SANTA CLARA MAGAZINE Santa Clara Magazine Listening Is Her Ron Hansen on Truth $30 Million from the No Longer Stuff of Sci-Fi
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SANTA CLARA MAGAZINE MAGAZINE CLARA SANTA Santa Clara Magazine Listening is her Ron Hansen on truth $30 million from the No longer stuff of sci-fi: SUMMER 2017 SUMMER Superpower: Anna and fiction, heroes Leavey Foundation to artificial intelligence Deavere Smith. Page 18 and villains. Page 28 fund innovation. Page 38 and public trust. Page 42 THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE KID THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE KID THE AND BAD, THE GOOD, THE 04/05/17 Explosion of color: purple and orange, blue and gold, red and white painting the length and breadth of California’s landscape—hillside and meadow and desert wash. A superbloom a decade in the making. What caused it? A wet winter sparked unprecedented growth, says Justen Whittall, an associate professor of biology who closely studies California’s native plants and trends in evolution of flowers’ colors. The superbloom started in January in the deserts east of San Diego, then moved north and east. After a five-year drought, Mother Nature gave California the gift of brilliant bouquets of bright orange poppies, white dune evening primroses, purple sand verbenas, and other wildflowers. But not every place was so blessed. “A large portion of California has been overgrazed by cows or developed,” Whittall notes. “There’s not going to be a superbloom in those locations.” Instead, look for little pockets of refugia: hiding places for native plants that haven’t been eaten, overrun, or built over. And savor this spot in the remote Carrizo Plain National Monument—which this spring was put under executive order review, potentially opening it up to oil drilling and mining. EPA / TONY AVELAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARC CRUMPLER TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMER 2017, VOLUME 58 NUMBER 2 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR STEVEN BOYD SAUM STAFF Editor magazine.scu.edu Steven Boyd Saum Literary Editor DIGITAL EXCLUSIVES Ron Hansen M.A. ’95 Good Guys Associate Editor Matt Morgan Timely features, videos, slideshows, Associate Editor, Digital Letters from Japan, a freshman Clay Hamilton congressman, fruit flies, Darwinian Contributors and Bad Guys yeast, the homeless of Missoula, and Kerry Benefield Denis Concordel debating the finer points of bridges “And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good—Need we ask anyone Alicia K. Gonzales ’09 Kyle Hilton vs. walls. Here’s some of the latest. to tell us these things?” An excellent question, one taken from a Platonic dia- Don Jedlovec logue—almost, which is to say almost asked under a plane tree, our old friend Sean McCabe David Plunkert Socrates chatting with his occasional interlocutor Phaedrus. In this case, in the Heidi Williams ’06 shade of the ancient Greek sycamore, the topic is love, but for some reason the Interns conversation turns to rhetoric: modes of expression, how you say something Devin Collins ’17 Gabrielle Deutsch ’18 well or badly. Truth be told, Phaedrus has been on my mind of late—on a few Perla Luna ’19 minds—since that almost-Platonic quote serves as the epigraph to Zen and Lindsey Mandell ’18 Giannina Ong ’18 the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (a book I read at age 17 and that made me Maura Turcotte ’17 Esther Young ’18 ready to head out across the country on an old Honda bike), but author Robert M. Pirsig is no longer working on a motorcycle called himself on this plane; Design Cuttriss & Hambleton he shuffled off this mortal coil in April. Yet the question remains: Good? Not Design Consultant good? Or some of both? Pentagram Austin Enter the Kid, our cover fella, sometimes going by William or Henry or Bil- ADVISORY BOARD ly, cattle rustler and charming ladies’ man, gunned down by a former buffalo President hunter and bartender and gambler turned sheriff. In border territory he lived Michael Engh, S.J. TWO FOR THE ROAD U.S. Poet Lau- and died, a time when who was in the right and who in the wrong depended on Vice President for reate Juan Felipe Herrera hit us with which judge in the employ of which businessman was issuing the warrant. University Relations James Lyons two original poems and a dazzling So, the past, reimagined—something fiction lets us do exceedingly well. Associate Vice commencement address. Enter the Future (it’s here, kid): time of high-powered, cloud-computing President for Marketing artificial intelligence, already used to identify terrorist threats and assign and Communications Matthew G. Dewey criminals risk scores for setting bail and sentences. And how’s that algorithm Assistant Vice DEPARTMENTS FEATURES working out when it comes to advising your doc or when that new chatbot President for quickly learns how to spout white supremacist slurs? Alumni Relations Kathy Kale ’86 4 LETTERS Let’s file that last part under badly. In Phaedrus, conversation turns to grasshoppers, music, justice. In these Elizabeth Fernandez ’79 18 Listening is Her Superpower Ron Hansen M.A. ’95 6 MISSION MATTERS The groundbreaking stage work of Anna Deavere Smith. By Jesse Hamlin pages, no grasshoppers. Instead, among the questions posed: What can a bi- Michael S. Malone ’75, ologist learn from an engineer? What of these islands sinking under the sea? MBA ’77 Paul Soukup, S.J. 7 AND What of the priest whose discernment leads him to say, “This is no longer my Where and what 22 Casts a Shadow calling”? What of the president of a country who embraces power and refuses Santa Clara Magazine 8 AT Travel bans: Four international graduate students respond. By Matt Morgan to let go—for decades? What of the heiress to the rifle fortune and the dreams (ISSN 0891-5822) ©2017 is published by that haunt her? What of the playwright whose work the Leader says will not be Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, 11 PARAGRAPH staged? Why does the high school basketball coach ask his players to say a prayer Santa Clara, CA after every game? Why is the student from halfway around the world afraid to 95053; 408-551-1840. 24 A Bigger Stage It appears four times 13 QUESTION Priest, social worker, CEO, and teller of stories: Jim Purcell on what drew him CROSSROADS Democracy means go home? What sparks the mind and heart of the engineering professor who per year: in February, June, September, to Santa Clara—and what Jesuit education can be. By Steven Boyd Saum nothing if you won’t fight for it. Former teaches for half a century? How about that superbloom? December. Business Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta Maybe that’s where the grasshoppers are to be found. and editorial offices: 14 COPYRIGHT University Marketing and ’60, J.D. ’63 told law grads that pro- Communications, Loyola Hall, 500 El Camino Real, 16 QUOTE 28 The Good, the Bad, and the Kid COCHRAN JOSH BY PAGE THIS ILLUSTRATION O’BRIEN. TIM BY ILLUSTRATION COVER tecting the rule of law is up to them. Santa Clara, CA 95053. Periodical postage paid Ron Hansen M.A. ’95 talks truth and fiction and Billy the Kid—and when you at Santa Clara, CA, and 54 BRONCO NEWS can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys. at additional mailing offices. Send address changes to: Santa Clara Magazine, 500 55 PARAGRAPH El Camino Real, Santa Clara University, Santa 38 Discover. Innovate. Clara, CA 95053-1500; 56 QUESTION A $30 million gift from the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation to help 408-551-1840. build a new home for science and engineering. Illustrations by Owen Smith Reproduction in whole or part without permission 59 AT is prohibited. Letters, photos, and stories with a Santa Clara hook are 62 PLUS encouraged. Reach us: 42 AI and Public Trust magazine.scu.edu/contact A future with artificial intelligence is no longer a sci-fi fantasy. So how do we [email protected] 67 FOOTNOTE manage it with moral intelligence? By Shannon Vallor @santaclaramag Opinions expressed in 72 LAST PAGE THE FIX Can technology rescue the magazine do not necessarily represent 46 Welcome to Wonderland democracy—or at least undo some of views of the editor or Observing elections near and far. Our tale: God Bless America, baseball, hell the damage it has done? Eric Gold- official University policy. Printed on FSC-certified freezes over, and prayers for the dead. By Steven Boyd Saum man, Irina Raicu, and Shannon Vallor paper. MURAL AND FLAG PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY WIKIMEDIA. LEON PANETTA PHOTO BY CHARLES BARRY. PLATO ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID PLUNKERT DAVID BY ILLUSTRATION PLATO BARRY. CHARLES BY PHOTO PANETTA LEON WIKIMEDIA. COURTESY PHOTOGRAPHY FLAG AND MURAL write—part of a series in The Atlantic. 2 SANTA CLARA MAGAZINE and went to the kitchen. I came back When we saw Kristóf Hölvényi’s pho- renewed vigor. The whole we’re making corrections, Dorothy had been in Sacramento on the line and he explained the Exxon to of a man at the Serbian border, we Bay Area thrives on this. here’s another: “Cut and among Jerry Brown’s “kitchen cabi- Valdez had run aground in Prince Wil- were transfixed. It served as the Time- I attended Santa Clara Paste Conservation” by net” and became friends with Collins. Letters liam Sound. He did not have many de- stamp for our Summer 2016 edition. in what might be called the Emma Marris made refer- She invited him to class. tails, but believed it could be a serious In March it was recognized with a glory days of early tech— ence to amino acids where B.T. lectured for well over an hour oil spill. He desired to hire my client’s 1970–74. I was exposed to we should have referred to on how things really get done in the three large ship-assist tugboats based the precision of Gerald Al- DNA.