SUMMER 2013 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE CAN SUPERSYMMETRY EXPLAIN THE UNIVERSE? C1_FrontCover_final.indd C1 6/28/13 4:07 PM your columbia connection. The perfect midtown location: • Network with Columbia alumni • Attend exciting events and programs • Dine with a client • Conduct business meetings • Take advantage of overnight rooms and so much more. APPLY FOR MEMBERSHIP TODAY! 15 WEST 43 STREET NEW YORK, NY 10036 TEL: 212.719.0380 in residence at The Princeton Club of New York www.columbiaclub.org C2_CUCNY.indd C2 6/21/13 10:05 AM CONTENTS Summer 2013 62214 DEPARTMENTS FEATURES 3 Letters 14 Heady Collisions By David J. Craig 6 College Walk What were conditions like .000000001 seconds Falcone’s stitches and seams . Tiles fi t after the Big Bang? Columbia scientists think the for King’s . The steam engine that could . answer could hold a great secret of the universe. Finnish your plate . Guantánamo Now . Taps for a senator 22 Street-Beat Confi dential By Paul Hond 44 News Muckraking journalist Juan González fi nds New deans appointed for international and stories where others fear to tread. public affairs, engineering, and dental schools . Ronald O. Perelman gives $100 million to 28 Without Walls B-school . Campbell Sports Center opens . By David Shapiro Lions rack up Ivy and national championships Six young artists create daring new works, by any media necessary. 52 Newsmakers 36 Shards of Love 54 Explorations By Meghan O’Rourke Sharon Olds, winner of the 56 Reviews 2013 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, writes poems 63 Classifi eds from the inside out. 64 Finals 40 To Deter and Protect Harold Brown, defense secretary under President Jimmy Carter, talks détente, defense, and Damascus. Cover illustration by Keith Negley 28 1 ToC.indd 1 6/28/13 11:29 AM IN THIS ISSUE COLUMBIA MAGAZINE Executive Vice President for University Development and Alumni Relations Fred Van Sickle Mary Habstritt ’89LS is the president of the Lilac Preservation Publisher Project and a freelance historical consultant who researches and Tim McGowan interprets industrial sites and maritime topics. She is the founder Chief Editorial Adviser of the Historic Ships Coalition, an alliance of New York City’s Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS historic vessels. >> Page 8 Editor in Chief Michael B. Shavelson Managing Editor Rebecca Shapiro Senior Editor Ira Katznelson ’66CC is the Ruggles Professor of Political David J. Craig Science and History at Columbia. His books include Liberal Associate Editor Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (with Andreas Paul Hond Kalyvas) and When Affi rmative Action Was White. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Copy Chief Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN >> Page 56 Contributing Editor Eric McHenry Art Director Eson Chan Sharon Olds ’72GSAS has received the Pulitzer Prize, the Assistant to the Editor Michael Gillis National Book Critics Circle Award, and the San Francisco State University Poetry Center Book Award. She teaches in Editorial Assistant Elisabeth Sherman the graduate creative-writing program at NYU. >> Page 36 Mailing Address Columbia Magazine Columbia Alumni Center 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 New York, NY 10025 Tel. 212-851-4155 Fax 212-851-1950 [email protected] John Parsons is a professor of physics at Columbia. Since www.magazine.columbia.edu 1994, he has helped to lead the European Organization for Address and Archive Assistance Nuclear Research’s ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron [email protected] 212-851-4155 Collider, outside Geneva. He contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson. >> Page 14 To update your address online, visit alumni.columbia.edu/directory, or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). Advertising: 212-851-4155 [email protected] To download our advertising brochure or David Shapiro ’01CC is an artist, writer, and fi ne-art appraiser. submit a classifi ed advertisement online, He is the founding editor of Museo, an online contemporary- visit www.magazine.columbia.edu/advertise. art publication. His work has been featured in the MoMA PS1 Columbia Magazine is published for show Expo 1: New York. >> Page 28 alumni and friends of Columbia by the Offi ce of Alumni and Development. © 2013 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York JÖRG MEYER JÖRG 2 Columbia Summer 2013 02 Contributors.indd 2 7/1/13 5:20 PM letters READER V. LEADER But vote stealing is epidemic. Something and replace it with a biomedical research I read with interest your Spring 2013 cover has to be done about it. center, Jealous organized a one-day protest article profi ling NAACP president Benjamin Jealous’s support of same-sex marriage is at that led to his one-semester suspension.” Jealous (“Justice’s Son”). On the cover, and variance with God’s precept (Leviticus 20:13). Jealous was not punished for organiz- again in the text of the article, the NAACP How does he justify this? Jealous opposes the ing a protest. He did that lots of times at is called the oldest civil-rights organiza- death penalty. Genesis 9:6 informs us that Columbia without any scrutiny or punish- tion in the United States. With respect, those who shed blood, by man shall their ment. The College only disciplined Jealous, the National Rifl e Association, founded in blood be shed. Implicit is that it is to be done rightly, when he seized a building during 1871, is thirty-eight years older than the by those duly authorized by government. the review period before exams. NAACP, and claims in excess of four million Jealous also laments stop-and-frisk, which Even if the school chooses to lionize Jeal- members against the NAACP’s 500,000. As he claims is unduly exercised against blacks. ous for his more recent activities, it should such, the NRA has a much better claim to This is a practical matter, because blacks are not assist him in rewriting the history of his the title of oldest and largest American civil- disproportionately involved in crime as a time on campus. He behaved abhorrently rights organization. percentage of the population. and was justly punished. That reality should David Sack ’95LAW John Dreyer ’47SEAS be presented accurately, not whitewashed. New York, NY Elmhurst, IL Dan Morenoff ’96CC Dallas, TX I was under the impression that the The magazine’s article on Ben Jealous National Rifl e Association was the nation’s is riddled with tendentious and fl at-out Benjamin Jealous is critical of efforts to oldest, largest civil-rights organization. wrong statements large and small, includ- contain voter fraud and paints himself as a “Baddest, boldest, most hated,” etc., I ing the article’s description of the potential hero for resisting efforts to ensure a legiti- can’t comment on, but Fortune magazine impact of Texas’s voter-ID law. mate turnout. However, it seems reasonable rated the NRA the nation’s most effective Without digging into all the details or to require some identifi cation for voting, lobbying organization. denigrating Jealous’s current work, I want just as such identifi cation is required in so Peter Caroline ’57CC to call out one close-to-home detail whose many other activities in our country. Green Valley, AZ description has no place in a Columbia We should be aware that voter fraud is publication. You state that Jealous “fought a growing campaign strategy, and there are Benjamin Jealous objects to the require- to save full-need fi nancial aid and need- many examples of multiple voting, fraudu- ment of some states for voters to prove blind admissions, and when the University lent registration, illegal residents voting, and their identity with a state-provided ID announced plans to raze the Audubon Ball- other means of altering the legitimate vote. because of the burden of cost to the voter. room, site of Malcolm X’s assassination, It is very diffi cult to prove under our voting Summer 2013 Columbia 3 03-05 Letters.indd 3 6/20/13 1:25 PM LETTERS laws, but as a local candidate (I successfully the contents page as it should be, which is to come a time when almost all traders would ran as a Republican for the California State more than can be said of the Times. respond in the same way at the same time. So Assembly and the Santa Barbara County Notwithstanding my objections to your if the market went down, it would go down Board of Supervisors) I was very aware that cover design, I enjoy reading Columbia Mag- fast. That happened on October 21, 1987. it exists. At our local University of Califor- azine immensely and will continue to do so. Adrian R. D. Norman ’67BUS nia campus, there are regular incidents of a Wolfgang von Manowski ’63GS, ’67GSAS Crowcombe, Somerset, UK precinct voter turnout exceeding registra- Daly City, CA tion. Certain populations regularly evidence SALT AND SWEET heavily weighted turnout that defi es logic or UNIFORM OPINION Here is my response to Moira Egan’s pro- experience in other activities. Great article about Robin Nagle and the New found and elegant poem “On Marriage,” In California, these practices are primarily York City Department of Sanitation by Paul in the Spring 2013 College Walk: the domain of one political party, and I am Hond (In the City of New York, “The Pickup sure pursued by both parties and numer- Artists,” Spring 2013), but Nagle’s sugges- Of late it troubles me, the life-sustaining ous candidates of all persuasions around the tion that it’s “the most important uniformed assessment of “marriage”; country. If fraudulent-voting campaign tactics force on the street”? I don’t think so. NYPD, for to many it is, in fact, a thing, abstract; become the norm, one can make a reasonable FDNY, and EMS share that honor.