem. (Problems whose Nash secured funding for the project Myron Gutmann. “I wanted to ask, ‘What solutions seem very unlikely “might be fun through the Indira Foundation; he, Kosslyn, are the big ideas we can be working on 10 to talk about” hypothetically, Zeckhauser and Shephard coordinated the April 2010 years from now?’ so we really make a good says, but it would be foolish to funnel re- symposium and the online poll and discus- investment in planning for them.” The sources into work on them.) Thus, even sion that followed. They drew attention to agency will review the submissions and though the public ranked world peace the the discussion through press releases and announce priorities in the summer. most important problem, and the second most difficult, it dropped to fourth place in importance when Muresianu calculated Beyond Ramen portunity for interdisciplinary or social the “Zec score” because of its difficulty. Noodles exchange.” But the Grad Commons stu- Sustainable development, ranked second dents—surrounded by lively company in importance by the public, fell all the On a Monday night in late March, from around the University—are both way out of the top 10 for the same reason. dozens of graduate students stand around well fed and social. “Student success is (See harvardmag.com/hard-problems to a brightly lit lounge where tables are cov- partly driven by well-being, balance, and see how 10 problems ranked on different ered with many different kinds of pies. social connection,” she adds, “and so we scales.) The conversation is warm and animated; want to build and broaden well-being as Kosslyn thinks the disconnect between professor of public policy and manage- an end in itself.” Eight decades after the scholars and the public may be partly a ment Jennifer Lerner, of the Harvard Ken- College was transformed by the creation matter of phrasing: the public sees the for- nedy School, chats with students from the of residential Houses, with faculty and est (world peace), while scholars examine Divinity School, Law School, and Gradu- academic advisers as residents, something individual trees, breaking the problem ate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). similar is taking root for Harvard’s large down into constituent parts (e.g., the dis- They avidly sample blueberry and choc- population of graduate and professional- tinct roles of religion, politics, or the avail- olate-pudding pies, along with several school students. ability of food and water in contributing types of quiches. No one seems stressed In 2001, then-president Neil Ruden- to violence). One way “to bridge the gap” out. In fact, everyone looks…happy. stine, the Harvard Corporation, and the and foster a better understanding of what Lerner, faculty director of one of two deans of the graduate and professional social scientists do, says Jennifer Shephard apartment complexes in the Graduate schools formally acknowledged the need of the FAS social science dean’s office, who Commons Program (GCP), observes, “The to expand the available graduate housing helped coordinate the original event, “is to stereotype of the Harvard grad student is on Harvard’s campus. Allan Brandt, now have more conversations where the public someone working until all hours, sitting dean of GSAS, recalls, “Some of our peer is involved and scientists explain their re- alone in his or her apartment or lab, eat- institutions had moved more aggressively search in a way that’s accessible.” ing ramen noodles. This allows little opin developing graduate housing, so we had

52 May - June 2011 Commencement Speakers of the Harvard Corpo- Liberian president Ellen ration last year. Shapiro, Johnson Sirleaf, M.P.A. past president of the

Brevia o n ’71, will be the principal Harvard Law School As- o /b st

speaker sociation t

during the and of the o fayf afternoon Harvard Robert N.

exercises at Alumni As- Shapiro Ellen Johnson Harvard’s sociation, Sirleaf 360th Com- was an Overseer member mencement, on May 26. of the Corporation’s gov- “Over the course of her ernance-review committee nearly 40 years in public last year; he now serves on service, President Sirleaf the search committee as the has endured death threats, membership of the senior incarceration, and exile, all governing body is expand- the while challenging the ed (see “The Corporation’s inequality, corruption, and 360-Year Tune Up,” January- violence that defined life February, page 43). in Liberia for so long,” said Drew Faust (the other presi- Summas Reset dent who will speak on The Faculty of Arts and the occasion) in announc- Sciences on February 15 ing the news. Sirleaf was slightly modified the terms elected president in 2005, for awarding the honor becoming Africa’s first fe- summa cum laude. Begin- male elected head of state. ning with the class of 2012, She delivered the Harvard candidates must be des- Kennedy ignated to receive highest School’s honors in their field of con- graduation That voice, stilled. The Reverend Peter J. Gomes, Plum- centration and have earned address in mer professor of Christian morals and Pusey minister in the a grade point average with- 2008. On a Memorial Church, who had suffered a heart attack and subse- in the top 5 percent of the lighter note, quent stroke in December, as previously reported, died on Feb- class (the criterion was 4 to

Mary E llen Matthews Mary the seniors ruary 28. His death prompted an extraordinary outpouring of 5 percent). A requirement Amy Poehler selected as news coverage and of personal recollection, reflecting his status that students also earn their class day speaker the as “one of the great preachers of our generation” (in President an A or A- in each of two actress Amy Poehler, of Sat- Drew Faust’s words); best-selling modern interpreter of the courses in humanities, so- urday Night Live and Parks and Bible; crosser of boundaries (as a black Baptist Republican who cial sciences, and sciences Recreation fame. announced in 1991 that he was “a Christian who happens as was dropped, because in- well to be gay” and then promoted equal rights for gays); and, terdisciplinary courses are Overseer Leaders for many members of the Harvard community, the enduring no longer unambiguously Leila Fawaz, Ph.D. ’79, a public face of the University, a man who reveled in tradition identifiable in those terms. Tufts historian, will be and celebrated it with zest, especially on high occasions such as president of the Board of his Baccalaureate address to graduating seniors and his closing Higher-Ed Update Overseers for the 2011-2012 prayer—the text secreted within his cap for delivery—at the University of Southern academic year. Attorney Commencement morning exercises each spring. (The Harvard California alumnus David Robert N. Shapiro ’72, J.D. memorial service, on April 6, was held as this issue went to press; Dornsife and his wife, Dana ’78, will be- coverage appears at harvardmag.com/gomes-memorial.) Dornsife, have given the come the institution a $200-million vice chair of the Over- unrestricted gift, which USC expects seers’ executive commit- to use to bolster teaching, research, and tee. Fawaz was a mem- fellowships in the humanities and social ber of the committee sciences, in particular. David Dornsife, a

ge o rge eli mo re that identified William USC trustee, is chairman and majority Leila Fawaz F. Lee as a new member owner of Herrick Corp., a steel-fabricat-

Photographs by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 53 John Harvard’s Journal

ing company.…Yale, which became more day after (May 27) for a tour of Cuba, Washington, D.C., draw- dependent on spending from its endow- featuring performances of Beethoven’s ing on her work for This ment than Harvard before the 2008-2009 Symphony No. 9. Some 85 musicians and Republic of Suffering, her financial collapse, has announced that it music director Federico Cortese are ex- book on the death toll of will require an additional $68 million in pected to make the trip; for details, see the Civil War (excerpted budget reductions to balance the fiscal www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hro. in this magazine’s Jan- year 2012 books. The university’s spend- uary-February 2008 is- ing from the endowment will decline Memorial minister. Wendel W. “Tad” sue). This year marks the Drew Faust

slightly from the current year (Har- Meyer, who served as associate minister 150th anniversary of the beginning of the N ews o ffice H arvard Mitchell/ stephanie vard has projected a 4 percent increase at Memorial Church from war. Among other faculty members who in spending from endowment income 1997 to 1999 and rejoined have been Jefferson Lecturers recently for fiscal 2012), and then is projected to its staff as associate min- are Adams University Professor emeri- remain essentially flat for several more ister for administration tus Bernard Bailyn (1998), Fletcher Uni- years. In early April, Yale announced that after the Reverend Peter versity Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. it had exceeded the $3.5-billion goal for J. Gomes was incapaci- (2002), Porter University Professor Helen its capital campaign, scheduled to con- tated in late 2010, has Vendler (2004), and Kenan professor of

clude June 30; in a significant recent gift, now been appointed act- N ews o ffice se L inc o ln/ H arvard Ro government Harvey Mansfield(2007). Yale alumnus John Malone, a cable-tele- ing Pusey minister in the Wendel W. vision entrepreneur, donated $50 million church. He had retired “Tad” Meyer Computational pioneer. Coolidge pro- to endow 10 new engineering professor- from the full-time ministry in 2009, af- fessor of computer science and applied ships.…New York University announced ter serving most recently as rector of mathematics Leslie Valiant was named plans to create NYU Shanghai, a full St. John’s Episcopal Church in Beverly the 2010 winner of the A.M. Turing research university and liberal-arts col- Farms, Massachusetts, for 10 years. Award, conferred by the Association for lege, in concert with East China Normal Computing Machinery for fundamental University; students are expected to en- A faust forum. The National Endow- contributions to computer science. The roll in September 2013, at a campus to be ment for the Humanities named Presi- award, the premier professional recog- built in that city’s Pudong district. dent Drew Faust to present the fortieth nition in the field, includes a $250,000 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, the prize. Valiant was cited for discoveries in Nota Bene federal government’s most prestigious artificial intelligence, natural-language Cuba concert. The Harvard-Radcliffe honor for intellectual achievement in the processing, and computer vision. Orchestra is celebrating Commence- field. She will speak May 2 at the Ken- ment in an unusual way, departing the nedy Center for the Performing Arts, in Miscellany. Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick ’78, J.D. ’82, has nominated Humanities and arts honorands. This year’s roster of National Hu- the Honorable Barbara A. Lenk, J.D. ’79, manities Medalists, who were honored by President Barack Obama, J.D. ’91, at the a state appeals judge, White House in early March, included five Harvardians: Daniel Aaron, Ph.D. ’43, to the Supreme Judi- Litt.D. ’07, Thomas professor of English and American literature emeritus, a founder cial Court (SJC), the of the Library of America; historian Bernard Bailyn, Ph.D. ’53, LL.D. ’99, Adams Commonwealth’s high- University Professor emeritus and twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and two of his est court. If confirmed, former students, Lenk would become the Stanley Nider first openly gay justice o f Massachusetts c ommo nwealth Barbara A. Katz ’55, Ph.D. on the SJC; she and her wn U niversity Lenk o tanley tanley ’61, of Princeton, partner married after a

and Gordon S. 2003 ruling by that court caused Mas- Wood, Ph.D. ’64, sachusetts to become the first state to tephanie Mitchell/harvard tephanie Mitchell/harvard hase/harvard jo n C hase/harvard N ews o ffice urtesy o f S Co urtesy o f B r c o urtesy N ider Katz S news o ffice of Brown, anoth legalize same-sex marriage.…Among New Daniel Aaron Bernard Stanley Nider Gordon S. Bailyn Katz Wood er Pulitzer Prize Yorker staffers nominated for National winner; and bio Magazine Awards are associate profes- grapher Arnold Rampersad, sor of surgery Atul Gawande (see “The Ph.D. ’73. Recipients of the Na- Unlikely Writer,” September-October tional Medal of Arts, conferred at 2009, page 30), for one of his medical ar- the same time, included Robert ticles, and Hendrik Hertzberg ’65, (see arn o chan Brustein, founder of the Ameri- “Hertzberg of the New Yorker,” January- can Repertory Theater, and former February 2003, page 36), for three of his rigitte C B rigitte bachrach press o ciated Ji m c o le/ass Arnold Robert Donald Hall Poet Laureate of the United States Talk of the Town commentaries. Win- Rampersad Brustein Donald Hall ’51, JF ’57. ners will be announced on May 9.

54 May - June 2011 a real sense of urgency.” At the same time, rect 5 Cowperthwaite; Davíd Carrasco, I made in the building I met at a free pizza both students and administrators wanted Rudenstine professor for the study of event, and they’re still my friends today,” to develop not just residential spaces, but Latin America in the faculties of divinity he reports. He is now a community advis- sustained communities of advanced stu- and arts and sciences, and senior Romance er for the GCP, helping to plan program- dents. “Most graduate students today are languages preceptor Maria Luisa Parra di- ming and community-building events looking for what I’ve been calling a ‘socio- rect 10 Akron. The faculty members’ role is ranging from a series of Korean film intellectual’ experience,” Brandt explains. similar to that of the masters of the under- nights to iftar meals during Ramadan. “Their interests go beyond what they will graduate Houses, hosting events like wine “It’s an avenue for connecting with people learn and discover in their particular grad- tastings in their apartments and inviting that you wouldn’t otherwise have, and I uate programs—they want to learn from scholars to speak at lectures and dinners: feel like it keeps a lot of people afloat… I’m one another and become members of a dy- recent guests have included Nicholas very fortunate to have plugged into it be- namic and diverse community.” Christakis, a medical sociologist with ap- cause I think my experience would have The development of the Graduate Com- pointments at both the Medical School been rough without it.” mons Program brought together research and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (see GSAS administrative dean Margot Gill on graduate housing initiatives at MIT, “Networked,” May-June 2010, page 44), emphasizes the importance of such opin- Princeton, and Stanford with Harvard’s and William Graham, dean of the Divinity ions in drawing the best possible graduate experience running both the undergradu- School. “Students are more used to going students: “Here are students not only tell- ate House system and the non-residential to the classroom or office of their teaching us, but also saying student-to-student, Dudley House for graduate students. At ers,” notes Carrasco. “Here, the process is that one of the reasons they accepted the the same time, the GCP was seen as an reversed in a relaxed, social environment.” offer at Harvard was because we have re- opportunity to foster connections among Golden recalls, “You hear about pro- ally taken the time to value and support students and faculty members from parts grams like this, and you wonder how a graduate community.” The GCP was of the University that might not other- many of the people around you actually originally funded for three years, but its wise interact—drawing together students are going to meet and connect with on budget has been stretched to cover four. from the schools of law and medicine, di- a deeper than neighborly basis. But I re- Gill hopes that the pilot program’s success vinity, design, business, and government, ally did make a few good friends….It just will not only extend the GCP itself into as well as public health and education. adds another dimension of warmth to the future, but provide a model for future “Graduate students, perhaps more than being in graduate school.” Dustin Smith, graduate housing sites: “This,” she says, “is other students, can become isolated in a third-year divinity student, first heard a success architecturally, it is a success for their specific academic program—in their about the GCP at an orientation session the neighborhood”—and obviously for the laboratories or in their departments,” says for admitted students, and entered at its resident students and faculty directors. Brandt. “But graduate students today debut in the fall of 2008. “The first friends vspencer lenfield want to learn from one another across a wide range of fields and disciplines.” The president’s office provided funding for a three-year pilot program. Harvard News from Our Website Real Estate Services commissioned two Harvardmagazine.com brings you continuous coverage of University and alumni Boston architecture firms to design build- news. Log on to find these stories and more: ings specifically for the GCP on Harvard- owned sites at 5 Cowperthwaite Street A Corporation Conversation and 10 Akron Street. Rickie Golden, a On implementing changes in University governance first-year student in the Graduate School harvardmag.com/corporation-conversation of Design, likes “all the sustainable aspects. There’s great light, plenty of win- Allston Anticipation dows; my apartment is spacious and beau- Exploring co-development to fund research, and possible tiful. It is new and immaculate, and I like academic moves. harvardmag.com/allston-anticipation that there are a lot of common-room options and places to study and socialize—I Contemporary Classical Laboratory love it.” The buildings opened sequential- A concert with instruments that include a cactus and a ly, in the summers of 2007 and 2008, and singing bowl. harvardmag.com/interior-gardens the GCP began in the fall. It now houses 429 residents across both locations— The Genome Map, 10 Years In mostly grad students, but also their fam- A decade after the human genome was first mapped, ily members, as well as some University scientists reflect. harvardmag.com/genome-decade staff members and researchers, including two faculty directors at each site. Lerner Visit harvardmagazine.com to get news as it happens. and her husband, Brian Gill, senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, di- stay connected - harvardmagazine.com

Harvard Magazine 55 the undergraduate The Most Important Course? by madeleine schwartz ’12

his past semester, my junior a little at sea. For the past 20 years, Gale Thomas Dingman and Hobbs professor spring, I went to my block- professor of education Richard Light has of education Howard Gardner, Light set mates with a question that had interviewed Harvard College students on up “Reflecting on Your Life,” a voluntary been troubling me for some the verge of graduating. Around 2007, he discussion series for first-year students Ttime. Was Harvard encouraging us to told me, he started to notice a trend. Even eager to explore those very ideas. In three think about the meaning of our lives? One though undergraduates were content with group sessions of 90 minutes each, fresh- said no. She had expected more of such the academic education they were receiv- men talk about the tenets by which they conversations in college. Another, who ing, many felt unprepared to take on big- make their life decisions. Topics vary. One spends a good deal of time studying Tibet- ger questions. One student told Light that assignment has students write down what an Buddhism at the Divinity School, said although his classes had equipped him for Light calls “core values” (which is more many of his classes had been about exactly work in chemistry and physics, “Harvard important: kindness or fame? kindness or that. He was satisfied for the most part. A forgot to offer the most important course— intelligence?). Another asks them to con- third friend asked why Harvard should en- a course in how to think of living my life.” template the meaning of leadership and courage its students to think about their With the help of dean of freshmen the purpose of their own educations. The lives when so many end classes are led by faculty up leading empty exist members or administra- ences without any mean- tors and take place in the ing at all. spring of each year, once How should a person the excitement of college live? In my three years has settled into a day-to- at Harvard, I feel I have day routine. rarely been asked the The program has been question. My courses quite popular, to the tackle writers like Pla- surprise of its creators. to or Augustine, who “We expected there spent their time trying to be 15 or 20 students to define the good life. interested in talking But talking about the about this,” Light told personal implications of me. But in the past three a text in section would years, the program has be gauche, and I can’t had an average of 150 imagine trying to bring students—10 percent of those conversations the freshman class. to the busy Kirkland House dining hall. Late- I’ve been surprised night chats with room- at the relative dearth of mates, such a vaunted such conversations here, aspect of the “college especially when com- experience,” don’t really pared to the sorts of talks happen when one room- that I had in high school. mate is shadowing an I spent the second half emergency-room shift at of my junior year at the Brigham and Women’s, “Maine Coast Semester,” and the other one is fin- a four-month program ishing up a problem set in Wiscasset run by the due the next day. Chewonki Foundation, an environmental orga- Apparently, I am not nization. The school is the only one who feels located on a large farm

56 May - June 2011 Illustration by Lisa Adams John Harvard’s Journal where the students also work, in part-time question I wished had been brought up students to think about their lives, such a shifts. Community discussions are central during the first few weeks of February, meek approach is unlikely to ever really to the program, and so once a week, the en- when it seemed like half the campus was shake undergraduates out of the daily drive tire school (40 students, plus faculty mem- putting on suits for consulting-firm or that Harvard encourages. By the time I was bers and farmhands) comes together in the investment-bank interviews. My room- invited to participate in “Reflections” my wood-paneled dining room and talks about mate was among them; she bought three freshman year, my inbox was so full of e- how to run the place. different skirt suits to meet with firms. mails from the Crimson, where I had just be- Our daily routines were centered For the week before the event, conversa- come a staff writer, and messages from oth- around thoughtful discussion. During my tions in our room focused on hemline er publications I was comping that I don’t time at the school, one group of students length. When I asked her why, after two think I even noticed that I had received it. I surveyed the carbon footprint of our ac- years of volunteer work at Harvard, she had no idea that the program existed until I tivities, and presented reports on eat- was now going in for consulting, she told learned, while researching this column, that ing pineapples or taking long showers. me it would be great preparation for a life two years earlier, Dean Dingman had asked When it snowed heavily late into April, in public service. Did the others at her me to think about the very same questions the school came together and spent a good recruiting events feel that way? “I think that were now preoccupying me. 20 minutes talking about whether it was mostly it seems like the thing to do after If Harvard is to fulfill its promise that a better to clear the paths with salt, quick Harvard. And it pays.” liberal-arts education can form individuals, and effective but terrible for waterways, In the first few months of the economic not just prepare them for careers, it needs or to work together and scrape the ice off crisis, in my freshman year, Harvard orga- to push its students in a them. We left the meeting carrying shov- nized conversations led by its president way that Introductory els. More often, our conversations took on the market meltdown, and forums Economics cannot. Were conversations the place of deeper talks: To what extent about the economic processes that had In the past few years, about the meaning should one include others in decisionmak- led to a worldwide collapse. Even today, the Business School has of life part of your Harvard experience? ing? What is the value of physical labor? I am frequently invited to discussions at made ethics a greater Do you think Harvard The closest I’ve come to an organized the Kennedy School about “leadership,” part of the curriculum. should do more search for meaning at Harvard is in my or talks where experts compare schools At the last two Com- to encourage such Moral Reasoning Core course, which I ful- of thought on the invisible hand. Despite mencements, graduating discussions? Visit harvardmag.com/ filled this fall with a class on ancient phi- all this, we rarely come together to discuss students have taken an extras to answer the losophy. We read Plato and Aristotle, and the moral side of what it means to go out “M.B.A. Oath” to serve question and see talked about definitions of the philosophi- into the world looking to make money. the “greater good,” and what other readers cal life. My favorite encounter was with It’s too bad, because it’s been my im- the school recently ap- had to say. Diogenes the Cynic, a Greek philosopher pression since the beginning of my time pointed a professor of leadership as its dean. who spent most of his adult life in a basin, at Harvard that there is an expectation It’s too soon to know whether these naked and eating raw onions. He was so that each one of us leave this place ready reforms will have an actual impact on the famous, even Alexander the Great came to to make an impact on the world outside. way businesses are run, or whether the pay his respects. Diogenes, who believed I wonder at the idea of creating potential graduates will just pay lip service to the that men should disregard the triviali- leaders whose decisionmaking has never idea of ethical finance. What an enforced ties of social customs, was unimpressed. been challenged in any way more demand- emphasis on ethics does do, however, is When Alexander asked if he could do ing than by the critical-thinking skills that remind people that careers do not exist anything for him, Diogenes replied, “Move a history class or a Core lecture provides. on a straight and narrow path, and that over. You’re blocking the sun.” I’ve heard the concern from peers that there is more than one way of leading But no matter how striking the read- personal conversations about “big ques- one’s life. ings, there’s a limit to how much you are tions,” when forced, will just make stu- I hope that the College can follow up on expected to let them win you over. Con- dents uncomfortable and be of no use. this lead. The Office of Career Services re- versations are subsumed in the substance When I asked Dean Dingman whether cently hosted an “Etiquette Dinner” over of course requirements—papers, note- “Reflections” would ever be required for J-Term at the Sheraton Commander in taking, sections where half the students all freshmen, he told me that the idea had Cambridge. An etiquette expert explained are watching the clock and waiting for been quickly dismissed: “It would make how to eat soup at business dinners and the end of Thursday. When reading the it something that students took because when to take off one’s jacket. According to fourth-century On the Pythagorean Life for they had to—another Expos program.” the Crimson, the students who participated class, the most immediate question is not I understand the apprehension. Fresh- found the event very useful for upcoming “What does this mean for me?” but rather man week, our entryway came together job interviews. Perhaps next J-Term, we “Can I write five pages on this before next for a conversation about race led by a can come together as undergraduates for week?” It’s still schoolwork. member of the dean’s office. The discus- something a little more substantial. sion was slow-going, mostly marked by A friend at Carleton College told me cautious silence. Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellow that her entire school was recently invited But while I admire the effort the adminis- Madeleine Schwartz ’12 is still chatting with her to discuss “How Rich Is Too Rich?”—a tration has made in trying gently to prompt blockmates.

Harvard Magazine 57 sports Lefty from Cincy Southpaw Brent Suter averages nearly a strikeout per inning.

s a boy growing up in the starters. Last year, Suter Queen City, Brent Suter ’12 had was one of only two start- an idol: the Cincinnati Reds’ ing pitchers named to the Ken Griffey Jr., the speedy, all-Ivy First Team, and in Apower-hitting center fielder who retired one sparkling 33-inning last year after 22 seasons with 630 home stretch, he went a league- runs, and who is a lock for the Hall of best 4-0 with one save and Fame. Like Griffey, Suter graduated from a 3.55 earned run average Archbishop Moeller High School, a paro- (ERA), while striking out chial school that is a statewide athletic 33 batters. Left-handed powerhouse. “I liked Junior’s [Griffey’s] hitters were almost help- swing, his ability to make plays in the out- less against him, recording field,” Suter says. “He seemed relaxed, just only two hits in 24 at-bats a really cool guy.” Suter’s Harvard uniform for an .083 batting average. number is 24, the number Griffey wore Understandably, he still when he played for the Seattle Mariners at cherishes a dream he’s had Brent Suter at the start of his career. since childhood: playing in O’Donnell Field Today, however, Suter looks to other the majors. role models: Randy Johnson, Andy Pet- There’s currently one Harvard-educat- Blue Jays and Mets from 1986 to 1990. The tite, and Cliff Lee—all elite left-handed ed pitcher in the big leagues: right-handed Crimson has sent only five players to the pitchers. A six-foot, five-inch, 215-pound reliever Frank Herrmann ’06, who had a majors since 1943, and only one Harvard- southpaw, Suter has had considerable creditable 2010 rookie year with the Cleve- ian, infielder Eddie Grant, A.B. 1906, LL.B. success retiring collegiate batsmen. In its land Indians, posting a 4.03 ERA across 1909, played in a World Series, alongside preseason forecast, College Baseball In- 40 appearances. A generation ago, south- Christy Mathewson and Jim Thorpe for sider website named him the Ivy pitcher paw Jeff Musselman ’85 (see “The Dow of the New York Giants in 1913 (see “Soldier, whom hitters least want to face and Professional Sports,” September-October Scholar, Athlete,” November-December ranked him among the league’s top three 2001, page 39) pitched five seasons for the 1993, page 83). Suter throws a fastball, change-up, and A Pitcher’s Grips curve. The lefty’s heater typically zips in at 88 or 89 miles per hour and tops out in To throw the two-seam fastball, which has more spin and hence moves more, the 90 to 91 mph range. He’s getting better Brent Suter aligns his second and third fingers along the seams at the point where velocity with age, as he grows stronger and they are closest together. He grips the four-seam fastball, which goes faster but improves in stamina; this allows him to moves less, with the same fingers perpendicular to a seam where they are more maintain the pop on his fastball through- widely spaced. The curve-ball grip puts the index and third fingers together alongside out a game. “I’m a late bloomer,” he says, one seam, which imparts the heavy spin that curves the ball’s path when the hurler explaining that he arrived at Harvard as “snaps” it off at the release. The change-up grip is similar to the two-seam fastball, but a 175-pound string bean, but has added with pressure applied by the third and fourth fingers and the ball resting deeper in about 40 pounds thanks to natural growth the hand, touching the palm. and weight work. His height provides leverage and increases the whip of his throwing arm, and simply releasing the ball one or two feet nearer the plate is worth another one or two miles per hour. And he www.gocrimson.com Photographs by Jim Harrison John Harvard’s Journal works on mechanics, aiming to keep bat- Nonetheless, the ability “to throw off- ing the batter into swinging ahead of the ters from seeing the ball until it is leaving speed pitches for strikes is a big sepa- pitch. his hand: that diminishes the hitter’s reac- rator,” Suter says. Any baseball hurler Suter gets plenty of outs throwing tion time, making a pitcher “sneaky fast.” worth his salt can pound the strike zone a change on, say, an 0-1 count, making Actually, Suter throws two kinds of with fastballs, but if that’s his only pitch, the batter top the ball for a groundout. fastball, the two-seam and four-seam, hitters will begin to “sit on” (expect) the When hitters put the ball in play, Suter differentiated by his grip on the ball (see fastball and tee off on it. Hence the im- gets about half his sidebar.) The four-seamer travels straight- portance of off-speed pitches like Suter’s outs from ground- er and a couple of miles per hour faster: it’s curve and change-up, which move dif- outs and half from fly Visit harvardmag.com/ a good pitch to try when a batter has two ferently from the fastball and arrive at balls. “You strive for extras to see a video of strikes, because the extra gas can blow the the plate at a different speed. His “out ground-ball outs,” he Brent Suter pitching. ball by a hitter for a strikeout. And Suter pitch” is his change-up: thrown with the says. “Especially with metal bats [which is a strikeout pitcher: last year he fanned same motion as the fastball, but with a make balls carry farther than wooden 47 in 49.2 innings pitched, while posting a grip that nestles the ball in the palm of ones], you want to keep the ball out of 4-2 record with a 5.26 ERA. As a freshman the hand, the change-up may travel eight the air. And you always want to miss the he whiffed 53 in as many innings. to 12 mph slower than the fastball, fool- barrel of the bat.” vcraig lambert

thunder with cheers. At the final buzzer, hundreds of Harvard students charged out of the stands to mob their team. Historic Hoops Season A week later, in another thrilling contest, the same two teams met in the Yale On the regular season’s final weekend, of Holy Grail among Crimson hoopsters gym for a one-game playoff to determine the Harvard men’s basketball team over- and their fans. (The Harvard women, which of the Ivy co-champions would powered perennial Ivy League top dogs in contrast, have captured 11 Ivy titles.) have the league’s automatic entry into the Penn and Princeton to win the Crimson’s That’s why the season-ending home NCAA postseason tournament. This one first-ever Ivy championship. By pacifying game against Princeton on Saturday night, went down to the wire: the Crimson led the Quakers, 79-64, and taming the Tigers, March 5, was literally the biggest basket- by a point with only 2.8 seconds remain- 79-67, the Crimson men capped off the ball game in Harvard’s history, and sold ing, but the Tigers hit a buzzer-beating first 100 years of hoops at the College in out weeks in advance. ESPN provided shot (videotape review required) to win, the most satisfying manner: Harvard and national coverage, and the New York Times 63-62. Thus Harvard’s postseason play Princeton shared the 2011 Ivy title with touted the contest beforehand. was in the National Invitation Tournament 12-2 records after the Tigers ended their The game lived up to all its hype. In (NIT) rather than the NCAA March Mad- season three days later with a victory at an electrifying first half that saw 18 lead ness. Oklahoma State bested the Crim- Penn. changes and the score tied nine times, son, 71-54, in the NIT’s first round. (Ken- Harvard had been the only college not Harvard battled to a 37-36 lead by half- tucky dispatched Princeton, 59-57, in the to win a men’s Ivy basketball title since time. In the second half, the Crimson first round of the NCAAs.) the league began in 1956, and the quest gradually took over the game as the The team’s 23 victories are the most for a championship had become a sort pumped-up crowd made the small gym in the history of the program; the 23-7 overall mark (including postseason) Standout players Kyle Casey (30) topped last year’s 21-8. The Crimson’s and Keith Wright (44) in action record of 14-0 at Lavietes Pavilion set as Harvard, in its final home a new record for home wins. Forward game, beat Princeton, 79-67 to clinch a share of the Ivy League Keith Wright ’12 was elected Ivy League championship Player of the Year and named to the All-Ivy First Team, while the National Association of Basketball Coaches honored head coach Tommy Amaker as its All-District Coach of the Year for Dis- trict 13. The triumphant 14-man squad will lose no seniors in May, and has only three juniors. In a column on Harvard’s landmark season-ending weekend, the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan concluded, “Har-

o n ffice inf o r m ati sp o rts t/ H arvard vard is coming, and Harvard will not be

alb o stopped.” T G il

Harvard Magazine 59 alumni Echoes of the Central Valley A Chicano writer mines the “humanizing effect of literature.”

oung fiction writers are often your role as a writer?’” In answer, The Faith uneven talents. One character is based on encouraged to “write what you Healer of Olive Avenue follows a wider cast of Janet Leigh, whom Muñoz researched ex- know.” That often yields stories characters and families in a Central Valley haustively, and the filming ofPsycho. (That that seem overly autobiographi- town that changes over a generation; the aspect of the book stems from a Harvard Ycal, yet juiced by primary experience. The lyrical, interconnecting stories are filled film class on Alfred Hitchcock taught by work is especially moving when the writer with heartbreaking struggles to define D.A. Miller.) is talented and courageous—and if his em- selves, aims, and the true nature of home. “Having three women form the core, pathic sensitivities reverberate in the rest Yet Muñoz, who worked hard to move two white women and a Mexican-Ameri- of us, as is the case with Manuel Muñoz away from a life in the fields, is wary of can girl, was not what I had planned, nor ’94, author of Zigzagger (2003) and The Faith labels. His debut novel, What You See in the what people might expect from me as a Healer of Olive Avenue (2007). Dark, published in March, is neither es- Chicano writer,” he concedes. To grow Both short-story collections focus on sentially gay nor Chicano. It marks his as a writer, however, meant delving into Mexican Americans in themes outside his own California’s Central Val- Manuel Muñoz time and place, and writ- ley, where Muñoz was ing about strangers. “All born and grew up in a the books I have enjoyed family of farm workers. have inspired empathy “It’s very poor; there’s a for the life of someone I lot of violence and racial might not have known tension,” he says of his otherwise,” he says. “The hometown, Dinuba, near best art always breaks Fresno. “It’s a forgotten that pattern of what we place—or a place that’s think is our experience. never thought of to begin That’s the great, human- with.” izing effect of literature. The books identify Chicano writers are capa- Muñoz as gay and Chi- ble of all sorts of things, cano, labels that prob- not just writing about ably helped draw atten- immigration or poverty tion to him as a writer, or working-class lives or as well as an early audi- geography. I want to start ence—which in turn new discussions. Here led to honors, including we have a Chicano writer the prestigious Whit- writing about Hitch- ing Writers’ Award in cock—what do we do 2008. Much of Zigzagger, with that?” written in his twenties, That’s not to say that articulates the world of the Central Valley and young gay Latinos sur- Muñoz’s experiences there rounded by America’s are not still hugely influen- agricultural bounty tial. A major theme in What while leading somewhat barren lives. The foray into the unfamiliar, cinematic world You See in the Dark, he notes, is “the way peo- book was acclaimed by critics and espe- of 1950s Bakersfield, California—the tip ple in a place they consider ‘nowhere’ think cially embraced by Chicano readers who of the Central Valley that he never saw outside of themselves through dreaming “welcomed me—and challenged me,” re- growing up, that takes its cues less from and imagination and fantasy—like that mo- ports Muñoz. “They said, ‘What else can the crops than from Los Angeles. The nov- ment you look at People or US Weekly and read you do with your material to make your- el is a sometimes lurid, always compelling about celebrities whose lives and stories self a proponent of the content? What is tale of three women’s fierce dreams and seem more exciting than your own.” The

60 May - June 2011 Photograph by Jeff Smith John Harvard’s Journal novel weaves the story of Leigh’s character students about whom you ask, ‘Does he puses in Latino- and queer-studies cours- with those of a singer, of a tired waitress really need to be here?’ You want to say, es,” he says. “A lot of Chicano writers bank “who knows she will never leave town,” ‘Can you go home and just bring me some on academics being our biggest champions, and of the hovering residents thrilled by more of this beautiful stuff?’” She got the because it’s hard for us to break past what proximity to stardom—and starving for sense that Muñoz “didn’t know how supe- those adjectives ‘gay’ and ‘Chicano’ mean to recognition of their own stories. rior he was, coming into the class, in terms most people and reach a more mainstream Place functions like a muse in Muñoz’s of what he was able to do on the page. He audience.” He also was excited about serv- life: “Dinuba is a reservoir of creativity for was so fully formed already; he only lacked ing as a mentor to other writers, having had me,” he says. Every vacation from his cur- confidence in himself to let go of the work such good guides himself. rent post, as an assistant professor of cre- and put it out there.” But Tucson reminds Muñoz of Fresno. ative writing at the University of Arizona, His mentors urged him to apply to Cor- “After living in New York City, it felt like is spent back home with his family; he nell for an M.F.A., which he earned in 1998. I was going back into the closet,” he re- takes long walks, checking his memory, There, he found a “literary godmother” ports. Some men he’s met are fearful about making notes of what’s changed and how, in Professor Helena Maria Viramontes— coming out to too many friends; others are gathering material for characters and snip- who, when Muñoz wavered over attending closeted gays who are married. “I feel like pets of story lines from neighbors and fam- because it would upset his family, called I’m back in the ’80s here,” he adds. “I mean, ily members, all of whom still live there. his mother to reassure her, in Spanish, that I have women checking me out because “The place was so formative,” he suppos- her youngest child would be well taken I’m single, don’t have a wedding ring or any es, “because I was trying to escape it for care of in upstate New York. kids in tow. I never had any of that confu- so long. It took moving away to make me “I give my siblings my books, but I never sion in New York. It’s like an out gay guy yearn for my town.” ask if they’ve read them,” he says. When can’t be living in Tucson.” Growing up, Muñoz, who learned Eng- his family attended a public reading of The tumultuous immigration issue has lish in kindergarten, worked a warehouse Faith Healer that he gave for gay students at also prompted him to question whether job to earn money for clothes and school the California State University at Fresno, it’s worth staying in such “a volatile state supplies. He learned of Harvard from a they sat in the back, “like they didn’t be- just for a job,” and to consider his role as picture in the dictionary (he had looked long,” he reports. “But they got to see me writer in confronting destructive narrative up the spelling of “Massachusetts”), but give a presentation and answer questions, and myth-making in politics. He’s been in- it was not until freshman year of high and the experience had an authority that vited to deliver a lecture at Kansas State— school that he decided to go to college. (He I don’t think they knew writing could the title is “Writing While Arizonan”—“a earned only As thereafter, apart from two command. It became crystal-clear to them take on the ‘Driving While Brown,’” he Bs in gym.) He reports that when he told what I was doing and what it means to me. says, Arizona’s version of “Driving While a Harvard recruiter at a local college fair I think they see now why it was necessary Black”; his talk promotes critical reading that he wanted to be a high-school teacher, for me to be away from home in places like and writing as tools for social change in the man refused to give him an application Cornell and New York City, where I had combatting political mythologies. “Plus, form, saying he should just attend state the opportunity to study and work, and there’s a lot to be said for maintaining my college. But Muñoz applied anyway and how lucky I am to get to this point.” The visibility as a Chicano professor,” he adds. was accepted, with a scholarship. public reading also helped neutralize the “The need for such role models in higher He arrived at Harvard with $80 in his fact that he is gay. “It removed the privacy education is pressing.” pocket, having spent $20 on cab fare from of shame that can come along when you In many ways, Arizona has many of the the airport. Shy by nature, he still felt have a gay kid in the family,” Muñoz says. same social, political, and economic con- lonely and alienated, as he often had in Di- “It’s understood in my family that I am straints Muñoz felt growing up in Dinuba. nuba, but this time it was because he was out, but we don’t discuss it, which is a very But they don’t eat away at him as they once from a lower class, less savvy, and poorer typical Mexican Catholic response.” did. “In some ways it may sound strange, than most of his classmates. (Being gay After Cornell, Muñoz worked at but I am grateful to be living here while was another complication, because Muñoz Houghton Mifflin in Boston before mov- these politics are going on,” he notes. struggled to come out of the closet and had ing to another publishing job in New York “Something about being here may be push- not yet done so.) He completed the Under- City. There, he continued writing fiction ing me in a new direction. graduate Teacher Education Program run and saw both his short-story collections “Being isolated doesn’t mean being lone- by the Graduate School of Education, but published. He was not taken with the cos- ly,” he tells friends. “If anything, this place he was drawn to English courses and then mopolitan literary scene; if anything, he has brought me much closer to art and to creative writing, “which became a ref- says, he found other aspiring writers in his art-making than I ever was in New York. I uge” under then Briggs-Copeland lectur- age group standoffish; whenZigzagger was mean, I have an office where I go to work, ers Jill McCorkle and Susan Dodd. “There to be published (by Northwestern Univer- instead of writing at a desk cramped in I learned that writing could be my life.” sity Press), they sounded unimpressed, or next to my bed,” he says, laughing. “My Muñoz’s “writing was just beautiful; so actually sorry for him, he says. tenure is dependent on my art: I am teach- much life on the page,” recalls McCorkle, The Arizona job offer, in 2007, seemed an ing writing. Being here is an affirmation now a professor of creative writing at affirmation “that my books were seeping of my decision to make art the center of North Carolina State. “He is one of those into academia, getting read on college cam- my life.” vnell porter brown www.haa.harvard.edu Harvard Magazine 61 Comings and Goings College alumni by focusing on genera- low class secretaries (which yielded an Harvard clubs offer a variety of social tional class cohorts grouped according to 80 percent return rate), and a gathering and intellectual events around the coun- related life-cycle experiences. of class data that includes histories on try. For information on future programs, To aid that process, the HAA has con- reunion attendance figures, gift-giving, contact your local club directly; call the ducted its first-ever comprehensive class- and information from class reports. Class HAA at 617-495-3070; or visit www.haa. governance review, examining class struc- leaders and secretaries, among others, harvard.edu. Below is a partial list of tures, leadership development, reunions, will attend the class leadership confer- spring happenings. other class activities, and other alumni ence in Cambridge in September. On May 3, the Harvard Club of East- needs; the results were to be presented at The reorganization has also created ern New York hosts astronomy profes- the annual spring meeting of HAA direc- four new and more clearly defined HAA sor Alyssa Goodman, who lectures on tors on April 15. alumni-outreach committees grouped “Seeing Science.” On May 12, McKay pro- “This is not a ‘gotcha’ game of ‘How into stage-of-life cohorts: “Building fessor of computer science Harry Lewis much money do you raise?’” says Timothy New Communities” (undergraduates discusses “The Future of Liberal Educa- P. McCarthy ’93, HAA vice president for through fifth reunion); “Strengthening tion” at the Harvard Club of Minnesota. College affairs, a longtime class secretary, Alumni Foundations” (sixth through Lewis also elucidates “Life, Liberty, and and a lecturer in the faculties of arts and twenty-fifth); “Broadening Alumni En- Happiness After the Digital Explosion” sciences and of government. “It’s an am- gagement” (twenty-sixth through forti- for members of the Harvard Club of St. bitious effort to characterize on a much eth); and “Maintaining the Connection” Louis on June 5. deeper level than we ever have before the (forty-first and beyond). Previously, the On June 1, the Harvard Club of Prince landscape of alumni activity at the class HAA committees were “Classes and Re- ton welcomes Robert Sackstein, an asso- level…with an eye toward integrating and unions,” “Undergraduates,” and “Recent ciate professor of dermatology and medi- fortifying the relationship among classes, Graduates,” but “The ‘one-size-fits-all’ cine, for a discussion of “What Everyone the alumni population, and the HAA as an committee approach wasn’t really work- Should Know about Stem Cells.” organization.” ing,” adds McCarthy. “We need to do a The review, overseen by McCarthy and better job at serving alumni at different HAA Reviews Classes Robert P. Fox Jr. ’86, among others, has stages of their lives.” The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) involved surveys is reorganizing the way it reaches out to sent to their fel-

Alumni Sing Out

The newly formed Jameson Singers, a Boston-area choral group of 52 members—47 of them alumni (39 of the College, 8 of the graduate schools)—were scheduled to make their de- but on April 10 at the Payson Park Congregational Church in Belmont, Massachusetts. Singing music by Brahms, Monteverdi, and Samuel Barber, the group will be conducted by its founder, retired Harvard choral director Jameson Marvin. “It’s been amazing getting back into singing and not just using the muscles, but that piece of the brain,” says Juliana Koo Jameson ’92, the group’s manager and a former member of the Col- Marvin legium Musicum. “I sang a little after I first graduated, but then life takes over—and if you don’t have it in your work life, music goes by the wayside.” Marvin could think of only one. The oth- That’s a common experience, judging by the number of ers are mainly lawyers, doctors, or business alumni who’ve joined the group to rekindle the passion for consultants, like Koo, who seek a “great mu- Visit harvardmag.com/ choral music they felt as undergraduates working with Mar- sical experience,” she says. More singers are extras to hear the Jame- son Singers rehearse for vin, whose tenure spanned more than 30 years. “I wanted to needed, she adds; the group is open to mem- a spring concert. recreate the same high-quality musical experience we had at bers of the community as well as Harvard af- Harvard not only for myself, but for them,” he says. “It can be filiates. Weekly rehearsals are required—as are annual dues of news o ffice Kris snibbe/harvard very uplifting for the audience and for members to experi- $100 (to cover the costs of rehearsal space, sheet music, and an ence that.” accompanist). For more information, singers and music lovers Very few of the choir members are professional musicians; can visit the group’s website at www.jamesonsingers.org.

62 May - June 2011 John Harvard’s Journal Vote Now of Commencement day, May 26. All Har- Flavia B. Almeida, M.B.A. ’94, of São This spring, alumni will vote for five vard-degree holders, except Corporation Paulo, Brazil. Partner, The Monitor Group. new Harvard Overseers and six new members and officers of instruction and Richard W. Fisher ’71, of Dallas. Presi elected directors for the Harvard Alumni government, may vote for Overseer can- dent and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Association (HAA) board. Ballots, mailed didates. The election for HAA directors is Dallas. by April 1, must be received back in Cam- open to all degree-holders. Verna C. Gibbs ’75, of San Francisco. bridge by noon on May 20 to be counted. General surgeon and professor in clini- The results will be announced at the For Overseer (six-year term), the candi- cal surgery, University of California, San HAA’s annual meeting on the afternoon dates are: Francisco. F. Barton Harvey ’71, M.B.A. ’74, of For Overseer For Director Baltimore, former chair and CEO, Enter prise Community Partners. Carl J. Martignetti ’81, M.B.A. ’85, of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Presi- dent, Martignetti Companies. Nicole M. Parent ’93, of Greenwich, Connecticut. Co-founder and managing partner, Vertical Research Part- ners, LLC. David J. Vitale ’68, of Chicago. Execu- tive chairman, Urban Partnership Bank. Kenji Yoshino ’91, of New York City. Flavia B. Almeida Richard W. Fisher Rohit Chopra Tiziana C. Dearing Chief Justice Earl Warren professor of constitutional law, New York University School of Law.

For Elected Director (three-year term), the candidates are: Rohit Chopra ’04, of Washington, D.C. Policy adviser, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Tiziana C. Dearing, M.P.P. ’00, of Bed ford, Massachusetts. CEO, Boston Rising. Katie Williams Fahs ’83, of Atlanta. Verna C. Gibbs F. Barton Harvey Katie Wiliams Fahs Peter C. Krause Marketing consultant/community vol unteer. Peter C. Krause, J.D. ’74, of New York City. Investment banker and real-estate investor. Charlene Li ’88, M.B.A. ’93, of San Ma- teo, California. Founding partner, Altim- eter Group; author. Sonia Molina, D.M.D. ’89, M.P.H. ’89, of Los Angeles. Endodontist. James A. Star ’83, of Chicago. Presi- Carl J. Martignetti nicole M. Parent Charlene Li Sonia Molina dent, Longview Asset Management. Patric M. Ver- rone ’81, of Pacific Palisades, Cali- fornia. Television writer, producer. George H. Yeadon ’75, of Pittsford, New York. Managing consultant, Ko- dak Solutions for David J. Vitale Kenji Yoshino James A. Star Patric M. Verrone George H. Yeadon Business.

Harvard Magazine 63 the college pump Granny Talk

most famous speech in American history Monty’s attention. His assessment of the in a little more than two minutes. program is not yet known. But pay atten- Here is a less-known fact about Ever- tion, Harvard. Yale Law School is peren- ett. Primus is grateful to Anne D. Neal ’77, nially at the top of U.S. News’s rankings of J.D. ’80, for pointing it out. She is presi- the nation’s law schools, perhaps just be- dent of the American Council of Trustees cause of such caring individuals as Monty. and Alumni in Washington, D.C., and also “Your wooden arm you hold outstretched a vice regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ to shake with passers-by.” Association of the Union, the oldest pres- ervation group in America. The organiza- Worrier james: The summer 2009 num- dward everett entered Har- tion was formed in 1853 to raise money to ber of the Harvard Library Bulletin—pub- vard at the age of 13 and took his buy Mount Vernon from the Washing- lished in January 2011—contains several degree 200 years ago at Com- ton family. In 1858, Everett embarked on essays written on the occasion of an exhi- mencement ceremonies held in a campaign to raise funds for the cause. bition at Houghton Library marking the Ethose days in August. Even then he was He traveled the country giving speeches centennial of the death in 1910 of psychol- known as a formidable orator. He was about Washington’s character and his role ogist, philosopher, and Harvard professor valedictorian of the class of 1811 and spoke in the establishment of the Union (Ev- William James, M.D. 1869, LL.D. 1903. One on “Literary Evils.” That was “an unmean- erett was a staunch Unionist). He spoke essay, “A Professor’s Salary,” explicates ing phrase,” he later wrote. “It was, I sus- 129 times to that end and turned over his a typed, single-page document among pect, an inferior performance. Not much speaker’s fees of $69,064 to the Ladies’ the James papers that chronicles his sal- can be effected, even by a mature mind, Association, helping them toward the ary across a 30-year span. The essay is by in a set discourse of only 12 minutes in $200,000 that Washington’s heirs required Drew Faust, president of Harvard and length.…” for Mount Vernon, no piddling sum. Lincoln professor of history. He went on to a life as an educator and When next you visit this historic site, tip Of the document she writes, “We do a politician from Massachusetts and was your hat to Old Granny. not know who compiled it, when, or for president of Harvard from 1846 to 1849. what purpose. It is typed, and James him- He didn’t much care for that job. Harvard self is not known to have typed anything.” lacked resources, and the students nick- Perhaps it is the work of a biographer. named him “Old Granny.” Best friend: Stressed Yale law students James’s salary rose from an annual rate When the Civil War came, Everett at- were able to reserve 30-minute sessions of $600 in 1873 to a high of $5,000 in 1899. tained the moment for with therapy dog Mon- Faust writes that “by the 1890s his salary which he is best re- ty (short for General was close to Harvard’s professorial maxi- membered. Asked to Montgomery) in a space mum. How did this compare to average deliver the principal at the Yale Law School salaries across the state and nation? In address at the dedica- Library dedicated to 1890, when James was paid $3,500, the av- tion of the Soldiers’ the purpose during a erage national income was $445; the state National Cemetery in three-day trial program average was $460, a ratio of nearly 8:1. The Gettysburg, Pennsylva- launched March 28. average Harvard University professor to- nia, he spoke for more Monty, a border terrier day makes about five times the national than two hours. He was mix, belongs to Julian average.” But, she notes, “Despite the followed by President Aiken, an access servic- consistent increases in his income, James Abraham Lincoln, who es librarian. Numerous worried incessantly about his financial Monty: delivered perhaps the students signed up for security.” vprimus v Check him out. 64 May - June 2011 Photograph courtesy of Yale University

treasure Gilded Nut A coconut with Bible stories

uaffers today may never example of “the blurring, the University; one of have imagined such a thing as testing, and teasing its goals is to chal- a goblet made from a coconut of the line be- lenge viewers to and gilt silver, but about four tween nature consider the Q centuries ago cups such as and artifice.” way in which the one shown here were well known Charlap sees the a thing has to a species of European collector. These Wunderkammer owner been categorized vessels were often displayed in a so-called as part of a pan- traditionally and cabinet of curiosities, or Wunderkammer, European “elite whether it might usually room-sized, containing a hodge- club of Humanist be thought of podge of remarkable items ranging from collectors engaged and arranged dif- preserved animals, skeletons, minerals, in questions of ferently. Thus a alleged mermaids, and the tusks of nar- nature and art.” number of ob- whals (but said to come from unicorns), (She has moved jects are dis- to wondrous man-made objects: ethno- on from coconuts played not in

graphic specimens from exotic locations, and is now an as- their usual sur- C o ll ege of Harvard ows antiquities, clockwork automata, paint- sistant curator roundings but, ings, sculptures. Some 1,500 coconut gob- at the Museum unexpectedly, lets from the early modern period survive. of Jewish Heri- elsewhere. A Danielle Charlap ’09 wrote an 87-page un- tage—A Living plain, wooden, dergraduate history honors thesis about Memorial to the beautifully curved them, entitled “Chasing Wonder: Coconut Holocaust, in New Native American Cups Collected in Europe, 1500-1700.” She York City, where she bow has left its examined in particular this one, from the is at work on an Emma shelf at the Peabody Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Lazarus exhibition.) Museum of Archaeol- Museum. Hans Peter Müller, a silversmith Müller’s goblet is part ogy and Ethnology to ap-

active in Breslau, Germany, fashioned it of the Tangible Things exhibi- pear upright in a case at and F e ll b e © President Junius Bee P h oto: A –B. , B R 61.58. around 1600. tion—on view through May the Harvard Art Museums “Prior to the sixteenth century, Euro- 29 in galleries at the Histori- among sculptures and paint- peans had yet to round the Cape of Good cal Scientific Instruments Col- ings. This goblet is temporarily Hope, making coconuts a real rarity, mer- lection in the Science Center in the Houghton Library, where iting their place among medieval church and at several other Harvard it appears in a gallery among a wonders working in the service of God,” venues, and previously explored in small collection of Bibles—start- writes Charlap. As Westerners spread the this space (see March-April, page ing with Gutenberg’s—famous for coconut palm from southeastern Asia to 68) and online (at harvardmagazine. the beauty of their typography and western Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean, com/2011/03/out-of-place). A co- design. The cup, too, tells a Bible the nuts would become a commodity with curator of that exhibition is story. Müller carved into the many uses, including as a source of copra senior lecturer Ivan Gaskell, nut scenes from the life of and coir. Müller made this goblet at a time who guided Charlap in pre- Samson, showing him remov- when the status of coconuts was chang- paring her thesis. The exhibi- ing the gate of Gaza, combat- ing from rare to commonplace, but a nut tion brings together 200 ing the lion, and smiting

carved with scenes in relief and covered intriguing things from Philistines with the b Loe K. of E da m e ory in h - R eisinger Museu m , Purc ase Museu m s/Busc A rt with richly wrought silver was deserving disparate collec- jawbone of an ass.

of a place in anyone’s Wunderkammer as an tions throughout v c.r. Harvard

72 May - June 2011

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