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130317_Hammond_v4.indd 1 1/29/13 2:57 PM March-April 2013 Volume 115, number 4 rcihves a rcihves y t features 25 A Cardiac Conundrum rd universi a rd The passion for procedures to fix ailing arteries and hearts—and the Ha rv page 44 problems of evaluating evidence and risk in making medical decisions by Alice Park

departments 2 Cambridge 02138 30 Forum: How Same-Sex Marriage Came to Be Communications from our readers Activism, litigation, politicking, and 9 Right Now the advent of a momentous social A virulent virus, how cucum- change in America ber tendrils coil, the exact m a zine/ S cience ource tt Ca by Michael J. Klarman

S co advantages of exercise page 9 15 Montage Art to touch or nibble, carpenter ants 36 Vita: Alexander and a master woodcarver, pop-culture Hamilton Rice detective, how to craft cookbooks, Brief life of an Amazon explorer: 1875-1956 seeing like Sherlock Holmes, and more by Mark J. Plotkin 24A New England Regional Section ed Press ed

Campus events, splendid gardens, at and “progressive American” meals 38 The Prison Problem Sociologist Bruce Western and his 59 The Alumni nson/Associ w

students are rethinking the American way of To Philip Slater’s fulfilling pursuit of w obscurity, Overseer and director incarceration and rehabilitation candidates, and more Winslo by Elizabeth Gudrais page 30 64 The College Pump A wartime “Harvard 44 John Harvard’s Journal man” traced, Harvard University Press’s print and digital centennial, and Archibald “an anchoring presence” for engineering in Allston, MacLeish’s snail mail 72 Treasure severe penalties in the College cheating investiga- Notes (literally) on tion, child psychiatric emergencies, when Widener Japanese falconry welcomed Xerox, online education’s rapid evolution, 65 Crimson the remade Corporation reports, housing and retail Classifieds development for Barry’s Corner, the Undergraduate on offering counsel—and gaining confidence, and a star On the cover: Photograph by rrison a Ed Kashi/Corbis Images

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www.harvardmagazine.com page 22 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters

Editor: John S. Rosenberg Senior Editor: Jean Martin Managing Editor: Jonathan S. Shaw Cambridge  Deputy Editor: Craig Lambert Assistant Editor-Online: Laura Levis Placebos, memorable McKinlock bell, pandemics Assistant Editor: Nell Porter Brown Art Director: Jennifer Carling Production and New Media Manager: Mark Felton The Future of Fracking The article is an excellent overview of Associate Web Developer: Michael McElroy and Xi Lu’s “Frack- the potential impact of cheap, abundant nat- Stephen Geinosky ing’s Future” (January-February, page 24) ural gas in the United States. The benefits was excellent. It’s rare to see such balance include job creation in the petrochemical Berta Greenwald Ledecky and information on that topic. Most writers and steel industries, the potential for en- Undergraduate Fellows provide opinion and recrimination, but little ergy independence from oil imported from Cherone Duggan, Kathryn C. Reed background on the techniques, economics, the Middle East, and currently, a greater re- Contributing Editors ecological concerns, and the near-term ne- duction in greenhouse gas emissions in the John T. Bethell, John de Cuevas, Adam cessity for that “new” resource. United States than in Europe. Goodheart, Jim Harrison, Courtney The authors made clear that we will However, I believe the authors’ proposal Humphries, Christopher S. Johnson, need improved regulation as well as an to allow the export of natural gas to take Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, investment climate that fosters full use of advantage of the higher prices in the world Christopher Reed, Stu Rosner, the technology and resource, while paving markets is misguided. It is akin to out- Deborah Smullyan, Mark Steele the way for the green technologies of 2050 sourcing American jobs, which has led to and beyond. higher unemployment over the past decade, Editorial and Business Office 7 Ware Street John L. Rafuse, K ’81 and has the potential to reverse the switch Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 Alexandria, Va. from coal to natural gas in the generation Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 Website: www.harvardmagazine.com Reader services: Explore More 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499 im harrison Harvard Magazine Inc. Visit harvardmagazine.com/extras to find these and other President: Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, F; andF; j

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2 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters of electricity, causing an increase in green- that burning methane for 100 years would to our descendants. The authors may dis- house-gas emissions. Driving up domestic be an “economic and strategic boon” as if agree, but it astounds me that they think prices though export demand would leave the property of bringing on climate change the proposition so unimportant or so obvi- many New England homeowners unable to by burning the natural gas had no negative ously wrong as not to mention it—even to pay their heating bills during freezing win- climatic importance whatever. dismiss it—in the first paragraph. ters. For the sake of American workers and It is my sense that mankind—especially Peter Belmont, A.M. ’61 homeowners, please let’s not allow exports. in the U.S.A.—should be cutting the burn- Brooklyn Ken Irvine, M.B.A. ’66 ing of fossil fuels such as natural gas to Cos Cob, Conn. zero as quickly as possible and far more Editor’s note: The authors’ final four para- quickly than quite comfortable, out of graphs focus on the transition to wind- When the peril of climate change is daily recognition of the discomfort that climate and solar-generated electricity, and borne in upon us all, it was unwelcome to change in its fullest effulgence will bring emphasize that to get to “a low-carbon find that a long article on frack- future,” the price of natural

is now significantly cheaper than either diesel fuel or characterized by variable combinations of hydrocarbons. Some gasoline on an energy-equivalent basis: a little more are gas- (methane-) rich, described as “dry.” “Wet” formations ing mentioned climate change than one-tenth the wholesale, spot prices of about $3 per yield significant concentrations of condensable heavier hydro- gas “must be low enough to gallon for those liquid fuels. carbons—such as ethane, pentane, and propane—referred to Fracking’s Lower-priced natural gas has had important con- collectively as natural gas liquids (NGLs). Still others—notably sequences for the U.S. economy. Approximately the Bakken field in North Dakota—are gas-poor but oil-rich and one-quarter of primary energy (mainly coal, gas, oil, are being developed primarily to extract that valuable resource. in an early paragraph only to nuclear, and hydro) consumed in the United States (In fact, only Texas outranks North Dakota now among U.S. oil- disenfranchise coal but not so Future in 2011 was supplied by natural gas. Electricity gen- producing states.) eration accounted for 31 percent of total natural-gas The hydrocarbon mix matters, because the break-even price Natural gas, the demand, followed by consumption in the industrial for profitable extraction of natural gas from a dry shale well is warn that inadvertent release (28 percent), residential (19 percent), and commercial estimated at about $5/MMBTU—about one and a half times the low as to make it impossible (13 percent) sectors. Natural gas is used as an indus- spot-market price in October. The bulk of the natural gas pro- economy, and America’s trial energy source in manufacturing products rang- duced from shale today is derived from wet sources: marketing of ing from steel and glass to paper and clothing. It is the the liquid products (which command higher prices) justifies the raw material for fertilizer, paints, plastics, antifreeze, investments. of (small amounts of) meth- energy prospects dyes, photographic film, medicines, and explosives. That means that the economic momentum of the shale-gas for renewable sources to com- More than half of all commercial establishments and industry can be sustained for the long term only by decreasing residences are heated using gas, which is widely de- production (ultimately causing prices to adjust—a process that ployed as well for cooking and as fuel for water heat- may be under way as drilling diminishes at current prices) or by by MichAel Mcelroy ers, clothes driers, and other household appliances. increasing sales of its product. ane (CH4) would be harmful Consumers have benefited directly from lower gas- Increased use of natural gas for transportation could provide an pete.” and Xi lu utility bills, and industrial customers have benefited additional domestic market, taking advantage of the significant by switching fuels—as have chemical and other pro- price disparity versus gasoline or diesel fuels (as noted above). cessors that use gas as a feedstock. Abundant, cheap Doing so would require not only an investment in facilities to “as a climate altering agent” natural gas has been of general benefit to electric-util- produce and deliver compressed natural gas (CNG), which is in ity customers as power suppliers have substituted it limited use now, but also the introduction of vehicles capable for coal to fire their generators. of running on this energy source. Buses, taxis, and public vehi- The shift from coal to gas in the electricity sector cles (police cars, for example), suitably equipped, that could be has also yielded an environmental bonus—a significant charged at central stations would appear to provide an attractive

but failed to mention that the s reduction in emissions of CO , because CO emissions early marketing opportunity. The benefits of such conversions is perhaps jour- 2 2

E The article per unit of electricity generated using coal are more than would include reduced demand for imported oil, improved urban

tty imag tty double those produced using gas. Approximately half air quality, and a further decrease in CO2 emissions. E of U.S. electricity was produced using coal in 2005, but An even larger opportunity may lie in exports. Natural-gas

arack/g by last March, coal’s contribution had dropped to an prices in Europe and Asia were five to seven times those in the burning of (large amounts of) d nalistically timely, given the Ed unprecedented low of 34 percent. Meanwhile, the U.S. United States during the first half of 2012; Japan is an especially Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that domestic eager consumer, given the wholesale closure of its nuclear-electric F upplies of natural gas now economically recover- lar- and wind-energy supplies that remain crucial in light of our emissions of CO2 during the first quarter of 2012 fell to the lowest generating capacity in the wake of the Fukushima earthquake, O able from shale in the United States could accommo- worsening climate-change crisis. level recorded since 1992. An ancillary CH4 (the normal and not at all R date the country’s domestic demand for natural gas at benefit of the coal-to-gas switch has recent efforts to produce shale U current levels of consumption for more than a hundred The Gas Gift been a significant reduction in emis- years: an economic and strategic boon, and, at least in Production and consumption of natural gas in the United States sions of sulfur dioxide, the cause of M Sthe near term, an important stepping-stone toward lower-car- were in approximate balance up to 1986. Production then lagged acid rain, because many of the older accidental sequela of fracking) bon, greener energy. consumption during the following 20 years; the deficit was made coal-burning plants selectively idled gas in New York, Pennsylvania, But even though natural gas is relatively “clean”—particularly up largely by imports from Canada, delivered by pipelines. The by the price-induced fuel switch relative to coal burned to generate electricity—the “fracking” situation changed dramatically in 2006 as companies using new were not equipped to remove this process used to produce the new supplies poses significant en- drilling technologies moved aggressively to tap the vast supplies of pollutant from their stack gases. vironmental risks. We must ensure that procedures and policies previously inaccessible gas trapped in underground shale deposits. would produce CO2, the better are in place to minimize potential damage to local and regional air Natural gas extracted from such sources accounted for 10 percent Supply and Demand Ohio, and West Virginia. But quality and to protect essential water resources. We need to make of U.S. production in 2007, and rose to 30 percent of production by A key question is whether the cur- sure that extraction of the gas (consisting mainly of methane, 2010—an enormous, swift change in our huge market. There are rent low price for gas can persist. with small amounts of other gases) from shale and its transport few signs that the trend is likely to reverse in the near future. Shales in different regions are

to market does not result in a significant increase in “fugitive” (in- Partly as a result of that surge in supply, domestic natural- s known and still dangerous “cli- Opposite: A hydraulic fracturing rig E the authors failed to fully ana- advertent) emissions of methane (CH4)—which is 10 times more gas prices are now lower than at any time in the recent past. The drilling for natural gas in eastern powerful as a climate-altering agent, molecule per molecule, than spot price for natural gas traded on the New York Mercantile Ex- Colorado. Right: A wastewater hold- ing pond for a fracking well in rural /corbis imag

carbon dioxide (CO , the most abundant greenhouse gas). Fur- change hit a record low of $1.82 per million British thermal units E 2 Pennsylvania—a state where several ton

ther, we will need to recognize from the outset that cheap natural (MMBTU) last April 20—down 86 percent from a high of $12.69 thousand wells have been drilled to s s E mate altering agent.” gas may delay the transition to truly carbon-free, sustainable so- in June 2008. Even at recent, somewhat higher prices, natural gas extract natural gas from shale. l lyze two themes. Indeed the article suggests 24 January - February 2013 First, production of natural F_Fracking.indd 24 12/6/12 12:42 PM F_Fracking.indd 25 12/6/12 5:15 PM

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Harvard Magazine 3 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters gas from hitherto dormant shale forma- The major source of the fine-grade crystal- tions presents no threat to air or water line silica sand used in the process is along quality different than that we have already the banks of the Mississippi in southeastern experienced for over 100 years. “Fugitive” Minnesota and western Wisconsin. emissions of gases and fluids have been the Even though sand has been mined in Publisher: Irina Kuksin concern and target of petroleum regula- these states previously, the requests for Director of Circulation and Fundraising tory agencies, such as the Texas Railroad sand have increased exponentially. We Felecia Carter Commission and the Oklahoma Corpora- have seen some dubious practices of local Director of Advertising: Robert D. Fitta tion Commission, since the first quarter of government officials with likely conflicts New England Advertising Manager the twentieth century. Petroleum drillers of interest in granting permits either for Abigail Shepard have always penetrated potable aquifers the mining or for the transportation in- Designer and Integrated Marketing with their subsurface bits and drilling flu- frastructure (like rail side yards) neces- Manager: Jennifer Beaumont ids, and the flow of natural gas has always sary for the industry. In addition, the sand Classified Advertising Manager required careful steps to contain the gas in companies are hiring county engineers and Gretchen Bostrom surface equipment and pipelines. Petro- regulators, leaving communities unpre- Donor Relations and Stewardship Manager leum production has long taken place in pared to deal with the issues. Allison Kern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Environmental issues to be considered Gift Processor and Office Manager Virginia. Shale gas supplies hardly pose include air pollution from fine silica par- Robert Bonotto new “significant environmental risks” ticles, ground- and surface-water impacts, Ivy League Magazine Network apart from the fact that greater quantities effects on wetlands and fisheries, and even Tel. 631-754-4264 of gas may be produced in coming years. removal of forest cover to accommodate New England and Mid-Atlantic Second, the National Renewable Energy mining. Impacts include dewatering and Advertising Sales Laboratory’s suggestion that the “domi- possible contamination of water supplies. Robert D. Fitta, Tel. 617-496-6631 nant source of electricity” in the United We must also remember that this is New York Advertising Sales States can come from a combination of happening far from the environmental ef- Beth Bernstein, Tel. 908-654-5050 wind and solar sources can only be a pipe fects and the profitable venue of the gas Mary Anne MacLean, Tel. 631-367-1988 dream for many years to come. Even then, mines themselves. Travel Advertising Sales according to the article, less than 40 per- Phyllis Kahn, M.P.A. ’86 Northeast Media Inc., Tel. 203-255-8800 cent of gas usage would be replaced by Minnesota state representative Detroit Advertising Sales renewable energy sources. The country’s Minneapolis Linda Donaldson, Tel. 248-933-3376 growing energy appetite for both domes- Midwest Advertising Sales tic use and possible LNG exports will McElroy and Lu neglect to mention the Karen Walker, Tel. 262-664-3209 require relatively more natural gas pro- release of natural gas into the atmosphere Southwest Advertising Sales duction, even if one assumes that wind through leaks in pipelines. A recent article Daniel Kellner, Tel. 972-529-9687 power demands for large acreage grids in The Boston Globe reported more than 3,300 West Coast Advertising Sales can overcome increasing political push- leaks in Boston alone. About 9 billion cu- Virtus Media Sales, Tel. 310-478-3833 back. The article rightly concludes that a bic feet of natural gas was unaccounted for “low-carbon future” can only be achieved, in Massachusetts’s gas-distribution sys- Board of Incorporators This magazine, at first called the Harvard Bulletin, was if at all, through tax credits, subsidies, and tem in 2010; this includes leaks, thefts, and founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was char- similar political initiatives. One might le- purging of pipelines for maintenance. As tered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s gitimately question whether this country’s the authors mention, methane released in governance. The membership is as follows: Stephen J. Bailey, AMP ’94; Jeffrey S. Behrens ’89, William I. Ben- dominant leadership in energy production the atmosphere is, molecule per molecule, nett ’62, M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. Bol; Fox in the twentieth century and the conse- a much more potent, though shorter-lived, Butterfield ’61, A.M. ’64; Sewell Chan ’98; Jonathan S. quent standard of living we enjoy would contributor to global warming than CO2. Cohn ’91; Philip M. Cronin ’53, J.D. ’56; John de Cue- have been achieved had we relied upon Michael Biales, A.M. ’72 vas ’52; Casimir de Rham ’46, J.D. ’49; James F. Dwinell III ’62; Anne Fadiman ’74; Benjamin M. Friedman ’66, political enactments in place of free-mar- Acton, Mass. Ph.D. ’71; Robert H. Giles, NF ’66; Richard H. Gilman, ket flexibility. Carbon-free energy sounds M.B.A. ’83; Owen Gingerich, Ph.D. ’62; Adam K. Good- laudable, but it is not likely to be realized Placebo Probes heart ’92; Philip C. Haughey ’57; Brian R. Hecht ’92; article about Ted Sarah Blaffer Hrdy ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Ellen Hume ’68; Alex without deep and serious disruption of Cara Feinberg’s S. Jones, NF ’82; Bill Kovach, NF ’89; Florence Ladd, BI our entire social-economic structure, a Kaptchuk (“The Placebo Phenomenon,” ’72; Jennifer 8 Lee ’99; Anthony Lewis ’48, NF ’57; Scott disruption which may well raise concerns January-February, page 36) mentions a 2010 Malkin ’80, J.D.-M.B.A. ’83; Margaret H. Marshall, that far exceed today’s highly publicized study of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) Ed.M. ’69, Ed ’77, L ’78; Lisa L. Martin, Ph.D. ’90; David McClintick ’62; Winthrop L. McCormack ’67; M. Lee focus on environmental quality. that “yielded his most famous findings to Pelton, Ph.D. ’84; John P. Reardon Jr. ’60; Christopher H. Carter Burdette, LL.B. ’58 date.” Unfortunately, there are at least three Reed; Harriet Ritvo ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Henry Rosovsky, JF Fort Worth major flaws in the study that cast serious ’57, Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98; Barbara Rudolph ’77; Robert N. doubt on those findings. Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78; Theda Skocpol, Ph.D. ’75; Peter A. Spiers ’76; Scott H. Stossel ’91; Sherry Turkle ’69, Ph.D. The effects of the use of sand in fracking One flaw was pointed out in three sepa- ’76; Robert H. Weiss ’54; Jan Ziolkowski. are ignored except for a mention of the use. rate comments, including one by me, on

4 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters the PLOS ONE web page at the time of been even better—but why not avoid intro- the gut, not in sufferers’ minds—and that publication: patients were given ingestible ducing variables into the gut environment treatment of it should focus on the former capsules filled with cellulose fiber as a “pla- altogether in both groups? Why not use a and not the latter. cebo” for IBS. A brief search of PubMed or noningestible placebo, like the fake inhaler Preston Estep, Ph.D. ’01 medical-advice websites reveals that cellu- or the fake acupuncture needles Kaptchuk Weston, Mass. lose fiber (along with other types of fiber) and colleagues employed in other studies? is a commonly used and clinically tested The third flaw is that they failed to mea- Ted Kaptchuk responds: The placebo in the prospective therapeutic for IBS. One pub- sure any physiological variables of the gut study was not cellulose fiber but micro- lication, for example, describes a type of or the gut microbial community (microbi- crystalline cellulose that has no such effect cellulose fiber as one of the “commonly pre- ome). If they had, they might have discov- on the gut. There is no reason to believe scribed medications in UK general practice ered prior to publication that their “pla- that a gulp of water contributes to relief for IBS.” I have found other publications cebo” had objectively measurable effects. of IBS symptoms. To my knowledge, there describing this inappropriate choice of a Despite prior studies showing that the are no recognized physiological markers placebo, but it is puzzling that a team of species composition of the microbiome is for IBS. To be fair, indeed, this study is not scientists that includes gastroenterologists altered in IBS, they failed to investigate the our team’s most rigor- based at Harvard Medical School would possibility that the placebo might measur- ous but it did happen choose a common therapy as a placebo. ably alter the microbiome. If this had oc- to receive the most me- Visit harvardmagazine. The second flaw compounds the first: curred, would the take-home message be dia attention because com/extras to read patients in the treatment group were in- that the gut microbes also “believed” in the it challenged the wide- additional letters to the editor. structed to take two cellulose pills twice power of the placebo, or would we more spread belief that pla- a day, which they presumably did with a reasonably infer that ingestion of a thera- cebo responses happen only when patients liquid of their choice; the control group was peutic agent might have caused the change? think they are taking medication. While instructed to do nothing. Thus the “con- Until the experiment is done properly I this study needs further replication, a sub- trol” group was not really a control at all. think we should consider the question ad- sequent more sophisticated study by our Drinking a liquid of their choice would have dressed by this study to be open, and we team, published in Proceedings of the National been closer to a real control, and study- should believe the many far more rigorous Academy of Science (2012), has already begun provided water for both groups would have studies showing that IBS is a disorder in the search for potential non-conscious pla-

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Harvard Magazine 5 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters cebo pathways that could be responsible nipulation. I’m glad both Art and Fashion Harvard Magazine (New England Regional for our finding in this IBS study. exist—beauty, no matter how shallow or Section, page 12F, and online at http://har- fleeting, is enjoyable. But I’m sorry that so vardmag.com/social-13). Ringing Memory’s Bell many people, so much money, and such hy- During my year at the Graduate School Thanks to Primus V for bringing back perventilated attention gets caught up in its of Education, I was fortunate to interact fond memories of the academic year 1968- ultimately meaningless swirls. with many students interested in social 1969 (“Ipso Facto!” The College Pump, No- Steven E. Miller, M.P.A. ’89 change as I was. It was refreshing to see a vember-December 2012, page 60.) That year, Executive Director, Healthy Weight Initiative, feature regarding graduates who want to my Leverett House sophomore roommates Harvard School of Public Health improve the world. It was good to see oth- Courtney Chinn, Stan Werlin, Steve Zakula, Boston ers who were not from GSE who are in the and I were in McKinlock C-23, which put world to improve it. Thank you for sharing the Pennoyer bell between and only five Legislated Housing Problems this with the Harvard community. to six feet below our windows facing the As reported in Ashley Pettus’s “Immobile Pamela Brummett Roberts, Ed.M. ’01 courtyard. Despite our busy schedules, we Labor” (January-February, page 9), Daniel Framingham, Mass. somehow found the time and the means to Shoag and Peter Ganong blame housing reg- attach a cord to the hook of sorts at the top ulations for the end in 1980 of a century of Urban Innovation of the bell wheel (not pictured) connected declining income disparities between richer Regarding “A Community Innovation Lab” to the stock supporting the bell, and to ring and poorer states. Regulation—that boogey- (January-February, page 55), I have been ac- old Pennoyer when the spirit moved us. We man of the right—is supposedly the reason tive in the Uphams Corner community since were careful not to let the line to the wheel low-skilled workers stopped moving to richer 1976. I attended a very impressive presenta- drop to a height reachable by non-C-23 states for better jobs. There is a more obvious tion by Kennedy School and Graduate School McKinlock residents passing explanation: the Reagan of Design students: the recommendations (on by on their way to D-entry and administration’s war on the the upgrading of the Dorchester North Bury- the dining hall, as we felt that poor. Reagan cut the fed- ing Ground and the disintegrating building any boost to our morale such eral budget for subsidized adjacent to the entrance) were extensive and as having our own fine bell to housing by 80 percent. By quite detailed; the suggestions were excel- ring at our whim was our due in the end of the Reagan era, lent. Keep up the good work, Harvard! light of our cramped and rather lower-income workers had Harold Jay Cohen ’63 dowdy quarters. a hard time finding afford- Newton Centre, Mass. Of course, at the time we able housing, even in areas were intrigued by the name they knew. Homelessness Native American Pandemics im harrison im Pennoyer on the frame, but j had become the epidemic I enjoyed Daniel Richter’s review, “Brutish none of us was a history major and with we still live with, and mostly ignore, today. Beginnings” (January-February, page 18). everything else going on in our pre-Yahoo/ If workers can no longer afford to live in the But it fails to mention the single most Google world, who had time to make the rich states where the jobs are, let us put the important and catastrophic sequence that long trek to Widener for a little research? blame where it belongs. changed the entire Colonist/Native Amer- After these many years, we are pleased Jane Collins ’71 ican interface in the sixteenth and sev- to learn of the provenance of the Pennoyer Medford, Mass. enteenth centuries: the introduction and bell, especially as we become aware of the dissemination of Old World infectious improvements in store for old McKinlock, The Two-Percent Solution disease pandemics in the Native American even if they come long after our departure. I’m not an economist, but I’ve been fol- populations. Beginning with the smallpox Thank you, Primus V, and well done! lowing the financial mess in Washington epidemic of 1529, sequential epidemics of Ed Lukawski ’71, M.D. ’75 with interest and despair. Now I see Fair smallpox, chicken pox, diphtheria, ty- San Francisco Harvard is in the same pickle (“Sober Fi- phus, influenza, measles, malaria, and yel- nances,” January-February, page 47). Obvi- low fever spread widely in the Americas. Feelings about Fashion ously Harvard’s problem, like Washington’s, Academics estimate that 95 percent of the I feel similarly about both Art and Fash- is a shortfall in revenues; it certainly cannot entire Native American population died ion—both with capital letters (“Vogue be an excess of spending. So why not apply in the first 130 years after European con- Meets Veritas,” January-February, page 28). the same fix—namely, increase the tuition on tact; 90 percent of the Inca Empire died There are probably some essential prin- those students who come from the top 2 per- in the epidemics; and the population of ciples of beauty, perhaps vaguely visible cent of America’s wealthiest families. Surely Mexico declined from 25.2 million in 1518 through the longest-lasting or most fre- they would be willing to pay their fair share. to 700,000 in 1623. quently recurring elements of style. But Jim Luetje ’60 The European explorers did not discov- mostly, it seems that what we currently Summerfield, Fla. er healthy, vigorous Native American pop- aesthetically love and celebrate comes and ulations and cultures. They found disori- goes in trends created by a complex in- Celebrating Social Entrepreneurs ented, fragmented survivors of collapsed teraction of bottom-up preferences, elite I was so pleased to read “New Social civilizations. Imagine North America 50 self-aggrandizement, and commercial ma- Entrepreneurs” in the January-February years after all-out nuclear warfare.

6 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 I Choose Harvard...

Douglas ’62 and Cynthia Crocker “ Financial aid is an Doug Crocker ’62 and his The couple recently aug- important part of wife, Cindy, took differ- mented their 10-year support ent educational paths: He of Harvard’s generous finan- the secret sauce attended Boston-area private cial aid program by creating that makes schools and her family chose a Cornerstone Scholarship. public schools in Illinois. But Crocker, a fine arts concentra- Harvard special.” they both concluded that tor who lived in Eliot House, education is the gateway to co-chaired his 50th reunion Ab GuptA ’04 opportunity—and that help- gift committee and enjoyed ing open those gates is essen- being back on campus. “It’s tial. “Cindy and I are huge like the 25 years that have Ab Gupta ’04 believers in financial aid for elapsed [since the last mile- students,” notes Crocker, now stone reunion] don’t make a Since graduating from He serves on his class gift semiretired from a successful difference,” he says. “It’s easy Harvard, Ab Gupta ’04 has committee and recently career in real estate investing. to rekindle that camaraderie.” lived in five cities, earned two joined the Harvard College advanced degrees, and served Fund West Coast Council, To read more, please visit www.alumni.harvard.edu/stories/crocker as CEO of a 200-person which fosters connections company. The constant among alumni. To mark his during that change-filled 5th reunion in 2009, he time? His Harvard College established the Gupta ties. “Harvard has been a very Financial Aid Fund, and he “ Cindy and I are important community for continues to support huge believers me,” says Gupta, now a Harvard’s trailblazing private equity investor in San scholarship program. in financial aid.” Francisco. A former econom- “Financial aid,” he notes, “is ics concentrator from Cabot an important part of the DouG CroCker ’62 House, Gupta gives back secret sauce that makes with his time and resources. Harvard special.”

To read more, please visit www.alumni.harvard.edu/stories/gupta

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right: Pforzheimer house residents engage in discussion with President drew faust. arvard university k ris s nibbe/ h arvard students: sworth; hotos: crockers: m d e crockers: P hotos:

130333_AAD_full.indd 1 2/1/13 12:57 PM Letters

One could postulate that, had the Native I don’t know what the “Two Worlds” are American populations not been decimated supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure one of by epidemics, the European intrusions into them is the distant past—the world of the Central and North America might have Mad Men at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Travel the world with been repulsed. If that had happened, our Too bad no one had the wit to have him fellow alumni and Harvard current world would look very different. sneaking a peek at her magazine, and her study leaders. More than Spencer Borden IV ’63, M.D. ’68 sneaking a peek at his. 50 trips annually. Montpelier, Vt. Dan Kelly ’75 Hopkins, Minnesota 2013 TRIP SAMPLING Guns and Public Health I read the recent article, “Gun Violence: A Heidi Bergos, director of sales and marketing at Public Health Issue” [published January 9 The Charles Hotel, responds: We appreciate the online; see http:// harvardmag.com/guns- feedback and want to take the opportunity 13] with dismay. It is an example of the hy- to share the creative thought process that perbole and misdirection which have con- went into the ad design and placement. tributed to the current polarized state of our The wedding ad was inspired by this government. In the article, constitutional photo of a couple in Harvard Square on rights become health issues, and democracy their wedding day—http://allegrophotog- must now subordinate the will of the ma- raphy.com/blog/tag/harvard-square/. We jority to the intense feelings of the minority. thought it was quirky, humorous, intelli- JUN 21–JUL 2, 2013 Violence is learned behavior, but guns rather gent, and immediately sat down to brain- CHANGING TIDES OF HISTORY: CRUISING than behavior must be controlled. storm how we could incorporate it into THE BALTIC SEA ON LE BORÉAL I wait in vain for Harvard Magazine to offer our ad campaign. The message of “Where FEATURING MIKHAIL GORBACHEV & LECH WAŁESA a balanced article on issues which concern Two Worlds Meet” was added because the electorate. Veritas is difficult to discern. we view marriage as the blending of two Craig S. Carson, M.B.A. ’75 worlds. Two people from different back- Plainfield, Ind. grounds with different life experiences and different interests. Editor’s note: The article was a news ac- Our intention was for the female model count of a Harvard School of Public Health to be styled in a sharp suit. She works as forum that included professor of health a top-level executive and was recently en- policy David Hemenway, who directs the gaged. She is extremely successful in her Harvard Injury Control Research Center. career, but also excited to be planning a His research on firearms was covered in wedding with her love. The male model AUG 7–24, 2013 SRI LANKA: THE ISLAND OF SERENDIPITY depth in “Death by the Barrel” (Septem- was styled more casually. He works at a STUDY LEADER: ANNE MONIUS ber-October 2004, page 52). For a Harvard local startup and reads the Harvard Busi- news office account of the forum, with a ness Review so that he can stay on top of the link to a video recording, see http://news. ever-changing startup environment. We harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/01/gun- crafted several ads that depict the meet- violence-talk. ing of two worlds. Another version of the wedding ad will run in this issue of Har- Julia Child’s Bathtub Years vard Magazine. We promise that this ad will The Valentine image of Julia Child and not be placed again. Paul Child in a sudsy bathtub (“Bon Anni- We apologize for running an ad that versaire,” Treasure, January-February, page could be viewed as sexist and dated. 76) in fact dates to 1956, not 1952-53. The Please know that it was truly not our in- OCT 16–NOV 1, 2013 date was entered incorrectly in the Harvard tention. EXPLORING VIETNAM & CAMBODIA Library’s Visual Information Access system, FEATURING A WEEK ON THE MEKONG RIVER the Radcliffe Institute reports, and has now speak up, please been set to rights. Harvard Magazine welcomes letters TO BOOK YOUR NEXT TRIP, CALL US on its contents. Please write to “Let- AT 800-422-1636 Who Reads What ters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, FOR MORE TRIP OPTIONS, VISIT I was struck by the Charles Hotel ad Cambridge 02138, send comments by e- ALUMNI.HARVARD.EDU/TRAVELS on page 59 of your January-February issue. mail to your­turn@har­­vard.edu, use our Under the headline “{Where Two Worlds website, www.harvard­maga­zine.­com, Meet},” a man and a woman (strangely or fax us at 617-495-0324. Letters may standing, side-by-side) are reading maga- be edited to fit the available space. zines: he Harvard Business Review, she Weddings.

8 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

limits on laboratories death in a matter of days. Fortunately, during the past 15 years, the virus has The Deadliest Virus claimed only 400 victims worldwide—although the strain can jump species, it hasn’t ird flu (H5N1) has receded from fowl, but in those isolated early cases, it had the ability to move easily from human international headlines for the mo- made the leap from birds to humans. It to human, a critical limit to its spread. ment, as few human cases of the then swept unimpeded through the bod- That’s no longer the case, however. In B deadly virus have been reported ies of its initial human victims, causing late 2011, the Dutch researchers announced this year. But when Dutch researchers re- massive hemorrhages in the lungs and the creation of an H5N1 virus transmis- cently created an even more deadly strain of the virus in a laboratory for research purpos- es, they stirred grave concerns about what would happen if it escaped into the out- side world. “Part of what makes H5N1 so deadly is that most people lack an immunity to it,” ex- plains Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiol- ogy at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) who studies the spread of infectious diseases. “If you make a strain that’s highly transmissible between humans, as the Dutch team did, it could be disastrous if it ever escaped the lab.” H5N1 first made global news in early 1997 after claiming two dozen victims in Hong Kong. The virus normally occurs only in wild birds and farm-raised

The modified H5N1 virus, magnified above, could infect a billion people if it escaped a biocontainment lab like the

Canadian facility at right. petrone valeria

Photograph by Fred Greenslade/Reuters/Corbis Images, Illustrations by Scott Camazine/Science Source Harvard Magazine 9 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now sible through the air between ferrets (the abroad. (A yearlong, voluntary global ban drastically reduce the danger of the virus best animal model for studying the impact on H5N1 research was lifted in many coun- spreading, he asserts, yet they’re still not of disease on humans). The news caused a tries in January, and new rules governing popular with some researchers. He ac- storm of controversy in the popular press such research in the United States were knowledges that limiting research is an and heated debate among scientists over expected in February.) Lipsitch says that unusual practice scientifically but argues, the ethics of the work. For Lipsitch and none of the current research proposals he “These are unusual circumstances.” many others, the creation of the new strain has seen “would significantly improve our Lipsitch thinks a great deal of useful re- was cause for alarm. “H5N1 influenza is preparational response to a national pan- search can still be done on the non-trans- already one of the most deadly viruses in demic of H5N1. The small risk of a very missible strain of the virus, which would existence,” he says. “If you make [the vi- large public health disaster...is not worth provide valuable data without the risk of rus] transmissible [between humans], you taking [for] scientific knowledge without accidental release. In the meantime, he have to be very concerned about what the an immediate public health application.” hopes to make more stringent H5N1 poli- resulting strain could do.” His recent op-eds in scientific journals and cies a priority for U.S. and foreign labora- To put this danger in context, the 1918 the popular press have stressed the impor- tories. Although it’s not a perfect solution, “Spanish” flu—one of the most deadly in- tance of regulating the transmissible strain he says, it’s far better than a nightmare fluenza epidemics on record—killed be- and limiting work with the virus to only scenario. vdavid levin tween 50 million and 100 million people a handful of qualified labs. In addition, he worldwide, or roughly 3 to 6 percent of argues, only technicians who have the right marc lipsitch e-mail address: those infected. The more lethal SARS vi- training and experience—and have been [email protected] rus (see “The SARS Scare,” March-April inoculated against the virus—should be al- marc lipsitch website: 2007, page 47) killed almost 10 percent of lowed to handle it. www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty/ infected patients during a 2003 outbreak These are simple limitations that could marc-lipsitch that reached 25 countries worldwide. H5N1 is much more dangerous, killing al- most 60 percent of those who contract the tough or tendril? illness. If a transmissible strain of H5N1 escapes the lab, says Lipsitch, it could spark a A Cucumber global health catastrophe. “It could infect millions of people in the United States, and very likely more than a billion people Coil Conundrum globally, like most successful flu strains do,” he says. “This might be one of the worst viruses—perhaps the worst virus— he cucumber tendril has long nearest trellis or fence post. Then it changes in existence right now because it has both fascinated observant gardeners. shape, wrapping around the object, twisting transmissibility and high virulence.” This specialized plant stem grows into tiny coils, and gaining a support struc- Ironically, this is why Ron Fouchier, the T straight at first—until it reaches the ture for its efforts to grow toward the sun. Dutch virologist whose lab created the new H5N1 strain, argues that studying it in more depth is crucial. If the virus can be made transmissible in the lab, he reasons, it can also occur in nature—and research- ers should have an opportunity to under- stand as much as possible about the strain before that happens. Lipsitch, who directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at HSPH, thinks the risks far outweigh the rewards. Even in labs with the most strin- gent safety requirements, such as enclosed rubber “space suits” to isolate researchers, accidents do happen. A single unprotect- ed breath could infect a researcher, who might unknowingly spread the virus be- yond the confines of the lab. In an effort to avoid this scenario, Lip- sitch has been pushing for changes in re- search policy in the United States and

10 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now

Grasping cucumber tendrils, opposite, coil in two different directions. Close study led to the discovery of a new type of spring. At left, a lignified fiber from a coiled tendril, greatly magnified

or physicists or engineers. Na- ture certainly does not care; she is subtle, and it is up to us to tease out how she works.” These grasping tendrils have also in- The team began by dissecting the ten- trigued scientists for centuries; Charles dril at various points in its development Darwin explored the topic in On the Move- and found a thin ribbon of gelatinous fi- ments and Habits of Climbing Plants, published bers, running the length of the stem, that in 1865. He noted that a coiled cucumber becomes woody—or “lignifies”—over tendril twists in one direction and then time. As it ages, this rigid strand also loses the other, with the two sections joined water and shrinks, and that combination in the middle by a straight piece that he of lignification and shrinkage pulls the en- termed the “perversion.” Many scientists tire tendril into its coiled shape. have studied cucumber tendrils since Once they understood the biological then, but important questions remained mechanism of the coil, the team wanted unanswered: Just how does the tendril to represent it with physical models. “As curl? And how do these coils benefit the a scientist, if I understand something, I plant? should be able to recreate it,” Mahade- wANT TO These were ideal questions for the team van explains. Using ordinary materials led by L. Mahadevan, de Valpine professor including rubber, glue, copper wire, and of applied mathematics. Mahadevan’s re- tape, the researchers made numerous ten- search seeks to explain everyday phenom- dril models until they arrived at one that ena, such as how flags flutter, why Venus behaved like a real cucumber tendril. It flytraps snap shut, or how the petals of allowed them to explore something sur- a lily form and unfurl; he describes him- prising that they’d noted in live tendrils: Get self as part applied mathematician, part when pulled from opposite ends, the coil physicist, and part biologist (See detailed does not straighten, coverage of this earlier work in “The Phys- but first overwinds, Away to ics of the Familiar,” March-April 2008, p. adding more turns to Visit harvardmag.com/ 46). He first wondered about cucumber both helices before it extras to view time- tendrils as a graduate student, but didn’t eventually straightens. lapse footage of the pursue the topic until postdoctoral stu- The team also de- strange phenomenon of ? “overwinding.” ITALY dent Sharon Gerbode (now assistant pro- veloped mathemati- fessor of physics at Harvey Mudd College) cal models that allowed it to understand joined his lab. Aided by graduate students the mechanical properties of the coil. Josh Puzey (biology) and Andrew Mc- Mahadevan points out that Darwin pre- Cormick (physics), the researchers used sciently called the cucumber tendril “an their mix of disciplines to understand the excellent spring,” and the Harvard re- TURN TO elusive tendril. “We do whatever it takes searchers quantified the structure, dis- to study problems in my group,” Mahade- covering in the process a new type of PAGE 67 van says. “We are not just theorists, or just spring. With its two opposite-handed experimentalists, not just mathematicians helices joined by the straight perversion

Photographs by Josh Puzey Harvard Magazine 11 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now in the center, the spring responds flexibly to varying levels of force. It’s pliant when pulled gently, and grows stiffer when pulled more forcefully. The stiffer the spring becomes, the more tightly it curls, and the presence of the perversion allows it to freely overwind or underwind. The team’s findings appeared in the journal Science last summer. Mahadevan sees benefits for the cu- cumber: when a tendril is young and es- pecially tender, and first winding onto a nearby trellis, a weak connection would be helpful. “If the wind blows or there is a disturbance of some other kind, then you don’t want the whole thing to fall apart,” he explains. “You want a relatively soft response.” But as the tendril develops istock tighter connections to a trellis over time, exercise, prescribed it grows woodier and reacts more strong- ly to any pulling, protecting the mature plant. Cheating the Reaper Mahadevan stresses that his team didn’t set out to discover a new type of spring, and he’s unconcerned about future ap- or patients with high blood pres- at Harvard School of Public Health, offers plications of these and other discoveries. sure, doctors are likely to prescribe specific exercise prescriptions. He explains that his research is motivated antihypertensive medication and pro- Lee and her colleagues pooled data from by pure curiosity. “I work on things be- F vide detailed instructions about how six large studies that included information cause I want to understand how the world much to take, and when. They have been less on the leisure activities and body mass in- works,” he says. “I’m fortunate to be part able to provide detailed dosage recommen- dex of more than 650,000 people older than of a system that still in some small degree, dations for exercise. Research shows that a 40, each of whom was followed for an av- I hope, will value it. The deep truth is that regular walking, swimming, or tennis habit erage of 10 years. The researchers’ analysis I worked on this the way I have worked on reduces chronic disease risk, but it’s been revealed that subjects who completed the other problems—because it is human to be unclear just how much different levels of ex- equivalent of 75 minutes of brisk walking curious.” verin o’donnell ercise might extend our lives. Now, a study each week—roughly 11 minutes a day— coauthored by epidemiologist I-Min Lee, lived 1.8 years longer than those who didn’t l. mahadevan website: a professor of medicine at Harvard Medi- exercise at all. Those who got the federally www.seas.harvard.edu/softmat cal School and professor of epidemiology recommended minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week—22 How much is enough? minutes every day, or 30 minutes a day, five days a week—gained 3.4 years. 5 Lee was somewhat surprised that even small amounts of movement made such a 4 difference. “What we found is really en- couraging,” she says. “If you do a little, you get a fairly good gain in years.” 3 That’s promising news, given that more than half of all Americans don’t meet those 2 federal physical-activity guidelines. “It’s very daunting for someone who never does physical activity even to think of 150 min- YEARS OF LIFE GAINED YEARS 1 utes a week,” Lee says. “This research sug- gests that while 150 minutes is a target, we can ask people to start off slowly and work WALKING 200 minutes/week 400 minutes/week 600 minutes/week their way up. Doing something is better (28.6 minutes/day) (57.2 minutes/day) (85.7 minutes/day) than doing nothing.” The more people exer- 100 minutes/week 200 minutes/week 300 minutes/week cised, the more years they gained, Lee says, RUNNING (14.2 minutes/day) (28.6 minutes/day) (42.8 minutes/day) although the benefits begin to plateau at 200 minutes/week (28.6 minutes/day) 12 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746

W&F Harvard Ad-175F:Layout 8 1/17/13 11:52 AM Page 1

Right Now about 43 minutes of brisk walking a day. 175 2 The gains applied to people of all weight 013 Yea levels, even those who were obese, “sug- g rs tin bra gesting that even if you don’t lose weight, ele C you’re better off than you were when you Charlie Haydock, CFA Adrienne Silbermann, CFA were not exercising,” Lee says. Still, nor- Chief Investment Officer Director of Research mal-weight people who completed the A.B. 1974 recommended 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise each week fared best, living more than seven years longer than those who didn’t exercise and had the highest body mass index. Researchers used brisk walking as an example because it’s the most commonly reported form of exercise, but any moder- ate-intensity activity will do: yard work, a bike ride, romping with kids. The only requirement, Lee says, is raising the heart rate to the point that you can carry on a conversation but “you can’t sing because you don’t have enough breath.” She adds Knowing wealth. that people who engaged in more vigorous Knowing you for 175 years

“What we found is Why has Welch & Forbes thrived for 175 years? really encouraging. Relationships. Relationships built on accessibility, If you do a little, you trust and stability. For us it’s the only way. get a fairly good gain If you value an enduring relationship with a firm expert in comprehensive in years.” portfolio management and tax, trust and estate planning, call exercise, say running or playing squash, Charlie Haydock ‘74 at 617-557-9800. experienced the same gains as moderate Jay Emmons, CFA AtWelch & Forbes, we know wealth. exercisers, but in about half the time each President And we know you. week. (The federal recommendation for vigorous exercise is 75 minutes per week.) Most people acknowledge that they www.welchforbes.com should exercise, but Lee believes it’s time to promote inactivity as a health risk akin to smoking, now universally accepted as a 45 School Street, Old City Hall, Boston, MA 02108 | T: 617.523.1635 dangerous choice. “We recently finished a study [published in The Lancet] that sug- gests that the number of lives lost from be- ing inactive is as great as the lives lost from smoking,” she says. Ohana Family Camp Lee herself runs 15 to 20 miles a week, Create lifetime memories for your and does as many errands as possible on family this summer on peaceful foot, but admits, “I never used to exer- Lake Fairlee in Vermont. Cozy cabins cise.” When she began physical-activity with fireplaces. Farm-fresh meals. research as a graduate student, though, “It Swimming, sailing, canoeing, was very hypocritical to do the research kayaking, fishing, hiking, biking, and not be physically active. So I’m one of tennis, crafts, and more. Delighting those that converted.” verin o’donnell generations of families since 1905. Imagine your family right here. i-min lee e-mail address: www.OhanaCamp.org [email protected]

Harvard Magazine 13 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 SeekingSeeking 31 31 great great leaders… leaders...

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1301_AdvancedLeadership_Harvard.indd 1 11/26/12 9:45 AM

Untitled-1 1 11/30/11 2:27 PM Montage Art, books, diverse creations

16 Off the Shelf 19 Detective in Pop Culture 22 The Art of the Cookbook 23 Chapter and Verse 24 Open Book

Clockwise from far left: Jennifer Rubell with “Prince William” in Engagement; a spectator in front of the Old-Fashioned doughnut wall; at Icons (2010), a 20-foot-tall piñata of Andy Warhol’s head, which guests destroyed with artist-provided baseball bats. The piñata disgorged a cornucopia of classic Hostess packaged desserts like Twinkies and Ding Dongs. in a pose he struck at the engagement an- nouncement, standing on one side of a plinth. Mounted on his sleeve is a replica of the royal engagement ring that Kate re- ceived. Viewers are encouraged to stand next to William, slide an arm through his, and slip a finger through the ring—posi- tioning themselves nicely for a photo op. “I thought a lot of girls might feel envi- ous of Kate,” Rubell explains, “so I did this piece.” “The viewer completes the work, even for a painting on the wall,” she

notes. “That’s true of all art—it’s just more asmussen; john Berens explicit in my work.” Typically, Rubell’s Please Touch the Art sculptures, installations, and happenings eather R violate the “Do Not Touch” norm of mu- hite; H Jennifer Rubell makes art to touch, crawl into, or even drink and eat. seum culture and openly invite viewers

to handle, engage with, or even eat the tephen W by Craig Lambert art in question: with Old-Fashioned (2009), a freestanding wall hung with 1,521 “old- n the fall of 2011, the public first in London. Inspired by the engagement of fashioned” doughnuts, a viewer could encountered the interactive sculpture Prince William to Kate Middleton a year pluck one and eat it, or just have a bite and

Engagement by Jennifer Rubell ’93 at her before, it’s a realistic life-size wax sculpture kwise from upper S left: rehang it on its nail. (The doughnuts were c I gallery, the Stephen Friedman Gallery (by Daniel Druet) of the beaming William, replenished daily.) Clo Harvard Magazine 15 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

She conceived Portrait of the Artist, an viewers,” Rubell explains. “If someone for a possible show of enormous (25 feet long by 8.5 feet high) crawls in, somebody else will likely take a her own, the pinnacle of steel-reinforced fiberglass rendering of her photograph and post it; when you have a a foodie’s fantasy life. “I Visit www. harvardmagazine. nude and very pregnant body—based on a photo of someone who’s crawled up inside made a point of keeping com/extras to view laser scan—as an exercise in intimacy be- my belly on the Internet, in a way, that’s a it as folksy and dumbed- additional images of tween artist and viewer: the distended ab- part of the work as well.” down as possible,” she Rubell’s interactive domen is hollowed out, allowing an adult Food figures centrally in many of Ru- recalls. “But after the sculptures. to crawl inside and perhaps even assume bell’s works (www.jenniferrubell.com); audition, they told me, ‘You’re too sophis- the fetal position for a vicarious moment she was a food columnist for the Miami ticated for our audience.’ That was the of intrauterine life. (A work in progress, Herald magazine while living in Miami moment when I realized that what I had Portrait will be completed in 2013.) “Allow- from 1993 until 2003, and wrote the 2006 been working for all my adult life was not ing viewers to transgress that boundary cookbook and hospitality guide Real Life a place I wanted to be. I am fundamen- [by touching and interacting with the art] Entertaining. Right after the book came tally interested in the visual world and also changes their relationship with other out, the Food Network auditioned her the world of ideas. In the mainstream food

Taxes in America: What Every- abused in the courtroom” (the subtitle), one Needs to Know, by Leonard illustrated here in 10 (count ’em) cases, Off the Shelf E. Burman and Joel Slemrod, Ph.D. from Ponzi to the Dreyfus Affair, could Recent books with Harvard connections ’80 (Oxford, $16.95 paperback). have wide application for the widely in- Slemrod, chair of economics at the numerate. University of Michigan, and his co- Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the author (of the Maxwell School at The Counterinsurgent’s Constitu- Interdependent Self, by Gish Jen ’77, BI Syracuse University) kindly assume that tion, by Ganesh Sitaraman ’04, J.D. ’08 ’87, RI ’02 (Harvard, $18.95). The novelist, people might want to understand tax pol- (Oxford, $35). The author, now on the here turned Massey lecturer, explores the icy before complaining about it. They are law faculty at Vanderbilt, writes seriously tensions between the Western novel— clear, informed, funny (there are lots of about a serious subject: law in the age of all about originality and individual experi- cartoons), and serious as educators—in “small wars”—as in the use of drones, ence—and the Eastern narrative of her case anyone is listening. or in conducting combat operations in ancestry, grounded in morality and the villages where insurgents are embedded recurrent forces of everyday existence. Truth’s Ragged Edge: The Rise of with civilians. the American Novel, by Philip F. Gura A Field Guide to the Ants of New ’72, Ph.D. ’77 (Farrar, Straus and Gir- The Lost Carving: A Journey to the England, by Aaron M. Ellison, Nicholas J. oux, $30). Literary criticism on a grand Heart of Making, by David Esterly ’66 Gotelli, Elizabeth J. Farnsworth, and Gary scale, tracing the novel from its origins (Viking, $27.95). The master woodcarv- D. Alpert (Yale, $29.95, softbound). Who in religious tracts to the masterworks of er’s introspective memoir about how he knew it would take four researchers to Hawthorne and Melville—where those came to repair, restore, and recreate the tackle the local ants? Ellison, of the Har- original themes remain in play. With many ornamental sculptor Grinling Gibbons’s vard Forest, and Alpert, of the Museum of underdiscovered writers and works along works at Hampton Court Palace after Comparative Zoology, and colleagues do the way. the fire in 1986. His high-relief floral so spectacularly, in a minutely illustrated and other works in limewood are simply and beautifully photographed volume of Math on Trial, by Leila Schneps ’83, RI breathtaking. myrmecology. It will make you more care- ’94, and Coralie Colmez (Basic Books, ful of where you step. $26). A mathematically minded mother- The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in daughter team, based Crisis, by Steven J. Harper, J.D. ’79 (Basic in Paris and London, Books, $25.99). A Kirkland & Ellis alumnus have dedicated them- says the supply of new lawyers exceeds selves to improving demand, the finances of getting legally the use of statistics educated are punishing, and the profes- in criminal justice. sion has become too focused on the short Their book, on “How term for its own good and its clients’. An numbers get used and indictment, with recommendations on how to deflate the bubble. Camponotus chromaiodes (red Five Lieutenants, by James Carl Nel- carpenter ant), from lpert A Field Guide to the son (St. Martin’s, $27.99). The intertwined Ants of New England stories of five Harvard students who went Gary A D.

16 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage world, you cannot fully explore those in- on a scale that necessarily affected the trial gloves for fishing them out.Creation terests.” participants’ relations with both the co- “melded installation art, happenings and But because food is, as she notes, “one of mestibles and each other. The mise en scène performance art with various Old Testa- the main excuses for human interaction,” included 2,000 pounds of barbecued ribs ment overtones, while laying waste to the it’s promising material for “relational aes- with honey dripping on them from a ceil- prolonged ordeal that is the benefit-dining thetics,” a school of art (defined by French ing-mounted trap. (“Scale is one tool that experience,” wrote New York Times art critic critic Nicolas Bourriaud in his eponymous artists use,” she explains. “Five ribs are Roberta Smith. “Moreover, it infused this 1998 book) in which the artwork inten- not in conversation with art history, but exhausted sit-down-and-wait-(and-wait) tionally acts as a catalyst for human inter- a ton of ribs are.”) There were also several convention with new and frequently un- action. Rubell finds the concept compel- long tables, each seating 100; three felled predictable life. The question, could 500 ling. apple trees with apples on the branches; dinner guests, unaided by waiters or in- For example, her work Creation, a hap- and three enormous industrial bags of structions, figure out how to fend for pening she staged in 2009, included food powdered sugar with cookies buried in- themselves? Furthermore, would they do and drink presented in a manner and side—and shoulder-length yellow indus- so in a civilized manner?” to war in 1917, by an historian of the Western Front. One wonders whether Iraq and Afghanistan will furnish similar material. For a fictional treatment of the same period, see Harvard 1914, by Allegra Jordan, M.B.A. ’95 (Gold Gable Press, $14.99 paperback)— a romance, from Radcliffe to Flan- ders Fields.

Music Then and Now, by Thom- as Forrest Kelly, Knafel professor of music (Norton, $112.50, paper- back). If you haven’t been able to enroll in Sublime limewood: one of “First Nights,” or the book version of that David Esterly’s decorative woodcarvings, and a course whetted your appetite for more, detailed view

here is a text with access to an e-book, Mc Clanahan hayer streaming music, and other goodies es- new global economy, inwardly T pecially suited to a master teacher’s in- much more fundamentalist in troduction to 28 foundational works of faith and culture, in a transi- Western music. Kelly is an Incorporator tion from “its earlier modesty and its hu- A History of Opera, by Carolyn Ab- of this magazine and, when not on sabbati- manistic values.” bate, RI ’07, professor of music, and Roger cal, parliamentarian of the Faculty of Arts Parker (Norton, $45). A sweeping review and Sciences—a maestro in several media. The Carriage House, by Louisa Hall of the past four centuries of the form. The ’04 (Scribner, $25). A first novel by a poet authors worry about “how to assess the In the Land of Israel: My Family 1809- and squash player, now a doctoral student future of an art form that, at best, has had 1949, by Nitza Rosovsky, former curator at the University of Texas, about a family a troubled relationship with modernity” for exhibits of the Semitic Museum (Tide- patriarch, his daughters, and their collec- and that seems, they say, predominantly Pool Press, $26.95). An elegantly remem- tive response to decline, symbolized by a backward-looking. bered personal history of a period now family carriage house. forgotten or obscured—Jewish family life The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa in Palestine dating to the early nineteenth A Long Day at the End of the World, Parks, by Jeanne Theoharis ’91 (Bea- century, through the formation of Israel— by Brent Hendricks, J.D. ’85 (Farrar, con, $27.95). At the centennial of Rosa handsomely produced by a publisher that Straus and Giroux, $14 paperback). The Parks’s birth, the author, professor of po- has created an outlet for interesting lives author’s deceased father, buried but then litical science at Brooklyn College, finds (Marian Schlesinger, Maisie Houghton). In disinterred for cremation in Georgia, was a life of activism and engagement long a very different vein, intellectual historian one of the several hundred bodies des- before—and well beyond—her landmark Diana Pinto ’70, Ph.D. ’77, writes Israel ecrated by a crematory proprietor who civil disobedience on a segregated Mont- Has Moved (Harvard, $24.95); she de- neglected his duties. A memoir and real- gomery, Alabama, public bus on Decem- picts a post-European Israel, tied to the life Deep South Gothic. ber 1, 1955.

Harvard Magazine 17 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage c hman a c hman a evin T K evin evin T K evin

Counterclockwise from upper left: at the 2009 event Creation, a ton of barbecued ribs, plus tongs, with honey c hman a dripping on them; two of the choco- late bunnies from Creation, prior to erens evin T K evin being smashed, and a participant in john b john gnome of a fat, bearded, leather- action; at the Icons event, a Drinking As with Creation, many pieces express vest-clad motorcyclist to create Pissing Painting with relevant glassware Rubell’s humor. Her Drinking Paintings are Gnome (Biker), a 2011 work that urinates says. Her parents are longtime contem- a series of blank canvases stretched onto beer when you pump his headgear. Lisa II, porary-art collectors whose acquisitions frames that contain stainless-steel tanks a nude, life-size, fiberglass modified Barbie populate the enormous Rubell Family filled with red wine, white wine, martinis, doll, lies on her side; her upper leg moves Collection exhibition space in Miami. Her or other beverages, with working brass on a metal hinge, allowing viewers to put uncle, Steve Rubell, co-owned the disco- spigots to dispense the potables sticking a nut in her crotch and use her as a nut- era cynosure Studio 54. “He was a huge out of the canvases; they certainly facilitate cracker. (The artist thoughtfully provides influence on me, almost a second father,” openings. She altered a commercial garden an adjacent pedestal filled with walnuts.) she says. “The biggest thing I got from him The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is that you can create a powerful, ephem- American Morning, Rubell’s 2008 “breakfast installation” for the Art Basel and the Brooklyn Museum have exhibited eral moment that means something for- Miami Beach week, invited art-lovers to Rubell, who grew up “as deep inside the ever.” At Harvard, she was president of the choose their cereal, add milk, and eat. art world as you can possibly get,” she arts-oriented Signet Society—“the only place where what I imagined Harvard to be came true,” she says. “Signet is the only organization I’ve ever really enjoyed.” Yet the time came when “I was really bored by, and uncomfortable with, the role I had in relation to art,” she says. “Art was something that you had to revere, and it had a kind of force field around it that you could not penetrate. You almost couldn’t even have an opinion about it—can you look at the Mona Lisa and think about whether you like that painting? To break through that force field is personally and conceptually very important to me—it’s a necessary contemporary act. The time when we had the pantheon delivered to us and we worshipped it is just over, and will

am never exist again. I think it’s important for

Chi L contemporary art to reflect that change.”

18 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

ever, “Like a Rolling Stone.” It shows the Detective in Pop Culture singer sitting, wearing a Triumph Motor- cycle T-shirt with a blue and purple silk Bob Egan finds the original venues of iconic images. shirt over it, holding sunglasses, and look- ing, well, moody. The legs of a man stand- ing with a dangling camera appear behind hough not a “street person,” lions. Through painstaking, often fascinat- Dylan. Bob Egan ’75 is definitely a man ing research, Egan—who’s been called a The pilasters in the background made of the streets, specifically those of “pop culture detective”—has successfully Egan think that “the photo was taken T Manhattan. Three decades ago, he pinpointed the exact bicycled every street on that island to re- spots where some of search The Bookstore Book (1978), his guide to the most famous album its bookstores that was complete enough to covers of all time were include Ukrainian shops. His current job as photographed. In 2011 a commercial real-estate broker also takes he launched a website, him to the sidewalks as he seeks out retail www.popspotsnyc. and other spaces for clients. “I walk a lot,” com, to share his he says. “When people tell me about some “PopSpots” findings. exotic destination they have been to, I ask Take the cover of if they have been to the eastern part of Chi- Bob Dylan’s iconic 1965 natown. I have an inquisitive mind. Some album, Highway 61 Re- out-of-the-way places in New York are as visited, which includes interesting as flying to a foreign country.” what many consider Some spots on certain streets are very the greatest rock song interesting indeed—they were the sites The Gramercy Park an of moments in the history of pop culture doorway site of the e g b o Highway 61 cover b that are engraved in the memory of mil- © lizlinder.com PHOTO:

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Harvard Magazine 19 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

Park” turned up two Federal five-story would be near that address,” he says. Cros- townhouses “that I had seen at least a by and Howard streets formed the T in- hundred times while walking past the tersection nearest to Central Falls, and by park,” says Egan. They had tall steps and using Google Street Views of that block, fancy white doors; zooming in on the Egan found architectural features on four white doors, Egan noticed an arced, pol- buildings matching the background of Si- ished-brass piece that “was right behind mon’s cover photo. Bingo! Dylan on the cover!” One day after work, Egan has an excellent visual memory, the Highway 61 album in hand, he tramped but also spends hours “flying” over neigh- over to the park and peered at the build- borhoods with Bing Bird’s-Eye View, and ings and the cover until, at 4 Gramercy tapping resources like the New York Pub- Park West, “the door handle, the arced lic Library’s digital archives. “The key to pattern of the brass window element, and PopSpots is research,” he says. Years ago, it the thin white pi- might have taken days poring over books lasters on the side to unearth connections like Dylan and matched perfectly.” Grossman, or Simon and Baskin, but today, Characteristically, the Internet yields such gold in seconds. Egan exclaimed, He’s also begun branching out into “Bingo!” movies, paintings, and historical events. The cover of Paul Popspotsnyc.com shows how Egan Simon’s 1975 album tracked down the Oslo site of Edvard Still Crazy After All Munch’s The Scream; he has also identified These Years depicts the likely location of Edward Hopper’s the mustachioed 1927 painting Drug Store ( the Greenwich singer in a stylish Village Historical Society’s website re- hat, standing on a ported his findings). A collection of clas- fire escape. Cast- sic film images of New York—including iron building fa- Marilyn Monroe’s leg-revealing updraft, çades populate the the Robert DeNiro Taxi Driver poster, the background, where, famous rooftop scene from Woody Allen’s unusually for Man- Annie Hall—is nearly complete, and Egan is hattan, the street now training his sights on Civil War pic- terminates in a T. tures of Abraham Lincoln and the exact Above: a recent photo of the Hell’s Egan used Google and Bing Maps to chart site of the Gettysburg Address. Kitchen block on West 56th Street the SoHo, Nolita, and Tribeca neighbor- More than a thousand Twitter fol- between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, Manhattan, where the cover of the 1957 hoods, which have the greatest concentra- lowers around the world monitor Egan’s West Side Story cast album (superimposed tion of cast-iron architecture, and circled findings, and the image-sharing website below) was shot. Egan spotted the 10 qualifying intersections. Searching re- Imgur attracted eight million hits by host- address “418 W 56 St” on the garbage can vealed that Edie Baskin, then a Saturday ing 24 images of his work. “With these to the left of the heroine, Maria. Night Live photographer who was dating rock albums, I tapped into something inside something like a college lecture Simon, took the photo in 1974 or 1975, and bigger than I thought,” he says. Yet, “the room with nice molding against a white that Baskin once had a photo exhibit at search is what matters. Searching for and wall, and Dylan sitting on the front edge Central Falls, a restaurant/gallery at 478 finding the exact spot is the most reward- of a stage.” Google searches identified the West Broadway that Egan recalled from ing thing to me.” vcraig lambert photographer, Daniel Kramer; Egan found the early 1980s. Kramer’s reminiscence of the shoot on the (In 1977, when he website of the Seattle-based Experience first came to New Music Project. There, Kramer recalled York, he lived in taking the picture on the front steps of a the area.) “I fig- building on Gramercy Park where Dylan ured that if she had often visited his manager, Albert Gross- frequented that man. (The four streets that border that restaurant, her loft private park, accessed only by key-holders, rank among of New York’s most exclusive Edvard Munch’s addresses.) Janis Joplin, another Grossman 1895 lithograph of client, had written elsewhere of looking The Scream superimposed on out on the park from his porch. its natal site, a road A Google Image search for “Gramercy called Valhallveien

20 March - April 2013 Images courtesy of Bob Egan Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 “Relentlessly authentic reviews in over 500 categories, from dentists to roofers to antique lamp repair. Written by people just like you.” Angie Hicks, Founder

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“Doc” Willoughby in his home kitchen in Cambridge, a laboratory for cookbooks

to,” with instructions for what to do with it in the recipe itself? As long as they addressed all these questions, they learned, these choices were mostly up to them. That book, The Thrill of the Grill (1990), has sold well over 100,000 copies; eight books later, Wil- loughby believes Thrill is still the team’s top seller. “I think the level of detail and specificity” Guar- naschelli insisted on, he says, “was part of what helped the book expand its audience beyond people who were already dedicated grillers.” Willoughby, whose career now embraces nearly 23 years as a food writer, doesn’t restrict himself to cookbooks. Before Thrill came The Art of the Cookbook out, Guarnaschelli advised the former English concentrator to write magazine “Doc” Willoughby talks grilling and writing. articles to increase his name recognition. His very first piece, on barbecue, forCook’s ohn “Doc” Willoughby ’70 got an staff, who tested recipes, and of noted Illustrated, impressed the magazine’s found- unconventional start as a cookbook cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli, er and publisher, Christopher Kimball, author. First, he was feeling burned who in the course of two long days, taught enough to prompt the offer of a writing Jout at a legal-services job. Next, in the the novices how to turn their ragtag col- job—and Willoughby finally quit his day mid 1980s he met, became friends with, and lection of recipes and text into a coherent, job with legal services. started volunteering a few nights a week as useful book. “Chris assumed that readers Since then he’s been the executive edi- a line cook and cold-station guy for Chris would know nearly as much about grill- tor of the late Gourmet magazine and a col- Schlesinger, former chef/owner of Cam- ing as he did,” Willoughby remembers, umnist for the Dining section of The New bridge’s renowned East Coast Grill. Wil- “since it’s such a straightforward cooking York Times, where he remains a regular con- loughby had no professional cooking experi- method. Maria convinced us that people tributor. He’s now the executive editor ence and so, with the promise of a vacation needed to know everything, from how to of magazines at America’s Test Kitchen, if the East Coast Grill succeeded, he worked light the fire to how to tell when the fire another Kimball enter- for a year for free. (One year later he enjoyed was the right temperature to what kind of prise, based in Brook- his all-expense-paid trip to Mexico.) In 1989, tools they should have if they wanted to line, Massachusetts. Visit harvardmag. when a literary agent approached Schlesing- become grillers.” It’s mostly in his “spare com/extras to watch er about doing a cookbook, he persuaded The men also had to decide how much in- time” that he’s written, Willoughby prepare a Thai-inspired sauce for her to let the inexperienced Willoughby struction to offer, and where. For example, ghostwritten, co-writ- grilled pork. try writing the proposal—probably, Wil- does the ingredients list say “one lime” or ten, developed, tested, loughby says, “because we share the same “two tablespoons of lime juice”? “We said and/or edited 17 cookbooks, including the way of looking at food, he wanted it to be both,” Willoughby recalls: ‘two tablespoons nine he’s done with Schlesinger, which in- more informal than a regular cookbook, and of lime juice from one lime,’ so you knew clude Salsas, Sambals, Chutneys, and Chowchows it was just a nice thing to do.” how much you needed to buy at the grocery (1993), Big Flavors of the Hot Sun: Recipes and The beginning authors were lucky to store.” Is it “one tomato, charred, peeled, Techniques from the Spice Zone (1994), License have the help of Schlesinger’s kitchen seeded, and chopped” or simply “one toma- to Grill (1997) and Let the Flames Begin: Tips,

22 March - April 2013 Photograph by Stu Rosner Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage

Techniques, and Recipes for Real Live Fire Cook- ing (2002). The pair are currently working on a tenth book, still untitled, which they c hapter & verse jokingly refer to as “Shut Up and Grill It,” a Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words nod to how complicated food has become since they started their collaboration. Michael Comenetz asks where Mark rather than Camus or Capus, but there is To them, food isn’t complicated. It’s a Twain said, approximately, “I don’t know no reason to believe he is the real coiner. good time. “In fact,” Willoughby com- why so much is made of the thoughts of In searching English-language newspaper ments, “one of the main reasons we have great men. I have had many of the same databases, I find that the Boston Globe, on kept doing cookbooks together over the thoughts, they just had them before me.” September 24, 1925, has “Do you talk years is that it gives us an excuse to hang in your sleep?…I talk in other people’s out, drinking beer and cooking, and it’s Andrew Schmookler hopes some- sleep.…I’m a college professor!” A similar also a good reason to travel.” one can identify a fable he read some 35 anecdote in the Detroit Free Press of Octo- Those travels, mostly to hot-weather re- years ago. It depicted iron filings making ber 22, 1906, has the punch line, “He talks gions of the world, inspire them. Once they what they thought was their own decision in other people’s sleep. He is a preacher.” have an idea for a new book, Schlesinger about where to go, when they were in (mostly) writes the recipes, drawing on a fact being moved by the force of a magnet. “unornamental men” (January-Febru- combination of his exposure to interna- ary). John Gordon identified this excerpt tional food cultures, decades of profes- “Lecturers talk while other people from Morris Bishop’s poem “A View of sional experience, and lifelong love of food. sleep” (January-February). Fred Sha­ the Gulf,” published in the July 18, 1964, (Willoughby says his friend has a particu- piro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, issue of Saturday Review (xlvii:29; 6). lar talent for coming up with precisely the writes, “I was unable to find any source right amounts of ingredients—this much details beyond Alfred Capus’s name in Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter balsamic, that much oil—without mea- the Google results, nor any citations in and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware suring, and “He’s almost always right.”) French quotation dictionaries. Most Web Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to Schlesinger then tests all his recipes him- attributions actually credit W. H. Auden [email protected]. self, while Willoughby makes many of

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Harvard Magazine 23 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage those that seem trickiest. They also hire a more closely replicate the experience of the known is How to Cook Meat. “For that one,” recipe tester “just to be safe.” Testers have home cook. Willoughby says, “I went down to Uni- usually worked at restaurants or food mag- Mostly, their books have been all about versity of Texas and took a three-day class azines, but sometimes are simply people live fire. Why have they focused mainly on in how to butcher a cow, in which we di- Schlesinger has met who express an in- grilling? Because, says Willoughby, “it’s vided up into teams, chose a cow, watched terest in the job. The latter “might be the more fun.” He and Schlesinger have writ- it slaughtered, then butchered it. Nothing best,” Willoughby admits, because they ten a few non-grilling books; the best like first-hand experience.” vbetsy block

o p e n b o o k Seeing and Observing

Drawing on Sherlock Holmes, Maria Kon- nikova ’05—the proprietor of Scientific American’s “Literally Psyched” column, now a doctoral student in psychology at Colum- bia—presents an elementary lesson (and some advanced ones) on enhancing one’s mental prowess. Konnikova clearly recalls details better than Watson did, in this pas- sage from the “prelude” to Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (Viking, $26.95).

When I was little, my dad used to read us Sherlock Holmes stories before bed. While my brother often took the opportunity to fall promptly asleep Holmes and Watson sit in their matching armchairs, the detec- on his corner of the couch, the rest of us listened intently. I re- tive instructs the doctor on the difference between seeing and member the big leather armchair where my dad sat, holding the observing. Watson is baffled. And then, all at once everything be- book out in front of him with one arm, the dancing flames from comes crystal clear.… the fireplace reflecting in his black-framed glasses. I remember “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is the rise and fall of his voice as the suspense mounted beyond all clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps breaking point, and finally, finally, at long last the awaited solu- which lead up from the hall to this room.” tion, when it all made sense and I’d shake my head, just like Dr. “Frequently.” Watson, and think, Of course; it’s all so simple now that he says “How often?” it. I remember the smell of the pipe that my dad himself would “Well, some hundreds of times.” smoke every so often, a fruity, earthy mix that made its way “Then how many are there?” into the folds of the leather chair, and the outlines of the night “How many? I don’t know.” through the curtained French windows. His pipe, of course, “Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have was ever-so-slightly curved just like Holmes’s. And I remember seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are that final slam of the book, the thick pages coming together seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.” between the crimson covers, when he’d announce, “That’s it …What I couldn’t understand then was that Holmes…had for tonight.”… been honing a method of mindful interaction with the world. And then there’s the one thing that wedged its way so deeply The Baker Street steps? Just a way of showing off a skill that into my brain that it remained there, taunting me, for years to now came so naturally to him that it didn’t require the least bit come, when the rest of the stories had long since faded into of thought. A by-the-way manifestation of a process that was some indeterminate background and the adventures of Holmes habitually, almost subconsciously, unfolding in his constantly ac- and his faithful Boswell were all but forgotten: the steps. tive mind. A trick, if you will, of no real consequence, and yet The steps to 221B Baker Street. How many were there? It’s with the most profound implications if you stopped to consider the question Holmes brought before Watson in “A Scandal in what made it possible. A trick that inspired me to write an en- Bohemia,” and a question that never once since left my mind. As tire book in its honor.

24 March - April 2013 Illustration by Boris Kulikov Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section

• April 26 at 8 p.m. The Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Extracurriculars Society, and Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum present Haydn’s The Creation. Special events American Repertory Theater • April 27 at 8 p.m. http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/arts www.americanrepertorytheater.org The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra offers

617-495-8676 617-547-8300 (box office) works by Mozart and Mendelssohn. s

• • eum April 25-28 617-495-2668 (general information) May 3 at 8 p.m. s u The annual Arts First Festival offers dance, • Through March 17 The Harvard-Radcliffe Chorus performs rt M theater, music, and other student and facul- The Glass Menagerie. Tennessee Wil- Carl Orff’sCarmina Burana.

ty performances—and honors the 2013 Arts liams’s classic stars Cherry Jones, among arvard A

Medalist: actor, screenwriter, and producer others. Loeb Drama Center. film he H ; T s

Matt Damon ’92. • Opening April 16 The Harvard Film Archive ic s • April 25-26 Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa

http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/ reimagines the tale with original music that 617-495-4700 trophy

crossing-borders weaves together lieder, cabaret, jazz, and • March 15-24 or As 617-495-8600 electronica. At Oberon. King Hu and The Art of Wuxia highlights The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study the Chinese director’s sophisticated work enter f

conference, “Crossing Borders: Immigration music with swordplay, choreography, and editing onian C s and Gender in the Americas,” features aca- • March 8 and April 19 at 8 p.m. in martial-arts cinema. demics, practitioners, and artists. Registra- http://www.music.fas.harvard.edu/calen-

tion required. Radcliffe Gym. dar.html; 617-495-2791 exhibitions & events arvard-Smith Performances by the Blodgett artists-in- Harvard Art Museums

Theater residence, the Chiara Quartet www.harvardartmuseums.org rchive; H • March 28 through April 7 John Knowles Paine Concert Hall. 617-495-9400 http://www.hrgsp.org/happeningnow.htm Sanders Theatre Sackler Museum, 485 Broadway http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/boxoffice • Continuing: In Harmony: The Norma 627-496-2222 617-496-2222 Jean Calderwood Collection of Islam- Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Play- • April 6 at 8 p.m. ic Art showcases 150 objects, including t to right: harvardt to right: Film A ers present Utopia Limited; or, The Flowers of The Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Mu­si­cum glazed ceramics, illustrated manuscripts, f

Progress. Agassiz Theatre. performs Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. and lacquerware. From le Left to right: From Come Drink With Me, at the Harvard Film Archive; “Dark Cloud Encounters,” at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; “Rustam Mourns the Dying Suhrab,” from a manuscript of the Shahnama, by Firdawsi, at the Harvard Art Museums

Harvard Magazine 24A Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology www.peabody.harvard.edu; 617-496-1027 Talks at the Geological Lecture Hall 24 Oxford Street • April 5 at 6 p.m. “Divination Through the History of Dream- ing,” by Kimberley C. Patton, Harvard Di- RETHINKBALLET vinity School professor of the comparative and historical study of religion SPRING 2013 • April 18 at 6 p.m. “Perfect Model: The Past, Present, and Fu- ture of Prediction,” by David Orrell, scien- tist and author of The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction Harvard Museum of Natural History www.hmnh.harvard.edu; 617-495-3045 Geological Lecture Hall 24 Oxford St. The Boston Opera House • March 28 at 6 p.m. “River. Space. Design Towards a New Ur- All Kylián ban Water Culture,” by Stuttgart University professor Antje Stokman March 7–17 • April 4 at 6 p.m. Celebrate the opening of the renovated Earth The Sleeping Beauty and Planetary Science Gallery with a lecture March 22–April 7 by Francis A. Macdonald, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences. Chroma Nature and science May 2–12 The Arnold Arboretum www.arboretum.harvard.edu; 617-384-5209 Coppélia Check the website for more classes, lec- May 16–26 tures, tours, and events. • April 8, 7-8 p.m. Swarthmore College biology professor Scott Gilbert reveals “The New You: How Symbio- Packages start at $135, Tickets from $29 • 617.695.6955 sis Studies Have Undercut Biological Views www.bostonballet.org of Individuality.” The Harvard-Smithsonian Center Corina Gill and Paulo Arrais by Gene Schiavone for Astrophysics www.cfa.harvard.edu/events/mon.html 617-495-7461; 60 Garden Street Minot DeBlois Advisors LLC Observatory night lectures with night-sky viewing, weather permitting, on March 21 thoughtful and disciplined investment advisory services and April 18 • April 19 (rain date April 20), 8-10 p.m. “Sidewalk Astronomy,” part of the Cam- bridge Science Festival, offers viewings of the moon, stars, and planets from telescopes set up in Central and Harvard Squares. Dedicated Investment Management • Consistent Strategy • Accessible and Transparent Please contact Catherine Smith ’83 or Robert G. Bannish ’85 for information. Events listings also appear in the University 50 Congress Street, Boston • www.minotdeblois.com • 617-557-7407 Gazette, accessible via this magazine’s web- Individual Accounts and IRAs • Trusts • Endowments • Foundations site, www.harvardmagazine.com.

24B March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 120933_LuxBondGreen.indd 1 7/31/12 11:24 AM explorations Spring Forward

A small selection of the region’s best public gardens • by Nell Porter Brown

ew England may not be widely known for its public gardens, but those that do grow here inspire N passion in the hearts of hardy- zoned green thumbs. The Glebe House, for example—the Connecticut birthplace of the Episcopal Church in the New World—also boasts the only extant American garden de- flowers, Emmet says. Equally thrilling is Counterclockwise from upper left: roses signed by Gertrude Jekyll, whose impres- the series of woodland scenes and outdoor at Blithewold; part of the children’s arena

at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens; the sionistic style turned landscapes into flow- “rooms” Farrand created, filled with hos-

Entry Garden at Tower Hill Botanic Garden; ill ing paintings. The other side of the state tas, ferns, and other shade-loving greenery, and one of Naumkeag’s grand vistas s

offers the Gothic Revival-styledRoseland set along mossy paths that wind their way T ower H ervation t): Blithewold; s f Cottage (owned by Historic New England), to a walled garden. “The paths also hold a South,” admits Roger Swain ’71, Ph.D. ’77, e nver/ f R

with its vibrant mid-nineteenth-century lot of Asian sculpture collected from the writer, gardener, and former longtime host an E s o s h tee boxwood-edged parterre gardens: “an elabo- Rockefellers’ trips,” such as stone Buddhas of the PBS television show The Victory Gar- ; A s s ru rate, rather rare place, planted beautifully,” and towers, Emmet reports. “And the moon den, “what is here is definitely worth atten- rom upper le e f s arden he T according to gardener Alan Emmet ’50, RI ’77, gate that you step through into the walled tion: certainly not shabby!” T who wrote the authoritative So Fine a Prospect: garden in the woods is just magical.” Historic New England Gardens. In the interest of (temporarily) satisfying For example, he says the greenhouses at

She also favors the normally private those late winter yearnings for blossoms Wellesley and Smith Colleges are “better aine Botanical G f (counterclockwi cmahon/naumkeag/

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, in Seal and fresh greenery, and for planning excur- than a ticket to Jamaica!” The Wellesley M tal y o s . M Harbor, Maine, designed by Beatrix Far- sions once the ground thaws, Harvard Maga- College Botanic Gardens has 16 of them s rand, that is open to the public, by reserva- zine has produced a selective look at what’s (in addition to its arboretum and other art- s courte

tion only, one day a week in the summer. growing where—now, and this summer— ful landscapes). The spaces include sections reeman/ coa ara f

The estate’s “huge, fabulous” main lawn in zones 3b through 7a. Although “the devoted to succulents and desert plants, a b otanic garden;otanic and K ar hotograph P b is bordered by countless varieties of lush greatest public gardens are probably in the fine array of unusual ferns, and tropical and b

24D March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Vice President 1730 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, MA 02138 Spring Forward 617 245-4044

A small selection of the region’s best public gardens • by Nell Porter Brown

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130321_Coldwell_GailRoberts.indd 1 1/24/13 1:15 PM Premier Properties New England Regional Section CAMBRIDGE-SOMERVILLE subtropical trees and flowers, along with an BOSTON AND BEYOND! orchid room and the 130-year-old Durant ca- mellia, which came from Wellesley’s found- ers, Pauline and Henry Fowle Durant, A.B. 1841. An entire “camellia corridor” is walk- able at The Botanic Garden at Smith Col- lege, as is an invitingly humid palm house, with coffee, banana, and cacao plants. The Australian fern trees are also worth a visit, and the college’s annual spring bulb show

©Jeffrey Dodge Rogers Dodge ©Jeffrey (March 2-17) is a popular tradition. When the snow is gone, Swain urges a HARVARD SQUARE trip to discover “all the early bloomers, the spring ephemerals, the marsh marigolds, Stunning, attached end-unit, single-family and skunk cabbages and other lovely Knowledge makes the difference! row-house residence. Coveted Half-Crown Realtor for 13 years. Cambridge resident for 16 years. early signs of spring” at the Garden in the Call me for all your selling & buying needs. Marsh Neighborhood Conservation District, Woods (home of the New England Wild- Kim Walker-Chin, MBA on the perimeter of Harvard Square. flower Society in Framingham, Massachu- Realtor® 8 rooms, 4 bedrooms, and 3.5 baths. 617.817.1593 setts). Enchanting pathways wind around [email protected] Magnificent details abound. Charming various habitat displays, such as bog and “The Deal is in The Price” front and back city gardens. Deck. Private swampland plants, meadow flowers, and Coldwell Banker driveway. Price upon request an inspiring rock garden. Visitors can also Residential Brokerage 171 Huron Avenue take longer loops through woodlands and Cambridge, MA 02138 Carol Kelly & Myra von Turkovich | Vice Presidents over the Hop Brook. carolandmyra.com | hammondre.com | 617.497.4400 www.NewEnglandMoves.com Later in the season, fans must get to “the best new public garden in New England— PROFESSORS ROW the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens,” IMPECCABLY RENOVATED CAMBRIDGE Swain avers. More than 10 meticulously de- signed garden spaces have already been cre- ated on the organization’s 248-acre tract in Boothbay; all are open year-round. Classes, dinners, and other events are available (al- though the buildings are closed from De- cember through March). Miles of walking trails wind along the shoreline, through the mossy woods, and past small ponds. The gardens opened in 2007 after 16 years of planning and planting by hun- dreds of volunteers and a core group of residents, some of whom mortgaged their homes to help raise money for the am- bitious project. “It’s a very creative and whimsical place for people of all ages,” says Restored Colonial Revival townhouse. Exquisite attention to detail. Designer kitchen and baths. Parking for 2 cars. 3+ bedrooms and 4 ½ baths. Media room. Garden with terrace. Divinity School marketing director Kris Folsom. Area convenient to the T, shops, restaurants, and the university. Exclusively offered $2,150,000 The unique Bibby and Harold Alfond Children’s Garden is designed around well- BARBARA CURRIER known books with a Maine connection. THE CURRIER TEAM | FINE PROPERTIES Kids can sit atop “Sal’s Bear” from Robert McCloskey’s Blueberries For Sal, meet Miss Phone: 617-593-7070 | Email: [email protected] | Web: www.BarbaraCurrier.com CAMBRIDGE Rumphius (by Barbara Clooney), who tells stories in a giant, handmade wooden chair, If you would like to list a property in our May-June issue, or search for E.B. White’s Charlotte the contact Abby Shepard: 617.496.4032 spider in the Story Barn. There are a real rock cave and tree stumps to jump among, water pumps and fountains, as well as liv-

24F March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section ing roofs to study and a pond that high- H oom e ss tth iis u n i q u e d e s e r v e a n i n s u r a n c e p o lliiccyy ttoo m aattcchh.. lights the local art of lobstering. A “fairy garden” offers miniature houses and other scenes crafted from moss, bark, pine cones, and mushrooms that involve fantastical creatures (fairy events are held on Fridays in July and August). “Adults love the chil- dren’s gardens, too,” according to Folsom, “because the landscaping and color from the annuals there are spectacular.” On the other side of the property, the Lerner Garden of the Five Senses provides a rare opportunity to enjoy the natural world in ways that go beyond our usual overdependence on visual beauty. There, paved stone pathways and elevated gar- dens ease the way for those with wheel- chairs, walkers, and canes. There are herbs to smell and taste, a “popcorn plant” (Cas- w w w. b r o w n s t o n e iin s u rra n ccee..ccoom ((661177)) 223366--66440000 sia didymobotrya), strongly scented flowers, and a wide variety of textured plants: “soft and fuzzy, others with jagged edges,” Fol- som explains. “You will use all your senses as you go along.” The central water feature is a pond and waterfall that runs down over a stone wall: “You can run your hands along it and feel wet and cold water that travels from one pool to another,” she says, and listening to and keeping the water on the same side assures the vision-impaired BROWNSTONE INSURANCCEE that they are always moving forward through the gardens. “Even the labyrinth Unparalleled protection for your mullttii-uniitt pprrooppeerrttyy is made of stones whose sizes change as you walk toward the center,” she adds. “Take your socks off and walk the path to incorporate reflexology or experience it as a meditation—or just as a fun thing to do.” (Horticultural therapy sessions and classes are also held in the garden.) There are also rich rose arbors, a kitchen garden, perennial beds, shoreline trails, loads of rhododendrons, and a hillside garden lined with moss, boulders, and an COMING NEXT ISSUE... unearthly, glowing glass orb sculpture by Henry Richardson. “If you are up in Maine shop HARVARD SQUARE and you come to the turnoff for Boothbay, shop local shop local Showcasing special products you’d better take it,” says Swain. “You can The Veritas team of former HARVARD SQUARE admissions officers from Yale, Ballet classes: shop Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Black Ink...what’s in store? Throughout its long history, age 3 through teen, Harvard Square has played Case Western, and Oberlin adult and pointe. Original Works of Art!

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&Summer 5/24 361st Harvard Commencement Come experience the all new Cu N O Spring rious George store! Equip 5/25 Patios in Bloom Kickoff businesses Discover exclusive apparel and merchandise, you r child explore toys and gift ideas witwith you in Harvard 6/2 Cambridge Riverfest h yourr favorite to see thing s differently Events monkey, or browse through ouourr library of over The 132-acre 6/3 Tory Row 5K for Harvard 8,000 children’s book titles, al Tower Hill Botanic Garden children’s book titles, all unde l underr one roof. Reunion coverage. To advertise, Square 6/9 Jose Mateo Dance for World Community Festival We Teach the World Magazine No time to swing by? 6/16 5th Annual Fete de la Musique / swing by? Make Music Harvard Square ...our website: Consider making us your loca readers on... l e-commerce 6/17 Father’s Day children’s book destination. k Kickoff Visit us online for one-stop ssho 7/5 Think Pink, Drink Pink, Shop Pin harvardmagazine.com hopping.pping. 617-547-4500 7/15 Bastille Day www.TheCuriousGeorgeStore.com To learn more, call 617.499.1459 in Boylston, Massachusetts, is another dy- M-S: 10am - 8pm /harvardsquare or visit www.isbos.org contact Abby Shepard at: 7/22 Mass Ave Mile Road Race Sun: Noon - 6pm Harvard Square • 1 JFK Street • Cambridge, MA 45 Matignon Roa d Cambridge, MA 0 2140 Accredited by HarvardSquare.com AISNE, the French Minis the Council of try of Educatio n, of InternationInternationaall Schools and the Intern ational BBac accalaureatecalaureate OOrganizationrganization. /harvardsquare www.harvardmagazine.com/harva rdsquare . namic year-round destination—especially www.harvardmagazine.com [email protected] for those seeking ideas and inspiration for

Harvard Magazine 24G Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 what they can accomplish at home. Vari- ous kinds of gardens (e.g., vegetable, winter plantings, and evolutionary) are on display, and woodland trails lead to diverse locales: a wildlife refuge pond and a mid-eighteenth- century English-style managed woodland with native species, a folly, and a Greek tion and is ordered evolutionarily: it begins Clockwise from upper left: pondside “temple of peace.” Two glass houses, the Or- with a primordial pool and moves through in the “sensory garden” at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens; curving pathways angerie and the Limonaia, help take the edge ferns to conclude with the Aster family, at Naumkeag; a stone archway leads to off New England winters with citrus trees “the most complex compound flowers,” Ar- the rose garden at Blithewold; and and blooming camellias, calla lilies, and num says. One centerpiece of the system- double pergolas in the Secret Garden bird-of-paradise flowers—along with other atic garden is a Southern magnolia that is at Tower Hill

nonhardy plants from around the world. espaliered against the brick of the Orangerie,

yer and diplomat Joseph Choate, A.B. 1852, ; “People tell us their stress level decreases as “and even blooms once in a while for us if LL.B. ’54, A.M. ’60, LL.D. ’88, and his family s they come up our driveway,” says marketing it’s mild enough.” in 1885. Now owned by the Trustees of Res- arden and public-relations director Michael J. Ar- “The systematic garden is a lovely intro- ervations, the Gilded Age, 44-room house num. “Tower Hill is a rejuvenating place, an duction to what’s related to what—a teach- in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, is open to

oasis.” As the home of the Worcester Coun- ing tool,” Roger Swain declares. “Worces- visitors from Memorial Day to Columbus aine Botanical G ty Horticultural Society (founded in 1842), ter gets lots of credit for its teaching and Day, but the grounds alone, with their cur- M tal otanic gardenotanic s

Tower Hill is also an educational wellspring. shows.” But his favorite part of Tower Hill rent designs by Fletcher Steele (who took ill b The library is open to the public, as are con- is the antique apple orchard. The garden landscape architecture classes at Harvard)

certs, classes, workshops, art exhibits, and purchased its first acreage from a dairy farm in partnership with Choate’s daughter, reeman/ coa

flower shows, such as those coming up on that also had an orchard, which has been Mabel (who also studied garden design), ara f b

African violets (April 20-21) and primroses nurtured and now includes 238 trees— offer lessons in grace, harmony, and scale. ar t): b f and daffodils (May 4-5). among them 119 varieties of pre-twentieth- “They ended up creating an amazing mon- lithewold; and T ower H ; b “The beauty of botanical gardens today,” century apples. (Samples are available on ument to twentieth-century landscape s says new executive director Katherine F. Columbus Day weekend, but enthusiasts design,” says Mark Wilson, the Trustees’ ervation rom upper le s e

Abbott, M.P.A. ’88, “is that they have grown can order scionwood—cuttings from a west region cultural resources manager. e f s so much beyond being a plant museum to tree—for grafting to their own trees and The two worked on realizing their vi- f R s o

really being about larger conservation is- look forward to edible fruit.) Picnics, with sion from 1926 until 1956; Mabel died two tee s f (clockwi sues: connecting people to plants in every wine and beer drunk in moderation, are years later, bequeathing the property to ru y o s he T way, shape, and form in terms of plants allowed, or visitors can eat at the in-house The Trustees. Now a $2.6-million restora- T being a part of the air we breathe, the food Twigs Café, where food is served indoors or tion of their work, which has deteriorated s courte we eat, and the water we drink, as well as on a stone terrace with views of the Wachu- somewhat over time, is under way. “We our spiritual, psychological, and emotional sett Reservoir. have a five-fountain system and an 80-year- heek/naumkeag/ . C hotograph P well-being.” The “systematic” garden, for To understand the depth and beauty of a old piping infrastructure, with over eight R example, which demonstrates plants’ re- 30-year collaborative artistic passion, visit lationships, is based on American botanist Naumkeag, a National Historic Landmark Arthur Cronquist’s taxonomic classifica- built by McKim, Mead & White for law-

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section acres of long-running pipes,” Wilson says. “We have to look at sustainability and iso- lating some of that water.” (Fundraising is in progress to match a $1-million challenge donation.) Meanwhile, everything is still open and operating for visitors. The project includes masonry repairs to the terraced Art Deco-style blue steps (made from a then brand-new building material: cinder blocks) that lead from the house to Mabel Choate’s extensive cutting gardens through an ethereal arbor of 75 white paper birches, which are near death and will be meticulously replaced. The serpentine lines of the 16 beds of roses sit in a sunny section by the house (designed to be seen from Choate’s bedroom); new Atlifecare Brookhaven living is as good as it looks. varieties will be introduced and existing Brookhaven at Lexington offers an abundance of opportunities for bushes rejuvenated. intellectual growth, artistic expression and personal wellness. Our residents Restoration is also share your commitment to live a vibrant lifestyle in a lovely community. planned for the Chinese Visit www.harvardmag. Call today to set up an appointment for a tour! garden, which includes com/extras to view a temple designed by additional images of A Full-Service Lifecare Retirement Community Steele. Entered through some of New England’s www.brookhavenatlexington.org best public gardens. the “Devil’s Screen” and (781) 863-9660 • (800) 283-1114 exited through a moon gate to bring good fortune, the garden holds carved lion and dragon stonework, foo dogs, and stone lan- terns—treasures from Choate’s extensive travels abroad—along with Asian plants and trees, including nine ginkgoes hover- ing over large-leaved butterburr. The tem- ple “took 20 years to complete,” Wilson notes. “The roof tiles came from Peking.” Other foreign accents lend personal warmth and history. A cast-iron pagoda, containing a sacred rock brought from China, leads to the Berlin-style linden allée inspired by a trip to Germany; a statue of Diana greets walkers at the end. Another sculpture, Young Faun with Heron, commis- sioned by architect Stanford White from Frederick MacMonnies, was moved by Steele from the front of the house to his more intimate side “outdoor room,” known as the afternoon garden. The Italian-style courtyard is framed by Venetian gondola poles originally painted teal and red, with gold accents (all now faded), and held to- gether by ship’s rope. In the center is a shallow oval pool with four fountains sur- rounded by stone chairs in the classical style. “We’re not a flower garden,” Wilson points out. “Mabel was moving away from the heavy maintenance of flower beds and (617) 792-0500 www.24hourscare.com

Harvard Magazine 24I Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 New England Regional Section

extensive lawns to more ground covers and New England mass plantings, or open fields, and using Gardens of Note trees and bushes as sculptural elements. And Steele was telling people not to use DDT [its insecticidal properties were dis- Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden covered in the late 1930s] on the property. Seal Harbor, Maine 207-276-3330 They were really ahead of their time.” http://rockgardenmaine.wordpress. Coastal Rhode Island offers another, com very different, example of a grand old house and gardens. “Blithewold is an ear- Blithewold Mansion, Gardens, and ly-twentieth-century place with wonder- Arboretum ful old trees and roses and a beautiful set- Bristol, Rhode Island 401-253-2707 ting on the Narragansett Bay,” says Emmet, www.blithewold.org who particularly loves its old-fashioned Document1Document1 11/20/03 11/20/03 11:51 11:51 AM AM Page Page 1 1 The Botanic Garden rose varieties. (Hybrid roses, she says, As Spring awakens your at Smith College “hold no romance for me.”) Inspired by the Northampton, Massachusetts English Manor style, the stone and stucco senses - celebrate the season mansion with steeply pitched roofs sits with fi ne French cuisine! 413-585-2740 www.smith.edu/garden/ at one end of an elegantly graded, 10-acre Reservations for lunch and dinner lawn that sweeps down to the water. now being accepted Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens The entrance garden features 100-year- Boothbay, Maine 207-633-4333 old climbing roses and dozens of shrub 8 Holyoke St., Cambridge MA www.mainegardens.org roses, including modern cultivars, as well (617) 497-5300 as annuals and perennials, such as comple- Garden In The Woods mentary blue and purple delphiniums and Framingham, Massachusetts lavender—all immaculately maintained. 508-877-7630 The chestnut rose, with its thousands of www.newfs.org pink blossoms, is among the largest in the country. The roses peak in mid June, with ASSISTEDASSISTEDLIVINGLIVINGRETIREMENTRETIREMENTCOMMUNITYCOMMUNITY The Glebe House Independent and Assisted Living another round in late summer, but the house Specialized Memory Care Woodbury, Connecticut 203-263-2855 and grounds, open year-round, are worth Here’sHere’s what what people people are are www.theglebehouse.org/ touring any time. Bessie Van Wickle (later Whatsayingsaying do Harvard about about us. alumni us. McKee) was an accomplished horticultur- have in common? Naumkeag ist who hired landscape architect John De- Stockbridge, Massachusetts Wolf to help realize her dream of creating a Cadbury Commons 413-298-3239 gardener’s paradise. 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24J March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 tastes and tables

Neighborhood Favorite Bergamot offers fresh food and refined comfort.

salty-sweet-bitter notes. The fried oysters ($13) were a bit tough, but their bed of vinegary greens with garlic aioli and small cubes of pan- cetta and delicata squash more than made up for that. Among the best entrées was a seemingly simple roasted chicken ($24). The juicy meat was cut from the bone and served, almost stew- like, with soft apricots, pistachios, and panko-encrusted endive—all in a delicate sauce with a hint of mustard or horseradish: a nuanced dish we could never tire of. The local swordfish ($26) was paired with wild rice and a few shrimp in a faintly garlic sauce that was a tad too salty, but altogether satisfying. Dessert anyone? Hint: don’t be fooled by the menu’s mild “Betty Crocker” title, “devil’s food cake.” Bergamot’s sweets are rich, dramatic creations. The cake ($9) was cut into several deliciously dense one-inch squares complemented by passion- nce evoo, the space that now amuse-bouche: a fried cremini mushroom fruit curd and brown-butter ganache, along holds Bergamot is a spacious with a dab of Asian cabbage slaw. House- with oval mounds of sesame ice cream. square room with high ceilings. made charcuterie ($12) varies nightly. On Just as novel and conceptually interest- O But it’s nicely warmed up with one visit, the plate included slices of finely ing was the coconut crémeux ($9), a creamy caramel-colored walls, an intimate bar, and a smoked duck breast with mushroom dux- yet chewy custard with lightly candied ca- curvy red sofa near the door for those wait- elles, a slab of oxtail terrine topped by a shews, banana ganache, a triangle of bitter ing to eat. The ever-changing menu offers fried quail egg, and a slice of braised pig’s chocolate, and a miso ice cream that added a lively, unfussy food (save the elaborate des- head (we could not bring ourselves to eat touch of salt to the raging mouth-party. serts) that owners Keith Pooler and Servio it, frankly) with shards of green apple. As a parting gift, Bergamot offers a free Garcia call “progressive American cuisine.” The appetizer of wide silky noodles, lay- spoonful of sorbet, this time a carrot-citrus What is that? Great cooking technique ered with sage-infused blend with white choc- combined with little twists on solid, clas- white beans, broccoli bergamot olate crumbles. This sic fare. rabe, and juicy raisins 118 Beacon Street ended the evening on an The bread came with a refreshing lem- ($13) had made its own Somerville, Massachusetts extra-sweet note—and on-infused crème fraîche, followed by an complex broth (sopped 617-576-7700 we promised to return, Soft lights and subdued colors make up with crusty bread) www.bergamotrestaurant.com as many diners no doubt Bergamot a relaxing spot to dine. and hit just the right do. vN.P.B.

Photograph by Tim Llewellyn Harvard Magazine 24K Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Visiting Masterpieces Cézanne’s The Large Bathers Through May 12

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Paul Cézanne, The Large Bathers (detail), 1900–06. Oil on canvas. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund.

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130301_MFA.indd 1 1/7/13 10:55 AM A Cardiac Conundrum How gaps in medical knowledge affect matters of the heart

by alice park

or millennia, people experienced angina pec- those treatments achieved those outcomes; and so toris and heart attacks, but it wasn’t until the accumulate lots of data on whether treatments 1910s and 1920s that physicians began produce the desired effects. Capturing good concerted efforts to discover knowledge of side effects, especially the un- their biological causes. During anticipated ones that are so common, is Fthe twentieth century, heart disease both less interesting and more difficult. began to climb from relative obscuri- Whenever doctors have more thorough ty to its now longstanding status as knowledge of the possible benefits of the leading cause of death for Ameri- a treatment than they do of its potential can adults. It has held that position risks, patients and doctors will lean towards every year except those between 1918 intervention.” and 1920, when it yielded to the in- Within cardiac care, examples of medi- fluenza pandemic. Yet cardiac care in cal intervention include surgical proce- 2013 is dramatically more advanced dures, such as coronary bypass operations, than it was in 1910—isn’t it? and invasive treatments like angioplasty. In his new book, Broken Hearts: The Coronary bypass has the longer his- Tangled History of Cardiac Care (Johns tory, traceable to 1910, when one sur- Hopkins), David S. Jones ’92, M.D. geon made an (unsuccessful) attempt ’97, Ph.D. ’01, Ackerman professor of to perform bypass surgery on a dog. But the culture of medicine, narrates the it wasn’t until 1968 that Rene Favaloro of history of two of American medicine’s the Cleveland Clinic described his success highest-profile treatments for heart dis- with human coronary artery bypass sur- ease: coronary artery bypass grafts and gery: he grafted a vein taken from the patient’s angioplasty. Each intervention, promising leg into the heart’s vascular system to replace a lifesaving relief, was embraced with enthusi- blocked coronary artery. Favaloro’s report cap- asm by cardiologists and cardiac surgeons—and tured the imagination of many surgeons. Initially both techniques often do provide rapid, dramatic re- they operated on stable patients with modest coronary duction of the alarming pain associated with angina. The heart, as ren- artery disease. Within a few years, however, as surgeons Yet, as Jones painstakingly explains, it took years to dered in a French became more adept at slipping new veins into the heart show whether the procedures prolonged lives; in both anatomy text vasculature, they operated on ever-sicker patients, and published in the cases, subsequent research deflated those early hopes. early nineteenth even dared to operate during heart attacks. The holy The interventions—major procedures, with potentially century grail soon became clear: act preemptively and operate significant side effects—provided little or no improve- before a heart attack occurs. By 1977 cardiac surgeons ment in survival rates over standard medical and lifestyle treat- were performing 100,000 bypass procedures per year; the opera- ment except in the very sickest patients. From his detailed study, tion’s popularity peaked at 600,000 instances in 1996. Since then, Jones draws broader conclusions about the culture and practice patients like Bill Clinton and David Letterman have kept the pro- of modern medicine. cedure in the limelight. /Science Source k “Doctors generate better knowledge of efficacy than of risk, Yet there was a fly in the ointment. The first randomized clini- and this skews decisionmaking,” he says. “They design treat- cal trial of bypass surgery’s efficacy, using data from a collabora-

Mehau Kuly Mehau ments to do something specific, and design studies to see if tion of Veterans Administration hospitals, was not published

Harvard Magazine 25 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 until 1977. Such trials were then becoming the gold standard of patients. But for patients with stable coronary disease, who com- medical research (and still are). “Surgeons said trials were totally prise a large share of angioplasty patients? It has not been shown unnecessary, as the logic of the procedure was self-evident,” says to extend life expectancy by a day, let alone 10 years—and it’s done Jones. “You have a plugged vessel, you bypass the plug, you fix a million times a year in this country.” Jones adds wryly, “If anyone the problem, end of story.” But the 1977 paper showed no survival does come up with a treatment that can extend anyone’s life expec- benefit in most patients who had undergone bypass surgery, as tancy by 10 years, let me know where I can invest.” compared with others who’d received conservative treatment “The gap between what patients and doctors expect from these with medication. “There was a firestorm of controversy,” Jones procedures, and the benefit that they actually provide, shows the says. “There was lots of money, institutional power, and lots of profound impact of a certain kind of mechanical logic in medicine,” lives at stake. The surgeons dismissed the trial for technical rea- he explains. “Even though doctors value randomized clinical trials sons. So, many other trials were done, all more or less showing the and evidence-based medicine, they are powerfully influenced by same thing: bypass surgery improved survival for a few patients ideas about how diseases and treatments work. If doctors think with the most severe forms of coro- a treatment should work, they come to nary artery disease, but for most oth- believe that it does work, even when the ers it relieved symptoms but did not clinical evidence isn’t there.” extend lives.” The results raise a phil- osophical question of the goal of med- Though he concentrated in history ical treatment: alleviating symptoms and science (and fenced for the varsity or lengthening lives? “How much is team) in college, Jones dutifully ful- it worth investing in a surgical proce- filled the undergraduate requirements dure, with all its risks,” he asks, “if all for attending medical school. He fo- you’re doing is relieving symptoms?” cused on geology, however, and wrote The advent of angioplasty in the his honors thesis on Mount Vesuvius. 1980s complicates the story. With “I knew there were courses in the his- angioplasty, instead of bypassing the tory of medicine,” he recalls, “which I plugged artery, “you use a balloon to avoided like the plague.” compress the plug,” Jones explains, But he took a small history of medi- “and (as it’s done today) you leave a cine class in his first year of medical stent behind to keep the blood ves- school, and became a research assistant sel open, and so restore blood flow to on a project that involved three million the heart.” Like bypass surgery, angio- cubic feet of documents (freshly declas- plasty went from zero to 100,000 pro- sified by President Bill Clinton) about cedures annually with no clinical trial the testing of plutonium on unsuspect- to assess long-term outcomes—based ing patients to assess the toxic effects of on the logic of the procedure and pa- radiation. That study raised important tients’ reports of how much better questions about the cultural and ethi- they felt. Yet the first clinical trials, cal environment of science. After Eileen which appeared in the early 1990s, Welsome’s 1999 book The Plutonium Files showed no survival benefit of elective angioplasty as Three bypass arteries (based on her Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper se- compared with medication. connect the aorta ries) chronicled 50 years of clandestine experiments, to smaller coronary Moreover, because such trials assess patients’ out- arteries on the heart’s Jones says he saw clearly the inevitable and revealing comes several years after their treatments, they often outer surface. bond between science and society: “It was a great way end up reporting the results of outdated procedures. to convince myself that the work of a medical histo- “A clinical trial on angioplasty published in 1992 might study rian is important and significant.” a group of patients who had the procedure in 1985,” says Jones. He was moved to pursue a Ph.D. in the history of science to “But angioplasty has been refined since 1985. So you start another complement his medical degree. Jones’s historical eye allowed trial in 1992 and publish in 1998; then, the cardiologists say, ‘Now him to view medicine through a slightly different filter than his we have fancy stents, not those old-fashioned stents they used peers, perhaps suggesting a more critical view of why doctors do in 1992.’ And so on. As long as you continue to innovate in a way what they do. His early research parsed the epidemics that deci- that, at face value, looks to be an improvement, the believers can mated the American Indians, an analysis that he expounded in his always step out from under the weight of negative clinical experi- 2004 book Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian ence by saying that the research necessarily applies to an earlier Mortality Since 1600. Analyzing the cycle of diseases that devastated state of medical technology.” the Native American population, from smallpox to tuberculosis Furthermore, “patients are wildly enthusiastic about these to today’s chronic ailments of obesity, diabetes, and heart dis- treatments,” he says. “There’ve been focus groups with prospec- ease, Jones argued that rather than simply reflecting differences i / Science Source tive patients who have stunningly exaggerated expectations of ef- in immune tolerances to certain pathogens and lifestyles, the epi- s ficacy. Some believed that angioplasty would extend their life ex- demics also grew from a web of complex social forces—includ- pectancy by 10 years! Angioplasty can save the lives of heart-attack ing forced migration, the changing economic circumstances of John Bavo

26 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 displaced native populations, and cultural practices that gave the Although initially assumed to be an affliction of the wealthy diseases deadlier power among American Indians. elite, by the 1930s and 1940s, heart disease was increasingly rec- ognized among men of all social and economic strata. “This led In Broken Hearts, Jones describes the historic methodological to a new concern: if someone was working on the assembly line struggles within the medical profession as doctors tried to iden- and doing physical labor and had a heart attack, he would be tify the causes of heart attacks. Beginning in the early 1900s, when eligible for workers’ compensation,” says Jones. As employers the first cases of heart attack were identified in the medical litera- wrestled with finding the right balance of financial responsibility ture, physicians have struggled to explain why hearts fail so sud- that would not leave them bankrupt, many responded by shift- denly. Understanding the why can in turn reveal how heart attacks ing accountability back to the workers, exempting heart attacks occur. Doctors hoped that would lead to the most effective ways from workers’ compensation to free themselves from a potentially to fix the problem. But one of the dirty secrets of cardiac care, enormous financial burden. says Jones, is that until the 1970s, heart experts could not agree The prevailing cardiac treatment remained weeks of bed rest, on what was causing heart attacks, rendering their interventions along with an admonition to avoid aggravating or exciting cir- equal parts gamble and trial-by-doing. cumstances that would provoke a spasm, or a clot, or a plaque to Starting with the earliest theory behind what triggers heart rupture and trigger a sudden heart attack. “That treatment only failure, every major advance in cardiac treatment, Jones says, mir- suited people who could afford weeks and weeks of bed rest,” says rors the prevailing views of where the disease comes from. Cur- Jones. “The changing recognition of heart disease—that eventu- rent theories hold that heart attacks are ally all humans may get it—led to chang- caused by the buildup of atherosclerotic “Some patients ing sets of responses to the disease and the plaques from high-fat diets and sedentary need for different kinds of treatments.” lifestyles. “But if we went back to Boston believed angioplasty Epidemiological surveys like the ground- 100 or 120 years ago, heart disease was breaking Framingham Heart Study (a life- less prevalent, and it was different,” says would extend their life style study of 5,209 middle-aged residents Jones. “There were people with athero- of Framingham, Massachusetts, begun in sclerotic coronary artery disease, but the expectancy by 10 years!” 1948 to identify the risk factors for heart more prevalent forms were syphilitic and For those with stable disease), began to connect factors like a rheumatic heart disease, something that low-fat diet, exercise, and avoiding smok- reflects the higher prevalence of infec- coronary disease, “it has ing to a lower risk of heart attack. But phy- tious diseases at the time.” sicians knew that such behavioral changes As reports of heart attacks began to not been shown to would challenge their patients. They populate the medical literature, compet- turned away from prevention and toward ing theories about their cause emerged. extend life expectancy treatment: if blocked pipes were the problem, The sudden nature of the attacks led by a day.” then bypassing the blockage would solve some doctors to assume that random it. “Of course,” says Jones, “treatments for spasms of coronary arteries might be responsible. Without any heart disease also generate revenue dwarfing that produced by pre- window into the living heart, however, this theory was supported ventive care.” only by evidence of similar twitches in the blood vessels found in But, as Jones says, heart-bypass surgery was a classic case of rabbits’ ears, for example, and by the fact that not all heart-attack “learning by doing.” Only as more patients went under the knife patients showed signs of lesions or clots in their cardiac blood could doctors know for sure whether such interventions were vessels on autopsy. Another popular theory involved clots ob- actually making a difference in their lives. Much of what justified structing blood flow to critical coronary arteries; this fueled the the first surgeries relied on the assumption that obstructions in appearance of blood-thinning agents such as heparin as a com- heart vessels needed to be cleared; the evidence for this theory mon treatment for heart-attack patients by the 1950s. rested on autopsy data and animal models of the disease—nei- But an equally compelling theory was also emerging, one that ther of which, most physicians will agree, are ideal substitutes had actually been described in an autopsy report back in 1844 that for the human body. Indeed, Jones, says, the seductive logic be- mentioned “several atheromatous lesions, of which a rather sig- hind the procedure may have blinded doctors to some serious nificant one was ulcerated and the atheromatous mass extruded questions about its safety and efficacy. into the arterial lumen.” Published in a seldom-read source—the The specter of neurological complications from the sur- Journal of the Danish Medical Association—the account received little gery—which required the use of a heart-lung machine to main- attention, but in the 1930s, the medical examiner of Boston made tain flow of oxygenated blood to the brain and body while the similar observations and developed the theory of plaque rupture. heart is stopped during the procedure—started to shadow the Heart attacks, according to his idea, happened when atheroscle- field. Early in the history of open-heart surgery, cardiac surgeons rotic plaques, embedded in the coronary arteries, ruptured and recognized the possibility of brain damage in patients. But as triggered blood clots (thromboses) that blocked blood flow. Con- coronary artery bypass became more widespread and standard- firmation came in the 1960s when pathologists painstakingly ized, the benefits, they felt, sufficiently outweighed the risk of sliced and analyzed coronary artery specimens from patients who memory and cognitive problems (which studies have estimated died of heart attacks: fatal coronary thromboses were nearly al- at anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent) that they generally ways associated with ruptured plaques. omitted it, even in major publications in reputable journals. “It’s

Harvard Magazine 27 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 maddening,” says Jones. “I followed the clinical trials in the New But it didn’t take long for cardiologists to begin seeing them- England Journal of Medicine that were published on bypass surgery. selves, as a profession, in competition with cardiac surgeons over In 1996 they published a huge study on the cerebral complica- treating heart patients. Surgery to treat heart attacks was becom- tions of bypass. But in the 20 or so clinical trials involving bypass ing a booming business, pulling in millions in revenue at a typical published since then, how often did they include data on neuro- cost of $10,000 to $15,000 per procedure. Buoyed by the emerging logical outcomes? Only half make more than a passing mention.” data from the late 1970s onward showing that bypass surgery did The reason, he argues, is the bias toward intervention that ac- not necessarily confer any survival benefit, cardiologists focused companies most new medical treatments. Both doctors and pa- on the advantages of angioplasty over surgery: no operation to tients evaluate such innovations by asking if there is a chance they open the chest, only a small incision in the groin, and a faster re- will help. “The truth is, there is almost always a chance something covery time. These benefits were concrete and immediately evi- will help; there are very few treatments in which there is zero dent, but cardiologists didn’t know whether angioplasty would chance that it will help,” says Jones. “Is there a chance that mas- improve outcomes to a degree comparable to bypass surgery. Still, tectomy will decrease a woman’s risk of dying of breast cancer? the intuitive sense of angioplasty’s lower risk catalyzed a growth Sure there is. Should we do a mastectomy on all young women, spurt from 133,000 procedures in 1986 to more than a million per- because there is a chance it will help them avoid breast cancer? Of formed annually by the 2000s, forming (together with bypass sur- course not; we have to figure out when it is appropriate.” gery) a $100-billion industry today. The problem with balloon angioplasty was re-stenosis: the Angioplasty emerged on the heels of bypass surgery when a plaques would re-form within a few weeks of the procedure. But German cardiologist, Andreas Grüntzig, devised a way to thread given the visual evidence of plaque, the belief that dealing with it a catheter from a groin artery into the heart in 1977. Initially, doc- had to translate into some health benefit drove another innova- tors performed angioplasty on patients with stable coronary artery tion in angioplasty: the development of stents designed not only disease; cardiologists were cautious about how to temporarily compress plaques in partially useful angioplasty alone would be as a treatment David Jones holds a vascular stent blocked arteries but to prop them open more (from the Warren Anatomical for heart-attack patients. Grüntzig predicted it Museum), designed circa 1995 by persistently with mesh-like devices that acted could substitute for bypass for at most 15 percent radiologist Morris Simon of like scaffolding for the vessels. In theory, stent- of patients who were candidates for surgery. Harvard Medical School. ing would prevent re-stenosis.

28 March - April 2013 Photograph by Stu Rosner Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 In angioplasty, a catheter sheathed by a deflated balloon is inserted (left) into an artery (red) clogged with plaque (yellow). When inflated (center), the balloon crushes the plaque into the walls of the artery and expands the wire mesh stent. The balloon is then deflated and removed, leaving the stent in place (right) to hold the artery open.

When faced with evidence that the placement of a foreign object in the vessel walls could itself promote thrombosis, and with recalls of stents that some- times snapped shut, cardiologists and device- makers simply turned to more flexible mate- rials and laced the stents with drugs that resisted buildup of thrombus. In 2007, a study of more than 2,000 patients with stable coronary disease showed that compared to drug therapy alone, stents in combination with drug therapy such as blood-pressure medications and cholesterol-lowering agents did not lower the risk of having a heart attack or improve citing the inevitable deaths that would occur survival during a seven-year follow-up period. But instead of curb- as people eschewed screening and visited their ing stent use, two years later, a survey showed that the share of pa- doctors only when treatment could do little to halt the disease. tients receiving drug therapy merely as a first-line treatment, before The American Urological Association continues to push for getting stents, remained unchanged at 44 to 45 percent. regular PSA screening, a position that many patients support as Jones argues that the predominant explanation of what causes well, given the intuitive belief that action is better than inaction. heart attacks—obstructions in the coronary vessels that need to Jones has some personal experience with such life-and-death be cleared—is primarily to blame, because it leads to an errone- decisionmaking. Six years ago, at 37, he was diagnosed with a very ous emphasis on the highly visible plaques looming on angiogram rare form of stomach cancer and had a tumor surgically removed. screens. In fact, these plaques are not heart attacks-in-waiting; “Mine was cancer therapy as it existed in the 1890s: find a tumor, smaller, often invisible lesions in the heart vessels are now under- cut it out, and hope for the best,” he writes in the preface to Broken stood to cause most heart attacks. The problem isn’t so much that Hearts. Yet his aftercare was fully twenty-first century, involving bypass surgery or angioplasty or stents aren’t working, Jones ex- frequent Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans to monitor plains, but that in some cases, the interventions target the wrong his condition. Jones has remained cancer-free since then and no lesions. “Instead of trying to stent every possible lesion, we need longer receives PET scans, as his doctor feels they aren’t needed; to realize that there are certain risks—small plaques—and that he told Jones, “If you were 70 years old, we’d do scans every six we cannot manage them all with stents or bypass. We need inter- months, but if we were to start doing that to you now, you’d die of ventions, especially lifestyle changes or medications, that address radiation-induced leukemia before you’re 60.” the causes of atherosclerosis, and not just the largest plaques. And So Jones has to tolerate the uncertainty of knowing that the we need to accept that there are some large plaques that might cancer may have recurred, and that an imaging test might reveal not need intervention. What we really need to do, if we want to it: “You have to live with this uncertainty—you can’t get a PET change the way we make decisions about these procedures, is to scan each morning.” Similarly, when his first PET scan disclosed change both the culture among physicians and the culture among some nodules at the base of one of his lungs that “shouldn’t be patients so that they accept a slight increase in risk tolerance.” there,” his doctor offered a lung biopsy but recommended against Consider, for example, breast and prostate cancer. After doc- it. He said, “If you’re willing to ignore them, I’m willing to ignore tors and health officials convinced the public that routine screen- them. So we did.” Jones explains that “it’s important not to do ing is the most effective way to detect tumors early, mammograms everything that could be done. I say this not only as an academic, and prostate-cancer tests became mainstays of routine physical but as someone in the trenches, a patient experiencing the cul- exams. But the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently con- ture of medicine and having to face my own medical decisions.” ducted evidence-based reviews of the benefits of such screenings, The reassessment of risks, such as those of the Preventive Ser- assessing lives saved against the risks of complications and false vices Task Force, Jones explains, may ultimately help to frame positives that the screenings generate. For women under 50, the treatment decisions in more realistic, and evidence-based, terms. panel concluded, the risks of unnecessary biopsies and potential Understanding, for example, that not all plaques in the heart may s i

b infections caused by yearly mammograms outweigh the benefits need to be removed (studies show that operating or stenting to ad- of the procedure; the panel recommended that women begin dress stable plaques may not yield longer lives or fewer symptoms)

rary/cor screening not at 40 as previously recommended, but at 50. Simi- may also prompt more judicious and appropriate use of therapies. b larly, an analysis of the prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood test “Doctors will have to teach patients a new attitude toward ab- to detect early signs of prostate cancer did not show a significant normal findings on lab tests and x-rays—that some are okay survival advantage, and the task force issued the seemingly stun- and don’t require intervention in every case,” he says. “That cience photo li s ning recommendation that no men, unless they have a history of would be a major shift in the culture of medicine.” prostate cancer, be screened with the PSA test.

©Sciepro/ Advocates and patients immediately criticized the guidelines, Alice Park is a staff writer at Time.

Harvard Magazine 29 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 F O R How Same-Sex Marriage U M Came to Be On activism, litigation, and social change in America by Michael J. Klarman

ifty years ago, every state criminalized homosexual sex, into the courtroom unless she exchanged her pantsuit for a dress. and even the American Civil Liberties Union did not object. Minnesota Supreme Court justices would not dignify the gay-mar- The federal government would not hire people who were riage claim by asking even a single question at oral argument. openly gay or permit them to serve in the military. Police Marriage equality was not then a priority of gay activists. Froutinely raided gay bars. Only a handful of gay-rights organiza- Rather, they focused on decriminalizing consensual sex between tions existed, and their membership was sparse. Most Americans same-sex partners, securing legislation forbidding discrimina-

would have considered the idea of same-sex marriage facetious. tion based on sexual orientation in public accommodations and y Today, opinion polls consistently show a majority of Ameri- employment, and electing the nation’s first openly gay public of- t ocie cans endorsing such marriages; among those aged 18 to 29, sup- ficials. Indeed, most gays and lesbians at the time were deeply am- port is as high as 70 percent. President Barack Obama has em- bivalent about marriage. Lesbian feminists tended to regard the t orical S braced marriage equality. Last November, for the first time, a is

institution as oppressive, given the traditional rules that defined a H majority of voters in a state—in fact, in three states—approved it, such as coverture and immunity from rape. Most sex radicals inneso t

same-sex marriage, and in a fourth, they rejected a proposed objected to traditional marriage’s insistence on monogamy; for M

state constitutional amendment to forbid it. them, gay liberation meant sexual liberation. eine/ How did support for gay marriage grow so quickly—to the point Only in the late 1980s did activists begin to pursue legal recog- rand H where the Supreme Court may deem it a constitutional right in 2013? nition of their relationships—and even gay marriage. The AIDS t er

epidemic had highlighted the vulnerability of gay and lesbian : r. B t The Pre-Marriage Era partnerships: nearly 50,000 people had died of AIDS, two-thirds In the early 1970s, amid a burst of gay activism unleashed by the of them gay men; the median age of the deceased was 36. An en- Stonewall riots in Greenwich tire generation of young gay men was forced to contemplate legal Village, several same-sex couples issues surrounding their relationships: hospital visitation, surro- y images; bo tt om lef

filed lawsuits demanding mar- gate medical decisionmaking, and property inheritance. In addi- tt riage licenses. Courts did not tion, the many gay and lesbian baby boomers who were becoming take their arguments very seri- parents sought legal recognition of their families. ously. A trial judge in Kentucky Still, as late as 1990, roughly 75 percent of Americans deemed ho- ews archives/ge

instructed one lesbian plaintiff mosexual sex immoral, only 29 percent supported gay adoptions, y n that she would not be permitted and only 10 percent to 20 percent backed same-sex marriage. Not a single jurisdiction in the world had yet embraced marriage equality. A movement moment: the : New York dail Stonewall Inn raid and riot, t Greenwich Village, 1969 Litigation and Backlash Stonewall In 1991, three gay couples in Hawaii challenged the constitution- Top lef Rebellion 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1980 1986 1987 1971-1973: Lawsuits filed in Minnesota, 25% of Americans claim to know 48% support Washington, and laws barring Kentucky seeking a gay person. discrimination the right to same- based on sex marriage are sexual brushed off by courts. orientation. Jack Baker and James Michael McConnell apply for a marriage license in Minneapolis, May 18, 1970.

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ality of laws limiting marriage to a man and woman. No national ture the option of amending the marriage law to include same-sex gay-rights organization would support litigation considered hope- couples or of creating a new institution (which came to be called less—but in 1993, the state supreme court unexpectedly ruled that “civil unions”) that provided them with all of the benefits of mar- excluding same-sex couples from marriage was presumptively riage. unconstitutional. The case was remanded for a trial, at which the At that time, no American state had enacted anything like civil government had the opportunity to show a compelling justifi- unions. An enormous political controversy erupted; the legisla- cation for banning gay marriage. In 1996, a trial judge ruled that ture’s 2000 session was dominated by the issue. After weeks of same-sex couples were entitled to marry. But even in a relatively impassioned debate, lawmakers narrowly approved a civil-unions gay-friendly state, marriage equality was then a radical concept: in law, causing opponents to encourage voters to “keep your blood 1998, Hawaiian voters rejected it, 69 percent to 31 percent. (A simi- boiling” for the fall election and “Take Back Vermont.” Governor lar vote in Alaska that year produced a nearly identical outcome.) Howard Dean, a strong proponent of civil unions, faced his tough- For the Republican Party in the 1990s, gay marriage was a est reelection contest, and as many as three dozen state lawmakers dream issue that mobilized its religious-conservative base and may have lost their jobs over the issue (though the law survived put it on the same side as most swing voters. Objecting that Republican efforts to repeal it in the next legislative session). “some radical judges in Hawaii may get to dictate the moral code Developments in Vermont resonated nationally. All 10 can- for the entire nation,” Republicans in 1996 introduced bills in didates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 de- most state legislatures to deny recognition to gay marriages law- nounced civil unions. One of them, Gary Bauer, called the Ver- fully performed elsewhere. (Such marriages were nonexistent at mont decision “in some ways worse than terrorism.” the time.) One poll showed that 68 percent of Americans opposed Massachusetts. Activists in Massachusetts, inspired by Ver- gay marriage. By 2001, 35 states had enacted statutes or consti- mont, filed their own lawsuit in 2001 demanding marriage equal- tutional provisions to “defend” traditional marriage—usually by ity. In 2003, the Supreme Judicial Court vindicated their claim in overwhelming margins. Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, while rejecting civil unions as Gay marriage also entered the national political arena in 1996. “second-class citizenship.” Massachusetts thus became the first Just days before the Republican Party’s Iowa caucuses, antigay ac- American state—and only the fifth jurisdiction in the world—to tivists conducted a “marriage protection” rally at which presiden- recognize same-sex marriage. tial candidates denounced the “homosexual agenda,” which was The ruling sparked only a mild local backlash: the state legis- said to be “destroying the integrity of the marriage-based family.” lature briefly but seriously debated overturning the decision by A few months later, the party’s nominee, Senator Robert Dole, constitutional amendment, but popular support for such a mea- co-sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which pro- sure quickly dissipated as same-sex couples began marrying. In vided that no state was required to recognize another’s same-sex the ensuing state elections, marriage-equality supporters actually marriages and that the federal government would not recognize gained seats in the legislature. them for purposes of determining eligibility for federal benefits. Elsewhere, however, the Massachusetts ruling generated enor- Congress passed the bill by lopsided margins, and President Bill mous political resistance. President George W. Bush immediately Clinton, eager to neutralize the is- denounced it, and many Republican representatives sue, signed it. 75 % of Americans deem called for a federal constitutional amendment to de- Vermont. The litigation victory homosexual sex immoral. fine marriage as the union of a man and woman. In ed P ress

t in Hawaii inspired activists in Ver- February 2004, after Mayor Gavin Newsom of San mont to follow suit. In 1999, that Francisco had begun marrying same-sex couples in

ssocia 10% to 20% support same-sex A state’s high court ruled that the defiance of California law, Bush endorsed such an

evy/ marriage. . L traditional definition of marriage amendment, explaining that, “after more than two discriminated against same-sex centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia erge J. F S couples. The court gave the legisla- 29% support gay adoption. of human experience, a few judges and local authori-

1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 Baehr lawsuit Hawaii filed in Hawaii. Supreme 23% of Americans 56% favor Court support granting allowing gays Hawaiian provisionally same-sex couples litigants Ninia and lesbians rules in favor the legal rights and Baehr (left) and to serve of same-sex Genora Dancel benefits of marriage in a 1996 appear- openly in the marriage. without the title. ance military.

Harvard Magazine 31 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ties are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of his floundering campaign. State party leaders called his oppo- civilization.” nent, a 44-year-old bachelor who opposed the federal marriage The issue proved an enormous election-year boon to Republi- amendment, “limp-wristed” and a “switch hitter,” and reporters cans. Americans at the time rejected gay marriage by two to one, began asking him if he was gay. On Election Day, a state ballot and opponents generally were more passionate than supporters. measure barring gay marriage passed by three to one, while Bun- At the same time, the issue proved vexing to Democrats. Approxi- ning squeaked through with just 50.7 percent of the vote. Ana- mately 70 percent of self-identified gays voted Democratic, yet lysts attributed his victory to a large turnout of rural conserva- some of the party’s traditional constituencies, such as working- tives mobilized to vote against gay marriage. class Catholics and African Americans, tended to strongly oppose In South Dakota, Republican John Thune, an evangelical Chris-

gay marriage. tian, challenged Senate minority leader Tom Daschle and made y images That summer, Republican congressional leaders forced a vote opposition to gay marriage a centerpiece of his campaign. Thune tt on the proposed amendment, even though it had no realistic pressed Daschle to explain his opposition to the federal marriage chance of passing. Its principal sponsor, Senator Wayne Allard of amendment and warned that “the institution of marriage is under ewsmaker/ge N /

Colorado, warned, “There is a master plan out there from those attack from extremist groups. They have done it in Massachusetts tt

who want to destroy the institution of marriage.” Although most and they can do it here.” In November, he defeated Daschle by 51 elle congressional Democrats opposed the amendment, while sup- percent to 49 percent—the first defeat of a Senate party leader in lden P : A porting civil unions, most swing voters found the Republicans’ more than 50 years. Across the border in North Dakota, a state t position more to their liking. marriage amendment passed by 73 percent to 27 percent. igh Republicans also placed referenda to preserve the traditional In the 2004 presidential election contest, the incumbent would o tt om R definition of marriage on the ballot in 13 states in 2004, hoping to not have won a second term had he not received Ohio’s electoral

make gay marriage more salient in the minds of voters and inspire votes. President Bush regularly called for passage of the federal mages; B y I religious conservatives to come to the polls. All the measures marriage amendment during the campaign and reminded vot- tt e passed easily, by margins of as much as 86 percent to 14 percent ers that his opponent, John Kerry, hailed from Massachusetts, G (in Mississippi). One newspaper aptly described a “resounding, whose judges had decreed gay marriage a constitutional right. rchives/ coast-to-coast rejection of gay marriage.” Most of the amend- Bush’s margin of victory in Ohio was about 2 percent, while the ments forbade civil unions as well. gay-marriage ban passed by 24 percentage points. If the mar-

The issue proved decisive in some 2004 political contests. In riage amendment mobilized enough conservatives to turn out or : ABC pho t o A t Kentucky, incumbent Senator induced enough swing voters to support Bush, it may have Jim Bunning, a Republican, began determined the outcome of the presidential election. Among o tt om lef attacking gay marriage to rescue frequent churchgoers—the group most likely to oppose gay marriage—the increase in Bush’s share of ed P ress; B the popular vote in Ohio from 2000 was 17 t Republicans introduce Peter Harrington

percentage points, compared to just 1 per- ssocia A

(left) and Stan / bills to allow states Baker, the centage point nationally. to deny recognition of Vermont litigants During the next two years, 10 more same-sex unions. (1999) states passed constitutional amendments

barring same-sex marriage. In 2006-07, Top: Toby Talbo t Republican presidential nominee Robert 1999 Dole co-sponsors the Vermont 74% of Americans claim to Supreme Defense of Marriage Act know a gay person. in the Senate; President Court ruling in Bill Clinton signs it. Baker lawsuit 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Hawaii Ellen Hawaiian Civil-unions 35 states declares same- DeGeneres voters issue dominates have enacted sex couples comes out on reject Vermont provisions are entitled to Ellen. marriage elections; to “defend” marry. equality. supporters lose traditional legislative seats. marriage.

Ellen DeGeneres (left) and Laura Dern in the coming- out episode of the In Montpelier, a protest on television series July 1, 2000—the first day civil unions were legally recognized

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 high courts in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Washing- Those states with antidiscrimination laws covering sexual orien- ton—possibly influenced by the political backlash ignited by the tation increased from one in 1988 to 20 in 2008. Massachusetts ruling—also rejected gay marriage. Dramatic changes were also afoot in the popular culture. In 1990, only one network television show had a regularly appear- Growing Support ing gay character, and a majority of Americans reported that they Despite the fierce political backlash ignited by gay-marriage would not permit their child to watch a show with gay charac- rulings in the 1990s and 2000s, public backing for gay rights con- ters. By mid decade, however, the most popular situation com- tinued to grow, bolstered by sociological, demographic, and cul- edies, such as Friends and Mad About You, were dealing with gay tural factors. Perhaps the most important was that the propor- marriage, and in 1997, Ellen DeGeneres famously came out in a tion of Americans who reported knowing someone gay increased special one-hour episode of her popular show, Ellen. Forty-six from 25 percent in 1985 to 74 percent in 2000. Knowing gay people million viewers were watching, and Time put her on its cover. strongly predicts support for gay rights; a 2004 study found that Many Americans feel as if they know their favorite television mages

y I 65 percent of those who reported knowing someone gay favored characters, so such small-screen changes also tended to foster ac- tt e G

/ gay marriage or civil unions, versus just 35 percent of those who ceptance of homosexuality.

AFP reported not knowing any gays. As society became more gay-friendly, millions of gays and les-

nson/ Support for allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the bians chose to come out of the closet. And support for gay mar-

yan A yan military increased from 56 percent in 1992 to 81 percent in 2004. riage gradually increased as well, despite the political backlash Backing for laws barring discrimination based on sexual orienta- against court rulings in its favor. Between the late 1980s and the o tt om: R tion in public accommodations rose from 48 percent in 1988 to 75 late 1990s, support grew from roughly 10 or 20 percent, to 30 or percent in 2004. Support for granting same-sex couples the legal 35 percent. In 2004, the year after the Massachusetts ruling, one rights and benefits of marriage without the title increased from 23 ed P ress; B study showed that opponents of gay marriage outnumbered sup- t percent in 1989 to 56 percent in 2004. porters by 29 percentage points; by ssocia A Shifts in opinion translated into policy changes. 81% of Americans favor gays 2008, that gap had narrowed to 12 The number of Fortune 500 companies offering and lesbians serving openly in percentage points. healthcare benefits for same-sex partners rose from the military. Support for gay marriage grew zero in 1990 to 263 in 2006. The number of states pro- for a second, related reason: young inslow Townson/ viding health benefits to the same-sex partners of 75% support laws barring people had come to overwhelmingly Top: W public employees rose from zero in 1993 to 15 in 2008. discrimination based on support it. They are far more likely sexual orientation in public to know someone who is openly accomodations gay and have grown up in an envi- Julie (left) ronment that is much more toler- and Hillary 56% support granting same- ant of homosexuality than that of Goodridge their parents. One scholarly study celebrate their sex couples the legal rights found an extraordinary gap of 44 marriage, and benefits of marriage Boston, May percentage points between the oldest 17, 2004. without the title. and youngest survey respondents in their attitudes toward gay marriage. The Moreover, despite the short-term political Massachusetts Kentucky state backlash it sparked, gay marriage litigation Supreme ballot measure has probably advanced the cause of marriage Judicial Court barring gay equality over the longer term. The litigation decides marriage has undoubtedly raised the salience of gay Goodridge. passes 3 to 1. 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 San Francisco Two more Eight more mayor Gavin states pass states pass Newsom constitutional constitutional begins to amendments amendments marry gay barring gay barring gay couples. marriage. marriage.

Mayor Newsom at the 2008 City Hall ceremony for Del Martin (center) and Phyllis Lyon, whose 2004 marriage license had been nullified by the state’s high court

Harvard Magazine 33 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 marriage, making it an issue subject to much broader discussion New York and New Jersey would do so by year’s end. and action—an initial prerequisite for social change. But that fall, Maine voters vetoed the gay-marriage law by 52.8 The gay-marriage rulings have also affected individuals’ ac- percent to 47.2 percent. That result seemed to influence some tions and preferences. Litigation victories inspired gay activists legislators in New York and New Jersey, where gay-marriage to file lawsuits in additional states. The rulings also led more gay bills were defeated after the election. And in Iowa, polls showed couples to want marriage—an institution about which they previ- a substantial majority opposed to their high court’s ruling, but ed P ress ously had been ambivalent. People often teach themselves not to Democrats controlling the state legislature refused to permit t want something they know they cannot have; the court decisions a referendum on a state marriage amendment. In the 2010 Re- ssocia made gay marriage seem more attainable. publican gubernatorial primary, all five candidates denounced A

Finally, the gay-marriage rulings created thousands of same-sex gay marriage; four supported a state constitutional amendment osivais/ married couples, who quickly became the public face of the issue. to ban it; and the most extreme candidate, Bob Vander Plaats, inez M t

In turn, friends, neighbors, and co-workers of these couples began promised an executive order to block implementation of the ar to think differently about marriage equality. The sky did not fall. court’s ruling. Vander Plaats came in second in the primary, win- ablo M : P

ning 40 percent of the vote, then turned his attention to remov- t Legislated Marriage Equality ing the judges responsible for the ruling, three of whom were up As support for gay marriage grew, high courts in California and for retention elections that fall. In 50 years, not a single Iowa jus- Connecticut ruled in its favor in 2008. But the California deci- tice had ever been defeated for retention, but Vander Plaats and sion was quickly overturned by Proposition 8, which passed by his allies made the election into a referendum on gay marriage, ed press; bo tt om righ a margin of about 5 percentage points. (Support for gay marriage and the justices lost. t in California had grown by about 1 percentage point a year since Elsewhere, gay marriage leapt forward. In 2011, the New York ssocia 2000, but its backers remained just shy of a majority.) legislature enacted it. Early in 2012, legislatures in Washington, A er/ t

Six months after this bitter defeat, gay marriage took an enor- Maryland, and New Jersey passed gay-marriage bills, though ea

mous leap forward. Within a few weeks in the spring of 2009, Governor Chris Christie vetoed the last of these. Last November eve Y : St the Iowa Supreme Court and three legislatures in New England 6, for the first time, American voters endorsed gay marriage, in t embraced marriage equality. The Iowa ruling appeared espe- three states: voters in Washington and Maryland ratified mar- cially significant: it was unanimous, unlike other state court riage-equality bills; Mainers approved a gay-marriage initiative rulings in favor of marriage equality; and it came from the na- (reversing the 2009 outcome). That same day, Minnesotans reject-

tion’s heartland, not one of its politically left-of-center coasts. ed a proposed constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage— y images; bo tt om lef Just days later, Vermont became the first state to enact gay mar- becoming only the second state in which voters had done so. tt riage legislatively, and New Hampshire and To the Supreme Court reedy/ge

Maine quickly followed. This past December, the Supreme Court agreed to review cas- G avid

It seemed possible that es challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage t op: D

Activists celebrate Iowa 2006-07 Supreme Court’s same-sex Maryland New York, marriage ruling, April 3, 2009. legislature New Jersey, narrowly Washington, Iowa high court rules in favor Iowa voters rejects gay Maryland, and of gay marriage; legislatures reject three marriage; Georgia high in Vermont, Maine, and New high court New York courts reject Hampshire pass statutes justices up for legislature gay marriage. authorizing gay marriage. retention. enacts it. 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 California and Maine voters Congress repeals Connecticut overturn gay- Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. high courts marriage statute; rule in favor of New Jersey and Lt. Dan Choi (center) and gay marriage; New York others hand- Proposition legislatures reject cuff them- 8 overturns gay marriage. selves to the White House California court fence to ad- decision. vocate repeal of Don’t Ask, Signs supporting the 2008 ballot Don’t Tell, initiative to overturn same-sex November 15, marriage in California 2010.

34 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Act and California’s Proposition 8. Finally, Kennedy seems especially attuned to his legacy. How Assuming the justices address the substantive merits of either tempting might it be for a justice to write the opinion that within challenge (which is uncertain, given procedural issues), they are a decade or two will likely be regarded as the Brown v. Board of Educa- more likely to invalidate DOMA. Several lower courts have al- tion of the gay-rights movement? ready done so, at least partly on federalism grounds. Historically, Whether or not the Court deems gay marriage a constitutional Congress has deferred to state definitions of marriage; conser- right this year, the future seems clear. Of late, support for mar- vative justices who care about preserving traditional spheres of riage equality has been growing two or three percentage points state autonomy may combine with liberal justices who probably annually. A study by statistician Nate Silver finds startling re- support marriage equality to invalidate the 1996 law. Indeed, a sults: in 2013, a majority of people in a majority of states support contrary outcome would be surprising. In 1996, some sponsors of gay marriage. By 2024, he projects, even the last holdout, Missis- DOMA defended it in blatantly homophobic terms, and Supreme sippi, will have a majority in favor. Court precedent forbids statutes to be rooted in prejudice. Fur- Even many conservatives have begun to acknowledge the inevi- ther, justices are not indifferent to public sentiment, and one re- tability of marriage equality. In March 2011, the president of the cent poll shows that Americans favor repeal by 51 percent to 34 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary observed that “it is clear percent. that something like same-sex marriage…is going to become nor- Predicting how the Court will rule on Proposition 8 is harder. malized, legalized, and recognized in the culture” and that “it’s The justices are likely to divide five to four, as they do today on time for Christians to start thinking about how we’re going to most important constitutional issues, such as abortion, affirma- deal with that.” tive action, and campaign-finance reform. As usual, Justice An- That a particular social reform may be inevitable does not mean thony Kennedy is likely to determine the outcome. His vote may that opponents will cease fighting it. Although conceding, “You turn on how he balances two seemingly opposing proclivities. can’t fight the federal government and win,” many whites in the On one hand, his rulings often convert dominant national norms Deep South continued to massively resist Brown and school de- ress into constitutional mandates to suppress outlier state practices. segregation, insisting that “We’ll never accept it voluntarily” and ed P ed t (His decisions barring the death penalty for minors and the men- “They’ll have to force it on us.”

ssocia tally disabled fit this description.) This propensity would coun- People who believe that gay marriage contravenes God’s will A / sel restraint on the Court’s part with regard to gay marriage, giv- are not likely to stop opposing it simply because their pros- itor en that only nine states and the District of Columbia currently pects of success are diminishing. Moreover, religious conser- permit it. vatives who condemn gay marriage cord Mo n cord On the other hand, Ken- will continue to influence Republi- co n LGBT activist

ohn/ nedy wrote the Court’s only Zach Wahls can politicians who need their sup- two decisions supporting gay addresses the port to win primary elections. Thus, rights, one of which explicitly Democratic an intense struggle over marriage National embraces the notion of a liv- Convention, equality is likely to continue for ing Constitution whose mean- Charlotte, several more years, even though the o tt om: alexanderC ing evolves to reflect changing North Carolina, ultimate outcome is no longer seri- September 6,

mages; B social mores. Moreover, his ously in doubt.

y I 2012.

tt opinions frequently treat in- e G ternational norms as relevant Kirkland & Ellis professor of law Michael J. t on/ to American constitutional August: Klarman is the author of the recently pub-

enning interpretation, and marriage The Democratic 51% of Americans favor lished From the Closet to the Altar: equality is rapidly gaining mo- Party platform repeal of Defense of Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle

Top: Tom P mentum in much of the world. endorses gay Marriage Act; 34% do not. for Same-Sex Marriage. marriage. 2012 2013 February: March: November: March: Washington, The New Hampshire Minnesota, Gay marriage New Jersey, legislature votes down an Maine, cases come and Maryland effort to repeal gay marriage. Washington, before the legislatures and Maryland U.S. Supreme pass gay conduct Court. marriage; referenda on Governor gay marriage. Christie vetoes it in New Hampshire state repre- New Jersey. sentative David Bates rallies against same-sex marriage, February 7, 2012. Harvard Magazine 35 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Vita Alexander Hamilton Rice Brief life of an Amazon explorer: 1875-1956 by mark j. plotkin

certified Boston Brahmin, Alexander Hamilton Rice, what he learned there to produce fine maps of some areas so for- A.B. 1898, M.D. 1904, was a true Harvard man who served as bidding and remote that few nonindigenous people venture there A a faculty member and director and founder of the Harvard even today, more than a century after his expeditions. Institute of Geographical Exploration (1929-1952). His ultimate In all, Rice led seven Amazonian expeditions: his first consisted passion, though, was green rather than crimson: he traversed and of himself and some local guides; one of the last included more than mapped enormous tracts of Amazonian rainforest in the first quar- 100 men. Along the way, he conducted research on tropical diseases, ter of the twentieth century. Thus perhaps the most consequential carried out the first surgical operation under general anesthesia in moment of his Harvard career was Commencement day in 1915, the Amazon, taught the fundamentals of South American explora- when the “explorer of tropical America, who heard the wild call tion to Hiram Bingham, Ph.D. 1905 (who stumbled across Machu of nature and revealed her hiding-place” received an honorary Picchu); made the first detailed map of Chiribiquete, the most spec- degree and met Titanic survivor Eleanor Elkins Widener, present tacular landscape in Amazonia (now Colombia’s largest national for the dedication of the library named for her drowned son. Rice park); and pioneered the use of aerial photography and shortwave and Widener married later that year and soon set out together for radio to map the rainforest more accurately and efficiently. South America; her vast fortune expanded the scope and scale of By turns elegant socialite and swashbuckling adventurer, Rice his fieldwork and supercharged his career. relished press coverage—his departures to and returns from the The Roxbury-born Rice developed wanderlust early, traveling Amazon were breathlessly reported in The New York Times—and he from Istanbul to the Caucasus before finishing college, then find- proved an almost endless source of good copy. “Explorer Rice De- ing time to visit Greece, Russia, France, and the Austro-Hungarian nies That He Was Eaten By Cannibals” is a hard headline to top. empire, play polo in Egypt, and ride to hounds in England before He also attracted ample criticism. A pugnacious former boxer finishing his medical degree. But the trek following his first year of who was chauffeured around in a blue Rolls Royce and lived in a medical school truly set the stage for his greatest adventures and 65-room Newport mansion during the depths of the Depression accomplishments. In June 1899, he headed to Winnipeg and then risked at least some resentment in Cambridge, but he has been ac- set out for Hudson Bay, traveling as a traditional French-Canadian cused of using his wife’s money to “buy” his academic position and voyageur. He paddled and portaged his canoe through the wilder- his many awards, of lacking academic credentials and employing ness, journeying overland and studying the terrain, the people, the outdated cartographic techniques, and of shirking teaching assign- flora and the fauna; all told, his extraordinary expedition covered ments to spend more time in Europe. His conduct has been blamed more than 1, 400 miles. The experience inspired a quarter-century for destroying the academic study of geography at Harvard. of exploration of the most remote and least known corner of the In rebuttal, former RGS director John Hemming, the leading au- Western Hemisphere: the northwest Amazon—terra incognita that thority on the history and mapping of the Amazon, notes that Rice Rice did much to transform into terra cognita. received his most prestigious awards—the Harvard honorary and His first visit, in the summer of 1901, retraced the 1541 voyage of RGS Patron’s Medal—before his marriage. Rice’s work in Amazo- conquistador Francisco Orellana, the first European to travel from nia has also continued to benefit conservation: for example, it at- Amazonian headwaters to the Atlantic. Rice traveled from high- tracted ethnobotanist Richard Schultes ’37, Ph.D. ’41, who revealed land Ecuador, over the snowcapped Andes, down through the mon- Chiribiquete’s botanical treasures and led the effort to have the tane forests of the eastern slope, and into the rainforests below to area declared a national park. (The Colombian government is now reach the great river. Despite the man-eating black caimans, vam- planning to double its size.) And throughout the world, conserva- pire bats, riverine stingrays, giant piranhas, electric eels, ubiquitous tionists who map, manage, and protect vulnerable ecosystems by sandflies, flesh-eating botfly larvae, burrowing toe fleas, tarantula utilizing aerial photography and satellite imagery to mark bound- hawk wasps, goliath bird-eating spiders, and tocandeira bullet ants, aries and monitor incursions are following in the trailblazing foot- he fell in love with the Amazon and embarked on a quest to find the steps of Rice and his colleagues who—in the words of a plaque at sources of rivers that were little more than vague scribbles on maps. 2 Divinity Avenue, the building that once housed Rice’s institute— So successful was he, it was often said he knew headwaters the way “laid the foundations for the mapping of the world from the air.” other men of his social class knew headwaiters. For professional cartographic training, Rice enrolled in a pro- Ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin, A.B.E. ’79, Ph.D., is president of the nonprofit gram at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London; he used Amazon Conservation Team (www.amazonteam.org).

36 March - April 2013 Map and photograph courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Rice in the field, and (opposite) a detail from his hand-drawn map of the Chiribiquete region of Colombia Real-world office: professor of sociology Bruce Western interviews former prisoners at this pizza shop in downtown Boston.

The Prison Problem Sociologist Bruce Western rethinks incarceration in America.

hen Jerry enters the pizza place next to of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Program in Criminal Jus- Boston’s Government Center, he shakes tice Policy and Management, turns on his tape recorder. “Today Bruce Western’s hand heartily. Jerry, who is the sixth of November,” he says, setting the recorder down on has served 25 years for armed robbery and the table. “My ex-wife’s birthday,” Jerry (not his real name) notes aggravated rape, was released two months wryly. Western reads out the four-digit number that identifies Wago. Western is studying what happens to prisoners af- Jerry for the purposes of the study. “I should play that number in ter their release and has come to interview Jerry about the lottery tonight,” Jerry says. his experience. Jerry is quick with a joke, charismatic After ordering them coffees, Western, and likable—not what comes to mind a sociology professor and faculty chair by Elizabeth Gudrais when one hears “convicted rapist.” For

38 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Western, this has been one of the study’s vironment and the outside world can be jarring in the extreme. chief lessons. Although he is one of the Jerry confides during his interview that he’s had trouble sleeping foremost experts on incarceration in at the shelter for homeless veterans where he lives: he isn’t used America, in the past he primarily studied to other people in his sleeping space. Inside the medium-security prisoners through datasets and equa- prison, inmates fought all day long, he says, but “when the cell tions. Meeting his subjects in person put door would click closed at night, that was the only time you were a human face on the statistics and dashed safe. No matter what beef anyone had with you, it had to wait un- preconceived notions in the process. til morning.” At the shelter’s dorm-style room full of bunk beds, Western has come to believe that just with people moving around all night, Jerry is constantly on edge: as offenders’ crimes carry a cost to so- “It’s like my body left the prison, but my mind is still in there.” ciety, so too does the shortage of social The outside world brings an onslaught of stimulation, the sud- supports and rehabilitative services for den need to make dozens of small decisions each day, when be- offenders. A crime-control strategy of fore, the prisoners were expected to do as they were told. “Adap- locking up more people, and keeping tive behavior in prison is maladaptive behavior outside,” explains them locked up longer, isn’t working, Marieke Liem, a postdoctoral fellow at Western’s HKS program. he says. He is determined to help the She is investigating the effects of long-term incarceration and American public understand how crime prisoners’ reentry using data from the United States and her na- is shaped by poverty, addiction, and his- tive Netherlands. In both her study and Western’s, subjects have tories of family violence, in an effort to said they simply can’t cope on the outside—that going back to promote a more humane—and more ef- prison seems comforting and familiar. fective—prison policy. The psychological challenge of reintegrating is often layered on top of other adversity—for example, childhood trauma. Jerry was “Luck, Not a Plan” five when his father went to prison for three years for shooting More than 2.2 million Americans are Jerry’s mother in the head during a drunken fight. (Luckily, the incarcerated. This population is dy- bullet went through her ear and her jaw, not her brain; deafness namic: hundreds of thousands of people in one ear was the only lasting effect.) After his father’s return, (mostly men) are released from U.S. pris- Jerry recalls, “I would stay awake at night listening to them fight, ons each year to try to make a go of it in wondering what he was going to do to her.” In many cases, says a world where they have failed before— Western, “the violence people bring into the world has its roots with the added disadvantage of a prison in violence they witnessed, or which was done to them, at very record. More than two-thirds will be re- young ages.” With stories like Jerry’s, he notes, “the line between arrested within three years; half will go victim and offender is very fuzzy indeed.” back in prison. Jerry started drinking when he was nine and left school af- Those released from prison are, as a ter the ninth grade. This history of alcohol abuse is also typi- group, little studied, partly because main- cal among current and former inmates: at least two-thirds are taining contact with them is so difficult. thought to have substance-abuse problems—no surprise, given The men tend to be “very loosely attached that people steal to get money for drugs, or commit other crimes to families and jobs,” Western explains. due to impaired judgment while under the influence. In ef- Prison time strains relationships with fect, American prisons are used as surrogate mental-health and partners and children, and the men often substance-abuse facilities. The nonprofit Human Rights Watch live separately after their release. They may move frequently, sleep- found that 56 percent of U.S. inmates are mentally ill. ing on the couches of friends and relatives or even becoming home- Jessica Simes, a doctoral student who is a research assistant in less as difficulty in finding employment begets financial trouble. Western’s study, tells of one subject, mentally ill and addicted to Tracking this group, though complicated, is essential to West- drugs, who failed a drug test that was a condition of her parole ern’s goal of understanding what challenges prisoners encoun- and was sent back to prison for the remaining 15 months of her ter in reintegrating into communities. With funding from the sentence. She had received prescription anti-anxiety medication National Institutes of Health, he is tracking a sample of inmates while in prison, but bureaucratic delays held up a new prescrip- released from the Massachusetts prison system who return to tion once she got out. Besieged by anxiety and desperate to feel Boston-area addresses during the course of a year. The research- calm, she used heroin. “The medical community has determined ers collect friends’ and relatives’ information (to maintain con- that addiction is a disease,” says Simes, “but the criminal-justice tact when, for example, a subject’s phone is disconnected for community considers it a crime.” nonpayment) and work with community street-workers and the In cases like these, the reasons people landed in prison in the Boston police, who may have information on the former prison- first place make them more likely to end up there again. This is why ers’ whereabouts. Ultimately, Western hopes to learn what ser- Western favors more robust support for prisoners who are released. vices might most effectively help the formerly incarcerated lead “In most cases,” he says, “these are poor people with few social sup- productive lives and what alternatives to prison might better im- ports, real behavioral problems, or tragic family histories.” prove public safety. Although Western’s team is still conducting interviews, the The challenges are great. The difference between the prison en- researchers have already identified some factors that seem to aid

Photographs by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 39 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Not all former prisoners have advocates or mentors; most are released into a piecemeal system where the assistance they receive relies on “luck, not a plan.” prisoners in reintegrating. As it happens, Jerry exited prison with “So many pieces have to come together” to set newly released several advantages. First, he is 51. Older offenders are less likely to prisoners on the path to a productive, stable life, says Caroline commit new crimes and end up back in prison, perhaps because Burke ’13, a social studies concentrator who is one of Western’s youthful tempers fade, or because maturity brings an awareness research assistants. “If someone isn’t on the right track after the of what one has missed. first few weeks, there’s a snowball effect.” Moreover, Jerry has housing—he can stay in the shelter for the The few inmates who do reintegrate without much difficulty, first year. He had $5,800 in the bank at the time of his release, who are best positioned to deal with the psychological effects of saved from his work-release job. And his sister lets him come the transition, have the “big three” in place: they have a job lined over and search job postings on her computer in exchange for do- up or find one quickly (e.g., through a trade union they previously ing her dishes. worked with); they have housing (often with a relative or through Jerry also has good relationships with his sons, ages 28 and 29, a social-service program); and they have access to healthcare and even though he’s been absent for most of their lives. He speaks treatment for substance-abuse and mental-health issues as neces- with each of them daily. When he thinks about his sons, Jerry sary. The most effective reentry programs address these factors, feels motivated to find a job. He wants to get his own apartment and Western recommends directing more resources their way. so he can offer them a place to stay, save up a bit of money to loan One more factor that can tip the odds is a mentor. Anthony Braga, M.P.A. ’02, a senior research Incarceration and Crime Rates: What Relationship? Incarceration rate, per fellow in the HKS program and 100,000 U.S. population chief policy adviser to Boston’s po- Scholars disagree over whether rising incarceration rates caused lice commissioner, found that this the drastic drop in violent crime of the 1990s. Bruce Western’s Violent crime rate statistical analysis shows that 90 percent of the drop in crime would (incidents per 100,000 was the key feature of the success- have occurred in any case. U.S. population) ful Boston Reentry Initiative. A joint 800 project of local, state, and federal government, it matches each inmate 700 being released with a mentor from a community organization. Braga, a 600 longtime lecturer at Harvard who is 500 now a professor at Rutgers, found that high-risk offenders who partic- 400 ipated in the program and received mentoring took 30 percent longer to 300 end up back in prison, and their of- 200 fenses were far less likely to be vio- lent crimes when they were rearrest- 100 ed. He says these results “show that you can make inroads and start get- 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 ting them away from the pressures that lead them to falling back into Sources: Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online (incarceration); Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics (crime). their old ways.” (But Western notes that keeping expectations modest to them if they need it. “I want to be their shelter in the storm,” he is important: “Some of the most successful reentry programs,” he says. “Be there for them because all those years I couldn’t.” says, “only reduce recidivism by 10 percent.”) Still, finding work might prove difficult. Jerry makes an excel- Jerry does have a mentor, his case worker at the shelter, a wom- lent first impression—neatly groomed, intelligent, self-aware— an he calls “an angel.” Most recently, when his state-paid health but he struggles with emotional control. When a nurse declined insurance was canceled in error, she helped him get it reinstated. his request for anti-anxiety medication at a recent appointment, Not all former prisoners have advocates like this, notes Catherine he told her, “When you see me on the six o’clock news, you’ll Sirois ’10, the project manager for Western’s study; most are re- know you made the wrong decision.” The nurse called security leased into a piecemeal system where the assistance they receive and Jerry was detained for 45 minutes, frisked, asked to remove relies on “luck, not a plan.” his shoes and belt. “It was embarrassing,” he says. “Very embar- rassing.” Many, perhaps most, former prisoners have trouble han- The Prison Pipeline dling difficult emotions and keeping their cool during disagree- The United states has the dubious distinction of having the ments—crucial skills for workplace success. world’s highest incarceration rate: more than seven-tenths of 1

40 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 percent of the population (about 1 in 100 adults) are in prison. Only eight countries have rates above one-half of 1 percent. The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has nearly one-quarter of its prisoners. Stricter treatment of drug offens- es, and longer sentences for violent and repeat offenders, underlie this high rate. The United States cur- rently has 41,000 inmates serving life sentences without parole, ac- cording to a recent report; England has just 41. Yet as recently as the 1970s, the U.S. incarceration rate was one-fifth its current level. Then tough-on-crime laws passed at the state and federal levels with bipar- tisan support. Now, the United States has reached “mass incarceration”—“a level of imprisonment so vast that it forges the collective experience of an entire social group,” Western writes. Western and his team of researchers meet regularly to discuss their work. Clockwise from He has found that 60 percent of bottom left are Catherine Sirois ’10, Caroline Burke ’13, Western, Jaclyn Davis, Tracy Shollen- berger, A.M. ’11, Anthony Braga, M.P.A. ’02, Jessica Simes, and David Hureau, M.P.P. ’06. black male high-school dropouts in the United States will go to prison before age 35. The deterrent ef- dren’s scores on vocabulary and reading tests fell in the days after fect of incarceration is lessened if it becomes so common that it no a homicide in their neighborhood, presumably due to emotions longer carries any stigma. “The American prison boom is as much such as fear and anxiety. In a neighborhood violent enough to af- a story about race and class,” he writes, “as it is about crime con- fect long-term school performance, even education is not an easy trol.” Reentry services for released prisoners go only so far; making ticket out of poverty. a real dent in the size of the prison population will require inter- One of Western’s students has found that the disparities be- vening in a cycle that begins long before any crime is committed. gin even earlier. For her thesis in sociology and African-American But making that dent requires an honest look at hard-to-face studies, Tiana Williams ’12 drew connections between race-based truths. Two factors greatly increase the odds of going to prison disparities in discipline in K-12 education, and race-based dispar- sometime during one’s life: being black or Hispanic, and being ities in incarceration. Analyzing data from a large national sur- poor. Poor minorities do commit more crimes, but that only ex- vey, she found that African-American students were significantly plains part of the disparity. “Small race and class differences in more likely than white students to be suspended from school, offending are amplified at each stage of criminal processing, from even though they did not misbehave any more frequently. She also arrest through conviction and sentencing,” Western writes. A showed that students who were suspended were more likely to criminal history accumulates that reflects not just criminal con- be arrested subsequently than students who were never suspend- duct, but the influence of race and poverty, and this in turn shapes ed—indicating that the way children are treated in school helps later decisions about sentencing and parole release. Western and set them on a path for later life. many fellow prison-policy scholars have observed that American Unless underlying social problems are addressed, says Cath- criminal-justice policy is built on the rhetoric of personal respon- erine Sirois, nothing will change: “Our priority should be, how do sibility—paying for one’s bad decision—to the exclusion of ask- we keep children from growing up in communities where selling ing why minority and low-income groups are so much more likely drugs is their best career option?” to make bad decisions, or how society fails them. Two other factors that greatly increase one’s odds of going to “A Reform Moment” prison—low educational attainment and a lack of employment As prison populations and expenditures ballooned, states be- opportunities—are closely linked, and are connected to one deci- gan to realize their policies were unsustainable. Yet, even as poli- sion: to drop out of school. That decision is often made by teen- ticians and the media focused in on prison reform, actual change agers leaving public-school systems ill-equipped in any case to came slowly. prepare them well for the modern work force. The dimensions of Take the case of California, which made headlines last year this multifaceted disadvantage may be even more closely linked when the amount budgeted for corrections surpassed that ear- than is immediately obvious. As one example, Patrick Sharkey, marked for higher education. (Incarcerating one person for a year Ph.D. ’07, a sociologist at New York University, found that chil- costs tens of thousands of dollars, and in some places rivals the

Harvard Magazine 41 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 relatively low since then. The rates of other violent crimes and property crimes fell pre- cipitously, too. Western concludes that nine-tenths of this drop in crime would have occurred without any increase in the incarceration rate. He points to increased police spending and presence as a major contributor (more and better policing keeps crime down even if people aren’t being sent to prison). The trend may also represent regression to the mean af- ter a historic high. He notes that crime dropped in Eu- rope, Canada, and Latin America during the same peri- od, even though incarceration rates in those places did not have the same steep upward slope. What’s more, New York maintained very low crime rates throughout the first decade

<200 of this century even as it shrank its prison population. 201-300 Because it is impossible to say how many crimes a 301-400 given individual would hypothetically commit if free instead of imprisoned, such analyses necessarily rely on 401-500 comparisons and statistical assumptions. Western’s conclu- 501-600 sion is controversial, and other scholars have obtained different Incarceration, State by State >600 prisoners per 100,000 population answers to the same question—notably, a widely cited analy- sis by University of Chicago economist and Freakonomics author Incarceration rates vary widely among the U.S. states, with some above and some below the average of 441 per 100,000 population. Steven D. Levitt ’89, JF ’97, who observed what happened in 12 The incarceration rates shown here reflect inmates housed within states after large numbers of prisoners were released from over- state prison systems, and exclude federal prisoners. crowded facilities under court order. The two scholars essentially Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2012 (data from 2010 and 2011) disagree about the statistical assumptions underlying their cal- culations: Western does not believe one can generalize from the price of tuition at an elite university.) In the wake of a Supreme specific situation Levitt used to generate his assumptions; Levitt Court order to ease prison overcrowding by releasing more than stands by his claim that locking more people up was the major 30,000 inmates, California voters in November scaled back their driver of the 1990s drop in crime. But even Levitt recently told The “three strikes” law, so the mandatory 25-years-to-life sentence for New York Times that he believes that the trend has gone too far and a third offense is restricted to serious or violent crimes. the prison population should shrink “by at least one-third.” This was not the first time California voters had considered such a change. Western believes the United States has finally The Case for Change reached “a reform moment” for prison policy. As voters chafe at Western has helped lead two national task forces on the swollen prison budgets and the costs of social disruption—an causes and consequences of mass incarceration. Now he is em- estimated two million American children are growing up with barking on an action-oriented initiative, convening leaders from a parent behind bars—other states have also revisited mandato- law enforcement, lawmaking, the judiciary, public policy, and ry-minimum sentence laws, increased use of parole, and placed substance-abuse and vocational services—as well as some former drug offenders in treatment instead of prison. Several states have inmates—for a series of meetings at the Kennedy School during also decriminalized recreational use of marijuana (most recently, the next three years. Their goal: to overcome the political grid- Washington and Colorado)—another indication that harsh drug lock that has inhibited major criminal-justice reform in America. sentences are falling out of favor. Some say the “prison-industrial complex”—those who work The U.S. Congress has reduced crack/powder cocaine sentenc- at prisons, sell goods to prisons, and benefit from cheap prison- ing disparities (a contributor to the racial disparity in incarcera- er labor—has become a large and powerful lobby that prevents tion), and the Second Chance Act, signed into law by President change. Western believes this argument is “oversold,” and the real George W. Bush in 2008, funds rehabilitative services for prison- explanation is simpler: for all the dissatisfaction with the amount ers, such as reentry programs, prison education, and drug treat- of money spent on prisons, tough-on-crime arguments are still ment, as well as research on the effectiveness of those services. popular. “If the crime rate drops, people say, ‘See, prisons work. More than $250 million has been awarded under the act so far— We have to spend more money on them,’” explains Marieke Liem. tiny compared to the combined state and federal prison budget of Conversely, “If the crime rate rises, people say, ‘We have to spend $75 billion annually, but an encouraging sign, says Western. more money on prisons.’” Western seeks to broaden the options. Economic concerns remain the most persuasive argument in One example: services for youths who have not yet committed driving prison reform. But Western has an even more compelling crimes. Anthony Braga, who has studied gang violence extensive- argument: locking up more Americans, he asserts, has not greatly ly, says the average gang comprises about 30 young men, but “only reduced crime. After peaking in the early 1990s, the U.S. homi- five or six are what I would call truly dangerous; the rest of the cide rate fell throughout the rest of the decade, and has remained kids are what we call situationally dangerous. They recognize that

42 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 there is the potential to be doing something better with their lives. “We’re still in an era where being soft on crime carries political risk,” If you can work with those kids, you can make a big impact.” he notes, but he has fresh hopes for the president’s second term. Helping divert youths from the path to prison may help stem the tide of urban violence and heal communities suffering from Earlier in his career, Western, the son of a sociology profes- the absence of husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. “The prison sor at the University of Queensland, Australia, wrote about labor walls we built with such industry in the 1980s and ’90s did not markets and statistical models for sociology. A chance conversa- keep out the criminal predators,” Western writes, “but instead tion with a colleague prompted him to reenvision prisons as a “la- divided us internally, leaving our poorest communities with few- bor-market institution”: he became aware that people who would er opportunities to join the mainstream and deeply skeptical of receive vocational, substance-abuse, and mental-health services the institutions charged with their safety.” in many European countries are incarcerated instead in the Unit- Breaking this cycle is a tall order, but keeping people out of ed States. His scholarly work then proceeded in a new direction. prison is clearly preferable to trying to help them once they’re al- Examining prisons’ role vis-à-vis U.S. labor markets, Western ready there. The prison experience shreds social ties with the out- found that the United States owes its (historically) comparatively side world, leaving inmates with convicted criminals as their only low unemployment rate in part to its high incarceration rate: people friends. Prison also gets them out of the habit of getting up and who would otherwise be unemployed are excluded from the cal- going to work each day—Western often refers to employment as a culations. He has also documented the reduction in pay suffered means of social control. And prison decimates former inmates’ em- by people with a prison record, compared to their peers with no ployment prospects. When someone can’t get a job and his social record, and how incarceration contributes to income inequality circle consists of other criminals, making money through criminal in the United States by condemning some people to very low pay. activity—i.e., recidivism—becomes his most likely path. He has explored the interconnectedness of race, lack of employ- Western does not believe it is a coincidence that when social- ment opportunity, and incarceration (finding, in research with his welfare programs were trimmed throughout the 1970s and 1980s, former Princeton colleague Devah Pager, that a black man without large increases in crime ensued. “We may have skimped on wel- a criminal record had about the same chance of being called after fare, but we paid anyway, splurging on police and prisons,” he applying for a job as a white man with a criminal record). And he “We may have skimped on welfare, but we paid anyway, splurging on police and prisons. Dollars diverted from education and employment found their way to prison construction.” writes. “Dollars diverted from education and employment found found that the high incarceration rate had the perverse effect of their way to prison construction.” Assistant professor of sociol- seeming to raise the average wage for African-American men: be- ogy and social studies Matthew Desmond agrees, noting, for cause so many low-earning African-American men are in prison, example, that the United States serves a smaller segment of its racial equality in pay is more apparent than real. population with public housing than do most European coun- During his time on the faculty at Princeton, he first ventured in- tries—but makes up for it in spending on prisons, which are used side a correctional facility to teach a sociology course for incarcerat- as de facto public housing. Says Desmond: “We’re going to house ed men. For someone who “had spent most of my career crunching the poor one way or another.” numbers on a computer and teaching Ivy League students,” West- Liem, a practicing forensic psychologist in the Netherlands ern remembers, that experience was “unbelievably powerful.” who first came to Boston in 2009, was struck by the way Ameri- Since coming to Harvard in 2007, he has worked with Kaia can inmates are “treated as subhuman.” That they wear jumpsuits Stern, a lecturer in ethics at Harvard Divinity School, to take and are referred to by number instead of name; that sex offenders groups of undergraduates into Massachusetts state prisons for are made to register publicly; that felons in some states lose their courses on urban sociology. The Harvard students learn alongside voting rights for life—all contribute to a “sense of otherness,” she inmates who are also pursuing bachelor’s de- says. “This idea that once you made a mistake and forever you have grees—and in the process, learn to view issues to pay for it is striking.” She suggests that instead it is possible to of crime and punishment in a more nuanced Visit harvardmag.com/ have compassion for both the victim and the perpetrator. For his way. Because of this experience, Western, a extras to read more about the courses and part, Braga says he understands public opposition to services for married father of three daughters, has gained other initiatives that convicted criminals, especially for violent offenders. But, he says, empathy for Jerry and others who have com- bring students into “if we’re trying to reduce overall levels of victimization, it seems mitted violent crimes. “Often we want to say contact with current and like you’d want to do something that makes it less likely that people that people in prison are criminal and evil and former prisoners. are going to continue committing crimes.” unredeemable, or that they’re innocent and victims of circum- Western estimates that the cost of providing job placement, tran- stance,” says Western. “The truth is that they’re neither of those sitional housing, and drug treatment for all released prisoners who things. You can do some very terrible things in your life and yet be need it would be $7 billion—one-tenth of current state and federal deeply human at the same time.” spending on corrections. He has been disappointed that the Obama administration has not taken a stronger stand on prison reform. Freelance writer Elizabeth Gudrais ’01 lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Harvard Magazine 43 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal John Harvard’s JournalJournal

As Many Books as Possible Short of Bankruptcy Harvard got into the book-publishing the five Glover children into a house built fully Translated into English Metre (1640), later business in the 1640s. It happened this for him by the College in Harvard Yard. Very called the “Bay Psalm Book.” Colonists sang way. In 1638, Puritan clergyman Josse Glov- likely the press was operated by Stephen praises to God with this volume in hand.

er sailed for Massachusetts with his wife, Day’s son, Matthew, who was also the Col- A good book, like most that have followed V 302 (2-11); U Elizabeth, and their children, and a lock- lege steward. it from Harvard. (It also turned out to be smith named Stephen Day and his family. The third item to issue from this press a good investment. Only 11 copies of the The Glovers brought with them a printing was the first real book produced in the Eng- psalter are known to exist today, and in De- V 302 (1-5) press, type, and paper to print on. Josse died lish colonies, The Whole Book of Psalmes Faith- cember 2012, the congregants of Old South U on the voyage, Elizabeth moved into a big rd University Archives, H house in Cambridge, and set up the Days in a a smaller house with the printing equipment. In this Issue rv ge) Ha In 1640 came another clergyman, Henry a Dunster, 30, who was quickly appointed the 47 Allston: The Killer App 53 Brevia rd University Archives, H a rv

first president of Harvard College. He mar- 48 “We All Can Do Better” 55 The Undergraduate phs: (this p ried the widow Glover and moved into her 49 Havard Portrait 57 Sports a house. She died in 1643, Dunster took pos- 50 Yesterday’s News 59 Alumni l photogr session of the press, type, and paper, remar- 50 Online Evolution Accelerates 63 The View from Mass Hall a pposite, Above) Ha O Archiv ried, and moved with the printing gear and 52 A Corporation Report 64 The College Pump (

44 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Clockwise from opposite page: two views of early digs in Randall Hall; legal history by James Barr Ames, the first book to bear the Harvard University Press imprint (1913); a book on Chaucer by George Lyman Kittridge, published in 1915 and still in print in 1970; three of the hundreds of volumes in the Loeb Classical Library; a spread from Daniel Berkeley Updike’s Printing Types (1923), a popular treatise and an outstanding piece of bookmaking

the President and Fel- a glass partition overlooking the compositors. lows voted to establish (Printing and publishing would split apart a printing office to print organizationally in 1942.) In 1913, the publica- for and at the direction tion office became Harvard University Press. Church in Boston voted overwhelmingly to of the University, but sold the operation in It celebrates its centennial this year with vari- sell one of their two copies at auction to 1827. Harvard’s third printing venture came ous undertakings: fund repairs, air conditioning, and so forth. in 1872 with the establishment of a printing • The backlist lives forever. The Press Sotheby’s estimates it will fetch between $10 office and, in 1892, a publication office, both in has published more than 10,000 titles since million and $20 million.) University Hall in the Yard. They later moved its founding. Unlike commercial publish- The press moved into another building to more spacious quarters in Randall Hall, on ers, who pulp slow-selling books mere in the Yard and clattered busily, turning out the site where William James Hall stands to- months after their launch and move on to books and pamphlets and other matter for day like an immense big toe. See the presses new speculations, university presses tend to the College and for outside customers until there, above, and the composing room, oppo- keep books in print for very long periods— Harvard abandoned the effort in 1692. In 1802, site. Publication staff sat on a balcony behind estimable behavior, academic authors would

Archival photographs courtesy of the Harvard University Archives; books courtesy of Harvard Magazine 45 the Harvard University Press and Houghton Library; photographs of books by Jim Harrison Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal say. But sometimes, of course, bad things happen to good books and they go out of print. Through a partnership with the Ger- man publisher De Gruyter, HUP will bring back into print, in either e-book format or print-on-demand hardcover, all currently unavailable titles for which the press still V 302 (1-5);

has publishing rights, starting this spring. U • Interactive Emily, etc. This year will bring an open-access digital Emily Dick- V 164 (1-1) inson Archive. It will showcase her manu- U scripts and encourage the reader to study the poet’s own handwriting, word choice, and rd University Archives, H a

arrangement; read and compare transcrip- rv tions of her poetry through time; and con- ll: Ha

duct new scholarship with annotation tools. rd University Archives, H a ll Ha a rv

The digital Dictionary of American Regional nd English will enable readers to find regional treet: Hatreet: ph of Ra words they already know but also search a incy S

by definition, browse by region, and flip u hotogr P serendipitously through the dictionary 38 Q to synonyms and new, unusual words— searchable, so that one will be able to get in More or less sweet homes: (top, left and “cattywampus,” perhaps. It will also contain bytes and bits all that is important in classi- right) Randall Hall, a former dining commons, where the Press moved in 1916, a wealth of information, along with audio cal Western literature, with Greek or Latin and 38 Quincy Street, a house without of field recordings from when the original text next to English translations. electricity, where staff moved in 1932; hardcover edition of the multivolume dic- • Exhibitionism. Books to conjure with, (bottom, left and right) in 1948, it was on tionary was compiled in the late 1960s. interesting records, correspondence with to Jewett House on Francis Avenue (now part of the Divinity School) and then in The Press will formally announce this notable authors, photographs, and ephem- 1956 to 79 Garden Street, vacated by the year details of a program to come in 2014: era worth looking at, are on display at the Gray Herbarium and renamed Kittredge the complete Houghton Library in Harvard University Press: Hall, where the Press leafs out today. Loeb Classical 100 Years of Excellence in Publishing, through Library, more April 20. Examples are shown here. Why establish a press? Back in 1912, than 500 vol- • New look. To commemorate its anni- when the found- umes, will be versary and welcome the future, the Press ing fathers were available in has enlisted the design firm Chermayeff and trying to drum up digital format, Geismar to create a logo and visual identi- enthusiasm and Counterclockwise from ty and is sending into the money for a full- upper left: the first Norton world books and publicity it fledged university Lecture (1927), by Gilbert Murray, professor of Greek at hopes are stylishly dressed press, they put to- Oxford; Willi Apel’s landmark (see page 48). With a back- gether a circular dictionary of music (1944), an ward glance, one notes that giving seven rea- enduring seller; Eleanor of during the 1920s some of sons for wanting Aquitaine (1950), the Press’s firstTimes bestseller the greatest of book design- such a thing. “One ers—Bruce Rogers, D.B. Up- was that an ade- dike, David Pottinger, and quately endowed W.A. Dwiggins, variously publication center associated with the Print- would add greatly ing Office—laid hands on to Harvard’s repu- The Press launched the Press’s output. tation for scholar- this monumental series, in coopera- • Celebrations. There’s ship,” the late Max tion with the a birthday website with Hall, NF ’50, HUP’s Massachusetts candles one may visit, one-time editor for Historical Society, www.hupcentennial.com, the social sciences, in 1961. and when the American related in his 1986 book Harvard University Association of University Press: A History. “Another was that it would Presses meets in Boston in contribute materially to the advancement June, there will be learned of knowledge....The authors strongly made parties. the point that a learned press ‘would not

46 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Breaking News Allston: The Killer App thority A quarter-century after the University first acquired land in u Allston, in 1989, to accommodate growth, it may begin construc- tion of the first academic facility there. At the Faculty of Arts and Sciences meeting on February 5 (as this magazine went to press), edevelopment A President Drew Faust told the gathered professors that planning

“has evolved” for the ultimate use of an Allston science complex on oston R which construction was suspended (given financial constraints) in 2010. What was outlined last summer as a health- and life-scienc- rtesy of the B

es facility (where stem-cell researchers and others would be relo- u o cated) has now been reenvisioned as “an anchoring presence” for C “the substantial majority of SEAS” (the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), plus flexible laboratory space to accommodate other researchers. Faust described the decision as an “extraordinary opportunity” for Harvard and for SEAS to accommodate growth; build facilities for collaborative, interdisciplinary research; and cre- ate innovative spaces to support those priorities. The school “must grow” she said, and could, in its new home, become “a hub in a wheel of connectivity” shaping the rest of the developing Allston site. Provost Alan Garber, who directs scientific programming for the entrepreneurs across Western Avenue at Harvard facility, noted that planning for this first major Allston academic Business School (HBS) and the Harvard Innovation Lab; and the po- building was only that: subsequent phases of development would tential to fulfill SEAS’s long ambition to expand with at least a few enlarge the academic presence in the area over time. The contem- dozen new professorships may ultimately prove compelling, the fac- plated move, he said, was four to five years in the future. (In Janu- ulty speakers who rose to comment conveyed deep concern and even ary, Harvard announced that architect Stefan Behnisch had been sharp reservations about the plan. Michael D. Mitzenmacher, McKay retained to work on the science center; he designed the original professor of computer science and area dean for computer science, complex on which work was halted, and now faces the task of said the faculty had learned of the plan only a week earlier, when adapting his prior work to different users and likely a more stringent Garber briefed them. Citing relocation away from budget—with University officials suggesting construction could students and scientific colleagues, he said, “Iso- begin in 2014.) Between now and the time for occupancy, Garber lating us has the potential to defeat both our edu- For a full report said, there would be “lots to learn” about improving transportation; cational and our research purposes.” Although he on the news and resolving the challenges of scheduling courses to accommodate stu- and many colleagues wished to feel enthusiastic continuing coverage, dents whose other work is in Cambridge; and maintaining research about the proposal, as presented—without solu- please visit http:// harvardmagazine.com/ collaborations. The first round of solutions, he acknowledged, might tions to the challenges moving might pose—it topic/allston-campus. not be “perfect.” He reiterated that a major motivation for contem- felt like “the cart before the horse.” He called for plating moving “the majority of SEAS” (without specifying what “more openness, more clarity, and more answers to our important parts might not relocate) is that “SEAS needs to grow.” That re- questions” about logistics, what else might be developed in Allston flects both the present scientific momentum and the judgment of and when, and what SEAS might gain in resources and personnel. Ste- the school’s visiting committee and of alumni active in the field. ven Wofsy, Rotch professor of atmospheric and environmental science u rosner st Although the prospect of brand-new facilities; proximity to the and area dean for environmental science and engineering, said of his field’s networked research and teaching, “If we move, our paradigm can’t work.” Above: Harvard’s new master-plan submission to Boston shows the already-approved Allston A period of intensive consultation science-center site as the large tan block outlined is about to begin. SEAS has been on in yellow at the lower section of the map. This a sharp growth trajectory since be- image shows the foundation of the science complex shortly before construction was halted. coming a school in 2007, but is out of space. Student enrollment is burgeon- ing. Society’s interest in engineering and applied sciences is robust. There are natural affinities between SEAS and HBS’s work. A major capital cam- paign is quietly under way. Whatever the initial fireworks, after many ambi- tious plans laid low by financial and other constraints, Allston’s academic development is in the offing.

Harvard Magazine 47 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

be in any sense a competitor to the com- in 1939, for Frank mercial publishers since its chief function Luther Mott’s Printer’s Mark would be the issuing of books that would History of Ameri- not be commercially profitable.’” can Magazines. HUP has been historically Thomas J. Wil- The first of many promiscuous with its logotype. son, the fifth di- Bancroft Prizes View diverse versions through rector of the Press, for books about time, including the crisp served from 1947 diplomacy or the centennial identity (right), at to 1967 and raised history of the www.harvardmag.com/extras. the prestige of Americas came the organization in 1951 for Arthur at Harvard and N. Holcombe’s Our More Perfect Union: From the history of American civilization, due in in the publishing Eighteenth-Century Principles to Twentieth-Century March; the first English translation of Albert world. He uttered Practice. Now and then, an actual bestseller Camus’s Algerian Chronicles, coming in May; a mission state- slips onto the list, bringing a change of pace and in the fall Martha Nussbaum’s Political ment famous in and elation to the Press staff. The first of Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. his profession: “A these was Amy Kelly’s Eleanor of Aquitaine and Naturally, the Press has had its good university press the Four Kings, 1950. days and bad. In his history of the place, exists to pub- In its centenary year, as in recent years, Max Hall summed up: “During the centu- The Press’s first lish as many good the Press will publish about 180 books, not ries since the first printing press arrived in Pulitzer Prize came in scholarly books as counting paperback reprints. It’s no pee- North America, the publishing of books by 1939 for volumes two possible short of wee enterprise. Some highlights of 2013: Harvard has taken several forms, and the and three (of five) of bankruptcy.” Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery maturing of the central publishing depart- Frank Luther Mott’s encyclopedic, The first of many and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, just out; Gish ment, even after 1913, has been a slow and readable A History of Pulitzer Prizes for Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdepen- erratic process. President Eliot founded the American Magazines. a Press book came dent Self, drawn from her Massey Lectures in Printing Office and Publication Office, and

“We All Can Do Better”

“Somewhat more than half” the students investigated for fessors to clarify what sorts of student academic misconduct on a spring 2012 final exam were “re- collaboration on work are permitted. quired…to withdraw from the College for a period of time,” FAS members were scheduled to hear rd news office news rd a

according to a message to faculty, staff, and students e-mailed some preliminary findings from Harris rv a y/h

by Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) dean Michael D. Smith on at the faculty’s February 5 meeting. a d

February 1. As reported last August, nearly half the students in The Ad Board proceeding, focused a n the course, which had a reported enrollment of 279, were in- on student conduct, did not engage Michael D. Smith vestigated by the Administrative Board for inappropriate col- those “faculty-facing” issues—such c brooks laboration on the take-home final examination. Smith’s Febru- as the expectations course leaders establish for students, the ary update indicated that of those whose work was reviewed, structure and conduct of exams, or other pedagogical chal- more than half were required to withdraw (typically, for two to lenges. Given the enormous effort involved in hearing this large four terms, according to Ad Board regulations); of the remain- volume of individual cases, and resolving ambiguities about who der, “roughly half” were put on disciplinary probation; and the said and shared what with whom when, it is also too soon to remaining cases resulted in “no disciplinary action.” expect reflection on whether the Ad Board process itself is up “Let me be crystal clear,” Smith wrote of efforts to clarify and to resolving such involved, complex investigations in a timely secure adherence to standards of academic integrity: “we all can manner. (Because the final cases were not resolved until just be- do better.” fore the Christmas holiday, students required to withdraw were Doing so, the dean suggested, could begin with faculty discus- treated as though they had done so by September 30, lessening sion of recommendations forthcoming from the Committee on their financial obligation for fall-term tuition, room, and board Academic Integrity, chaired by dean of undergraduate education fees.) Wider discussion of such problems—essentially absent Jay M. Harris. That committee has pursued “student-facing” and during the Ad Board hearings last term—awaits faculty and stu- “faculty-facing” initiatives. The former might include “the adop- dent engagement now. tion of some form of an honor code to guide students,” and the For a fuller report on the Administrative Board proceedings latter, possibly, “recommendations regarding best practices for and Dean Smith’s message (including the full text of his e-mail properly structured and administered assessments of student and links to earlier reports on the cheating investigation), see competency,” along with already-instituted exhortations to pro- http://harvardmag.com/cheating-13.

48 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 would have founded a more fully organized university press if the financial means had harvard portrait been available. President Lowell wanted a university press, but only with misgivings did he agree to start one, because he feared that it would not be self-supporting—and it wasn’t. President Conant tried to abolish the Press because he did not think the Uni- versity should be ‘in business.’ But he failed, and the University in the second half of his administration strengthened the Press in- stead, recognizing for the first time the need for making ample funds available for work- ing capital. President Pusey had no financial worries about the Press until the very end of his tenure. Under the four- year directorship of Mark Carroll, the Press published such seminal works as John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, E.O. Wilson’s The Insect Societies, and Nota- ble American Women: 1607-1950, edited by A book offered for Edward T. James a fee in print and free and Janet W. James. online in edX, the nonprofit Harvard- It also ran large, MIT partnership for unanticipated, interactive study on and unsatisfacto- the Web rily explained defi- cits, and Carroll left his job, not quietly, in 1972. President Bok inherited a crisis during Abigail Donovan and Laura Prager which Harvard gained some additional ex- perience with academic publishing. He told The United States has more than 70 million children—and 7,500 child psychiatrists. the new Director in 1972 that he wanted the That gulf between those who might need help and those trained to give it led assistant best scholarly press and also a very profes- professors of psychiatry Laura M. Prager ’80 (right) and Abigail L. Donovan to clarify sional press and saw no reason why the two what happens to children with acute mental illness by writing Suicide by Security Blanket, purposes should interfere with each other.” and Other Stories from the Child Psychiatry Emergency Service. They draw on personal “It would be hubristic of me, I think, to experience: Prager directs that service at Massachusetts General Hospital; Donovan is assess our place in the world,” says today’s associate director of the hospital’s Acute Psychiatry Service. Their book’s 12 compos- Press director, William P. Sisler, in response ite episodes, crafted with “obsessive” care to protect privacy, bring lay and profes- to a question to that point, “but the num- sional readers into the ER “when kids come to the brink,” sharing what that’s like for ber of positive reviews we receive for our the child, physicians, and support staff. Their subjects range from children like “the books and the awards won suggest we’re whirling dervish”—“just as sick, or even more so” than peers with physical ailments— doing okay. To the best of my knowledge, to those like “the astronomer,” suffering from social deprivation, not acute psychopa- we have not been a drain on the Universi- thology. Most of the stories have no resolution, typical of emergency-room practice. ty in the last 40-some-odd years (I’ve been Donovan stresses “the complexity of these kids, their families, and the systems in which here going on 23, and can attest to that), so they live.…Each individual case needs a lot of expertise.” Prager hopes “to expose a we continue to be self-sufficient from two social evil: one reason children end up in emergency rooms is the lack of easily acces- sources, our sales and our endowment. Ob- sible outpatient care.” If we continue to “ignore the fact that children have very profound viously, both we and the University will be emotional and social difficulties,” she says, we will “end up neglecting our future: with happier if that situation continues, though kids whose difficulties weren’t addressed when maybe we could have made a difference.” it doesn’t get any easier!” With the book, she adds, “I think I can make a difference on the local and national level.” vchristopher reed

Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 49 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal Online Evolution Yesterday’s News Accelerates From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine The evolution of technologically enabled teaching and learning—through the Harvard- 1913 The class of ’14 votes almost 1963 A $72,000 Xerox Copyflo is in- MIT edX partnership, and for-profit ventures unanimously for the installation of electric stalled in Widener only after a 12-man including Coursera and Udacity—accelerated lights in the senior dorms, suggesting the crew hoists the huge, steel-frame ma- nationwide in late 2012 and in the new year. $3,000 cost be covered by a $6 term-bill chine up by crane, swings it over the li- As public attention focused on free, advanced- charge against sophomores and juniors. brary’s roof, lowers it to D-level of the level massive open online courses (MOOCs), inner courtyard, and pushes it through a other discussions emerged in academia about 1948 British constitutional historian window. (The formerly off-site machine applications to and implications for much Helen Maud Cam becomes the first had produced an eight-fold increase in more tailored and entry-level instruction. woman granted tenure as a full professor reproductions, including copies of books Herewith, some highlights. in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. printed on deteriorating stock.) • edX: The Second Season…and Beyond. The University-MIT venture unveiled 1953 Harvard University Press pub- 1973 A proposal to reform the Col- humanities and other courses for the vir- lishes Flying Saucers, by Paine professor of lege calendar would bring freshmen to tual spring “semester,” broadening from practical astronomy Donald H. Menzel. Cambridge before Labor Day, end first the initial focus on quantitative fields. Warning that the “exploitation of the semester before Christmas, and end sec- They include versions of Bass professor minds of the American public, feeding ond semester in mid May. (Faculty mem- of government Michael J. Sandel’s “Jus- them fiction in the guise of fact under the bers reject it.) tice,” Jones professor of Classical Greek protection of a free press,” could start a literature Gregory Nagy’s long-running serious panic, he analyzes and debunks 1983 A sampling of statistics from the overview of the hero in ancient Greek assorted alleged UFO sightings. College admissions office reveals 12,450 civilization (both previously offered in applications received for the class of recorded-lecture formats), and a limited- 1958 The University stages a discreet 1987—down 6.5 percent from the previ- enrollment “Copyright” course taught fundraising event, “Harvard’s Day,” draw- ous year; a 14.5 percent drop in applicants by WilmerHale professor of intellectual ing 2,600 alumni and wives to Cambridge from New York City; and a 20 percent property law William Fisher. There is also and reaching others with “The Case for increase in applicants from Texas, Okla- a public-health course on global environ- the College,” an hour-long program car- homa, Mississippi, and Kansas. mental change. (Read a detailed account at ried on 197 CBS radio stations, http://harvardmag.com/harvardx.) Armed Forces Radio Service, 1998 Diana L. Eck, professor of com- Looking to the future, a particularly in- Voice of America, and WCJB of parative religion and Indian studies, and teresting experiment emerged in a spring Quito, Ecuador. Participants Episcopal minister Dorothy A. Austin course: Chinese History 185, “Creat- include Robert Frost ’01, become the first same-sex ing ChinaX—Teaching Chi- Leonard Bernstein ’39, couple named to lead na’s History Online,” led John F. Kennedy ’40, a Harvard House by Carswell professor and Tom Lehrer ’47. (Lowell). of East Asian languages and civilizations Peter K. Bol. He has a reveal- ing cohort of associates: Yu Wen, head teaching fellow for curriculum; Ian Miller, “HarvardX technology leader”; and Ren Wei, “art his- torical development” (graduate students in history, history and East Asian languages, and the history of art and architecture, re- spectively). The goal is “creating modules for ChinaX,” the bilin- gual, online version of

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 a General Education survey of Chinese his- content (either full courses or shorter, teaching beyond campus, but to use its tory. single-topic “modules”) using the technol- tools to deepen learning and engagement After an initial overview of the history, ogy platform, and for conducting related within the classroom—principally by hear- the students will pick a period and a topic evaluations. A technology-focused teach- ing questions. There were many. Professor (Song dynasty paintings, say) and, follow- ing “bootcamp,” also offered in January, of German Peter Burgard worried that the ing “labs”—instead of sections—in video- with support from HarvardX and the Har- focus on massive, distance audiences was editing software, design, sound, geographic vard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, completely at odds with Harvard’s focus information systems (GIS), and so on, will equipped doctoral students to use “video, on enhancing close student-faculty interac- be involved in “producing videos, creating social media, online curation, technology- tions. Francke professor of German art and structures for content development, choos- enabled feedback, and annotation soft- culture Jeffrey F. Hamburger asked about ing texts and images for online discussion ware” in their spring courses. the development of online assessments of and mark-up, and participating in debates • The Faculty: Anxieties and Aspira- student work in nonquantitative courses. and discussions that will be shown to a tions. Sharing hands-on experience with Saltonstall professor of history Charles worldwide online audience” for the new the edX platform is critical; not all faculty Maier was concerned that focusing on on- course. Readings include books on Chinese members have embraced online education line lecture courses might jeopardize small, history and art and Classroom Assessment Tech- as it has speedily unfolded since last May discussion-based classes. Several speakers niques: A Handbook for College Teachers. Bol, a and been explained to date. Although edX worried about free classes undercutting faculty pioneer in historical databases, GIS, and HarvardX explicitly emphasize appli- the University’s tuition-based model, and and use of digitized resources in research cations on campus, “flipped classrooms,” about funding for edX (Harvard and MIT and classes (and a member of the HarvardX and enhancements throughout the educa- have each pledged $30 million of support). faculty committee), is making the new ped- tion system, the website describes edX as Professor of Romance languages and litera- agogy itself a teaching subject. The result “a not-for-profit enterprise dedicated to tures Virginie Greene worried that the pro- will flow back into the next iteration of the Massive Open Online Courses.” To pro- liferation of individual courses gave short Gen Ed survey course on campus, too. fessors steeped in seminars, tutorials, and shrift to thoughtful sequences of learning. • HarvardX: The Website. University humanistic disciplines where learning In response, the professors were told that edX engagements are detailed at http:// assessments are qualitative, the MOOC edX is explicitly meant to extend teaching harvardx.harvard.edu. The website lists model can seem a repudiation of proven broadly, for those who are interested, and to the Harvard members of the edX board means of teaching and mentorship. devise techniques to improve on-campus, (provost Alan Garber, executive vice The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) class-based learning in all disciplines and president Katie Lapp, Faculty of Arts and devoted its December meeting to an es- formats. Part of its experimental nature is Sciences dean Michael D. Smith, and chief pecially robust discussion of these issues to devise tools, such as online laboratories information officer Anne Margulies—who with Lue and Dean Smith. The intent was for science classes, but also qualitative as- succeeds Graduate School of Education to clarify edX’s aims—not only to extend sessments of coursework—including, for dean Kathleen McCartney, recently named president of Smith College); its faculty di- rector (Rob Lue, professor of the practice News from Our Website of molecular and cellular biology and past dean of the summer school); and its direc- Harvardmagazine.com brings you continuous coverage of University and alumni tor of research—a key position, since edX news. Log on to find these stories and more: aims at assessing the effectiveness of inno- vations in teaching and learning (Andrew Success Fighting AIDS in Africa Ho, assistant professor of education). A Harvard School of Public Health symposium Ho outlines some initial research objec- recounts the success of PEPFAR-funded AIDS tives: finding out who the several thou- programs in Tanzania, Botswana, and Nigeria. sand students who completed early MOOCs harvardmag.com/aids-in-africa are (among the hundred thousand or more who registered) and how students use the The Fight for Fossil Fuel Divestment many learning choices presented to them The University announces a new Social Choice Fund on the in a online courses whose pace they may heels of a fossil-fuel divestment controversy. control; conducting learning assessments; harvardmag.com/fossil-fuel and exploring how to assure integrity among online learners. Gun Violence: A Public Health Issue HarvardX conducted “Town Hall” Four Harvard experts convened at the School of Public meetings for faculty members in January Health to debate public-health approaches to gun violence. and February, at which Lue, members of harvardmag.com/gun-violence the course-development team, and pro- fessors who have offered an edX course stay connected - harvardmagazine.com discussed options for developing online

Illustration by Mark Steele Harvard Magazine 51 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal instance, the caliber of computer scientists’ suffered significant funding cuts even with online, for-credit courses in diverse programming. Students in MOOCs seem as student demand has risen, required subjects for enrolled undergraduates, be- to be self-assembling into small discussion courses are over-enrolled, and students ginning next fall. groups, online and off. No one has figured struggle to pay higher tuitions. The forces driving such interest received out a sustainable business model yet, but it In January, California governor Jerry weighty validation from William G. Bowen, is nascent. Harvard’s funding commitment Brown proposed spending $10 million president emeritus of Princeton and of the is tied to grants and philanthropy. And on- per year on entry-level general-education Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a distin- line assessments of learning promise fertile courses. edX president Anant Agarwal and guished analyst of higher education, in his ground for researchers to determine what leaders of Udacity and Coursera made pre- Tanner Lectures at Stanford last October. sequence of material and courses best pro- sentations to the University of California (He cited as a collaborator Lawrence S. Ba- motes student mastery of a subject. regents about possible collaborations. San cow, president emeritus of Tufts, chancellor Others at the meeting were enthusiastic Jose State University signed an agreement emeritus of MIT, now a member of the Har- about the experiment. Moncher professor with Udacity to pilot three such courses vard Corporation). Addressing costs and of physics and of astronomy Chris Stubbs in mathematics—free online, or available productivity in the sector, Bowen concluded asked if online courses might help under- at reduced cost for credit. A regents’ brief- that despite changes in information tech- graduates enhance their skills before they ing paper began, “Online education is an nology, “relatively little has happened with matriculate. (The College already has on- idea whose time has come”; the group dis- respect to classroom teaching—until quite line, pre-enrollment placement exams for cussed aiming to have UC students take 10 recently.” A firm proponent of “minds rub- writing, mathematics, foreign languages, percent of their classes online by 2016. The bing against minds” as students and teach- and the sciences; and Harvard Business State University of New York’s chancel- ers interact, he nonetheless now felt that School has had its diverse entering M.B.A. lor, Nancy L. Zimpher, emphasized in her “we are only at the beginning of the kind of students pass online tutorials to master ac- 2013 state of the university address a strong re-engineering that could in time transform counting and finance skills required in the commitment to “a full scale-up of Open important parts—but only parts—of how curriculum.) Professor of molecular and SUNY”—aiming within three years to en- we teach and how students learn.” cellular biology Rachelle Gaudet hoped roll 100,000 degree-seekers in the program, “I am today a convert,” Bowen said. that partnerships might make it possible to “making us the largest public online pro- “I have come to believe that ‘now is the offer virtual courses in subjects too special- vider of education in the nation.” time’”—that advances in technology “have ized for any one institution to support. Selective universities are also interested, combined with changing mindsets to sug- • The Broader Context. Far beyond for academic reasons. Yale’s faculty com- gest that online learning, in many of its University Hall, interest in online learn- mittee on online education, reporting in manifestations, can lead to good learning ing is spreading fast—particularly among December to the dean of the college, went outcomes at lower cost.” The evolution is large public university systems that have so far as to recommend experimenting on—in technology, teaching, and mindsets.

A Corporation Report changed. The reforms involved expanding governance, said the overhauled Corpora- the senior governing board’s membership; tion—with 13 members, up from seven— Two years after the Harvard Corpora- creating standing committees to oversee has “surpassed our greatest expectations,” tion enacted sweeping governance reforms finances, facilities and capital planning, thanks to new expertise and internal com- in December 2010, Senior Fellow Robert D. governance, and alumni affairs and devel- mittees providing deeper coverage of criti- Reischauer ’63 and his colleagues Nannerl opment; and attempting to focus more at- cal matters. Reischauer said each commit- O. Keohane, LL.D. ’93, and William F. Lee tention on strategic issues. tee had yielded higher-quality analysis than ’72 offered a briefing on how its work has Reischauer, who chairs the committee on the Corporation had been able to muster previously—in part because of the “deep expertise” of non-Corporation committee Corporation Changes members (an innovation created by the 2010 At its early-December meeting, the Harvard Corporation announced reform measures). that Patricia A. King, J.D. ’69, Waterhouse professor of law, medicine, Keohane, past president of Welles- ethics, and public policy at Georgetown Law Center, and a member of ley and of Duke—where she was deeply the University’s senior governing board since 2006, engaged in buildings and facilities is- would step down by year-end, for family reasons. On sues—said she had been “struck by how February 4, the election of her successor was an- James W. Breyer superficial our consideration of major nounced: James W. Breyer, M.B.A. ’87, a partner of capital projects had been” when these Accel Partners, the Palo Alto-based venture-capital firm (famously, an were jammed into the Corporation’s over- early investor in Facebook). He is the first of a new generation of fellows, all agenda, without expert vetting. The and brings expertise in technology-focused venture financing, from a process since the reforms, she said, had be- Patricia A. firm with unusually broad global reach. Breyer joins the Corporation as come “exemplary.” Lee, who serves on the King of July 1. For a full report, see http://harvardmag.com/breyer. facilities and capital-planning committee with Keohane, noted that the committees

52 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Downsizing multidisciplinary overhaul of the school’s The University has agreed to sell the academic doctoral program. She has also Arsenal on the Charles office complex, Brevia served as a Harvard-appointed director acquired in 2001 for $162.6 million. When of the edX online-learning venture. it was purchased, the Watertown site was seen as a way of accommodating Rhodes Encore—and More academic programs Adding to the large whose growth was crop of Rhodes constrained by the Scholars previ- protracted permit- ously announced ting and building (see Brevia, Janu- process in Cam- ary-February, page bridge—and later, 53), Harvardians as potential swing garnered both of space for tenants the awards avail- dislocated during able in Zimbabwe the construction of annually: Dalu- the planned Allston muzi Mhlanga ’13, campus. Both ratio- a social-studies nales changed, and concentrator from Harvard made little Mather House and use of the space be- Bulawayo; and yond housing the Naseemah Mo- offices of Harvard hamed ’12, a for- Business School’s mer Eliot House publishing opera- resident also from tion, which was al- Upsizing. Samuels & Associates, the Bulawayo, who ready based at the Arsenal. The buyer is Harvard-designated developer for concentrated in social studies and Afri- Barry’s Corner (at the intersection of athenahealth, a fast-growing software North Harvard Street and Western can and African American studies. She firm, whose headquarters is in the Arse- Avenue) in Allston, in December filed is spending the year in India learning nal; the $168.5-million transaction is to its proposal for a residential and retail Indian classical dance on a Michael C. close in the spring. The University de- “commons” with 325 rental residenc- Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship. Her es, 45,000 square feet of retail space, clined to comment on prospective dis- and parking. The plan calls for two new sister, Shazrene Mohamed ’04, won a posal of any other properties. For more streets within the 2.67-acre site, and Rhodes of her own in 2004, making the information, see http://harvardmag. 3,600 square feet of new public open Mohameds the first pair of sisters to win com/watertown 12. space. The tallest building would rise - seven to nine stories, down from an scholarships in Rhodes history. original 11-story concept that was Social Investing met with criticism from the local Academic (and Other) Philanthropy Faced with student support for divesti- community. If the plan is approved, As Harvard gears up for the public launch construction could begin this fall, with ture from the stocks of fossil-fuel com- occupancy in about two years. For of a capital campaign, other institutions panies, the University has announced further details, see http://harvardmag. remain active fundraisers. Mortimer B. plans to create a “social-choice fund” com/barrys-corner. Zuckerman, LL.M. ’62, of Boston Prop- that would take special account of so- erties, who in 2004 funded a $10-million cial-responsibility considerations. The ate School of Education in 2005, and fellowship program to support Harvard investment vehicles will be selected and dean the next year, will step down at the business-, law- or medical-school stu- overseen by the Corporation Committee end of the academic year to assume the dents who wished to study in Harvard’s on Shareholder Responsibility, and in- presidency of Smith College. McCart- education, government, or public-health vestment returns would be dedicated to ney, a scholar of early schools as well, has pledged $200 mil- rd news office news rd

supporting financial aid. It is scheduled childhood development, a lion to underwrite Columbia Univer- to begin operating on July 1. Read a more led both the effort to es- rv sity’s Mind Brain Behavior Institute, a detailed report at http://harvardmag. tablish a new doctoral multidisciplinary center with 65 fac- com/fossil-fuel. program in educational ulty members.…New York City mayor leadership—aimed at Michael R. Bloomberg, M.B.A. ’66, has Decanal Departure training reformers who mitchell/h a a nie steph given his alma mater, Johns Hopkins, Kathleen McCartney, who was ap- can transform American Kathleen $350 million to fund interdisciplinary pointed acting dean of Harvard Gradu- public schools—and the McCartney research and financial aid—bringing his

Image courtesy of Samuels & Associates Harvard Magazine 53 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

total support for the school to $1.1 bil- years—down from a current average of Sanders Theatre on April 13, featuring lion. Harvard Business School’s Bloom- seven years there, and longer at other in- two of his protégés as guest artists: saxo- berg Center, reflecting his support, stitutions. Among the measures proposed phonists Joshua Redman ’91 and Don bears his name.…The University of Il- are changes in curriculum to align courses Braden ’85. For a full report, see http:// linois College of Engineering received with qualifying exams and to accelerate harvardmag.com/tom-everett. a $100-million pledge from the Grainger progress toward the dissertation. It is Foundation; it will pay for 35 endowed also entertaining proposals for innovative Divinity gift. Susan Shallcross Swartz professorships focused on bioengineer- programs to prepare doctoral students and her husband, James R. Swartz ’64, ing and “big data” computation, plus for various careers. have given Harvard Divinity School $10 scholarships and building renovation.… million, one of the largest gifts in its his- Eugene Lang, a Swarthmore alumnus, Nota Bene tory, to establish the Susan Shallcross gave that school $50 million, the largest Preeminent mathemati- Swartz Endowment for Christian Studies . gift in its history, to invest in engineering cian. President Barack and science.…UCLA, previously the re- Obama has named Gade Winter whimsy. The College’s January rrison

cipient of a $200-million naming gift from University Professor a “Wintersession” programs this year of-

entertainment executive David Geffen Barry Mazur one of 12 h jim fered 150 activities and events, ranging for its medical school, received another recipients of the Na- Barry Mazur from field trips and immersive engineer- $100 million from him, for student schol- tional Medal of Science, ing and arts short courses to “Golf Simu- arships at the school.…Separately, Face- the nation’s highest honor for scientists lator: Play Pebble Beach!” “Ethnic Cook- book CEO Mark Zuckerberg ’07, who and mathematicians. Mazur is a promi- ing!” and chair massages. in 2010 donated $100 million of stock to nent number theorist; his book Imagining support education reform in Newark, Numbers was reviewed in the magazine’s Miscellany. Harvard Business School, New Jersey, has donated nearly a half-bil- January-February 2004 issue (page 16). which operates a global network of re- lion dollars of stock to the Silicon Valley search centers to facilitate faculty case- Community Foundation. Good chemistry. Erin O’Shea, Mangels- writing (with outposts in Buenos Aires, dorf professor of molecular and cellular Paris, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Stanford’s Humanities Hopes biology and chemistry and chemical bi- and Tokyo), is establishing a new one Stanford is underwriting experiments ology, and co-head of the undergraduate in Istanbul.… Eliot University Professor meant to overhaul graduate education in concentration in chemical and physical Lawrence H. Summers, a past Harvard the humanities. It will provide depart- biology, is relinquishing her teaching to president and U.S. Treasury secretary, ments with additional, year-round fel- become vice president and chief scien- will co-chair a growth and competitive- lowship funding for doctoral students tific officer of Howard Hughes Medi- ness project at the Center for American so they can finish their training in five cal Institute. She will be responsible for Progress, where he will also be a dis- overseeing the institute’s investigator tinguished senior fellow. It aims to find program—which funds leading scientists ways to spur more widely shared eco- across the country—and programs to nomic growth.…The College has appoint- support young researchers and to foster ed Stephen Lassonde as dean of student

interdisciplinary research. life, effective in late March. He has been te University a deputy dean of the college at Brown, t do S Band goodbye. Tom Everett, director and dean of Calhoun College (one of the a olor

of Harvard Bands (the undergraduate Houses) and assistant C ffice phy/

University Band, Har- dean at Yale. He succeeds Suzy Nelson, a vard Wind Ensemble, who left last summer to become dean ews O N ews rd a hotogr

and Harvard Jazz Bands) rv of the college at Colgate.…The athletics since 1971, retired in Feb- Ha department announced in early January se/ ruary. His long career that men’s soccer coach Carl Junot has ervices P on C h a on tive S J

will be celebrated in a resigned after three seasons; during 2012, a Jazz Bands concert in Tom Everett the team finished last in the Ivy League. re tions & C a nic

Huntington D. Lambert has been appointed dean of the Division of Continuing u Education (DCE), effective in late April. Faculty of Arts and Sciences dean Michael D. omm Smith, making the announcement, emphasized that Lambert would “build on DCE’s phy, C phy,

efforts to extend [its] pedagogy online, partnering with HarvardX to grow the a University’s digital footprint.” The new dean comes from a similar post at Colorado

State University; previously, he founded and was interim CEO of that institution’s hotogr

Global Campus, a fully online public university within the CSU system. It now serves U P more than 6,000 students. For a full report, see http://harvardmag.com/lambert-13. © 2009 CS

54 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 enable the fellows to develop continuity investment conditions, would have pro- ing keenly on such a campaign. Keohane, and close relationships with both admin- found consequences: endowment distribu- a veteran of such exercises, said Harvard istrative staff members and deans. That tions are the largest source of funds for the was pursing “a good process—it’s always makes it possible, he explained, to execute schools; and lower returns raise the cost of iterative” as the development team works decisions (as on building projects) in a dis- paying for unfunded employee pension and with deans and potential donors to sort ciplined, timely manner, and on budget. retirement healthcare benefits.) Might the out what is feasible. President Drew Faust, Reischauer emphasized that the Uni- Corporation alter budgets so that schools she said, had brought the deans together versity’s operations have changed signifi- not only had to make an accounting en- so that those with related academic mis- cantly, too. For example, there are “mul- try for depreciation of the buildings, but sions are discussing objectives jointly. tiyear financial plans now,” encompassing also to levy an actual cash charge against The Corporation receives regular, efficient Harvard as a whole. (Past budgeting was operations for depreciation—to fund fu- briefings from the committee, and is “dig- largely aggregated, school by school, from ture maintenance and improvements? ging deeply” with the appropriate staff. separate yearly submissions.) That, and Reischauer said such matters were “more In general, said Lee, the governance re- the board’s augmented financial oversight, than under discussion.” For instance, “de- forms have enabled the Corporation and “allow us,” he said, “to look at problems preciation is part of the budget process” Harvard to move more quickly. Significant proactively—and opportunities as well.” now—“schools have to include it in their initiatives such as the Harvard Innovation He characterized Harvard’s administra- budget presentations.” Harvard has “large Lab and the edX online-education venture, tive capacity as “remarkable compared to deferred-maintenance needs,” he noted, launched in the previous academic year, pro- where this University was a decade ago.” calling undergraduate House renewal— ceeded, he said, at “light speed” and “warp He called the result “the best of two expected to cost more than $1 billion—the speed,” respectively—a critical improve- worlds—the old Harvard of every tub on “poster child of what happens when you ment for Harvard in an era of rapid change. its own bottom, and a more centralized don’t focus on these needs.” The stakes are Having committees vet details for the one,” like Princeton. Keohane said that large. Requiring that 2 or 3 percent of build- Corporation, Reischauer said, makes possi- Harvard was “still knitting some things ing value, say, be set aside yearly to pay for ble a “move in the right direction”: toward together,” but that people who had operat- future capital improvements would raise more strategic thinking about broader eco- ed in isolation are sharing information and schools’ costs by tens of millions of dollars, nomic challenges, the pressure on tuition learning about best practices. These con- reducing their capacity to fund current aca- revenue, federal research funding, and the versations, Reischauer said, are yielding demic operations—but also avoiding either costs of investing in educational technol- efficiencies and economies as the schools an enormous deferred-maintenance backlog ogy. “We spend a lot of time on these kinds cooperate, and the smaller schools turn or reliance on capital-campaign funding to of issues, in every meeting,” he added—al- to the central administration for services pay for such routine work. though, he hastened to say, “We’re not fully they cannot afford or do well on their own. The Corporation and its alumni-affairs there yet. It’s a cultural change.” That raises the issue of better financial and development committee (jointly For a more detailed report, see http:// management and oversight—an important with the Board of Overseers) are focus- harvardmag.com/corporation-13. rationale for the reforms (see “Sober Fi- nances,” on Harvard’s 2012 financial report, January-February, page 47). Pointing to the the undergraduate new consolidated budgeting practices, Rei- schauer said that Daniel Shore, vice presi- dent for finance and chief financial officer, worked regularly with financial deans in Lines of Support each school—and “exerts pressure when… needed to conform to the overall financial constraints the University faces” (including by kathryn c. reed ’13 limits on borrowing and the need to main- tain sufficient cash for operations). Lee said the board could now spend always use the same stall in the can be weeks before there is something time on substantive financial questions, women’s bathroom near the superin- new to read. I enjoy the wit that neighbors iteratively if necessary, “rather than hav- tendent’s office on the first floor of Ad- the poignant, try to think of a response ing 27 budgets blow by us in two hours in ams House—the last one on the right. and what words I would use. By now, I May,” as in the past, given its then-smaller IIt’s strange to feel such an attachment, but could recite the stall door like lyrics, if size and large agenda. I stop by most afternoons, before leaving ever that topic of conversation came up. The fellows were asked if the new pro- for class or returning to my room. It’s not There is a community there, in the four- cesses had led to changes in financialpolicy always convenient, more a habit of choice. by three-foot space—periodically white- as well. Was there discussion, for example, If the stall is occupied, sometimes I wait. washed only to be written again. about changing the assumed 8 percent The conversations are what keep me My sophomore year, this was the sup- rate of investment return on endowment coming back, penned on the wooden door port I found. Between frustrations that assets? (A lower return, reflecting recent in blues, blacks, and greens. At times, it went unsaid and disappointments that re-

Harvard Magazine 55 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal mained unshared, I looked food. I had spent the after- for meaningful conver- noon editing articles for The sation, something other Crimson and attending meet- than discussions of lack ings—with class somewhere of time and sleep. Tutors, in between. One proctor advisers, and administra- asked about my week, check- tors offered guidance and ing in as is his habit after two support. They reached out years of working together and and I didn’t reach back. many more years of working They provided a starting with students. point for the conversation “I’m okay,” I said, before I sought, and I turned my thinking. I was worried head and continued my about impending dead- search. lines, thesis interviews. I After a semester of soli- hadn’t taken time to pause. tude, I happened to use To breathe. I knew I was that stall in Adams House lacking sleep. After a week and read the only words of checking in with my ad- on a freshly painted door: visees, it was the first time “I feel so alone.” For once, someone had checked in I did not. with me. I stopped. The week caught up. “Actually, I became a peer advis- I’m not.” I cried, tried not ing fellow (PAF) my ju- to. “It’s okay. I’ll be all right. nior year. Paired with nine It’s almost 9:30, we should freshmen in an entryway of get downstairs.” He held the 23, I worked with two oth- door, and we agreed to meet er PAFs and the entryway to talk later that week. proctor to help our advi- Downstairs, in the com- sees transition to Harvard mon room, we made fruit life. My students and I met cobbler and wrote postcards to discuss academics and to send home. Our freshmen roommates, social clubs and extracurricu- helped. I wanted to show that “effortless were worried about Expos and final exams, lar activities. At times, the conversation felt perfection” was the exception and not the leaving for break and being on their own. more like an interview; I questioned them norm, that you could be struggling to keep As a senior, I listened to excited talk of about the essay due later that week, the up and be happy, too. I wanted to set a their first semester, and could think only of midterm for which they had not begun to standard and break it again and again. the remaining seven that would soon come study—most importantly, their sleep. More And so we met for coffee or early-morn- to a close. I gave advice that I had imple- often that not, the tone of our meetings was ing breakfasts. My co-PAFs and I threw mented for three-and-a-half years (When closer to that of coffee between friends. weekly study breaks in the dorm, insisted you’re working, work—when you’re playing, don’t. Always, however, the inevitable ques- that it was okay to take 30 minutes away Never regret doing one of the two.), and some tions—“How are you so calm? How do you from an unfinished paper due in an hour or that I, too, had yet to master. (Schedules will do so much and still have it all together? two. We listened to talk of course-stress help. Make a routine. Don’t wait until the last min- You do so many things. How?”—were and homesickness, all the while attempt- ute and realize you have too much to do.) part of their response. I did my best to ing to admit to pressures of our own. I thought I was helping them, somehow convince them otherwise: “I have a paper In the worst periods, in the depths of a easing the transition into 25-page term pa- due tomorrow that I haven’t started yet. “midterm season” that lasts from the third pers and three-hour final exams. That was I’m telling you to sleep more but I have my week of the semester until the end, my what I was there for—four years in, I was mom telling that to me.” They did their happiness—genuine or otherwise—was an example, both of what to and not to do. best to seem convinced. stored up for those few hours each week. That’s the challenge of being a PAF, to I thought I was smiling for them, showing It had started snowing that night in set an example while admitting to your that happiness is possible at Harvard, even Cambridge, one of those first dustings that faults. Too well balanced, and you set a during the times I felt it was not. leaves only an inch for the next day’s warmer standard that is impossible. Too clearly rain and weather to consume. I hadn’t no- struggling, and what standard have you During the last week of classes in Decem- ticed as I walked along Mass. Ave. before the set? I became a PAF in the hope of giving ber—two weeks before exams—I entered study break, head down, thinking of oth- back, to attempt to help students in the my proctors’ room before study break, get- er things. And even after two hours with way that I had previously refused to be ting ready to go downstairs with bowls and my advisees, urging them to “take pause,”

56 March - April 2013 Illustration by Justin Gabbard Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 breathe, I didn’t take the long way back to Talk. Start over. Try again. Through my Yet there is an isolation in this mutual- my dorm from Canaday—via the steps of conversations as a peer advising fellow, I ity, a segregation inherent in our pursuits. Widener, where I could turn and take in the constantly remind and am reminded to do Even so, we come together when we allow Yard—instead, continuing straight through. just that. others to enter our space, the confines of But I did watch the start of a freshman My favorite line in the stall references our three-by-four. We are brought closer snowball fight as I passed, walking faster the reader. (Most others address the self.) by the support lines we accept, the inade- than I might have, though slower than be- It responds to an assertion in sharp, black quacies we permit others to see. If we suc- fore. Even with my head buried a bit too ink: “This might be the closest you and I ceed, here, at Harvard, this might truly be far down, I thought of the study break, will ever be.” At Harvard, we learn to seek the closest you and I will ever be. and looked up when I remembered to. Part out and build communities. At best, we re- Under that sharp black line, there is a of the anxiety had lessened—two hours of member to look up, our heads less buried challenge in faded blue: “or the farthest advice-giving had not been a purely altru- than before, both to listen and to share. apart.” istic pursuit. With help, we learn to admit our imper- I thought about my advisees and the fections, teach each other, and not feel so Kathryn C. Reed ’13 is one of this magazine’s Berta question about doing everything, having it alone. Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows. all together, too. “Sometimes,” I had replied, “the best you can manage is happiness and hope that the papers, work, and meetings sports will come through.” It hadn’t taken Harvard long to teach me this lesson, though I hadn’t said it out loud before. I had said it for my freshmen, but now realized that I needed Giant Champion to hear it again, too: “Sometimes, that’s the best you can manage. And, when you can’t, it’s always better to say something, to admit Rebecca Nadler is Harvard’s first NCAA skiing gold medalist. to it, than not to.” One semester, I was concerned about a hard-to-track-down advisee. For two o ski, even for good skiers, ski, the larger the ratio becomes. months, we had found it nearly impossible means to spend a lot of time Downhill racer Rebecca Nadler ’14 of the to meet. Finally, we scheduled an early- sitting. For most people, skiing Harvard women’s ski team can get to the morning breakfast where my questions means a long drive from home bottom faster than any other woman colle- were met with half-answers; I reached Tto the distant snowy mountains and a sim- gian in America. She is the reigning NCAA out and waited for the student across the ilar voyage back. And if you’re an alpine/ champion in the giant slalom, the faster table to reach back. I said I was there if downhill (as opposed to cross-country) ski- of the two alpine events (slalom and giant ever anything was needed. “Everything’s er, each run begins with a ride on a ski lift, slalom, or “GS”) in which college ski teams fine,” is what I was told. I left the meeting and that trip up the hill lasts a lot longer compete. Last March, racing in the NCAA frustrated. It felt far-removed from other than the one down. In fact, the faster you individual championships at the Bridger mornings, coffees, meetings when I had done the same as my advisee, refusing a hand to hold.

There are more comments on the stall door this year than before—in defiance of the whitewash or because of more returners like me. None of us stay long when we come; there are no faces or names to the ink on the door. I like to think that we’re a community made stable by our inconstancy. For a time, it was the only place at Har- vard where I admitted defeat—gave sup- port and sought some, too. Knowing that I had company who could be anyone had brought comfort to me. Gradually, I built similar support systems outside the stall. Though I never considered the writing Ready for a training run: on the wooden door an act of hiding from Rebecca Nadler at the top one’s faults, I learned that it could feel of a trail at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont empowering to admit difficulty. Pause.

Photograph by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 57 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

Bowl in Bozeman, Montana, Nadler became her big assets is that she stays more posi- says. “Races come down to tenths or even the first Harvard skier to win an NCAA tive than most athletes. In this sport there hundredths of seconds.” championship. “The thought of winning are often very challenging circumstances. In Bozeman, Nadler awoke on race hadn’t crossed my mind,” she says. “I knew Pushing through that, and not letting it morning to “the most beautiful day,” she where I matched up in the East, but the ski- get to her, is something Rebecca does ex- recalls. Her strong morning run placed her ers out West are typically very strong.” ceptionally well. When she has a bad run, second in the field. The top 30 finishers That’s true, and in addition, they are she uses it to motivate herself.” hit the course again for habituated to western snow conditions, Harvard’s regular season includes six the second run, start- which differ a bit from those on eastern carnival weekends in the Northeast, in- ing in reverse order of Visit harvardmag.com/ mountains. “Eastern snow is a lot wet- cluding the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski As- their earlier finish. This extras to watch Nadler ter—it’s compacted and it freezes, like sociation championships, followed by the helps make the final re- in action on the slopes. an ice-skating rink on an angle,” says Tim NCAAs in March. (This year, the NCAA sults closer, because it’s generally better to Mitchell, Finnegan Family head coach of will hold its championships at Bread Loaf ski earlier in the start order, before other skiing, who mentors the Crimson alpine and the Snow Bowl in Middlebury, Ver- competitors have roughed up the course. squad. “Out West, the snow is typically mont.) Each carnival includes slalom, giant Still, Nadler had another good run in the softer. Due to the higher elevations and the slalom, and cross-country races for men afternoon, placing her fourth in that co- weather patterns, the snow is not so wet. I and women. The slalom course is shorter, hort, but the woman who finished ahead feel like it’s a disadvantage for the eastern with lots of quick, short turns; the longer of her in the morning made a bad mistake skiers when the championships are on a GS course, with fewer turns and a larger and fell, catapulting the Harvardian into western mountain.” turn radius, produces faster speeds. Typical first place. Indeed, Nadler was only the fourth times are around 50 seconds for slalom, and Nadler hails from Ottawa, where she woman from the Eastern Region to win an a little over a minute for the giant slalom. grew up skiing with her family on week- NCAA giant slalom title at a western site Collegiate races score the top three male ends at the Tremblant Ski Club in Quebec, in 15 attempts. (There is some asymmetry: and female finishers, based on rank order, two hours away. By 15, she was racing in more than half the skiers at western col- not time. (The sport’s governing body, the FIS events. She trained in Europe, made Fédération Inter- the Quebec team, and took two years off nationale de Ski after high school to try ski racing, but was [FIS] awards in- eventually disappointed in her results. “I’d dividual points lost sight of why I ski,” she says. “It wasn’t differently, based fun anymore.” Then she enrolled at the on how far each Carrabassett Valley Academy, a ski acad- runner-up finishes emy near Sugarloaf in Maine. “The coach behind the winner there reminded me that I actually know in elapsed time.) how to ski. I always ski my best when I Because snow and relax and have a good time.” A friend en- wind conditions couraged her to apply to Harvard. “I had rd Athletic O ffice Athletic a rd vary so widely, ab- only seen Harvard in movies,” Nadler says. solute times mean “I didn’t know real people went there.”

Ha rv lbot/ Ta very little in ski Now she is one of them. Two or three racing, but relative mornings a week, Nadler rides in one of Nadler zooms around a giant slalom gate at the 2012 times in a given two team vans that leave around 6 a.m. for Dartmouth Carnival. race matter great- Crotched Mountain in New Hampshire,

ph by G il a ph by P hotogr ly. In slalom and an hour and a half trip each way. (Some- leges are Europeans used to Continental GS, each athlete takes two runs down the times they train nearby at Blue Hills Ski snow, which resembles that on eastern course, and the sum of the times recorded Area in Canton, south of Boston.) The mountains, says Mitchell.) Earlier in the determines the order of finish. team skis for an hour or 90 minutes, then year, Nadler had set another Harvard mile- Before the race, the skiers make an is back in Cambridge in time for an 11 stone at the Williams Carnival (ski races “inspection” run, sideslipping down the a.m. class. “When it was the only thing I that draw teams from many colleges are mountain to study the course: noting was doing, I didn’t appreciate ski racing called “carnivals”) where her win in the snow conditions and tricky turns, for enough,” says the neurobiology concentra- giant slalom made her the first Crimson example, and planning tactics. “If it’s a tor. “Now, I am so busy with school and woman ever to win a downhill event. really challenging course full of sharp work that I really enjoy it more. My love “She’s a very, very powerful skier, espe- turns, you’ll want to ski smarter,” Nadler for the sport only grows each year.” Coach cially for someone who is not super large,” says. “But if there’s a lot of space between Mitchell concurs. “You have to drag Re- Mitchell says. (Nadler stands five feet, two the gates and the course is more open, becca off the hill at the end of the day,” he inches.) “Rebecca has always been a physi- you can take more risks—let your skis says. “She does not burn out. If the ski lift cally gifted skier. She’s technically very run and carry more speed.” Tactics are didn’t close, she would not stop skiing.” solid, and she’s very aggressive. One of fine, but “skiing is so unpredictable,” she vcraig lambert

58 March - April 2013 www.gocrimson.com Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 alumni The Sage of Tree Frog Lane Philip Slater has happily progressed from fame to obscurity.

n 1970, his bestselling book, The Pur- suit of Loneliness, made Philip Slater ’50, Ph.D. ’55, a famous author whose pho- to appeared in Time magazine. Subtitled I“American Culture at the Breaking Point,” the book developed a searing critique of American culture, describing many of its ills—violence, inequality, and worship of technology among them—as fallout of the national cult of indi- vidualism that fostered isolation, competi- tion, and loss of community. The book made Slater an intellectual hero of the countercul- ture, then at its high-water mark. One year later, at age 44, he disproved F. Scott Fitzgerald’s claim that “there are no second acts in American lives.” Slater had Philip Slater, who says he’s been a professor of sociology at Brandeis “addicted to the ocean,” on since 1961 and eventually chaired the de- his morning walk in Santa partment. But “the university disappoint- Cruz, California ed me,” he recalls. Academia wasn’t the fount of brilliant ideas he had imagined, His fourth and current spouse is photog- the field of social relations, he became one though he did enjoy his time there. He felt rapher Susan Helgeson. “It’s been a very of the first people in North America to take that “as a teacher, I wasn’t that good at satisfying life, in nearly every way,” he says. LSD, years before Timothy Leary heard of conveying content in lectures. I thought I psychedelics. This happened at Boston could maintain myself by my writing, so I Slater probably set out on the path to Psychopathic Hospital under the auspices left. That was a mistaken assumption: it’s sociology and social criticism by growing up of Harvard Medical School psychiatrist been hard going financially.” the son of a frustrated scholar. His father, Robert W. Hyde, who became Slater’s Not that Slater the author (www.phil- John Elliot Slater, A.B. 1913, was president mentor: “a brilliant man, who had a kind of ipslater.com) hasn’t been prolific. His 12 of a shipping company and chair of the New unfettered mind.” Slater adds that, “if you books include The Glory of Hera: Greek My- Haven Railroad, but “had an unfulfilled de- take LSD and take it seriously, you never thology and the Greek Family (1968), Earthwalk sire to be an academic,” Slater recalls. “One look at the world the same way again.” (1974), Wealth Addiction (1980), A Dream De- reason I left the university is that I realized He taught at Harvard for six years as a ferred: America’s Discontent and the Search for a I was playing out his road not taken.” lecturer and leader in the group-process New Democratic Ideal (1991), and a novel, How He attended public schools in Mont- course, Social Relations 120, before join- I Saved the World (1985). His latest book, The clair, New Jersey, declining private school ing the Brandeis sociology faculty in 1961. Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of Global because “there were no girls there.” After “The department was very cohesive, very Culture (see sidebar), may be his most ambi- high school, with World War II still rag- radical—in teaching methods, and so on,” tious. He’s also written 20 plays and acted ing, he spent two years in the Merchant he recalls. “So we were hated by the rest of in 30 in Santa Cruz, California, where he Marine and “foolishly married my high- the university. It was one battle after an- has lived for the past four decades, current- school sweetheart,” he says. Hence, his other—constant harassment.” He recalls ly near a bird sanctuary on Tree Frog Lane. “extracurricular activities” at Harvard an assistant professor who remarked, in a “What I’m proudest of in my life,” he were being a husband and parent; he con- course on gender, that “every man should says, “is that I have four bright, interesting, centrated in government. know how to cook a meal.” The rumor creative, and fun children who love each “My whole academic career was guided soon circulated that the final exam in the other and enjoy hanging out together.” by choosing the path of least specializa- course was cooking a meal. (Wendy, Scott, Stephanie, and Dashka, tion,” he says. “I did not like looking at the The success of Pursuit of Loneliness led to three from his first marriage and one from world through one lens—it seemed too some lucrative book advances, which con- his third, now range in age from 49 to 64.) limiting.” In 1952, during graduate work in vinced Slater he might support himself by

Photograph by Susan Helgeson Harvard Magazine 59 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal writing. After leaving Brandeis, he joined multaneously, a publisher canceled a book San Francisco-based California Institute with Jacqueline Doyle of the Esalen Insti- contract with a $30,000 advance payment for Integral Studies, where he offers a re- tute and former Brandeis colleague Mor- remaining, and even sued the author to quired course for graduate students, “Self, rie Schwartz (of Tuesdays with Morrie fame) recoup the original $30,000 installment. “I Society, and Transformation.” It’s an on- to found Greenhouse, a personal growth was here in a strange place with no job, no line curriculum that also includes an in- center in Cambridge: “I was running all income, no girlfriend,” he recalls. “It was tensive five-day residential session each kinds of groups, [humanistic psychology one of the happiest times of my life.” He semester—“very, very multidisciplinary, pioneer] Carl Rogers was there, it was a joined a men’s group that he continues to which is why I like it,” he says. “What very exciting time.” attend, 35 years later, and began stage act- I love is that the students are all adults, A serious romantic relationship drew ing, which he had never done. mostly in their forties and fifties. They are him to Santa Cruz in 1975. The next fall, Today Slater remains in Santa Cruz, very interesting people—open-minded, Slater’s female companion returned to where he walks on the beach every morn- excited, motivated—who decided to get a Cambridge to take a job, and “I found ing, explaining, “I am addicted to the Ph.D. They come from all over the world.” myself feeling abandoned,” he recalls. Si- ocean.” Since 2007 he has taught at the Most of the students know and admire

The World According to Slater Philip Slater’s book The Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of though they still run the world, many men today express feelings Global Culture was published in 2008 by the smallish Sussex Aca- of powerlessness. They’re angry that women are invading previ- demic Press. It appeared without any noticeable publicity in the ously all-male domains, and upset that women aren’t as depen- United States and so far has flown under the radar. Yet it may dent on them as they used to be…modern men have been stand as his magnum opus; it’s a thought-provoking study that trained in macho skills over many years and at severe cost, only turns a long lens on human history, culture, economy, and social to discover that those skills are no longer of any use to anyone. structures. Always adept at spotting patterns before others no- Strutting, boasting, fighting, destroying, and killing just don’t seem tice them, Slater here describes cultural styles that play out on as important to the world as they used to.” a macroscopic, Toynbee-like level, while stitching these massive Some men respond to their loss of prerogatives by “clinging systems closely to the facts of daily life. to ever-shrinking definitions of masculinity,” and Slater links this Many of today’s jarring dislocations, he asserts, stem from the to the surge in male bodybuilding and steroid use. Other men, clash between the ancient system of control culture and a newer more identified with integrative culture, welcome the chance to pattern: integrative culture. “Incivility and chaos arise when an old spend more time taking care of their children, although “Mr. system is breaking down and a new one hasn’t yet fully taken hold,” Moms” are often as unwelcome at park playgrounds as women he writes. The “chrysalis” of the title refers to the transitional state firefighters can be in firehouses. “I’ve seen women intrude with between one life form and the successor that grows out of it. astonishing arrogance and officiousness into the parenting styles The ethos of control culture has dominated human societies of men who have been a child’s primary caretaker since it was for millennia, Slater writes, ever since the advent of agriculture: born,” Slater writes. “Women, too, have trouble giving up old it embraces “a static vision of the universe, a deep dependence patterns.” on authoritarian rule, a conviction that order was something that War might be the institution that most fully epitomizes control had to be imposed, and a preoccupation with combat.” Integra- culture, and Slater argues that the rise of integrative culture is tive culture, in contrast, breaks down mental walls and boundar- making war obsolete. The burgeoning of global trade over the ies and celebrates interdependence. “It has a dynamic vision of last 30 years means, for example, that “Almost anywhere we the universe, a democratic ethos, and sees order as something attack today we’re attacking our own companies, our own prod- that evolves, as it does in Nature, from spontaneous interaction.” ucts, our own creations, our own citizens.” This conflict illuminates, for example, the endless wrangling of Furthermore, in contrast to past centuries, war is no longer creationists and scientists. Creationists view the extraordinary good for business. Except for a few war-related industries, pros- complexity of life as something that “could only have come about ecuting a war, or even winning one, is no longer an advantageous as the conscious creation of a humanoid intelligence—some sort activity, he says: warfare is simply more costly now, and its re- of über-authority—since it would be impossible for this sort of wards smaller and less certain. “War today is a symptom of thing to evolve on its own.” But scientists feel the creationists backwardness,” Slater writes. “While nations mired in poverty have it backwards: “[I]ntelligence springs from organizational and fanaticism are busy making macho gestures and killing one complexity. Mind inheres in any cybernetic system capable of another, Western Europe—once a luxuriant breeding ground of learning from trial and error and becoming self-correcting.” mutual slaughter—has a common market and currency.” He Control culture—identified with “authoritarianism, militarism, notes that the sole exception to this trend is the United States, misogyny, proliferating walls, mental constriction, and rigid dual- “primarily because for decades it’s been able to wage wars on ism”—clearly embraces male dominance as well. The controllers’ small, weak Third-World nations with little fear of retaliation. world is crumbling, Slater argues, with the ascent of women, a But the attacks of 9/11 made it clear that retaliation can come in development linked to integrative culture. Consequently, “Even nonmilitary forms.”

60 March - April 2013 www.alumni.harvard.edu Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Slater’s books, as well. “The thing about holders, except Corporation members and Gilbert S. Omenn, M.D. ’65, Ann Arbor. being famous,” he muses, “is that it’s sort of officers of instruction and government, may Professor of internal medicine, human ge- sickening how some people respond to you. vote for Overseer candidates. The election netics, and public health and director of They’ll say, ‘Your book changed my life,’ but for HAA directors is open to all Harvard the Center for Computational Medicine then it becomes clear that they haven’t read degree-holders. and Bioinformatics, University of Michi- the book and don’t have a clue what is in it. Candidates for Overseer may also be gan. I’ve had people treat me as ‘someone famous’ nominated by petition, that is, by obtain- Sanjay H. Patel ’83, A.M. ’83, London. and try to get on board in the crudest ways. ing a prescribed number of signatures from Managing partner and head of interna- Once, a woman said, ‘I haven’t read your eligible degree holders. The deadline for all tional private equity, Apollo Management book [The Pursuit of Loneliness] but I’ve been petitions for this year was February 1. International LLP. looking at you in this discussion and you Ana Maria Salazar, J.D. ’89, Mexico look lonely.’ ” A pause. “Fortunately,” he adds, For Overseer (six-year term): City. Anchor, ImagenNews/Living in Mexico/El “I’ve drifted into obscurity.” Susan L. Carney ’73, J.D. ’77, Hamden, Primer Café; CEO, Grupo Salazar. vcraig lambert Connecticut. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Gwill York ’79, M.B.A. ’84, Cambridge. Appeals for the Second Circuit. Managing director and co-founder, Light- Christopher B. Field ’75, Stanford, house Capital Partners. Vote Now California. Director, department of global ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science; For elected director (three-year term): This spring, alumni can vote for five new Melvin and Joan Lane chair in interdisci- Theodore “Ted” H. Ashford III ’86, Harvard Overseers and six new elected di- plinary environmental studies, Stanford Wilmington, Delaware. President, Ash- rectors of the Harvard Alumni Association University. ford Capital Management. (HAA). Ballots, mailed out by April 1, must Deanna Lee ’84, New York City. Chief Richard R. Buery Jr. ’92, New York be received back in Cambridge by noon on communications and digital strategies of- City. President and CEO, The Children’s May 24 to be counted. Results of the elec- ficer, Carnegie Corporation of New York. Aid Society. tion will be announced at the HAA’s an- Walter H. Morris Jr. ’73, M.B.A. ’75, Po- Patrick S. Chung ’96, J.D.-M.B.A. ’04, nual meeting on May 30, on the afternoon tomac, Maryland. Retired principal, Ernst Menlo Park, California. Partner, New En- of Commencement day. All Harvard degree- & Young LLP. terprise Associates.

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Harvard Magazine 61 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard’s Journal

Shilla Kim-Parker ’04, M.B.A. ’09, New held various roles in the Harvard Club of York City. Senior director, strategy and Long Island since 1996. As president, she Return to Harvard Day business development, Lincoln Center for revised bylaws to clarify the club’s mis- The HAA invites all reunion-year the Performing Arts. sion and expand membership to parents. alumni and their families to return to Lori Lesser ’88, J.D. ’93, New York City. In 2005 she created the Harvard Club of the College to experience an under- Partner, Simpson Thacher and Bartlett Long Island Distinguished Teacher Award graduate’s academic day on April 11. LLP. Program, which offers local teachers the Attend classes and lectures, have lunch Barbara Natterson Horowitz ’83, A.M. chance to attend classes at the University, in the House dining halls, tour the cam- ’83, Los Angeles. Professor and cardiolo- and has otherwise honored more than 100 pus, attend a student-led panel discus- gist, David Geffen School of Medicine at educators from more than 65 schools in sion on undergraduate life, then join UCLA; author. the community. students for a reception. For details, Julie Gage Palmer ’84, Chicago. Lec- John J. West Jr., M.B.A. ’95, of Cam- contact the HAA at 617-496-7001. turer in law, University of Chicago Law bridge. West is the HAA director for Pro- School. fessional Interest Shared Interest Groups rent Harvard undergraduates (e.g., by host- Argelia M. Rodriguez, M.B.A. ’84, (SIGs) and the immediate past president ing a spring dinner) and potential Harvard Washington, D.C. President and CEO, Dis- of Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs (HAE). candidates. Its “Path to Harvard” essay trict of Columbia College Access Program. At HAE, he spearheaded a five-year strate- competition elicits more than 1,000 ap- Jacques Salès, LL.M. ’67, of Paris. Avocat gic plan to expand and sustain the SIG. As plicants annually, from which two under- à la Cour (attorney at law), Ginestié Magel- HAA director, he has played a crucial role graduate and two graduate candidates are lan Paley-Vincent. in helping struggling SIGs grow stronger chosen to meet with Harvard admissions by sharing advice and business experience, officers and Polish students in Cambridge. Alumni Awards troubleshooting, and providing critical re- In a successful bid to reinvigorate the The HAA Clubs and SIGs [Shared Interest sources to ensure they thrived. Harvard Club of Sacramento, newly Groups] Committee Awards honor indi- Membership in the Harvard Club of Po- elected board members have built “a highly viduals who provide exemplary service to a land has risen from 20 to 300 alumni with- engaged membership” on multiple fronts: Harvard club or Shared Interest Group, and in the past six years due to popular club more than 250 alumni and guests have recognize those clubs and SIGs that have or- events that feature top business and politi- participated in club events within the past ganized exceptional programming. Awards cal leaders, as well as lectures by Harvard year. Using its new “AlumniMagnet” web- were presented to the following recipients faculty. In 2011, the club also drew a crowd site, the club creates two monthly e-news- at the HAA Board of Directors’ winter meet- by hosting the annual HAA European Club letters that reach 800 alumni. Through ing on January 31. Leaders’ Meeting, with guest speaker Lech a simple but effective motto—Do “just Judith B. Esterquest ’72, Ph.D. ’80, of Walesa. In addition, club leaders have one thing” for the club—members have Manhasset, New York. Esterquest has strengthened connections with both cur- creatively expanded personalized events ranging from bird-watching and potluck dinners to olive-oil A Special Notice Regarding Commencement Exercises tastings and an “underground Thursday, May 30, 2013 tour” of Old Sacramento. By forming an alliance be- Morning Exercises tween the schools, the MIT- To accommodate the increasing number of those wishing to attend Harvard’s Commencement Exercises, the follow- Harvard Club of Colombia ing guidelines are proposed to facilitate admission into Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement Morning: has broadened its membership • Degree candidates will receive a limited number of tickets to Commencement. Parents and guests of degree candi- dates must have tickets, which they will be required to show at the gates in order to enter Tercentenary Theatre. Seating base and increased its activi- capacity is limited, however there is standing room on the Widener steps and at the rear and sides of the Theatre for view- ties. The organization has also ing the exercises. been instrumental in integrat- Note: A ticket allows admission into the Theatre, but does not guarantee a seat. Seats are on a first-come basis and can ing Latin American Harvard not be reserved. The sale of Commencement tickets is prohibited. clubs as a whole. In 2011, it • Alumni/ae attending their reunions (25th, 35th, 50th) will receive tickets at their reunions. Alumni/ae in classes be- hosted the first regional HAA yond the 50th may obtain tickets from the College Alumni Programs Office by calling (617) 496-7001, or through the an- nual Treespread mailing sent out in March with an RSVP date of April 15th. Latin American Club Leaders’ • Alumni/ae from non-reunion years and their spouses are requested to view the Morning Exercises over large-screen Meeting in Cartagena, Colom- televisions in the Science Center, and at designated locations in most of the undergraduate Houses and graduate and pro- bia, which brought together fessional schools. These locations provide ample seating, and tickets are not required. nearly 20 leaders from the 12 • A very limited supply of tickets will be made available to all other alumni/ae on a first-come, first-served basis through clubs. The club also fosters the Harvard Alumni Association by calling (617) 496-7001. undergraduate connections, in Afternoon Exercises part through events that bring The Harvard Alumni Association’s Annual Meeting convenes in Tercentenary Theatre on Commencement afternoon. All together local high-school stu- alumni and alumnae, faculty, students, parents, and guests are invited to attend and hear Harvard’s president and the dents and Harvard College Commencement speaker deliver their addresses. Tickets for the afternoon ceremony will be available through the Harvard students doing summer intern- Alumni Association by calling (617) 496-7001. vJacqueline A. O’Neill, University Marshal ships in Colombia.

62 March - April 2013 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 The View from Mass Hall

The Future of Education

n January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Swit- zerland, I participated in a panel discussion on MOOCs— massive open online courses—and the future of education. Massachusetts Institute of Technology President L. Rafael Reif and I had the opportunity to share our thoughts on IedX, the nonprofit organization created by Harvard and MIT to make high-quality educational content and courses available online. EdX will enhance our understanding of learning and teaching on our campuses at the same time it brings knowledge to individuals across the globe. Nearly 200,000 people, half of them from outside of the United States, enrolled in the initial edX courses taught by Harvard fac- ulty this fall—Introduction to Computer Science I and Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical and Public Health Research. I expect to see even larger enrollments in the next slate of Harvard offerings, which includes an introduction to moral and political philosophy, an examination of global environmental change, and an explora- tion of the law of copyright. In The Ancient Greek Hero, the platform’s first humanities course, students will encounter the HomericIliad and Odyssey—and related art, film, and music—throughout time and across space, considering enduring characters and questions in an entirely new context. These courses are not lectures delivered turn, devoted to meetings with his students on campus. Reducing through the web, but active learning experiences where students effort expended on routine activities creates more opportunities to are asked to demonstrate understanding and connect with others explore, to experiment, and to engage in meaningful work. Higher to form participant communities. education will continue to be advanced by digital innovations. The Online learning has potential that would have recently been un- edX partnership is an opportunity for Harvard and MIT, together imaginable. For example, I could not have envisioned when I was with a host of partner colleges and universities, to encourage new traveling in India just a year ago that the hunger for knowledge approaches, to develop new methods, and to drive assessment—all about public health expressed to me so frequently would be served pursued in a spirit of boundless curiosity and an abiding openness so dramatically by our Health in Numbers course. Eight thousand peo- to the wider world. ple in India signed up. In addition to contributing to online dis- MOOCs and their potential captured considerable attention at cussion groups, 150 students spontaneously gathered in Mumbai Davos as business and political leaders speculated about the future to discuss the material, exchanging ideas and creating connections of residential education, a conversation that will continue in the that they have sustained since the course’s conclusion. A meet-up in months and years ahead. I believe that online education offers us Bangalore featuring a Skype session with edX professors attracted possibilities we have just begun to imagine for sharing knowledge a similar number of students from an array of courses who were more widely and teaching more effectively. But the power of resi- eager to interact face to face. dential education and interaction will not be undermined. Bringing Increasing access and making knowledge from diverse fields and thinkers and doers together is uniquely generative. Every day the disciplines much more broadly available are important aims, but magic that happens inside a Farkas or Paine Hall rehearsal room; there are other motivations for launching edX. We intend to lever- across an i-lab whiteboard or a House dining room table; in a Law age observations made in the digital space to understand what we School classroom or a stem cell laboratory or dozens of other set- might do better in our own classrooms and classrooms around the tings across our campus reminds us of the uplifting and transfor- world—an aspiration that is already being realized. In response mative power of the company we are so lucky to keep. to tens of thousands of students completing assignments for his popular introduction to computer science course, David Malan of Sincerely, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences developed a tech- nology to assess student-submitted programs. He used the same technology in the in-person version of the course taught at Harvard College. The improvement saved him valuable time, which he, in

Harvard Magazine 63 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 The College Pump Statistics, No Lies

Joseph Nye’s course, ‘Leadership and Eth- inadvertently lost and that although he has ics in Foreign Policy.’ During the course, we passed on we know for sure he really was a watched Errol Morris’s filmFog of War: Eleven ‘Harvard man.’” Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. In it, McNamara reflects on his tenure at Har- vard Business School and his efforts during World War II to increase the efficiency of Yesterday’s mail: The book The Breath- “Your wooden arm you hold outstretched aerial bombing through applied statistics. less Present: A Memoir in Four Movements is a to shake with passers-by.” To expand the practice, McNamara creat- 2011 memoir by Carl Vigeland ’69, a writer ed the Office of Statistical Control for the who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, and ommander John R. H. Calla- Army Air Corps at Harvard Business School, teaches writing part time at the University way of the United States Navy, teaching statistics to young Army officers. of Massachusetts there. He has written sev- M.P.A. ’07, has sent Primus the Armed with this potential connection, I en books, one with Wynton Marsalis about following dispatch: “When I was inquired further with my grandfather and jazz, another on Mozart. Cgrowing up during the late 1970s and early was rewarded when my grandmother pro- The memoir includes a passage about the 1980s, my [maternal] grandfather proudly duced a photograph of the 353rd Army Air young Vigeland’s attempts, while living in claimed to be a ‘Harvard man,’ usually dur- Force Base Unit (Statistical School) with Conway, Massachusetts, in the 1970s, to get ing late-evening conversations when some- my grandfather in the third row. advice on his writing from a fellow Con- one questioned the veracity of a particular “He passed away in January 2011, and we way resident, Archibald MacLeish, LL.B. assertion of his. It always seemed an odd went through his effects when my grand- ’19, Litt.D. ’55—poet, writer, author of the claim because I knew him to be a graduate mother relocated to the Boston area from play J.B., librarian of Congress, and former of Penn State with our native Bing- Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory, a master’s degree hamton, New who died in 1982, aged 89. There are several from Syracuse and York,” Callaway direct quotes from his letters to Vigeland, a high school math reports. “While bestowing his advice on writing. Here is an teacher for many going­ through his excerpt from Vigeland concerning the post years, but we never military papers, office, which suggests that what the Postal called him on it out we found the cer- Service needs today is bushels of big-snail- of deference. As we tificate awarded mail citizens like Archibald MacLeish. grew older, I heard by the Graduate “It was on a hike with our landlord’s wife the occasional sto- School of Busi- that I learned that the poet Archibald Mac­ ry about statistics ness Administra- Leish was our immediate neighbor. He lived classes at Harvard First Lieutenant Llewellyn S. Parsons, Army tion for the Air on an estate at the top of the hill, above but nothing more. Air Force, center top, completed Statistical Forces Statistical the pastures and beyond two ponds in the School Class 46-1 in September 1945. Aside from his ac- School, complete woods that were bordered on our farm’s ademic pedigree, we also knew he was a with the familiar Veritas seal, as well as side by an abandoned apple orchard. I had World War II veteran who served as an in- form letters from President Harry S Tru- spotted him a few times in town, usually structor pilot in the Army Air Corps. The man and General Henry ‘Hap’ Arnold, and at the post office, where he pulled up in his connection between his military service and other documentation of his service tucked black Mercedes, wearing a white tee shirt, the statistics classes was never made. into his Air Corps Pilot’s Navigation Kit. He carpenter’s overalls, and a straw hat, and “In 2006, I began my second semester at was low key about his service, as was typi- retrieved an entire bushel basket of mail the Kennedy School,” continues Callaway, cal of his generation. I feel fortunate that that the postmaster, Syd St. Peters, had “and was fortunate enough to take Professor the certificate and other papers were not been holding for him.” vprimus v

64 March - April 2013 Photograph courtesy of John R. H. Callaway Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746

Treasure The Annotated Falcon An item in the history of note-taking

alconry is the hunting of wild samurai class. Several families established quarry using a trained bird of prey. their own schools of falconry around the Its practice and art may have be- fourteenth century, according to Kuniko gun in Mesopotamia four thousand McVey, librarian for the Japanese collec- Fyears ago. Evidence suggests the sport was tion at Harvard-Yenching Library, and the introduced into Japan by a Korean courtier teachings of the falconers were transmitted in a.d. 359, to be enthusiastically developed through notes for generations. by emperors, nobles, and members of the The library holds 11 Japanese books on falconry produced before 1800, all but one of them manu- scripts, among its 1.3 million texts. Four of the works once be- longed to Matsu­daira Sadanobu (1759-1829), a chief senior coun- cilor of the Tokugawa shogunate, and in- sociate in ornithology at the Museum of clude the two pages Comparative Zoology, guesses these two

reproduced here. They are meant to be Hodgson’s Hawk-eagles. og: 008319431 l a t

were copied then from They were most recently sighted during a S C I

manuscripts attribut- “Take Note,” a two-day conference in No- LL ed to Jimyoin Motoha- vember at the Radcliffe Institute for Ad- O ru, a celebrated callig- vanced Study. The conference concluded rapher and a member a four-year initiative to explore the history

of the Jimyoin falconry and future of the book. The study of notes 6981ook 0260. TJ H

school, who made his is intimately connected to the study of read- are B . R copies in 1506. One ing, a field newly poignant, as a report on y manuscript is a copy the institute’s website points out, because ing Librar

of a text that had itself “the rise of digital technology has made the h been copied in 1328, encounter between book and reader seem thus showing, says more fragile and ghostly than ever.” Links

McVey, how this spe- to all the conference presentations may be Harvard-Yenc cialized knowledge found on this magazine’s website, and a link was transmitted pri- as well to an online exhibition of 73 note-re- vately within a family lated items from Harvard collections, rang- of falconry experts for ing from these feathered friends to a second- generations. century price list written on a potsherd, to a Falconers also use seventeenth-century German engraving of a birds other than fal- “note-closet,” in which slips of paper could cons. Jeremiah Trim- be hung on hooks corresponding to up to ble, curatorial as- 3,000 alphabetized headings. vc.r.

72 March - April 2013 Images courtesy of Harvard Imaging Services and the Harvard-Yenching Library Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Life after graduation is even more rewarding.

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130322_HUECU.indd 1 1/28/13 9:40 AM in theatres march 22nd

CollEgE aluMni MagazinE STrEET daTE: FEb/MarCh duE daTE: 1/22 130315_FocusFeatures_Harvard.inddnon-blEEd: 7” 1 x 9.25”, 4-Color January 22, 2013 1:30 PM EST1/23/13 8:41 AM