Alumni Review January 2012 Williams
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ALUMNI REVIEW January 2012 Williams A DEFINING DECADE 20 8 28 9 7 30 ALUMNI REVIEW Volume No. 106, Issue No. 4 Editor Student Assistant Amy T. Lovett Trillia Fidei-Bagwell ’12 Assistant Editor Design & Production departments Jennifer E. Grow David Edge Editorial Offices P.O. Box 676, Williamstown, MA 01267-0676, tel: 413.597.4278, fax: 413.597.4158, e-mail: [email protected], web: http://alumni.williams. Opinions & Expressions edu/alumnireview President Adam Falk discusses Address Changes/Updates Bio Records, 75 Park St., Williamstown, MA 01267-2114, tel: 413.597.4399, fax: 413.458.9808, e-mail: [email protected], expectations and change. … web: http://alumni.williams.edu/updatemyprofile Letters from readers. 4 Williams magazine (USPS No. 684-580) is published in August, September, December, January, March, April and June and distributed free of charge by Williams College for the Society of Alumni. Opinions expressed in this publication may not necessarily reflect those of Williams College or of the Society of Alumni. Scene & Herd Periodical postage paid at Williamstown, MA 01267 and additional mailing offices. News of Williams and beyond. 6 Postmaster: Send address changes to Williams magazine, 75 Park St., Williamstown, MA 01267-2114 Life of the Mind WILLIAMS COLLEGE Board of Trustees Renowned author and visiting Adam F. Falk, President • Gregory M. Avis ’80, Chairman of the Board • professor Aminatta Forna “reads” Keli Kaegi, Secretary to the Board Africa. … Nashville’s Marcus Barbara A. Austell ’75 • Thomas M. Balderston ’78 • Patrick F. Bassett ’70 • Eric L. Cochran ’82 • Michael R. Eisenson ’77 • O. Andreas Halvorsen ’86 • Hummon ’84 tells stories through Yvonne Hao ’95 • Stephen Harty ’73 • Joey Shaista Horn ’87 • Jonathan A. Kraft ’86 • Glenn D. Lowry ’76 • Robin Powell Mandjes ’82 • Fred Nathan Jr. ’83 music. … English professor Lawrence • Kate L. Queeney ’92 • Elizabeth Beshel Robinson ’90 • Robert G. Scott ’68 • William E. Simon Jr. ’73 • A. Clayton Spencer ’77 • Laurie J. Thomsen ’79 • Sarah Raab explains how to notice a poem. 26 Keohane Williamson ’84 • Gregory H. Woods ’91 • Christopher F. Giglio ’89, President, Society of Alumni, attends meetings by invitation of the Trustees 12 22 30 26 Williams features January 2012 A Sense of Self How the liberal arts shaped the life of Bicentennial Medalist Navjeet K. Bal ’84. 9 A Defining Decade On the cover Historian Michael Beschloss ’77 and President Emeritus President Jack Sawyer John Chandler discuss the leadership of Jack Sawyer. 12 1972 portrait by George Rebh ’73 The Red Jacket Go to back cover Piecing together an artifact of Williams history. 20 Community Roots www.facebook.com/williamscollege Twenty percent of Northern Berkshire households have limited access to nutritious food. Michael Gallagher ’06 twitter.com/williamscollege and his Square Roots Farm are helping to change that. 22 JANUARY 2012 | WILLIAMS ALUMNI REVIEW | 3 >> Click here for text only On Expectations and Change by President Adam Falk s the legacy of legendary professor Bob Gaudino reminds they can then go out into the world and make it a better place. A us, learning is often most powerful in times of discomfort That is how Williams, over time and over generations, brings and even pain. change to society as a whole. I’m confident that by harnessing I’m reminded of that as the Williams community has been our currently heightened energy we’ll effect a more rapid responding to the discovery of a horrible, racist message on a evolution of our college culture toward the day when the slights wall inside Prospect House. Photos of the events that followed, and injustices we’ve learned about recently are things of the along with directions to fuller coverage, are on p. 7. past. The work of fully realizing the community we aspire to is As the investigation into that incident continues, the college urgent, but for all our commitment, history teaches us that the is engaged in serious conversations about larger campus issues realization of our goals will be neither quick nor easy. and social challenges, Our college’s evolution, especially over the last half-century, having learned more fully in has been defined in large part by this kind of community-driven the wake of this one act the leadership. In fact, today’s Williams was shaped tremendously extent to which instances of by a string of fundamental and farsighted college decisions over discrimination happen here, several years, beginning in the early 1960s, that led Williams to: as they do everywhere. • increase in size by 50 percent We have seen a powerful • begin to admit women and to diversify the student and thoughtful response body by race, ethnicity and religion among a broad cross- • overhaul the curriculum and section of students, faculty, • move from a fraternity-based to a house-based staff, alumni and parents, system of residential life. and I’ve benefited from We intend to celebrate these 50-year anniversaries, as befits the resulting deeper sense a college, with scrutiny and analysis. of the college’s cultural We’ve begun by asking historian Michael Beschloss ’77 to evolution over the past half interview President Emeritus John Chandler, who as dean of JUSTIN KNIGHT century. the faculty and then as a Williams board member was a central We at Williams expect eyewitness to these times. Their conversation (beginning on a great deal from each other and from this place, and we do p. 12) focuses on the leadership style of Jack Sawyer, who served not shirk from holding ourselves to higher standards than we as president during those years. see in our society at large. When our expectations aren’t met, It’s clear, though, that changes of this size were not the it rightfully upsets us. We know racism exists in America, and work of one person; many people and factors played roles. we know race is an issue that’s too rarely talked about honestly Over the next few years we’ll have conversations on campus and productively. But that’s not what we want for Williams. Our and in these pages that explore the broader social context, aim, as I said in my remarks at an all-campus forum Nov. 14, the campus dynamic and the individual people and processes is a Williams community that is free of racism, free of sexism, that came to bear. free of homophobia, free of fear. There’s nothing we can aspire Understanding more deeply these important parts of our to that is more important to who we are and to what Williams past will inform the essential work we do together now to help is. The idea, of course, is not only to create that community on Williams continually evolve to meet the future. campus but also to foster in all of our students the sense that 4 | WILLIAMS ALUMNI REVIEW | JANUARY 2012 OPINIONS & EXPRESSIONS n >> Click here for text only ALUMNI REVIEW September 2011 LETTERS ethany McLean ’92 (“Devils in the among his dispersed classmates, I was Details,” September 2011) is trying to struck: What an unexpected reminder that, RELIEF FOR B ANXIOUS P ARENTS wake Americans up to what is being done even if as students we were too distracted to our country. Something is profoundly by the demands of the day to notice, we wrong when so much wealth is directed walked among what legends left behind. The Williams Alumni Review welcomes letters into speculation and asset capture instead Packed in among the accoutrements of relating to articles or items that have appeared of real asset creation. We have forgotten the everyday are signs, like Mike’s jerseys, in recent issues of the magazine. Please email that the economy is a tool, a set of lives well lived. I’d look forward comments to [email protected] of organizing principles enforced details to reading more stories like this or send them to the Alumni Review, P.O. Box with laws, to provide the Utilitarian that rise from the college’s dusty corners, 676, Williamstown, MA 01267-0676. Letters “greatest good for the greatest number.” reminding us of Williams at its best. may be edited for clarity and space. Instead, we made it a god, a Moloch to —Amanda Korman ’10, Pittsfield, Mass. which we sacrifice the old, the young, the weak, the ill, the poor, to feed its ike Reily ’64 was the president of n “The Community We Aspire to Be” insatiable maw. Laws can be changed and MAlpha Delta Phi when I joined and I(June 2011), President Falk notes the the economy returned to servitude instead when he was clearly ill. I was unfortunate greater diversity of students and that of rapacious mastery. This is the task of that I did not get to know community neither diversity nor tolerance our generation. Bethany and courageous him better; nonetheless I alone are enough. He says folk like her are showing the way. was impressed that he carried himself the College’s “mission to prepare —Ron Hodges ’80, Montgomery Village, Md. with quiet dignity. I want to share the leaders must surely include engaging information that Hodgkin’s disease is students with the diverse society they uring my time at Williams I was today highly curable in greater than 80 will graduate to serve.” Left unanswered Doften surprised by how limited percent of the cases. The overwhelming though, is how. the institutional memory of dignity likelihood is that today Mike would Neither study abroad nor community students, myself included, could have been cured to go on to play service programs are enough. Falk’s be. Because much of what we knew about further games and live a full life.