SEPT–OCT 2011, VOLUME 104, NUMBER 1

UCHICAGO ALUMNI TRAVEL 2019

“Compatible people, … DECARCERATION 1933–2018 ROTH … PHILIP BIBLIOPHILES … COLLEGE KASS … SAM RACE AND SKYSCRAPERS good lectures, interesting tours.”

—Alumni Traveler, Scotland and Norway 2018

Why Travel Insight and inspiration Camaraderie Ease and expertise from a UChicago and conversation of a fully planned tour with UChicago? scholar’s lectures with fellow alumni led by an experienced traveling companions tour director

Winter Spring Summer Fall

New Zealand Holland and A Week in Tuscany Inspiring Italy Jan. 17–Feb. 1 Belgium by Barge June 11–19 Sept. 1–12 May 10–18 Israel Past and Present Arctic Expedition Normandy Mar. 4–15 Insider’s Japan June 14–24 Sept. 7–15 May 11–23 Belize to Tikal Changing Tides of Toronto to Mar. 5–13 Paris Noir History: The Baltic Sea Vancouver by Rail May 12–20 June 23–July 2 Sept. 20–26 Journey through South Africa Celtic Lands: D-Day Poland Romance of Mar. 26–Apr. 11 75th Anniversary June 28–July 6 the Douro River May 28–June 7 Oct. 15–26 Gems of the Danube July 8–18 Mystical India Nov. 3–21 National Parks and Lodges of the Old West Aug. 14–23 SUMMER 2018 For More Information Indicates exclusive UChicago departures. alumni.uchicago.edu/travel Indicates a cruise. [email protected] 773.702.2150 SUMMER 2018, VOLUME 110, NUMBER 4

UCH_Summer2018 cover and spine_v1.indd 1 7/27/18 9:18 AM LSE-UCHICAGO DOUBLE EXECUTIVE MASTER’S IN HEALTH POLICY FROM HARRIS PUBLIC POLICY AND THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

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LSE-Chicago Ad_v5.indd 1 2/5/18 10:19 AM UCH_ADS_v1.indd 2 7/26/18 11:53 AM Features SUMMER 2018 VOLUME 110, NUMBER 4 22 CORRECTIVE MEASURES A UChicago professor spearheads an initiative to end mass incarceration. By Lucas McGranahan

30 TALKING BACK Reflections on the life and literature of Philip Roth, AM’55.By Laura Demanski, AM’94

32 BIBLIOMANIA! College students go head-to-head in a competition for the best undergraduate book collection. By Susie Allen, AB’09

38 TOWERING INSIGHTS English associate professor Adrienne Brown explores the complicated racial history of the American skyscraper. By Susie Allen, AB’09

44 FOOD FOR THOUGHT Former White House chef Sam Kass, LAB’98, AB’04, is serving up new recipes and improvements to food policy. By Laura Demanski, AM’94 Plus: Kass’s recipe for brussels sprouts Caesar salad from Eat A Little Better.

Departments 3 EDITOR’S NOTES Remembrance of notes past. By Laura Demanski, AM’94

4 LETTERS Readers applaud class correspondents, debate health policy, ponder the merits of reflection and regret, and more.

7 ON THE AGENDA Humanities’ reach expands exponentially. By Anne Walters Robertson

9 UCHICAGO JOURNAL Vision care in the developing world; expanding access to the College; making property tax more proper; agricultural legacies; and more.

20 COURSE WORK Adrienne Brown’s work Lights up on Thomas Christensen’s Making and Meaning in the American probes the effects of Musical. By Jeanie Chung burgeoning urbanism 47 PEER REVIEW in the 19th and 20th In the alumni essays, an unlikely political wife mulls her future and a scholar centuries. See “Towering treads the boards. Plus: Alumni News, Deaths, and Classifieds. Insights,” page 38. Illustration by Sylvia 80 LITE OF THE MIND Moritz. Doodling is the sincerest form of flattery.By Laura Demanski, AM’94

See the print issue of the University of Chicago Magazine, web-exclusive content, and links to our Facebook and Twitter accounts at mag.uchicago.edu.

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 1

Contents_Spring18_v2.indd 2 7/26/18 5:24 PM pring ahead: Photographed from

S above in late May, productions badger soaring by photography the quads were both stately and verdant. One of the newest sights in the campus landscape, which opened to students in fall quarter 2017, is Campus North Residential Commons, the tall white building northeast of the Regenstein Library.

UCH_Wallpaper_v1.indd 2 7/26/18 12:50 PM EDITORˆS NOTES

Volume 110, Number 4, Summer 2018

editor Laura Demanski, AM’94 senior editor Mary Ruth Yoe associate editor Susie Allen, AB’09 managing editor Rhonda L. Smith art director Guido Mendez alumni news editor Andrew Peart, AM’16, PhD’18 copy editor Sam Edsill student interns Brooke Nagler, ’20; Dylan Petiprin, ’19 graphic designer Laura Lorenz Remembrance contributing editors John Easton, AM’77; Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93; Brooke E. O’Neill, AM’04; Amy of notes past Braverman Puma BY LAURA DEMANSKI, AM’94 Editorial Office The University of Chicago Magazine, 5235 South Harper Court, Suite 500, Chicago, IL 60615. telephone 773.702.2163; fax 773.702.8836; email [email protected]. The University of Chicago Alumni y happy coincidence, this of psychology Jesse Prinz, PhD’97, Association has its offices at issue contains reproduc- agree, saying that doodling focuses 5235 South Harper Court, 7th Floor, Chicago, IL 60615. telephone 773.702.2150; tions from the course note- our attention on what we’re hearing fax 773.702.2166. address changes books of two UChicagoans. and helps us remember it later. 800.955.0065 or [email protected]. Original Source (page 12) That was the case for Lorch, who web mag.uchicago.edu offers a page from Nobel sketched Sinaiko during a lecture on The University of Chicago Magazine Prize–winning astro- Aristotle’s Poetics in October 1989. In (ISSN-0041-9508) is published quarterly physicist Subrahmanyan a Q&A on our website (mag.uchicago (Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer) by the Chandrasekhar’s notes for .edu/doodlecore), Lorch talks about University of Chicago in cooperation a quantum mechanics class the class; clearly the lecture stuck with with the Alumni Association, 5235 South Harper Court, 7th Floor, Chicago, IL he took as a student at Cam- him, helped by doodling and affection. 60615, and sent to all University of Chicago bridge University. And Lite of the Mind Meanwhile, if the cover page of alumni. Published continuously since 1907. features notes that Benjamin Lorch, Chandrasekhar’s notes on quantum Periodicals postage paid at Chicago and B additional mailing offices.postmaster AB’93, AM’04, took in a class with the mechanics is any indication, he was Send address changes to The University of College’s legendary Herman Sinaiko, all business during his classes. Yet the Chicago Magazine, Alumni Records, 5235 AB’47, PhD’61 (page 80). note he added almost two decades lat- South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615. Like many others who went to er, in the same careful, almost austere © 2018 University of Chicago. school for a very long time, I love note- hand, betrays how his wife Lalitha Advertising Contact uchicago-magazine@ books. Throughout my 20-plus years as had been on his mind as well. uchicago.edu or visit mag.uchicago.edu a student—from kindergarten to high Laptops may be more efficient, /advertising. The Magazine is a member school to college to graduate studies— but long live handwritten notes with of the Ivy League Magazine Network, whose clients include other colleges and there was no more welcome accompa- their madeleine-like powers to take universities. These advertisements help niment to each new fall. They might be us back in time, to knowledge and ex- the Magazine continue to deliver news Mead or Clairefontaine; I wasn’t too perience alike. of the University of Chicago and its alumni particular, just craved those blank lines to readers. Please contact the editor with any questions. full of promise, all neatly spiral-bound, Copy that simultaneously tactile and symbolic. Just before deadline, the Magazine wel- ivy league magazine network Once acquired and brought to class, comed Sam Edsill to the staff as copy Heather Wedlake, Director of Operations web ivymags.com those notebooks offered the different editor. He takes over the copyediting, email [email protected] pleasure of filling them up—dutifully fact-checking, and proofreading du- telephone 617.319.0995 with ideas, facts, dates, equations, ties of Rhonda L. Smith, who became and fancifully with doodles. In work managing editor earlier this year. Sam The University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual meetings and during phone calls, I still comes to UChicago from the American orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic fill my margins with elaborate geomet- Hospital Association and the New York origin, age, status as an individual with a ric designs. To onlookers, I know, political news company City & State. At disability, protected veteran status, genetic the practice can appear inattentive. press time, we were already benefiting information, or other protected classes under the law. For additional information, please see In my experience it’s anything but, from his sharp eye, and are very happy

©istock.com/blindspot photography by laura demanski, am’94 equalopportunity.uchicago.edu. and experts, including philosopher to be working with him. ◆

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 3

Ed Notes_Summer2018_v2.indd 3 7/26/18 4:31 PM Another outstanding contribution to the Spring issue was a letter about Jona- LETTERS than Z. (“JZ” as we knew him) Smith. The writer described JZ’s unique sto- rytelling, teaching, and mentoring so well that I felt again how profound was his adopting me as an advisee upon Support your class correspondent Henry Rago’s untimely death. Though One of the thankless tasks that your fellow alumni who are College class cor - the ordeal was crushing, JZ’s steering respondents perform is to compile class notes about what folks have been up to. me to apply to Yale for graduate school We all know that this task can only be fulfilled to the degree that we provide redeemed it. I’m so glad I got to thank support to these volunteers. I would him personally at my 40th reunion. This is, thus, a personal like to address the Class of ’58, but the “Oh, think nothing of it,” he gushed, message carries well across all classes. as only JZ could. “You were the per- note asking you to This is, thus, a personal note asking fect candidate for that spot,” which support your class you to support your class correspon- happened to be a Rockefeller Fellow- dents’ appeals for your stories. Even ship for a trial year in seminary. It both correspondents’ appeals. though my class was a small group, saved me from Vietnam and opened the many of us do not know one another. door to my happy career as priest and Still, regardless of prior acquaintance, folks from all classes enjoy their class- seminary professor. mates’ updates. So please contribute to your class narratives and our shared his- Yes, hindsight is 20/20 vision. tory while we can. Thanks for providing quarterly occa- Speaking personally, I have enjoyed my correspondent’s (Bob Bloom, SB’58) sions to “see more clearly, love more reports. Good luck, Bob, and many thanks for what you do. dearly, and follow more nearly, day Norm Schulze, SB’58 by day” (Richard of Chicester, via clifton, virginia Stephen Schwartz’s song from God- spell) in the paths we were set upon by UChicago’s exceptional administra- tors and faculty. Oh, and “Let’s Get Lost in memory days came a handwritten note on presi- Lost”—here’s to never sacrificing ser- “Well, you’ve done it again,” as Click dential stationery thanking me for my endipity! Edward Tenner’s (AM’67, and Clack the Tappet Brothers used to service and assuring me he hadn’t been PhD’72) The Efficiency Paradox just say, “You’ve wasted another perfectly aware of a near mishap. Talk about put- went on my summer reading list. good hour.” Except it wasn’t wasted ting a third-year at ease. If that wasn’t Michael Tessman, AB’70 devouring, almost as it arrived, the enough, years later I saw him briefly in kingstown, rhode island Spring/18 issue of the Magazine, Washington, DC, when he was Gerald which proved yet another slam dunk Ford’s attorney general. He not only re- Constitutional context for which kudos are in order. membered my note but said he’d kept it In “The Long Founding Moment” Special “thanks for the memories,” in a file as an example of unusually good (UChicago Journal, Spring/18) Ali- including a superb piece about Hanna manners and penmanship. son LaCroix points out, “There isn’t Gray (“The Long View,” UChicago an optimal distribution of federal ver- Journal), whom I had the privilege of sus state power,” and further notes, meeting, not at the U of C, but at the “There might be an optimal one, but unveiling of her portrait in the grand you can’t find it in the Constitution.” promenade of Woolsey Hall at Yale With these words she understates the during my graduate work. A good U many problems our country has with of C friend had her as his doctoral ad- an 18th-century constitution and ac- viser, so I no more than mentioned his companying political system as it con- name and she was right on subject. fronts a 21st-century commercial and ab’03 recchie, benjamin by photography That same quality personified Ed technological world. Levi, LAB’28, PhB’32, JD’35, one of Indeed, one could take the Con- her predecessors as UChicago presi- stitution line by line and show quite dent, with whom she’s pictured in the conclusively that when its context is story. On the occasion of his presiden- ignored (i.e., the Second Amendment tial installation, I carried the Universi- written when only muskets and other ty banner, nearly taking out a window primitive firearms were available, and in the chapel entry while lowering the those in limited quantities) its words heavy, awkward pole in passage. Mor- can be and are interpreted to give us tified, I wrote a letter to Levi apologiz- “wrong answers in constitutional ing for any delay or anxiety resulting law.” An example to illustrate my from my mismaneuver. Within a few point: the equating of money with free

4 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

Layout_Letters_Summer18_v2.indd 4 7/26/18 2:26 PM speech. It is hard for me to believe that from elevation, have auto accidents, that pay inequity persists even when anyone making prudent judgments and otherwise encounter the slings wage rates are equitable, but was could possibly have come up with that and arrows to which flesh is heir. More- drawn into reading about it by my “answer.” I have come to the conclu- over, people will encounter the same confusion. Please be precise when de- sion that one of the most serious flaws risks regardless of insurance status scribing your charts. in our Constitution is to allow 5–4 de- because they still live in the same place Michele Beaulieux, AB’82 cisions of the Supreme Court justices and have the same lifestyles as before. chicago to become the law of the land. I take The actual hope is—and there was as precedent the Judicial Procedures no statement to contradict this—that We agree with the letter writer and apolo- Reform Bill of 1937, a legislative ini- visits by those few people who come gize for the misleading labeling.—Ed. tiative proposed by President Frank- into emergency rooms in true crisis lin D. Roosevelt to add more justices that could have been prevented by a Jazz records to the Supreme Court. An alternative trip to the doctor’s office a few weeks I was intrigued and perplexed by the to “packing” the court would be a con- before might be reduced or even elim- caption on page 51 of your Spring/18 stitutional amendment to require that inated. That would mean a financial issue, which described jazz musician any decision that would become the savings to the health system but also Hanah Jon Taylor as having been the final law of the land would need the the saving of lives that are unneces- director of the University of Chicago concurrence of a large majority, per- sarily shortened. Jazz Ensemble in 1992. haps 7–2, or better yet, 8–1. People who have not had access to I enrolled in a doctoral program in At 81 I have lived in an era when the doctors because of financial reasons are the fall of 1992, and I know there was son of a former migrant farm worker not going to suddenly acquire the habit no University-sponsored jazz ensem- from Eastern Europe/factory worker of making an appointment to see about ble in the 1992–93 school year, nor could have the opportunity to attend a cough or any of the other conditions in 1993–94. In the fall of 1994 signs the University of Chicago because that they have been conditioned to live appeared announcing auditions for a of the sacrifices of his parents, their with because they couldn’t afford to do new jazz ensemble. I was one of the 10 understanding of the value of educa- anything about them. How, in such a musicians selected by director Mwata tion, the preparation of a Catholic short space of time and with no teach- Bowden for the maiden edition of educational system, and my own hard ing or habituation, could it be expected what he christened the University of work. Those days seem to be long that the newly insured and the never Chicago Jazz X-Tet (the X originally gone. Would that we, as a country, insured would change their habits? having been intended as a Roman nu- strive to interpret the Constitution in Journalists and researchers in this meral), which is still going strong un- such a way as to bring back into reality country have substituted asking a der his direction decades later. a 21st-century version of that time. question for asking the right question But, in my X-Tet years, I had never Ernest A. Dorko, SM’61, PhD’64 and getting an answer for getting the heard any suggestions that there had albuquerque, new mexico real answer. Have all the editors died been another incarnation of a Univer- and gone to hell? sity jazz ensemble as recently as 1992; Information, please Lonnie L. Sorrells Jr., AB’81 and while a number of guest artists “Measuring Medicaid” (UChicago brighton, michigan played with the X-Tet, Taylor’s name Journal, Spring/18) oversimplifies is quite unfamiliar to me. My under- complex issues. The letter writer raises a good question standing had been that Ingrid Monson, The expected outcome of increased about the types of emergency department assistant professor in the Department access to medical care is not to prevent visits analyzed by the researchers. The au- of Music from 1991 to 1995 and now the use of emergency rooms but the thors did indeed analyze the effect of insur- a professor at Harvard, had been the abuse of them. There was no discussion ance on emergency department visits for driving force, not just in creating a jazz of whether the case mix seen among different types of care and circumstances. ensemble where none had existed previ- the groups is different. If there is no They found that Medicaid caused bigger ously, but also in finding a major figure difference in the case mix that would increases in discretionary or preventable from South Side Chicago’s Association be a positive change. Increased use of emergency department visits than in non- for the Advancement of Creative Mu- photography by benjamin recchie, ab’03 recchie, benjamin by photography preventive care will not prevent emer- preventable emergencies.—Ed. sicians movement, Bowden, to lead it. gencies from occurring. People will I hope you can elucidate on what continue to get shot and stabbed, fall Title trouble role he did or didn’t play in the history The headline “Driving Up Wages” of jazz performance at the University. The expected outcome (Fig. 1, UChicago Journal) and chart Rowen Bell, SM’94, MBA’05 labeled “Average hourly earnings, chicago of increased access US” in the Spring/18 issue surprised to medical care is not me. Curious that men’s and women’s According to a February 2, 1990, Chi- earnings would be as close as depict- cago Maroon story, the University of to prevent the use of ed, I read the article only to discover Chicago Jazz Ensemble was a registered emergency rooms but that the chart and article were about student organization formed that year Uber drivers’ compensation, not all by Josh Sinton, AB’94, with Hanah the abuse of them. US workers. I’m glad to have learned Jon Taylor as its musical director. The

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 5

Layout_Letters_Summer18_v2.indd 5 7/26/18 3:18 PM versity in 1959, my mother, Oberlin of about 25 graphite blocks, each the LETTERS ’33, would come to some of the open size of a cinder block. I could easily HUM 101 activities. Her intellectual have touched them. Also at Argonne 25-member ensemble had its first perfor- spirit was renewed. She applied to the was CP-5, still actively used by mance on April 4, 1990, at the First Uni- School of Social Service Administra- researchers. tarian Church of Chicago.—Ed. tion to work toward a master’s degree. Norman Hilberry, PhD’41, direc- Despite her Phi Beta Kappa creden- tor of Argonne, spoke at a welcom- Looking back (to the Winter issue) tials, she was told that she was too old ing meeting of interns like me. He As a longtime formal and informal stu- to be admitted to a degree program, was in the squash court on December dent of regret, I read “Looking Back” and that those slots were reserved 2, 1942, and sent to the grandstands (Winter/18) with great interest. The for younger students. She could, of with an axe. He was to cut a rope and fascinating “conversation” between course, pay tuition and take courses. lower a safety rod into the reactor in Martha C. Nussbaum and Saul Lev- She did not. Sara Paretsky, AM’69, case things got out of hand. He was more, excerpted from their recent MBA’77, PhD’77, is not alone in hav- later told that if the worst had hap - book, Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations ing mixed feelings about UChicago pened it would all have been over in about Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, (Glimpses, “Criminal Mastermind”). a microsecond. and Regret (Oxford University Press, I read “Urban Legend” (C. Vitae) Bill Brainerd, AM’63 2017), reminded me of many works in and noticed a curious omission. media, pennsylvania the large literature on regret I read as Having joined the US Air Force while a graduate student at the University attending the University of Chicago Corrections of Pennsylvania, including Woulda/ medical school, I noted that although On page 47 of “Babyography” Coulda/Shoulda, by Arthur Freeman the text reveals that the GI Bill helped (Spring/18) we misstated the surname and Rose DeWolf (William Morrow, Herbert Gans, PhB’47, AM’50, of a great-grandmother whose family 1989), and What Might Have Been: complete his first two degrees, under has long used Our Baby’s First Seven The Social Psychology of Counterfactual “milestones” there was no mention of Years. Her name is Pat Brend. We re- Thinking, by Neal J. Roese and James his military service. gret the error. M. Olson (Lawrence Erlbaum Associ- William Sloan, SB’63, MD’67 ates, 1995). Looking forward to more was not only a classmate but a The University of Chicago Magazine looking back with Aging Thoughtfully! friend (UChicago Journal, “String welcomes letters about its contents or about Karen Matlaw Steinberg, Theory”). the life of the University. Letters for pub- LAB’71, AB’75 J. Curtis Kovacs, AB’63, MD’67 lication must be signed and may be edited pacific grove, california sun city, arizona for space, clarity, and civility. To provide a range of views and voices, we encour- The Winter/18 issue contained quite Tale of the pile age letter writers to limit themselves to a few articles that intersected with my I worked at Argonne National 300 words or fewer. Write: Editor, The life. “Looking Back” struck so very Laboratory in the summer of 1959. University of Chicago Magazine , many chords. My wife and I live in an Chicago Pile-1, or what was left of it, 5235 South Harper Court, Suite 500, age-restricted community, Sun City, was in a warehouse attracting little Chicago, IL 60615. Or email: uchicago Arizona. When I started at the Uni- attention. It was a stack five feet high [email protected].

BLAST FROM THE PAST Jimmy [Wilson, proprietor of the Woodlawn Tap] did a great job by decreeing that only active candidates for the PhD could serve as bartenders and surrounded the bar with reference books to

squelch many disagreements am’94 demanski, laura by photography which frequently arose in the bar. … I still miss Jimmy and the Woodlawn Tap since the long life I’ve lived has never allowed me to replicate the ease and camaraderie of the watering hole that Jimmy created and maintained for thousands of University of Chicago students over his lifetime. —Joseph N. DuCanto, JD’55, July–Aug/12 River Forest, Illinois

6 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

Layout_Letters_Summer18_v2.indd 6 7/26/18 4:51 PM ON THE AGENDA

artistic partners, including perform- ers, computer scientists, chemists, Humanities’ reach physicists, and neuroscientists. Likewise, the Humanities has made expands exponentially transformational contributions by fos- BY ANNE WALTERS ROBERTSON, DEAN OF THE DIVISION tering programs in cognitive science OF THE HUMANITIES AND CLAIRE DUX SWIFT DISTINGUISHED and digital studies of language, cul- SERVICE PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC ture, and history, and by developing AND THE COLLEGE programs such as media arts and design and urban architecture. Realizing that the life of the mind must also preserve the life of the body, our division has en- wo years ago, when I be- hanced prospects for humanities PhDs came the dean of the Divi- by preparing them for a challenging job sion of the Humanities, market. We cultivate opportunities for my perspective about the them both within and beyond academe, myriad roles of the human- enriching society with the kind of criti- ities at the University of cal thinking and analysis that charac- Chicago and in the world terize our disciplines. grew exponentially. From As the Division of the Humanities my bird’s-eye view, I can reaches outward in myriad ways, other see that the work of our fac- fields are looking into the humanities. ulty, students, and alumni, Books and articles written by special- as well as our outreach initiatives, is ists in nonhumanities subjects often Tsetting the agenda for transformative Robertson has spent more than 30 recognize how an understanding of the dialogue about the humanities in the years on the faculty of the Division of humanities is essential to their projects. world today. the Humanities’ Music Department. Christian Madsbjerg’s Sensemaking: In 1930 University of Chicago The Power of the Humanities in the Age president Robert Maynard Hutchins of the Algorithm and Gary Saul Morson encouraged disciplinary innovation produce new interpretations of old and Morton Schapiro’s Cents and Sensi- by creating four graduate divisions subjects, adding to the heft of human- bility: What Economics Can Learn from at UChicago: the humanities and the ities scholarship through books and the Humanities both appeared in 2017. three sciences—social, physical, and articles that often attract the recogni- This past spring, former US Treasury biological. Rather than install the tion that Philippe Desan’s Montaigne: secretary Robert E. Rubin published more prevalent arts-and-sciences A Life received in 2017 from the New an op-ed in the New York Times titled model that exists in most US univer- Yorker and the Wall Street Journal. “Philosophy Prepared Me for a Career sities combining graduate studies, he Likewise, our creative endeavors have in Finance and Government.” grouped disciplines based on how he set the standard for originality and As always, the division was keen to imagined departments would most imagination, including Augusta Read embrace these overtures. The Franke likely collaborate in their research. Thomas’s Ear Taxi Festival, a six- Institute hosts an Andrew W. Mellon To be sure, the 15 departments in day festival of new music; Christine Foundation–sponsored program called the Division of the Humanities have Mehring’s celebration of the restora- The Limits of the Numerical. Classics cooperated extensively, but we also tion of Wolf Vostell’s famous concrete professor Alain Bresson recently made have collaborated across divisions car; and William Pope.L’s multisen- a fundamental contribution to econom- through interdisciplinary organiza- sory installation Claim (Whitney Ver- ic history in his prize-winning book tions like the Franke Institute for the sion) at the Whitney Museum. The Making of the Ancient Greek Econo- Humanities, the Neubauer Collegium The Division of the Humanities my: Institutions, Markets, and Growth in for Culture and Society, and the Gray leaves another kind of mark through the City-States (2016). Center for Arts and Inquiry. During public conversation: our faculty deliv- In short, I believe this is an excep- the past 30 years, we have also wit- er scholarly papers in venues around tional and pivotal time for the Divi- nessed the birth of three new depart- the world each year. Notably, Martha sion of the Humanities at UChicago, ments—visual arts, cinema and media Nussbaum presented the National and I’m excited and motivated when studies, and comparative literature— Endowment for the Humanities’ Jef- I think about our immediate and long- developed through what were initially ferson Lecture in 2017. We are also re- term future. As the humanities play workshops and committees. drawing the traditional boundaries of increasingly seminal roles in the acad- Through our research and teaching the humanities through our collabora- emy and the world, we at UChicago

photography by john zich in the Division of the Humanities, we tions with multiple new academic and will continue to lead the way. ◆

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 7

OntheAgenda_Summer 2018_v1.indd 2 7/23/18 4:44 PM UCH_ADS_v2.indd 4 8/1/18 10:36 AM SUMMER 2018 Harper’s Index, 11 ...... Original Source, 12 ...... For the Record, 13 ...... Citations, 17 ...... Fig. 1, 18

James Chen’s (AB’82) Vision for a Nation has improved access to eye care in Rwanda and is piloting a program in Ghana.

PHILANTHROPY countries, and research predicts myo- grown up in Nigeria and spent a large pia alone will affect 4.8 billion, half part of my working life in developing the world population, by 2050. Asia, I noticed that very few people Poor vision is “the largest unad- [there] had glasses,” says Chen. Farsighted dressed disability in the world today,” While made-to-order glasses re- says Hong Kong philanthropist James main out of reach for many in the de- Chen, AB’82. He’s spent more than a veloping world, Chen realized a single venture decade working to understand and pair of specs serving a wide range of fix unaddressed poor vision in the needs could provide a more cost- James Chen, AB’82, is reenvisioning developing world, along with its far- effective option. So, in 2011, Chen a centuries-old solution to reaching causes and consequences, founded Vision for a Nation (VFAN), transform millions of lives. investing family wealth from the mul- a nonprofit dedicated to providing af- tinational pot and pan business his fordable eye care in developing coun- Corrective lenses date back at least to grandfather built after fleeing China tries—beginning with Rwanda. the 13th century. Yet an estimated 2.5 in 1947. “The idea there was just to say, billion people today need glasses and Chen’s mission began 14 years ago, ‘Let’s just pick a country and attempt don’t have them. That number threat- when he met an Oxford professor who to solve this problem ourselves,’” Chen ens to grow. About 80 percent of peo- had developed a “very intriguing pro- says. If nothing else, he figured, they’d

©sarah day/clearly ©sarah ple with poor vision live in developing totype” of an adjustable lens. “Having learn more about it. Within five years,

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 9

UChicago Journal_v12.indd 9 7/26/18 1:20 PM VFAN had screened more than 2.5 degree. To address what Chen calls a Some people know they need glass- million pairs of eyes and revolution- “huge bottleneck” in the eye care sys- es but don’t want them. Chen points ized the Rwandan eye care system to tem, VFAN devised a three-day train- to cultural biases, particularly for make it accessible to the country’s en- ing program and delivered it to 2,700 girls. In some societies, he says, par- tire population of 12 million. The effort Rwandan nurses. (Rwanda now in- ents worry that glasses might hinder involved close collaboration with the corporates eye screening as a regular their daughters’ marriage prospects. government’s ministry of health. training requirement for nurses.) Awareness remains a widespread Through VFAN’s Patients with vision challenge and a key part of Chen’s work in Rwanda, SOMEONE WHO HAS problems receive either personal mission. Chen identified four glasses, eye drops, or, in “Sight is the golden thread of hu- key obstacles to NEVER HAD A PAIR OF serious cases, referral to man development,” Chen writes in solving poor vision CORRECTIVE GLASSES a specialist. The system his book, Clearly (Biteback Publish- in the developing MAY NOT KNOW HOW “isn’t perfect, but it’s ing, 2017), which shares its title with world: dollars, dis- definitely functional,” the nonprofit he founded in 2016 to tribution, diagnosis, BAD HIS OR HER EYES Chen says. raise awareness about vision care ac- and demand. REALLY ARE AND WHAT Another unexpected cess through social media as well as First and perhaps obstacle? Demand. petitions and other outreach. most obvious: eye IMPACT IT HAS ON Many people don’t real- This year VFAN launched a pilot care costs money. In THEIR FUNCTIONALITY. ize they have poor vision. program in the Central Region of the developed world, “Someone who has never Ghana that will expand nationwide most of that markup goes toward high- had a pair of corrective glasses may not in 2019. Chen hopes lessons learned ly trained doctors, luxury retail space, know how bad his or her eyes really are in Rwanda will open doors to af - and fancy brand names. “That’s kind and what impact it has on their func- fordable eye care across the develop - of the dirty secret of the optical indus- tionality,” says Chen, who discovered ing world. He’s got a clear vision for try,” Chen says. his own need for lenses when he failed the future. VFAN skips all of that; 90 percent a driving test as a teenager. —Ingrid Gonçalves, AB’08 of the lenses they provide are simple reading glasses that cost less than one dollar to produce. For people with more complex needs, VFAN of- fers adjustable-lens models that cost around three dollars. The technology behind the ad - justable lenses builds on the work of Chen’s fellow UChicago alumnus, Nobel prize–winning physicist Luis Alvarez, SB’32, SM’34, PhD’36. The Alvarez Dual Lens features two independently moving polycarbonate plates. Their position relative to each other determines the overall focal length of the lens. But getting the glasses into the hands of the people who need them can be tricky, particularly in rural ar- eas of the developing world. In addition to leveraging the min- istry of health’s existing infrastruc- ture, VFAN streamlined distribution. They stocked reading glasses in a lim- ited selection of strengths that covered

nearly all farsighted needs, and pro- hui bronney by photography vided adjustable lenses to nearsighted patients—narrowing their inventory down to a lean list of five items. Before any lenses can be provided, however, patients need a diagnosis from a health care professional. For- mal training in optometry or oph - thalmology takes years, but basic eye Chen hopes to replicate the success his nonprofit had in bringing screening doesn’t require an advanced affordable vision care to Rwanda.

10 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

UChicago Journal_v12.indd 10 7/26/18 1:21 PM COLLEGE ACCESS As part of the test-optional process, applicants can choose which informa- tion best represents their skills and WILLIAM college readiness, including standard- RAINEY HARPER’S Forward ized test scores other than the SAT/ ACT or nonstandard materials and INDEX accomplishments. Prospective stu- thinking dents will have the option of including VENTURED The UChicago Empower Initiative a two-minute video introduction as AND GAINED part of their applications, rather than changes the admissions conversa- an on-campus or alumni interview. Years since the founding tion, adds more financial aid. In-person interviews—both on of the Edward L. Kaplan, campus and alumni interviews—are MBA’71, New Venture In June the University announced it being phased out. First-generation, Challenge (NVC): will no longer require the SAT/ACT low-income, and other underrepre- for College applications—a decision sented students often couldn’t take widely reported in national and inter- advantage of interviews because national media. While hundreds of US of time, cost, and other factors. In - colleges do not require standardized stead, the Office of College Admis- 22 tests, “Chicago’s move is the first by sions will partner with Wisr, an NVC alumni companies still one of the very top research universi- online platform that allows alumni in existence today: ties in the country,” Inside Higher Ed and prospective students to connect reported. before and during the admissions The new UChicago Empower Ini - process. Through Wisr, alumni vol- tiative updates this and other admis- unteers can interact with students of sions policies to enable similar interests, 300 UCHICAGO EMPOWER IS answer questions, students to better rep- Ice cream–related ventures resent themselves. “We and share knowl- INTENDED TO “LEVEL that have participated: want students to under- edge with a broad stand the application THE PLAYING FIELD set of students, does not define you. You FOR TALENTED FIRST- unlimited by geo- define the application,” GENERATION AND LOW- graphical distance. says James G. Nondorf, The new initia- 2 vice president and dean INCOME STUDENTS tive “continues Amount, in millions, PayPal of admissions. the College’s un- WHO PERCEIVE TOP- paid to acquire 2007 NVC The initiative also wavering commit- includes a substantial RANKED COLLEGES AS ment to access and winner Braintree: enhancement of finan- INACCESSIBLE.” inclusion,” says cial aid. Tuition will John W. Boyer, now be free for families with incomes AM’69, PhD’75, dean of the College under $125,000 a year (with typical and a first-generation student him- $800 assets). Families earning less than self. “Throughout the past century, $60,000 (again, with typical assets) UChicago has considered a broad di- 2018 finalists: will have tuition, fees, and room and versity of cultural perspectives and board covered. First-generation stu- academic merit without regard to dents will receive a $20,000 scholar- socioeconomic class.” The Odyssey ship over four years and a guaranteed Scholarship Program, the flagship 11 paid internship the summer after financial aid initiative established in their freshman year, regardless of 2007, removes such barriers to a Col- Amount received by 2006 family income. lege education by eliminating stu - first-prize winner GrubHub: Critics of standardized tests have dent loans and providing other kinds long argued that the test scores corre- of support. late more strongly with socioeconom- The College admissions process ic background than with academic always stresses to applicants that $25,000 ability—while contributing to a lack there’s no one piece of informa - of diversity on campus. UChicago Em- tion—academic and extracurricular Amount received by 2018 power is intended to “level the playing records, essays, or letters of recom- first-prize winner Manifest: field for talented first-generation and mendation—that alone determines low-income students who perceive whether or not a student would be a top-ranked colleges as inaccessible,” good fit for the College. Instead, each Nondorf says. application goes through a holistic $315,000

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 11

UChicago Journal_v12.indd 11 7/26/18 1:21 PM review process. Admissions offi - cers say that students’ transcripts— their high school grades and rigor of ORIGINAL SOURCE courses—along with their responses to the University’s famously creative LOVE NOTES supplemental essay questions, are the most valuable predictors of future performance. But wait, there’s more. UChicago Empower expands the College’s cur- rent Police and Fire Scholarships for the City of Chicago nationwide: select children of police officers and firefighters will receive full-tuition scholarships. The College is also working to increase the number of veterans on campus by partnering with the Posse Foundation Veter - ans Program. The first undergradu- ate Veterans Posse cohort will enter UChicago in autumn 2020. The initiative offers more kinds of support for current College students too. For example, through Wisr, first- generation and low-income students will be able to connect more easily with alumni mentors. A new Summer Scholars Program for African American Students, sponsored by the Allison Davis Jr. Education Summit and the UChi - cago Women’s Board, will provide fully funded summer opportunities at UChicago for talented students from underrepresented high schools. This program builds on the success of the Neubauer Adelante Summer Scholars program for students from Latino/ Hispanic communities. UChicago Empower also targets high schools, earmarking new fund- ing for professional development programming for counselors from rural schools, as well as expanding ad- missions workshops for Illinois high In 1930 Subrahmanyan he jotted notes on a quantum school students.

Chandrasekhar, then 19, left his mechanics course at Cambridge, courtesy special collections research center Although alumni interviews are native city of Lahore, India (now he wrote in a dedication inscribed being phased out, College Admis - Pakistan) and headed for England. on the notebook’s front page in sions still needs an army of volun - As he embarked on postgraduate 1948. Those notes, along with teers. Alumni are invited to attend study at Cambridge University, many of Chandrasekhar’s other college fairs held around the country, Chandrasekhar was beginning personal papers, are now open to where they can chat with prospective to develop the theory of star researchers at the University of students about their own College evolution that later earned him the Chicago Library. experiences and answer questions. Nobel Prize in Physics. The notes are dated September Alumni are also needed to men - He had other preoccupations 11, a day that would prove tor undergraduates through Wisr. as well. Two years earlier important in Chandrasekhar’s life. If you’re interested in volunteer - Chandrasekhar had met Lalitha Exactly six years later, Lalitha and ing, please contact College Admis- Doraiswamy, a fellow physics Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar sions at alumnischoolscommittee@ student at Presidency College were married, and remained so uchicago.edu. in Madras, India (now Chennai, until his death in 1995. —Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93 India). She was on his mind as —Susie Allen, AB’09

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UChicago Journal_v12.indd 12 7/26/18 4:29 PM FOR THE RECORD

TRAUMA CENTER OPENS September 4. In addition, potential for impact across consistently excellent theater The University of Chicago Patel will be appointed as a the University. company in America” by the Medicine began providing faculty member at UChicago. Wall Street Journal in 2006. adult trauma care on May 1, He currently holds the William BOARD REELECTS NEUBAUER AS CHAIR with the first patient brought V. Power Endowed Chair in The Board of Trustees has AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHER by ambulance at noon that Biology at the University of reelected Joseph Neubauer, At convocation, 10 members day. The level 1 adult trauma California, Berkeley, where he MBA’65, as its chair, and Ashley of the UChicago faculty were center adds to UChicago is a professor and cochair of D. Joyce, AM’01, and Brien honored for their work in the Medicine’s pediatric trauma the Department of Molecular M. O’Brien have joined the classroom. Stuart Gazes, and burn services, providing and Cell Biology and a board as new members, the senior lecturer in physics; the community with a professor in the Department of University announced June 11. Kimberly Hoang, assistant comprehensive system of Integrative Biology. O’Brien also has been elected professor in sociology; Boaz care to treat the full range of chair of the UChicago Medical Keysar, professor in psychology; trauma injuries in patients of PROVOSTIAL POST Center’s Board of Trustees, Peggy Mason, professor in all ages. Since announcing Daniel Abebe, AM’06, PhD’13, which he joined in 2005. neurobiology; and Nadine plans to become a level 1 adult was named vice provost of the Neubauer, the retired chairman Moeller, associate professor trauma center in December University, effective July 1. In of the ARAMARK Corporation, of Egyptian archaeology, 2015, UChicago Medicine has this role, he will lead a range of has served on the University’s received the Llewellyn John and hired 18 experienced trauma critical efforts in support of the Board of Trustees since 1992 Harriet Manchester Quantrell professionals from around University’s academic units. and as chair since 2015. Awards for Excellence in the country, including He also will serve as the faculty He and his wife, Jeanette Undergraduate Teaching. The five surgeons. director of UChicagoGRAD, Lerman-Neubauer, have a Faculty Awards for Excellence the University’s initiative long history of service and in Graduate Teaching and for graduate students and generous philanthropic giving Mentoring went to Niall postdocs. Abebe is the Harold J. to the University. Atkinson, associate professor of and Marion F. Green Professor art history; Rina Foygel Barber, of Law and Walter Mander CURBING CONFLICT SM’09, PhD’12, associate Teaching Scholar. His research The Pearson Global Forum professor in statistics; John focuses on the relationship will take place October 4–5, Brehm, professor in political between foreign relations law bringing together scholars, science; David Freedman, and public international law. policy makers, and other professor in neurobiology; and stakeholders to examine Susan Schreiner, professor strategies to prevent, of the history of Christianity deescalate, and resolve violent and theology. conflicts around the world. The inaugural Forum will be held at NEW DEAN FOR PHYSICAL SCIENCES the University of Chicago and Angela V. Olinto, the Albert hosted by The Pearson Institute A. Michelson Distinguished for the Study and Resolution of Service Professor in the Global Conflicts, launched at Department of Astronomy UChicago in 2015. The Forum and Astrophysics, was will convene researchers, named dean of the Division students, policy makers, and of the Physical Sciences. Her individuals working in conflict appointment took effect zones or with victims of July 1. Olinto is a leader in the STRONG ECONOMIC FORECAST conflict. The event will focus on field of astroparticle physics Economist Sendhil bridging a critical gap between and cosmology, focusing on Mullainathan joined the research and policy and using understanding the origin of Chicago Booth faculty as empirical insights to inform DECADES IN THE MAKING high-energy cosmic rays, University Professor on July 1. more effective policies. On June 9, more than 70 years gamma rays, and neutrinos. He previously was the Robert after taking her first UChicago She succeeds Edward C. Waggoner Professor of COURTING SUCCESS course, June Gordon Marks “Rocky” Kolb, the Arthur Holly Economics at Harvard. His Angel Ysaguirre has been Patinkin, 90, received her Compton Distinguished Service research spans behavioral, appointed executive director bachelor’s degree in political Professor of Astronomy and labor, and public economics; of the University of Chicago’s science. Patinkin, LAB’44, Astrophysics, who served as corporate finance; and the Court Theatre, effective AB’18, left school early to work dean from 2013 to 2018. intersection of machine September 4. Ysaguirre, who for the Marshall Plan. When her learning and public policy. previously led the nonprofit family learned that Patinkin MAKING A SPLASH AT MBL Mullainathan is the 22nd Illinois Humanities, will work regretted never receiving Nipam Patel, a top scholar person to hold a University alongside Charlie Newell, her degree, they contacted of modern evolutionary and Professorship, and one of nine the Marilyn F. Vitale Artistic the College and learned that, developmental biology, has active faculty members with Director, as coleader of the counting several classes been appointed director of the that title. University Professors University’s professional she took at Northwestern UChicago-affiliated Marine are selected for internationally theater. Founded in 1955, University, she had enough

left to right: uchicago news; uchicago news; photographyBiological by joe sternbenc/uchicago news Laboratory, effective recognized eminence and Court was dubbed “the most credits to graduate.

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 13

UChicago Journal_v12.indd 13 7/26/18 1:21 PM POLICY Robert Weissbourd, JD’79, created had spent weeks training staff on the a new computer model for the Asses - new system. sor’s Office to use. Their model was Grotto filed a Freedom of Informa- more sensitive to factors such as loca- tion Act request and obtained the code Value tion and renovation that can influence the Assessor’s Office was using to val- a property’s market value. ue homes. He showed it to Berry, who “It felt pretty successful,” says Ber- was surprised to discover that he was judgment ry, the William J. and Alicia Townsend looking at the old, outdated model. A Harris scholar fights to reform the Friedman Professor at the University In a Pulitzer Prize–nominated se- of Chicago Harris School of Public ries of Tribune/ProPublica Illinois property tax system. Policy. “Which I sup- articles, the As- pose then made it all the IT FELT PRETTY sessor’s Office In 2015, if you’d asked property tax more depressing when it SUCCESSFUL. WHICH I tried to defend expert Christopher Berry about the turned out to be a com- itself. First they work he did for the Cook County As- plete charade.” SUPPOSE THEN MADE IT claimed they sessor’s Office, he would have said it The first sign of trou- ALL THE MORE DEPRESSING were using the old was “a textbook example of how to do ble came in 2016 when and new models policy reform.” Berry was contacted WHEN IT TURNED OUT TO BE simultaneously. The Assessor’s Office determines by Jason Grotto, then a A COMPLETE CHARADE. Then the office the value of properties in the county. reporter at the Chicago changed its sto- But James Houlihan, the office’s lead- Tribune. What would you say, he asked ry, asserting they’d found issues with er at the time Berry began his work, Berry, if I told you the Assessor’s Of- Berry and Weissbourd’s model. But knew that some of those assessments fice had never implemented the new they never said exactly what the issues were flawed. Low-priced homes were model you worked on? were, and neither researcher was ever overvalued, and high-priced homes Berry was dubious. The of - contacted about any problems. were undervalued. As a result, poor fice, by this time under the leader- The Tribune/ProPublica investiga- homeowners were paying more than ship of influential Democrat Joe tion was the beginning of the end for their fair share in property taxes. Berrios, had said publicly that the new Berrios. In the months that followed, So, with Houlihan’s blessing, Ber- model was better than the previous he was called before the Cook County ry, AM’98, PhD’02, and consultant one by every measure. Weissbourd Board of Commissioners to defend ©istock.com

After studying property taxes in Cook County, Berry turned to Detroit and discovered an even more dire situa- tion. Not only are less wealthy homeowners paying more than their fair share of property taxes, they are also at risk of losing their homes as a result.

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UChicago Journal_v12.indd 14 7/26/18 1:21 PM Net Cook County Property Tax Shift 2011–15

$200

$0

-$200

-$400

-$600 Millions in Over or Under Payment

-$800 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Least Expensive Sale Price Decile Most Expensive

Critics have argued for decades that property taxes in Cook County are highly regressive. To quantify the scale of the problem, Berry used properties that sold in Cook County between 2011 and 2015 to estimate the value of all residential properties in the county. He then divided the county’s homes into ten equal segments (deciles) based on their sale price, and compared the actual tax rate to a fair tax rate. The most expensive homes (decile 10), he found, were undertaxed to the tune of $800 million, while the least expensive were overtaxed.

the work of his office and accused making it hard to keep up with tax pay- are even higher there, because in in a lawsuit of violating federal civil ments on the small home she inherited Michigan the county can foreclose on rights laws and housing laws. An in- from her parents. homes for property tax nonpayment. dependent study confirmed that, just That’s not what lawmakers intended. An astonishing 100,000 Detroit-area as Berry and others had said, assess- “People are supposed to be paying their properties were foreclosed on for this ments were highly regressive. (Berry tax proportional to the value of their reason between 2011 and 2015. Of estimates that about a billion dollars in property. That’s what policy makers these foreclosures, Berry and Atua- tax burden was shifted from the top 10 have chosen,” Berry says. It’s not the as- hene estimate that 10 percent resulted percent of homeowners to the bottom sessor’s job to change the fundamental from flawed assessments. 90 percent.) In March 2018 the people nature of the property tax system. “When you combine those two spoke. Berrios lost his primary in what Studying Cook County left Berry things together—you combine the was widely regarded as an upset. wanting to know more about property overassessment of poor households So why does Berry think the Asses- tax assessments around the country. and the really rampant tax foreclo- sor’s Office never used his model? He “One question is, ‘Is Cook County sures—you start to wonder, is the one suspects it may be because it would just an isolated case? Do we just have a causing the other?” Berry says. have resulted in higher property taxes bad assessor?’ … Or is this a very gen- Meanwhile, in Cook County, a new in wealthy parts of the city—and that eral problem?” Through the Center assessor will take the reins of the of- would have been politically challeng- on Municipal Finance at Harris Pub- fice later this year. Fritz Kaegi, who is ing for Berrios. lic Policy, which he directs, Berry has running unopposed in November, has But sticking with the old model meant been trying to find out. pledged reform. But change will come homeowners in less affluent communi- In March he and Bernadette At- with a cost in some of Chicago’s most ties paid more than their fair share of uahene of the Chicago Kent College prosperous neighborhoods. Berry property taxes. One homeowner in the of Law released a study that found doesn’t envy the work that lies ahead North Lawndale neighborhood told the troubling levels of regressivity in for Kaegi. “It’s going to be a hard job,”

graphic by laura lorenz (data from berry and atuahene)Tribune the inflated assessments were Detroit’s assessments. The stakes he says.—Susie Allen, AB’09

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 15

UChicago Journal_v12.indd 15 7/26/18 1:22 PM Philadelphia’s young virtuosos in training can get free or low-cost instruction through the Settlement Music School, founded more than a century ago and led today by Helen Eaton, AM’00.

ARTS EDUCATION neighborhoods, just blocks from Cen- orchestra, and choir training in eight ter City, Settlement operates from the underserved schools throughout the three-story red brick building where city, enhancing the music instruction it has resided since 1917. More than already offered by those schools. Class- Urban 300,000 students have received music es are open to all and are based on the education at the school since its 1908 needs of each school. “The real oppor- founding, including Albert Einstein, tunity in our community partnerships soundscape Chubby Checker, actor Kevin Bacon, is that we bring the teachers directly to At Philadelphia’s Settlement Music Grammy-winning opera singer Eric where the students are,” says Eaton. Owens, and Tonight Show musician Playing music was Eaton’s first love School, led by Helen Eaton, AM’00, Questlove. Today the school has five and ambition. She took up the violin at anyone can play. branches throughout the Greater Phil- age 8 before switching to viola at 16, adelphia region and 5,000 students. inspired by a family friend who played Cecelia VonderLinden was surprised At Settlement anyone can pick up the instrument for the Israel Philhar- photography by matt stanley, courtesy settlement music school music settlement courtesy stanley, matt by photography when her daughter, My Love, said she an instrument, exercise their vocal monic Orchestra. was going to audition for her public el- chords, or train their ear. There are After graduating from the Uni - ementary school’s production of An- programs for age groups from babies versity of Pennsylvania and earning nie—more so when My wanted to play and toddlers to adults, with the bulk of a certificate in viola performance the lead role. them aimed at children and teens. Some from the Juilliard School, Eaton was “She was always shy,” recalls are designed to address the decline of accepted into UChicago’s musicol- VonderLinden, who lives in Philadel- arts education in US public schools, es- ogy program and headed west with phia, “but she memorized her lines so pecially in lower-income areas. Guillaume Combet, a violinist who is quickly, and got the part.” For instance, the Teacher Train- now her husband. It was in Chicago Her daughter’s confidence grew, ing Institute for the Arts targets that she began warming to the idea of VonderLinden said, by participating early childhood professionals and a career in music education, en route to in an after-school program devised by preschool and elementary teachers full conversion. Helen Eaton, AM’00. My, now 11, is who want to bring arts instruction From the time she was an applicant, also a better student, says her mother, into their classroom. And, for the past Eaton was struck by the UChicago mu- recently making her school’s honor roll five years, Settlement has brought sic faculty’s “holistic approach to their for the first time with nearly all As. music lessons straight to schools teaching that really embraced the natu- Eaton, who studied music history though Eaton’s brainchild Music ral curiosity of their students.” While and theory at UChicago, is CEO of Education Pathways. still in graduate school she began teach- Philadelphia’s Settlement Music The program, in partnership with ing at the West Loop’s Merit School of School. Situated on a narrow street in the School District of Philadelphia, Music, whose efforts focus on young one of Philadelphia’s oldest residential provides intensive after-school band, people, from babies to high school se-

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UChicago Journal_v12.indd 16 7/26/18 1:22 PM niors. There she hoped to tap into the I could play a part in making a differ- The Mellon grant, with Settlement “joy the professors at UChicago were ence in families’ lives.” as the lead partner for 10 institutions experiencing in their teaching.” From Merit Eaton moved to the Chi- including the Philadelphia Orches- She did. At Merit Eaton found her cago Children’s Choir, where she was tra and the Temple University Music own joy in witnessing the opportu- president and executive director for Preparatory Division, will support nities afforded to young students almost three years before being named the pursuit of greater diversity in clas- from all economic backgrounds. She Settlement’s CEO in 2010. In that posi- sical music through identifying and remembers walking the hallways on tion she’s focused on suffusing music nurturing young musicians, while Saturdays, when Merit’s Alice S. education across the greater Philly com- the Pew grant will help Settlement’s Pfaelzer Tuition-Free Conservatory munity, working on the school’s own faculty members develop new teach- for the most accomplished young mu- turf and around the city, with partners ing methods and curricula for 21st- sicians was in session. “I felt the ex- such as social service agencies, librar- century music students. citement of the students to be there, ies, and retirement homes. Under Eaton’s watch Settlement’s students from all over the city coming Eaton’s work is hardly done. Settle- work is expanding in many direc - together, playing side by side.” She ment recently received grants from tions. “It’s all about equitable access,” taught at Merit for five years before the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation she says, “and the critical role the arts moving to the school’s administra- and Pew Center for Arts and Heritage play in creating opportunity.” tion with the aspiration that “one day that are shaping its future ambitions. —Jon Caroulis

CITATIONS

published January 9 in Physical in 2006, dissuades families Review Letters, bring scientists from educating their children, one step closer to solving the thereby harming India’s long- shear thickening mystery. term economic growth. In a Becker Friedman Institute QUANTUM FORCE working paper released in It sounds like science fiction, May, Anjali Adukia, assistant but scientists are more and professor at Harris Public more confident that quantum Policy, lays those fears to rest. entanglement—a force that The employment program isn’t links two objects, no matter associated with a substantial how far apart they are— decline in children’s education, really exists. Now, in a paper Adukia found. published April 25 in Nature, a group of researchers, including GREAT JOB! Aashish Clerk, professor in How you praise toddlers can the Institute for Molecular affect their performance in Engineering, have managed school years later, according to link the motion of two to researchers including aluminum plates about 20 Susan Goldin-Meadow, the microns across. They achieved Bearsdley Ruml Distinguished this quantum feat using a Service Professor in custom-designed circuit made Mix two parts cornstarch and one part water and you’ve Psychology, and , out of a superconducting Susan Levine got a fluid that exhibits shear thickening behavior. metal. The plates are about the Rebecca Anne Boylan the diameter of a human hair, Professor in Education and making them among the Society. Previous research might be the cause. In order- THE PLOT THICKENS largest objects scientists have has shown that children to-disorder transition, particles If you’ve ever played with yet entangled. By harnessing who as toddlers received a oobleck—a goopy mixture of arrange themselves neatly the property of quantum high proportion of “process cornstarch and water—you’ve at low speeds and become entanglement, scientists hope praise”—praise that focuses seen that certain fluids, when disordered at high speeds. to develop more powerful on effort (“you worked hard”), mixed at high speeds, become But there was a problem: sensors and computers. not innate ability (“you’re so so viscous they’re nearly researchers only observed smart”)—had more motivation impossible to stir. Scientists this transition in some shear NO DOWNSIDES for challenging tasks in school have been trying to understand thickening liquids. Using an Almost one in four adults in during second and third grade. this phenomenon, called advanced X-ray technique, India participates in a program By fourth grade, according shear thickening, for decades, a team of scientists at that guarantees them 100 days to the new study published in because it may reduce the Argonne National Laboratory of paid employment on public Developmental Psychology in energy consumption in many determined that order-to- works projects. It’s a boon to March, these children also had industrial processes. One disorder transition and shear struggling rural communities, greater achievement in math theory? A phenomenon called thickening are two separate but some policy makers worry and reading comprehension.

photography by andrew curran, cc-by-ndorder-to-disorder 2.0 transition phenomena. The results, that the program, established —Susie Allen, AB’09

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 17

UChicago Journal_v12.indd 17 7/26/18 1:22 PM FIG. 1 HABIT FARMING

The crops our ancestors grew may from the fact that the north is It was a simple way to test the dif- affect our behavior today, according wheat growing while the south is ferences that interested him: Which to a new study published in Science rice growing. Wheat is relatively people change their environment Advances this April by Thomas Tal- straightforward to cultivate, while and which change themselves? helm, assistant professor of behav- “the irrigation networks that are So Talhelm and a research assis- ioral science and William Ladany involved in growing rice mean that tant began creating “chair traps” in Faculty Scholar at Chicago Booth. farmers have to coordinate their coffee shops across China and ob- For several years Talhelm has water use,” he explains—giving rise serving how customers responded. studied cultural variation in north- to a more cooperative culture. In a test of 678 people, northern- ern and southern China. Southern- Talhelm was in search of a “more ers were more likely to move the ers have the reputation of being concrete” way to measure and ob- chairs than southerners (see figure deferential and conflict averse, serve these differences in behavior below). Northerners, the same pa- while northerners are thought to when, while sitting in a coffee shop, per revealed, were also much more be more pugnacious and individu- he noticed a departing patron likely to be found sitting alone. alistic. (Talhelm, who’s lived in had pulled out his chair, creating None of the people they studied both parts of the country, says he a narrow passage between it and were farmers, Talhem notes. Yet found the stereotypes to be true, another chair. To get through the “these elements of historical cul- broadly speaking.) trap, people could either move ture are still shaping people in In a 2014 paper Talhelm ar- one of the chairs or squeeze be- the modern world.” gued the contrast stems, in part, tween them. —Susie Allen, AB’09

Percent of coffee shop patrons moving chair Bars represent one standard error of the mean (SEM).

25%

20%

15% graphic by laura lorenz (data from talhelm, et al.) et talhelm, from (data lorenz laura by graphic

10%

5%

0% Beijing Shenyang Guangzhou Hong Kong Shanghai North (Wheat) South (Rice)

18 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

UChicago Journal_v12.indd 18 7/26/18 1:22 PM INTERVIEW his followers to bring the war home. You’re probably one of the few In 1977 Beam created Camp Puller, a people who wasn’t surprised by Vietnam War–style training facility the recent upsurge in public in Texas, “to turn Klansmen into sol- white nationalism. White diers,” Belew writes. It was the begin- It’s an odd thing to have your project ning of the militarization of the white shift in such a dramatic way. In an ear- power movement. lier version of my book, I explained power is For more of this conversation, visit why it’s important to study the fringe. mag.uchicago.edu/belew. This inter- My editor ended up striking that en- view has been edited and condensed. tire section. All of a sudden my topic not new —Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93 of study was in the mainstream. Historian Kathleen Belew finds It’s disheartening. I would rather In your book, you draw a picture of have been wrong. But history can give an unexpected origin for a a national coordinated white pow- us some tools about how to respond— resurgent movement. er movement. Has your work been what has and hasn’t worked in the met with any skepticism? past. This may seem astonishing and The Vietnam War created the con- None of the events I write about are new, but it is not new. temporary white power movement discovered in this book. Everything in the United States. That’s the pro- has been documented by journalists, What were the biggest surprises vocative claim of Bring the War Home: watchdog groups, ethnographers, for you? The White Power Movement and Para- sociologists. But this is the first book The level at which social relationships military America (Harvard University that takes an archival perspective and were managed by women staggered Press, 2018) by Kathleen Belew, assis- a wide-angle view. me. If you look at intermarriages, you tant professor of US history. There has been excellent work done can really see how white power func- In the aftermath of Vietnam, by journalists looking at one event in tions as a social movement that con- white power activists drew a straight one place. For example, the 1984 mur- nects different regions, social classes, line from that war to the revolution der of Alan Berg [a Denver talk show urban and rural areas. There’s a web they hoped to bring about in the host who criticized white power of people. United States. The story they told groups] was reported in great depth Yet another surprise was that these about Vietnam—soldiers betrayed in the Rocky Mountain News and the white power activists were using by political leaders and the military, Denver Post. But journalists wouldn’t technology very early. In 1984 they their sacrifice trivialized—helped necessarily connect that murder to established Liberty Net, a protosocial unite disparate white supremacy what other white power activists were network. They were early adopters groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and doing in other places. who were very skilled in this arena. neo-Nazis. Similarly, ethnographers have done They had a decade of practice using this The title of Belew’s book comes deep work, but they spend perhaps two before the Oklahoma City bombing. from white power leader and Viet- years with one group. So again, you get nam veteran Louis Beam, who urged fragmented views of the whole. Your book belies the stereotype of uneducated, rural white The book culminates in the 1995 power activists. Oklahoma City bombing. Is this The movement is not Southern, it’s commonly understood as the work not low class, it’s not uneducated, and of the white power movement? it never has been. David Duke was At the time, Timothy McVeigh’s ac- wearing a suit, going on talk shows, graphic by laura lorenz (data from talhelm, et al.) et talhelm, from (data lorenz laura by graphic tions were dismissed as those of a lone and presenting a more genteel image wolf by the FBI and the media. for the Klan in the 1970s. White power But the social geography of his life is a bridge movement that has brought shows many connections, ideologi- in a whole lot of people. cally and materially, with the white power movement. He structured his What’s it like to write about such actions based on manuals, such as recent history? The Turner Diaries [by William Lu - My training is in American studies, ther Pierce as Andrew Macdonald, which has a less rigid divide about National Vanguard Books, 1978], that what’s far enough back to study. In the directed white power activists. discipline of history, there’s a harder If you see the Oklahoma City bomb- line: 25 years or more. ing—which killed 168 people—as My work on white power could help part of the white power movement, navigate the crush of information in it changes a lot about how we think these very emotional current events. about the supposedly race-neutral We can’t afford to wait 25 years to un-

photography by anne ryan 1980s and 1990s. derstand what’s happening now.

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 19

UChicago Journal_v12.indd 19 7/26/18 1:22 PM everett collection everett

illustration by allan burch

------7/24/18 4:28 PM South Swee (1979), (1927), and race in in race and (“Can’t help help (“Can’t Sweeney Todd Sweeney Todd: Show Boat (2015). They examine Show Boat (1949), Sweeney Todd , the class has a more creative “You’ve got to be carefully ( Hamilton Overall,he found the students’ lyrics “The SOSC Class Song,” according “A “A refrain is usually a great thing But the course is called Making and Over the quarter, the students ana pressed in a SOSC class—the tension tension class—the SOSC a in pressed establishment academic the between and some students who might be less into it.” It begins with a student walk ing into class and Karl Marx chanting “Religion is the opiate of the people,” lovin’ dat man”). clever, and projects a few on the screen. satirizes it, wrote who student the to “the condescension that can be ex ney Todd assignment: write lyrics for theirmusicaltheater number. own to have,” Christensen tells students when he hands the papers back, citing therepetition linesof in “Nothing’s( gonna harm you”), Pacific taught”), and lyze four musicals: South Pacific TheDemonBarber Fleet Streetof and the cultural and historical so on focusing contexts them, of each around cial class in theotherthree shows. Meaning, and Christensen also wantsthe students to understand a little of the technical craft of creating a mu sical. In week six, after a discussion of song anatomy and Stephen Sond heim’s use of lyric and rhyme in nor key, signaling key, nor something ominous lies ahead. of the situation even when the action says otherwise. For example, at the end of the “Make Believe” scene, as Ravenal learns that the judge wants to talk to him, the music turns to a mi - - The music “sneaks up underneath underneath up “sneaks music The Music, he notes, is not only an emo tional expression. It also tells the truth Presumably the the Presumably characters aren’t aware start they of it until singing. a sense, this In emotional their just is coming personae through. ets, is nondiegetic—the music is an expression of the characters’ world outer inner the of part not thoughts, they inhabit. presum- “and Christensen says, you,” ably the characters aren’t aware of it until they start singing. In a sense, this is just their emotional personae through.” coming the music in that scene: diegetic. The The diegetic. scene: that in music the music is happening within the know world characters the and show, the of they’re singing. In contrast, “Make Believe,” like many romantic du - - - - , the Avalon . When the handsome

’s ’s the second week of spring t quarter in Making and Meaning in the American Musical, and Christensen Thomas Foundation Professor of Music and the Humanities, asks thewhat may be classthe central question for anyone who’s ever watched musical theater—and certainly it— dislike who people many for “Why is everyone singing?”

Show Boat the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 He points out that earlier in the The song is abouttwopeopleThefallingissong of kind duet a was it that fact “The Christensen reads Hammerstein’s “It’s not exactly Shakespeare, is it?” The class is discussing a scene in 20 AMERICAN HISTORY AMERICAN Anatomy of Song BY JEANIE CHUNG COURSE WORK movie, several characters sing “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” Christensen borrows a term from film to describe in love, and one student says the mu impliessomething intimate about it,”a classmateadds. “They’re already com lyrics: “Only make love you that believe believe make Only I you. love pre in mind of peace find Others me. he says. “But within those six lines or so, you basically have accelerated somethingthatshould take hours, days of getting to know someone, or maybe in normal life, weeks and months.” the 1936 film version of the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musi cal riverboat gambler Gaylord Ravenal meetsMagnolia Hawks, riverboatthe captain’sdaughter, theybreak intothe song “Make Believe.” But why? “hassic this tendency kindjump-to of processes.” start emotional municating—even though they don’t connection.” a there’s other, each know tending. Couldn’t you? Couldn’t I? Couldn’t we?” He reads a few more lines as the students giggle. I UCH_Coursework_Christensen_v2.indd 20 - - 7/26/18 4:32 PM - - ◆

J. C. ).About a (made pos Hamilton Hamilton mediately, even when the syllabus didn’t include a trip to sible through funding from Course the College, the and Arts Fund, Resource the Department of Music, plus a $40 per student contribution).— one. Both times it’s been offered, it has filled up im course but not a survey beginningor methods course—Making and Meaning is open to any , - - ) to) newest ( For For the day’s final performance, After the song ends with George dents pack up to go, smiling. gelica Schuyler, Eliza’s sister. Ships,” and “Guns hip-hop-based the sung by Aaron Burr, the Marquis de Lafayette, and George Washington, out yell to class the asks Christensen “Lafayette!” and “Hamilton!” at the appropriate times in the song. Even before that point, they’re snapping theirfingers. Washington’s line, “The world will never be the same, Alexander,” stu - - - - Show Boat Show As a Signature Course—As Signature a 2019. In addition to short writing assignments, in cluding the original lyrics and a review of Hamilton students submit a final ele an paper discussing ment—such as a song, a lyric, or melody recurring a character—from a or choice their of musical that is not discussed in the course. an elective designed to be an introductory level the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 21 in - - in 2017, this year, year, this Hamilton, which the class Company Today three students take on num Sondheim is Chris Sondheim is bers from will travel downtown to see on stage the following week. Many of them are already familiar with the songs; they nod along to “Helpless,” led by the character Eliza Hamilton, and mouth the words and backing vocals to “Satisfied,” a song/rap led by An logue, but most of the enrolled stu dentsarecomfortable singing, having school high in musicals in performed elsewhere. or to act out a scene or deliver a mono Making Meaning and in Musical American the meets twice a week. The class sees film or video of three musicals and at and hopes to take the class Story Side to West SYLLABUS tends a fourth show live. Christensen first taught the 2017. spring in course musical favorite tensen’s he composer; theater taught Todd Sweeney Christensen’s course is not intended to be a history of musical theater, though theater, musical history of a be to intended not is course Christensen’s thesyllabus goes from oldest ( quarter of the students in the spring 2018 course were music or theater and performance majors. ------

. He sug Oliver! Psycho , it borrows the ,” he says,he “kind,” of West West Side Story did . Like Sweeney Todd Romeo and Juliet Macbeth The course requires each of the 25 “Iwanted todo something that was a The song comes near the end of the Christensen repeats his advice about One of them has written both mel both written has them of One Christensen had studentstold they

pretation of some part of a musical. Christensen, himself not a singer, permits those not musically inclined studentstoperform an in-class inter gests a more gradual they when and tempo accompaniment, acceleration the in tryagain,it both think worksit better. bit likebit play, play, after Lady Macbeth has killed herself and Macbeth is plunginger into deepmadness: “Everything I’ve longed for / Everyone I’ve wronged for / All my life prolonged for / This. / Meaningless.” Accompanied by Christensen on piano, the student performs the song for the class. this investigation of psychosis.” Chris tensen notes that the minor major sev enth chord progression is sometimes known as the Herrmann chord, after film composer Bernard Herrmann, who used it to great effect in ideasand Shakespeare,of plot butnot the specific language. ody and accompaniment for his song from an imagined musical adaptation of with the refrain. Then, to illustrate how it it how illustrate to Then, refrain. the might work, he sits down at the Logan im to piano grand penthouse’s Center rus. Like a UChicago version of “50 toWays Leave Lover,”Your much of the song consists of lines like, “Buon giorno, Mr. Adorno / How do you do, Montesquieu,” and name checks Mil ton Friedman, AM’33, alongside so cial sciences staples like Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Simone de Beauvoir, and Michel Foucault, before the how bridge: just class SOSC in learn “You’ll little you really know.” provise a melody that sounds a little“Food,Glorious Food”from like then proceeds to a duet between the student and a professor, with rest the of the class chiming in as a cho could explain the plot and characters to provide context for their songs, and some “essentially sketched out a whole musical,” he says. everett collection everett UCH_Coursework_Christensen_v2.indd 21

illustration by allan burch public policy ORRE TIVE MEASURES A UChicago professor spearheads an initiative to end mass incarceration. by lucas mcgr anahan

ost people believe in a world of sec- try, including the closest runners-up, China and Russia. ond chances,” said Senator Dick But the high-water mark for incarceration in the United Durbin (D-IL) at the Smart De- States may be behind us. In 2009, after 37 consecutive years carceration Initiative conference of growth, the US incarceration rate finally leveled off and held on the UChicago campus in began to decline slightly. This shift may have been a response November 2017. Durbin’s voice to short-term budget crunches in the Great Recession, but is just one in an emerging chorus it has given lawmakers an opportunity to question what is of public officials, researchers, still an over $50 billion annual expenditure on incarcera- and community activists seeking tion—difficult to justify in the face of research showing that alternatives to a system of mass time behind bars generally increases rather than decreases incarceration that has taken hold chances of recidivism. theispot c/o neubecker robert ©2018 in the United States like nowhere else in the world. “Now And no budget line captures the human costs of incarcera- it’s up to us,” Durbin said. tion: permanently disrupted families, educations, housing, MThe scale of the problem is difficult to overstate. In a now and careers, all borne disproportionately by people with familiar story, the United States has emerged as the global mental illness and communities of color, further entrench- leader in incarceration, driven by efforts such as the fed - ing existing inequities. eral Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of Remarkably, the intentional reduction of incarceration, 1994, mandatory minimum sentences (including a host of or decarceration, now has potentially as much bipartisan state-level “three-strikes” laws), and a decades-long war on appeal as “tough on crime” legislation once did, winning drugs. Today the United States has under 5 percent of the advocates from Black Lives Matter activists to former Re- world’s population but over 20 percent of its prisoners. Its publican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The question is total prison and jail census exceeds that of any other coun- what to do with this historic opening.

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©2018 robert neubecker c/o theispot Matthew Epperson’s course on decarceration draws students from across the University’s schools and divisions.

atthew Epperson, an associate professor in the Epperson has also seen mental health services from an School of Social Service Administration, has administrative perspective, leaving Michigan for a stint more than an academic understanding of the ef- as a mental health administrator in North Carolina. There M fects of incarceration. With 15 years of experience he felt unprepared by his experience as a clinician for such as a practicing social worker, including six as a crisis mental tasks as overseeing the center’s managed care and mental health counselor at a county jail in Grand Rapids, Michigan, health service contracts. He says that his lack of research he has seen firsthand how the criminal justice system fails to knowledge was typical of mental health administrators. meet the needs of individuals and communities. Sensing how much more there was to learn, Epperson For a significant proportion of the inmates Epperson decided to get a PhD—“probably the best career decision I worked with, jail was part of a recurring pattern generated made,” he says. As a professor he could still work directly by untreated mental illness or addiction. “There were some with the community while also conducting research and folks I knew on a first-name basis because they were in and teaching a new generation of students to critically evalu- out of the jail, sometimes weekly, sometimes multiple times ate the criminal justice system. in the same day.” For them, jail was neither a deterrent to At SSA Epperson’s research focuses on risk factors for future behavior nor a treatment for current problems. To criminal involvement among individuals with mental illness, Epperson, it felt like a waste. So he set up a program to as well as the development of conceptual frameworks for ef- divert individuals with serious mental illness away from fective and sustainable decarceration. He cofounded the jail and into treatment. Incarceration and mental illness Smart Decarceration Initiative in 2014 with collaborators at remains a focus of his research at SSA today. the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University When Epperson began as a social worker in the mid- in St. Louis. However, plans are underway for Epperson’s 1990s, the term “mass incarceration” was not on the tip of work in this area—now called simply “Smart Decarcera- everyone’s tongue. We did not have Michelle Alexander’s tion”—to be housed within a new criminal justice–focused book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of center to be established at SSA. Epperson is also a leader of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2010) or the documentary the Promote Smart Decarceration initiative of the American film13th (2016), each of which traces disparities in the crim- Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, one of that or- inal justice system to a troubled historical legacy rooted in ganization’s 12 Grand Challenges for Social Work intended photography by lloyd degrane lloyd by photography slavery. Nor did we have the TV series Orange Is the New to address the nation’s toughest social problems. Black (2013–), with its humanizing portrayal of prisoners. The goal of Smart Decarceration is to transform the Even a sympathetic insider might have been unaware of the criminal justice system by reducing the incarcerated pop - full scope of the problem. ulation in a way that redresses social disparities and en- A light-bulb moment for Epperson came at a conference hances public safety. Its strategy—demonstrated so far by after his first year at the jail, which outlined how the United a book and two national conferences—is to source perspec- States had become historically and globally unique in its re- tives and evidence from everyone researching, working in, liance on incarceration. “It wasn’t just happening in Grand or impacted by the criminal justice system. Rapids, Michigan. It wasn’t just happening to the person “Incarceration could look quite different in 10 or 20 years,” across from me. It was happening everywhere.” Epperson says. “We want to shape how it looks different.”

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UCH_Epperson_v3.indd 24 7/26/18 2:27 PM TODAY THE UNITED Borrowing from the field of medicine, Epperson suggests that different cases require different levels of care. Incar - STATES HAS UNDER ceration may be viewed as a particularly high level of care for protecting public safety. You don’t perform surgery on 5 PERCENT OF THE a scraped knee, increasing expense and risk for no reason. And time behind bars may be an inappropriate remedy for a drug offense. Whether in medicine or criminal justice, in- WORLD’S POPULATION patient care is to be avoided where outpatient care will do. A medical lens on the issue also tends to make discussions BUT OVER 20 PERCENT more scientific and less narrowly moralistic. “In adopting a public health approach,” writes Ernest Drucker, a New OF ITS PRISONERS. York University professor of global public health, “decar- ceration efforts are less likely to blame and stigmatize in - dividuals; instead, decarceration can focus on the adverse policies and pathogenic environments imposed on entire or Epperson, it’s critical that we scrutinize the func- populations.” A participant in the Smart Decarceration tion of incarceration. Despite the optimistic 18th- Initiative’s 2015 inaugural confernce, Drucker has recent- century conception of the penitentiary as a place for ly edited an anthology titled Decarcerating America: From F penitence, or the righting of one’s character through Mass Punishment to Public Health (The New Press, 2018). self-reflection, prisons and jails are actively hostile places A public health approach may require changes through- for rehabilitation. Nor do harsh sentences seem to deter out the criminal justice system. For instance, Cook County criminal behavior in the general population. Incarceration sheriff Tom Dart opened a new Supportive Release Center may inflict retribution, but this is an unquantifiable and, in 2017 with grant funding from UChicago Urban Labs and to Epperson’s mind, dubious goal. In the end, Epperson in partnership with Treatment Alternatives for Safe Com- thinks that incarceration is only effective at incapacitat- munities and Heartland Alliance Health. After they’re ing individuals who pose an imminent threat to the com- released, some of the most in-need former inmates can munity—perhaps just a small fraction of those languishing now spend the night at a repurposed mobile home near the in America’s jails and prisons today. jail, where they may eat, sleep, wash clothes, and arrange Narrowing the role of incarceration in society requires out- for services such as housing assistance and mental health lining alternatives. A host of other criminal justice sanctions counseling. Dart sees it as obvious that this model should are available: jail-diversion programs provide community- be scaled up and replicated widely. based treatment to those with serious mental illness or sub- stance abuse disorders; deferred prosecution allows charges to be dropped in exchange for making restitution to victims or ffective decarceration would depend largely on the completing rehabilitation programs; and community super- actions of prosecutors, Epperson says. This means vision (probation and parole) allows individuals to maintain that prosecutors should not be rewarded for process- family and work lives while serving a sentence. Some juris- E ing large volumes of cases with high conviction rates, dictions use these interventions regularly within specialized but for carefully applying sanctions that don’t unduly disrupt courts that seek to address the needs of particular communi- the lives of individuals or communities. “A prosecutor’s role ties: drug courts, mental health courts, and veterans courts. is really to promote safety and justice,” he says. In that role, Epperson is currently coleading a study on deferred prose- they “have to respond to the evidence that shows that just photography by lloyd degrane lloyd by photography cution programs in Cook County, Milwaukee County, and St. locking people up doesn’t achieve those things.” Louis, with the aim of designing a future randomized trial ex- Some prosecutors across the country are getting on board. periment on the practice. In his view, calling such approaches For instance, Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner, “alternatives” already cedes too much ground, since it implic- a former civil rights lawyer, made headlines with the contro- itly accepts that incarceration is the default remedy. To his versial idea that prosecutors ought to discuss the price tag of mind, incarceration is just one tool in the tool kit—the heavi- incarceration with judges during sentencing. Funds saved est and bluntest one. “How did we end up in a place where if by using less expensive sanctions—say, court-mandated ad- somebody has a drug habit and they steal something from a diction treatment—could be used to address unmet needs store … our default response would be they should sit behind in the community, potentially making everyone safer. John bars tonight and possibly for the next few months or years?” Chisholm, district attorney of Milwaukee County, Wiscon-

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 25

UCH_Epperson_v3.indd 25 7/26/18 2:28 PM sin, coauthored a chapter in the Smart Decarceration Initia- why he believes many Americans are readier for a more re- tive’s book, Smart Decarceration: Achieving Criminal Justice habilitative approach today: the opioid crisis is perceived as Transformation in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, white and rural, whereas crack was understood as African 2017), outlining principles for fair sentencing that address American and urban. the seriousness of a crime while preserving the defendant’s Even with two forms of the same drug, racial and socioeco- basic means of citizenship. nomic disparities are in plain view. The Fair Sentencing Act An emerging leader in prosecutorial reform is Kim Foxx, of 2010, authored by Durbin and signed by President Barack the state’s attorney for Cook County, Illinois. Foxx was Obama, established an 18:1 sentencing disparity between elected in 2016 as the first African American woman to lead crack cocaine and the powder form of the drug more popular the county’s prosecutor’s office, which is the second largest among white and affluent users. The reason this law is con- in the United States. Foxx has recommended the increased sidered a progressive reform is because it revises the ratio of use of personal recognizance bonds, which allow low-risk 100:1 established under the Reagan administration in 1986. defendants to sign a written promise to appear in court with- The Smart Decarceration conference also featured out the need for cash bail. As Katie Hill, director of policy, a leading conservative voice on criminal justice: Marc research, and development in Foxx’s office, described at the Levin, the vice president of criminal justice policy at the 2017 Smart Decarceration conference, attorneys are now Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Right on Crime initia- encouraged to seek cash bail only as a last resort. tive. Epperson draws on Levin’s perspective to supplement Many poor defendants nationwide sit in jail only because traditionally liberal or leftist arguments against mass incar- they are unable to afford bail. A September 2017 order by ceration with conservative ones. Cook County chief judge Timothy Evans required judges Levin argues that we should employ the least restrictive to set affordable cash bail for defendants not deemed to be criminal justice sanctions that are consistent with justice, dangerous. By December of that year, the population of while creating incentives rather than barriers to education Cook County Jail had reduced by 20 percent, dipping below and work. For the Right on Crime initiative, decarceration 6,000 for the first time in decades. goes hand-in-hand with a conservative vision of “consti- Some contend that Cook County’s criminal justice re- tutionally limited government, transparency, individual form has not gone far enough. The electronic monitoring liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise, and the systems that are commonly replacing bail can limit move- centrality of the family and community.” ment in a way that’s similar to incarceration. There are also For instance, of about 11.5 million Americans cycling in concerns about judges’ uneven adherence to new policies. and out of jails each year, the majority are not convicted of a On the other hand, Sheriff Dart claimed in February 2018 charge for which they are being held but are unable to afford that the new rules go too far, letting potentially dangerous cash bail, a system that arguably criminalizes poverty and suspects walk the streets. He delayed some releases for a vitiates the ideal of presumed innocence. Moreover, Levin short time while conducting additional case reviews—a points out, one-fifth of those in jail in many jurisdictions are move that prompted backlash from both activists and fel - low officials. Even those seeking a change of course are learning to steer the ship together as it moves. OF ABOUT 11.5 MILLION ass incarceration was a decidedly bipartisan cre- ation, driven by a Republican-led war on drugs, AMERICANS CYCLING a 1994 crime bill authored by Democratic senator M Joe Biden and signed by President Bill Clinton, IN AND OUT OF JAILS and a flurry of three-strikes laws that were nowhere more punitive than in heavily Democratic California. Today EACH YEAR, THE mass incarceration is once again an area of emerging bipar- tisan agreement, but in the opposite direction. One Democrat seeking to make amends is Senator MAJORITY … ARE Durbin. Speaking at the 2017 Smart Decarceration con- ference, he publicly regretted the criminalizing attitude UNABLE TO AFFORD adopted by the public and policy makers during the crack- cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. He also frankly indicated CASH BAIL.

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UCH_Epperson_v3.indd 26 7/26/18 2:28 PM there for unpaid fines for infractions that would not other - his is not the first time the United States has looked wise carry a jail sentence. “People end up in what basically to significantly downsize a major social institution. is a debtors’ prison,” he says. One alternative, he suggests, Epperson cites the lessons of the 20th-century dein- is that courts be given the authority to assess the day fines— T stitutionalization movement in mental health care, penalties limited to what an individual earns in a day—used in which long-stay state psychiatric hospitals—criticized in some European and Latin American countries. as isolated and stigmatizing—were largely replaced by Levin invokes a further principle, one that resonates community-based care. (See “Learning from Deinstitu- with American religious conservatism: redemption. In- tionalization” page 29.) carceration and the restrictions on housing, educational Epperson says that deinstitutionalization was successful opportunities, and job prospects that come with a criminal in meeting its target of closing down facilities, which it did charge hinder individuals’ ability to pull themselves up, of- ahead of schedule. “But it wasn’t successful because lots of ten when they are at their lowest point. It does not seem to these folks ended up not getting adequate support.” The be a system designed to offer second chances. One example analogy is clear enough: deinstitutionalization, whether of the antirehabilitative bent of the criminal justice system in mental health or the criminal justice system, requires an in recent decades is the banning of federal Pell Grants for adequately funded successor system. The evacuation of the prisoners in the 1994 federal crime bill. Educational grants institution is not itself the goal. for prisoners were partially revived under President But it’s more than an analogy. Prisons and jails are not just Obama but face an uncertain future. like psychiatric institutions. They are in fact the largest psy- None of this is to mention cost savings, which are clearly chiatric institutions in the United States, containing 10 times appealing to fiscal conservatives. Why continue a $50 bil- the number of individuals with serious mental illness—con- lion annual expenditure that at best yields highly mixed ditions such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and major results and at worst is a massive waste of human and eco- depression—as America’s remaining psychiatric hospitals, nomic potential? Levin says that he leads with the fiscal according to the Treatment Advocacy Center. Cook County argument: “The appetizer is saving money, and the main Jail by itself holds more individuals with serious mental illness course is public safety, keeping families together, getting than any state psychiatric hospital in the United States. people in the workforce.” Most inmates do not receive any treatment for these Durbin echoed this sentiment at the 2017 Smart Dec- disorders while behind bars, and sometimes receive worse arceration conference: “We’re talking about the primary than no treatment. In 2015 the State of Illinois settled a breadwinners in many families spending their peak earning class-action lawsuit brought by 11,000 state prison inmates years behind bars, instead of contributing to their families claiming cruel and unusual punishment for alleged abuses and society. They end up costing society as prisoners.” including the withholding of medications, the stripping and Levin’s position is not a fringe view on the right. In fact, humiliation of suicidal prisoners, and the use of extensive many are eager to brand prison reform as a conservative-led solitary confinement as punishment for symptoms. The cause. Signatories to the Right on Crime initiative include settlement calls for new residential treatment facilities, the likes of Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, and Newt hundreds of new staff to provide treatment, and closer Gingrich. Gingrich and conservative activist Pat Nolan monitoring and additional out-of-cell time for mentally ill went on record promoting Right on Crime in a 2011 Wash- prisoners in solitary confinement. (In October 2017 three ington Post opinion piece, where they argued that a reduction legal organizations filed a motion against the Illinois De- in incarceration is a win-win that saves money while increas- partment of Corrections, claiming it hadn’t met its obliga- ing public safety. “If our prison policies are failing half of the tions under the terms of the settlement.) time, and we know that there are more humane, effective al- Some officials are taking more proactive measures. As the ternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat New York Times has reported, Sheriff Dart took the unusual and rehabilitate our prisoners,” they contended. step in 2015 of appointing a clinical psychologist, Nneka “Everyone running on the Republican ticket for the 2016 Jones Tapia, as warden of the county jail. Even before be- election except for one candidate was pretty vocal about the coming warden, Jones Tapia had overseen the offering of need for criminal justice reform,” Epperson says. “That hadnev - new services in the jail: collecting mental health histories, er been the case in a presidential election in the last 30 years.” arranging for diagnoses and medication, and forwarding Opposition to mass incarceration has not entirely won pertinent mental health information to judges so that they the day among Republicans, however, as the GOP nomina- could consider it in their rulings. In March 2018 she stepped tion, and ultimately the presidency, went to the sole tough- down as warden after three years on the job, saying she hopes on-crime voice in the group. to be a resource to the jail in the future as a collaborator.

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UCH_Epperson_v3.indd 27 7/26/18 2:28 PM This touches on a concern of Epperson’s: that a high- profile case of recidivism could be used to justify a return OVER 90 PERCENT to tough-on-crime policies. “There’s also hundreds of thou- sands of stories of people who are locked up and whose OF INMATES HAVE lives are made worse and are basically victimized by the system,” he says. “And so both of those stories need to be HIGH LIFETIME RATES considered here.” Violent crime in particular elicits a strong response, making it something of a taboo topic among politicians OF TRAUMATIC advocating for criminal justice reform. The safest way to critique the system is to conjure a sympathetic image of a EXPERIENCES SUCH AS nonviolent offender—perhaps one of the one-in-five incar- cerated individuals in the United States serving time for a ABUSE, NEGLECT, AND nonviolent drug offense. However, a case can be made that decarceration should include reduced sentences for violent WITNESSING VIOLENCE. crime as well. Todd Clear, a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University who visited SSA in spring 2018, takes this position, arguing that the term “violent” names a mis- As a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of leadingly broad range of cases and that moderate sentence Politics in spring 2018, Jones Tapia led a series of seminars reductions for violent offenders are not linked to increased on the role of trauma in the criminal justice system—an- recidivism or significant public safety risks. other important area of mental health crisis among the Other criticisms come from another direction entirely. incarcerated. Prison abolitionists, such as prominent social activist and Studies indicate that over 90 percent of inmates have scholar Angela Davis, argue that prisons are fundamentally high lifetime rates of traumatic experiences such as abuse, illegitimate institutions that should be rejected outright neglect, and witnessing violence. Symptoms commonly in- rather than reformed. The abolitionist critique, says Ep- clude anxiety brought on by associations with a traumatic person, is that reformers are only “tinkering around the event, which can lead sufferers to turn to drugs or alcohol edges” of the system. If abolition, not reformism, was the for relief. Incarceration amplifies these effects, as incar - correct response to slavery, then perhaps it is the correct ceration is itself a traumatic experience. The problem is response to another form of institutionalized unfreedom intergenerational: children of incarcerated parents are six that entrenches racial inequality in the United States. times likelier than average to be incarcerated themselves. Epperson acknowledges the abolitionists’ concern that we might settle for too little. How much incarceration is the right amount? Will minor successes lead to complacency? ot everyone agrees that mass incarceration is a Nevertheless, he says, “I’m a pragmatist at heart.” problem. Tough-on-crime rhetoric such as Presi- Epperson ultimately sees himself as a mediator among dent Donald J. Trump’s resonates with the belief different forces for change in the criminal justice system. N that a bad deed deserves punishment, while stok- This includes his teaching as well as his work with Smart ing the fear that either we or our loved ones may fall prey Decarceration. For instance, he teaches a course on decar- to malevolent forces in a dangerous world. At its most un- ceration in which he has students debate different perspec- seemly, such rhetoric appeals to dehumanizing, frequently tives on the issue such as abolitionism or Right on Crime. racialized images of exactly whom decent people must be “The students are developing their own policy ideas and defended from. A concern for the welfare of perpetrators interventions, which is really exciting because even if a appears misplaced, the very definition of a mawkish bleed- handful of them go on to do those things there’s a much ing heart. greater impact.” Epperson says he recently got an email from a stranger in South Carolina that described a repeat offender who commit- ted a violent crime while out on parole. To this correspondent, ecarceration, of course, is not a matter of closing the case discredited Epperson’s entire approach. “So if you down some facilities, pocketing the savings, and want to not incarcerate people I’d gladly put this person on calling it a day. Epperson cites the idea of “justice a bus and send them to Chicago so you can deal with them.” D reinvestment.” Although this term traditionally re-

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UCH_Epperson_v3.indd 28 7/26/18 5:26 PM fers to the diversion of funds from prisons and jails to other borhoods and communities of color. And yet no complete parts of the criminal justice system, he says, the concept is list of approaches can be offered in advance, nor are aca- being broadened to include addressing the upstream social demic outsiders necessarily in the best place to prescribe and economic conditions that lead to involvement in the what communities need. Part of Epperson’s philosophy is criminal justice system in the first place. to be flexible and listen. “Are we making the right investment? Are we making To that end, the University of Chicago Women’s Board the right impacts?” asks Esther Franco-Payne, AM’99, awarded Epperson a 2018–19 grant for a project to assess who spoke at the 2017 conference. Justice reinvestment the strengths and needs of the high-incarceration Chi - concerns Franco-Payne in her work as executive direc- cago neighborhoods of Austin and Washington Park. tor of Cabrini Green Legal Aid, a Chicago nonprofit that Epperson’s team is creating a community advisory board provides holistic services to individuals affected by the consisting of ordinary residents, officials, and formerly criminal justice system. “You see multiple generations of incarcerated individuals, allowing communities to define people in the same family impacted by incarceration,” she their own problems while using evidence to examine how says. “We need to really think about what is it that we need to address them. Movements for civil rights, women’s to do to break that cycle as we continue to spend billions rights, or gay rights would have been dead in the water and billions of dollars on this nationally.” if they had not been led by the people most affected, Ep - Mental health services and substance abuse treatment person says, and there’s no reason to think that a move - are clear targets for justice reinvestment. So are public edu- ment for the formerly incarcerated and their communities cation and economic opportunities for low-income neigh- should be different. ◆

LEARNING FROM DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION The late 20th-century shift in mental health care offers lessons for the decarceration movement.

he deinstitutionalization movement Deinstitutionalization shifted the finan- The legacy of deinstitutionalization has in the United States was driven by cial burden of mental health care to the included improved rights, respectabil- the Mental Retardation Facilities federal government, which never provid- ity, and community integration for many T and Community Health Centers ed complete or long-term funding for the Americans suffering mental illness and Construction Act of 1963, signed by Presi- new community mental health centers. those with intellectual disabilities, espe- dent John F. Kennedy in the last weeks of Less than half of planned centers were cially those with engaged families and his life, which shifted care to community ever built, while the overwhelming ma- more easily managed conditions. mental health centers. jority of state psychiatric hospital beds However, it has also meant the aban- Deinstitutionalization was enabled by were eliminated. donment of tens of thousands of seriously psychotropic drugs that improved symp- Under President Ronald Reagan, fed- mentally ill individuals lacking sufficient tom management for certain disorders. eral funding for mental health treatment social or financial supports, who face an The fact that psychiatric patients’ institu- was drastically reduced and block granted exceptionally high risk of social isolation, tional care was not covered by Medicare or to states, essentially ending federal over- homelessness, and incarceration. For Medicaid upon these programs’ passage in sight of mental health care. Further bil- these individuals, deinstitutionalization 1965 accelerated the process. Leaving state lions of dollars were stripped from mental rang out like a cruel last call: you don’t hospitals became both possible and neces- health programs by the states themselves have to go home, but you can’t stay here. sary for most psychiatric patients. during the Great Recession. —L. M.

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UCH_Epperson_v3.indd 29 7/26/18 2:29 PM in memoriam ture—an omission much discussed during his life and after his death. His bibliography contains its own small canons: the Kepesh novels, the Zuckermans, the Roths. Sex, aging and death, and Jewishness were his most noted themes, but there was little of life in 20th-century America that wasn’t represented in his body of work. (Some of his critics would place women’s experience in that category.) Trying to take the full measure of that work, the me- morials that proliferated in May consistently observed its faithfulness to the concrete world in all its detail and the universality miraculously wrought from those specifics. Reflections on the life and literature Selections from some of the appreciations follow.

of Philip Roth, AM’55. Dwight Garner, The New York Times by laur a demanski, am’94 One might as well come out and say it: The death of Philip Roth marks, in its way, the end of a cultural era as defini- tively as the death of Pablo Picasso did in 1973. … His work had more rage, more wit, more lust, more talk, more crosscurrents of thought and emotion, more turning over of the universals of existence (in his case, Jewish- American existence), as if tending meat over a fire, than hilip Roth, AM’55, spent only a few years at any writer of his time. the University of Chicago, but they had an outsized influence on the career of the cel- Hermione Lee, The Washington Post ebrated American novelist, who died May From The Anatomy Lesson (1984) to Nemesis (2010), I became 22 (see Deaths, page 76). one of the group of readers to whom he sent penultimate It was here that Roth published his first book drafts and asked for comments. There’s no point being story for a national audience, “The Day It polite, he said. (He was exasperated by English politeness.) Snowed,” in the graduate student–edited So I would tell him exactly what I thought, and he would lis- Chicago Review. He endowed one of his most ten with beady-eyed attention, pouncing on woolly expres- famous and enduring characters, Nathan Zuckerman, with sions, defending his work and lightning-quick to pick up Pa UChicago education, and an unmistakable one at that: anything that might be useful. Drafts would arrive by fax “Inspiring teachers, impenetrable texts, neurotic class- in those days, and when Roth was sending me new versions mates, embattled causes, semantic hairsplitting—‘What to read, the faxes would sometimes roll down the stairs. It do you mean by “mean”?’” Roth wrote in The Anatomy Les- was one of the most exhilarating tasks I have ever taken on. son (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983). Roth arrived at the University of Chicago in 1954, com- Christian Lorentzen, New York pleting his master’s degree in English the following year. It’s ever tempting to think of Roth as a product of his time, After briefly serving in the Army, he returned to campus to to attribute his success to a keen instinct for the turn in sex- teach composition in the College from 1956 to 1958 and re- ual mores of the late ’60s; or to see him, with Susan Sontag sumed his productive exchanges with students, colleagues, [AB’51], as the last comer of the New York Intellectuals; and teachers. or, along with Norman Mailer and John Updike, as the last Among those he spoke of later were Napier Wilt, then of the Great Male Narcissists, in David Foster Wallace’s dean of the humanities; professor and The Lonely Crowd phrase. Roth’s talent bloomed across six decades and has author David Riesman, whose mass culture course he au - become part of the foundation of an ongoing literature. dited; his fellow graduate student Ted Solotaroff, AM’56, That he was male, that he was a Jew—in his own mind these who published an early excerpt from Portnoy’s Complaint were accidents. The essence he sought was American, and (Random House, 1969) as editor of the New American its nature was struggle, a struggle first of all, as he wrote Review; and novelist and professor Richard Stern, who in 1961, against a nationwide reality that was day by day famously advised Roth to mine his personal stories of threatening to outdo any one writer’s powers. growing up in New Jersey for his fiction. The University of Chicago “was the right place for me Cynthia Ozick, The Wall Street Journal to go to,” Roth told an interviewer in 2011. “I enjoyed it. I So come, and let us praise the Nobel committee for its hon- developed a real affection for the place, the neighborhood orific omission, this majestic absence that joins Philip Roth Hyde Park, and the University.” What he learned there, he to Mark Twain, James Joyce and Tolstoy: He has something said in 1983, was “how to talk back to all those great books.” in common with each. With Joyce, the unflinching reckless- Protean and prolific, he talked back for some 50 years ness of the familiar yet unspoken, going where even dare - in more than two dozen books that earned him nearly ev - devils once feared to tread. With Mark Twain, cosmic

ery literary prize of note, save the Nobel Prize for Litera - laughter and a revelatory overturning of moral expectation. hertzberg daniel by illustration

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UCH_Roth_v2.indd 30 7/25/18 5:13 PM With Tolstoy, a biblical descent into baseness, to show how could possibly imagine, summon or otherwise lay his hands human beings, entangled in sex, death and treachery, really on. His subject was the human condition. are. And all in a freewheeling American vein: clear, brisk, unpretentious colloquial sentences that, bundled into a Nathaniel Rich, The New York Review of Books crafty paragraph, take on the irresistible blow of a force ma- I had just been kicked out of Hebrew school, a year ahead of jeure—while meanwhile, boiling in fiction’s chthonic bowel, my bar mitzvah, and I felt an immediate intimacy with the a ferocious literary intellect waits and watches. novel’s [Portnoy’s Complaint] author, Philip Roth. Though two generations separated us, I felt that he spoke directly The Economist to me or, in some mystical, incoherent sense, spoke from Forget the Jewishness or anti-Jewishness. Certainly, like somewhere inside my brain. I had read novels that fright- all great artists, Mr Roth mined his immediate milieu, but ened and delighted me, made me laugh, made me question— only as a way of directly unearthing the deeper questions of Roth’s writing did all that, but it also elicited a spookier family, society, belief, culture and relationships; of getting response. I had never before read a writer who knew me. It at the underlying nature of humanity. Judaism is only his was a shock to discover that others felt the same way—in - way in, a mighty metaphor for all religions and all peoples. cluding many who were not Jewish teenage boys. … (He used his religion in the manner of, say, Bob Dylan or It’s foolhardy to predict literary fate; all one can do is take a Leonard Cohen.) But, profoundly, Mr Roth eschewed the snapshot of the moment. But this fool predicts that several gen- literature of victimhood. He refused to be relegated. In- erations from now Roth will be considered the central Ameri-

illustration by daniel hertzberg daniel by illustration stead—like all great artists—his subject was everything he can novelist of the second half of the twentieth century. ◆

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UCH_Roth_v1.indd 31 7/25/18 3:11 PM books

College students go head-to-head in a competition for the best undergraduate book collection. BIBLIOMANIA!by susie allen, ab’09

32 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

UCH_Brooker_v8.indd 32 7/26/18 4:12 PM BIBLIOMANIA!

UCH_Brooker_v8.indd 33 7/26/18 4:12 PM his spring, in a conference room at the Joseph Regenstein Library, Rosanna Warren and second-year undergraduate Clare Kemmerer engaged in the debate that divides bibliophiles everywhere: To lend or not to lend? Warren, the Hanna Holborn Gray Dis- tinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, is firmly anti. “I never lend my books,” she says. Kemmerer is pro. She keeps track of the 306 volumes in her personal collection in an Excel spreadsheet and has a special column where she notes ev- Terything she’s lent out. At this point she’s running a mini library out of her dorm room. “I get little freshmen knock- ing on my door,” she says, asking to borrow from her. Lots of UChicago students are, at the very least, inad- vertent book collectors. Between course readings and rec- reational trips to Powell’s and the Seminary Co-op, many a Maroon has ended their college career wondering how on earth they ended up with so many books—and how to schlep them home, or to their next apartment. But some, like Kemmerer, who owns 12 bibles (seven English, two Greek, one Latin, one Hebrew, one French), are on a different level. For these students, there is the T. Kimball Brooker Prize for Undergraduate Book Collect- ing, awarded by the University of Chicago Library every year since 1990. The prize was established by T. Kimball Brooker, AM’89, PhD’96, an accomplished collector of rare books. It comes with a cash prize—$1,000 for a second-year stu- dent and $2,000 for a fourth-year student—and a member- ship to the Caxton Club, a society for Chicago book lovers and collectors. To enter, students submit a bibliography and an essay about their collection. Finalists are invited to come to the library and present a selection of their books. Selections from Clare Kem- merer’s and Anna Wood’s PRIMARY winning book collections. Kemmerer is especially at- CONSIDERATION tached to her dog-eared copy of Saint Augustine’s Confessions. Wood ac- IS GIVEN TO THE quired much of her collec- tion while in Mexico City THOUGHTFULNESS AND last summer. INTENT IN BUILDING

THE COLLECTION. photography by alan klehr/churchill + klehrunuchko/istock, photography adapted (left and by guido above); mendez svitlana (previous pages)

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UCH_Brooker_v8.indd 34 7/26/18 4:13 PM Wood (left) and Kemmerer were recognized at the spring meeting of UChicago’s Library Society.

That’s what brought Kemmerer to the Reg in April, along with her heavily annotated edition of St. Augustine’s THERE’S NO WRONG Confessions (Oxford University Press, 2009); The Lais of Marie de France (Labyrinth Press, 1978); and an art book SUBJECT FOR A BOOK that includes a section about religious tattoos. Her collec- tion’s title, arguably worthy of its own prize: “The Only Crush I Have Is the Crushing Weight of My Sins (Love and COLLECTION. Faith in Christian Literature).” The judges who award the Brooker Prize aren’t neces - Chicago Press; Michael Thompson, a collector and mem- sarily looking for valuable or rare books. Rather, according ber of UChicago’s Library Society; Catherine Uecker, to the Library’s website, “primary consideration is given head of research and instruction at the Special Collections to the thoughtfulness and intent in building the collection Research Center; and Nancy Spiegel, the Library’s bibli- around the collector’s interest. … Whatever its defining ographer for art, cinema, and history. quality may be, the organizing principle should be appar - Kemmerer begins her presentation by explaining her ent in every item of the collection.” winding academic path. She transferred from the New Past winners have included Elizabeth Litchfield, AB’08, School in New York to the University of California, Berke- for “A Library of Love: Challenging the Social Order One ley, before arriving at UChicago. “My book collection has Couple (or Threesome?) at a Time,” a collection of romance been with me through all three schools,” she says. Today novels, and Aaron Vanides, AB’10, for “Into the Mists of “they’re eating my dorm room.” (For logistical reasons, the North: A Comparative Collection of the Medieval Ger- she’s glad she doesn’t have a roommate: “I would be so manic Tradition and Its Modern Manifestations.” There’s afraid of books falling on them.”) no wrong subject for a book collection. Kemmerer’s affection for her collection is apparent as she This year’s judging panel is a veritable “who’s who” describes the books she’s brought to share with the judges. of Hyde Park’s book community. Along with Warren, She considers all of it to be pleasure reading. “I read all of there’s Jeff Deutsch, director of the Seminary Co-op these for fun,” she insists as the judges peruse titles including

photography by alan klehr/churchill + klehrunuchko/istock, photography adapted (left and by guido above); mendez svitlana (previousBookstores; pages) Garrett Kiely, director of the University of Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three

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UCH_Brooker_v8.indd 35 7/26/18 4:12 PM Selections from the Brooker Bibliographies

Clare Kemmerer, Class of 2020 Khia Kurtenbach, SB’18 THE ONLY CRUSH I HAVE IS THE CRUSHING HISTORY THROUGH A GASTRONOMICAL LENS WEIGHT OF MY SINS (LOVE AND FAITH IN CHRISTIAN LITERATURE) Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook (General Mills, 1930) Robert Alter, Strong as Death Is Love: The Song Your Baby’s Formula (Sioux Valley Hospital, 1960) of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel: A Dan Nevins, Holiday Cookbook for Boys and Girls Translation with Commentary (W. W. Norton, 2015) (Watermill Press, 1981) Katheryn Pfisterer Darr, Far More Precious Than All About Home Baking (General Foods Jewels: Perspectives on Biblical Women (John Corporation, 1933) Knox Press, 1991) Kathryn Lofton, Consuming Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2017) Aliya Slayton, AB’18 Rosa Giorgi, Angels and Demons in Art (J. Paul FROM TUNG TO TONGUE: Getty Museum, 2005) LANGUAGE HISTORY AND USAGE

James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Anna Wood, AB’18 Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us LEARNING A LOVE FOR SPANISH LANGUAGE (Bloomsbury Press, 2011) THROUGH LATIN AMERICAN POETRY Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays, The Language of Names: What We Call Ourselves and Why It Giancarlo Huapaya Cárdenas, Taller sub verso Matters (Simon & Schuster, 1997) (Casa Katatay Editores, 2011) Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How Dolores Dorantes and Rodrigo Flores Sánchez, It Got That Way (Perennial, 1990) Intervenir / Intervene (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015) Richard W. Bailey, Speaking American: A History Luis Felipe Fabre, Poemas de horror y de misterio of English in the United States (Oxford University (Editorial Almadía S.C., 2013) Press, 2012) Octavio Paz, Configurations (New Directions, 1971) Jeffrey Kacirk,The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten Reina María Rodríguez, Variedades de Galiano (Simon & Schuster, 2000) (Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2008)

Danny Licht, AB’18 Past winners A JOYOUS SCIENCE

2015: Juliet Eldred, AB’17 Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian “Zines, Punk Rock, and Empowerment” Cooking (Knopf, 1992) Cal Peternell, A Recipe for Cooking (William 2011: , AB’13 Anastasia Klimchynskaya Morrow, 2016) “Alexandre Dumas: Historian and Storyteller” Chad Robertson, Tartine Bread (Chronicle 2007: Erin Wonder, AB’09 Books, 2010) “Cultured Insolence: Wit in British Literature” David Tanis, Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys (Artisan, 2010) 1998: Sherlina Nageer, AB’98 “Literature and Poetry from the Caribbean” Alice Waters, My Pantry (Pam Krauss Books, 2015)

1996: Nathanael Crawford, AB’96 “From ‘Mankind’ to Midwives: The John Newberry Medal”

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UCH_Brooker_v8.indd 36 7/26/18 4:13 PM John Cheever story implied in this recipe,” she says. MY HOUSE WAS Aliya Slayton, AB’18, is full of stories as she describes her collection of books about linguistics, “From Tung to Tongue: Language History and Usage.” One of the first items she ac- ALWAYS FULL OF quired was A Dictionary of First Names (Chambers, 2009). The cover is wrapped with a sheet of white paper because BOOKS GROWING UP, she wanted to bring the book on a middle school trip but thought the baby-filled cover might look odd to her class- AND BECAUSE OF THAT mates. She’s fascinated by names and where they come from. “Something that unites my collection is that it’s not theoreti- I JUST DEVELOPED cal,” Slayton says. She’s brought two titles by John McWhort- er, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language (Henry Holt, 2001) and What Language Is (And What It Isn’t and What A HABIT. It Could Be) (Gotham, 2012) both aimed at a lay audience. Much of what the finalists present is familiar to the judg- Centuries? (Marquette University Press, 2016). Kemmerer es, particularly Deutsch, who has a bookseller’s encyclope- pauses on The Lais of Marie de France. The medieval poet is dic knowledge of titles and editions. He asks Slayton why “just a charming person, and I love her very much.” she picked the particular edition of H. L. Mencken’s The Equally passionate about his collection is finalistDanny American Language (Cosimo, 2008) she has in her collec- Licht, AB’18. His assemblage of cookbooks, titled “A Joyous tion; Slayton says it’s what she happened to find. Science,” was born of necessity: he was moving to an apart- But Anna Wood’s (AB’18) collection of Mexican small press ment and wanted to learn to cook. He found a copy of Alice poetry, “Learning a Love for Spanish Language through Waters’s The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from Latin American Poetry,” is terra incognita for the judges. a Delicious Revolution (Clarkson Potter, 2007) and wound up She bought many of the books in Mexico City last summer getting a summer job at her legendary restaurant Chez Panisse. while working on a chapbook of her own poems. Some have That experience led him to the work of chefs and food the handmade quality of zines, while others were commer- writers such as Elizabeth David, David Tanis, and Paul cially produced—though in very limited quantities. Bertolli. Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand (Clarkson Potter, Uecker notices that many of the books are first editions. “Is 2003), one of the titles he’s brought to present to the judges, that important to you?” she asks. Wood explains that it’s not has a special place in Licht’s heart: “The section on balsam- intentional but often happens by accident, “because I seek out ic vinegar is really moving.” things that are rare.” Kiely points out that for many of the ti- Licht tells the judges that, at this point, the collection is tles in the collection, the first edition may be the only edition. more motivational than instructive. “I already know how After the presentations are complete, the judges begin to cook,” he explains. “What I’m looking for is books that their deliberations. It turns out to be an easy decision. Of all augment and inspire that cooking.” the finalists, they agree, Wood seemed the most interested in Khia Kurtenbach, SB’18, also presents the judges with a se- the beauty of books as objects—something that distinguishes lection of cookbooks—though hers are of a decidedly different collectors from people who are simply avid readers. Kemmer- flavor. Many were passed down from her grandparents and re- er stands out for her passion for collecting and the clear vision flect her family’s roots in the Midwest. When asked what she’d behind her collection. They agree Kemmerer will receive the like to add to the collection if she were to win the prize, Kur- second-year prize, and Wood the fourth-year prize. tenbach says there’s a book about Jell-O she hopes to acquire. For Wood, learning she had received the prize was a hap- The judges flip through titles including theGo Big Red py and unexpected graduation gift: “It’s a really nice end- Cookbook: Recipes and Traditions from the Hearts of Huskers ing to my fourth year to have my book hoarding rewarded.” (Morris Publishing, 1992), The Nebraska Pioneer Cookbook She’s always had books around, she says. “My house was (University of Nebraska Press, 1974), The South Dakota always full of books growing up, and because of that I just de- Centennial Cookbook (State Publishing Company, 1989), veloped a habit,” she says. “Anytime I go to a used bookstore, and several church cookbooks. especially, I can’t help but grab a handful.” But her Mexican Kiely spots a recipe that calls for “pieces of pheasant”— small press poetry is the first focused and defined collection “Which pieces?” he says with a laugh. Warren chuckles she’s ever had. With the help of the prize, she’s planning to over a section in Easy Suppers (H. P. Books, 1980) contain- add to it this summer, when she goes back to Mexico. Like ing a recipe for a candlelit dinner for two. “There’s a whole every good book collector, she’s on the hunt. ◆

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UCH_Brooker_v8.indd 37 7/26/18 4:13 PM culture TOWERING INSIGHTS English associate professor Adrienne Brown explores the complicated racial history of the American skyscraper. by susie allen, ab’09

38 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

UCH_Brown_v5.indd 38 7/26/18 2:21 PM UCH_Brown_v5.indd 39 7/26/18 2:21 PM chicago history museum, ich1-051976; j. w. taylor, photographer; scott scott photographer; w. taylor, j. ich1-051976; museum, history chicago

hen the first skyscrapers soared tor and filmmaker Harold Lloyd dangles from a building’s into existence in the 1880s, Amer- edge clutching only the hands of a clock. icans were fascinated by the new But despite their omnipresence in late 19th and early pages) (previous images news/getty images olson/getty buildings on the block. Not every- 20th century American life, there was one place where one liked them, or believed the skyscrapers were hard to find: the novel. trend would last, but the towering Adrienne Brown was a graduate student at Princeton structures—popularized in Chi- University when she first noticed the skyscraper’s curious cago and New York, and exported absence from canonical novels about American cities. Sky- worldwide—demanded attention. scrapers got an occasional line or two (in The Great Gatsby They changed the everyday lives [1925], for instance, they are likened to “white heaps and of metropolitans, interrupting sugar lumps”) but were otherwise peripheral and unim- familiar skylines and packing bodies into the city more portant to the story. densely than ever before. This indifference surprised Brown, now the director of WEven people living outside urban centers couldn’t escape undergraduate studies and an associate professor in the De- the “mortared Himalayas,” as one writer dubbed them. partment of English Language and Literature at UChicago. Skyscrapers were ubiquitous in newspaper articles, car- The skyscraper got fanfare “in almost every other cultural toons, and photographs. Poets, including Carl Sandburg, sphere. … There are plays written about it, there’s poetry wrote odes to them, and filmmakers cast them in starring about it, but the novel as a form is not that drawn to it.” Was roles. The silent-era classic Safety Last! (1923) features a set it really not there, she wondered, or was she just looking in

of death-defying skyscraper stunts. In one famous shot, ac- the wrong places? cosmopolitan book corporation, 1931

40 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

UCH_Brown_v5.indd 40 7/26/18 4:41 PM Chicago’s Home Insurance Building, com- pleted in 1885, has been mythologized as the world’s first skyscraper. (Some architects dis- pute the characterization, because the tower was not fully supported by its steel frame— the defining characteristic of a skyscraper.) Many doubted the building would be able to stand on its own.

Answering that question led Brown to the pulpy edges of American literature. In dime novels, science fiction, ro- mances, and so-called weird fiction, skyscrapers abounded. The more time she spent with these fantastical tales, as well as architectural writing and reportage from the era, Brown began to see how enmeshed their representations of the buildings were with post-Reconstruction racial anxiety in America. Those entanglements are the subject of her book The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). Skyscrapers didn’t just change city skylines. Brown ar- gues that they also demanded people develop new ways of seeing and relating to others. And those new ways of see- ing emerged at a historical moment when race was in flux as Americans debated how, precisely, to conceptualize race and make racial identifications. InThe Black Skyscraper Brown writes that “the early skyscraper threatened to reveal the ‘nothingness’ of race … precisely when the nation most desired to assert and extend the meaningfulness of race.”

rown grew up in suburban Maryland. Because of le- gal restrictions on the height of buildings, there are few skyscrapers in the nearest big city, Washington, B DC. She doesn’t remember the first real skyscraper she saw. “No one was more surprised than me when the sky- scraper ended up being at the center of [my] book,” she says. But she was always fascinated by architecture and how we

chicago history museum, ich1-051976; j. w. taylor, photographer; scott scott photographer; w. taylor, j. ich1-051976; museum, history chicago relate to it. (Any aspirations of being an architect herself were scuttled by a lack of depth perception and being overall “very bad spatially.”) As a University of Maryland undergraduate, she wrote her senior thesis on literature about the suburbs. The idea of getting a PhD wasn’t on her radar. But a THE EARLY SKYSCRAPER olson/getty images bews/getty images (previous pages) (previous images bews/getty images olson/getty professor encouraged her to apply to graduate school, and she settled on Princeton, home to several scholars work- THREATENED TO REVEAL ing on the intersection of architecture and literature, and strong programs in pure architecture and American stud- ies. That’s when she began reading and writing about the THE “NOTHINGNESS” skyscraper, which became the subject of her dissertation. When she joined the UChicago faculty in 2011, Brown OF RACE … PRECISELY began the work of expanding her dissertation—which fo- cused more narrowly on the skyscraper’s absence in early WHEN THE NATION 20th century novels—into The Black Skyscraper. The build- ings’ relationship to race grew from one chapter into the MOST DESIRED TO book’s primary focus as she noticed that “this question about the life of race, whether race could remain a viable category that you could read from the outside, was con- ASSERT AND EXTEND stantly shadowing the skyscraper.” One challenge of writing the book was helping modern- THE MEANINGFULNESS day readers understand how radical a shift skyscrapers rep-

cosmopolitan book corporation, 1931 resented. The ability to perceive the world from above is OF RACE.

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 41

UCH_Brown_v5.indd 41 7/26/18 2:21 PM Adrienne Brown says moving to Chicago helped her understand aspects of city life that had once been abstract, such as light, pollution, and density—“all of these things that the skyscraper magnifies and intensifies in the city.”

something we take for granted today. We fly in airplanes; Larsen’s Passing (1929), about a black woman who has con- we own drones; we’ve seen the earth from space. But life in cealed her racial identity to marry a white man. the 19th century was smaller in scale. Suddenly urban citi- Much of Larsen’s novel takes place in and around sky - zens had to adapt their bodies to a new architectural reality. scrapers—a choice that, Brown argues, serves to highlight “You do find these stories in the ’10s and ’20s of people the various ways city life complicated the act of racial per- from Iowa arriving to New York and Chicago for the first ception. Through the tragic death of Passing’s protagonist, time and having to crane their necks,” says Brown. “Their Larsen ultimately shows that the growing difficulty in muscles hurt from having to look up all the time.” pinning down a person’s race didn’t make the question go That wasn’t the only adjustment skyscrapers neces- away. If anything, the desire to make racial determinations sitated. “People looked drastically different depending got stronger. on where one stood in and around these tall structures,” That theme carries through to other stories that Brown Brown wrote in a 2017 blog post. From the top of a sky- studies in The Black Skyscraper. Several, not coincidentally scraper, everyone became “an ant-like speck.” On the jam- in Brown’s view, are science fiction or apocalypse narra - packed streets below, faces were abstract and hard to see. tives. “When you think about how crazy it was to people In the new world created by the skyscraper, bodies took that these buildings were being put up, the science fiction many forms: they looked one way from up close, another already writes itself,” Brown says. If anything, the genre of from on high, another from within a crowd. science fiction “had to keep up with the buildings.” (Some of the stories feature the destruction of iconic skyscrapers, a cultural fascination that hasn’t gone anywhere: “We are his was a threatening shift in an era when lawmakers still doing that with Transformers.”) were trying to decide what made a person black or One structure, New York City’s Metropolitan Life white, Brown contends. The one-drop rule, which Tower, is the setting for two very different apocalypse T stated that any amount of black ancestry made some- stories about race and the urban setting. George Allan Eng- one black, became law in many Southern states but had ob- land’s serialized epic The Last New Yorkers (1909) depicts vious limitations. In urban areas, you might not know your the building under attack by a horde of monsters. From in- neighbor’s name, let alone their genealogical background. side the structure, the story’s white protagonists identify In the North and the West, where migrants were plenti- the encroaching creatures as hybrids of apes and “degener- ful but family history was scarce, appearance became the ate” nonwhites who have returned to a “primeval state.” standard by default. You were black or white or Asian be- cause you looked that way. In the 1920s the Supreme Court upheld this practice, arguing that race was “a matter of ryan anne by photography familiar observation and knowledge” that “the common IN THE NEW WORLD man” could interpret. But it was clear from Brown’s research for The Black Skyscraper that writers in the early 20th century were be - CREATED BY THE ginning to see how fragile a criterion appearance offered. White Americans wrote fearfully about the dangers of SKYSCRAPER, BODIES black Americans “passing” and intermarrying. Black writ-

ers grappled with the practice too, in novels such as Nella TOOK MANY FORMS. photography by cornelius marion battey

42 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

UCH_Brown_v5.indd 42 7/26/18 2:22 PM A FRESH Eleven years later, W. E. B. DuBois chose the same set - LOOK AT ting for his short story “The Comet” (1920), about the af- termath of a natural disaster. But in DuBois’s telling, the DUBOIS’S setting of the Metropolitan Life Tower allows Manhattan’s two remaining residents, a black man and a white woman, to acknowledge each other’s humanity. Looking out over the FICTION city below, the unnamed woman remarks on “how foolish our human distinctions seem—now.” E. B. DuBois is known primarily Could race be a human distinction that no longer mat- for his nonfiction and his activism, ters? The question hangs in the air but doesn’t find an an - but Brown got to know a different swer in “The Comet”: DuBois’s protagonists soon discover W side of the legendary sociologist that only New York has been destroyed and the rest of the while researching The Black Skyscraper. She United States (and its racial regime) remains intact. was drawn to DuBois’s short fiction, which It wasn’t DuBois’s first time using the skyscraper as a includes not only science fiction, such as “The motif—his earlier unpublished story “The Princess Steel” Comet,” but also romance, fantasy, and mys- (c. 1908) is also set in one. In his work, “the skyscraper is tery. His stories have often been regarded putting forward these potentially liberatory conditions as a footnote in his career, and not without that disrupt the social script of racial domination and op - reason. “The writing can sometimes be a little pression and discrimination,” Brown says. The hopeful strange and hard to wrap your mind around,” possibilities “often crash down eventually, but he does use Brown says. the skyscraper to stage these ‘what-if’ moments.” But she believes DuBois’s fiction was more than strange. It’s where he began “testing out and thinking through some of the ideas that n the ’40s and ’50s, the suburbs replaced the city in the end up informing some of his social thought.” American cultural imagination. The housing develop- With Britt Rusert of the University of Massa- ments springing up around the country were the new chusetts, Amherst, Brown is editing a forth- I utopias and sites of fascination—at least for white fam- coming collection of DuBois’s fiction, much of ilies. Black families were largely kept out. Sometimes the it previously unpublished. discrimination was explicit: Levittowns, the iconic post- In gathering material for the book, Brown war developments in the Northeast, initially had a whites- and Rusert have discovered a treasure trove only clause in their lease agreements. In other cases the of DuBois oddities in the archives at Fisk government and banks enforced segregation through the University, including a story about an electric practice of redlining, which de facto prevented residents car. They’ve also found Agatha Christie-esque of black neighborhoods from getting mortgages. parlor mysteries written under the pen name Since finishing The Black Skyscraper, Brown has also Bud Weisob (an anagram of his name). moved some of her research from the city to the suburbs. They aren’t sure why he used a pseudonym. She’s at work on a new project about property ownership and It may have been a political necessity— midcentury white flight, and recently published anAmeri - DuBois was blacklisted because of his ties to can Quarterly article examining real-estate appraisal manuals communism—or because the stories were from the turn of the 20th century, in which questions about “so strange that they were off brand.” Some, racial perception are once again front and center. Brown thinks, could be explained by DuBois For Brown, studying redlining and property feels like the photography by anne ryan anne by photography trying to advance his political agenda through logical sequel to The Black Skyscraper. If cities complicated a popular medium. “But some of them don’t the existing order, “the suburbs become a longer-term an- necessarily fit into that, and those are the swer to that question. … The suburbs are low rise, they’re re- ones we’re interested in—where they don’t moved from the city. You can have more control over who’s neatly fit into any kind of propagandist agenda. moving in and out,” Brown explains. They’re just him writing a mystery story.” The issues are at once new and familiar: how architecture and “So you just never know what you’re going race entwine, and how writers contend with those links. “It’s to get in the DuBois archive.” fun to be at the beginning of this new project that very much

photography by cornelius marion battey —S. A. comes out of The Black Skyscraper but carries it forward.” ◆

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 43

UCH_Brown_v5.indd 43 7/26/18 2:22 PM glimpses FOOD FOR THOUGHT by laur a demanski, am’94

he Secret Service hates it when you run in You transferred to the College from a community col- the White House.” So begins Sam Kass’s lege where you’d enrolled for baseball. What was it like Eat a Little Better (Clarkson Potter, 2018)— coming back? not your typical cookbook opening. I went to the Laboratory Schools and my aunt and uncle But Kass, LAB’98, AB’04, would know, [Amy Kass, AB’62, and Leon Kass, LAB’54, SB’58, having served at 1600 Pennsylvania Av- MD’62] were on the UChicago faculty. So I had a pretty enue from 2009 to 2014. Following years decent sense of what the University was like. But it was a of restaurant work, he became the Obama bit of a shock when the coach told me that we don’t practice family’s personal chef while Barack Obama on Thursdays because that’s science lab day. I hadn’t really was campaigning for president. After the been used to that. And the caliber of the students took some 2009 inauguration, Kass continued cook- getting used to. But I think it’s the single best decision I ing for the first family while also taking on the jobs of senior ever made, besides marrying my wife. policy advisor for nutrition and executive director of Michelle What told me that [the College] had really done its job TObama’s Let’s Move public health campaign. was that I felt like I was prepared to go to college when I The experience transformed Kass’s career, broadening graduated—I was sort of wishing that I could do it again, his focus from the food on a plate to the food on our planet. now that I’d been given the skills of thinking and writing On a global scale, he is a partner in Acre, a venture capital in the way that I had. fund launched by Campbell Soup to invest in health-focused food start-ups, while his strategy firm Trove provides con- Your culinary career traces back to a quarter studying sulting to companies looking to lessen their negative impact abroad in Vienna. How did that happen? on the environment and human health. I had one quarter left and enough credits because of my trans- Eat a Little Better, published this spring, aims to do the fer. I applied to all three of the abroad programs, and I got same thing for what’s on your plate at home, creating a waitlisted for all of them. I ended up marching into the office lower-pressure path to healthier eating, with recipes us- of the dean of the study abroad program and got into a heated ing everything from veggies to red meat and flexible cook- discussion with him. ing techniques. It also has tips on how to organize your I knew how badly I wanted to get out and see the world. kitchen, pantry, and refrigerator in ways that encourage I knew that I was going to make the most of the experience, better choices—for instance, getting your produce out of maybe more than students who had better grades than me, the crisper and putting it on an eye-level shelf where it will and probably stronger applications. be the first thing you see when you open the door. So, long story short, a few weeks later I got accepted into The Magazine talked to Kass about his UChicago educa- the Vienna program. And on my third day there I got con- tion, carving out a life in food, the book, and his own food nected to the sous chef of a Vienna restaurant, who ended loves. This interview has been edited and condensed. up giving me all my training and teaching me everything I know. What was it like growing up in the University I had worked one summer in a restaurant in Chicago neighborhood? while I was in college, so I said to the head of the program, Hyde Park is one of the most diverse communities that I’ve I’m interested in food, maybe I could get into a pastry ever known—diverse in all kinds of ways. It has the intellect, shop once a week just to learn about it. She came back and it’s the anchor of the University, it has different races and eco- said something like, “My husband’s uncle’s friend from nomic classes. And so it provides a pretty dynamic environ- college’s son rides bicycles with the sous chef of the best ment for kids to grow up in. I’ve maintained lifelong friends restaurant in Vienna. If you’re interested, he’d be willing from the time I was a little kid, which I’ve come to find is ac- to meet with you.” tually quite rare. I remember playing baseball for Hyde Park- If it weren’t for that completely random and lucky mo-

Kenwood, going to the Point. It’s just a great place to grow up. ment, none of this stuff would have happened. photography by aliza eliazarov

44 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

Glimpses_Kass_v2.indd 44 7/26/18 4:47 PM VOICES ON BETTER EATING ESPOUSE UTOPIC IDEALS OF HOW WE’RE SUPPOSED TO EAT AND FRAME IT AS, THERE’S A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG WAY.

Your book puts forth the idea of eating a little better, making small changes that add up. How does that work? A lot of the voices on better eating espouse utopic ideals of how we’re supposed to eat and frame it as, there’s a right way and a wrong way. It just doesn’t fit with people’s daily lives. People try to reach these ideals, then they fail, then they get discouraged, then they stop trying. If we want people to actually make changes, it has to be done in a way that fits their reality. So the book tries to focus on and cel- ebrate progress more than ideals.

What experts say is good for us and bad for us seems to change a lot. How should people navigate conflict- ing studies on eating and health? My advice would be, don’t listen to it. Just try to focus on eating mostly plants, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, “What the University really honed was a way to think,” some nice lean protein. And on not eating too much. We Kass says. “It’s only with those tools that I could have can’t just react to the latest study because you’re going to gone from the kitchen to writing food policy.” go back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Keep it simple. Part of the trick is not to get too obsessed with food either. Take a deep breath and relax a little bit. It’s going to be What was the best part about being the White OK. Let’s just make some progress and build from there. House chef? That’s the approach. I don’t even know how to pick. It was great. I was cooking for the most important family in the world. I was also doing policy Can you share a few key tips from the book for starting work, like the Let’s Move campaign. It was the greatest time I to make that progress? had in my life, and the best job in the world. Working with the Make sure your house is set up with the things you’re trying First Lady, growing the garden—everything was spectacular. to eat and not a bunch of the things you’re not. What you have in the house and where you position it has a big influ- If you could build US food policy from the ground up, ence on what you end up consuming. And try to cook one what would you do first? more time a week than you already do. I would invest $10 billion in research. We are dramatically underinvested in this area. And I would work to align our What’s your typical breakfast? policy toward human health and environmental health. I’ll quickly make myself an omelet. I know that sounds like Right now we have agricultural policy on one hand and a whole thing, but it really takes me like 30 seconds. Actu- health policy on the other. They’re not aligned, and we’re ally it’s a quick challenge because making a perfect omelet not growing food based on what’s best for people—and is not an easy thing. Sometimes I’ll have a little salmon with we’re definitely not taking into consideration the impact it and a cup of coffee with half-and-half. on the environment and the role of climate change when it comes to crafting our policy. Globally, food agriculture You’re a realist about how people eat, so what’s your is the number two driver of greenhouse gas emissions and own favorite guilty food pleasure? within the next few decades will be number one. So we’re I can’t say no to a buffalo wing, and I’m pretty much down

photography by aliza eliazarov going to have to take some much more aggressive steps. for ice cream no matter what. ◆

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 45

Glimpses_Kass_v2.indd 45 7/24/18 11:47 AM RECIPE FROM EAT A LITTLE BETTER Brussels Sprouts Caesar Salad Serves 6 to 8 / Active time: 20 minutes / Start to finish: 20 minutes

I wish I could say I came up with the idea of swapping out the not to mention more nutrition. I particularly like to use brus-

romaine in the classic Caesar, because there’s a reason you sels sprouts, thinly sliced so they grab on tight to that I-want- clarkson by published pick. aubrie by 2017 © copyright photograph now see kale and brussels sprouts coated in creamy, bright, to-eat-this-forever dressing. Baby spinach leaves, very thinly from reprinted

anchovy-spiked dressing at restaurants from Brooklyn to sliced kale, or a crunchy combination of thinly sliced celery llc. house, random penguin of imprint an potter/publishers, Boise. These vegetables deliver flavor instead of just crunch, and radishes are also great to use here instead of the sprouts.

INGREDIENTS 1. Drizzle both sides of the bread slices with about better little a eat 4 thick slices crusty bread ¼ cup of the oil, then toast in a toaster oven or 400°F ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil oven, flipping once, until golden on both sides, 5 to 8 1 or 2 oil-packed anchovy fillets, minutes. Cut them into 1-inch pieces. finely chopped 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 2. Use a fork to mash the anchovy, garlic, and a pinch Kosher salt of salt to a paste. Scrape the paste into a large bowl. kass. sam by 2018 © copyright . 1 large egg yolk Add the egg yolk, lemon juice, mustard, and stir well. 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice Then while whisking, add the remaining ¼ cup oil in a 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard thin, steady stream and keep whisking until creamy. Freshly ground black pepper Season with salt and pepper to taste. 2 pounds brussels sprouts, bottoms trimmed, halved lengthwise, very thinly sliced 3. Add the brussels sprouts to the bowl, toss with Big handful finely grated Parmesan cheese the dressing to coat well, and season with more salt 12 vinegared white anchovy fillets, to taste. Scatter the bread and cheese on top and, if often labeled “boquerones” (optional) you’ve got them, add the white anchovies.

46 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

Glimpses_Kass_v2.indd 46 7/25/18 11:40 AM Notes and Releases, 54 ...... Alumni News, 56 ...... Advanced Degrees, 74 ...... Deaths, 76 ...... Classifieds, 79 peer review

It’s move-in day on campus as College student orientation gets underway in the early 1950s. uchicago photographic archive, apf4-02403, university of chicago library

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 47

Peer Review_Summer18_opt2_v8.indd 47 7/25/18 5:36 PM ALUMNI ESSAY

A good mayor is hard to find BY BLAIR THORNBURGH, AB’12

o look at me is to see the And so here I am, betrothed and on the street and congratulated (for World’s Least Likely Po- thrust into a curious extracurricular my book coming out, for a landslide litical Wife. I have a Rose- for the rest of my life. (Yes, I have heard win, for our engagement), picking up mary’s Baby haircut that I all the Parks and Recreation jokes. If this my phone during election week and dye in the bathtub, and I makes me Leslie Knope, so much the barking “talk to me,” holding a boom regularly parade around in better.) I had to learn fast: I trust every- mic during an ad filming. Some is ex- an oversized black T-shirt one and speak much too freely, even to hilarating: rallies, speeches, protests, that reads FEMINIST in reporters and opponents; I am still in debates. And some, the worst part, is bold witchy letters. I own the broke-artist mind-set of “attend- emotionally taxing: being berated to no tasteful wrap dresses or ing events for the snacks” and chomp the point of tears while canvassing, be- twinsets. I have a degree down hors d’oeuvres instead of making ing lectured on the Main Street park- in medieval studies, and I write self- polite conversation; I have a (now cur- ing situation at a cocktail party, driving Tconsciously smart-alecky young adult tailed) habit of swearing at Pennsylva- past a giant sign with my fiancé’s face novels for a living. nia senator Pat Toomey on Twitter. on it declaring him a no-goodnik who’s And yet—I fell in love with an elect- Some of it is fun: ribbon cuttings taking the town to hell in a handbasket. ed official. (yes, there are giant scissors), parades, And yet it’s not all that unfamiliar. It was an extraordinarily cute 5K kickoffs, fire department chicken My grandfather Dick Thornburgh was meet: writer is working on novel barbecues, Josh ducking out to “mar- governor of Pennsylvania and then US about young mayor, writer meets ac- ry someone real quick” at the local attorney general. I grew up with for- tual young mayor, young mayor has brewery, holding the Bible in my best mal family portraits every year, award dimples and green eyes like a real-life Michelle Obama dress (bought second- ceremonies, names in the paper, names YA love interest, writer solicits infor- hand, worn frequently) for his swear- in the social register, and photos of mational interview that morphs into ing in. Some is exhausting: knocking my family members with presidents, a date. Fast forward 13 months, and on every door in town and foisting popes, dignitaries, and Jimmy Stewart writer has a ring on her finger and is political literature on unsuspecting lining my grandparents’ condo walls. kindly reminding the young mayor to residents, trifolding fundraising letter Grandpa was even on Da Ali G Show, please put his pizza crusts in the trash after fundraising letter, wearing high which, trust me, got me a lot of mileage after the Sixers game is over. heels at any time for any purpose. Some in middle school. My fiancé, Josh, ran for mayor of his is oddly glamorous: being stopped So in the right context, with the hometown of Downingtown, Pennsyl- right group of people, my last name vania, at the tender age of 26, because, will elicit a nod. Other times, people as he so charmingly put it on our first How does the squint between me and Josh: How date, “elected office is the best way to granddaughter of a does the granddaughter of a Republi- help as many people as possible.” (Me: can governor end up with a progressive photo credit teekay credit photo “How many suits did you own then?” Republican governor Democratic upstart, and why is her theispot Him: “Less than one.”) Over the past end up with a hair that color? My mother and grand- c/o eight years, he’s seen taxes stabilize, a mother have lived through smear cam- new train station take shape, and a band progressive Democratic paigns and public outrage and crushing of rogue chickens terrorize the south upstart, and why is defeats and even death threats (it’s side of town. He’s even gotten into a fine, everybody’s fine!), and they can photo credit teekay Twitter spat with Donald Trump. her hair that color? look back on it winsomely. But I never ©2018 jon krause

6448 the university university of chicago of chicago magazine magazine |sept–oct | summer 2011 2018

UCH_Alumni Essay_Thornburgh_v5.indd 48 7/24/18 1:54 PM fry, “writes books about smart teenage girls.” When I told him, “Hey, I might write an essay about marry- ing the mayor, is that chill?” he said “Just don’t make too much fun of me.” If the personal is politi- cal, then our relationship has a feminist platform: I have (on good days) a ca- reer, or (on less productive ones) a hobby, but regard- less, I am defined as some- one who does stuff and doesn’t just exist at the side. thought to ask how it made them feel or “Mayor/Representative/Senator Sure, I have my fair share of stand-still- about themselves: to have people set Maxwell and his wife, Blair,” no pro - look-pretty moments ahead of me, and up lawn chairs to watch you leave your fession specified? What if the swear - I probably will have to stop going to wedding ceremony because you’re ing/sex/teenage hijinks in my novels Wawa in my pajamas and yesterday’s marrying the First Son of Pennsyl- offend the electorate? What if we have eyeliner (even if it does make me look vania, or to be nine months pregnant a fight in Wegmans over whether or like a Woman of the People). I will and running into a burning campaign not to spring for the family size cheese bear children as photogenic as possi- office to rescue index cards of precious and people whisper at our lack of literal ble for those soft-focus campaign ads. voter data. family values behind their carts? What I will fasten his cuff links until the day Controlling for other variables, mar- if he starts calling me “Mother” and I I die. Because it is fun, and exhaust- ried politicians tend to outperform can’t make him stop? What if, God ing, and oddly glamorous, exhilarat- single ones. But research has yet to forbid, our eventual daughter takes ing, and emotionally taxing. But in the weigh in on how marriage benefits or a party drug in a fit of pique and ends end, because it is my choice. hinders YA novelists. Aside from the up kidnapped with her security detail So I won’t be ditching the FEMI- standard patriarchal nonsense of dra- dead, like Zoe Bartlet on that one epi- NIST T-shirt. But I might buy a new matically lowered lifetime earnings, sode of The West Wing? cardigan to wear over it. ◆ my heterosexual marriage will give I am being hyperbolic. That is what me a role that is not only reductive but I do; wife or no, I’m a writer. And my Blair Thornburgh, AB’12, is the au- photo credit teekay credit photo

theispot publicly so: political wife. I will morph intended husband knows and enjoys thor of the young adult novels Who’s

c/o from “somebody’s granddaughter” to this. “You’re writing a book?” he said That Girl (HarperTeen, 2017) and Or- “somebody’s wife” with barely a gasp when we met. “I’m meeting with this dinary Girls (HarperTeen, forthcom- in between. When we are both rich writer tomorrow,” he told a friend ing). By day she is a senior editor and famous, will the society pages re - before we got coffee the first time. at Quirk Books in Philadelphia. She fer to “Blair Thornburgh and her hus- “Blair,” he will announce at every lives—where else?—in Downing- photo credit teekay ©2018 neil webb band, the politician Josh Maxwell,” steam-table chicken dinner and fish town, Pennsylvania.

theuniversity university of of chicago chicago magazine magazine | sept–oct | summer 20182011 6549

UCH_Alumni Essay_Thornburgh_v5.indd 49 7/26/18 4:57 PM ALUMNI ESSAY

Empathy unmasked BY JOHN PAUL ROLLERT, AM’09, PHD’17 ILLUSTRATIONS BY CAMERON COTTRILL

e talk about empathy would it mean for you not just to un- us about empathy, including Adam a lot these days— derstand a stranger’s experience but Smith, Michel de Montaigne, Wil- most often to ob - to actually fulfill the fundamental re - liam Shakespeare, Jay Gatsby, and, serve the lack of it. quirement of empathy: To feel what yes, President Obama. But, as one of Consider the presi- she feels for the reason she feels it? the chairs of my dissertation commit- dent. No, not that Seriously, think about it: What tee gently observed, I hadn’t gotten one. Barack Obama, would it take to bring home the trau- around to telling readers, practically who warned in his ma of an exceedingly precocious child speaking, how they might overcome 2006 book, The Au- (spoiled and maybe a little bratty) who their “empathy deficit.” dacity of Hope, that lost his father in a shocking moment Actors are not the only individuals the nation was suf- of domestic violence? Or to feel the who make a career out of stepping into fering from an “empathy deficit.” stinging humiliation of a boorish and the shoes of others, but then again, I WHe’d been saying as much since at proud man being pushed into retire- didn’t have access to any interna - least 2002, when he gave an address at ment who believes his boys are lousy tional spy rings, and I hadn’t known a Rockefeller Chapel event commem- and that he has nothing to show for a any narcs since high school. In turn, I orating the life of Dr. Martin Luther lifetime of busting his chops? Or to feel decided that I would try to learn what King Jr. and bemoaned “an empathy the 10,000-watt rage of a young wife actors learn—gain an empathetic edu- shortage, an empathy deficit.” “We’ve who’s sacrificed everything for her cation, if you will—in order to make become so cynical,” he told the as - husband’s career only to have him drop sense of the requirements of a radical sembly, “that it almost seems naive to her like a bad habit when some floozy commitment to empathy. believe that we can understand each comes along? Luckily, Chicago has arguably the other across the gulf of race or class or Actors who sign on to play Hamlet, liveliest theater scene in the country, region or religion. It’s so much easier Willy Loman, or Medea face just such complete with an unruly assortment to retreat into what’s familiar.” challenges, and when I reached the of acting studios that offer everything It’s also tempting to stay put. Sym- end of the first draft of my doctoral from one-off classes and refreshers to pathy is one thing (I can feel sorry for dissertation for the John U. Nef Com- what I was looking for: a comprehensive you just fine standing over here on mittee on Social Thought, “At Home introduction to acting. After spending the other side of the room) but step- and Abroad: Reflections on the Na- some time on Yelp, where, much like ping into the shoes of someone whose ture and Limits of Empathy,” increas- faculty meetings, the overwhelming life looks a lot different from yours is ingly I found myself thinking about spirit is often in error, never in doubt, frankly a little terrifying. The demo - them. My research had examined I settled on the Artistic Home, a well- cratic benefits of closing that distance what a range of figures have to teach regarded training studio and black box are one reason the distinguished law theater in West Town. lecturer made his recommendation— In addition to aspiring Laurence “Not sympathy, mind you, but empa - Stepping into the shoes Oliviers, acting classes tend to attract teekay credit photo thy”—but to anchor one’s ethics in a of someone whose life the same assortment of individuals sustained commitment to empathy who often congregate in adult educa- is no small undertaking. Set aside all looks a lot different from tion programs: the curious, the bored, of the detective work to make sense yours is frankly a little the lonely, and the strange. It’s that of someone’s daily affairs beyond a last group—and the need to sort out

tidy list of stereotypical traits. What terrifying. the eccentric from the amateur taxi- photo credit teekay

6450 the university university of chicago of chicago magazine magazine |sept–oct | summer 2011 2018

UCH_Alumni Essay_ROLLERT_v3.indd 50 7/26/18 4:57 PM dermists—that makes conducting interview, passing the hodgepodge of The feeling of vulnerability, a sense interviews of anyone who wants to prewar walk-ups and street establish- that often dulls with the certainties enroll in an acting class a fairly rou- ments that share the same stretch of of adulthood and the satisfactions of tine procedure. Mine was with Kathy Grand Avenue, I found myself nurs- professional success, is essential to an Scambiatterra, the cofounder and ar- ing a small knot in my stomach. It had actor’s art, a lesson I would learn re- photo credit teekay credit photo tistic director of the Artistic Home, been a while since I’d been given the peatedly over the cycle of four classes as well as a distinguished actress, once-over to determine if I would that make up the Artistic Home’s ba - stage director, and a member of the be an unpleasant presence in a class- sic curriculum. In the United States, theater’s ensemble. She couldn’t have room, and while I believed (or, well, there isn’t a consensus approach to been more welcoming when I first con- hoped) that I would pass the test, I theatrical training, but most of the tacted her about joining the introduc- have to say, it was remarkable to feel schools sit somewhere downstream

photo credit teekay tory class, but as I made my way to the so vulnerable again. of the Stanislavsky system.

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UCH_Alumni Essay_ROLLERT_v3.indd 51 7/25/18 3:25 PM ALUMNI ESSAY

Named for Konstantin Stanislav- the street are required to pass through You’re crying? I’m crying! You’re sky, the actor and director who found- the setting of an actual play before en- crying. I’m crying. [another impulse] ed the Moscow Art Theatre at the tering the workshop where they will You’re scared. I’m scared. tail end of the 19th century, the Stan - learn their trade. If you’re confused, that makes you islavsky system broke from previous The space itself is actually far cozi- pretty much like every acting student dramatic techniques by fundamen- er than the barebones acting studios in who first encounters the Repetition tally changing the actor’s orientation. many an earnest Introduction to Act- Game. Explaining the theory behind Rather than working (as actors call it) ing video you can find on YouTube. it, Meisner said he wanted an exercise “outside in” by emphasizing gestures, It’s outfitted with a collection of mis- that had “no intellectuality.” Like costumes, and vocal range, Stanislav- matched furniture and assorted bric-a- Stanislavsky before him, he wanted sky had his students work “inside out” brac that would look entirely at home to remove “all the mental manipula- by enrolling them in what he called in a flat full of sociology students. The tion” that most often leads to self-con- “The School of Experience.” This studio is supposed to have the feel of scious, stilted acting involved a curriculum of free play and a domestic setting, one that, with the in order to pro - improvisational games that aimed to wall of props just inside the door, can duce performances free students from customary habits be rearranged quickly to give the feel- “firmly rooted in while making them more receptive to ing, if not of Elsinore, then of someone the instinctive.” a harrowing array of passions, all long else’s living room. “Instinctive” is an- before they entered the world of a play Students wander through this space other way of describ- or tried to memorize a line of dialogue. to do what students do, regardless of the ing behavior that my Lee Strasberg is the most famous of discipline: take their seats and make an mother would just Stanislavsky’s American acolytes, but audience. In acting classes, most of the call “inappropriate.” Sanford Meisner’s legacy as a teacher time is spent watching others fumble That’s by design. has been most enduring. The Artistic through the very exercises you’ll soon The brilliance of Home’s training regimen is based on be called on to do yourself. In the case the Repetition Game is not only that it what is conventionally known as the of the Repetition Game, that involves pushes you into emotional registers that Meisner technique, an approach to joining another student with no direc- you’re hardly at home in but that it also acting that draws inspiration from the tions except to engage each other and gives you nowhere to hide. Once you’ve Stanislavsky system by its focus on say what you’re feeling (in Meisnerian been called into the space, you’re not softening up the behavioral disposition parlance, “speaking to the moment”) supposed to play a character or conjure a of actors to make them more capable of or to repeat what the other person has plotline. You’re just supposed to engage channeling a wider range of emotions. already said, allowing for impulses to the other actor, and even if you’re a re- Such a process may sound unre - shift the repetitive conversation. This served person by nature, when someone markable, but consider what it would gives rise to exchanges that look more or gets in your face and says, “You’re full of take to eliminate, even for a short less as follows: it,” you might quickly lose track of your time, the tendencies, mannerisms, and You’re scared. I’m scared? You’re inside voice. tics that everyone recognizes in your scared. I’m scared. You’re scared. Meisner training is not Marine Corps daily behavior in addition to the sensi- I’m scared. You’re scared! I’m scared! boot camp—for one thing, there are far bilities that underwrite them. In other You’re scared! I’M SCARED! [an fewer push-ups—but the intensity of words, to relieve you of you. This is no impulse shift] You’re angry. I’m an- the process should not be understated. small challenge, and Meisner’s open- gry! You’re angry? I’m angry! You’re You are not only being thrust far be- ing gambit is the Repetition Game, the angry! I’M ANGRY! YOU’RE AN- yond your emotional comfort zone, but cornerstone of his technique. GRY! I’M ANGRY! You’re angry? you’re also expected to give evidence of I had never heard of the game I’m angry. You’re angry. [another it. Crying, screaming, and a fair bit of R- when I arrived at the Artistic Home. impulse] You’re crying. I’m crying. rated behavior are all de rigueur in class Like so much of what goes on in act- meetings—no, you cannot remove your ing classes, the first blush with the pants, and fisticuffs are strictly prohib- exercise is baffling to anyone whose “Instinctive” is another ited—but then again, such conduct is teekay credit photo vision of an actor’s art is almost en- way of describing hardly alien to the theater. tirely derived from watching actors. Emotionally, the Repetition Game In turn, it seems appropriate that the behavior that my can be brutal. I found it somewhat training studio at the Artistic Home mother would just call like being trapped in a Buster Keaton lies at the back of the building behind movie: whipsawed, smacked, dunked,

the theater, for students arriving from “inappropriate.” tripped, and kicked down a flight of photo credit teekay

6452 the university university of chicago of chicago magazine magazine |sept–oct | summer 2011 2018

UCH_Alumni Essay_ROLLERT_v3.indd 52 7/25/18 3:25 PM stairs—all in the course of a scene. pondering a “shared specific,” when might attempt to channel strange and The experience was a reminder that something terrible flickered across outrageous passions in service of step- if you soften people up by pummeling her face. She turned to me. “I told you ping into the shoes of a gross gallery them, it’s going to leave bruises. That I’m dying of cancer,” she said, before of characters. Such work is extremely may sound extreme—and it’s meant retreating behind the door. When she challenging, not only because it is in- to be—but empathy often requires no knocked and came into the room, the credibly time consuming. Creatively less. Adam Smith famously began his sight was positively devastating. speaking, the benefits of such efforts Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) by She wasn’t dying of cancer, any are showered on audiences who watch describing how we would feel if we more than Smith’s observer is being a gifted actress dissolve into a role, and spent some time watching someone torn limb from limb, but the imagi- they are also enjoyed by writers whose being broken on a medieval rack, but nation can bring home either set of talent for empathy allows them to colo- if the ethical possibilities of empathy circumstances to inspire a profound nize a fictional world with a vivid com- require you to be affected by the suf- sense of grief. munity of characters. fering of others (and thereby prompt- As I continued through the Artistic Cultivating a radical capacity for ed to do something about them), you Home’s basic curriculum, improvisa- empathy can have great benefits for an have to allow yourself to be wounded. tional exercises like the Door-Knock artist—my time at the Artistic Home Otherwise, you’re lying when you say, Game incorporated more and more convinced me of this—but I am more “I feel your pain.” circumstances, adding layers of com- doubtful about its relevance for ethics. Smith’s example is a somewhat gory plexity and believability to every new To be sure, I am all for trying to un- reminder of why the Repetition Game scenario. Such additions work against derstand the lives of others and extend is just the first step in the Meisner the narcissistic tendencies in the train- the catalog of our experience—two ac- Technique. The exercise is supposed ing. Rather than lulling you into the tivities that lend themselves to the spirit to prepare you to be emotionally mode of the tortured artist, you learn of tolerance and democratic accommo- receptive to what Meisner called to harvest and metabolize human ex- dation that Barack Obama celebrates. “living truthfully perience, letting it fire you creatively. But the difference between that activ- under imaginary Such lessons prepare you for the ity and empathy in any full measure is circumstances.” training’s ultimate aim, to inhabit a akin to the difference between my own What did he mean theatrical role so thoroughly you seem experience attending your wedding by this? Take the to disappear. Describing the require- and yours. The practical challenges of Door-Knock Game, ments of such an endeavor, Meisner bridging that divide are considerable, another staple of the seconded George Bernard Shaw’s esti- morally speaking, and I’m not sure the training. One stu- mation that “self-betrayal, magnified effects are worth the effort. dent calls another to to suit the optics of the theater, is the With apologies to the former presi- join her, and the sec- whole art of acting.” In other words, dent, I think we may do more good not ond student comes the aim of an actor’s work is to lose by trying to feel the pain that others up with an imaginary himself in order to find a character. feel but by doing whatever we can to circumstance, a “shared specific,” that Empathy is not an entirely differ- assist them. Much like trying to learn will give their interaction a little drama. ent enterprise, even if the experience a new craft, rather than reaffirming She shares it with her partner before she tends to be more fleeting. You are leav- our grasp on the world, such efforts retreats behind a door, and when she ing the immediate world of your own can be revelatory in their own way. By reenters, the two quickly launch into experience—your needs, your fears, reminding us how others suffer even repetition with a trajectory dictated by your present circumstances—and en- when we enjoy comfort and security, the charged circumstance. tering a new emotional landscape. You they can teach us a separate lesson: Our teacher often reminded us that, are betraying your self, even if just for humility. ◆ as actors, we should always make a moment, in favor of another. choices that invite the greatest con- If we often do so instinctively with John Paul Rollert, AM’09, PhD’17, is flict, so I once informed a fellow writ- those nearest to us, cultivating a ca- an adjunct associate professor of be- photo credit teekay credit photo er that his prose was garbage. That pacity to inhabit lives that are far dif- havioral science at the University of episode had some sparks—You’re a ferent from our own is daunting. This Chicago Booth School of Business. loser! I’m a loser! You’re a loser! I’m a is true even under ideal circumstances, He writes the In-House Ethicist, a fea- loser!—but the one I remember more like those the Artistic Home afforded. tured column for the Chicago Booth vividly was a lot less sophomoric. I The teaching staff created a safe envi- Review, and his writing has appeared called a young woman down, and I ronment to explore the full spectrum of in Harper’s, the Atlantic, the New York

photo credit teekay remember her standing beside me, human emotion and taught us how we Times, and the Paris Review.

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UCH_Alumni Essay_ROLLERT_v3.indd 53 7/26/18 4:58 PM NOTES

BACK TO STUDS’S PLACE The daily interview show hosted by Louis “Studs” Terkel, PhB’32, JD’34, on Chicago’s WFMT radio station for nearly half a century migrated online in May. Launched by WFMT and the Chicago History Museum, the Studs Terkel Radio Archive encompasses a digital platform, where users can hear the thousands of programs he recorded between 1952 and 1997, including conversations with Martin Luther LIFE AFTER SHOW BIZ King Jr., Louis Armstrong, and Joel Kupperman, AB’54, SB’55, AM’56, professor emeritus of philosophy at the Maya Angelou, as well as initiatives University of Connecticut, is the subject of All the Answers (Gallery 13, 2018), a to engage the public with Terkel’s graphic memoir by his son Michael. Famous during World War II as a child prodigy work. For example, Bughouse Square, on the NBC radio show Quiz Kids, Kupperman stayed to see the program break a podcast hosted by Eve L. Ewing, into television but left at age 16 for UChicago, returning to show business only AB’08, and launching in August, mixes once for what the book presents as a fateful 1957 appearance on The $64,000 Terkel’s recordings with Ewing’s Challenge. All the Answers traces how a philosopher exploring ethics, morality, commentary and her own interviews. and character emerged from the trauma of childhood celebrity.

COST OF THE CAUSE Criminal defense attorney and for contributing to the advancement capturing “the ways that words suggest prisoners’ rights activist Fay Stender, of French art and culture. and yet finally never do encapsulate the JD’56, who died in 1980, is profiled in ultimate strangeness of the world in the new biography Call Me Phaedra: KEEPING HISTORY ALIVE which each body—whether human or The Life and Times of Movement Americans and the Holocaust, a 25th- animal—is ultimately unknowable.” Lawyer Fay Stender (Regent Press, anniversary special exhibition at the 2018). Written by attorney and US Holocaust Memorial Museum, ALL SIDES TO THE STORY illustration former judge Lise Pearlman, it features the research of Stephen J. Tracy Mumford, AB’10, won a depicts Stender as a courageous Morewitz, PhD’83, on the SS Quanza Peabody Award in May as part of

fighter for justice in her defense of controversy, a 1940 incident in which the team that created 74 Seconds, a by

high-profile convicted militants Jewish refugees from Europe were Minnesota Public Radio podcast michael such as Huey P. Newton and George denied safe harbor in Veracruz, about Philando Castile and the police Jackson—but also as the kind of tragic Mexico, and Norfolk, VA, until legal officer who was charged in his 2016

figure alluded to in the title, driven to action on their behalf prompted the fatal shooting. Mumford, a digital kupperman suicide by the fate she suffered at the US State Department to intercede. producer at MPR, was a producer, hands of the Black Guerilla Family. Morewitz, a lecturer in nursing and reporter, and host on the podcast,

health science at California State which was recognized by the Peabody from

DEMOCRACY AND ITS DISCONTENTS University East Bay, is coauthor, Board of Jurors “for the model it offers all

Vivien A. Schmidt, AM’73, PhD’81, a with Susan Lieberman, of the play us of how to comprehensively cover the

professor of international relations and Steamship Quanza, which premiered at incidents of police violence.”

political science at Boston University’s Chicago Dramatists in 1991. answers

Frederick S. Pardee School of Global RISE TO THE TOP

(

Studies, was awarded a 2018 Guggen- PRIZE-WINNING POET In July David Hoffman, MBA’98, was gallery heim Fellowship to study the rise of Jennifer Chang, AB’98, assistant named CEO of Dunkin’ Brands, the populist leaders in Europe and the professor of English at George parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts United States in recent years. Schmidt Washington University, received this and Baskin-Robbins. Hoffman became 2018); 13, intends to interview major populist year’s William Carlos Williams Award president of Dunkin’ Donuts US and figures on both sides of the Atlantic for from the Poetry Society of America Canada in 2016 after holding various courtesy a book on what she calls the “rhetoric for her collection of poems Some Say leadership positions at McDonald’s. “I of discontent,” looking to the language the Lark (Alice James Books, 2017). grew up in the restaurants,” Hoffman

of populism to answer “why now, in The award recognizes a single-author said after his new appointment was gallery this way, in these places.” Later this poetry volume from a small, nonprofit, announced. “It was burgers and fries at year Schmidt will be decorated as a or university press. Chang’s book 16 and it’s donuts at 50.” 13 chevalier in the French Legion of Honor was cited by poet Paisley Rekdal for —Andrew Peart, AM’16, PhD’18

54 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

Notes_Layout_Summer18_v6.indd 54 7/25/18 3:44 PM BULLSHIT JOBS: A THEORY RELEASES By David Graeber, AM’87, PhD’96; Simon and Schuster, 2018 If your job vanished tomorrow, would society suffer? If not, suggests David The Magazine lists a selection of general Graeber, professor of anthropology at interest books, films, and albums by alumni. the London School of Economics, you For additional alumni releases, use the link may be working a bullshit job. This to the Magazine’s Goodreads bookshelf at is no personal indictment: Graeber mag.uchicago.edu/alumni-books. classifies jobs as such only when workers themselves report a sense of THE EXISTENTIALIST’S SURVIVAL GUIDE: HOW meaninglessness. Plus, he contends, TO LIVE AUTHENTICALLY IN AN INAUTHENTIC AGE contemporary capitalism simply tends By Gordon Marino, PhD’88; to proliferate managerial and admin- WHITE REBELS IN BLACK: GERMAN HarperOne, 2018 istrative jobs that neither make, main- APPROPRIATION OF BLACK POPULAR CULTURE What would a version of Marcus Aure- tain, nor move things. So join the club. By Priscilla Layne, AB’03; University lius’s Meditations for the 21st century All of us, even traditional laborers, of Michigan Press, 2018 look like? Instead of a manual for living Graeber suggests, may be doing some Just play Elvis Presley or the Rolling stoically, Gordon Marino, professor amount of bullshit work, including a Stones, and you’ll hear how much of of philosophy at St. Olaf College, of- classic example—paperwork. American and British youth culture fers wisdom about living authentically of the post–World War II period de- drawn from a career spent studying THE PRICE OF GREATNESS: ALEXANDER pended on white artists borrowing such existentialist thinkers as Søren HAMILTON, JAMES MADISON, AND THE from black popular music. According to Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. CREATION OF AMERICAN OLIGARCHY Priscilla Layne, assistant professor of Existentialist thought, Marino By Jay Cost, AM’04, PhD’17; Basic German and adjunct assistant professor believes, is a key to understanding Books, 2018 of African and African American stud- anxiety, despair, and other threats to Alexander Hamilton, in Lin-Manuel ies at the University of North Carolina our inner well-being as pathways to Miranda’s Broadway musical, is at Chapel Hill, a similar phenomenon becoming more fully human. adamant about “not throwing away his swept through East and West Germany shot.” But after reading political sci- after the war. In literature and film, re- entist Jay Cost’s account of Hamilton’s bellious young whites took black popu- relationship with James Madison, you lar culture as their mark of defiance may take a different view of his vision against mainstream norms. That trope of a country, like himself, that would be has prompted Philipp Khabo Köpsell “young, scrappy, and hungry.” Ham- and other black German writers to ilton saw an American constitutional make blackness more than a symbol. republic that would achieve national greatness by entrusting economic power THE DEBASEMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS: HOW to wealthy commercial and financial POLITICS SABOTAGE THE IDEAL OF FREEDOM interests, argues Cost, while Madison By Aaron Rhodes, AM’76, PhD’80; pushed for equal distribution of power Encounter Books, 2018 among citizens. This disagreement con- Should the economic and social rights EXHIBIT ALEXANDRA tinues in debates over the role and limits recognized in international law, such By Natasha Bell (neé Natasha Long), of government in US politics today. as the rights to social security and a AM’08; Crown, 2018 sufficient standard of living, count as Alexandra and Marc, two university BAY OF POETS human rights? In this critique of the teachers in York, England, have a fairy- The New York Second, featuring rationale behind today’s international tale marriage and a happy family—until Harald Walkate, IMBA’01; The New York human rights system, Aaron Rhodes, Alexandra goes missing. Held captive Second, 2017 president of the Forum for Religious in a room by an unknown psychopath, The debut album of the Amsterdam- Freedom Europe and former executive Alexandra narrates Marc’s tortuous based quartet led by jazz pianistHarald director of the International Helsinki odyssey to find her, basing her account Walkate takes its name from the Gulf of Foundation for Human Rights, calls for on reports from the police investigation La Spezia, known as Golfo dei Poeti for reforms that follow a classical liberal fed to her by her captor, with flashbacks its associations with Lord Byron, Mary definition of human rights. Social and of the marriage and her own imagina- Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Percy economic welfare are political matters tion filling in the gaps.Exhibit Alexan- Shelley, who drowned in its waters in for states to decide, argues Rhodes, dra, a thriller by Natasha Bell, puzzles 1822. Like the album’s namesake, the while the legitimate concerns of hu- readers with the hidden identity and nine compositions performed here by man rights advocacy are more basic— motive of its villain, but the biggest the group move between the serene and protecting individual liberty and mystery may be who Alexandra and the turbulent, blending soul and Latin promoting civil society. Marc really are beneath the fairy tale. influences with bold jazz improvisation. — Andrew Peart, AM’16, PhD’18

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 55

Releases_Layout_Summer18_v4.indd 55 7/25/18 4:02 PM HONOR Phoenix Society members lead the way in supporting the University’s students, ROLL faculty, resources, and facilities. The names below represent new members welcomed into the society from July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018.

All names are listed per member request and also located in the online Leaders in Philanthropy Honor Rolls at give.uchicago.edu/leadersinphilanthropy.

Anonymous (10) Edward Hamlin, AB’81, and Paula Hamlin Henrietta Bartizal Pons, MBA’79 Susan Albin John Mark Hansen and Dana Saowalak Suzanne Rague, MBA’74 Carole Artman‑Hodge, MBA’79, Thomas Heberlein, AB’67, Shulamit Ran and Abraham Lotan and James Hodge, AM’75, AM’77, PhD’79 and Elizabeth Thomson Marjorie Rapp, AB’51, AM’54 J. Marshall Ash, SB’61, SM’63, PhD’66, Susanna Hecht, LAB’68, AB’72 Margo Reich, AB’70 and Alison Ash Janet Helman and Robert Helman Richard Rendine, MBA’63, and Linda Rendine Jack Barbera, AB’68, AM’69, PhD’76 John Heneghan, MBA’96 Henry Renken, MBA’77 Jane Engle Berlin, AM’52 Kathryn Herndon, AB’55, Barbara Rogers, AM’89, Michael R. Bernique, AM’70,* and Robert Herndon, AB’55 and Christopher Rogers, MBA’90 and Michele B. Bernique George Hersh, AB’80, MBA’82, Thorn Rosenthal, LAB’69, JD’75 Beth Boland, AB’85, JD’88, and Patricia Hersh Michael Rosepiler, MBA’94, and Peggy Qin You can become a lifetime member by and Robert Boland, AB’83, MBA’87 John Hutchason, MBA’71 Janet Rotner and Philip Rotner funding a life‑income gift or simply notifying Phyllis Brauer, MST’80 William Jackman, MBA’95 Sharon Rowley, MBA’79, Montague Brown, AB’59, MBA’60, John G. Jacobs, JD’72, and Craig Rowley, MBA’78 us that you’ve planned a gift to the University and Barbara McCool and Betty C. Jacobs, JD’72 Randi Rubovits‑Seitz in one of the following ways: Dennis Miles Campbell, MBA’78 Stasha Jain, AB’93 Paul Schollmeier, AB’69, AM’74, PhD’82 Amy Carbone, AB’83, Joseph Jannotta, MBA’67,* and Gina Jannotta Barbara Schubert • included the University in your will or trust and Paul Carbone, AB’83 Pamela Johnson and Daniel McDonald, PhD’80 Nicholas Carras, AB’84, and Kathleen Carras Annette Kadar, PhB’47 Mady Wechsler Segal, AM’67, PhD’73, • named the University as a beneficiary of Andrea Christian‑Michaels, AM’79, Sharon M. Keigher, AM’71, PhD’85 and David R. Segal, AM’63, PhD’67 and Stephen Christian‑Michaels, AM’79 Thomas Kelly Michael Seibold, AM’80, and Maurice Peterson a retirement plan, life insurance policy, or Julia Cissel, AB’83 Ryan Klabunde, MBA’97 Deming Sherman, JD’68 The Phoenix Society financial account James Clark, MBA’84 Geraldine Krasner, AM’68, Deborah Sifferlen, MBA’96, David Coplen, AB’78 and Ronald Krasner and Joseph Sifferlen, MBA’93 honors individuals Dana Corman, AM’72 Joan Lascelle, AB’60, AM’64 Byron Smith, MBA’86, and Beth Ann Smith Thomas W. Coyle, MBA’71, and Sally S. Coyle Nancy Leipzig, SM’80, Frank Smith who make estate As a member, you will receive benefits Natalie Dandekar, AB’64, PhD’70 and Bernard Leipzig, SB’76, PhD’82 Jean Maclean Snyder, LAB’59, AB’63, JD’79 Peter Dawson John Longwell Jr., MD’67, and Helen Wang Allan Spradling, SB’71 commitments or life- including but not limited to Mary Lynn Donovan, MBA’86, George Lundin, JD’54 Sandra Steele, MLA’05, and Patrick Donovan, MBA’85 Barry L. MacLean and John Steele, MBA’96 income arrangements • complimentary admission to Harper Lectures, Carol Duncan, AB’58, AM’60, Thomas Magee, AB’81 Rebecca Wilson Stein, AB’93 and Andrew Hemingway Eric and Barb Malès James Stirling • invitations to exclusive University events, to support the Scott Edelstein, LAB’83, and Anedi Edelstein Elizabeth Mandel‑Carley, AM’68 Charles Strickler, MBA’97 including the annual Phoenix Society Deana Elwell, MBA’80 Susan Maren, AB’75 Alexis Strongin, AB’80, SM’82, MD’84, University of James H. Eraker, SM’71, PhD’81 Fred A. Mauck, JD’62, and Martha P. Mauck and Steven Strongin II, AB’79, AM’82 luncheon, and Eric Etu, MBA’09, and Liza Etu Pearl Maxey and Rick Maxey David Terman, LAB’51, AB’55, SB’56, MD’59 Janet Fahey and Richard Vance Roxane McKay, MD’70 Virginia Tobiason, CER’02 Chicago. Such gifts • personalized assistance from gift planning Roger Fink, AB’63 Marsha Meskan and Stephen Meskan Preston Torbert, AM’70, PhD’73 professionals. Wilbur Franklin Nancy Meyrich and Richard P. Krasnow Hazel Vespa, AM’68, and Carl Vespa, AB’49* provide important Joseph Garcia, MBA’88 G. Michael Moebs, MBA’75 Anne Wedemeyer, MD, JD Richard Gates, MBA’72 Venkat Mothkur, LAB’00 Donald Weidemann, AB’75, MBA’76, ways to strengthen Anne Glass and Mitchell Glass, AB’73, MD’77 Donald William Musser, PhD’81 and Jennifer Weidemann Become a member today. and sustain the Richard Graf, AB’79, AM’80 William Odell, SM’56, MD’56, Joan Wennstrom Bennett, SM’64, PhD’67 Visit phoenixsociety.uchicago.edu/join David Grawemeyer, JD’89 and Margaret Odell David Wetzel, AM’74, PhD’76 Herman Greene, THM’68, MDV’98, John Odgen, MD’71 Robert Wollmann, PhD’68, MD’69, University’s future. Email [email protected] and Sandra Greene Thomas P. O’Toole Jr., MBA’73 and Richard Sessions, AM’72 Ellen Grimes and John Grimes Mary Ott, SM’67, PhD’71, and Edward Ott Meredith Lee Young, MBA’83, Call 866.241.9802 John Groh, AM’68, PhD’72, and Nancy Groh Peter Parshall, AM’67, PhD’74, and John Francis Chmura Kirsten Gronbjerg, AM’70, PhD’74 and Linda Parshall Adam Zelitzky, MLA’12 Susan Guber, AB’60 Gerald Picus, SB’47, SM’50, PhD’54, Edward Hamburg, PhD’82, and Joy Picus and Stacey Hamburg John Polking, SM’61, PhD’66 *Deceased 60 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

AlumniNews_Summer18_v15.indd 60 7/25/18 3:02 PM HONOR Phoenix Society members lead the way in supporting the University’s students, ROLL faculty, resources, and facilities. The names below represent new members welcomed into the society from July 1, 2017, through June 30, 2018.

All names are listed per member request and also located in the online Leaders in Philanthropy Honor Rolls at give.uchicago.edu/leadersinphilanthropy.

Anonymous (10) Edward Hamlin, AB’81, and Paula Hamlin Henrietta Bartizal Pons, MBA’79 Susan Albin John Mark Hansen and Dana Saowalak Suzanne Rague, MBA’74 Carole Artman‑Hodge, MBA’79, Thomas Heberlein, AB’67, Shulamit Ran and Abraham Lotan and James Hodge, AM’75, AM’77, PhD’79 and Elizabeth Thomson Marjorie Rapp, AB’51, AM’54 J. Marshall Ash, SB’61, SM’63, PhD’66, Susanna Hecht, LAB’68, AB’72 Margo Reich, AB’70 and Alison Ash Janet Helman and Robert Helman Richard Rendine, MBA’63, and Linda Rendine Jack Barbera, AB’68, AM’69, PhD’76 John Heneghan, MBA’96 Henry Renken, MBA’77 Jane Engle Berlin, AM’52 Kathryn Herndon, AB’55, Barbara Rogers, AM’89, Michael R. Bernique, AM’70,* and Robert Herndon, AB’55 and Christopher Rogers, MBA’90 and Michele B. Bernique George Hersh, AB’80, MBA’82, Thorn Rosenthal, LAB’69, JD’75 Beth Boland, AB’85, JD’88, and Patricia Hersh Michael Rosepiler, MBA’94, and Peggy Qin You can become a lifetime member by and Robert Boland, AB’83, MBA’87 John Hutchason, MBA’71 Janet Rotner and Philip Rotner funding a life‑income gift or simply notifying Phyllis Brauer, MST’80 William Jackman, MBA’95 Sharon Rowley, MBA’79, Montague Brown, AB’59, MBA’60, John G. Jacobs, JD’72, and Craig Rowley, MBA’78 us that you’ve planned a gift to the University and Barbara McCool and Betty C. Jacobs, JD’72 Randi Rubovits‑Seitz in one of the following ways: Dennis Miles Campbell, MBA’78 Stasha Jain, AB’93 Paul Schollmeier, AB’69, AM’74, PhD’82 Amy Carbone, AB’83, Joseph Jannotta, MBA’67,* and Gina Jannotta Barbara Schubert • included the University in your will or trust and Paul Carbone, AB’83 Pamela Johnson and Daniel McDonald, PhD’80 Nicholas Carras, AB’84, and Kathleen Carras Annette Kadar, PhB’47 Mady Wechsler Segal, AM’67, PhD’73, • named the University as a beneficiary of Andrea Christian‑Michaels, AM’79, Sharon M. Keigher, AM’71, PhD’85 and David R. Segal, AM’63, PhD’67 and Stephen Christian‑Michaels, AM’79 Thomas Kelly Michael Seibold, AM’80, and Maurice Peterson a retirement plan, life insurance policy, or Julia Cissel, AB’83 Ryan Klabunde, MBA’97 Deming Sherman, JD’68 The Phoenix Society financial account James Clark, MBA’84 Geraldine Krasner, AM’68, Deborah Sifferlen, MBA’96, David Coplen, AB’78 and Ronald Krasner and Joseph Sifferlen, MBA’93 honors individuals Dana Corman, AM’72 Joan Lascelle, AB’60, AM’64 Byron Smith, MBA’86, and Beth Ann Smith Thomas W. Coyle, MBA’71, and Sally S. Coyle Nancy Leipzig, SM’80, Frank Smith who make estate As a member, you will receive benefits Natalie Dandekar, AB’64, PhD’70 and Bernard Leipzig, SB’76, PhD’82 Jean Maclean Snyder, LAB’59, AB’63, JD’79 Peter Dawson John Longwell Jr., MD’67, and Helen Wang Allan Spradling, SB’71 commitments or life- including but not limited to Mary Lynn Donovan, MBA’86, George Lundin, JD’54 Sandra Steele, MLA’05, and Patrick Donovan, MBA’85 Barry L. MacLean and John Steele, MBA’96 income arrangements • complimentary admission to Harper Lectures, Carol Duncan, AB’58, AM’60, Thomas Magee, AB’81 Rebecca Wilson Stein, AB’93 and Andrew Hemingway Eric and Barb Malès James Stirling • invitations to exclusive University events, to support the Scott Edelstein, LAB’83, and Anedi Edelstein Elizabeth Mandel‑Carley, AM’68 Charles Strickler, MBA’97 including the annual Phoenix Society Deana Elwell, MBA’80 Susan Maren, AB’75 Alexis Strongin, AB’80, SM’82, MD’84, University of James H. Eraker, SM’71, PhD’81 Fred A. Mauck, JD’62, and Martha P. Mauck and Steven Strongin II, AB’79, AM’82 luncheon, and Eric Etu, MBA’09, and Liza Etu Pearl Maxey and Rick Maxey David Terman, LAB’51, AB’55, SB’56, MD’59 Janet Fahey and Richard Vance Roxane McKay, MD’70 Virginia Tobiason, CER’02 Chicago. Such gifts • personalized assistance from gift planning Roger Fink, AB’63 Marsha Meskan and Stephen Meskan Preston Torbert, AM’70, PhD’73 professionals. Wilbur Franklin Nancy Meyrich and Richard P. Krasnow Hazel Vespa, AM’68, and Carl Vespa, AB’49* provide important Joseph Garcia, MBA’88 G. Michael Moebs, MBA’75 Anne Wedemeyer, MD, JD Richard Gates, MBA’72 Venkat Mothkur, LAB’00 Donald Weidemann, AB’75, MBA’76, ways to strengthen Anne Glass and Mitchell Glass, AB’73, MD’77 Donald William Musser, PhD’81 and Jennifer Weidemann Become a member today. and sustain the Richard Graf, AB’79, AM’80 William Odell, SM’56, MD’56, Joan Wennstrom Bennett, SM’64, PhD’67 Visit phoenixsociety.uchicago.edu/join David Grawemeyer, JD’89 and Margaret Odell David Wetzel, AM’74, PhD’76 Herman Greene, THM’68, MDV’98, John Odgen, MD’71 Robert Wollmann, PhD’68, MD’69, University’s future. Email [email protected] and Sandra Greene Thomas P. O’Toole Jr., MBA’73 and Richard Sessions, AM’72 Ellen Grimes and John Grimes Mary Ott, SM’67, PhD’71, and Edward Ott Meredith Lee Young, MBA’83, Call 866.241.9802 John Groh, AM’68, PhD’72, and Nancy Groh Peter Parshall, AM’67, PhD’74, and John Francis Chmura Kirsten Gronbjerg, AM’70, PhD’74 and Linda Parshall Adam Zelitzky, MLA’12 Susan Guber, AB’60 Gerald Picus, SB’47, SM’50, PhD’54, Edward Hamburg, PhD’82, and Joy Picus and Stacey Hamburg John Polking, SM’61, PhD’66 *Deceased the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 61

AlumniNews_Summer18_v15.indd 61 7/25/18 3:02 PM IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO BECOME A DOCTOR • Intensive, full-time preparation for medical school in one year • Early acceptance programs at select medical schools—more than any other postbac program • Supportive, individual academic and premedical advising VISIT US AT WWW.BRYNMAWR.EDU/POSTBAC [email protected] 610-526-7350 A BRYN MAWR COLLEGE sucker for science.

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AlumniNews_Summer18_v15.indd 69 7/25/18 3:08 PM College, the University of Arizona, and Duke firm FMC Corporation in 1952, serving as DEATHS University before joining UChicago in 1975, CEO from 1971 until his retirement in 1991. where he served from 1978 to 1981 as associate An active civic leader and philanthropist, he dean of the Graduate Division of the Social served on Argonne National Laboratory’s FACULTY AND STAFF Sciences and master of the Social Sciences governing board, chaired the Hoover Insti- Collegiate Division and twice chaired the tution’s board of overseers, was chair of the Hellmut Fritzsche, the Louis Block Profes- Department of Political Science. An expert board of the National Museum of Natural sor Emeritus in Physics, of Tucson, AZ, died on Japanese government and the bureaucrat- History, and was a life director of the Lyric June 17. He was 91. An experimental physicist ic state, he authored such books asMinisters of Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Botanic who made major contributions to modern elec- Modernization: Elite Mobility in the Meiji Res- Garden. He is survived by three daughters tronics, Fritzsche chaired the Department of toration, 1868–1873 (1964) and Cages of Reason: and six grandchildren. Physics from 1977 to 1986 and oversaw The Rise of the Rational State in France, Japan, the building of the Kersten Physics Teach- the United States, and Great Britain (1993). 1940s ing Center. His experimental research on He is survived by his wife, Pauline; three amorphous semiconductors led to techno- daughters, including Andrea J. Silberman, Eunice “Ruddy” Hale Smith, AB’43, died logical advances in computer memory, solar LAB’82; and three grandchildren. February 4 in Lake Forest, IL. She was 95. panels, and what would become flat-screen Nicholas Rudall, professor emeritus of Smith was a reporter for the Chicago Daily televisions. A member of the UChicago classics and founding artistic director of News during World War II and turned her faculty for nearly four decades, he was also Court Theatre, died June 19 in Tucson, attention to civic and charitable work in the vice president of United Solar Corporation AZ. He was 78. A scholar and renowned 1960s. She served on the boards of Planned and a consultant for Energy Conversion translator of Greek drama, Rudall taught Parenthood, Lake Forest College, Hull Devices. His honors included the Alexan- in the Department of Classics from 1966 House, and Know Your Chicago, a UChicago der von Humboldt Award and the Oliver E. until his retirement four decades later. As program in civic awareness and participation Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize. Court Theatre’s artistic director from 1972 now sponsored by the University’s Graham His wife, Sybille Fritzsche, JD’68, PhD’95, to 1994, he developed the institution from School of Continuing Liberal and Profession- died June 17 (see page 78). He is survived by an amateur community-based theater into al Studies. She is survived by three daughters, two daughters, Susanne Fritzsche Olkkola, a professional company, overseeing the a son, and eight grandchildren. LAB’81, and Katja Fritzsche, LAB’88; two establishment of its permanent home on Olivia (Coolidge) Dworkin, AB’45, died sons, Peter Fritzsche, LAB’77, and Thomas UChicago’s campus in 1981. His published April 28, 2017, in Meredith, NH. She was Fritzsche, LAB’80; and eight grandchildren. translations and adaptations included 94. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Dwor- Kali Charan Bahl, associate professor emer- ancient works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, kin taught political economics at Hobart and itus, of Chicago, died March 29. He was 90. Euripides, and Aristophanes, as well as William Smith Colleges, where she met her Bahl joined the Department of South Asian modern texts by Christopher Marlowe, husband. They later ran a home for troubled Languages and Civilizations in 1967, shortly Henrik Ibsen, and Georges Feydeau. He is Jewish youth in Germantown, PA. For more after its inception as a formal program of study survived by a daughter and extended family. than 25 years she was the owner of Roseway at the University. Over his 30-year career, he Paula Jaudes, professor of pediatrics at Books, a used bookstore in Boston. Her hus- led the development of the department’s lan- UChicago Medicine, died June 16 in Chicago. band, Harry W. Dworkin, AM’52, died in guage program, helping establish the study She was 71. A member of the Department of 1996. She is survived by a daughter, two of Hindi at UChicago. A specialist in the Pediatrics since 1975, Jaudes became medi- sons, a brother, and three grandchildren. Hindi, Rajasthani, Munda, and Punjabi lan- cal director of the Illinois Department of Gerald Reaven, AB’47, SB’50, MD’53, died guages, he authored several linguistics refer- Children and Family Services in 1993 and February 12 in Stanford, CA. He was 89. An ence works and guides, including A Reference also served as president and CEO of La Ra- endocrinologist and a professor emeritus at Grammar of Hindi (1967), as well as numerous bida Children’s Hospital from 1996 to 2011. the Stanford University School of Medicine, articles on Indian literature and folklore. He In addition to her role as associate director Reaven established insulin resistance as a is survived by his wife, Vimla; a daughter, of outreach at UChicago’s Center for Global cause of type 2 diabetes and demonstrated Vipula Bahl Purcell, LAB’81; two sons,Vinit Health, she served the American Academy its role in a group of metabolic abnormali- Bahl, LAB’76, and Chandra Shekhar Bahl, of Pediatrics as an executive committee ties that he called “Syndrome X,” associ- LAB’83, AB’88; and five grandchildren. member of the Council on Foster Care, ated with cardiovascular disease. Honors Louis Cohen, SB’48, MD’53, professor Adoption, and Kinship Care. She is sur- for his research included the Banting Medal emeritus of cardiology at UChicago Medi- vived by a sister and extended family. for Scientific Achievement from the Ameri- cine, died January 10 in Chicago. He was 89. Daniel Luchins, associate professor emeri- can Diabetes Association and the William S. In his six decades as a researcher, physician, tus of psychiatry, died May 2 in Chicago. He Middleton Award from the Department of and teacher at the University, Cohen studied was 69. During his 25 years on the UChicago Veterans Affairs. He is survived by his wife, the chemistry of compounds now used to treat faculty, Luchins served as chief of adult psy- Eve (Perl) Reaven, PhD’54; two daughters; a range of cardiac problems, helped create chiatry, director of public psychiatry, and and a son, Peter D. Reaven, MD’84. the medical center’s first coronary care unit, director of both the Geriatrics Psychiatry Merrill A. Freed, AB’49, JD’53, died January and designed the Department of Medicine’s Clinic and the Center for Public Mental 29 in Highland Park, IL. He was 88. After course on clinical pathophysiology and thera- Health Services Research. He was also a one year in India on a Fulbright Scholarship peutics. He also contributed to advances in staff psychiatrist at Jesse Brown Veterans and two years in the US Army, Freed spent treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He Affairs Medical Center and its Auburn- his career as a lawyer with the Chicago firm was recognized by the Department of Medi- Gresham Community Based Outpatient D’Ancona & Pflaum, now merged with cine with a Distinguished Service Award in Clinic. His research included studies of Seyfarth Shaw. He is survived by his wife, 2007. His wife, Emili Cohen, CER’84, died depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s Janet (Bezark) Freed, LAB’49, AM’58; two in 2013. He is survived by a daughter,Ruth C. disease, and human brain development. daughters; two sons; three brothers, includ- Kubicek, LAB’73; two sons,Curtis R. Cohen, ing Stanley A. Freed, PhB’49, and Frederick LAB’71, and Fredric A. Cohen, LAB’78; TRUSTEE D. Freed, AB’57; and five grandchildren. eight grandchildren, including Naomi S. George K. Hendrick Jr., A B’49, M BA’49, Cody, AB’99; and six great-grandchildren. Robert H. Malott, University of Chicago died February 19 in Chicago. He was 94. Bernard S. Silberman, professor emeritus trustee emeritus, died April 4 in Palo Alto, After serving in the US Army during World of political science, died April 28 in Chicago. CA. He was 91. A World War II US Navy War II, Hendrick became a partner in the He was 87. Silberman taught at Oberlin veteran, Malott joined the manufacturing investment banking firm Blunt, Ellis &

76 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

Layout_Deaths_Summer18_v6.indd 76 7/25/18 3:35 PM Simmons. He went on to become a founding Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. He is survived Raymond K. Baker, AB’57, AM’60, of partner in the venture capital firm Fronte- by his wife, Christine; two daughters; two Wilmette, IL, died December 26. He was nac and later founded the merchant bank- sons; a sister; and six grandchildren. 82. Baker taught philosophy at the City Col- ing firm Hendrick, Urgo. He is survived by Frank Ezra Levy, AM’54, of Fort Lee, NJ, leges of Chicago and worked as a criminal three daughters; a son, George K. Hendrick died April 23, 2017. He was 86. A profes- defense attorney. In retirement he ushered III, MBA’93; 11 grandchildren; and three sional cellist and composer, Levy taught for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is great-grandchildren. for a time at Brooklyn College and the New survived by his wife, Deborah; three sons, Carl Vespa, AB’49, died March 8 in Chi- School. After stints with the St. Louis Sym- including Aaron Evan Baker, AB’81; and cago. He was 87. Vespa worked at Argonne phony Orchestra, the Feldman Chamber three grandchildren. National Laboratory, Honeywell, and Bell Music Society, and the Halifax Symphony Keith D. Hage, PhD’57, of Leduc, Alberta, Labs. In 1963 he founded NanoFast, which Orchestra, he became principal cellist at died December 11. He was 91. Professor manufactures precision electronic scientific Radio City Music Hall, where he remained emeritus of geography at the University of measurement equipment. Survivors include for more than four decades while also play- Alberta, Hage taught there from 1967 until his wife, Hazel M. Vespa, AM’68; three ing with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the his retirement in 1985. He studied urban stepdaughters; two stepsons; and many New York Philharmonic. He is survived by meteorology and prairie weather patterns grandchildren and great-grandchildren. two daughters, a stepdaughter, a stepson, a and was a fellow of the American Meteoro- brother, and three step-grandchildren. logical Society. He is survived by his wife, 1950s Philip M. Roth, AM’55, died May 22 in New Ollie; two daughters; a son; five grandchil- York City. He was 85. One of the preeminent dren; and four great-grandchildren. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, AM’51, PhD’56, American novelists of the second half of the Robert H. Gerstein, JD’59, of Highland died March 2 in Providence, RI. She was 87. 20th century, Roth won the National Book Park, IL, died March 29. He was 82. A A leading scholar of the English Renaissance Award for his debut collection, Goodbye, real estate lawyer who also worked as a de- who advanced the study of 17th-century Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959), and veloper in the Chicago metropolitan area, women’s writing, Lewalski was the first again for Sabbath’s Theater (1995); achieved Gerstein started his legal career at the firm woman to receive tenure and hold an endowed literary celebrity with the best-selling novel Yates, Holleb & Mickelson, which later chair in English at Brown University and the Portnoy’s Complaint (1969); and later re - became Holleb, Gerstein & Glass. Over first to do the same at Harvard University, ceived the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his decades he helped develop office, retail, where she taught since 1982. An authority 1997 novel American Pastoral. Other honors and residential projects on Michigan Av- on John Milton, she published such works as included the National Humanities Medal, enue and in Lincoln Park while promoting Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century the National Medal of the Arts, and the Man low- and moderate-income housing in Hyde Religious Lyric (1979) and Writing Women Booker International Prize. (See “Talking Park, Highland Park, and the University of in Jacobean England (1993). Her husband, Back,” page 30.—Ed.) Illinois at Chicago area. He is survived by Kenneth F. Lewalski, AM’52, PhD’60, died Lawrence Kaplan, PhD’56, died March his wife, Helene (Paul) Gerstein, AB’58; in 2006. She is survived by a son. 6 in Washington, DC. He was 91. A bota- a daughter; two sons, including Mark D. Peter G. Peterson, MBA’51, died March nist who specialized in the origin and cul- Gerstein, JD’84; and eight grandchildren. 20 in New York City. He was 91. Peter- tivation of beans in the Americas, Kaplan Germain G. Grisez, PhD’59, of Emmits- son served as an assistant on international taught at Roosevelt University for nearly a burg, MD, died February 1. He was 88. economic affairs and commerce secretary decade before becoming a founding member Professor emeritus of Christian ethics at under President Richard M. Nixon before in 1965 of the University of Massachusetts Mount St. Mary’s University, Grisez pre- becoming chair and CEO of the Wall Street Boston campus, helping to start its biology viously taught at Georgetown University firm Lehman Brothers in 1973. He cofound- department. He taught there until his re- and Campion College and wrote extensively ed the alternative investments firm the tirement in 1995 and served as editor of the on Catholic theology. In Contraception and Blackstone Group in 1985. In several books journal Economic Botany. He is survived by the Natural Law (1964) and other writings, and through his support of the Peter G. Pe- three daughters, including Martha Kaplan, he defended the Catholic Church’s teach- terson Foundation, he promoted arguments AM’81, PhD’88; and two granddaughters, ings on contraception. His three-volume for fiscal responsibility and limits to federal including E. Kaplan-Kelly, AB’14. work The Way of the Lord Jesus (1983–1997) entitlement spending. He is survived by his Franz C. Snyder, AB’56, died April 25 in assembled teachings in moral theology and wife, Joan Ganz Cooney, a daughter, four Berkeley, CA. He was 81. A US Army vet- helped articulate what became known as sons, a brother, and nine grandchildren. eran, Snyder taught English at Richmond the new natural law theory. Survivors in- Boyd R. “Bob” Burkhardt, 12GC’52, died High School in Richmond, CA, and Al- clude three sons, 12 grandchildren, and 23 May 7 in Tucson, AZ. He was 84. After bany High School in Albany, CA. For more great-grandchildren. serving in the US Air Force as chief of than 20 years he was a volunteer usher for Judith E. Rosenblatt, AB’59, of Jackson- surgery at Lajes Air Base in the Azores, the Aurora Theatre Company, the Berkeley ville, FL, died December 26. She was 79. Burkhardt moved with his family to Tucson Repertory Theatre, and UC Berkeley’s Cal Rosenblatt taught elementary school in and established a surgical facility next to the Performances. His wife, Mary Ann “Zoe” Chicago and Centralia, MO, before work- Tucson Medical Center. A specialist in plas- (Anday) Snyder, LAB’52, AB’56, died in ing as an editor for state and local boards of tic surgery for nearly four decades, he served 1982. He is survived by two daughters, a the League of Women Voters of Minnesota. as president of both the Pima County Medi- sister, and two grandchildren. She later embarked on a two-decade career cal Society and the Rocky Mountain Plas- Arthur L. Waldman, AB’56, of Pinecrest, at the University of Minnesota Immigration tic Surgery Society. He is survived by two FL, died March 26. He was 81. After earn- History Research Center. She is survived daughters, a son, and five grandchildren. ing his medical degree, Waldman became by two sons and eight grandchildren. Sheldon M. Gordon, PhB’52, died Sep- the first neurologist in Middletown, CT, tember 28 in North Palm Beach, FL. He where he served as chief of neurology at 1960s was 88. After a stint as a runner on the Middlesex Hospital for 31 years. An assis- Chicago Board of Trade, Gordon became tant clinical professor at the University of John Cashman, SB’60, died March 3 in a real estate developer who helped pioneer Connecticut Medical School, he also taught Wilmington, NC. He was 79. A diplomat entertainment retail. Beginning in the early in its affiliated family practice residency at of the American Urological Association 1970s, his major development projects were Middlesex Hospital. He is survived by his and a fellow of the American College of innovative retail complexes such as Pearl- wife, Phyllis; three sons, including Brian Surgeons, Cashman was the head of urology ridge Center in Aiea, HI; the Beverly Cen- Pearce Waldman, AB’86, MBA’87; a sis- at the US Naval Hospital in Charleston, SC, ter in Los Angeles; and the Forum Shops at ter; and seven grandchildren. before moving to Wilmington in 1972 to join

the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 77

Layout_Deaths_Summer18_v6.indd 77 7/26/18 5:53 PM the private practice Hanover Urological, Andrea Farkas Patenaude, AB’67, of as a member of its board of directors. He where he remained until his retirement. Brookline, MA, died January 29. She was taught macroeconomics and microeconom- He also served as president of the New 71. A clinical psychologist and a leader in the ics at the University of Lima and was indus- Hanover-Pender County Medical Society field of psychosocial oncology, Patenaude try minister of Peru in 1983, later serving and as chair of the Department of Surgery began her career in the Department of Psy- as that nation’s minister of economy and at the New Hanover Regional Medical chiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital and finance. He is survived by his wife, Blanca; Center. He is survived by his wife, Diane later worked as a clinician at the Dana-Farber two daughters; and a son. Cashman, AB’60; a daughter; a son; two Cancer Institute, where she served as direc- Eli Leon, AM’79, died March 6 in Emery- sisters; a brother; and six grandchildren. tor of the Jimmy Fund Clinic from 2000 to ville, CA. He was 82. A psychotherapist in Miriam D. Balanoff, AB’61, JD’63, of Chica- 2011 and then as director of psychology private practice in Oakland, CA, for a time, go, died in September 2017. She was 91. After research and clinical service in the Center Leon started collecting African American operating a storefront legal practice in Chi- for Cancer Genetics and Prevention until quilts in the mid-1980s and became a promi- cago and teaching a course on women and law her retirement in 2017. She was also an as - nent curator of the self-taught art, receiv- at local colleges, Balanoff was elected in 1978 sociate professor of psychiatry at Harvard ing a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989 to to the first of two terms in the Illinois House Medical School and an attending psycholo- conduct research and expand his collection. of Representatives, where her advocacy for gist and psychosocial researcher at Brigham Known as a champion of quiltmaker Rosie economic and social causes included propos- and Women’s Hospital. She is survived by Lee Tompkins, he organized numerous ing legislation to protect workers facing plant her husband, Leonard; a daughter; and a exhibitions featuring his own collection closings. For 14 years, beginning in 1986, she sister. (See Alumni News, page 64.—Ed.) and also loaned works by Tompkins to the served as a judge on the Cook County Circuit Sybille Fritzsche, JD’68, PhD’95, of Whitney Museum of American Art for the Court. Her husband, Clement Balanoff, Tucson, AZ, died June 17. She was 87. A 2000 Whitney Biennial. Survivors include PhB’49, SB’58, died in 2002. She is survived civil rights lawyer in Chicago for nearly a sister and extended family. by a daughter, M. Jane Balanoff, AB’76; two three decades, Fritzsche served as a legal sons; nine grandchildren, including Clement counsel to the American Civil Liberties 1980s Balanoff, LAB’04, and Monica Balanoff, Union and later as executive director of the LAB’06; and a great-grandchild. Chicago Lawyers Committee for Equal Jeffrey C. Boulden, AB’82, died January 15 in Georgia L. Helmer, SB’63, PhD’82, died Rights under Law. In addition to teaching Peoria, IL. He was 57. Boulden served under- October 21 in Asheville, NC. She was 76. A law at DePaul University and Chicago-Kent privileged clients for more than two decades biochemist, Helmer worked as a research as- College of Law at the Illinois Institute of as an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation. sociate at North Carolina State University. Technology, she earned a doctorate as a An accomplished cook, he also enjoyed blues She later became a patent examiner with the scholar of Chinese history. Her husband, and jazz music and traveling to New Orleans. US Patent and Trademark Office, retiring Hellmut Fritzsche, the Louis Block Profes- He is survived by his father and a sister. in 2012 after more than a decade of service. sor Emeritus in Physics, died June 17 (see She is survived by her husband, Hollis D. page 76 ). She is survived by two daughters, 2000s Smith; two sisters; and a brother. Susanne Fritzsche Olkkola, LAB’81, and Jack K. Balcombe Jr., AB’65 (Class of Katja Fritzsche, LAB’88; two sons, Peter Erin Ashly Reynolds, AM’02, died March 1966), died December 30 in Lorimor, IA. Fritzsche, LAB’77, and Thomas Fritzsche, 30 after a sudden illness in Branson West, He was 73. Balcombe worked as a psycholo- LAB’80; and eight grandchildren. MO. She was 40. A licensed clinical social gist in Chicago before he and his wife pur- Margery Smith, AM’68, PhD’70, died worker, Reynolds operated her own coun- chased a farm near Lorimor in the late 1970s. March 14 in St. Paul, MN. She was 90. A seling practice, SEMS Treatment Services, He was a social worker at nursing homes in member of the Sisters of St. Joseph and a and was executive director of the Family Ac- Afton and Creston, IA. He is survived by his professor emerita of English at the College cess Center for Excellence of Boone County. wife, Sarah Frank; two daughters; a sister, of St. Catherine, Smith taught on the English She was also an assistant clinical professor Joan Balcombe, MD’80; and a grandson. faculty there from 1968 to 1993 before at the University of Missouri. Licensed Jerry Lee Schoemann, MBA’65, died serving as St. Catherine university archives as a minister in 2001, Reynolds was co- January 25 in Austin, TX. He was 78. director until her retirement in 2011. She pastor, with her husband, of Fifth Street Schoemann earned a degree in mechani- founded the Antonian Scholars Honors Christian Church in Columbia, MO, from cal engineering before studying business Program at St. Catherine and received the 2013 to 2017. Survivors include her husband, at UChicago. He led a long career as a busi- 2010–11 Alumnae Award. She is survived by Marcus; a daughter; a son; her mother and fa- ness professional in communications and extended family. ther; two grandmothers; and two brothers. marketing. He is survived by his wife, Zeke R. Upshaw, LAB’09, died March 26 of Ginger; three daughters; a son; a sister; and 1970s a sudden cardiac event in Grand Rapids, MI. 11 grandchildren. He was 26. A professional basketball player, Floy Agnes Naranjo Lee, PhD’66, died Amos R. Bien, AB’73, died of cancer No- Upshaw spent his NCAA career with the March 6 in Santa Fe, NM. She was 95. vember 19 in Williamsburg, VA. He was Illinois State University Redbirds and the Lee was a hematology technician on the 66. A population ecologist specializing in Hofstra University Pride. He was in his second Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, NM, be- responsible and sustainable tourism, Bien season with the Grand Rapids Drive, an NBA fore pursuing her doctorate in zoology. An was founder and CEO of Rara Avis Rain- G League team affiliated with the Detroit expert in cytogenetics and radiation biology, forest Lodge and Reserve in Costa Rica. Pistons. Survivors include his mother. she worked for a time at Argonne National He worked for the United Nations Envi- Laboratory, going on to serve as the direc- ronmental Programme, was a founding 2010s tor of the Department of Tissue Culture member of the Global Sustainable Tourism at the Pasadena Foundation for Medical Council, taught sustainable tourism at the Alan M. Swartz, SM’15, died unexpectedly Research, a senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Universidad de Cooperación Internacio- in his sleep May 12 in Vernon Hills, IL. He was Propulsion Laboratory, and a radiobiolo- nal, and served as lead assessor for the in - 31. Swartz was working toward his PhD in the gist in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s ternational nonprofit Forest Stewardship Department of Chemistry. He was a research Mammalian Biology Group. She helped Council. He is survived by three children, assistant in the laboratory of Jared Lewis, found the American Indian Science and two sisters, and four grandchildren. former assistant professor of chemistry, and Engineering Society and was a member of Ivan F. Rivera, AM’73, died February 11 in focused on the development of new catalysts. the Santa Clara Pueblo. She is survived by a Washington, DC. He was 71. An economist He is survived by a daughter, his mother and daughter and two grandchildren. with the World Bank Group, he also served father, two sisters, and a grandmother.

78 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

Layout_Deaths_Summer18_v6.indd 84 7/25/18 3:38 PM CHICAGO CLASSIFIEDS

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the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018 79

Classifieds_Summer 18_v3.indd 79 7/26/18 5:47 PM LITE OF THE MIND

Doodlecore

In his College classes, Benjamin Lorch, AB’93, AM’04, language, logic, lessons, and learnings,” Lorch recalls. His often surrounded his notes with doodles, and the more he notes reveal that under discussion that fall day in 1989 was enjoyed his professors, the better the chances his margina - Aristotle’s Poetics. lia included their likenesses. Among those teachers Lorch Have you saved your own course notes, and do they really liked—a far from unique sentiment among College contain any notable doodles? Scan and send them to us at alumni—was Herman Sinaiko, AB’47, PhD’61 (1929–2011). [email protected] and we’ll share a selec- Shown here are Lorch’s notes from Modes of Criticism, tion on our website.—Laura Demanski, AM’94 where Sinaiko impressed on the students taking the Gen - eral Studies in the Humanities course that “each disci- To learn more about Lorch’s memories of Sinaiko, pline, each science, and each way of thinking has its own visit mag.uchicago.edu/doodlecore.

80 the university of chicago magazine | summer 2018

UCH_LoTM_v2.indd 80 7/26/18 5:24 PM HEAD BACK TO SCHOOL WITH US!

The UChicago Alumni Association is proud to offer the Harper Lecture series, featuring University faculty speaking on critical topics to engaged alumni around the globe.

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