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Franklin Leonard The Black List reshapes Hollywood

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DeanLeBaron_v6.indd 1 5/20/16 9:53 AM JULY-AUGUST 2016 VOLUME 118, NUMBER 6

FEATURES 37 The Plant Prospectors | by Jonathan Shaw Why, and how, the Arnold Arboretum aims to sample threatened botanical diversity

44 Vita: Nathaniel Bowditch | by Tamara Plakins Thornton Brief life of a mathematician and businessman: 1773-1838 p. 14 46 The Outsiders’ Insider | by Sophia Nguyen Franklin Leonard’s Black List of scripts opens doors in Hollywood

52 Forum: Does Money Matter? | by Idrees Kahloon Determining how floods of super PAC cash influence the presidential election

JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL 14 Showtime at the 365th Commencement: sunny skies, som- ber talk. Plus academic advances in Allston, class-scheduling complexities, probing politics, Currier House chiefs, inside the endowment, summer-school debut, social-club sanctions and other news, acknowledging , the Undergraduate uncen- tered, and tandem track-and-field stars p. 32 p. 55 DEPARTMENTS 2 Cambridge 02138 | Letters from our readers—and a proposal for conversation about the curriculum 3 The View from Mass Hall 9 Right Now | Social supports for entrepreneurs, teasing out teamwork,

evolution’s sex advantage

12A Harvard2 | A calendar of summer events, an animal sanctuary, all-season sauna, early Winslow Homer, and more

55 Montage | What makes ballet brutal, childbirth without guilt, cerebral comics, glass sea creatures, Seamus Heaney’s Aeneid, and more

63 Alumni | A feisty career fisherman, four Harvard Medalists, Commencement elders, elected Overseers and alumni association directors, and more

68 The College Pump | The College gates, barred and not p. 37 76 Treasure | Seat fit for a queen On the cover: Franklin Leonard

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: STU ROSNER; REED HUTCHINSON/LOS ANGELES BALLET; WILLIAM FRIEDMAN/THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM; ERIC HANSON 69 Crimson Classifieds by Jeff Vespa/Getty Images

www.harvardmagazine.com 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  art director: Jennifer Carling associate editors: Marina Bolotnikova, Final clubs, comparing campuses, reading Greek Sophia Nguyen staff writer/editor: Lydialyle Gibson manager, digital media: Laura Levis DNA DRAWING el jobs. ATMs have permanently removed assistant editor: Nell Porter Brown Your discussion of using gene drives to teller positions. While unrelated to robotics berta greenwald ledecky combat malaria was very even-handed (“Ed- but similar in effect, movement of manufac- undergraduate fellows iting an End to Malaria?” May-June, page turing offshore has permanently (likely) re- Jenny Gathright, Bailey Trela 37); but DNA is, and must be, right-handed moved tens of thousands of working-class daniel steiner undergraduate in the twist of its helix. jobs (“Who Owns the Ro- editorial intern: Aidan Langston Alas, on your very clev- bots Rules the World,” by er cover illustration it is Richard B. Freeman, May- editorial intern: Olivia Campbell left-handed, although in June, page 37). The effect of contributing editors another fine picture on all this rests nearly entire- John T. Bethell, John de Cuevas, Dick page 55 you got it right. ly on the tens of millions Friedman, Adam Goodheart, Jim Haber ’65 of people without degrees Elizabeth Gudrais, Jim Harrison, Wayland, Mass. or advanced training. Re- Courtney Humphries, Christopher S. training has not worked Johnson, Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, Editor’s note: Other cor- for these people. There are Christopher Reed, Stu Rosner, Deborah respondents made the simply too many. Smullyan, Mark Steele same point about our Robotics is inevitable. harvard magazine inc. supervision of the cover More working-class job president Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. illustration by artist losses will come. The ef- : ’69. directors: Peter K. Bol, Jonathan Pete Ryan. Author Jon Shaw amplifies: fect will further increase the wealth gap L.S. Byrnes, D.B.A. ’80, Scott V. Edwards, Since DNA’s structure was not part of my between rich and poor, with dire con- Thomas F. Kelly, Ph.D. ’73, Ann Ma- biology instruction in school, I had to look sequences for the nation. Sharing of the rie Lipinski, NF ’90, Lars Peter Knoth it up. Distinguishing left-handed from right- wealth effects of robotics with the few Madsen, John P. Reardon Jr. ’60, Bryan E. handed DNA is not intuitive even with both workers left will not happen any more Simmons ’83 versions in front of you, and even when you than sharing between management and know DNA is supposed to be right-handed. workers occurs now. I suggest that you Board of Incorporators Maybe that is why this error occurs even add homeless waiters and waitresses beg- This magazine, at first called the Harvard Bulletin, was founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was char- in science journals and textbooks—espe- ging for cash to your depiction. tered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s cially on covers. For example, see www. Paul Gaboury, M.B.A. ’80 governance. The membership is as follows: Stephen ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775190 Acton, Mass. J. Bailey, AMP ’94; Jeffrey S. Behrens ’89, William I. Bennett ’62, M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. Bol; on nucleosomes, which are left-handed (it Fox Butterfield ’61, A.M. ’64; Sewell Chan ’98; Jona- also refers to errors in depicting DNA). An The article by Richard Freeman con- than S. Cohn ’91; Philip M. Cronin ’53, J.D. ’56; John de Cuevas ’52; F. Dwinell III ’62; Anne Fadiman image with incorrect chirality recently ap- tains a logical flaw that renders its reme- ’74; Benjamin M. Friedman ’66, Ph.D. ’71; Robert H. peared on the cover of Nature Structural and dy ineffectual. He states: “In international Giles, NF ’66; Richard H. Gilman, M.B.A. ’83; Owen Gingerich, Ph.D. ’62; Adam K. Goodheart ’92; Phil- Molecular Biology. (Finding these errors has trade, comparative advantage explains why ip C. Haughey ’57; Brian R. Hecht ’92; Sarah Blaffer become a game for some people.) Chiral- a highly productive country does not ‘steal’ Hrdy ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Ellen Hume ’68; Alex S. Jones, NF ity (handedness) in molecules affects their jobs from a less productive country. Instead, ’82; Bill Kovach, NF ’89; Florence Ladd, BI ’72; Jen- nifer 8 Lee ’99; Randolph C. Lindel ’66; Ann Marie biological activity, among other important both countries benefit by specializing in Lipinski, NF ’90; Scott Malkin ’80, J.D.-M.B.A. ’83; consequences. Some DNA is left-handed; but sectors in which they have a relative ad- Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. ’69, Ed ’77, L ’78; Lisa L. Martin, Ph.D. ’90; David McClintick ’62; Winthrop right-handed “B-DNA” is the common form. vantage.” Freeman then claims “comparative L. McCormack ’67; M. Lee Pelton, Ph.D. ’84; John P. advantage” also explains why robots will Reardon Jr. ’60; Christopher Reed; Harriet Ritvo ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98; ROBOTS AND JOBLESSNESS not “steal” jobs from humans. “If a robot is Barbara Rudolph ’77; Robert N. Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78; Self-checkout at Home Depot and su- twice as efficient as a human at driving a car, Theda Skocpol, Ph.D. ’75; Peter A. Spiers ’76; Scott H. Stossel ’91; Sherry Turkle ’69, Ph.D. ’76; Robert H. permarkets permanently removes entry-lev- for example, (please turn to page 5) Weiss ’54; Jan Ziolkowski.

2 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 THE VIEW FROM MASS HALL

An Invincible Spirit

n January 1916, more than 1,100 Har- sharing their exper- vard students, many motivated by the tise and thinking, possibility of the ’ en- give their classmates trance into the Great War, joined what insight into an insti- Iwould become one of the country’s first Re- tution that is so im- serve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) pro- portant to our nation. grams. In addition to their usual course of They extend their study, young men in the Harvard Regiment influence beyond received theoretical and practical military our campus through instruction, drilled and marched at Sol- volunteer opportu- diers Field, completed complex exercises nities including the in nearby towns, and—on at least one oc- Center for Public casion—paraded through Boston in a show Leadership’s “Vet- of national “preparedness.” Their command- erans Impact Day,” er, Captain Constant Cordier, considered which recently put them inspired by “an invincible spirit” and more than 150 stu- remarked that “in all this land there is no dents from Harvard better material for officers than is found in and local colleges in the student body of Harvard.” direct contact with One century later, we mark the return to those who have served. In the coming year, Harvard renewed its military ties, I found our campus of the full complement of ROTC: the Yellow Ribbon Program, which assists inspiration in a name etched into the walls Air Force, Army, and Navy. I have had the veterans with tuition and fees, will, for the of the Memorial Hall transept. Charles Rus- honor of restoring the full and formal rec- first time, be open to an unlimited number sell Lowell, valedictorian of the College ognition of these programs in the five years of eligible students across our Schools. Class of 1854, served in the Union Army since the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and Harvard’s soldier-scholars undertake and died shortly after being wounded at the I have admired those undergraduates who their diverse work in a place where one Battle of Cedar Creek—not far from where choose to serve the nation, whether they is everywhere reminded of distinguished I grew up in ’s Shenandoah Valley. are completing deployments in Afghani- military service and sacrifice. My days and A decade before he made the ultimate sac- stan, training pilots aboard aircraft carri- nights in Cambridge are spent in Massachu- rifice for his country, he addressed his class- ers halfway around the world, or inspiring setts Hall and Elmwood, both of which were mates, urging them both to consider what their fellow citizens with a flyover at the used to house troops during the American should be and to imagine what can be. This Harvard-Yale game. These young people join Revolution; nearby Wadsworth House shel- uneasiness with the present married with an extraordinarily distinguished group of tered when he came an eagerness to shape the future is among alumni: the University has educated more to take command of the Continental Army. the finest traditions shared by Harvard Uni- recipients than any college Other quiet corners are dedicated to those versity and the United States Armed Forces, or university other than the service acad- who served later and farther afield. Plaques and we are privileged to renew fully in this emies, and our graduates have been deco- and walls listing the names of those who centennial year a longstanding and vigorous rated with the highest honors from each of gave their last full measure of devotion are partnership. “The world,” as Lowell would the service branches. familiar sights at the Divinity School, the remind us, “always advances by impossibili- Our campus community includes hun- Law School, the Medical School, and else- ties achieved.” dreds of men and women who have already where, and Memorial Church and Memo- served or who will return to service after rial Hall have become landmarks, guiding Sincerely, they complete their studies. At the Busi- our way as they stand testament to the hu- ness School, the Kennedy School, and the man cost of supporting and defending the Law School, among others, student veterans Constitution. and service members bring to their learning When I was preparing my remarks to the and their practice rare perspectives and, in first class of students commissioned after

Harvard Magazine 3 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746

Letters

7 WARE STREET position of General Education. Recent reforms melded approaches meant to re- Speaking Frankly, at inforce the civic intent of Gen Ed courses; maximize students’ freedom of course se- West Point lection; and somehow squeeze in a distri- publisher: Irina Kuksin Drew Faust gave one of the signal speech- bution requirement. Much less attention director of circulation and es of her Harvard presidency at West Point was paid to the pedagogical aims of those fundraising: Felecia Carter this past March. The subject was educa- requirements. donor relations and stewardship tion in the humanities—and in leadership. As the faculty deliberated, Nicholas manager: Allison Kern Her talk brought to the fore common Faust Lemann ’76 wrote “What Should Gradu- director of advertising: themes: immersion in the arts and humani- ates Know?” in The Chronicle of Higher Educa- Robert D. Fitta ties and learning to think critically about tion. Drawing on his decanal experiences values. The venue and format (a formal ad- remaking the curriculum of Columbia’s new england advertising manager: dress, rather than the occasions where an Graduate School of Journalism, he sug- Abby Shepard interlocutor poses questions, and Faust’s gested that colleges need to specify what classified advertising manager: answers are briefer) made a difference. they are for (lest they become excessively Gretchen Bostrom At the United States Military Academy vocational by default). As a “quick list of designer and integrated marketing (USMA), as Faust noted, “the humanities possibilities” for an undergraduate cur- manager: Jennifer Beaumont are resources that build ‘self-awareness, riculum, he suggested “instruction around associate web developer: character, [and] perspective,’ and enable a set of master skills that together would Jeffrey Hudecek leaders to compel and to connect with oth- make one an educated, intellectually em- ers.” She identified three ways in which that powered, morally aware person.” Among gift processor and office manager: occurs. “First,” she said, “leaders need per- them: “Rigorous interpretation of mean- Robert Bonotto spective”—the historical and cultural lenses ing, taught mainly through close reading that clarify a situation through “empathy: of texts. Numeracy, including basic statis- magazine network how to see ourselves inside another person’s tical literacy. Pattern and context recogni- director of operations: experience. How to picture a different pos- tion. Developing and stating an argument, Heather Wedlake, Heatherwedlake@ sibility.” Second, “leaders need the capacity in spoken and written form.” And so on, ivymags.com to improvise. I often point out that educa- through “Empathetic understanding of tion is not the same thing as training for a other people and other cultures.” editorial and business office job.…Circumstances evolve. Certainly, sol- Lemann is also a member of the Ameri- 7 Ware Street diers know…that our knowledge needs to can Academy of Arts & Sciences’ new Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 be flexible, as we grapple with complexity Commission on the Future of Undergrad- Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 in an instant.” Third, she emphasized how uate Education. Bracingly, upriver from Website: www.harvardmagazine.com leaders like Churchill and Lincoln “use the Lemann’s school, the USMA course cata- E-mail: [email protected] persuasive power of language.” log states an “Educational Philosophy.” It Two broad applications to Harvard details such academic goals as communi- @harvardmagazine come to mind. One concerns transitions. cation skills; critical thinking and creativi- .com/harvardmagazine West Point, Faust noted, was “the nation’s ty; lifelong learning; ethical reasoning; and first college of engineering.” Now, even as subject-matter expertise in STEM fields Harvard Magazine (ISSN 0095-2427) is published bi- monthly by Harvard Magazine Inc., a nonprofit cor- “other institutions drop liberal-arts re- and humanities and social sciences. poration, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, quirements, military academies have been Gen Ed embraces some language about phone 617-495-5746; fax 617-495-0324. The magazine is supported by reader contributions and subscriptions, adding them. Over the past 50 years, West such purposes. But they were not the sub- advertising revenue, and a subvention from Harvard Point has transformed its curriculum into ject of the recent debate, and the faculty is University. Its editorial content is the responsibility of a general liberal-arts education, graduat- the editors. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Mass., unlikely to revisit the principles before the and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send ad- ing leaders with broad-based knowledge next iteration of the curriculum—around dress changes to Circulation Department, Harvard of both the sciences and the humanities, the quarter-century mark. Even when that Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037. Subscription rate $30 a year in U.S. and possessions, $55 and the ability to apply that knowledge in happens, Harvard presidents are careful Canada and Mexico, $75 other foreign. (Allow up to a fluid and uncertain world.” The College, to give faculty members their head in such 10 weeks for first delivery.) Subscription orders and customer service inquiries should be sent to the Cir- grounded as it has been in the traditional matters. But surely there was, and perhaps culation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, liberal arts, is very much tilting the other still is, an opportunity to engage more fully Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, or call 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499, or e-mail [email protected]. way, expanding engineering and applied with these critical issues in the interim, on Single copies $4.95, plus $2.50 for postage and han- sciences, and inspiriting entrepreneurship. campus. It would be good for students and dling. Manuscript submissions are welcome, but we That prompts anxieties about waning stu- professors to hear more from the president, cannot assume responsibility for safekeeping. Include stamped, self-addressed envelope for manuscript re- dent interest in humanities and adults’ re- directly; as her West Point remarks attest, turn. Persons wishing to reprint any portion of Harvard sponsibility to assure that their charges are she has plenty to say, and forcefully. This Magazine’s contents are required to write in advance for permission. Address inquiries to Irina Kuk- broadly, not merely vocationally, educated. is a conversation the community ought to sin, publisher, at the address given above. The related relevant point is the com- have. vjohn s. rosenberg, Editor Copyright © 2016 Harvard Magazine Inc.

4 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters

(continued from page 2) robots produce” will equal or exceed the suspect policy apparently didn’t attract the loss of earnings at their former jobs. Fur- concern of the Corporation, Board of Over- but only 50 percent more efficient at pick- ther, when there is no limit to the extent seers, or University counsel. Harvard should ing blueberries, the robot would do the to which robots will displace employees, not be positioned on this slippery slope of driving, while the humans would pick the then there will be an ever shrinking num- social engineering if it hopes to maintain its blueberries.” ber of employees left to share in an ever in- core integrity. But underlying the theory of compara- creasing amount of prosperity. Philip Stockton ’62 tive advantage in international trade is the The combination of these factors will Miami assumption that the population in a highly likely result in the same concentration of productive country is not going to expand wealth in a few owners that Freeman’s As a graduate member of the Owl Club, into a less productive country and thus ineffectual remedies seek to avoid. I look I believe Dean Rakesh Khurana’s propos- will not take all the jobs in both countries. forward to his offer of his robot assis- al to penalize students who are members Unfortunately, that assumption can’t be tant, who “will report shortly on what we of any final club which is not co-ed is the made for robots, the population of which should do.” epitome of hypocrisy, logically flawed, and is essentially limitless and borderless. Gordon Bennett ’68 completely misguided. Freeman admits to this contradiction Inverness, Calif. It is hypocritical because the University when he later refers to “armies” of robots. discriminates on a massive scale. It just When there are “armies” of robots, then in FINAL CLUBS discriminated against 35,000 applicants his example, they will do the driving and The punitive policy announced recently by rejecting them based on arbitrary ad- pick the blueberries, because they can do by the dean of and President mission criteria. It discriminates against both and are better at both. Drew Faust must be a crushing disappoint- applicants of Asian descent who typically This flaw undermines his remedy—pol- ment to all alumni who believed in Harvard need SAT scores over 100 points higher icies that would encourage employees to as an enduring bastion of free inquiry and than those of white applicants in order be able to “share...in the ownership of the association [see page 27 and harvardmag. to be accepted. It now is discriminating machines that replace them at work.” It is com/finalclub-16 and harvardmag.com/fall- against members of final clubs because the questionable whether those former em- out-16]. I cannot fathom how such an ill-ad- University will not apply the policy to all ployees’ shares of the “prosperity that the vised, and, in the real world, constitutionally other single-sex organizations, including Fragrance-Free Workplaces?

In the 1960s few would have believed that smoke-free workplaces would one day become the norm. Could fragrance-free workplaces, medical facilities, and nursing homes be the wave of the future?

In a 2009 policy statement the CDC banned air fresheners and scented To learn more, play on candles in all its facilities. This policy states: “Fragrance is not appropriate for YouTube the video a professional work environment, and the use of some products with fragrance “Multiple Chemical may be detrimental to the health of workers with chemical sensitivities, Sensitivity: A Life-Altering Condition,” which contains allergies, asthma, and chronic headaches/migraines.” The full CDC policy footage of interviews with can be viewed on the website of the Chemical Sensitivity Foundation, which four leading members of contains information about multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), including a Congress and a former research bibliography. We welcome hearing from you on this topic by phone, Commander of Walter 207-373-3829, or through e-mail or snail mail via our website. Reed Army Medical Center.

Please donate to the cause on www.ChemicalSensitivityFoundation.org

Harvard Magazine 5 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters the South Asian Men’s Collective and the discrimination is misguided and dimin- contested Overseers’ election, not settled Association of Black Harvard Women. ishes the freedoms of students who volun- fact. The SAMC and ABHA are officially It is logically flawed because, to be con- tarily choose to join any single-sex organi- recognized student groups (as the final sistent, the University should penalize zation. clubs are not), and thus required to be any non-affiliated single-sex organization Students would be far better served if open to any members of a different gender and yet no plans have been announced to the University focused instead on making who may wish to join. deny admission to students who attend a them aware of the many forms of discrimi- single-sex high school, or who are mem- nation, both good and bad, and on educat- When I left Kansas for Cambridge in bers of the Boy or Girl Scouts. It also is ing them on how to deal with being dis- 1955, it was my first trip east of the Missis- logically flawed because even if the final criminated against. sippi River. I had never heard of the final clubs were to become co-ed, those not Michael Erickson ’74 clubs. Of course I leaned about them soon selected still would feel excluded and Corte Madera, Calif. enough, and ended up joining one as a soph- disempowered. Meanwhile, how are final omore, where I made many of my closest clubs any different from the University’s Editor’s note: Claims concerning admission friends. Although I have contributed regu- athletic teams? The athletic teams are sin- of Asian-American applicants are matters larly to the College, and hardly at all to the gle-sex organizations that foster values in for debate in current litigation and in the club, I remain intensely loyal to both. So I the locker rooms that are virtually identi- am thrown into painful conflict by the ad- cal to those of the final clubs: friendship, SPEAK UP, PLEASE ministration’s plan to blackmail the clubs. shared experiences, and bonding. Harvard Magazine welcomes letters Luckily, I’m not a future sophomore who The reality is it is impossible for any on its contents. Please write to “Let- will be subject to manipulation in the cause institution to function without discrimi- ters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, of gender integration. nating, hence, the reason Harvard rejects Cambridge 02138, send comments by e- Richard H. Seaton ’59 35,000 applicants. Furthermore, not all mail to your­turn@har­­vard.edu, use our Manhattan, Kans. discrimination is bad. Harvard discrimi- website, www.harvard­maga­zine.­com, nates when it assigns students to single- or fax us at 617-495-0324. Letters may GEN ED sex roommate groups. Consequently, the be edited to fit the available space. General Education (“General Educa- University’s attempt to eliminate sexual tion Reconstituted,” May-June, page 31) is

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6 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 WHAT WILL YOUR LEGACY BE?

Advancing research. Educating the best and the brightest. Ensuring your alma mater’s leadership in the world. MAKING AN IMPACT IS EASY.

• Leave a portion of your estate to Harvard College. • Name Harvard College as a beneficiary of your retirement plan or life insurance policy. Donors who include Harvard in their will or make a similar estate planned gift are welcomed into the Society and join a tradition of legacy giving that began in 1638 with John Harvard.

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16-392 JulyAugust_Full Pg Ad indd.indd 1 5/20/16 2:02 PM Letters

different because it is general. Its goals are complementary: every student must learn to critically evaluate the advice of physician or accountant or tennis coach, while at the same time the future physician or accoun- Finally. tant or coach must learn to think critically in crafting that advice. Acorrectdiagnosis— In Gen Ed, differences are less impor- andsomehope. tant than similarities: for example, my university, where I am heavily involved Real recovery starts with the right diagnosis. in the Gen Ed program, has many more The Pavilion is research-backed, with undergraduate clinical and professional a proven history of uncovering the true programs than Harvard. No matter: Gen reasons why people struggle with a cycle Ed is general, so we can compare. Harvard of treatment failures. now joins us (and many other universities) Let us help you today. Call 855.707.0517. in what I call the “charm bracelet” model: critical thinking, ethics, and cultural sen- sitivity dangle as discrete trophies next to the Empire State Building and Yellow- stone Park. I prefer the model in which Gen Ed is a core institutional value rather than an external decoration. In this model, every course in every discipline advances the TOP RANKED PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL – U.S. News and World Report wider goals of Gen Ed, especially when far from the liberal arts. In addition to techni- Boston, Mass. www.mcleanpavilion.org cal skills, nurses and lawyers need just as much critical thinking as historians and mathematicians. However, it is difficult to measure the The Arnold Arboretum of “success” of this approach. Since both ad- ministrators and accreditors are uncom- Campaign for the Living Collections fortable with unmeasurable outcomes, it is unlikely that such a curriculum will ap- pear widely or soon. James S. Wolper ’76 Professor of mathematics, Idaho State University

COMPARING CAMPUS STRATEGIES As a degree-holder from Harvard and Princeton, and also one who unexpectedly found his principal career for more than 30 years in higher education administration (with, in addition, significant connections to and long-time roles with Cambridge Uni- versity and Sarah Lawrence College), I was greatly pleased (and a little surprised) to see the thoughtful and appreciative commen- tary, “The Tiger Roars” (May-June, page 2), commending Princeton’s recently produced strategic framework, and suggesting that Harvard might benefit from a comparable undertaking. It has long been a truism that higher education in the U.S., and especially its multiplicity and variety, are treasures of Support the next century of discovery at the Arnold Arboretum. our nation, widely admired throughout Make a gift online at arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617.384.5766 the world. Com- (please turn to page 74)

8 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

SAFETY-NET DIVIDEND Food Stamp Entrepreneurs

conomist Gareth Olds has some the least likely to have access to credit, be- reduces risk. Starting a business is inher- unexpected advice for policymakers cause they don’t have collateral.” ently perilous. “If you can guarantee some who want people to start their own But just as critically, public assistance kind of a floor”—if the venture fails, “their E businesses: kids will still have give them welfare, health insurance, including access that they’ll still be to food stamps able to eat—then and public health they’re more will- insurance. Con- ing to take on a trary to the notion risk. And…that’s that welfare’s safe- very important to ty net undermines firm-creating and ambition and hard economic growth.” work—“a safety Olds, an assis- ‘hammock,’ I’ve tant professor in heard it called,” Harvard Business Olds says—his re- School’s entrepre- search finds that neurial manage- public assistance ment unit, first gives would-be en- published this trepreneurs the lift conclusion in a they need, in part pair of 2014 work- by increasing their ing papers during ability to save mon- his doctoral re- ey for investment. search at Brown. “Most of the evi- One focused on dence we’ve seen so the State Chil- far says that the ef- dren’s Health In- fects tend to be the surance Program largest for lower- (SCHIP), which income people,” he provides health explains. “Which insurance to chil- makes sense, be- dren in moderate- cause they tend to income families. be the most con- Using U.S. Census strained. They’re Bureau data from

Illustration by Dan Page Harvard Magazine 9 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now

1992 to 2011 to compare households just Alaska, he lived them. Money was tight: All that put a floor under their feet. “That above and below the cutoff for SCHIP, his stepfather worked a steady but low- security, having that in the back of your both before and after the program began paying job as a dental assistant, and his mind, changes the risks you’re willing to in 1997, Olds found that the self-employ- mother did a series of odd jobs, includ- take,” he says. “And they went out on a ment rate among SCHIP-eligible house- ing as a secretary and a doula; she is now limb, and it worked.” holds rose by 23 percent versus those a nurse. They lived paycheck to pay- Olds is now investigating whether the households that weren’t eligible. The rate check. But when he was six, his parents effect holds for other public programs. of new business starts rose by 13 percent launched a business, a training school One area that interests him: student-loan among households that qualified for the for dental assistants, which they ran suc- debt, which has become a crushing bur- program, and the survival rate of new cessfully before selling it a decade later. den. “We’re looking at whether parents businesses rose by 8 percent. The largest “It was one of those family businesses in areas where there’s been a rising cost of growth was in newly incorporated busi- where everybody pitches in,” he says. On public education are less likely to start a nesses, many of which were substantial Saturday mornings, the family would go business. And we’re finding that they are, and successful enough to contribute to to Costco and get muffins for the stu- and the effects are pretty large.” the family bank account: income from dents; in the afternoons, he and his two In a -based experiment, he is self-employment increased 16 percent sisters would serve as mock patients so also offering business-training programs relative to other wages. students could practice taking x-rays to food-stamp recipients, to find out Olds’s other 2014 paper, on “Food Stamp and fitting dental dams. whether lack of knowledge is “one of the Entrepreneurs,” found a similar link be- At the time, Olds didn’t think much big constraints” for the poor. Behind this tween business starts and eligibility for about it. “I just knew this was what we did question is his larger one: “Can public programs have an impact on entrepreneur- “If you can guarantee entrepreneurs ship?” “If entrepreneurship is something we’re some kind of a floor…then they’re more willing interested in supporting”—President Obama and many other politicians have to take on a risk. That’s very important to talked about its importance, he notes— “we need to know if it’s something pub- firm-creating and economic growth.” lic policy can control. If the answer is no, then we should get out of that business the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance on Saturdays, and this was why I couldn’t and make sure the financial institutions Program (SNAP), which expanded in the play with my friends.” But as he got older, work well. But if there’s something that mid 2000s when its requirements were he thought about the risk his parents had isn’t being provided in the market right loosened. Newly qualified households taken (“None of this was guaranteed,” he now—like cheap training or income se- were 20 percent more likely to start a says) and the money they’d had to save. curity—then that’s something we should business, and the number of incorporated They didn’t take out a loan. “I started pay attention to.” vlydialyle gibson businesses rose 16 percent among those thinking, how did they save that money?” who were newly qualified. He recalled the years early on when the gareth olds website: Those findings were familiar to Olds— family was on food stamps and he and his www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile. as a child growing up in Anchorage, sisters got healthcare through Medicaid. aspx?facId=738736

“COLLECTIVE EFFERVESCENCE” ization. Drawing on documents, observa- tion, surveys, and interviews, the authors concluded that the markers of successful What Makes Teams Tick interdisciplinary collaborations include not just an intellectual, but also emotional and interactional elements, and they pro- any of the most pressing issues The study, by professor of sociology Mi- posed a “shared cognitive-emotional-in- of our time—climate change, chele Lamont, lecturer on education Ve- teractional platform” for evaluating such economic inequality, human ronica Boix Mansilla, and Kyoko Sato, now projects. M rights—require interdisciplin- a lecturer at Stanford, closely examined Lamont said the findings may appear ary solutions. Yet facilitating collaboration nine interdisciplinary networks funded counterintuitive. “Instead of thinking among individuals from disparate fields can by the Canadian Institute for Advanced that the emotional and the interactional often be challenging. A recent study on what Research, the MacArthur Foundation, and corrupt the cognitive,” as the issue has of- contributes to successful interdisciplinary the Santa Fe Institute. These networks all ten been framed in the literature, she ex- work has found that the “emotional aspect” brought together scholars from at least plained, the authors view the first two di- of such collaborations is at least as impor- three disciplines; their research topics mensions “as interacting with knowledge tant as their intellectual aspect. ranged from brain development to urban- production and as empowering.” Success-

10 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now Successful collaboration requires the construc- tion of a group identity, “a sense of ‘us.’”

tice, which probed the origins, School of Education, who has led a study development, and preven- on interdisciplinary collaboration in the tion of juvenile crimes. past, called the paper an “ambitious” and The team’s work, she “creative synthesis” of various kinds of explained, has data. “I don’t know of any study that helped lead to looked at longstanding networks over a changes in the significant period of time,” he said. “This courtroom. is not the type of question that you can The collabo- answer simply by doing a lengthy online ration produced survey; it doesn’t lend itself to large-scale an influential article ‘big-data’ methods.” His own research on quoted in the landmark successful collaborations yielded similar 2005 Supreme Court people-centered findings that empha- decision that out- sized factors such as the rigorous selec- lawed the death tion of team members and good leader- penalty for ju- ship. “People need to like each other,” he venile offenders. said. “Nobody wants to work for years Kyoko Sato said on something if he or she doesn’t like the that what distin- other people.” guished this group The major takeaway from the study, were the positive Lamont said, is that researchers should interactional and choose their collaborators carefully, as- emotional features sessing not just intellectual contribu- that facilitated dia- tion, but also emotional intelligence and logues among partici- personality. “The days of the titans who pants ranging from le- dominated their disciplines at Harvard gal officials to experts in and elsewhere may be obsolete one day,” ful interdisciplinary networks, she contin- psychology, public health, and education. Lamont said, “because the key to innova- ued, are characterized by a “collective ef- “They really liked each other,” she said, tion is now often collaboration.” fervescence” that involves mutual respect “and they were also all bonded in a col- vzara zhang and learning among team members. lective mission to make a difference in the When accomplished experts of differ- juvenile-justice system.” michele lamont website: ent disciplines sit around one table, added Howard Gardner, Hobbs professor of http://sociology.fas.harvard.edu/ Boix Mansilla, the resulting interaction is cognition and education at the Graduate people/michèle-lamont comparable to an intercultural dialogue, with all the ancillary stereotypes and as- sumptions about “the other.” The par- HELPING EVOLUTION MULTITASK ticipants often underplay the need to con- struct an emotional cohesiveness—­which the study found to be integral. “What our Why Sex Succeeds study suggests is that we need to pay spe- cial attention to something that we some- times take for granted or forget,” she said. hy pair up to procreate? Bi- stay one step ahead of parasites and other Successful collaboration requires the con- ologists have long wondered pathogens by evolving to outsmart their struction of a group identity, which Boix why so many organisms go attacks. (The phrase comes from the Red Mansilla encapsulates as “a sense of ‘us’; W to so much trouble to create Queen’s remark in Through the Looking Glass: the degree to which a team can get excited offspring, when asexual reproduction fulfills “Now here, you see, it takes all the running about the idea and the leaders can keep the evolutionary goal of passing on as many you can do, to keep in the same place.”) this intellectual excitement alive.” genes as possible to the next generation. The second theory, “Plucking Rubies,” sug- One group illustrating successful col- During the last century, scientists devel- gests that recombining genes in each gen- laboration, Lamont said, was the MacAr- oped two main theories. The “Red Queen” eration preserves beneficial mutations; at thur Foundation’s Research Network on hypothesis says that DNA-sharing, because the same time, harmful mutations are se- Adolescent Development and Juvenile Jus- it speeds up evolution, allows organisms to lected out of the gene pool.

Illustration by Michael Witte Harvard Magazine 11 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now

Desai’s team was also surprised by a striking new finding: a number of very harmful mutations in asexual yeast “hitchhiked” to subsequent generations alongside beneficial muta- tions. “These deleterious mutations spread through the population because they’re linked to beneficial mutations,” he explains. “The strength of this effect was stronger than theoreti- cal work that we and other people have done would have predicted.” But in mating populations, recom- bination prevented those hitchhikers from fixing, confirming a version of the plucking rubies hypothesis. Many questions remain. “These experiments don’t yet answer the question of why sex is so widespread,” Desai says—and future studies will need to con- Cabot associate professor of organismic quently exposed that population to antibi- sider its costs. “Obviously it’s quite ex- and evolutionary biology Michael Desai otics, which allowed them to kill any yeast pensive to maintain all the machinery has changed the conversation, becoming that didn’t have sex. and spend all the effort that’s required the first researcher to directly observe, at a Because S. cerevisiae reproduce quickly, for sexual reproduction,” he says. “What molecular level, how sex provides an evo- it took Desai’s team just six months to still needs to be done is to weigh these lutionary advantage. He finds that natu- produce 1,000 generations of both popu- advantages that we have demonstrated ral selection does appear to pluck rubies, though in a more complex way than scien- “Sex is a way of helping natural selection do tists originally proposed. In findings published inNature , Desai more things at the same time.” describes his studies of Saccharomyces cere- visiae: yeast used in beer- and wine-making lations. Sequencing the yeast genes every here against the potential costs.” Hop- that reproduce, conveniently, both asexu- 90 generations allowed them to track ing to further clarify this key biological ally and sexually. “We can have genetically genetic mutations over time, and he and question, he’s planning new studies forc- identical strains that are maintained in al- his team saw a clear advantage to mat- ing sexual and asexual strains of yeast to most identical environments, the only dif- ing. “We found that sexual populations compete against each other, to see which ference being that one population periodi- of yeast adapt substantially faster, close wins out. cally undergoes mating,” while the other is to twice as fast as asexual populations, “Our genomes are big and complicated, strictly asexual, he explains. over a thousand generations of labora- and there’s a lot going on, and natural se- They faced one major complication: tory evolution,” Desai reports. They also lection is trying to do all of these things although S. cerevisiae can reproduce sexu- learned a little about why: in the asexual at once: it’s trying to keep the deleterious ally, they almost always choose the asexual yeast, beneficial mutations are less likely mutations out of our genomes and drive route. It took “a lot of coaxing,” Desai says. to “fix” (spread across the population) the beneficial mutations through the pop- “The yeast actually don’t like to have sex because the yeast compete and interfere ulation,” Desai says. “Sex is a way of help- in the lab.” He created a system to force with each other. “Many beneficial muta- ing natural selection do more things at the one population to mate every 90 genera- tions are driven extinct by this competi- same time. In a sense, it’s a way of helping tions, by adding genes for antibiotic resis- tion,” he says. In contrast, mating yeast re- evolution multitask.” verin o’donnell tance to their DNA and prompting those combine deleterious mutations away and genes to switch on only when genes for contribute different beneficial mutations, michael desai website: mating were active. Researchers subse- so positive attributes spread. desailab.oeb.harvard.edu

12 July - August 2016 Illustration by Chris Madden Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 SUPPORT HARVARD MAGAZINE

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160710_Fundraising-full_v3.indd 1 5/23/16 1:58 PM Harvard2 Cambridge, Boston, and beyond

12B Extracurriculars Events on and off campus this summer

12J Sweet Sweat The joys of a traditional Finnish sauna

12L Sights by Cycles A Boston/Cambridge loop

12N Homer House Languid afternoons

12H The Animals’ Kingdom One woman’s drive to build a piece of “heaven” on earth 12P In with the New ’s Parsnip should ripen over time STU ROSNER

Harvard Magazine 12A Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared

MUSIC Extracurriculars Harvard Summer Pops Band www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hub/events/sum- Events on and off campus during July and August merband The ensemble performs its popular annual SEASONAL offers fish, meats, produce, breads and concerts; program details appear online. The Farmers’ Market at Harvard pastries, herbs, pasta, chocolates, and (July 28 at 4 p.m. in ; July 31 at www.dining.harvard.edu/food-literacy- cheeses—along with guest chefs and 3 p.m. at the Hatch Shell in Boston) project/farmers-market-harvard cooking demonstrations. (noon to 6 p.m.; The market at the Science Center plaza Tuesdays through November 22) The Chorus From left: Clark’s Point Light, New Bedford (1854), by William Bradford, at the New Bedford www.boxoffice.harvard.edu Whaling Museum; Anna Deavere Smith’s one-woman show Notes from the Field: Doing Time The programs includes Pilgrim Psalms, by in Education, at the American Repertory Theater; and Extraordinary Playscapes, at the COURTESY OF THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS Ross Lee Finney, and the world premiere FROM COURTESY LEFT: OF THE NEW BEDFORD WHALING MUSEUM; COURTESY OF THE A.R.T.; Boston Society of Architects

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160703_Hammond_v5.indd 1 5/24/16 10:28 AM Harvard Squared of Rain Songs, by Memorial Church com- Ulysses’ Gaze, Landscape of the Mist, and The RECREATION poser-in-residence Carson Cooman. Traveling Players. (July 15-August 22) Tree Canopy Walkway Sanders Theatre. (July 29) www.ecotarium.org The Complete Rouben Mamoulian looks Kids and parents can swing from the trees The 30th Annual Lowell Folk Festival at the Armenian American’s long Holly- (harnessed and helmeted) at Worcester’s www.lowellfolkfestival.org wood career through his classic films, such EcoTarium. There are also exhibits on na- Three days of music with hundreds of per- as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Silk Stockings, and ture, science, and animal life, and visitors can formers, including headliners King Sunny The Mark of Zorro. (Through August 30) roam the 55-acre reserve in search of real- Adé & His African Beats, Natalie MacMas- life signs of creatures’ habitats. ter and Donnell Leahy, rockabilly artist Ja- THEATER son D. Williams, and Deacon John Moore American Repertory Theater EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS from . (July 29-31) www.americanrepertorytheater.org Created and performed by Anna Deavere www.radcliffe.harvard.edu Summer Gospel Festival Smith, BI ’92, Notes from the Field: Doing Women of the Blackwell Family: Resil- www.spirituallyfabulous.com/summer- Time in Education explores the origins and ience and Change focuses on seven mem- gospel-fest consequences of the school-to-prison pipe- bers of this illustrious, influential family who A celebration of this musical tradition, from line. (August 20-September 17) were particularly active between 1830 and classic to contemporary artists, with food 1850. (Opens July 5) vendors and children’s activities. NATURE AND SCIENCE Institute Park, Worcester, Mass. (August 6) The Arnold Arboretum Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts www.arboretum.harvard.edu www.ccva.fas.harvard.edu FILM The arboretum (see page 37) offers weekend Artist Martin Beck’s two-year exhibition walking tours throughout the summer, along Program has mined the center’s history www.hcl.harvard.edu/hfa with family-focused outings (on July 16 and of academic pursuits, pedagogical mission, A retrospective on filmmaker Theo Ange- August 20), and an exhibit, New England and gallery shows through what he calls lopoulos highlights his poetic take on con- Society of Botanical Artists: The Art of “episodes.” The tenth (and final) project temporary Greek life. Screenings include the Woody Plant. (July 8-September 11) reflects on a 1963 display, originally titled

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12D July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 HUECU Student Refi_JulyAug_outlines.indd 1 5/20/16 8:38 AM Document1Document1 11/20/03 11/20/03 11:51 11:51 AM AM Page Page 1 1

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Fifty Photographs at Harvard: 1844-1966. (July 6-August 7) ASSISTEDASSISTEDLIVINGLIVINGRETIREMENTRETIREMENTCOMMUNITYCOMMUNITY Spotlight Independent and Assisted Living SpecializedHere’s what Memory people Care are Here’s what people are www.harvardartmuseums.org Whatsayingsaying do Harvard about about us. alumni us. Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Ru- have in common? bens, and Rembrandt offers about 40 works from the museums’ collection of Cadbury Commons Netherlandish, Dutch, and Flemish draw- A Remarkable Senior Residence ings from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. (Through August 14)

New Bedford Whaling Museum Name:Name:MiltonMilton R. R. www.thewhalingmuseum.org Occupation:Occupation:PostalPostal Supervisor, Supervisor, Retired Retired Inner Light: The World of William Brad- Hobbies:Hobbies:Reading,Reading, Walking, Walking, Exercising Exercising Lifestyle:Lifestyle:Independent,Independent, Active Active ford. A comprehensive look at this nine- ChoiceChoice of Senior/Assisted of Senior/Assisted Living: Living: teenth-century painter best known for his CadburyCadbury Commons Commons The Harvard alumni who chose depictions of ships and the Arctic, who also “ThereCadbury“There is a is stable aCommons stable and and gentle gentle may atmosphere atmosphere have captured dramatic scenes of coastal New of helpof help and and empathy empathy throughout throughout the the England. (Opens July 1) community.retiredcommunity. from I feel Iwork, feelassured assured but that not thatI am fromI partam part oflife. of others’others’ lives, lives, as they as they are ofare mine. of mine. For Formyself, myself, I feel that Cadbury• Commons provides a I feelMuseum that Cadbury Visits Commons Play Reading provides a Peabody Essex Museum MAGAZINE/JC HARVARD wellSymphonywell trained trained and andcaring Selections caring group group of •people ofLecture people who who are interestedare interested in my in welfare.”my welfare.” www.pem.org Check out 12 newly painted utility box- Series • Yoga • Organic Gardening More than 40 oil paintings and watercol- es throughout Harvard Square. Images CallCall (617) (617) 868-0575 868-0575 to arrange to arrange a personal a personal tour,Calltour, (617) or visit or 868-0575 visit www.cadburycommons.com www.cadburycommons.com to arrange a personal tour, ors created between the late 1880s and of unicorns, pandas, and a wolf howling WhereWhereor visitThe www.cadburycommons.comThe Emphasis Emphasis Is On Is OnLiving Living 1912 are on display in American Impres- at the moon join rollicking abstractions, 66 Sherman6666 Sherman Sherman Street, Street, Street, Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge, sionism: Childe Hassam and the Isles of tranquil scenes of nature, and decora- EQUAL EQUAL MA MA02140 02140 ◆ (617) ◆ (617) 868-0575 868-0575 HOUSING HOUSING MA 02140 • (617)868-0575 OPPTY OPPTY Shoals, revealing inspiring views of these tively framed poetic texts. This form of beautiful and historic islands six miles off public art, a trend evident in cities across the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. the country, celebrates local artists, en- (Opens July 16) hances public space, and deters vandal- ism. “The utility boxes were an eyesore,” Boston Society of Architects says Denise Jillson, executive director of www.architects.org the Harvard Square Business Associa- Curated by the Design Museum Boston, tion, which organized and financed the Extraordinary Playscapes explores the just over $1,000 project, working in col- role of play, and designers’ and architects’ laboration with the city and a host of innovative efforts to spur children’s healthy volunteers. “This is a fun and powerful emotional, social, and physical growth. The statement about how the whole com- show includes “Playground Passports” that munity can work together to make ev- promote some of Boston’s most intriguing erything more beautiful.” spaces, including PlayCubes, a new instal- Artists represented include Harvard lation at Chinatown Park and PlayForm 7, students—Grace Chen ’19 (a rendition a “playscape” added to City Hall Plaza in of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night June. (Through September 5) across the street from the First Parish in Teaching the World® Cambridge), Julia Grotto ’17 (a somber DeCordova Sculpture Park portrait of a woman at 10 Eliot Street), and Museum and Nicole Flett ’18 and Montita So- www.decordova.org wapark ’18 (scenes of trees and birds EXPLORE THE WORLD Lotte Jacobi, Lisette Model: Urban perched over a stormy sea at Winthrop IN A CREATIVE AND Camera. A series of portraits, abstrac- Park)—alongside the Square’s popular CARING ENVIRONMENT. tions, and stirring street scenes lend insight spray-paint artist and vendor Antonio into the sensitive, but also bold and versa- Maycott, local painter Dennis Smith, and tile, work of these two twentieth-century grade-schoolers at the nonprofit Com- Pre-K to 12th artists. (Through September 18) munity Art Center. Harvard Square Business To learn more, call 617.499.1459 Events listings are also accessible at Association or visit www.isbos.org www.harvardmagazine.com. www.harvardsquare.com

12F July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 1730 Ave Cambridge, MA 02138 617 245-4044

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The Animals’ Kingdom One woman’s drive to build a piece of “heaven” on earth

by Nell Porter Brown

white cat named Fluffy lounges is a “home for life” for 132 abused beside a campfire, licking herself or abandoned animals. White on a nippy spring day. Wizard, a founded the farm 20 years ago A black pug, trots into view, bark- and depends on a crew of devoted ing at his constant companion, an old beagle volunteers, adults and teenagers, called Freedom. The two paw playfully at to keep it open to the public year- each other, flop over, and are rolling around round. “There’s no other reserve in the dirt just as Debra White appears to around like this, where the ani- greet visitors to her Winslow Farm Ani- mals are so free,” says volunteer mal Sanctuary, in Norton, Massachusetts. Ron Mollins, who has been help- “Now, come on,” she tells the dogs, bending ing out since 1998. “We don’t have to stroke them, and they cheerfully move lions or tigers, but if you really along. “The farm goes around in a circle,” want to get to know animals, this is the fully integrated, and their living quarters, White says, turning to her human guests. place to do it.” cleaned daily, are rotated over time, “so “You can touch the animals, if they want Dozens of cats roam the grounds, while they don’t get bored.” Many of the cats, you to. But not the pot-bellied pigs. Go up goats, mini-horses, rabbits, and emus like black, amber-eyed Velcro asleep by in the back under the pine trees to see the peaceably share a corral. Harmony tends the aviary, have been thrown over the donkeys, they’re out with the alpacas. Please to prevail; their needs are met, White sug- farm’s roadside fence at night. “That hap- make sure you close the gates behind you.” gests, and there’s nothing to fear. Nine pens,” White reports, wearily. “We find With these simple rules, visitors are un- separate feeding stations mitigate com- them in carriers in the morning. No notes, leashed to explore the 16.5-acre site that petition for food, newcomers are thought- nothing telling me anything about them.

12H July - August 2016 Photographs by Stu Rosner Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared

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Representing the Amanda Armstrong Senior Global Real Estate Advisor North Shore’s c 978.879.6322 finest homes AmandaArmstrong.net [email protected] Each office independently owned and operated Opposite: Beyond the farm entrance, goats roam the barnyard, peafowl commune at the aviary, and donkeys greet visitors. Above: Founder Debra White and Belle, a Hafflinger saved from slaughter Step Outside with

One time we had 23 rabbits dumped Outward Bound Professional! over—it took us days to catch them all and then they all had to be spayed and neu- “Harvard has worked with OBP for 20+ years. OBP custom designs tered so they wouldn’t reproduce.” White took in Athena, the black-nosed our program to provide students the opportunity to examine their sheep, after the Animal Rescue League of team’s development and become aware of their leadership Boston found her living on a median strip off Route 495. An Indian indigo peacock, assumptions. OBP masterfully provides this experience.” now at least 30 years old, has been at Win- - David King, Faculty Chair, MPA Programs, slow Farm for more than half his life. Dur- of Government ing a recent visit, he was in full wooing form, fanning and quivering his six-foot spread of iridescent blue and green feathers at potential mates. White says that when she first saw him, he was living in a four- by-four-foot cage with “feces caked on his plumage.” Every day White gets calls about animals in trouble or in need of a home. It’s wrenching to turn any creature away, but the farm runs on a $200,000 annual budget dependent on visitor admission fees, fun- Photo by: Tom Fitsimmons draising, donations, and grants, and is at capacity. “I try to teach people—and they (617) 830-5114 should teach their children that responsi- [email protected] bility—that when you get an animal, it is Boston Harbor Islands www.thompsonisland.org

Harvard Magazine 12I Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared yours to care for. The way you treat it at while a farrier cleaned and trimmed their tors, but rabbits are out and about, and first, when it’s a baby, should be the way hooves. Visitors are free to watch, ask ques- doves fly in and around the aviary, where you always treat it throughout its life,” tions, and learn. A few slowly approached Jin (a red, blue, and yellow pheasant found White explains. “These are not little pieces the three donkeys and laid hands on their in the parking lot of the Toys “R” Us in of disposable trash.” manes, smoothing down the fur. The four North Attleboro) lives with the peafowl. alpacas have big, liquid eyes, but are skit- Chickens peck and squawk here and there, The farm lies between a country road tish; a calm approach occasionally yields a often congregating with the roosters, Har- and Meadowbrook Pond. An old pine grove silky touch of their chocolate-colored fur. ry and Larry, at the far end of the property, shades the chunk of land where the don- The horses and mini-horses are in pad- on the porch of the David Sheldon White keys and alpacas were hanging out recently docks, where volunteers accompany visi- Resource Center, which houses events,

ALL IN A DAY: Sweet Sweat

Public baths are an ancient tradition. Turks have the hammam, Russians have banyas, and Japanese, their onsen. For Finns and Swedes, it’s the sauna: people happily clus- tered in a closed room heated to a toasty 220 degrees. For devotees, it is a ritual, a spiritual and bodily cleans- ing, says David Straus, a regular at the region’s traditional Finnish sauna, which has been run in rural Pembroke, Massa- The saunas (below right) are steps from chusetts, by the Uljas Koitto Temperance Society (UKTS) since Furnace Pond (above), where a raft beckons swimmers. Old pines shade the 1927. For others, like Straus and his wife, Irina, from Latvia, who rustic lodge (below left); guests are come weekly with their three young children, the experience encouraged to enjoy its cozy living room. is simply and deeply relaxing. Once hot enough, sauna-takers leave the cedar-paneled sweat dens, walk 10 feet, and dive into 1,000 people, enough to support saunas, Furnace Pond. In the winter, a hole is cut into the ice for dunk- churches, and social clubs. The Uljas Koit- ing. “You sweat out all the impurities of the work week, you to (“Noble Endeavor”) was a religious open and shut your pores; it just feels good,” says Straus, also group founded in 1892 to stem drunken- the society’s treasurer. “We spend the whole day together. And ness among fellow Finns—and liquor is you disconnect from the still prohibited on the property. The Uljas Koitto Temperance Society rest of the world.” Newcomers are warmly welcomed— www.uktshome.com Open year round; May through October, The property sits at and given tips: eat a solid meal about 90 Saturdays, 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. the end of Suomi (“Finn- minutes before entering the heat, drink ish”) Road, a dirt lots of water, and take it slowly. The tem- drive leading into a perature changes can be a shock, literally. pine-tree glade. It There are two wood-fired saunas, one for each gender; both includes a lodge built have attached rooms for changing and showering. Guests should around 1900, where bring toiletries, a water bottle, and towels along with a bathing coffee, tea, and suit, although many people choose to go nude in the sauna itself. snacks are served The place draws a mix of long-term South Shore-dwellers and on a screened porch. more recent immigrants, mainly from Europe; everyone tends UKTS is run by a to sit outside on benches and talk in between sweats and swims. core group of about Guests can also gather in the lodge’s living room, which has a 45 volunteers who fireplace, books, and toys. have cared enough It’s not a spa or a nudist colony, although it’s been mistaken over the years to for both. People seem to love it, or leave it. Straus has had keep it alive. friends visit “and never come back,” he says, laughing. “They A good number can’t get used to so many people sitting in a small room barely are descended from clothed, or it’s just too hot.” Finnish immigrants It’s also not a place to be loud or flashy, take selfies, blab on who first arrived in smart phones, or commune with laptops. People mostly sit Quincy in the 1880s quietly, and enjoy the natural setting. “You can go in and out to work in the quar- of the sauna, you rest in between, out in the open air,” Straus ries; by 1920, that says. “You can take the kayak out. You eat, you swim, you community had meet people. People just enjoy talking to each other. It’s just so grown to more than unique.” vn.p.b.

12J July - August 2016 Photographs by James Ahola Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Untitled-5 1 5/17/16 3:30 PM Harvard Squared educational programs, and even beds for volunteers who travel from afar. White built it, as well as her own wood-framed house, and other beguil- ing structures scattered around the landscape. Sheds, cabins, chicken- wire enclosures, and even a tiny chapel to commemo- rate residents who have died, are often Residents include alpacas, freshly flanked by wildflower and herb gardens, sheared for summer; peacocks, free to spread their tail feathers; or shrouded by wisteria. The handsome, and this pig and sheep enjoying the sun. hexagonal stone barn with round win- dows, a skylight, and a shingled roof, was nure and mud, dust, dirt, loose feathers and constructed this past winter for the don- fur, food scraps, hay, grain, tractors, hoses, keys. Visitors also gather at play zones, ropes, shovels, and sludge buckets—or the picnic tables, or around a fire pit. endless labor required to run it. The place has a storybook feel. Visitors Since 1996, White says, she has taken sit on bentwood furniture to watch the only five days off. Three were spent in the paddock, or wait for animals to wander by. hospital undergoing knee surgery, a break Geese favor the hand-dug pool, banked by that “felt like a European vacation,” she rocks. Dozens of stone animal statues are says, laughing. Yet the farm offers a famil- tucked into nooks or stand on pedestals iar routine. White grew up in a nearby log was to be very quiet and observant. We in the gardens, offering the makings for an cabin, and helped care for her father, David didn’t talk very much,” she explains; often, impromptu treasure hunt. Children are en- Sheldon White, who had been a “genius in- she was her father’s hands, building what couraged to explore and simply spend time ventor for Texas Instruments in the 1950s,” he could not. She also spent significant with the animals, without any agenda. And she says, but was diagnosed with Parkin- time outside, playing in the woods by her- unlike at petting zoos, no attempts are made son’s disease by the time she was three. self, or in the company of her pets. “They to hide the evidence that this is a farm—ma- “The way I had to communicate with him were my happiness, they were always there

STAFF PICK: Cycling Sightseers free pathways. The guide suggests starting at the New England Aquarium; bring along a bike on the MBTA, or rent one from the The Landscape Architect’s Guide to Boston is an online adjacent kiosk for Hubway, the city’s bike-share program. Ride collection of tours through 26 neighborhoods, including South along Commercial Street toward the North End, the traditional Boston, Jamaica Plain, and a few in Cambridge, many off the tour- Italian neighborhood (an ideal stop for lunch, gelato, or pastries), ist track. The point is to give Boston’s 12 million-plus annual then head onto Causeway Street, taking a sharp right just before visitors and its residents a richer understanding, from a topo- North Station/TD Garden, to access one of the city’s most in- graphical perspective, of how and why the city has evolved. genious additions to cycling infrastructure: the 690-foot North One ideal half-day trip is a 10-mile loop called The Boston/ Bank Bridge that curves under the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, Cambridge Bike Network, incorporating long stretches of car- through the Charles River Locks, and into Paul Revere and North Point Parks, which offer picnicking and sunbathing. Past those is the Museum of Science. Then the tour U-turns back to Boston, picking up the Storrow Drive/Esplanade bike path. Take that to the Harvard Bridge, which returns riders to Cambridge, at the edge of MIT. Follow the guide’s map along Memorial Drive, taking a right just before the Hyatt Regency, then another onto the Vassar Street cycle track, which runs into a transformed Kendall Square (stop for a meal at Area Four, or ice cream at Toscanini’s). Then wind back to the Aquarium through the historic Back Bay (via Commonwealth Avenue) and the Downtown Crossing shopping district. At a leisurely pace, with The Landscape Architect’s Guide to Boston no stops, the trip would Boston/Cambridge Bike Network likely take two hours. www.asla.org/Boston vn.p.b.

12L July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 WE ARE | known for exemplary service

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160707_Gibsonsothebys.indd 1 5/19/16 1:33 PM Harvard Squared

for me and brought me through a lot,” she care for her father full time, decided to buy says, as did the sights and sounds of nature back a portion of the land and build a sanc- and its animals. “To this day, I feel I am in tuary. Working at three jobs (including heaven on earth to be here,” she adds. “I as a veterinary assistant), she eventually think a lot of people are just missing out on saved enough money to do just that. the simple things that are offered to us.” “I call her the ‘Jane Goodall of Norton,’” Winslow Farm is located on property Ron Mollins says while tending the camp- that was owned by her father’s family until fire behind White’s house. He comes every it “was lost due to his illness,” she says. In day for at least three hours to chop wood, her twenties, White, who attended college rake, clean up—whatever “she asks me to for a year before choosing to stay home and do.” Still, “I get more out of this place than

CURIOSITIES: Winslow Homer’s Early Days

On Sunday afternoons through September, WELCOME HOME TO 154 ALLSTON STREET, The 1853 Homer House, an Italianate mansion a contemporary single family home set back from the street offering privacy rare that dominates a hill just above Belmont town to Cambridgeport. The open floorplan center, is open for tours. Visitors are also wel- on the fi rst fl oor continues thru to the come to lounge outside, drink punch, and play private backyard. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms along with the walk-out lower croquet on the home’s expansive front lawn. “We level create a great multi-level layout. This off- want it to feel like it is summer in the Victorian market listing won’t last long; call for details. 1800s,” says the site’s volunteer curator, Susan SPENCER & LAUREN LANE Smart ’71, CMS ’01. She is a member of the non- [email protected] profit Belmont Woman’s Club, which saved the 617-872-0030 | SpencerLane.com house—built by wealthy Boston merchant Wil- FOLLOW US ON: fb.com/cambridgeproperties liam Flagg Homer and his wife, Adeline Welling- and @SpencerandLaurenLane ton—from demolition in 1927, and still owns it. Guided tours highlight the largely untouched original interior architecture, along with the life and early work of the couple’s nephew, Win- slow Homer. A small exhibit includes “The War—Making Havelocks for the Volunteers” to Our Valued Advertising Partners (the cover of an 1861 Harper’s Weekly), which Cadbury Commons is set in the mansion’s parlor, Smart says, and The Charles Hotel “The Robin’s Note” (below, from an 1870 issue Early illustrations by Winslow Coldwell Banker / Barbara Currier of Every Saturday) which “may have been set on Homer are on display in Belmont. Coldwell Banker / Gail Roberts the porch.” Smart adds that a number of Homer’s early illustrations and paintings, Coldwell Banker / Spencer & Lauren Lane especially his rural landscapes, “contain Belmont scenes.” The young artist spent Compass Realty much of his first two decades in West Cambridge, parts of which, including his rela- Fresh Pond Ballet tives’ homesite, became Belmont when that town was established in 1859. Gibson Sotheby’s International He and his family lived nearby, but in a modest farmhouse (still standing and privately Goddard House owned) because his father was a “get rich quick sort Hammond / Brattle Office of fellow” and lost a bundle in the gold Hammond / Carol & Myra rush, Smart explains. Homer spent time at the man- International School of Boston sion, however, even after he moved to New York Lux Bond & Green City in 1859 and began to emerge as one of the cen- McLean Hospital tury’s finest painters. Most people associate Homer Sotheby’s /Amanda Armstrong with Maine, where from 1884 until his death in 1910 Thompson Island - he lived and worked in his Prouts Neck studio, now Outward Bound Professional owned, and opened for limited tours, by the Port- Viewpoints Real Estate MV / Bobbi Flake Reed land Museum of Art. “There, you learn about the Waypointe on Lake Sunapee last years of his life,” Smart notes. “Here, you come Welch & Forbes, LLC for the young, ro- mantic Winslow The 1853 Homer House Support from these advertisers helps us www.1853homerhouse.org produce the independent, high-quality publication just starting out.” “Summer Sundays with Winslow Harvard alumni rely on for information vn.p.b. Homer,” through September about the University and each other. IMAGES COURTESY OF THE 1853 HOMER HOUSE

12N July - August88 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared

I put into it,” he adds. “It’s magical—the way life should be, and could be. It’s a nourishing place, nourishing to the spirit.” White has never strayed from her initial, core mis- sion: to rescue and care for maltreated animals. She also promotes animal wel- fare and the conservation of natural habitats, offering barnyard tours, especially when she had about educational programs, and a partnership 300 animals on site—takes too with nearby Wheaton College. Students, much time and effort; too often she says, “come to observe alternative life- adopters “did not realize what they were Play areas for all ages blend in with the style living” as part of courses on religion getting themselves into” and returned the “storyland” ambiance. and philosophy, to study animal psychology animals. other and if they don’t see any fear, then and training techniques, or sometimes to do At one time she dreamed of expanding they are all just cool and they’re laying empirical research. (They have worked with the farm to include a charter school, trails around together,” White says. “I constant- the farm’s miniature horses, assessing their and campsites, and an on-site holistic ly know exactly what everybody needs cortisone levels, heart rates, and behaviors.) veterinarian. Now, she says, “my goals are here, without a hesitation, on a daily ba- When networking with other animal- completed. We are running as is.” sis, even when they are sick, because I am rights and rescue organizations, White is It’s enough. Recently a visitor sat down quiet and always watching.” People, she happy to share information, but her daily by the aviary and watched the peacock adds, “don’t really stop and observe and duties are too demanding for much formal strut and call. A brindle cat came over and experience what’s going on around them. political activism. Even adopting out ani- curled up in the sun. White doves flew by. If humans didn’t have voices, I think we’d mals she rescues—which she used to do, A llama loped up. “The animals read each all be better off.”

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If you would like to list a property in our March-April issue, contact Abby Shepard: 617.496.4032.

Harvard Magazine 12O Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 TASTES & TABLES

In with the New Harvard Square’s Parsnip should ripen over time. by nell porter brown

From left: The dining room, although refined and calm, could use a splash of warmth from the upstairs lounge. was the filet of sole in a quintessen- tially French sauce americaine ($30), accompanied by lobster-filled tortel- lini that were, unfortunately, a bit too tough and chewy. The desserts are especially mem- orable. The lemon-balm sorbet paired with chunks of golden cake and a pool of buttermilk mousse ($11) “eats like a strawberry short- arsnip, which replaced the vener- made rolls—potato, wheat, and oatmeal— cake,” noted the affable waiter, “but ated Upstairs on the Square last fall, and a dish of sweet butter. We recommend much better.” Slices of faintly ripe straw- lacks the sassy whimsicality of its the appetizer of hand-plucked heads of berries added a pleasing herbaceous P predecessor. Gone are the fuchsia- carefully roasted baby cauliflower, purple note. The poached pears, tasting faintly colored walls adorned with leaping zebras, and yellow, that arrived with a subtle apple of anise and bergamot, lay on a plump the gilded chairs, mirrors, and the sense of purée and a slab of novel, cumin-spiced bed of ricotta cream tweaked with honey participating in an Alice in Wonderland mo- crème brûlée ($14): rough crunch meets and plenty of zested lemon ($11). ment that charmed diners for years. Pars- silky loaf, with a touch of burnt sugar. The Parsnip’s third-floor lounge is a warm nip is more buttoned-down: an affluent Brit fresh seared scallops in a truffle butter counterpart to the dining room’s cool af- in a flannel suit to Upstairs’s can-can girl. sauce came with poached baby gem let- fect. Low lights, velvety seating, and small The dining room still has its soaring tuce, strips of prosciutto, and a generous tables offer intimacy. Behind the bar, al- ceiling and the large windows overlook- clump of sweet pea tendrils that stitched luring liquor bottles cluster along shelves ing Winthrop Park. But the interior is the dish together ($17). backed by a dramatically lit red wall. Food now ruled by warm gray tones, a shining An entrée of handmade cavatelli, small is served: a fine mix of lamb or fish in the parquet floor, and 1950s-style, space-age blobs of dough tenderly rolled in on form of sandwiches and salads, along with chandeliers. The look-alike Jackson Pol- themselves, was awash in whipped, melt- small plates of snacks that seem to change lock painting that looms over the tasteful, ing, goat cheese ($24). The creamy mass frequently. if generic, décor prompts the question: can nearly obscured oyster mushrooms and The lounge’s porthole-style windows re- Parsnip develop a character of its own? the earthy, bitterish bite of fiddlehead fern main from the Upstairs days. They offer a The food tries to answer that. Continen- fronds, and overwhelmed bird’s-eye view of the con- tal fare with a French base, it’s the essence a sprinkling of pine nuts. PARSNIP tinually morphing Square, of “fine dining,” and therefore justifiably Yet the lusty dish was 91 Winthrop St epitomized by Parsnip it-

rich. The meal began with excellent home- tasty and filling. Lighter Cambridge self. vn.p.b. PARSNIP OF CHINNOCK/COURTESY E. WAYNE (617) 714-3206 12P July - August 2016 www.parsniprestaurant.com Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL COMMENCEMENT 2016

Clockwise from top left: Law School graduates flaunt their profession’s symbol of authority; a Kennedy School graduate The set designers did their work well: for prepared to bear the weight of the world; the second year in a row, the Big Day itself Mason Fellow Sidrotun Naim, MC/M.P.A. was spectacularly summery, verging on hot ’16, of Bandung, Indonesia; and Garrett C. Allen, of Mather House and Bellevue, (but clear, nary a storm in sight), with li- Washington, A.B.-to-be lacs and dogwoods lingering in bloom after a long, cool spring. candidates for election to the Board of Over- In the cinematic vein, the University itself seers (see page 67); and the year-ending co- unspooled some carefully prepared narra- troversy over new College policies aimed at tives this year. President Drew Faust began reining in single-sex final clubs and other formal acknowledgment of Harvard’s past social organizations (see page 27). entanglement with slavery, welcomed Air Force ROTC back to campus (see pages 29- As if counter-programming the sunny 30), and chatted about the arts and humani- backdrop and the intramural concerns of

ties with Conan O’Brien ’85. Other staged ap- the preceding semesters, much of the week PHOTOGRAPHS CLOCKWISE FROM JIM TOP LEFT: HARRISON; STU ROSNER JIM (2); HARRISON pearances featured visitors Al Gore ’69, LL.D. itself focused on the world beyond, in de- ’94 (work on climate change in China) and cidedly darker tones. On Tuesday morning, Scene 1, Take 2 Stephen Hawking, S.D. ’90 (black holes— Cogan University Professor Stephen Green- where, as in China, the sun doesn’t shine). blatt, orator for the Phi Beta Kappa liter- For the 365th Commencement, Harvard Of course, there were unscripted stories, ary exercises, drew on a personal experience went Hollywood, with headline speakers too: the long, bitter protests and sit-in at the of anti-Semitism and his immersion in The Steven Spielberg (the afternoon exercises), Law School, aimed at addressing perceived Merchant of Venice to make the case for un- Rashida Jones ’97 (College class day), and deficiencies in diversity and inclusion; the derstanding the other. He concluded with a Sarah Jessica Parker (Law School class day). Free Harvard/Fair Harvard slate of petition commentary on an unperformed play about

14 July - August 2016 www.harvardmagazine.com/commencement Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 

Clockwise from top left: A new J.D. sends a message— modifying the school’s former shield to reflect its slave connections; spirited Mather- ites (from left) Chris Bruno of Pompton Plains, , Sir Thomas More, in a passage thought to Maryland, Baltimore County (known na- Daniel Ryu of Palisades Park, New Jersey, Robert Doles of Johns Creek, Georgia, Ryan be in Shakespeare’s own hand, in which a tionwide for educating minorities, women, Fortin of North Reading, Massachusetts, mob demands the explulsion of “strangers” and low-income students in science, tech- Duncan O’Brien of Wellesley, Massachu- from England. He told the scholar-gradu- nology, engineering, and math), spoke to the setts, Leo Lim of Seoul, and Viviana Maymi ates-to-be that “You will have to decide for Graduate School of Education candidates of Tampa; Legally Blonde Jessica Cohen, M.B.A. ’15, J.D. ’16; Ed.M. celebrants (from yourselves” how to deal with “wretched just days after Faust spoke at UMBC’s grad- left) Bethany Dawson of Huntertown, strangers” in flight—“to look away or be- uation—her first non-Harvard commence- Indiana, Marcie Herring of Honolulu, and come involved, to secure your safety or to ment address. “[M]any colleges—most col- marshals Kara Lawson of Wausau, Wiscon- sin, and Shanae Burch of Buena, New Jersey; open yourselves to risk, to succor or to pun- leges—have not figured out how to do as Adams House faculty deans Sean Palfrey,

PHOTOGRAPHS CLOCKWISE FROM JIM TOP LEFT: HARRISON; STU ROSNER JIM (2); HARRISON ish.” He wished for them “the gift of see- good a job as UMBC at enabling all students hugging Alexandra Sperry ’16 of New York COURTESY OF JESSICA COHEN; STU ROSNER; JIM HARRISON ing the other as a human being”—as Sand- to reach their highest potential,” she said. City, and Judith Palfrey presided at the ers Theatre suddenly felt close to southern Hrabowski’s Cambridge remarks were diploma ceremonies. Europe. (See www.harvardmagazine.com/ preceded by, and turned out to echo, a mo- tling of our chains,/Take them off. Un-cuff PHOTOGRAPHS CLOCKWISE FROM STU TOP LEFT: ROSNER; JIM HARRISON; commencement for detailed reports on PBK ment that went viral: Ed.M. candidate Don- us.…/I’ve been a Black hole in the classroom and all the other events summarized here.) ovan Livingston’s spoken-word poem, “Lift for far too long;/Absorbing everything, with- Wednesday’s jam-packed roster of class Off,” on freedom, education, and equality— out allowing my light to escape./But those days had a home-and-home series, of a sort. and on African Americans’ difficult, entwin- days are done. I belong among the stars.”). Freeman Hrabowski III, LL.D. ’10, president ing histories with all three. (“As educators, Hrabowski saluted Livingston as a “twenty- of the deservedly exemplary University of rather than raising your voices/Over the rus- first-century Martin Luther King,” and re-

Harvard Magazine 15 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL • COMMENCEMENT 2016 called his mother’s saying, “We the teachers and murder; climate-related famine ity) were an anomaly. Given slower produc- make the difference.” in Africa and fires in Canada. It is as tivity growth, an alarming erosion in edu- Faust struck an almost grim tone on if we are being visited by the horse- cational and skills gains for workers, and Thursday afternoon. After beginning non- men of the apocalypse with war, fam- what he called the “commodification” of un- comittally ( “[M]y assignment is to offer a ine, natural disaster—and, yes, even sophisticated labor under the twin hammers few reflections on this magnificent institu- pestilence—as Zika spreads, aided by of globalization and technological change, he tion at this moment in its history. And what political controversy and paralysis. and others were downbeat. Louise Sheiner a moment it is”), she was all business, and On Friday, “Building an Economy for Pros- ’82, Ph.D. ’93, now at the Brookings Institu- then some: perity and Equality,” the Radcliffe Day morn- tion, pointed to the dismaying, divergent What is going on? What is happening ing conversation, wasn’t quite at the Four outcomes for those at the top and bottom to the World? The tumultuous state of Horsemen level of despond—the current of the economy: a clear and widening “in- American politics, spotlighted in this economic indicators are relatively robust, equality in life expectancy.” Most agreed that contentious presidential contest; the after all, particularly in the United States. investments in education and other policy political challenges around the globe But it didn’t take long for panelist David prescriptions could help close those gaps. from Brazil to Brexit; the Middle East Autor, Ph.D. ’99, an economist at MIT, to de- Whether economic growth can be reignited in flames; a refugee crisis in Europe; clare that the halcyon decades from the end is “the hardest part,” concluded Lee profes- terrorists exploiting new media to of World War II until 1970 (robust growth, sor of economics Claudia Goldin. “Equity perform chilling acts of brutality rising incomes, and widely shared prosper- may be easier.”

the dark early uni- positor of the American experi- Honoris Causa verse. Doctor of Sci- ence who lucidly illuminates the ence: Luminous star in matter of Black lives. Six men and three women received honorary de- the firmament of astrophysics, royal grees at Commencement. University provost Alan citizen of science and namesake of His Excellency Fernando M. Garber introduced the honorands in the follow- an asteroid, he has shone fresh light Henrique Cardoso. Sociol- ing order, and President Drew Faust read the ci- on the cosmic dark ages and the gen- ogist and former two-term tations, concluding with the recipient’s name and esis of galaxies far, far away. president of Brazil. Doctor degree. For fuller background on each, see har- of Laws: Expert on dependency

vardmag.com/honorands-16. El Anatsui. Preeminent West STU ROSNER and development, exponent of de- African sculptor, best known Martin Rees mocracy and engagement, he has as- Judith Jarvis Thom­ for shimmering hangings cended the echelons of both academe son. Moral philoso- made from found objects. Doctor of Arts: and government to guide his nation through chal- pher and metaphy- Fusing ordinary articles of refuse into extraor- lenge and change. sician, a professor of dinary artworks that refuse categorization, he philosophy emerita weaves strands of Mary L. Bonauto. at MIT. Doctor of diverse cultures and Lawyer and civil-rights Laws: Eminent moral genres into splendor- director of GLAD, theorist and metaphysi- ous cascades of grav- leader in the effort to cian who ponders with ity and grace. eliminate discrimina-

STU ROSNER acuity what it means to tion based on sexual Judith Jarvis be good; exemplar of rea- Elaine Fuchs. A orientation. Doctor of Thomson son and scholarly values, National Medal Laws: Savvy strategist in who models with ingenuity what it is to be good. of Science-win- the quest for equality, su-

STU ROSNER ning stem-cell re- premely deft advocate for David Brion Davis, Ph.D. ’56. Yale’s Ster- El Anatsui searcher, based at the dignity of all, she has ling Professor of American history emeri- Rockefeller­ Uni- brought to life stories both

tus, a leading scholar of slavery and ab- versity. Doctor of Science: Stem-cell eminence of love and of loss, and STU ROSNER olition. Doctor of Laws: Confronting the and doyenne of the epidermis, whose innovative in- now, thanks to her, count- Mary L. Bonauto unconscionable negation of freedom, discerning vestigations of genes and proteins have pluripotent less hearts may be glad. our demons and our better angels, a sterling chron- power to get under our skin. icler of inhuman bondage who shows that the past Steven Spielberg. Film director, producer, not was, but is. Arnold Rampersad, Ph.D. ’73. The ac- and screenwriter. Doctor of Arts: Sovereign claimed biographer of W.E.B. Du Bois, of celluloid storytelling who draws us into the dark The Right Honorable Lord Martin Rees. Langston Hughes, and Ralph Ellison. Doc- then directs us toward the light; his movies move us Astrophysicist and cosmologist, who has tor of Laws: Lifelong student of the human spirit, in magical ways as we closely encounter the terrors pioneered understanding of black holes and literary biographer extraordinaire, an erudite ex- and wonders of life.

16 July - August 2016 www.harvardmagazine.com/commencement Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 

Mirth broke through the gloom from an unexpected quarter. During the Morning Exercises, the University brass, elevated on the dais beside Memorial Church, typically adhere strictly (one is tempted to say reli- giously) to their elaborate script, only to be knocked off course by ebullient M.B.A.s, or gavel-wielding J.D.s, or, especially, spirited A.B.s—full of beans, and sometimes effer- vescing beverages, cheering their fulfillment of “the Faculty’s requirements for the first degree in Arts or in Science,” as the script puts it (even if they do not seem, just then, particularly “ready to advance knowledge,

to promote understanding, and to serve STU ROSNER society”). Ph.D.s Anthony J. Covarrubias, of Gardena, This year, frisky deans did a number on California, and Eylul Harputlugil, of Izmir, Turkey, and New York City, were among those admitted themselves, beginning with Xiao-Li Meng— to the “ancient and universal company of a professor of statistics, for goodness sake. scholars.” Du Ruitao, S.M. ’16, of Foshan, Guang- kids. I’m the father of seven, and I Presenting the doctoral candidates, he said, dong, China, was bedecked with blossoms and cash. kept insisting on the importance of

“As dean of the Graduate School of Arts and going to college, but I hadn’t walked HARRISON JIM Sciences…,” paused, then continued, “hear- “How many of you took 37 years to graduate? the walk. So in my fifties, I re-enrolled at ing no cheering,” finally elicited the desired Like most of you, I began college in my teens, Cal State, Long Beach, and I earned my de- response—but not loud enough to satisfy— but sophomore year I was offered my dream gree. I just have to add, it helped that they and cued another round. Faust, trying to job at Universal Studios, so I dropped out. gave me course credit in paleontology for confer said doctorates, was in turn inter- I told my parents that if my movie career the work that I did on Jurassic Park. Three rupted, and had to command the rowdy didn’t go well, I would re-enroll. It went years of Jurassic Park. Thank you.” Life les- scholars to “wait a minute, here comes the all right.” In the end, he went back “for my sons, learned. responsibility part. You can’t leave that out.” There were further miscues and amuse- ments. School of Dental Medicine dean R. Commencement Bruce Donoff approached the microphone and froze as Provost paused. At Hightlights times, students were supposed to rise but did not, or when commanded to rise were From Phi Beta Kappa and Rashida Jones to Federal Reserve chair deemed to have risen already. Dean David Janet Yellen, harvardmagazine.com/commencement brings you N. Hempton ad libbed about being leader in-depth coverage from Commencement week. of “the huge faculty of divinity.” (The school does have longevity: it celebrates its bicen- Poet and Renaissance Scholar Launch tennial this coming academic year.) Gradu- Commencement Week ate School of Education dean James Ryan, The Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises featured stopped mid introduction by the future Stephen Greenblatt and Robyn Schiff. teachers’ cheers, said, “I’m gonna forget my harvardmag.com/pbk-16 lines.” He didn’t, of course. All in good fun. Compared to their graduate and profes- Freeman Hrabowski: “We the Teachers sional school predecessors, the undergradu- Make the Difference” ates were downright orderly, reversing the Hrabowski encouraged education graduates to normal order of affairs. People were fanning carry on the values of community and collabora- themselves, so perhaps the temperature, by tion that animated the civil-rights movement. then in the low 80s, was getting to them. harvardmag.com/hgse-16 After the lunch respite, it fell to Spielberg (whom Faust called “one of the greatest sto- Prosperity and Equality rytellers of our—or any other—time”) to A substantive discussion at this election-year steer a middle course between the down- Radcliffe Day beat and the daft. He did so most winningly harvardmag.com/radcliffe-16 by talking about his own trajectory. “I can remember my college graduation—which is visit harvardmagazine.com/commencement

easy, since it was only 14 years ago,” he said. FROM TOP: JIM HARRISON; COURTESY OF THE HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION; TONY RINALDO/COURTESY OF THE RADCLIFFE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY

Harvard Magazine 17 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL • COMMENCEMENT 2016 The Talk by your nearest and dearest. Your mak- ingly limiting reach of kinship and like-mindedness: ers. Today your tribesmen are not only in Kindness is so often dismissed as the ane- The Commencement-week speakers wove together your thoughts as you toil far away in Cam- mic, saccharine twin of its more robust sib- affectionate observations, searing personal anec- bridge, but now in plain sight, like dreams lings in the terminology of world religions: dotes, an explicit evocation of the apocalypse (in suddenly manifest in the waking world, compassion in Buddhism, mercy in Judaism President Drew Faust’s address, making the case loving you, annoying you, photographing and Islam, love in Christianity. Worse, kind- for universities’ role in troubled times), and that old the life out of you. And sometimes, ask- ness is often seen as a cowardly way to duck standby, avuncular advice (from Steven Spielberg). ing—behind your backs, or maybe right agonizing ethical dilemmas that involve the in front of you—what on Earth will she surrender of power, privilege, or capital; or Kindness: A “Subversive Thing” do with a Divinity de- to ignore systematic At ’s Multireligious Com- gree? Especially in this violence against female, mencement Service, in economy. brown, child, or gay and Memorial Church, fac- What they would do, she transgender bodies; or ulty speaker Kimber- hoped, was apply what they to hack the gnarly chal- ley C. Patton, profes- had learned: lenge of injustice while sor of the comparative You’ve spent years racking up gold stars for and historical study of training to become being nice. But kindness of religion, evoked the scholars and ministers, is not niceness. It is, in- school’s spirit: to become activists, to stead, a powerful and “What is it like become writers, to be- subversive thing. It is to teach there?” I’m come literate in what something that anyone sometimes asked. has always been one of can practice, even if she He Jiang

I usually answer, the oldest and most per- STU ROSNER cannot bring herself to wearily or humor- sistent realms of human experience, the one feel compassion, or mercy, or love. ously, depending that calls the shots for all the rest of them. No matter the challenge, she urged, “Let us nev- Kimberley C. Patton on the day: “God There is no chronic injustice or pernicious ertheless practice kindness, the gateway to

JUSTIN KNIGHT/COURTESY OF HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL bless them, they’re evil in this world that can be solved without compassion, the gateway to justice.” all trying to save the world.” How weird understanding the profound role that reli- and wonderful to see you world-savers gion, culture, and ideology, intertwining as “My Hand on Fire” today, and tomorrow, not as independent they do, play in its action. During the Commencement Morning Exercises, He self-actualizing graduate students, but And in doing so, pursue the hard work of being Jiang related a story stemming from his youth in a instead as tenderly encumbered, trailed kind and promulgating kindness, beyond the seem- farming community in Hunan province, far from images of today’s modern, urban China—an inci- dent that shaped his drive to pursue research on flu, Laugh Lines malaria, and hepatitis, and to disseminate knowl- edge to less privileged areas, like his home village. Rashida Jones ’97, College Class Day speaker, on selling When I was in middle school, a poison- a script for a $16-million movie, only to watch the deal fall ous spider bit my right hand. I ran to my through and then making the movie with her partner, for mom for help—but instead of taking me to $840,000—“almost a year of Harvard tuition.” a doctor, my mom set my hand on fire. Chief Marshal Sheryl Sandberg ’91, M.B.A. ’95, COO After wrapping my hand with cotton, of Facebook, representing the twenty-fifth reunion class then soaking it in wine, and putting a Rashida Jones

at the Commencement day luncheon spread in Widener HARRISON JIM chopstick into my mouth, she ignited the Library: “I am so happy to be here because this is one of the very few things I get to cotton. The flame quickly engulfed my do that Mark Zuckerberg does not. I worked really hard to graduate from Harvard— hand. The searing pain made me want to twice. And then I go work for someone who didn’t graduate once.” scream, but the chopstick prevented it. All Fiftieth reunioner Daniel Brooks ’66, waiting with classmates to process into I could do was watch my hand burn—one Tercentenary Theatre for the afternoon oratory, where he was “looking forward to minute, two minutes—until mom put out a Spielberg spiel.” the fire. Latin Salutatorian Anne Ames Power ’16 offered a You see, the part of China I grew up in “dictionary” of Harvardian terms (with English translation was a poor, pre-industrial farming society. tucked into the Morning Exercises programs for the un- When I was born, my village had no cars, schooled). Teasing out meanings, she explained: “[A]t Har- no telephones, no electricity, not even run- vard a ‘concentration’ can be defined as ‘an individual ning water. And we certainly didn’t have course of study’ as well as ‘what you lack in Friday morning modern medical resources. There was no class’”—and added the senior-year revelation “that ‘thesis’ doctor to see about my spider bite. Drew Faust can be a noun, a verb, and a state of being.” For those who study biology, you may Sheryl Sandberg

STU ROSNER have grasped the science behind my mom’s

18 July - August 2016 www.harvardmagazine.com/commencement Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 

Commencement Confetti

Musical Notes ble of delivering political one-liners Joshuah Brian Campbell ’16 did double as punchy as those deployed on the duty—nailing his Senior English Address hustings. Some samples: “We cannot during the Morning Ex- will away or wall away ercises but also, literally, the world” (former sec- singing for his dinner the retary of state Mad- night before. At the hon- eleine Albright, LL.D. orands’ banquet in Annen- ’97, at Harvard Kenne- berg Hall, accompanied by dy School’s Class Day). guitarist Alex Graff ’17, he “The ability to know, sang “Desafinado,” by Bra- as former dean Jeremy zilian songwriter Antônio Knowles used to put it, Carlos Jobim (a treat for ‘when someone is talk- Fernando Henrique Car- ing rot’” (President

doso, in lieu of the usual Drew Faust, Com- HARRISON JIM

classical selection). Dur- STU ROSNER mencement afternoon END OF AN ERA. This year’s festival rites ing the Phi Beta Kappa Joshuah Brian Campbell address, on the role of are the last for Grace Scheibner, Harvard’s Literary Exercises Tues- education in informing first formal Commencement director, who retires after 24 such extravaganzas. Scheib- day morning, the Radcliffe Choral So- discourse). “We are a nation of im- ner’s successor faces a job that combines ciety, somewhat surprisingly, sang “We migrants, at least for now” (Steven logistics mastery with penetrating psychol- Are…” by Ysaye Barnwell (of Sweet Honey Spielberg, Ar.D. ’16, in his afternoon ogy (tending to visiting heads of state and in the Rock); its charming refrain is well address—before referring to his at- entertainers) and exquisite diplomacy (weighing last-minute ticket requests). suited for graduates with attending el- tending family member, his 99-year- President Drew Faust gave her a richly ders: “We are our grandmothers’ prayers./ old father). deserved shout-out after conferring the We are our grandfathers’ dreamings./We honorary degrees. are the breath of our ancestors./We are Gendered (Club) Jokes the spirit of God.” Josh Bean ’16 did the As debate roiled after the College’s dress, President Faust teased about dis- fresh arrangement of “Simple Gifts” for decision to pressure members of final cussing with parents what is known as a the Commencement Choir’s Thursday clubs, fraternities, and sororities (see “‘final club.’ Without an ‘s.’” performance. page 27), Dean Rakesh Khurana came in for some ribbing. Tuesday morning, Phi Leading Lecturers Zingers Beta Kappa president Robin Kelsey said, The studious Phi Beta Kappans annually Commencement-goers may have noticed “Unlike some other societies bearing an- recognize teaching excellence. This year, that the United States is conducting a cient Greek initials, Phi Beta Kappa is not they honored Kiran Gajwani, lecturer and presidential election. It turns out that ac- embroiled in any campus controversy—of concentration adviser in economics, who ademics and their guests are fully capa- which I am aware,” giving the dean a sig- runs the senior-thesis research seminar; JIM HARRISON JIM nificant look. Kelsey Charles S. Hallisey, Numata senior lectur- went on to note the er in Buddhist literatures; and Brigitte A.B. election of academ- Libby, lecturer on the classics and Allston ic achievers to PBK, Burr assistant dean of “whatever your sex, (who had an excellent excuse for being ab- gender, or sexual sent: she delivered a daughter on Saturday, orientation.” In her May 21). It is a small sample, but all three Baccalaureate ad- are lecturers, not ladder faculty members on

FULL-SERVICE. In a big year for ROTC, Ensign Adam Gracia ’16 was joined at Wednesday’s commissioning ceremony by his U.S. Navy family: Captains Jorge Gracia and Nancy Gracia, and (right) Lieutenant (j.g.) Alexandra Gracia, his sister. President Drew Faust’s gift to the officers was Leadership, an anthology edited by Elizabeth D. Samet ’91, professor of English at the U.S. Military Academy, who came to campus the next day for her twenty-fifth reunion.

Harvard Magazine 19 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL • COMMENCEMENT 2016

the tenure track—perhaps a subtle comment on teaching.

Counting Who Counts Harvard awarded 7,727 degrees and 11 certificates on May 26. Colle- gians garnered 1,661 degrees. Those entering “the ancient and universal company of scholars” (Ph.D.s) and those who “have surmounted with

distinction the first stage of gradu- HARRISON JIM ate study” (a master’s in arts or sciences) to finance positions; a higher received 988 degrees from the Graduate proportion of respondents SIGNS OF THE TIMES. The Law School, having School of Arts and Sciences, led by 538 will be in finance and consult- abandoned its shield, associated with a slave-own- ing family (see the decorated mortarboard, page doctorates. Other notable totals: busi- ing than any class since 2007.) 15), and absent a successor, hoisted plain banners ness (934), extension (783), law (769), ed- More than half of those enter- on Langdell and in Tercentenary Theatre; stay ucation (746), Kennedy School (584), and ing the workforce expect start- tuned for the new design. In their anniversary MAGAZINE/JC HARVARD th public health (546). The world is also the ing salaries in excess of $70,000. years, the Harvard Alumni Association (175 ) and Harvard College Fund (90th) hailed alumni commu- richer to the tune of 61 Harvard-trained Panelists at Radcliffe’s Friday nity and philanthropy on the Yard’s light standards. dental specialists. conversation on “Building an Economy for the first African American to earn a Har- IVY BLING. - Prosperity and Equality” vard doctorate, and Ralph Ellison, Litt.D. mates Andrew Fischer ’16, of lamented the small fac- ’74, author of Invisible Man, who was that (well-named) Diamond Bar, California, a receiver, sports tion of College graduates year’s afternoon guest speaker. (In that 2013-2015 football champion- (4 percent in 2016) enter- dreary year, Harvard ship rings (next up: a job with ing public or nonprofit Magazine reported in Bank of America Merrill Lynch), as William Walker service. its news headlines, ’15, of Hingham, Massachu- “This year’s gradu- setts, shows his 2014 lacrosse Freshman Ties ates: More inter- championship hardware. First-year roommates Pen- ested in money” After summer travel, he joins Fidelity Investments. ny S. Pritzker ’81 and Eliz- and “ROTC on the

JIM HARRISON JIM abeth Sherwood-Randall wane.”) Senior Survey ’81 cross paths in Washington, D.C., where “This is the best time to enter the job mar- the former is secretary of commerce and Whose Ox Gets ket in close to a decade,” FiveThirtyEight’s the latter deputy secretary of energy. They Gored? Ben Casselman informed fortunate grad- were joined on a reunion panel by none Radcliffe “Econo- uates in early May. The ’s other than Loretta E. Lynch ’81, J.D. ’84, my and Prosper- senior survey (906 responses) offers con- whose day job is attorney general. ity” panelist Doug- STU ROSNER firming evidence, with 21 percent headed las W. Elmendorf, EXTRA! EXTRA! In a classic to consulting jobs, 18 percent to finance, Echoes dean of Harvard print-era hack, and 14 percent to technology. (The sub- Honorand Arnold Rampersad, Ph.D. ’73, Kennedy School, the Lampoon sets are amusing: 43 percent of male fi- LL.D. ’16, has written acclaimed books proposed address- hoisted Harvard Crimson display nal-club members reporting are heading about W.E.B. Du Bois, A.B. 1890, Ph.D. ’95, ing federal deficits racks and by cutting benefits deployed them at SOMBER SPEECHES. Canned oratory about life and raising Medi- the entry gates lessons congeals much graduation rhetoric. But care premiums for the Morning Exercises—fully sometimes, the talk becomes painfully real. “I am from those who here today to thank you—for saving my life,” class day stocked with back speaker Marcelle de Souza Gonçalves Meira, M.B.A have done better in issues of the ’16, shown here, told her society—a sugges- humor magazine. peers. Her husband and classmate, Pedro Meira, died tion greeted, to his last September from stomach cancer, and her remarks addressed this ultimate challenge. The amusement, by applause. “I don’t mean just College class of 1991 elected as its Chief Marshal Bill Gates [’77, LL.D. ’07],” he continued, Sheryl Sandberg, who shares with Meira an HBS and suggested extracting resources from M.B.A. (’95), and the loss of her husband, Dave the top third to half of the economic or- Goldberg ’89, little more than a year ago—the subject of her moving commencement address at the der—a suggestion, he joked, that elicited University of California, Berkeley, earlier in May. “slightly less applause.” SUSAN YOUNG/HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL BUSINESS YOUNG/HARVARD SUSAN

20 July - August 2016 www.harvardmagazine.com/commencement Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 

cure: heat deactivates protein, and the spi- Governors, must arm them- Steven Spielberg der’s venom is simply a form of protein. selves with the power which It’s cool how that folk remedy incorpo- knowledge gives.” Or as early rates basic biochemistry, isn’t it? But I am a twentieth-century civil rights Ph.D. student in biochemistry at Harvard, activist Nannie Helen Bur- I know that better, less painful treatment roughs put it, “education is existed. So I can’t help but ask myself, why democracy’s life insurance.” I didn’t receive one at the time? Evidence, reason, facts, logic, an understanding of his- “Truth Cannot Simply Be Claimed” tory and of science.…These are In troubled times, President Drew Faust told the af- the bedrock of education, and ternoon audience, universities need to restate their of an informed citizenry with basic values: the capacity to lead, to ex- We sing in our alma mater about “Calm plore, to invent. Yet this com- rising through change and through storm.” mitment to reason and truth…

What does that mean for today’s crises? seems increasingly a minority STU ROSNER Where do universities fit in this threaten- viewpoint. In a recent column, George Will I left college because I knew exactly ing mix? What can we do? What should deplored the nation’s evident abandonment what I wanted to do, and some of you we do? What must we do? of what he called “the reality principle— know, too, but some of you don’t.…Maybe We are gathered today in Tercentenary the need to assess and adapt to facts.” Uni- you’re sitting here trying to figure out Theatre, with and Me- versities are defined by this principle. We how to tell your parents that you want morial Church standing before and behind produce a ready stream of evidence and in- to be a doctor and not a comedy writer. us, enduring symbols of Harvard’s larger sights, many with potential to create a bet- Well, what you choose to do next is what identity and purposes, testaments to what ter world.… we call, in the movies, “a character-defin- universities do and believe at a time when So what are our obligations when we ing moment.” Now, these are moments we have never needed them more.… see our fundamental purpose under siege, that you’re very familiar with, like…In- We look at Widener Library and see… our reason for being discounted and un- diana Jones choosing mission over fear a repository of learning…a monument to dermined? First we must maintain an by jumping into a pile of snakes. Now, in reason and knowledge, to the collection unwavering dedication to rigorous as- a two-hour movie, you get a handful of and preservation of the widest possible sessment and debate within our own character-defining moments. But in real range of beliefs, and experiences, and facts walls. We must be unassailable in our in- life, you face them every day. Life is one that fuel free inquiry and our constantly sistence that ideas most fully thrive and long string of character-defining mo- evolving understanding. A vehicle for Veri- grow when they are open to challenge. ments, and I was lucky that at 18, I knew tas—for exploring the path to truth wher- Truth cannot simply be claimed; it must exactly what I wanted to do. But I didn’t ever it may lead. A tribute to the belief that be established—even when that process know who I was. knowledge matters, that facts matter—in is uncomfortable. Universities do not just How could I, and how could any of us? the present moment, as a basis for the in- store facts; they teach us how to evaluate, Because for the first 25 years of our lives, formed decisions of individuals, societies, test, challenge, and refine them. Only if we we are trained to listen to voices that are and nations; and for the future, as the basis ourselves model a commitment to fact over not our own. Parents and professors fill for new insight. As James Madison wrote what Stephen Colbert so memorably la- our heads with wisdom and information, in 1822, “a people who mean to be their own beled as “truthiness”…can we credibly call and then employers and mentors…explain for adherence to such stan- how this world really works.…[B]ut some- Drew Faust dards in public life and a wider times doubt starts to creep into our heads, world. into our hearts, and even when you think, We must model this com- “That’s not quite how I see the world,” it’s mitment for our students, as kinda easier just to nod in agreement and we educate them to embrace go along, and for a while I let that going- these principles—in their along define my character.… work here and in the lives they But then I started paying more attention. will lead as citizens and lead- And my intuition kicked in. I want to be ers of national and interna- clear that your intuition is different from tional life. your conscience. They work in tandem, but here’s the distinction. Your conscience “My Intuition Kicked In” shouts, “Here’s what you should do,” while Steven Spielberg, visibly thrilled to be your intuition whispers, “Here’s what you a Harvard honorand, mixed personal could do.” Listen to that voice that tells you anecdote, filmic wisdom, and conven- what you could do. Nothing will define your

STU ROSNER tional graduation tropes: character more than that. •

Harvard Magazine 21 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal Academic Allston, As HBS dean Nitin Nohria wrote in his funds to foster the work of SEAS (see har- 2016 message to the business faculty, “One vardmag.com/paulson-16). At Last key area of integration about which we In a brief conversation a few days later, are deeply excited, and for which we are an enthusiastic Doyle noted that although More than a quarter-century after Har- now laying the groundwork, is that with the schools differ significantly in scale and vard began banking land for expansion the John A. Paulson School of Engineering approach (the engineers and scientists seek in Allston, beyond the Harvard Business and Applied Sciences (SEAS), which will precise solutions to intellectual puzzles, School (HBS) campus, academic while the management profes- growth there is reliably under sors learn from businesses in way—and the faculties imme- operation and expect to influ- diately involved are fostering in- ence practice through appli- tellectual collaborations ahead cation and revision), they have of their physical colocation. much in common. Comment- The flagship project, hous- ing on three faculty members’ ing much of the engineering May 12 presentations on their and applied sciences faculty, data-related research, he said, received regulatory approval “I would have challenged an in April (see harvardmag. outside observer to tell which com/seas-16). Construction one was from which school.” will be under way this sum- He and Nohria, he added, “left mer, with occupancy expected Nitin Nohria Francis J. Doyle III there elevating our already in 2020. The complex includes SCHOOL BUSINESS HARVARD FOR YOUNG ©SUSAN SCIENCES APPLIED AND GRINELL/SCHOOLELIZA ENGINEERING OF very, very high expectations 445,300 square feet of new classrooms, labo- be moving to Allston….We see tremendous for these collaborations,” given their col- ratories, and related facilities atop part of synergy among our faculties in the area of leagues’ excitement. the subsurface footings where building and entrepreneurship, and are Such collaborations, particularly on cur- stopped in 2010 during the financial crisis planning a joint research symposium…to riculum, may need a few years’ gestation, and recession; 51,500 square feet of renovat- spur collaboration.” so it is timely to get them under way be- ed offices and classrooms at the existing 114 That gathering—a reconfigured version fore much of SEAS is across the street from Western Avenue; and a 47,000-square-foot of HBS’s annual faculty symposium, which HBS. Doyle mentioned the possibility of “district energy facility” to provide elec- focuses on fellow professors’ research— fruitful “intellectual collisions” in data tricity and heating and chilled water. Total took place on May 12, and brought together science (given SEAS’s large computer- project costs are estimated at $1 billion. many of both schools’ professors. It built science faculty), in the emerging “Internet Interestingly, the energy plant has been on work Nohria and SEAS dean Francis J. of Things” (about which HBS professors relocated from underneath the science Doyle III had already undertaken (sympo- are already writing, and SEAS has inter- complex toward the eastern edge of Har- sium materials noted that Doyle met with ests in materials, robotics, and commu- vard’s landholdings—and it will be built at Nohria before accepting Harvard’s job of- nications technologies), and in the full grade. According to the regulatory filing, fer, and that their common interest in their spectrum of new pedagogies and teaching these changes reflect both University stud- schools’ possible collaboration influenced (from undergraduate to doctoral courses ies of “climate resiliency” in an era of global his decision), plus various teaching and re- and modules). HBS’s prowess in execu- warming (the area is filled land, at the level search interactions among faculty members. tive education, he noted, is a whole new of the Charles River), and utilities planning The day highlighted research presentations, vista for SEAS. In a word, the day spent for future academic growth and the an- informal opportunities to discuss emerg- together promoted “very exciting dialogue ticipated siting of an “enterprise research ing areas of inquiry and opportunities for between the schools,” with ample momen- campus” with significant commercial office pedagogical collaboration, and other intro- tum to pursue joint opportunities. and laboratory development—much of it ductions: what one participant character- Separately, on April 21, HBS formally on land at 100 Western Avenue, now in an ized as a “first date.” Its potential outcomes broke ground for construction of Klarman extended process of environmental reme- were importantly underwritten in June 2015 Hall, its new conference center, audito- diation (see harvardmag.com/fessler-16). when John A. Paulson, M.B.A.’80, made a rium, and community-convening complex Meanwhile, the soon-to-be-neighboring University-spanning, river-crossing pledge (see harvardmag.com/klarman-16). Be- academic colleagues were getting together. of $400 million in unrestricted endowment yond its educational import, Klarman is an expansive step, extending the HBS cam- pus south, into current parking lots. Huge IN THIS ISSUE classes like SEAS’s Computer Science 50 could draw undergraduates across the 24 University People 29 Brevia Charles into the high-tech Klarman facil- 25 Endowment Insights 32 The Undergraduate ity, if HBS is willing. When Klarman and 26 Yesterday’s News 34 Sports a second part of the facility are built and 27 News Briefs the existing Burden Hall is razed, HBS will

22 July - August 2016 have an extensive new quadrangle east of —and the makings of a HARVARD PORTRAIT new roadway along the southern edge of its campus. Its extension west will accom- modate the sites for future HBS academic buildings, according to its campus plan. Nor do those projects exhaust sidewalk superintendents’ opportunities in Allston. Scaffolding is going up for the beginning of the four-year renovation of the Soldiers Field Park graduate-student housing com- plex at the eastern edge of HBS’s cam- pus. And work was well under way this spring to install the “life lab,” a temporary, modular facility, complementing the iLab complex on Western Avenue, where entre- preneurs will have access to wet labs and related biology facilities. The Klarman, housing, and lab projects together repre- sent another $370 million of anticipated construction investments. vj.s.r.

The Art and Science of Class Scheduling Organizing the science complex has been protracted, but scheduling undergraduate classes on both sides of the Charles once the SEAS complex opens may prove harder. The shortest pedestrian route runs 1.5 miles from the science facilities in the North Yard to the future Allston classrooms and labs. Given the logistical difficulties of crossing Soldiers Field Road on the lone footbridge (which is Dustin Tingley not accessible to people with disabilities), and the traffic-choked vehicular link from Dustin Tingley is less interested in political personalities than in the mechanisms John F. Kennedy Street to North Harvard that animate politics. His new book, Sailing the Water’s Edge, is a deep, quantitative Street (which lies between Harvard Business dive into how the structure of American government influences U.S. relationships School and the athletic facilities), it is no sur- with other countries. That isn’t to say he’s uninterested in the here-and-now impact prise that the Allston planners’ Class Sched- of his work: “There are presidential candidates who imply they’re willing to carpet- uling Task Force has been at work since 2012. bomb vast portions of the world,” he says gravely. He sees engaging with the public Its co-chair, dean of undergraduate educa- as a mandate of his role. Tingley has studied everything from climate change to olfac- tion Jay M. Harris, reported to the Faculty tory cues in mating to negotiations between young children, his disparate interests of Arts and Sciences (FAS) in April. unified by his “obsession” with data, statistics, and disentangling cause and effect. He outlined solutions that would stan- “There are politics on the playground,” he says, “and there are politics in the forums dardize class lengths in 75-minute chunks of the United Nations.” Named a professor of government last fall, he contributes his (which could be combined for seminars, empirical instincts elsewhere, too, leading the University’s outcomes-based research studios, labs, and so on); expand the pass time for HarvardX on the science of learning. Between college at the University of Roch- between classes from five minutes to 15; ester and a Ph.D. from Princeton, Tingley taught high-school math and history, unsure and stagger starting times for the first class if he would become a career academic. There were times when he wanted to be an each day, so that Cambridge courses might environmental advocate, he remembers, or a music producer. But did he have any begin 30 or 45 minutes earlier than those doubts about his path while in graduate school? “Very few,” he answers. These days, in Allston—creating, with the pass times, between his work and family (he has a two-year-old son), Tingley has less time for the 45- to 75-minute transit times between the guitar, an old passion. He’s played in a mix of bands—rock, jazz, experimental—but classes on the other side of the river. has never taken to formal lessons. “They always wanted me to read music,” he jokes, As the faculty mulls these possibilities, “and I didn’t really want to.” vmarina bolotnikova Harris also raised multiple other schedul-

Photograph by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 23 John Harvard's Journal

dating professors’ needs; and reliev- graduate General Education requirements ing conflicts over access to suitable are also likely to take effect—yet another teaching spaces. significant challenge). That would be a suf- Whether the faculty as a whole ficient runway, Harris thought, to test and will accept the changes necessary adjust the system before engineering and to effect such improvements is applied sciences classes begin in Allston in uncertain (as is students’ willing- 2020. ness to acknowledge, as Harris Amusing though all this may sound, it is put it, that “the adult day doesn’t educationally consequential. More rational begin at noon”). But Harris said scheduling enables students to assemble College classes will cross the Charles. FAS would ideally consider a for- desired courses of study. And making ing issues. Most formal instruction has mal legislative proposal and accompanying the trans-Charles logistics work as SEAS been jammed into the prime hours from rules this fall—along with airing of norms, brings 17 classrooms on line, and accom- 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and largely from Mon- culture, and other issues important for ef- modates burgeoning cohorts of concentra- day to Thursday, imposing conflicts that fective implementation. If enacted during tors, is essential if the College—in keeping limit many students’ course options. Stan- the 2016-2017 academic year, the registrar’s with its fundamental value of providing dardizing class lengths and starting times, office could begin reprogramming its infor- an undergraduate education in the liberal building in periods for seminars and other mation systems, redrafting the faculty and arts—is not to separate engineers from extended instruction, and decompressing student handbooks, making room assign- other students. the midday clustering of courses—per- ments, and so on. Then, during the 2018 For a full discussion of these issues, in- haps even truncating the three-day spring semester, professors would sched- cluding the minute, but meaningful, de- weekend—hold the promise of maximizing ule their 2018-2019 classes, effective with tails of the scheduling proposals, see har- students’ educational choices; accommo- that year’s fall term (when the new under- vardmag.com/allstonclasses-16. vj.s.r.

history of science department); Ann Pearson, University People Ross professor of environmental sciences; and Salil P. Vadhan, Joseph professor of computer Honored Professors science and applied mathematics. The Roslyn The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has conferred Abramson Award for outstanding undergraduate Harvard College Professorships, its highest honor teaching was conferred on Kirsten Weld, assis- for teaching excellence (a five-year honorary title, tant professor of history, and Leah Whittington, COURTESY VADHAN OF SALIL P. accompanied by supplementary research fund- assistant professor of English. Salil P. Vadhan

ing), on David Charbonneau, professor of astron- /HPAC MITCHELL STEPHANIE omy; Marla Frederick, professor of African and David Students’ Choice African American studies and of religion; Shige- Charbonneau The Undergraduate Council selected the following to receive its hisa Kuriyama, Reischauer Institute professor of Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for excellence in cultural history (chair of East Asian languages and civilizations, teaching College students: Joseph Blitzstein, professor of the and a faculty sponsor of the Early Sciences Working Group in the practice in statistics; Roger Porter, faculty dean of and IBM professor of business and government; and Tess Wise, teaching fellow in government. The Council’s John R. Marquand Prize for exceptional advising and counseling

was awarded to James Biblarz, tutor COURTESY OF ROGER PORTER in Eliot House; Judith Flynn, Allston Roger Porter

CURRIER HOUSE CHIEFS: Latanya Sweeney, professor of government and technology in residence, and attorney Sylvia Barrett, A.L.B. ’95, have been appointed faculty deans of Currier House (the first leaders appointed to that post since the title was changed from House master). The couple, who met at MIT as undergraduates and subsequently founded a computer company together, have a son, Leonard, who is eight years old. They succeed Moore professor of biological anthropology Richard W. Wrangham and Elizabeth Ross, who stepped down after eight years of service at Currier.

24 July - August 2016 Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications Endowment Insights endowment assets now support a larger managed funds “generally averages 1-2 per- physical plant, enhanced financial aid, and cent of assets under management.” Mak- Last February, three Republican mem- other costs.) ing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, us- bers of Congress sent a questionnaire to the Other interesting tidbits include the fol- ing fiscal 2015 assets ($37.6 billion), yields, 56 private universities and colleges with en- lowing. very roughly, $110 million of internal costs dowments valued at $1 billion or more, seek- Investment-management expenses. Harvard (at 0.75 percent) and $225 million to $450 ing information about those endowments, Management Company (HMC) has al- million of external management costs (at investments, financial aid, and financial ways maintained that its hybrid asset- 1 percent to 2 percent). practices. The answers, provided by the management model (investing a portion Peer institutions, which maintain small April 1 deadline, offer insights into the in- of the assets itself, less expensively, and internal investment staffs and pay external dividual institutions’ circumstances and retaining external managers to invest the managers fees to invest essentially all their policies (on Harvard, see harvardmag.com/ rest) provided important economies. It has assets, reported these internal and exter- queries-16), and for comparative purposes. not detailed those economies to any signif- nal expenses for fiscal 2015 (as a percent- The University, for example, revealed its icant extent, other than reporting, as in its age of endowment assets) respectively: estimate of the endowment’s loss of pur- fiscal 2014 letter, that its studies suggested • MIT, 0.12 percent, 1.0 percent chasing power since 2008. Even though, savings of “approximately $2.0 billion over • Princeton, 0.09 percent, 1.3 percent in nominal terms, its value as of June 30, the last decade as compared to the cost • Stanford, 0.15 percent, 1 percent to 2 2015, finally exceeded the prior peak before of management for a completely external percent the financial crisis in 2008 ($37.6 billion vs. model” delivering equivalent investment • Yale, 0.14 percent, 1.22 percent $36.9 billion), “In real (inflation-adjusted) returns. The response to the congressio- Yale’s external cost ratio, which has dollars, the endowment remains below nal query notes that the management cost declined significantly in recent years, is the fiscal 2008 value, by approximately $5 for internally managed funds is “generally particularly notable. It invests less than billion.” (And distributions from those below 0.75 percent” and that for externally one-quarter of its endowment assets in

Burr assistant dean in Quincy House, a lecturer Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign (for more on Mele, on human evolutionary biology; and Susie Jang, see “Rise of the Little Guy,” September-October 2013, page 13).… tutor in Eliot House. And the Graduate Student Black professor of political economy David T. Ellwood, a scholar Council recognized these faculty members with of poverty and welfare and HKS dean from 2004 to 2015, has been its Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentor- appointed director of its Wiener Center for Social Policy. He also ing Award: Jean Comaroff, Whitehead professor chairs the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, an academ- of African and African American studies and of SNIIBBE/HPAC KRIS ic-practitioner collaboration aiming to create expanded paths for anthropology; Drew Fudenberg, Abbe professor Kimberley economic and social advancement. Allison professor of econom- of economics; Kimberley Patton, professor of the Patton ics Lawrence Katz and Beren professor of economics N. Gregory comparative and historical study of religion (see page 18); Nancy Mankiw are among the 24 members of the partnership. Rosenblum, Clark professor of ethics in politics and govern- ment; and Leah Somerville, assistant professor of psychology. Overseers Executives Kenji Yoshino ’91, the Chief Justice Earl Warren professor of con- National Academy Honorands stitutional law at NYU, and Nicole Parent Haughey ’93, a former The National Academy of Sciences has elected 84 investment-research and corporate executive, have been elected new members, including Myles A. Brown, pro- president of the Board of Overseers and vice chair of the Overseers fessor of medicine; Oliver Hart, Furer professor executive committee, respectively, for the 2016-2017 academic year. of economics; Hopi E. Hoekstra, professor of or- ganismic and evolutionary biology and molecular Newsmakers and cellular biology (and a Harvard College Pro- SWINHART/HPAC AMANDA Jane L. Mendillo, president and chief executive officer of Har- fessor): Robert E. Kingston, professor of genet- Hopi E. vard Management Company from 2008 through 2014, has been ics; and Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family profes- Hoekstra nominated for election to the board of directors of General Mo- sor of psychology. tors Company. She is already a director of Lazard Ltd., the in- vestment bank, and a trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Founda- Kennedy School Centers tion.…The Radcliffe Institute’s 55 fellows during the 2016-2017 The Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) Shoren- academic year include a bumper crop of 11 Harvard affiliates, stein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy ranging from Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Paul professor of constitu- has appointed Nicco Mele as director, effective tional law and professor of history (who is working on a biogra- July 1, succeeding Alex Jones, who stepped down phy of Constance Baker Motley) to Eugene Wang, Rockefeller in 2015. Mele, most recently at the University of professor of Asian Art (Chinese art). See the complete list at

COURTESY OF NICCO MELE NICCO OF COURTESY Southern California, was previously deputy pub- www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/from-around- Nicco Mele lisher of The Los Angeles Times and webmaster for the-world-and-across-harvard.

Harvard Magazine 25 John Harvard's Journal

publicly traded stocks and bonds, the least expensive asset class to manage, and is Yesterday’s News heavily committed to typically higher-fee From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine investments (such as private equity and venture capital), in which it has long re- ported extremely strong relative returns. 19015 J. P. Morgan signifies his inten- front-page editorial in the paper declares, Its low expense ratio may reflect favorable tion of donating $1 million toward the “What was once proudly called the G.I. relationships it has developed with supe- construction of new buildings at the Bill of Rights has become a fraud: Exis- rior investment managers, who value Yale Medical School. Grateful administrators tence on $65 a month—or $90 with de- as a limited partner (investor); achieving cable their thanks to the financier, who pendents—is patently impossible.” those kinds of relationships is a high prior- is traveling in Europe: “Great gift re- ity for HMC under its new senior manage- ceived: beneficent results innumerable.” 19715 The Summer School celebrates ment (see the discussion at harvardmag. its centennial year. Harvard’s first regular com/overhaul-16)—plans that may be dis- 19315 The Law School announces the summer course, in botany, was offered rupted given the disturbing news that its inauguration of a training course for by Professor Asa Gray; many of his stu- CEO is on medical leave (see page 29). prison wardens. dents were women teachers who thus Financial aid. The inquiring lawmakers became pioneers in the education of have a special interest in undergraduate Before leaving to take on the world, the women at the University. financial aid, and each responding institu- seniors offer some suggestions to the tion spelled out its program in some detail University. Among them: that varsity ath- 19815 During the summer Alumni (although with some differences in pre- letics be confined to the freshman, soph- College program, 171 people sign up for sentation); highlights follow. omore, and junior years, and that “radical a week-long course in “basic computer Harvard reported that only one-quarter improvement be made in the ventilation conversation,” which, by its close, has of the College class of 2015 took out loans; of Widener Reading Room (temperature most of them programming. those who did graduated with median 90 in the shade).” educational debt of $10,900. Since finan- 2006 Crews remove the grass on cial aid was liberalized, beginning in fiscal 19465 The Bulletin’s Undergraduate the ’s playing field during 2004, the proportion of students who re- columnist, Mitchell Goodman ’45, re- the summer, replacing it with a new syn- ceive Pell Grants (a common indicator of ports that has called thetic surface, a $5-million project that lower-income family circumstances), has for a local buyers’ strike as rising prices will open the stadium risen from 10 percent to 18 percent. in the Square make subsistence difficult for night, winter, Princeton said that just 17 percent of for fixed-income veteran scholars who and off-season students have assumed debt—and the av- receive only $15 a week of gov- use. erage debt load for graduates is down to ernment subsistence. A $6,600. Its proportion of students receiv- ing Pell Grants rose from 7.2 percent in the class of 2008 (entering in 2004) to 18 percent in the class of 2018. In Yale’s class of 2015, 17 percent of students assumed loans—and their average debt was a heftier $15,521. At Stanford, which unlike these peers is not need-blind for inter- national applicants (who are therefore skewed to higher-income families), 22 percent of members of the class of 2015 assumed debt, with median loans of $16, 417. Back to the land. Finally, three insti- tutions reported an intriguing pil- lar of their investments: income from owned, developed land. Princeton owns somewhat less than half of the land at the nearby Princeton Forrestal Center, developed beginning in the mid 1970s. Stanford’s “endowment land,” valued at $3.4 billion, encompasses the Stanford Research Park (with 10 mil- lion square feet of income-producing

Illustration by Mark Steele properties), the Palo Alto offices at the Members of all-female heart of the venture-capital industry, and social clubs protest against new sanctions more. (Another asset is the Stanford Shop- on single-gender ping Center.) Just down the Charles River, organizations. MIT owns more than 5 million square feet of rentable commercial spaces—much of Rhodes and Marshall it in the red-hot Kendall Square life-sci- scholarships. The pol- ences and technology hub. (In fiscal 2015, icy follows a year of es- MIT noted, its real-estate tax payments calating hostilities be- represented more than 13 percent of Cam- tween final clubs and bridge’s total tax revenues.) Dean Rakesh Khurana, Harvard’s Allston planners are surely and will take effect in aware of the synergies to be had from locat- CRIMSON HARVARD THE fall 2017, affecting only

ing inventive faculty members next to en- KIT WU/ students entering with trepreneurs, innovation-minded technology the class of 2021 and businesses, and venture investors: the ra- News Briefs thereafter. Two final clubs, the Spee and tionale for the planned “enterprise research the Fox, became co-ed earlier this year, in campus” envisioned for Western Avenue Social Club Sanctions response to pressure from Khurana (though (see harvardmag.com/fessler-16). And its Citing their history of gender discrimi- the Fox’s graduate board disputed the move, financial planners are certainly as aware of nation and negative influence on campus and declared the new women members the potential to turn a vacant, brownfield life, the College announced in May that it “provisional” pending approval by a two- landholding into a future source of long- would ban members of historically male fi- thirds majority of alumni); they thus won’t term, stable income, at a time when other nal clubs and other unrecognized, single- be affected by the policy. No other clubs revenue sources (net tuition, sponsored- gender social groups from holding leader- have yet announced plans to go co-ed in research funds, and endowment returns) ship positions in athletics or official student response to the new rules. appear more constrained, and volatile, than groups, and from receiving College endorse- The clubs had been linked to sexual as- in past decades. vj.s.r. ments for fellowships, like the prestigious sault last spring, when a College-wide sur-

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Harvard Magazine 27 John Harvard's Journal vey found that 47 percent of senior women a safe, supportive community for Harvard Princeton president who participated in final-club activities re- women. Former dean of the College Harry emerita Shirley Til- ported unwanted sexual contact since en- Lewis ’68 wrote a letter to Khurana con- ghman was elected to tering Harvard, compared to 30 percent of demning the sanctions, arguing that they the Corporation, fill- senior women overall, and that 17 percent would create “a College culture of fear and ing the vacancy cre- of assaults occur on property used by sin- anxiety about nonconformity” (though ated by the death of gle-gender social organizations. But in their acknowledging that final clubs can have James F. Rothenberg, messages to undergraduates announcing a negative influence on campus culture). an investment-man- the new policy, President Drew Faust and Lewis later led a group of 11 other faculty agement executive, Khurana appeared to distance the decision members in drafting a motion in opposi- the prior summer. from concerns over sexual assault, focus- tion to the social-club sanctions, to be vot- Now, Rubenstein is ing instead on the discriminatory nature of ed on by the faculty next academic year. in the queue to fill the single-gender groups. Read full reports at harvardmag.com/ planned departure of Many students and alumni, unsurpris- finalclub-16 and harvardmag.com/fall- Nannerl O. Keohane, ingly, greeted the decision with sharp out-16. vm.b. and a.l. president emerita of David M. disapproval; a few final-club affiliates Wellesley College Rubenstein threatened legal action against the Uni- David M. Rubenstein, Fellow and Duke, at the end versity. Hundreds of women belonging to The day before Commencement, the Uni- of the next academic year. Read a full report sororities and female final clubs gathered versity announced that David M. Ruben- at harvardmag.com/rubenstein-16. for a rally the week following the an- stein—a private-equity executive and a

nouncement, capturing national media Harvard Campaign leader—will become a Medical Conflicts of Interest COURTESY OF THE GROUP CARLYLE headlines and provoking campus-wide Fellow of the Harvard Corporation, effec- In early May, shortly before conclud- debate about the legitimacy of the policy. tive in July 2017. ing his service as Harvard Medical School Protesters called all-female groups “collat- Although the announcement a year in (HMS) dean on June 30, Jeffrey S. Flier com- eral damage” in the University’s effort to advance is unusual, the appointment is in pleted a review of the school’s conflict of shut down final clubs, and stressed the im- effect a slow-motion double-switch, to interest policy that he began in early 2015. portance of their organizations in creating use a baseball metaphor. Last December, Then, he cited the need to ensure that the policy “remains optimally constructed and relevant to the current environment and practices, striking an appropriate bal- ance between ensuring the integrity of our work and permitting our faculty the maxi- Explore More mal opportunity to improve human health

through the discovery, evaluation and even- Harvardmagazine.com brings you continuous coverage of tual introduction and use of new drugs and University and alumni news. Visit to find these stories and more: devices”—the latter involving engagement with commercial companies. At the end of 2015, Flier promulgated The Changing Consensus on Healthcare changes in the “research support rule,” Cost-Sharing which he found “overly restrictive” and Economists question whether price transparency can too rigid relative to circumstances that reduce healthcare spending. might arise in each situation. Accordingly, harvardmag.com/healthcare-16 where faculty members who hold equity in privately held companies were previous- Narrowing School Achievement Gaps ly presumed to be prohibited from receiv- The Harvard Graduate School of Education launches ing research support from those entities, “By All Means” initiative. the policy now permits a petition to rebut harvardmag.com/gaps-16 that presumption. Faculty members who own equity in publicly traded enterprises How Harvard Has Changed How I Eat would not be prohibited from receiving Harvard students’ unparalleled passion for free food research support from such businesses is something that I found unbelievable at first. unless they owned more than 1 percent of harvardmag.com/harvardfood-16 the total equity; above that level, faculty members may petition for permission for such research support. The May changes pertain to support visit harvardmagazine.com for clinical research, where a separate rule

FROM TOP: ISTOCK; STEPHANIE MITCHELL/HPAC; ISTOCK/HARVARD MAGAZINE/JC had prohibited faculty members conduct-

28 July - August 2016 Reconsidering Race demic core. The new venue, five miles At the end of April, Yale announced that from the university’s central facilities it would retain the name of Calhoun Brevia and its first such expansion, will by 2019 College, its undergraduate residence accommodate 2,400 staff members in- named for U.S. vice president John C. volved in an outpatient medical clinic, Calhoun, the fervent proponent of states’ business operations, buildings and real rights, nullification, and slavery estate, human resources, din- (and would initiate historical ing, development, and librar- study of his legacy). It named ies and archives. Ultimately, two new residential colleges— the site can accommodate 13 being built to accommodate an new buildings totaling 1.5 mil- expanded student body—for lion square feet of offices and African-American civil-rights ac- clinical space.…The Univer- tivist Pauli Murray (who was de- sity of California at Berkeley, nied admission to Harvard Law which disclosed severe budget School for advanced study, in an deficits in February, has an- era when it was not coeducation- nounced that it will eliminate al; see “Two Women, Two Histo- 500 staff positions (6 percent of ries,” November-December 2007, the total) through attrition and page 29) and Benjamin Frank- layoffs. lin, a slaveholder who became SPOTLIGHT ON an abolitionist late in life.…Separately, SLAVERY. On April Peering into Space Princeton decided to retain the name of 6—drawing on Faculty members from its Woodrow Wilson School of Public research conducted the departments of by the student- and International Affairs, and of the inspired Harvard astronomy, physics, similarly named residential college, and and Slavery mathematics, history to examine the former Princeton and U.S. Project—Corpora- of science, and phi- president’s segregationist history. tion Senior Fellow losophy have formed a William F. Lee, President Drew Black Hole Initiative, On Leave Faust, and U.S. Representative John R. the only such center dedicated to the The University an- Lewis, LL.D. ’12, spoke to an audience field. Abraham (Avi) Loeb, Baird profes- at Dudley House before unveiling a nounced on May 23 that stone tablet affixed to Wadsworth sor of science and chair of astronomy, is Stephen Blyth, presi- House, acknowledging the four the founding director; cosmologist Ste- dent and CEO of Harvard enslaved people who lived there when phen Hawking, S.D. ’90, spoke at Sand- Management Company Harvard presidents Benjamin ers Theatre on April 18, kicking off the Wadsworth (1725-1737) and Edward since the beginning of MITCHELL/HPAC STEPHANIE Holyoke (1737-1769) were in residence. initiative. 2015, has begun an imme- Stephen The simple plaque memorializes diate medical leave. Chief Blyth Titus, Venus, Juba, and Bilhah, and is Campaign Contributions operating officerRob - meant to be the first step in University Harvard Medical School has reported acknowledgement of its connections ert Ettl will be interim CEO, overseeing to slavery; read a full report at fundraising proceeds of $539 million as the endowment-investment operations. harvardmag.com/slaves-16. of March 31, up from $512 million two Details are at harvardmag.com/blyth- months earlier, suggesting steady prog- leave-16. ress toward its $750-million goal—and study of early-childhood development. continued gains for the $6.5-billion Uni- Early-Childhood Education An academy will advance training of ear- versity campaign overall; a status report Harvard Graduate School of Education ly-childhood educators, and there will be is likely by late summer, following the has received a $35.5-million gift, the larg- new fellowships and two new professor- June 30 close of Harvard’s fiscal year.… est in its history, from the Saul Zaentz ships in the field. Details are available at Separately, in April, the University re- Charitable Foundation, for an early- harvardmag.com/gsedonation-16. ported that the Lemann Foundation has childhood initiative. Under the direc- expanded its support for financial aid tion of Thompson professor of education On Other Campuses and fellowships for students from Brazil, and society Nonie Lesaux and Kargman As Harvard expands its academic foot- and will support visiting faculty mem- associate professor in human develop- print in Allston (see page 22), Stanford bers and underwrite a Brazil research ment and urban education advancement is redeveloping a former office park into fund. Jorge Paulo Lemann ’61, a billion- Stephanie M. Jones, the initiative will a satellite Redwood City campus, relo- aire São Paulo-based investor, made sig- conduct a five-year, population-based cating support operations from its aca- nificant commitments to financial aid

Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/HPAC; plaque by Harvard Magazine/JC Harvard Magazine 29 John Harvard's Journal

and research beginning in 2006.) Har- Nota Bene vard’s Brazilian ties were underscored Pay packages. The Uni- in the award of an honorary doctorate versity’s annual disclosure of laws to that nation’s former president, reveals that for the fiscal Fernando Henrique Cardoso, at Com- year ending June 30, 2015 mencement (see page 16). (data are reported with a lag), President Drew Faust Climate-Change Developments earned $816,370, plus other In August 2014, David F. Swensen, the compensation (retirement Yale endowment’s long-term chief in- and deferred compensation, vestment officer, wrote to external asset the use of the presidential managers, emphasizing that “greenhouse residence) of $386,610. Har- ROSE LINCOLN/HPAC ROSE gas emissions pose a grave threat to hu- vard Management Compa- AIR FORCE LANDING. Air Force Secretary man existence,” therefore “making con- ny’s departed president and Deborah Lee James visited campus on April 22 to sideration of the impact of climate change chief executive officerJane sign the agreement for its decision to establish a essential when evaluating investment op- L. Mendillo earned $13.8 reserve officer corps program at Harvard. That completes a five-year process that began with the portunities.” In a letter to the community million during her final 18 return of Navy ROTC in 2011 and the Army a year this April, highlighting this economic cri- months overseeing the en- later, following repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” terion (as opposed to ethical or other con- dowment. Further details policy that had banned openly homosexual people siderations), Swensen reported that small appear at harvardmag.com/ from military service. Harvard students’ ROTC training takes place at MIT. holdings in thermal coal and oil-sands compensation-16. operations were eliminated. Yale and its external fund managers now share a The yield. Nearly 80 percent of appli- M.B.A. ’02, J.D. ’04, and Hugo Van Vuuren “common understanding” about not mak- cants offered admission to theCollege ’07, M.D.S. ’12, and initially based at the ing new investments in “greenhouse gas class of 2020 have decided to come to School of Engineering and Applied Sci- intensive energy companies,” and about Harvard, down slightly from the 81 per- ences to support ideas originating there— risks posed by climate change to south- cent yield reported last year, but the fourth has foundered following disagreements ern farmlands or low-lying coastal real year in a row that acceptances have hov- between the two partners about its di- estate, and potential regulations aimed ered around that level. As a result, 40 to 50 rection. Among investors in the fund is at reducing emissions. Climate advocates wait-listed applicants will be admitted. Corporation member James W. Breyer, a continued to press for a formal policy of leading figure in the venture-capital in- divestment, which Yale has declined to Miscellany. Gap years got a high-profile dustry.…Corporation member Theodore adopt. The Yale Carbon Charge Project, boost with a May 1 White House news V. Wells Jr., co-chair of the litigation de- which assesses carbon pricing as a tool to release: “The President and Mrs. Obama partment at Paul Weiss, who has previ- promote sustainability, is being piloted in announced today that their daughter ously represented Exxon Mobil Corpo- 20 campus units; in March, Yale became Malia will attend Harvard University in ration, has been retained by the company the first university member of the Carbon the fall of 2017 as a member of the class to represent it as state attorneys general Pricing Leadership Coalition, formed by of 2021. Malia will take a gap year be- investigate whether it misrepresented to the World Bank and the International fore beginning school”—during which the public and investors its knowledge of Monetary Fund. (MIT joined in May.) the family will, of course, be moving to climate change.…Harvard Magazine congrat- a new home. (Mom and dad ulates contributing editor Adam Kirsch are, respectively, J.D. ’88 and ’97, a critic and poet who has written in ’91.)… and these pages about Robert Frost, Seamus Fortune have both reported Heaney, and T.S. Eliot, among many other that Xfund—the seed-stage subjects; he has won a Guggenheim Fel- venture-capital fund found- lowship, to pursue his work on the letters ed by Patrick Chung ’96, of Lionel Trilling.

EXTENSIVE EXTENSION: In reporting on the 2015-2016 academic year, Huntington D. Lambert, dean of the division of continuing education and University extension, observed just how far online learning has pro- gressed. Of 787 courses offered, to 14,500 students (more than 3,000 of whom are pursuing degrees), more than half were online; 42 of those courses included a weekend session on campus. The Extension School offered 13 HarvardX courses, accompanied by teaching support and discussion sections, for credit, and deployed several of its own, internally developed, fully online courses. STEPHANIE MITCHELL/HPAC STEPHANIE

30 July - August 2016 ing such work paign’s $6.5-billion target; but MIT—with one universally required course, Expository from receiving 1,036 professors of all ranks, and 4,527 under- Writing, and to improve writing instruction other income ex- graduates and 6,804 graduate students—is generally. His briefing, a report on the work ceeding $10,000 about half Harvard’s size. of FAS’s standing committee on undergradu- from sponsor- Citing the institute’s history of “discov- ate education, noted the “challenges of teach- ing companies, ery, knowledge creation, and innovation,” ing students who come to the College with holding more the campaign announcement focused varied levels of preparation for writing” (as than $30,000 in on fundamental science; the “health of Harvard extends its outreach to applicants, public stock in the planet” (MIT has developed a multi- attracts students for whom English is not the such companies, hundred-million-dollar research program primary language, and so on), as well as the or holding any on climate change, clean energy, and sus- need to help students “continue to develop as stock in pri- tainability—see “A Modest Proposal,” writers” as they pursue their concentrations. vate companies. January-February, page 4); scientific and Expos 10, an introduction to writing of- While upholding engineering research on human health; fered to students whose placement tests the principle that enhanced emphasis on innovation and en- suggest a need for such work (limited to Jeffrey S. Flier “research involv- trepreneurship, to apply discoveries more 10 students per class, with 15 to 17 sections ing human study rapidly and widely; teaching and learning offered in most years, enrolling about 10 participants should be subject to height- (driven by a comprehensive strategy for percent of entering freshmen), and Expos ened scrutiny because bias can directly broader, deeper use of online and other 20, the required course (which varies in impact the safety and welfare of clinical re- technologies, overseen by the Office of content based on the instructors’ academic search participants,” HMS will now liberal- Digital Learning, and experiential learn- field), are largely taught by preceptors. ize the rules, which it found could “stifle re- ing—on campus, in the world, and for K-12 These postdoctoral, term appointees are search that is in the best interest of patients use); and in its core faculty resources, stu- by definition likely to move on, or be hired JOHN SOARES/HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL SCHOOL MEDICAL SOARES/HARVARD JOHN and human study participants.” The income dent financial aid, and facilities. away, rather than stay at Harvard long threshold is raised to $25,000, and the limit MIT’s science- and engineering-in- term. But they are trained in writing—and on ownership in publicly held enterprises to tensive campus will require substantial teach in a context where students receive $50,000. The prohibition on owning equity spending to pursue this work. During the close attention and must revise their work. in a private company from which a faculty campaign’s quiet phase, the institute bor- (The written work required in many Gen member wishes to receive clinical research rowed $1.3 billion for new facilities and to Ed and concentra- funding remains in place. A mechanism to address deferred maintenance, assuming tion courses is gen- permit petitions for exceptions to these donor support to help meet the larger to- erally used only for guidelines was also put in place. vj.s.r. tal costs. So far, that bet, and other aspects assessment, and of the campaign, ap- rarely subjected to pear to be paying off: expert comment fundraisers had se- and revision that cured $2.6 billion of could improve gifts and pledges as writing skills.) of March 31—or 52 To determine percent of the goal: the effectiveness an even more com- of the marquee fortable initial mar- course, the com- gin than Harvard’s mittee retained Les 43 percent when the Perelman, former public phase of the director of under- Jay M. Harris Crimson campaign graduate writing at began in September MIT; he and a cohort of researchers read the

MIT campaigns, too. 2013. Given Harvard’s placement tests for an entire Harvard fresh- LINCOLN/HPAC ROSE stupendous results man class, and then their final Expos essays, “For a Better World” since, the omens appear favorable for its and scored their progress. Based on those From Harvard’s perspective, the second most downriver neighbor. findings, the committee has recommended JOHN PHELAN JOHN important fundraising effort in Cambridge “expanding our writing instruction on both launched publicly on May 6, when MIT— On Writing Better ends of the spectrum,” for less proficient celebrating the centennial of its relocation At the end of a year in which the Faculty of writers and those who are most advanced. from Boston­­—unveiled its outward-look- Arts and Sciences (FAS) reworked the Gen- In the latter case, an experiment has been ing “MIT Campaign for a Better World.” To eral Education curriculum (see “General Ed- undertaken to allow very proficient writers put its ambitions in perspective, the goal is ucation Reconstituted,” May-June, page 31), to bypass Expos 20, and instead fulfill the $5 billion (as the Engineers’ website puts dean of undergraduate education Jay M. Har- requirement in a writing-intensive regular it, 5x109), compared to The Harvard Cam- ris reported on plans to enhance the College’s class: in 2015-2016, the Humanities 10a and

Harvard Magazine 31 John Harvard's Journal

10b sequence. Another pilot will be run this digital teaching platform that highlights writing develop courses—historical writ- year. Both embed required writing instruc- writing in subject-area concentration ing, scientific nonfiction, and so on—be- tion in the context of a course about which studies is being offered to departments, yond the English department’s relatively students are presumably passionate. with discipline-specific exercises stitched limited nonfiction offerings. And in the Beyond Expos, Harris’s report noted, in, to connect the skills honed in Expos to longer term, should graduate enrollment most “teaching of writing is done by the rest of students’ academic work. in humanities and other writing-intensive graduate-student instructors, a relatively These are incremental steps toward disciplines continue to plummet, Harvard small number of whom may have received a focus on instruction in writing across professors may find that they have to read support as teachers of writing.” To remedy the curriculum—perhaps increasingly and grade those undergraduate papers and that deficiency, this fall, the writing pro- necessary in an age of smart phones and exams themselves—so they may welcome gram and Bok Center are piloting training 140-character messages. In time, one could future student cohorts whose writing is to equip teaching fellows to teach under- imagine diverse disciplines in which fac- subjected to continual improvement dur- graduate analytical writing. Separately, a ulty members with a strong interest in ing their College years. vj.s.r.

THE UNDERGRADUATE could be held in a single cardboard cube. There was never a question of discard- ing the books I’d written when I was 11 and 12. I’m still exorbitantly proud of these Whittling Down juvenilia. They seem to me now the purest thing I’ve ever done, complete and whole in a foreign way, as though they were the products of a long-forgotten craft. by bailey trela In a way, this was a rehearsal—go- ing through the things I’d written when t home there’s a box with my ter, among a wistful gathering of rela- young, whereas soon I’d have to cull a name scrawled atop it. It lies in a tives and family friends; we had come to- more complicated mass: the uncollected cubby in the upstairs guest room gether to mourn, in ways both functional notes of my more recent years, and the and contains, among sundry oth- and personal, the passing of a matriarch. books I’d always meant to read. Before Aer small mementos, a scarf, a horseshoe en- While there, I also went through many I returned to Harvard, my sister-in-law graved with my name, and two books, which boxes, paring, weeding, and tossing away asked if I wanted to take an extra suit- I both wrote and illustrated, back in the the bones of my childhood, decocting and case with me: “For when you have to move polymath days of fifth and sixth grade. distilling them until the out.” She was already thinking about I spent a week back home this semes- brightest remnants graduation. About the great throwing- out that accompanies it. I said I didn’t think that would be necessary, but the family persisted. My brother pulled me aside and asked, refer- encing the grand library I’ve amassed at school that ev- eryone just seems to know I have: “What are you going to do with your books?” I didn’t know.

Every single thing I’ve written while at Harvard— essay, memoir, fiction, even what you’re reading right now—began as a Word doc- ument with a tail-end section labeled: Disjecta. I stole the word, the idea, from Samuel Beckett’s Dis- jecta, an opaque collation of fragments and poems and critical exercises that simply

Illustration by Eric Hanson didn’t fit anywhere else in his oeuvre. You I’ve been imagining the day of my de- a dismembered poet,” which nine out of 10 get the sense, perusing it, that for Beck- parture from Harvard on and off in various poets agree is the worst type to be. ett it was a distasteful thing to publish, iterations for the past few months, though The pain of cracking, of falling into a bitter book. The pieces it contains that the most ideal versions—I can’t say why— sherds—the sad thing is that after awhile, were written in another language remain always contain the curious moment when if you don’t think about it, you’ll forget untranslated; if you are interested in it, a wise and anonymous Frenchman pulls me even this. And so I’ve begun to suspect Beckett seems to say, you must be a serious suddenly aside at Commencement and re- that when things begin to make sense—to scholar (the joke being: perhaps you are too flects airily, Ah,“ le grand débouchement!” And come together, as the phrase has it—it’s only serious). I understand him, somehow, miraculously. because we’ve discarded the other pieces. When I write, the blank space beneath “The great opening-up,” I think to myself, the heading of Disjecta fills up, gradually, and I call out to him as he melts into the Your standard-issue Harvard College with thoughts: the rames of arguments, crowd: “You’ve nailed it!” desk comes equipped with three drawers on passels of vocabulary, sheaves of tentative There is a promise embosomed in the the right side: the top two of equal size, the ideas. Some of them I incorporate, others I process of growing up. You hear it all the bottommost slightly larger, slightly deeper. leave behind. The latter always ache to be time. In its most basic form it is some- My third drawer is currently playing host mended, to be followed through to what- thing like: Things will come together. “Things,” to 24 dining-hall coffee cups, which I will ever their end might be. Disjecta membra— here, can and does have a number of con- probably return. The upper two are brimful Beckett’s disjecta is a shortening—is often crete meanings: the world, your circle of of papers: old essays bearing indecipherable used in the scholarly world to refer to sherds of ancient I feel like the epicenter of a knowledge-based Big Bang, pottery; they are the leftover things, the whole of which with the truth rocketing away from me in all directions. can never be accounted for or completely understood. Like the frag- acquaintances, your identity, your mind. professorial comments, notes I’ve scribbled ments of my writing, they mean something But I can’t help worrying about the grand- to myself, half-hazy sketches and drawings, only obliquely. scale fragmentation that comes with going receipts, lists (to-do, shopping, and other- For a while now I’ve been worried about out into life and that seems, at least to me, wise), sticky notes sans stick, problem sets, the way my mind works. Sometimes it more definitive of postgraduation exis- and all the other delible scraps that tend to seems I’m incapable of thinking in a con- tence. Concretely, this worry makes sense: flock together with time. tinuous way. I came to Harvard as a fresh- The people I’ve known will scatter, and For four years this mass has accreted: at man planning to study English, and at first the things they meant together will cease the end of each, I bagged it up, stuck it in I hoped that literature, over the course of to be; they will have meaning only as the storage, and transferred it, a few months four years, would come to make sense to fragments of a whole. later, to newer drawers. But now I’m not me; with time I matured and lowered my And more generally, my interest in disjec- sure where I’ll end up. The state of future hopes and began to wait for just English ta doesn’t exactly bode well for the arrival storage is likewise unknown. Can I expect literature to reveal itself, its heart. Now I’ve of the coalescence I’ve been taught to ex- drawers where I end up settling? Will they struck realist bedrock: I try only to under- pect. By the time I’ve finished whatever it be as nice, as dry, as preservative as those stand writers, one by one and on their own is I’m writing, the unincorporated disjecta I’ve come to know? Or will there only be terms. membra—those bits that I haven’t managed drawer-shaped holes in the wall that my I wanted something infrangible, unscat- to fold into the work’s structure—no lon- papers will have to share with dust, spi- tered. I wanted the whole ancient pot. ger make sense to me. Though I’ve spent ders, the occasional opossum? What I got was a mindful of tumbling only a week or two writing, already the Disjecta, I’ve only just learned, shares a sherds. thoughts that came to me gleaming and root with dejected. Both stem from a verb When I sit down in my room to write, eureka-bright have been dulled by the lit- whose chief connotation, in the Latin, is to the books that surround me begin to loom, tle changes in my mind, my thoughts. They throw, or throw down. Hence the lowness of to threaten. They are bound in glue and belong to someone else; they make sense spirits, the melancholia that pertains to de- thread. They have a definite shape, a claim only to him. jected. And hence the thrown-outness, the to wholeness. They seem to gloat, letting There’s a sense of pain and anxiety en- scattered-to-the-winds-ness of disjecta. me know, in their own silent way, that veloped in the concept of disjecta, one that I know it’s not absolutely necessary that I’ll never make my way through them all, shows up etymologically. The mother I toss the contents of my drawers, or any much less understand them. It seems silly phrase, disjecta membra, can be translated a one of my books, that I throw them out, to hold onto them. number of morbid ways, though the first down, or into the trash. It’s not impossible Between those thoughts of mine that I’ll word is typically given as “scattered,” to hold onto everything. If you’re an adult never have time to chase down and these while membra becomes, variously, “limbs,” with disposable income, and you want to alien compendiums, I feel like the epicen- “fragments,” “members,” “remains.” The do it, there’s literally nothing stopping ter of a knowledge-based Big Bang, with phrase itself, as the Oxford English Diction- you. You can make a budget and set aside the truth—whatever that might be—rock- ary informs, has been whittled down from a stack of cash and purchase as many stor- eting away from me in all directions. Horace’s disjecti membra poetæ: the “limbs of age sheds as you’ll need; you can cart your

Harvard Magazine 33 John Harvard's Journal childhood drawings and photographs them anymore. They’re far too scattered— have to guess whether I’ll ever make sense and books about and stack them up and it would take an expert on me, a scholar of of them. I have to decide if I still harbor, continue doing this until a worldly-wise my life, to draw them all together, and I’m somewhere in the obscurity of memory, storage-shed attendant claps you on the far from that. the thoughts that once tied me to these shoulder and suggests that it’s time to I’ve begun to whittle things down. objects. move on. When I tire of working through draw- Back home I’ve got two books with You can do this, but I doubt you’d get ers, I move to my bookshelves, and vice white cardboard covers, and they seem the anything more than back pain out of it. I versa. Some things, I’ve found, are easy last pure thing I ever did. know I’d like to compile and preserve all to part with. Others I know I must keep. the scraps of paper and thought that have But there are trickier cases as well, things Berta Greenwald Ledecky Fellow Bailey Trela ’16, come to me during college. But the point of that evoke a dim pang of recognition, that who wrote these words in early May, actually be- synthesis has passed; I can’t make sense of recall images of my younger selves—and I lieves he’ll one day finish The Magic Mountain.

SPORTS (wrongly, it turned out) that a tape mea- sure would be prohibited. So she eyeballed it. When the blocks felt strange under her feet right before the race, she assumed it A Fast Start was nerves; not until too late did she re- alize that their placement was off by 12 inches. “I didn’t run very well, and I re- First-years Ngozi Musa and Gabby Thomas help member being angry about it the whole rest of the summer,” she recalled, now able set the pace for track and field. to smile. “It was a lesson never to get my blocks wrong again.” by lydialyle gibson Sitting next to Musa, her teammate Gab- by Thomas laughed. “So that explains why you’re so anal,” she said. A fellow freshman n April, sprinter Ngozi Musa, ap- set her starting blocks incorrectly at the and sprinter, Thomas is Musa’s best friend proaching the end of her freshman sea- world junior championships in Eugene, and closest competitor. She also takes a son on Harvard’s track and field team, Oregon. It was 2014, her first competition somewhat more relaxed attitude toward the was telling a story about the time she on an international stage, and she thought precise position of starting blocks. “I don’t I pay attention to detail that same way, or maybe just to different details,” she said. “If I forget my tape measure, I’ll use my feet or something.” Then it was Musa’s turn to laugh. “Yeah, she thinks outside the box. But we balance out. She’s the calm and I’m the storm.” That’s true in many ways, suggests Keb- ba Tolbert, Harvard’s sprints/hurdles and horizontal jumps coach, describing Musa’s explosiveness and Thomas’s deliberation. “Ngozi’s more tightly wound,” he explains, “a little more powerful, a little more instan- taneous. She’s like, boom. Gabby’s smooth- er. She’s bouncier, more elastic. And much more deliberate.” In their first season in Cambridge, Musa and Thomas broke multiple Harvard and Ivy League records—some of them multiple times—in the 60-, 100-, 200-, and 300-me- ter dashes and in 4 x 100-, 4 x 200-, and 4 x 400-meter relays. In May, when the Crimson women brought home their third Sprinters Gabby Thomas (left) and Ngozi Musa are teammates, close competitors, and best friends.

34 July - August 2016 Photographs by Jim Harrison consecutive outdoor Ivy League Heptago- Both spent the year nal title, Thomas won gold in the 100- and shedding old habits to pick up speed. 200-meter dash and bronze in the long jump. Both women were part of the 4 x 100 relay athletes; they train that won it all. Thomas made first team All hard throughout fall Ivy, Musa second team. In addition, Thomas semester, grinding qualified for this summer’s Olympic trials, along day after day while Musa holds the national record in Si- without the payoff of erra Leone, where she is a dual citizen (and a meet until Decem- for whom she competed in the 2014 world ber, when the indoor juniors), for the indoor 60-meter dash. She season begins. It’s can run it in 7. 40 seconds. a brutal stretch, he Jason Saretsky, McCurdy director of says, at a time when track and field/cross country, talks often the new students are about the national ambitions he has for also making other Harvard’s program, how he’d like to see hard adjustments. (As his athletes competing every year for Ivy a freshman proctor, who lives in the dorms as soon as they arrived on campus. “They League championships and beyond. Musa with his wife and two children, Saretsky have far, far exceeded what they did in high and Thomas are part of that plan, and they sympathizes: “I see these kids, and I see the school. Part of it is luck, part of it is hav- shared a roster last season with stars like transition they go through.”) ing each other, and part of it is surviving sprinter Autumne Franklin ’16, hurdler and All that can take a toll on first-year the fall.” middle-distance runner Paige Kouba ’16, runners’ performance. “My usual rule of and shotputter and discus thrower Nikki thumb,” Saretsky says, “is that if they can Having each other is the part both Okwelogu ’17. get back to where they were by the end of women talk about most. They met in spring But as freshmen, Saretsky says, Musa their senior year in high school, that’s pretty 2015 during the Visitas weekend for admit- and Thomas were unusual. The first year good.” But Thomas and Musa began break- ted students, although they didn’t hit it of college can be difficult for track and field ing records, their own and others, almost off until they met again, this time as team-

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Harvard Magazine 35 John Harvard's Journal “One thing I’ve really been learning this year: making her successes my successes.”

done,” Musa added. “And the intensity has to be there, and that you’re executing properly—” “Like, your foot is cocked at a 90-degree Thomas and Musa hold Harvard and Ivy made when she was 13. Her mother, a for- angle, your arm is sitting at the correct po- League records in the 4 x100-meter relay mer high-school high-jumper, pushed her to sition. And if it’s not, then you’ve wasted and in May helped win a conference title. run, “and then in junior year of high school a run.” mates, in the fall. After that, they became I realized that I had potential to do well in One other thing the two share, which per- inseparable. track, and that’s when I began to think seri- haps helped with their transition: midway “It’s such a blessing to have someone—,” ously about it as something with a future.” through high school, both moved across the Thomas began. For each, this past season meant shed- country when their parents changed jobs— “Such a blessing,” Musa echoed. ding bad running habits they’d picked up Musa from Wisconsin to Seattle, and Thom- “—that you can compete with at practice in their early years in the sport, and learn- as from suburban Atlanta to Northampton, and during meets, someone who will push ing to hone their natural gifts: Musa getting Massachusetts. The move helped Thomas you,” Thomas summed up. rid of a hunched posture that had her push- open up to new people; Musa, who initially Last season the two trained together 85 ing down off the blocks, instead of up, and dreaded the disruption of uprooting after percent of the time, and as sprinters they Thomas working to correct a stride that was tenth grade, grew to love Seattle so much overlap in most events, racing against each too long. Tolbert goes down the list: “We’re that she wears a tiny silver pendant in the other often. Which means that somebody trying to teach them how to accelerate prop- shape of Washington State on a chain around wins and somebody loses: last fall, their erly, how to run at top speed correctly. How her neck. “My phrase is always, I want to teammates told them about another close to be relaxed, and how to run with the cor- become more comfortable being uncom- pair whose friendship eventually foundered rect technical things: where their feet are, fortable,” she said. “Because I feel like, when because of their competition on the field. where their hips are, the way their arms are, you’re uncomfortable, that’s when you grow. Musa and Thomas said they are determined good posture, good rhythms.” The women’s That’s when you get better.” not to let that happen to them. talent is both a blessing and a curse, he says. “It’s hard sometimes when you see some- “The blessing is, you can achieve at a high one else’s successes, and you’re like, ‘But me, level. The curse is that sometimes you don’t Explore More but me,’” Musa admitted. “But at the same realize all the work it’s going to take to get time it’s like, you have to rejoice with those to the next level, because the level you’re at For more on Crimson sports, see who rejoice and make other people’s suc- came fairly easy.” these online-only articles: cesses your successes. I think that’s one That’s the hardest thing about the sport, thing I’ve really been learning this year: Musa and Thomas admitted, harder than the Jimmy Vesey making her successes my successes. Because long season—it runs the length of the school Looks Back she’s my best friend. It’s so cool to see how year and, for postseason competitions, be- Harvard’s Hobey far she’s come and how far she’s going.” yond—and the rough practices, harder than Baker winner heads Musa and Thomas both came to track the early bedtimes and strict diets their oth- to the NHL. and field through the gateway sport of soc- er friends don’t have to keep, and the disci- harvardmag. cer, where they were the fastest forwards pline required for getting homework done com/vesey-16 on their childhood teams. When she was before practice, or writing papers on the bus. nine, Musa’s father, who himself ran track Explained Thomas, “It’s just, how much Touché, Again in college, enrolled her and her two older work it takes to change—.” Two-time NCAA women’s fencing brothers in the Hershey’s Track and Field “The littlest detail,” Musa broke in. champion Adrienne games. She made it all the way to the na- “To get, like, one-tenth of a second better, Jarocki talks about tionals in the 50-meter dash and won first that’s hours and hours of work,” Thomas the sport of place. It was exciting. “So I said, I think I’ll said. “Because it’s short sprints, so it’s not “physical chess." become a runner.” like you have any room to mess up and make harvardmag. Thomas’s story is similar, a journey from up for it.” com/jarocki-16 the soccer field to the racetrack, which she “Yeah, if you mess up in the 100, you’re

36 July - August 2016 www.gocrimson.com The Plant Prospectors The Arnold Arboretum’s systematic mission by Jonathan Shaw to sample botanic diversity

Many mornings, before classes, Michael Donoghue would roll at length and compare them side by side as they changed through out of bed in the “rickety old house” he shared with several other the seasons and from year to year. graduate students, and consider how lucky he was. He lived rent- This global collection of botanical diversity at Harvard’s Ar- free on 281 acres, formerly an estate and contiguous farmlands, in nold Arboretum is rooted in a tradition of botanist-explorers, Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Periodically, when a wind- stretching back at least to the eighteenth century, when the pre- storm felled a tree on the grounds, workmen would deliver wood eminent plant-hunters in colonial North America were funded by for the fireplaces. But that’s not why Donoghue, then working to- monarchs seeking ornamental specimens for their gardens and ward his 1982 Harvard doctorate, considered himself fortunate. estates, or trees that would yield timber or fruit for the economic For him, the draw of this enviable situation was the plants: trees good of the nations they ruled. In October 1765, for example, John and shrubs gathered from around the world, some rare or endan- Bartram, royal botanist to George III, and his son William dis- gered, that grew just outside his door, where he could study them covered an unknown plant with beautiful fruit growing along the

Franklinia alatamaha, photographed by Jon Hetman/The Arnold Arboretum Harvard Magazine 37 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Arboretum director William (Ned) Friedman and graduate student Kristel Schoonderwoerd recently discovered that seed development in Franklinia continues for a full year after pollination, with a seven- month pause in winter—exceed- ingly rare among flowering plants. The plant, seen at far left in its autumn colors, is extinct in the wild. The silk tree at left, an Asian native prized for its fragrant and showy blooms, was introduced to

ROBERT (LEFT); MAYER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN North America in 1745. banks of the Altamaha river in Georgia; they named it Franklinia and it has continued its plant explorations ever since. alatamaha after fellow Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin. The Now, though, the arboretum is launching a new era of discov- Franklin tree, one of their most notable horticultural finds, is ery, focused on collecting exceptional representatives of botani- now considered extinct in the wild, but still grows in the gardens cal variation from a rapidly changing world. A plan unveiled this of connoisseurs—and at the decidedly democratic Arboretum, spring aims to secure the collections’ scientific importance for the which has a particularly massive and long-lived specimen. next century. The agenda is spurred by widespread destruction of Other botanists introduced foreign plants. André Michaux, native plant habitats due to global development, as well as threats who served Louis XVI of France and discovered Rhododendron to the diversity of plant populations caused by rapid changes catawbiense crowning peaks in the Blue Ridge mountains with in prevailing climatic conditions. It calls for 10 years of expedi- its purple flowers, also introduced the silk tree and camellia to tions to global sites—principally in the Northern Hemisphere— North American gardens. Specimens of all these plants grow at to sample as much of the remaining diversity as possible among the arboretum today. But the explorer who left the greatest leg- woody plants that will grow in Boston’s temperate, but warming, acy of botanical diversity to the arboretum was its own Ernest climate. This time, the collecting targets are driven principally by Henry Wilson, whose decades of exploration in East Asia in the scientific criteria, including new understanding of plant phylog- early 1900s brought more than 2,000 new plants to the West, in- enies (family trees showing the evolutionary history of relation- cluding Acer griseum, the paperbark maple, known for its beauti- ships among plants), conservation considerations, and attention ful exfoliating bark. Wilson called the arboretum, which he ran to developing biological breadth among the arboretum’s existing from 1927 until his death in 1930, “America’s Greatest Garden,” living specimens.

38 July - August 2016 Portraits by Jim Harrison Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Ephemeral Attractions On a glorious spring afternoon in April, when the sky was a continuous, deep blue, Arnold Arboretum director Ned Friedman set out on a quest on its grounds. He was seeking the perfect young female seed cones—red, brown, purple, or pink—of Larix siberica, the Siberian larch. He paused periodically, stopping to admire the beautiful exfoliating bark of Acer griseum, explaining that it is pho- tosynthetic, like a leaf. This species is represented in the West by offspring of just two specimens brought back by the arboretum’s great plant collector E.H. Wilson in 1901 and 1907. A recent expe- dition to sample the rare maple’s genetic diversity from nine populations in China revealed a species under duress: only one population had produced seeds, and only a few. At one rocky site at the base of the conifer collec- tion, Friedman noted that horticulturists will attempt to grow Ephedra, the Mormon tea plant; it normally lives in deserts. Once thought to be a close relative of flower- ing plants, molecular work shows that it is instead most closely related to conifers—hence the siting within the arboretum collections. Along the way, Friedman greeted visitors; he chatted with a local bike-shop owner who had a suggestion relating to a new bike path that will take com- Found at the Arboretum in a multi-pronged mission: muters off city streets and through the grounds instead. (clockwise from top): a tiny, serving the public, as well as exquisite, pink female cone of a Below a hill offering a long view up into the conifer collec- 116-year-old Siberian larch meeting scientific priorities tion, Friedman stopped again. At center stood a magnificent (Larix siberica); flowers erupting and conservation goals—an Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the dawn redwood—the first speci- from a Norway maple bud (Acer effort to connect people to men to be grown outside of China, he said (the species was platanoides); the curled-back plants and diversity. The bud scales of a Japanese maple discovered in 1941, and and was formally described by a Chi- (Acer palmatum) dating to 1898, arboretum, with its Freder- nese botanist who had trained at the arboretum)—and one of its leaves and flowers (the red ick Law Olmsted-designed the most beautiful conifers. ovoids) yet to open. These and paths, roadways and vistas, At last he reached the larches, and pulled down a low branch other stunning ephemera are found at Arboretum director incorporation into Boston’s to show off the tiny female cones. “Imagine that photographed Ned Friedman’s facebook.com/ “emerald necklace” of park- against the blue sky. More beautiful than a rose, and subtle.” ArnoldArboretum.Harvard lands (Harvard donated the The cones are no more than page. Bottom left: the first dawn land to the City of Boston redwood (Metasequoia glypto- a quarter-inch long, and an stroboides) grown outside China, but retained a thousand-year indescribable, deep crim- in fall color lease), and free admission son. “That’s the magnifi- (unique among major arbo- cence of this collection,” he reta), has had this important public role from the outset. said, “myriad ephemera. The broader, institutional message that he hopes to convey A collection of long-lived is about stewardship of the natural world. Why bring all these trees, but within that con- plants here? “It’s important because at a very basic level, some of text, an infinite number them may be lost if we don’t. It’s important at another level be- of ephemeral events in the cause the arboretum has a critical role, in an urban landscape es- lives of organisms.” pecially, to connect people with nature.” And at a scientific level, Each week, Friedman pho- “the conception of how organisms work is being opened up in tographs one of these “myri- ways we couldn’t have dreamed possible. With new instrumenta- ad ephemera” at the arbore- tion and genomic knowledge, we are learning how plants sense tum, and captions the image and interact with the environment in astounding ways.” Such with scientific or cultural knowledge enriches the human condition, he says, and is the “cen- context in an e-mail to plant terpiece of Harvard’s mission, I think: to help us lead a good life lovers around the world that because we understand. That’s what we’re doing here. As important is also posted to Facebook. as our work is for conservation, climate change, ecology, and evo- It’s part of his public out- lutionary biology, our core mission engages the human condition, reach, complementing the ar- and helps ensure that we humans become better stewards of the boretum’s events and classes planet that we share with millions of other species.”

Photographs by William Friedman/The Arnold Arboretum Harvard Magazine 39 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 25-30 100

The Arnold Arboretum plans to collect plants from around the globe at the sites indicated. China, with temperate zones not unlike Boston’s, will be the single most important source of acquisitions from the wild. Plants from the Southern Hemisphere, on the other hand, often can’t survive New England’s seasonal climatic fluctuations.

Collecting from the Last Wild Places interesting from an evolutionary and developmental point of view.” “We’re facing mass extinction on the planet,” said arboretum For example, Friedman, an evolutionary biologist, studies the director William (Ned) Friedman, explaining the thinking behind diversification of seed plants, and has made extensive use of the the plan. “Climate change,” continued the Arnold professor of or- arboretum since his arrival at Harvard in 2011. Pollination biol- ganismic and evolutionary biology, “is fundamentally changing the ogy in rhododendrons and conifers, bud formation and climate way humans live, and will continue to do so. We have all manner of change in hickories and walnuts, and the role of mutation in new wonderful and rich questions about the evolution of life that remain floral forms of redbuds have all drawn him and his lab team into unanswered. We have issues of conservation biology. And we have the living collections. Most recently, he has been studying the this world of genomes that is opening up right before our eyes, un- arboretum’s Franklinia specimens, which grow in the Explorer’s derstanding biology by actually stringing out the sequence of DNA.” Garden atop Bussey Hill, where the most sensitive plants are Putting these issues together, Friedman and Michael Dosmann, the sited. He and graduate student Kristel Schoonderwoerd have dis- arboretum’s curator of living collections, worked with an advisory covered that the plant’s extraordinary cultural history is matched board to develop a list of 395 “desiderata:” groups of plant acquisi- by its most unusual reproductive biology: a seven-month winter tions that Friedman said will make the living collection “extraordi- dormancy that intervenes between the time a flower is pollinated narily relevant not just to the world, but also to Harvard University’s in late summer and the moment the first fruits begin to develop academic mission for the next century and beyond.” the following season—akin to waiting two seasons for an apple “We don’t aspire to have everything in the world,” noted Dos- to ripen. Friedman speculates that the Franklin tree’s unusual mann—and the Boston pattern of hitting pause after pollination may have evolved as the climate circumscribes plant’s ancestors, which likely originated in the subtropics, mi- The plant collection plan what can be grown out- grated north and adapted to colder conditions. by the numbers: doors—“but we are try- Crane, who was formerly director of the Royal Botanic Gar- ing to be synoptic.” As dens, Kew, recalled how one year a male ginkgo in their collection New species for the collections 177 Peter Crane, dean of the suddenly produced a few seeds. (Ginkgos, often called “living Yale School of Forestry fossils,” are the sole remaining representatives of a plant division marginally hardy 92 & Environmental Stud- called the Ginkgophyta.) “That is the kind of thing you see and New genera for the collections 41 ies, put it, what makes could potentially investigate when you have a living collection,” marginally hardy 31 the plan distinctive is its he said. “The opportunity to observe these plants closely over a “strong science underpin- long period of time is incredibly valuable. The Arboretum,” he Acquisition targets’ regions of origin ning: the idea that they added, “is botanically among the very topmost important collec- Eastern Asia 225 want to sample broadly” tions in the world,” and has “a very distinguished history, particu- Eurasia 18 from families of related larly associated with the exploration of woody plants from East species, and “they want Asia, but also with a strong tradition of plant science at Harvard.” Europe 17 to get examples of un- Consistent with E.H. Wilson’s focus on China and environs, a North America 133 usual” groups of plants region he called “the mother of gardens” because of the extraor- South America 2 “that might otherwise be dinary biodiversity he had found there, by far the largest num- overlooked but that are ber of newly anticipated acquisitions is expected to come from

40 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 eastern Asia; the plants Wilson collected there adapted well to tractive plants that circulate in the nursery trade) or plants whose Boston’s similar latitude. Now, of course, both regions are subject provenance is unknown, obtaining wild representatives, preferably to climate change, and China is also an epicenter for development, from multiple places within their natural range, is a priority. habitat destruction, and impending species loss. The collecting plan emphasizes acquiring wild species, includ- Latitude, Altitude, and Solitude ing those already represented in the collections. As Larry Hufford, The importance of sampling broadly from across a plant’s nat- a professor of plant systematics and evolution at Washington ural range, in order to sample diversity within a species, was dem- State University and a member of the living collections advisory onstrated early in the arboretum’s history, when its first director, committee, explained, “Wild species are where the genetic diver- Charles Sargent, wanted to grow Cedrus libani, the biblical Cedar of sity lies, and we really need to know what that diversity is. One of Lebanon, a tree native to the Mediterranean. These trees may be the attributes of complex landscapes like China or the American seen all over Europe; they were carried back as mementos of the West is that there are unique pockets of genetic diversity,” often Crusades. But in Boston, none proved hardy enough to survive the small and geographically disparate—a pattern, he said, that has winter. Sargent therefore acquired seed from trees growing high become clear only in the past couple of decades, thanks to the rise in the Taurus Mountains of Turkey, where the elevation ensured of DNA sequencing. The Torrey pine, Pinus torreyana, for example, freezing temperatures. That population proved completely hardy grows only in two spots along the California coast near San Diego. at the arboretum, and even further north.

Thought to be a relict of a population nearly extinguished during A significant number of the plants targeted for collection during FRIEDMAN WILLIAM the last ice age, these trees now growing in southern California nevertheless retain the genes necessary to survive cold New Eng- land winters at the arboretum. “With habitat destruction ongoing all over the world, not just in the U.S. but in China, and with glob- al climate change, which is likely to lead to extensive extinctions,” Hufford said, “sampling that diversity Relict wild populations now may be our last chance.” of the Torrey pine (right) The arboretum’s approach is excep- grow only in Southern tional, he continued, for using “knowl- California, at the edge of the evolutionary tree of the southernmost reach of the last glaciation, but flowering plants and the conifers to the plant retains genes think about how best to sample in order that make it hardy at to represent diversity.” Taking this new the arboretum. Curator of living collections approach will make the collection even Michael Dosmann with more valuable to researchers. Hufford Acer griseum, the himself worked on the first family tree paperbark maple. of hydrangeas in the 1990s, using plants at the arboretum and at Kew to figure out the relationships among living spe- cies of that genus. Without those re- sources, he says, the project would have required years of work tracking down wild populations in China. Another reason for acquiring more plants of wild origin has to do with provenance. The arboretum maintains extraordinarily detailed records about its 15,000 accessioned plants: where in the world they can be found, where and when they were originally collected, and their current health. There are even data about the 75,000 plants that have died or have been removed since the arboretum was founded in 1872, all georeferenced on map layers. This kind of documenta- tion, much of it available online, makes the collection all the more valuable to researchers, and even to casual visitors. But because many of the species now in the living collections are either cultivars (selections of especially robust and at-

Harvard Magazine 41 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 . sinensis S S. sinensis S. sinensis S. monadelpha S. monadelpha S. pseudocamellia S. pseudocamellia S. rostrata S. rostrata Stewartia S. serrata grandifloraS. ovata var. S. ovata S. malacondenron S. malacondenron H. sinensis serrataH. villosa var. alatamaha F.

A phylogeny, or family tree, shows the evolutionary history of Stewartia, and its ancient relationship to Franklinia. This phylogeny (from Li et al., 2002) was constructed using molecular data from the arboretum’s living collections, and was used to study the geographical distribution of New World and Old World groups of Stewartia. At right, the characteristic mottled bark of Stewartia pseudocamellia. ARNOLD ARBORETUM the future expeditions are considered marginally hardy in Boston thetic rate and how water flows out through the leaves. “But all today. But winters are becoming milder, and remote temperature we’ve got is information on these wimpy deciduous plants with monitoring throughout the grounds has produced more granular thin little leaves,” he said. “It would be really cool to expand this understanding of the arboretum’s own microclimates, helping its data set to include some of these evergreen species.” Viburnum davi- horticulturists site plants with ever better precision. The push for dii has been grown successfully for the last two years at the New biological breadth has led to ambitious attempts, for example, to York Botanical Garden. Getting it to grow in Jamaica Plain would grow flowering plants with evergreen leaves. In 2012, Michael Dos- be a stretch, he admitted, but would fulfill multiple aims: “One, mann and a colleague from the Morris Arboretum of the University it brings us a beautiful plant. Everybody would love it. Two, it of Pennsylvania collected acorns and cuttings from the northern- brings us a different lifestyle for this group, because it’s evergreen, most U.S. stand of live oaks (Quercus virginiana, the southern, ever- meaning it is functionally different. And three, it brings us phy- green species seen dripping with Spanish moss in movies), located logenetic diversity because this would add an ancient Viburnum on the Virginia coast, in the hope that they might get a plant to lineage that we don’t have represented now.” survive. “We’ll have to get creative if we want to add some of this Other genetically important additions to the collection, he material to the collections,” Dosmann admitted. “We are going to lose some Expeditions last year returned with 73 kinds of the live oaks, maybe all of them—but why not grow” them as part of the arbo- of plants, of which only 24 were actually targeted. retum’s bonsai collection, which horti- culturists move into greenhouses during And he expects more of the same—including the the cold season, so “a researcher could still grab the DNA from a leaf?” This is discovery of species previously unknown to science. an innovative way to expand the scope of the collection into less hardy genera. With live oak now mostly in said, would be Viburnum microcarpum, which grows in moist, cloud- hand, the arboretum’s wish list includes similarly ambitious quarry forest habitats in Mexico, and the rare and isolated Viburnum el- among other groups of plants, including an evergreen shrub, Vibur- lipticum—the only one of the world’s 165 viburnum species en- num davidii, a subtropical species native to China. demic to the northwestern United States. Both plants, relatively This is the kind of acquisition that, 40 years after he lived on the straightforward to acquire but hard to grow, would add signifi- grounds, still excites Michael Donoghue, past director of the Har- cant biological diversity to the collection, adhering to the plan’s vard University Herbaria and now a professor at Yale. The leading conscientious approach of finding rare plants from different parts expert on Viburnum evolution (his vanity plate reads “VBRNM”), of the world, with different lifestyles. “That’s why everything on he visits the arboretum regularly to conduct research and called this list is interesting,” Donoghue said. “I love that.” the V. davidii “a classic example of what we want to try to do. It “We can’t know exactly what will be important 50 years from has large, very beautiful, thick, leathery leaves, with a very special now,” Dosmann noted. “Nobody could have predicted that plant venation pattern.” Donoghue and his colleagues have been study- phenology [the study of events such as flowering time or leaf-out ing physiology in viburnums recently, measuring their photosyn- in response to seasonal phenomena including temperature, length

42 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 of day, drought, and so on] would become useful in the study of a genus of plant that we never had here that Michael Dosmann col- climate change.” Phenological work at the arboretum from the lected in China with our wonderful Chinese colleagues and partners 1970s to the present, for example, helped Donoghue and his co- at the Chengdu Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Botany. workers recognize that two factors—the branching architecture We never would have dreamed that we could acquire this material of the plant, and the type of buds that a plant has—are the best from the wild.” And he expects more of the same—including the predictors of how well any species will respond to fluctuations in discovery of species previously unknown to science. climate. Now phenology is a principal focus for researchers like Many of these expeditions will be run in collaboration with the arboretum’s Elizabeth Wolkovich, assistant professor of or- other arboreta, under the auspices of the North America-China ganismic and evolutionary biology, who has recruited a team of Plant Exploration Consortium (NACPEC, which includes more citizen scientists to record such events on the grounds. She wants than a dozen institutions in the United States and China). That to understand how differences in the way plants react to cues ensures a wide distribution of seeds and cuttings—and thus the such as warming, chilling, and photoperiod affect their competi- long-term survival of the germplasm they collect. It also helps tion for resources and the formation of plant communities. Cli- control expenses. (The Arnold Arboretum hopes to raise $5 mil- mate change will alter the composition of temperate forests, she lion for its decade-long expeditions effort.) But University of says, and her research aims to predict the effects of such change. Pennsylvania Morris Arboretum executive director Paul Meyer What happens if important mast-producing species such as oak explained that, relatively speaking, the expeditions themselves and beech, for example, reach the limits of their ability to respond are not the principal challenge: “The big expense begins when to changes in seasons, fail to set seed, and decline? you get home. In some ways,” he said, “it is a little like having a Nobody knew in 1910, when E. H. Wilson first collected a single baby. The baby comes pretty quickly, but it is 20 years of expense

Tsuga chinensis, the Chinese hemlock, that by the end of twentieth in raising it.” Many supporters, he added, often like supporting DONOGHUE MICHAEL century its American cousin Tsuga Acquiring canadensis would be decimated by an Viburnum davidii, an evergreen insect infestation (see “A Hemlock representative of Farewell,” July-August 2014, page 8) to the genus, would which the Chinese plant is resistant, add a completely as horticulturists at the Morris Arbo- new evolutionary lineage to the retum observed in the 1980s. The sin- arboretum’s gle plant Wilson collected had been living collections. the parent of all Chinese hemlocks in the United States until 1979. A number of new collections have been made since the mid 1990s, but the arboretum wants more specimens from China in order to increase di- versity of the species in the United States. The institution’s goal is to be a repository of both plant material and knowledge, a resource at the ready for an uncertain future. To that end, the arboretum has also targeted for acquisition many woody plants— clones from the exact, individual specimens—that have already had their genomes sequenced. Such plants, which might be languishing in a research greenhouse somewhere or growing near a lab—and could easily perish from the actual expedition, which may cost $6,000 to $10,000 per par- neglect—are scientifically valuable because they are the source ticipant. But “running the greenhouse, staffing it, moving the of rich, painstakingly annotated genetic data. For the same rea- plants out into the garden, and documenting and evaluating ev- son, the arboretum will simultaneously encourage researchers erything is where the real expense lies.” the world over to use individual plants from its living collection Even so, the price of such knowledge seems, if anything, low for whole-genome sequencing. This project, supported by spe- compared to the return. The 350,000 species of flowering plants cial funding, will create a kind of genetic library that can be used (the angiosperms), which include every fruit, vegetable, and for reference purposes in the future. Having genetic sequences to grain, emerged in an explosion of evolution about 135 million complement seeds, cuttings, and living plants will provide an- years ago. They form the basis of the food chain on the planet, other resource for scholars. yet the question of why they have been so much more successful than the other seed plants that preceded them—of which there On the Trail of Undiscovered Species are under 2,000 extant species, mostly conifers and cycads—re- With efforts on this scale, Friedman knows that arboretum mains unanswered. If flowering plants are the bulwark of life, expeditions will bring home more species than the 395 that are on wouldn’t it be crucial to know what climatic conditions or inher- its list. Expeditions last year returned with 73 kinds of plants, of ently evolved traits fueled their diversification and success—and which only 24 were actually targeted—a powerful reminder of the the limits of their adaptability? diversity that exists in the wild just waiting to be studied. Fried- man is thrilled by what the explorers were able to obtain: “There’s Jonathan Shaw ’89 is managing editor of this magazine.

Harvard Magazine 43 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 VITA Nathaniel Bowditch Brief life of a mathematician and businessman: 1773-1838 by tamara plakins thornton

n 1816, Harvard awarded Nathaniel Bowditch an honorary doc- such wrongdoing, he “would descend on the object of his animad- tor of laws, a decade after its (unsuccessful) offer of the Hollis version with the quickness and scorching severity of lightning.” Iprofessorship of mathematics and natural philosophy. These Once Bowditch caught on to the loose, even negligent, way Har- were remarkable moves, considering that Bowditch was entire- vard was run, the storm was not long in coming. College monies ly self-taught. But Bowditch was no less remarkable. He was the were mixed in with personal accounts, the books hadn’t been kept country’s most accomplished mathematician, the man Thomas Jef- in years, and official papers consisted of “detached scraps” and ferson called “a meteor of the hemisphere.” Though remembered shorthand “hieroglyphics.” President John T. Kirkland distributed now largely for his New American Practical Navigator (1802), the ubiq- scholarships without the Corporation’s knowledge or consent, uitous guide for nineteenth-century mariners, he took much great- awarded honorary diplomas against its explicit orders, regularly er pride in his annotated translation of that apotheosis of Enlight- skipped chapel duty to dine with patrician friends in Boston— enment quantitative sciences, Pierre de Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste. and then sought reimbursement for the bridge tolls. Bowditch set So did his countrymen. For a young nation anxious to prove about cleaning house, social niceties be damned! Out went the to Europe that it was not a cultural desert, this accomplishment College treasurer, the steward, and finally Kirkland himself. would “be something to boast of,” wrote Harvard professor Ed- Proper Boston was appalled, not so much by what Bowditch ward Everett in 1818. Earlier Everett had complained that Europe- had revealed, or even by the results of his actions, but by the rough- ans were barely aware of American scientific publications, noting shod way in which he had conducted affairs. F.R.S. though he that the only copies of Bowditch’s article on meteors to be found might be, Dr. Bowditch lacked the polished manners of the clas- on the Continent were “the one my brother had brought in his sically educated gentleman. It was all a “shameful business,” con- trunk to Holland, and I in mine to Germany.” Citizens were there- fided Charles Francis Adams in his diary. “But some men have no fore elated when in 1818 the Royal Society of London “paid a trib- delicacy.” On campus, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bowditch “is ute to American genius,” as one Boston newspaper put it, designat- sincere assafoetida”—a foul-smelling gum. ing Bowditch an honorary member of that august institution. Eventually the Brahmins realized that Bow­ditch’s forthright But why did he turn down the Harvard professorship? At the ways had their uses. The patrician corporations he administered— time, Bowditch already headed a marine insurance company in financial, educational, and cultural alike—ran efficiently and profit- his native Salem, and unlike the Hollis chair, that post provided a ably, and his willingness to offend powerful people had political generous salary and leisure to pursue his studies. He could hardly utility. In maintaining the rule-bound Bowditch as a standard-bear- have doubted his ability to teach teenagers math and science (not er of their class, Brahmins promoted the notion that their institu- until 1803 did the College add arithmetic to its admissions require- tions operated impartially, treating wealthy capitalists and poor ments), but he was haunted by his lack of a gentleman’s education, folk with the same no-exceptions, clockwork regularity. When with its immersion in Latin and Greek. He was, one contemporary Bowditch received more European honors in the 1830s for his newly observer commented, afraid of “singing small on classic ground.” published Laplace volumes, elite Bostonians eagerly embraced this Harvard tried again in 1810, seeking him as an Overseer. Once American Newton as a cultural ornament to the Athens of America. assured the “indispensable duties of the office” were minimal, he ac- Bowditch made no permanent mark as a scientist, but his cepted. He assumed a far more significant role in 1826, when he was methodizing, systematizing, rationalizing ways shaped American named to the Corporation, appointed this time for business, not institutional life and the modus operandi of American capitalism. mathematical, expertise. The College was in a financial mess and Harvard is a case in point. He left his Laplace manuscript to the Bowditch, who had taken charge of a Boston trust and investment College, and somehow it ended up at the Boston Public Library, company, had a reputation for making it operate like a miniature sidelined like Laplacean science itself. But a numbering system solar system, a “great machine” running “with the regularity and for Harvard’s libraries? Printed annual reports of the President? harmony of clock-work.” Had Harvard’s powers-that-be known That carefully managed endowment? Look no further than the what he would do, they might have thought twice about their de- Laplacean businessman on the Corporation. cision. “Order, method, punctuality, and exactness were, in his es- teem, cardinal virtues; the want of which, in men of official station, Tamara Plakins Thornton ’78, professor of history at the State University of he regarded not so much a fault as a crime,” Josiah Quincy reflected New York, Buffalo, is the author of Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power in his History of Harvard University, and when Bowditch detected of Numbers (University of North Carolina Press), published this April.

44 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 In this 1835 portrait by Charles Osgood, Bowditch sits with the first two volumes of his Mécanique Céleste translation, as a bust of Laplace looks on. Image ©2006 Peabody Essex Museum/Photograph by Mark Sexton Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 The Outsiders’ Insider

How Franklin Leonard’s Black List is reshaping Hollywood SMC ackstage at the Montalban Theater in Los Angeles, Frank- by Sophia Nguyen lin Leonard ’00 takes his catered sandwich to the green room. It’s his party, in a manner of speaking, and the on an invitation he had extended on Twitter. “Honestly,” he says, table’s been set with beer and wine and some- “kudos to her for coming into the lion’s den.” one else’s preferred brand of bourbon, and Despite apologizing earlier for “running around neurotically,” has TV actors of varying fame and uniformly the supremely unruffled-seeming Leonard sits down long enough good looks seated around it. They’re all on a dinner break before for a brief interview. “What are your plans?” he asks. “Do you a live reading of “College Republicans,” a screenplay written by want to be a screenwriter?” Hesitation prompts him to prod, “Oh, BWes Jones that follows a young Lee Atwater and Karl Rove on come on, you must have designs on something.” their 1973 campaign through the South. Leonard—in a blazer Leonard is used to writers wanting something. If he can, he will and Converse sneakers, his dreadlocks tied back in an elegant help them get it. Actors get more glamor and directors more cred- knot—retreats to a cluster of chairs to the side, where his team it, but he is passionate about spotlighting screenwriters; he seems members balance their plates on their knees. The situation is to believe in pure story, conceived on the page—not through aes- reminiscent of the divide in high-school theater, between the thetic or cinematic observation—as the prime mover of filmmak- thespians and the techies. “Joining the kids’ table?” his events ing. He calls himself the writing community’s hype man: “I’m cool manager quips, and he nods. with being the Puff Daddy to their Biggie.” And he became that by A self-described micromanager, Leonard goes over a few last creating a Black List that people dream of being on. details: collecting the cast members’ contact information; choos- ing the house music as the audience files in (“Southern funk. The Black List 1.0: “A Way to Quantify Heat” Allman Brothers,” he decides, firmly); drafting introductory re- Leonard likes to say he founded the Black List by accident. marks. He especially worries that the auditorium full of Holly- In December 2005, he was a junior executive at a production com- wood liberals might boo his guests: Alex Smith, the current sit- pany, frustrated that he couldn’t seem to find good scripts. He went ting (and first woman) national chair of the College Republican through his calendar, pulling the contacts for every executive he National Committee, and two of her friends; they’d taken him up had met with that year, coming up with a list of 90. From an anon-

46 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ymous address, he polled them about their favorite unproduced have parlayed the attention into jobs on massive studio franchises. screenplays from that year, and, after tallying the results, sent the Brian Duffield, of the Black List class of 2010, earned his first writ- numbered list back to them as a PDF under the title “The Black ing credit on the young-adult blockbuster Insurgent; Marvel Studios List.” Then he went on vacation to Mexico. hired Chris McCoy (named to the Black List three times) for Guard- “I went to the resort business center to check my e-mail” for his ians of the Galaxy, and Stephany Folsom (whose script on Stanley Ku- work account, Leonard recalls. “And there were 75 e-mails where brick made the 2013 list) for their next Thor sequel. Josh Zetumer, the list had been forwarded back to me. People were saying, ‘This a former lawyer’s assistant, found himself writing on-set dialogue list is amazing! Where did it come from?’” He kept quiet about his for a James Bond movie and, later, the script for a Robocop reboot. involvement, but a few months later, an agent calling to promote No one on the List is pulled from total obscurity; scripts still need a client’s script came up with a bald-faced lie that made Leonard to reach the right desks—and enough of them. But the List can bot- realize that he’d started something big: “Listen, don’t tell anyone, tle the otherwise transient buzz around a writer; it makes the glow but I have it on good authority that this is going to be number one last a little longer. As Zetumer told The Boston Globe in 2012, “The on next year’s Black List.” Black List is a way to quantify heat.” Making the case for an un- “A) I had decided I wasn’t going to do it again because I was proven talent or a script written on speculation was much harder afraid of getting fired, and B) even if I was, it’s asurvey , so six before it existed. The Black List gave people something to point to. months out, there’s no legitimate authority on what’s going to be on the list—certainly not number one,” Leonard says. “He was us- The Outsiders’ Insider ing the possibility of the thing as a tool to sell his client.” Leonard has always thought of himself as an outsider—or at That incident convinced him to continue compiling his sur- least, he concedes, someone who’s gotten access to, but not comfort- vey. People began to pay attention in 2008, when two scripts that able with, the inside. This is partly the product of a roving, army-brat had been on the 2005 roster, Lars and the Real Girl and Juno, were childhood: born in Hawaii, he lived in El Paso, Fort Leavenworth, nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Heidelberg, and Frankfurt before his family settled in Columbus, for best original screenplay. Black List titles have been made into Georgia. Leonard’s mother was a schoolteacher and his father a col- movies as various as The Social Network, Whiplash, Selma, The Hangover, onel and surgeon who, upon retiring to civilian life, specialized in and World War Z. Four of the last six Oscars for best picture, and neonatology. They were strict, he says, but “it was also a very loving 10 of the past 14 for adapted or original screenplays, went to films home. It’s not at all that sort of cliché military upbringing.” highlighted on the Black List. As the announcement of the Black As a child, he had a stutter, which he outgrew, and a love of soccer, List became an anticipated annual event, Leonard expanded his which he did not. (On weekends, he plays in a Santa Monica pick- survey’s scope. He now polls some 550 to 650 people, with a re- up league called Untitled Football Project, as a defender; in spare sponse rate of roughly 50 percent. “The idea of a PDF has become moments he reflexively checks on his fantasy league, on his phone.) adorable,” he adds—scripts on the list are now announced, one Adding to his shyness: “I was a giant nerd. I was Steve Urkel [from by one, on Twitter or through YouTube videos. TV’s Family Matters], basically. People called me that all the time in Beyond trade publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, high school, and I was like, ‘That’s so mean, that’s not true,’ but in media outlets like The Los Angeles Times and Slate took notice, eager retrospect? Not inaccurate.” He joined the Boy Scouts and captained to peer into this window on the industry’s conversations: zombies the math team; his senior year, the state senate commended him for, were in, then out again; biopics have consistently done well, as have among other achievements, perfect SAT scores. making-of stories about beloved classics like the Muppets or Jaws. At Harvard, Leonard got involved with the Institute of Poli- At one point, even Mother Jones joined in the fun of speculating about tics—not the Lampoon, the usual hangout of the Hollywood- what titles might one day come to theaters. bound. Still, in hindsight, it’s possible to see the of his inter- Leonard takes care to emphasize that these are not the best un- est in the behind-the-curtains systems that support creativity. He produced screenplays but the most liked. The distinction emphasizes was publisher of in 1999, and wrote his social- that the list is not about quality per se—or some external, aesthetic studies thesis on liberal democracy and slam poetry. During sum- standard—but about the gut: these are the stories that a critical mers interning in New York City, he explains, venues like the Nuy- mass found moving, thrilling, or fun. It also suggests the list’s true orican Poets Cafe were an attractive hangout for a kid under 21. utility: taking the temperature of Hollywood’s excitement. The first His path to Los Angeles took a few detours through politics participants may have praised the list less for its new titles than for and media: back then, law school seemed basically inevitable; those they recognized. Aphorisms abound about the industry’s con- Leonard imagined that he’d then pursue a career at the Southern servatism: executives are said to spend their days saying “No, no, no, Poverty Law Center. After graduating from college, he worked on and no,” then going to lunch; saying yes will get them fired. Nancy the congressional campaign of John Cranley, J.D. ’ 99, M.T.S. ’00, Oliver told Entertainment Weekly in 2008 that her romantic dramedy his mentor and onetime teaching fellow for a history class on the about a man and a sex doll, Lars and the Real Girl, “had been making Warren Court. (Leonard says, of that time, “It was great. I mean, the rounds for a few years, but it was still an invisible property. The it was weird.” They were being taped for the MTV reality show Black List changed all that. It gave permission for other people to True Life; the episode aired after the election, which they lost.) He like it.” Leonard’s survey had an observer effect. Measuring—and then auditioned to be a video deejay, but, failing that, went to thus, cementing—consensus, it became a Hollywood fixture. Trinidad for seven months, where he observed the aftermath of The awards-season success of Black List films sits next to a more the country’s contested parliamentary election and wrote for its sobering statistic: of the 1,067 screenplays highlighted in the past oldest daily paper. Returning to the States, he took a consulting 11 years, 322 lived to become movies. Even so, some of their authors job at McKinsey & Company. In the months following the Sep-

Harvard Magazine 47 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 tember 11 terrorist attacks, though, the firm laid off his entire re- Here’s the thing. I didn’t do anything with those scripts. cruitment class with five months’ severance. Leonard spent much I didn’t write them, I didn’t direct them, I didn’t produce of his time watching rented DVDs before heading west, to Los them, I didn’t finance them, I didn’t act in them, I didn’t run Angeles, where a friend tipped him off to an open assistantship at cable or post lights on set. I didn’t even give them from one the Creative Arts Agency. He was hired the next day. person to another, who would go and do those things. All I Leonard was working at Leonardo DiCaprio’s company, Appi- did was change the way people looked at them. But again— an Way, when he sent out the first Black List in 2005. After he sent and I really cannot stress this enough—I did not do a damn out his second list, the Los Angeles Times published a story identi- thing to make them. fying him as its creator. Though he considers himself naturally In that moment, Leonard named the strange truth of his career: introverted and a homebody at heart, he began being invited to that until a few years ago, he was best known for devising an in- speak at colleges, panels, and festivals as an industry sage. strument to measure others’ opinions.

“I didn’t do anything with those scripts.…All I did was change the way people looked at them. But again—and I really cannot stress this enough—I did not do a damn thing to make them.”

“It’s still sort of surreal. I think that the thing that sort of gets Modernizing the Dream Machine me asked back or gets me invited to speak is that I’m constitu- If the Black List’s origin tale starts with serendipity—its found- tionally unable to bullshit.” Proving that, he continues: “And I er stumbling across a once-invisible need—its next chapter has a think there’s some amount of, like—from a casting perspective— more deliberate arc. In 2009, Leonard met software engineer Dino I’m a black guy with dreadlocks, and that person with the Har- Sijamic through a mutual friend, and they struck up a conversation vard background talking about the economics of the industry. It’s about the difficulty of finding worthy material for film development. fundamentally interesting.” Though he has grown used to public “Coming from a very different world, where essentially everything speaking over the years, he still vomited before giving a speech at that I did was about automating, making things faster or more ef- Fast Company’s 2010 Most Creative People in Business conference: ficient—when he told me about these problems, that was interest- “Ray Kurzweil was right before me,” he explains. “Just to give you ing,” Sijamic says. “Because they can definitely be solved. It’s just a a sense of how out of place I was.” matter of time, and going about it in the right way.” In a video from a more recent speech in New York, on an as- Their solution was a website they dubbed “a real-time Black signed theme of “How to Change the World,” Leonard looks List,” an online hub where members—agents, managers, produc- faintly green. (He has been described as soft-spoken, which ers, financiers, directors, and actors—could find promising proj- is not quite right; his talk is sometimes boisterous and always ects. Writers pay a monthly fee for the Black List to host their fast, a rate accelerated by nerves.) He piles on self-deprecating scripts, then choose from some 1,000 tags to index it; these de- asides, some planned, others clearly ad-libbed, almost under his scribe genre (“alien invasion,” “prehistoric fantasy,” “heist com- breath. Issues more pressing than showbiz weigh on his mind— edy”), theme (“self-discovery,” “guilt/regret”), and other elements protests in Baltimore, an earthquake in Nepal—and they fore- (“combat with weapons,” “$1-10mm [budget],” “twist/surprise ground his remarks about the Black List’s unlikely successes. ending,” and “female protagonist [diversity]”). Writers can then This goes some way toward explaining his tone when he tells boost their visibility by paying for evaluations from the site’s the audience: stable of anonymous professional readers, who give each script a

48 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 numerical rating and brief comments about its strengths, weak- everyone, with the probable exceptions of Leonard and Sijamic, is nesses, and commercial viability. Highly rated scripts are featured an aspiring writer. The small, close-knit team meets at cafés, in each in the website’s “top lists,” and highlighted in e-mail newsletters. other’s kitchens, or at Soho House, the private club in West Hol- Sijamic’s tech-world optimism was a natural complement for lywood where Leonard is a member. Free to be a remote CEO, he Leonard’s McKinsey-honed mentality: both were confident that says he seizes the opportunity to travel while he’s still unmarried they could modernize the Hollywood dream machine. The Black and doesn’t have kids. In 2015, he was on the road 120 days, attending List embodies a philosophy: that through savvy entrepreneurship, film festivals, entrepreneurship conferences, and other events from capitalism can encourage not just efficiency, but meritocracy, in Oaxaca to Toronto to Nairobi; even when he’s home in Los Angeles, show business. That the system could be tinkered with to yield he spends much of his time stuck in transit, and while stuck in traf- higher-quality entertainment. That, if engineered properly, the fic, conducts phone conferences and listens to podcasts—and, more marketplace could identify the best material, to the benefit of recently, the cast recording of Hamilton (a musical that happens to be all—financiers, creatives, and audiences. It’s a theory of industrial deeply concerned with the power of writing). art-making that’s powerfully attractive in a business as resource- Initially, some accused the Black List of piling on in the already- intensive, risk-averse, and data-hungry as Hollywood. crowded arena of reading services and competitions seeking to The website also included a component that catered to this make money off luckless hopefuls. From this view, offering the abiding interest in taste by numbers. Leonard had followed the possibility of exposure is akin to selling lottery tickets. The skep- Netflix Prize—a contest to come up with better movie-recom- ticism has faded, though, in part due to Leonard’s readiness to mendation software—with interest, and had been impressed answer pseudonymous critics on online message boards and Red- dit question-and-answer ses- sions, often late at night and for hours at a time. The site has been popular enough that it recently raised fees to cope with rising de- mand, promising to give out more coupons for free hosting and evaluation to compen- sate. More significantly, the founders also added a new mechanism to their market- place. Scripts receiving high scores from paid readers will earn a few months of free hosting and some free evalua- tions. The best material could go on a hot streak, entering The scripts for Lars and the Real Girl (2007) and Juno (2007) were at the top of the first Black List, an endless loop of free reads, in 2005. The List has since included celebrated veterans like Aaron Sorkin (writer of The Social racking up enough high rat- Network) and relative unknowns like Damien Chazelle ’07 (of Whiplash). ings to be highlighted. This may keep talented writers by Amazon’s system ever since it suggested the books of Polish from being scared off by the price hike; it also keeps the stron- journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who subsequently became “my gest submissions from languishing simply because their creators favorite writer of all time.” After Sijamic built their site’s first al- couldn’t afford to invest in more attention. gorithm, Leonard enlisted the help of his college roommate, Sean So far, a few scripts have attained sufficient escape velocity to Owen ’00, who’d worked at Google and gone on to found his own break through to the vaunted annual list: Justin Kremer’s “Mc- company, Myrrix, “so we have a recommendations algorithm that Carthy,” about the Red Scare—“When it first came through the is far more powerful than it has any right to be, for a company as site with really good reviews I was convinced someone was play- small as we are,” Leonard admits. “If I’m being honest, it’s still the ing a practical joke on me. It was just way too on the nose,” says most underutilized part of the site.” He suspects that Black List Leonard—and Jason Mark Hellerman’s “Shovel Buddies,” about a members resist the idea that their preferences can be predicted. group of twenty-somethings fulfilling the last wishes of a friend “Everyone wants to believe their taste makes them special—like, with cancer. Both were unknowns before joining the site: Kremer who could possibly divine what I will like?” (He doesn’t state the was living in Staten Island with his parents; Hellerman had a desk irony: that the annual list succeeded, at least in part, because it re- job routing calls for a producer. The writers crowned number assured gatekeepers that their tastes were shared by their peers.) one on the 2014 and 2015 lists were also discovered by their reps The co-founders launched the Black List site in October 2012. through the site, Leonard adds. But his favorite success story— Now, they employ several full-time staff members who assist in its “the craziest, and probably the one I’m most proud of”—doesn’t various projects and day-to-day operations. With no fixed hours or share that straightforward trajectory; it doesn’t involve the annu- offices, the company allows time and flexibility for other pursuits— al list at all. In 2012, Ruckus and Lane Skye, a husband-and-wife

Harvard Magazine 49 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 team based in Georgia, uploaded a thriller that eventually caught So far, the prize opportunities have included deals with studios the eye of a film executive in Abu Dhabi. The Arabic-language like Warner Brothers and the Walt Disney Company, fellowships movie that resulted, Zinzana, was reportedly the first genre flick with the National Football League, Google, and the Hasty Pud- ever made in the United Arab Emirates. ding, and spots in screenwriting labs. According to Scott Myers, who runs the popular screenwrit- Kristina Zacharias, working full-time as an administrator at ing blog “Go Into the Story” (which started in 2008, and became New York University, considered herself a “hobby writer” until the Official Screenwriting Blog of the Black List in 2011), the Black recently, when she won a fellowship to attend the Sundance Film List is the latest shift in a longer historical change in Hollywood: Festival under the wing of a prominent producer, and a spot in “It used to be a closed-loop system,” he says, one that expanded a workshop at the women-centered Athena Film Festival. Since periodically to recruit writing talent—mostly journalists and then, she has been working on a film treatment with a producer novelists; the market for scripts written on speculation boomed she met at Sundance, and taking calls from potential managers. in the 1980s and 1990s, but even that was built on personal con- “When I decided to take it seriously, the Black List was the way nections or film-school networks. that I actually could get a little bit of traction,” Zacharias says. These days, says Leonard, people take one of two routes: “You And, she adds, Leonard has sent introductory letters on her be- enter the Nicholl Fellowship, which is the Academy’s screen- half to agencies and festival labs. writing competition, and the biggest screenwriting competition “I have no idea how to thank him—he keeps saying, ‘This is on earth, and if you place in the top 30, somebody will probably what we do,’” she reports over the phone, sounding elated. “And call you. Or you move to L.A. and you get a job at Starbucks and I’m like, ‘No! No one knows that this is what you do.’ This is like you network until somebody pays attention to you.” But, he con- you’re in this select, members-only club, and you have access to all tinues, warming to his subject, “If you’re a married man with a these great resources, and I mean that, to me, is like the real value. mortgage in Raleigh, North Carolina, you’re a terrible father if you Once you’ve sort of proven that you’re serious, the Black List will pick up your family and move them to L.A. because you want to do anything that it can to help.” figure out how to be a screenwriter. If you’re a single mom on the Cinderella stories like hers are tantalizingly rare. But the Black South Side of Chicago, that’s not an option for you.” For these hy- List may have a subtler, more diffuse effect on people working be- pothetical talents, he maintains, his site’s hosting and evaluation yond Hollywood, through the happy hours it organizes in some doz- fees are a bargain. en cities, hosted by local volunteers. Shelley Gustavson has found The site tends to pitch itself less as real-time analog to the an- collaborators at the Chicago events, but says the aim is to build ca- nual list, and more as a place for new writers to be discovered, maraderie among screenwriters: “We want to get them away from and for established writers to promote themselves. (Members of their laptops, and help them feel supported.” While the Chicago various English-language Writers Guilds can list their work for happy hours have been drawing some 150 attendees, the New Or- free, and get other services at a discount.) leans happy hour (held at a supposedly haunted converted mansion) All can submit their work to various contests: usually, the draws a crowd a third that size on a good night, according to actor site’s algorithm determines the strongest scripts for a shortlist, Hunter Burke. “We’re trying to be part of the community that’s try- and then those finalists submit personal statements and résumés. ing to bring back a local film movement,” says Burke, who hopes to make his next movie on the cheap, in his city, with Lou- isiana-based financiers. He thinks the Black List’s name will attract a critical mass. “Really, it was a no-brainer to put them at the forefront of the community-building exercise we should start doing here.” The range of Black List activities has also grown to reach an audience far broader than its core constitu- ency. These include the “Black List Live!,” staged read- ings of still-unproduced scripts from the annual list. Leonard has also, in effect, become a part-time radio host and producer, putting out a weekly podcast of interviews and full-cast table reads of scripts from the site. “The podcast definitely represents a shift, I’d say, from the Black List brand being a sort of industry- facing thing, or sort of B2B, to us being consumer-fac- ing, so what I’d say is that we’re sort of a B2B2C.” He pauses. “And it’s strange for me, I’m not going to lie. I’m sort of fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of being in the public eye, period. That transition has been an awkward one for me.” Within the next year, the company’s ventures are Leonard speaking at the most recent Sundance Film Festival, set to expand even further. The site just rolled out a where he served on the jury social feature that enables writers to associate per- sonal profiles with their scripts, so industry mem-

50 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 “If you’re a married man with a mortgage in Raleigh, you’re a terrible father if you pick up your family and move them to L.A. because you want to figure out how to be a screenwriter.” bers can search for people, as well as for material; Leonard hopes remembers one time when the pieces seemed, finally, to fall in this will particularly help women and people of color to promote place—the production schedule was set; they were hiring crew themselves as diverse talent. He also plans to raise money for and renting offices—and how the filmmakers waited at the bank a film fund, so the business can start financing projects. To his for a wire transfer that never came: “That’s indie financing for mind, “We find the best material first, and have access to most of you,” he says. “It happens more often than you realize.” Then he it. It would be cool if we could put money behind the stuff that adds: “No, it sucked. It sucked. It was a heartbreaker.” To Jones, we identify as being good.” “The script is just a map. It’s not an art form in and of itself. It’s Asked about their long-term ambitions for the Black supposed to be a movie.” List, the co-founders often point to AngelList, a website Though the Black List had long pushed for a live reading of his that matches startups, investors, and job-seekers. But when script, Jones and his collaborators had said no until recently, wor- they’re feeling more expansive, they say they’d like to be the ried that it might complicate an already dicey development pro- “Google of scripts.” That suggests an ambition to make the cess. This time around, with the director and lead actors seem- Black List not merely one resource among many, but the de- ing fully committed, it felt safer; the event might even lend the fault. Theirs would be the most comprehensive, specific, production some momentum, keeping it on the industry’s radar. and reflexively trusted tool for summoning—instantaneous- It would be many months before Jones’s scenes would play out ly—whatever screenplay any asker could think to ask for. on-screen, but the performance made his script, briefly, “a live, breathing thing.” Introducing it, Jones told the audience that he “It’s Supposed To Be a Movie” had never heard his words spoken aloud before the afternoon’s Wes Jones never considered himself especially political. But rehearsal. like many Americans circa 2008, he got caught up in election ex- “College Republicans” played well in the room. Even in 2016, citement—the punditry, polls, and prognostications—such that when Karl Rove has somewhat faded from public consciousness, when it ended in November, he says, “There was a little void.” A the recent primaries have lent new weight to the narrative of a documentary about Lee Atwater then airing on PBS offered first political party remaking its identity, and young men with out- a kind of methadone, and then inspiration for his next screenplay. sized dreams are never out of style. This was what the industry, “College Republicans,” imagining the road trip taken by the young circa 2010, dreamed of making: a well-balanced script that, for Atwater and fellow Young Republican Karl Rove, got Jones an agent all its scheming and swearing and PG-13 sexual content, seems and manager. His reps pushed the script onto the desks of various strangely wholesome in its eagerness to please, its efforts to give studios and production companies throughout January 2010, and a little something to every kind of viewer. The power struggle is in March flew him out to Los Angeles for meetings. Jones was es- intercut with slapstick comedy, romance, and a heist. With its corted through what he dubs “the bottle-of-water tour,” a court- focus on character over ideology, it does indeed work, as Leon- ship ritual befitting a desert city: the debutant talent leaves each ard maintains, as a nonpartisan coming-of-age. Everyone laughed office with a bottle of water in hand, and the hope of work in his at the right moments, and, after his deft introduction of Alex heart. By midsummer, he’d snagged several assignments: a deal with Smith as the CRNC’s first woman leader, they applauded; no one Warner Brothers, a book-adaptation project. booed. For Jones—Indiana-raised, New Jersey-based, and working At the after-party in the theater’s mezzanine lobby, Leonard low-level jobs on the fringes of indie filmmaking for more than a quietly went about getting everyone settled, offering congratula- decade—“College Republicans” opened the door to the wider in- tions or drinks. Finally, lacking anything else to do but enjoy the dustry; the Black List, in naming his script number one in Decem- celebration, he confessed, “I hate this part. I’m really bad at min- ber 2010, gave his arrival some real fanfare. “I’m saying the same gling. This is the part that makes me, like, want to lock myself in a things. I have the same ideas. I am the same guy I have been for closet somewhere.” He meant it, but no sooner had he said it than years, trying to do this stuff—but all of a sudden, peoplecare, ” he the trio of Republicans appeared at his elbow, gesturing toward says, chuckling and chagrined. “Because, you know, I have back- the famously blue-eyed actress standing within earshot. “We’re up. I’m on the Black List. It creates a status—and a reputation, obsessed with her,” they said, and without missing a beat, he made in fact—where none was before.” At the time, he didn’t believe it the introductions and rotated through their smartphones to take when a Sony executive told him, “You know, you’re going to get their photos. When the moment no longer needed him, he re- work off this for years.” But when his agents put him up for a staff turned to replaying the night mentally. It went well, he thought, job on the new cable drama Billions, “What did they send, in 2015? but as ever, “There were a couple of things that could have gone ‘College Republicans.’” better.“ Rather than name them, he shrugged. “I’m already think- Even as that screenplay brought its creator steady success ing about the next one, for better or worse.” as a writer-for-hire, the project itself stalled. Actors were at- tached, then detached; money was hard to come by. Jones still Sophia Nguyen is associate editor of this magazine.

Harvard Magazine 51 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 F O R U M

/TNS VIA GETTY IMAGES; RAINMAKER PHOTO/MEDIA PUNCH/ASSOCIATED PRESS; JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES; WICHITA EAGLE WICHITA KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES; ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES; AND ASON REDMOND/AFP/GETTY IMAGES CLOCKWISE FROM BRENDAN TOP LEFT: HOFFMAN/GETTY IMAGES; HUH/ASSOCIATED NAM Y. PRESS; CEM OZDEL/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES; RADER/BO

ished on him, Ted Cruz, too, had to go gentle into that good night. So does money really matter? Does Money The fear that U.S. elections and institutions would all come crashing down in a flood of money was ignited after the infamous Citizens United ruling in 2010. In this panicked view, the Supreme Court had not only inaugurated a new Gilded Age, but also given Matter? it the veneer of constitutionality—leaving the nation’s imminent plutocracy impervious to future legislative correction. Though How super PACs actually shape Citizens United actually focused on a small rule banning nonprofits from airing “electioneering communications” within 60 days of an U.S. presidential politics election, its logic was expanded in subsequent cases into this basic principle: As long as political spending is “uncoordinated” with by Idrees Kahloon candidates and their official campaigns, it cannot be regulated un- der the First Amendment, even if the donor is a corporation or a labor union. That opened the door to unlimited contributions to, hese days, super PACs (political action committees) don’t and spending by, these parallel campaigns—in theory giving them seem so super anymore. Donald Trump wrapped up the Re- financial leverage that could overshadow candidates’ official cam- publican nomination without significant support from one, paigns (contributions to which fall under strict federal limits). while his money-flush rivals dropped off one after another. Jeb Opponents quickly sloganized the ruling as “Money is speech Bush fizzled out in February when the $100 million spent by his and corporations are people”—though, as with all slogans, theirs Right to Rise super PAC failed to generate liftoff. Marco Rubio contained only a fraction of the truth. Its philosophical thrust was threw in the towel a month later, when the $62 million donated correct: the court had upended the rationale for the modern regime to his support groups couldn’t spare him the humiliation of losing of campaign-finance regulation (in place since the 1970s) that had Tin his home state. And no matter how much money oil barons lav- allowed regulation of both “corruption or the appearance of corrup-

52 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 tion.” Instead, the majority opinion limited future regulatory inter- demonstrated that American policymakers essentially respond vention to narrower quid pro quo corruption (think money-stuffed only to the preferences of the affluent—those at the 90th percen- manila envelopes). But even seemingly cut-and-dried corruption tile of the income distribution and above. The same goes for well- cases might be suspect under the new order: disgraced Virginia gov- funded business lobbies vis-à-vis mass-based interest groups. ernor Bob McDonnell is currently challenging before the Supreme Disturbing correlations, to be sure—but correlations nonetheless. Court his conviction for accepting $177,000 worth of luxury items How do the voters fare amid this deluge of money? The question and gifts from a businessman on the grounds that it was all just may be new, but the answer will be the same as another that has speech, not bribery. The outcome is uncertain as of this writing. been intriguing political scientists for decades: Do political cam- Though the issues are often muddled together, journalists, open- paigns actually work? If they do, then the more money the merrier government activists, and ordinary citizens highlight two criticisms for aspiring elected officials. If they don’t, then maybe the qua- of the post-Citizens United era. The first isadequate representation: the possi- To the charge that the ultra-wealthy dominate bility that the super-wealthy, now free to cut multimillion-dollar checks, will become dispro- political donating, America must plead guilty. portionately important to politicians, who will in turn influence bureaucrats, lobby fellow lawmakers, and cajole drennial, multibillion-dollar spectacles that voters behold in the government agencies to benefit their patrons. In the phrasing of presidential race are only elaborate exercises in money-burning. Furman professor of law Lawrence Lessig, a prominent crusader Today, in fact, the availability of open data and statistical analysis for campaign-finance reform, serious candidates not in possession enable us to begin to find answers. of private gold mines will all be forced to win the “invisible pri- mary” of the ultra-wealthy donor class, at the expense of ordinary In the 1960s, when party alignment was much stronger and face- citizens whose votes are now worth much less—or, for all practi- to-face social networks were much more important to voter opin- cal purposes, worthless. ion (people were still bowling together then), the reigning theory The second is the matter of adequate selection. It is the fear that was one of “minimal effects.” Campaigns were held to matter very money, spent on advertisements, voter files, canvassing, consult- little in determining election outcomes. But in the decades since, ing, statistics, or anything else, could actually change the minds of political scientists have come around, with some studies showing voters, and thus swing whole elections. And it’s hard to see that convincing associations between advertising and voting behavior, as anything less than a grave threat to democratic order. though the consensus is far from fully formed. To the first charge—that the ultra-wealthy have tightened their For my senior thesis in applied mathematics, I considered this dominance over political donating—America must plead guilty. question by analyzing the effects of television advertising on pub- During the 2016 presidential race, through May 31, $462 million lic opinion in the 2016 Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire pri- had already flowed to super PACs: 36.9 percent of total donations. mary. Because these contests were heavily polled (almost 100 for Compare that with the 2012 contest between and Iowa and 50 in New Hampshire), public opinion was registered Mitt Romney, where the role of super PACs was also bemoaned, almost instantaneously, allowing for comparison with data on the though their funding supplied a now paltry-seeming 22 percent of political television ads shown in each state (recently released to total donations. Earlier in the 2016 cycle, an astounding two out the public by the Television Ad Archive). of every three dollars was going to an outside group rather than For Republican voters choosing among multiple candidates, directly to candidates. (The decreasing percentage of super PAC ads seemed to work—a bit. Even when controlling for the num- contributions since then reflects both the rise of Bernie Sanders’s ber of rallies held and mentions on national and local television, online small-donation operation, and the winnowing of the Re- swings in advertising volume were strongly correlated with publican field.) swings in public opinion. Much of that money comes from the richest of the rich. An early Between two competing Republicans, it would take an average press release from Jeb Bush’s super PAC actually touted the fact of 232 more airings of positive ads over the span of a week to in- that 95 percent of its donors had donated less than $25,000—not duce a single-point swing in voter preference. The returns to neg- exactly within the price range of the middle class. In fact, nearly ative advertisements were weaker, though their effect was still half of all super PAC money comes from just 50 donors, according statistically significant: 440 more negative ads directed at a can- to a Washington Post analysis. The much-vilified Koch brothers have didate over the span of a week would trigger a one-point decline set up a deeply financed network of political groups that almost in the polls. That’s not to say negative ads necessarily have less parallels the Republican Party in funding and political prestige effect on voters’ minds. Studies of voter psychology actually show (even if it’s not paying dividends just yet: “You’d think we could that such ads are a bit better at piquing interest than positive have more influence,” Charles Koch bemoaned in theFinancial Times advertisements touting a candidate’s character, biography, or ac- earlier in the year). complishments. But negative ads may just cause voters to shift to But are big donors getting any bang for all those bucks? Given any number of competing candidates, diluting their benefits, while that politicians seldom admit outright that a controversial vote positive ads tend to increase the vote share of the target candidate. has been swayed by the influence of a heavyweight donor—at No other variable registered a strong, statistically significant least while they are still in office—it can be hard for journalists effect, including so-called earned media—the free publicity ob- to say for sure. But academics have had a bit more success. By us- tained from frequent news coverage—that self-flagellating jour- ing decades of survey data, Princeton professor Martin Gilens has nalists have taken to blaming for Donald Trump’s inexorable rise.

Harvard Magazine 53 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 very well: 88 percent of official, campaign-

sponsored advertisements in Iowa and New Hampshire were positive, compared

with just 35 percent of super PAC ads. The mudslinging so frequently derided by pundits may be getting a second wind from this new campaign structure. This is not a small phenomenon: in Iowa and New Hampshire, a majority of commer- cials aired in the Republican race were su- per PAC-sponsored. For down-ticket races, it stands to rea- son that political advertising effects are even stronger than for the presidential race. Even the most hardened politicos do not generally discuss the local state legisla-

tive race at the dinner table. Advertising SULLIVAN/ JUSTIN MCNEW/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID LEFT: TOP FROM CLOCKWISE BUCKMAN/ LAURA PRESS; SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PATRICK GETTY IMAGES; IMAGES AND JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY VIA GETTY IMAGES; BLOOMBERG Holding more candidate events was actually associated with drops and local media coverage likely constitute a greater fraction of the in vote share, but this appears to be because candidates strug- information diet for the less publicized races, probably making gling to gain traction preferred aggressive, on-the-ground efforts their importance greater—especially now that presidential-style to spending their limited funds on expensive advertising. campaigning has been exported to these races as well. Today, many Among Democrats, where the race quickly shrank to Bernie Senate races and more than a few House races attract the support Sanders and Hillary Clinton, I did not find a significant return of single-candidate super PACs. And while we may hope that a fu- on advertising. A few factors may help explain this. Advertis- ture president is unlikely to move national policy on behalf of a ing seems to yield benefits only when there are large imbalances benefactor, a senator or representative facing reelection may have among candidates. Both Sanders and Clinton swamped the air- fewer qualms. waves with ads at very similar rates, as Sanders turned his im- Some analysts maintain that the “conventional wisdom” about pressive fundraising into a slight advantage over the Clinton the dominance of super PACs has been upended—that their ef- machine. In addition, Republicans had the option of choosing fects, in competitive races, cancel each other. But such critics may among 11 or so serious candidates, some of whom were political be using the wrong counterfactual: it’s not that candidates with neophytes or first-termers, making public appraisal less sure and the super PAC have lost, it’s how much worse they would have thus more susceptible to the effects of advertising. fared without such aid. Of course, among a field of a dozen or so Perhaps the best way to conceptualize political advertisements, competitors, almost all of whom have major super PAC backing, then, is as an arms race. One candidate’s dominance in the ad game, if unanswered, will soon lead to electoral advantage, Few would agree that democracy should but another candidate’s advertisements will tend to cancel out that gain. only reflect the views of the affluent. If campaigns matter, then campaign money does, too. True, turning advertising into actual electoral advantage is an only one can emerge a winner. (To quote Syndrome, the villain expensive endeavor: the cost of the 232 positive ads needed to of the animated superhero filmThe Incredibles, “When everyone’s deliver a single-point increase is more than $100,000 in relatively super…no one will be!”) small markets like Iowa and New Hampshire, and more than that The evidence suggests that those who speak apocalyptically for the super PACs (which aren’t covered by the federal law re- about super PACs as a new regime of legalized bribery are a bit quiring television stations to charge official campaigns the lowest overwrought. Instead, these entities are powerful new instru- possible rates). But these large sums are well within the means of ments for influence—over both voters and elected officials—that the modern super PAC, the most prominent of which can expect are beyond the means of the average citizen. Economic elites did to raise several million dollars in a week. not suddenly acquire political influence in 2010—but they may But it’s not just more advertising that super PACs buy—it’s also have further tightened their grip on it. One does not need to be an a differentkind of advertisement. Since Congress passed a “Stand ardent majoritarian to find that worrying. By Your Ad” provision in 2002, candidates have been required to Maybe democracy shouldn’t reflect the views of the median voter, give the now-familiar “I endorse this message” at the end of all but few would agree that it should only reflect the views of the af- commercials sponsored directly by their campaigns—and when fluent. But unless and until the Supreme Court reverses itself, the these advertisements go very negative, there’s a real risk of back- current regime of lax campaign finance and ever-more-important lash that does more harm than good. But commercials sponsored super PACs will continue. The chance of that depends largely on the by independent organizations, and aired without a candidate’s en- outcome of the 2016 presidential race. And the outcome of the 2016 dorsement, sidestep this problem. More significantly, voters also race will likely depend on those very same super PACs. tend to believe them more, according to psychological studies. Campaign managers appear to understand this phenomenon Idrees Kahloon ’16 concentrated in applied mathematics.

54 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage Art, books, diverse creations

56 Open Book 57 Brain Food 58 Off the Shelf 60 With Seamus Heaney in Elysium 61 Chapter & Verse

a dancer. There’s always someone to Stepwise replace you, so you have to have no ego but also be very confident. It’s a A ballet career, earned through tricky thing.” Still, during a recent rehearsal, college and cattle-calls Walker radiated contentment. In by Maggie Shipstead a warm, sunny studio, she and the rest of Los Angeles Ballet’s corps de ballet were learning the finale to

t’s so brutal,” Elizabeth Claire George Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin SAMUEL AKINS Walker ’11 says of ballet, the art Concerto. Its tempo was quick, the counts From left (and from the Los Angeles form she loves. The dancer isn’t long and complex, but Walker remained Ballet’s 2015-2016 season): Elizabeth Claire Walker in “Arabian Dance” from “Ijust talking about the daily class- unruffled. In ballets like this one, depen- The Nutcracker, and poised backstage es and rehearsals, the aches and pains, and dent on an impeccable corps, she dances during Don Quixote the wrenching pursuit of impossible physi- for herself and her own commitment to cal ideals. She’s talking about the daunting, her art, but also for the sake of the whole: counting and gesturing through the phras- ever-replenishing ranks of young talent com- for the other dancers who move with her es they’d just learned, double-checking the peting for limited jobs. “You have to be re- in precise, shifting formations across the movements. Like almost all ballet dancers, ally lucky,” she says, “and you have to never stage, to realize the choreographer’s vision she is slight but very strong, with spec- stop working, and never give up, and not get and dazzle the audience. During breaks, tacular posture. Her technique is crisp, her

REED HUTCHINSON/LOS ANGELES BALLET hurt, and also develop your personality as other dancers sought her out for help, presence alert yet serene. She smiles as she

Harvard Magazine 55 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage dances. “I feel like I’ve had it almost taken about to give up, she spotted a notice for decided to put her career on hold. While away so many times that I’m just astound- Los Angeles Ballet, a new company with earning her degree in the history of art ed with the fact that I’m still able to keep impressively pedigreed artistic directors. and architecture, she squeezed in classes going,” she says. The audition happened on a rainy day, she at José Mateo Ballet Theatre in Harvard Walker’s path has been uncertain, and remembers; her mother encouraged her to Square and kept up a heavy involvement in unusual for a professional dancer. A native go. “She said I’d regret it if I didn’t. I was the Harvard Ballet Company, even though of New York City, she studied at American sewing pointe shoes in the car.” A week she was plagued by a ligament she’d torn Ballet Theatre’s elite Jacqueline Kennedy later, she got the call. in her foot back in her JKO School days. Onassis School as a teenager. Her senior Walker deferred college and headed Though she always felt the pull of ballet, year of high school—even after she’d been west. Both city and company proved to be she says, “I wasn’t sure if it was a possibil- accepted to Harvard—was spent attend- good fits, but an experimental summer- ity for me. I wasn’t sure if my body was go- ing massive cattle-call auditions for pro- school stint in Cambridge in 2007 made ing to be able to handle it.” fessional companies. Just when she was Walker fall in love with Harvard, too. She In her junior spring, mostly healed, she took a leave to dance a two-month con- tract with Los Angeles Ballet. After gradu- o p e n b o o k ation she endured yet another cattle-call audition before being taken back into the company full time. During her second sea- Guilt-Free Childbirth son, in class on Valentine’s Day 2012, disas- ter struck. “I was doing soutenus, the sim- plest step you could do,” she says, of a turn Amy Tuteur ’80, an obstetrician-turned-writer and mother of four, is the self- performed by extending one leg and bring- proclaimed “Enemy Number One of the Natural Parenting Industry,” a spirited com- ing the other to meet it, “and somehow my batant in the childbirth wars. In Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting (Dey foot slipped, and all my weight was on it St./HarperCollins, $26.99), she enters the fray with zest. From the introduction: in a twisted way over the pointe shoe, and I felt it go.” She had torn the same liga- No woman should ever feel ment as before, this time severely enough guilty about the choices she to require surgery. For four months, she makes regarding childbirth, couldn’t put any weight on the foot. Her breastfeeding, or the manner in recovery was grueling: “I had to teach which she cares for her baby. myself to dance again, basically,” she says. Surprised? Unfortunately we “That was a really, really low point for me.” live in a society where these fun- Even for the luckiest dancers, careers damental aspects of a woman’s are relatively fleeting; the fragility of the life are now an arena where body, pushed to extremes, is part of bal- judgment, second-guessing, and let’s allure and its heartbreak. As the guilt reign supreme. It is no lon- curtain rose for the following year’s Nut- ger enough to give birth to a cracker, Walker found herself tearing up, healthy baby and to care for that overwhelmed. “I wasn’t sure it was going

baby, providing food, warmth, ISTOCK IMAGES to happen,” she says. and tenderness. Now all of these acts Initially I was simply bewildered by the Now in her sixth season with Los Ange- must be done, in many circles, in ways ways in which my patients tormented les Ballet, Walker has danced a wide range decreed “correct” by the natural parent- themselves. After delivering a beautiful of roles; her favorites include the Dark An- ing industry. healthy baby to a joyous healthy mother, I gel in Balanchine’s Serenade, Desdemona in Where did this industry that dictates would visit her the next day in the hospital Limón’s The Moor’s Pavane, and Arabian in the behaviors of millions of women come and find her tearful over her “failure.” In- The Nutcracker. She has also avoided major from? stead of enjoying the miracle of her new injury since her surgery, although, at 28, she Surprisingly, the currently popular phi- child, she would be berating herself that has begun considering what she will do af- losophies of natural childbirth, lactivism, she had “given in” and gotten an epidural ter she retires. She used to think she would and attachment parenting are based on for pain relief. Or perhaps she would have seek out an entirely distinct second ca- nothing more than the personal beliefs of concluded that her C-section reflected the reer, but now she is increasingly intrigued a few individuals, most of them men. To fact that her body was “broken.” There by the prospect of contributing to the my mind, though, the most damaging as- was a myriad of if-onlys. If only she hadn’t survival of American ballet. “The longer pect of this paradigm is that the judgment agreed to the postterm induction; if only I’m in this world, the more I realize what and guilt surrounding childbirth and child she had trusted birth more. Sometimes I a special thing ballet is and how much it’s care are heaped upon women most often wondered if the process of birth was more struggling,” she says. “The business model by other women.… important than the baby itself. is not ideal. It’s just so hard for these in- credible companies to keep going. I’d love

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Walker in the Pas de Trois (a dance for three) from Swan Lake, and as Queen of the Dryads in Don Quixote

to somehow make an impact.” For now, she dances. “I’m go- ing to keep doing it until I can’t anymore or until it doesn’t make sense to anymore,” she says. Back in the studio, Stravinsky Violin Concerto took shape with amaz- ing quickness. Walker, in black tights and diaphanous green

skirt, darted and turned and REED HUTCHINSON/LOS ANGELES BALLET (2) leapt. After an hour, the dancers had mas- frustrated, because you tered Balanchine’s clockwork choreography. never know if you’d be The company would not revisit the piece for farther along in your six months, until final rehearsals for the per- career if this or that hadn’t happened,” continues. “I feel like I’ve earned the things formance, but when the time came, Walker she says. But she wouldn’t give up what that I do.” would remember the steps. she learned, or the people she met, while Is she glad she took time away from at Harvard. “With time lost from that and Maggie Shipstead ’05 is the author of Seating Ar- ballet? Walker’s characteristic gratitude time lost from the injury, I think I appreci- rangements and a second novel, Astonish Me, is tempered by what-ifs. “Some days I’m ate everything I get to do a lot more,” she about ballet,

moments just x-rays of life’s? Equal parts grave and goofy, the Brain Food image captures Tsurumi’s spe- cialty: life observed and shown Comics to chew on as absurd. by samantha maldonado In her work—which includes one-off drawings, visual book reviews, picture books, and il- aping a package closed, shaving lustrations—Tsurumi pushes an armpit, coaxing bread out of a situations to their extremes, toaster with a fork, sitting on a toi- asks “What if?” and then adds T let while staring at a phone—chin fanciful elements. “If I give my resting in hand, pants puddled around an- brain enough stuff to chew on,” kles. In her comic drawing “Faces of Death,” she says, “something random Andrea Tsurumi ’07 imagines skeletons per- will pop out.” For example: “I forming each of these banal activities. No love watching people choose words explain desserts. It’s a very naked and the message: Is vulnerable indulgent moment, this a parallel uni- where someone who’s very seri- verse? A setting ous will be, like, ‘Oh wait, they for a cautionary have coffee cake!’” tale? Are death’s “There’s no way to get ahead most ordinary of Andrea’s brain,” says Tsu- rumi’s literary agent, Stephen Barr, who is guiding the de-

velopment of her forthcoming ANDREA TSURUMI OF COURTESY

COURTESY OF ANDREA TSURUMI OF COURTESY children’s book, Accident. In it, an armadillo Tsurumi at work in her studio, and details knocks over a jar of strategically placed from “Faces of Death” red liquid and rushes around encounter- cident is “Richard Scarry-crazy”—and the ing other animals who are experiencing animals with attitudes, colorful liveliness, their own accidents. Barr describes Acci- and earnest sense of wonder in her images dent as a “high-calorie picture book,” dense do seem descended from his drawings of with jokes and detail; Tsurumi says Ac- Busytown.

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In Tsurumi’s work, details explode from countering it can be as overwhelming, trip- various obsessions: dogs, books, history, and the page. Her cheeky maximalism packs a py, and thrilling as visiting a new place—al- food. The cover depicts two ice cream cones visual punch, whether she’s using hard lines lowing the reader to see things in a more fun fighting: one, cone-fists balled up at the end or a hazier, impressionist approach. En- and zany light. Her sensibility, delighting of stocky cone-arms, has just punched the in what might seem mundane, can other’s scoop-head off. Within the book, resonate with people of all ages. fluffy bichons become trichons become It’s almost as if Tsurumi is sharing tetra­chons, like Cerberuses with an extra secrets of the world’s possibilities, profusion of heads; a food photographer and it’s exciting to behold—even shoots breaking news for a newspaper; a if how she discovers these secrets Civil War battle is imagined with desserts and develops them on paper can be in “Cake vs. Pie.” The latter is gleeful and difficult to pin down. gruesome: cakes on roller skates aim arrows Tsurumi’s first book,Why Would at multi-legged pies, a fortune cookie spars You Do That? exhibits her dark hu- with a muffin, and a jelly roll bashes a cinna- mor and tendency toward sur- mon roll. Later, an ice-cream orderly emp- realism. Published in May, this ties a bed pan while a biscotti doctor stands playful assortment of her comics by, splattered in guts. Tsurumi commits to and drawings also documents her every joke, and her attention to detail in re- Detail from “Challenging alizing these conceits keeps them from be- the Gods: Rubens Becoming coming precious. Rubens,” Tsurumi’s contribution (adapted from curator For her contribution to Prometheus Eter- Christopher D.M. Atkins’s essays) nal, an art anthology showcasing a recent

to Prometheus Eternal Philadelphia Art Museum exhibition, Tsu- ANDREA TSURUMI OF COURTESY

of departure to examine the living abundantly,” meaning that “The wild hog is equivalents today, and to probe the an infestation machine”—is a good point of Off the Shelf changing oceanic ecosystem and the departure. The omnicurious Frazier was threats that may make the actual profiled in “Seriously Funny” (September- Recent books with Harvard connections fauna more fragile than the Blasch- October 2008, page 40). kas’ enduring works. Legal Plunder, by Daniel Lord Smail, A Sea of Glass, by Drew Harvell (Univer- Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Baird professor of history (Harvard, sity of California, $29.95). The Blaschkas, Mrs. Adams, by Louisa Thomas ’04 (Pen- $39.95). A close scholarly examination of of glass-flowers fame, first modeled marine guin, $30). The marriage of London-born household goods as they were accumu- invertebrates (see “A Glass Menagerie,” Louisa Catherine Johnson and John Quincy lated in late medieval Marseille and Lucca harvardmag.com/glasssea-16, on Harvard’s Adams, as New England as they came, reveals the rise of the modern consumer specimens). A professor at Cornell, who united Old World and New at a pivotal economy, with valuables enmeshed in webs curates the marine invertebrate collection time. Their fruitful lives together, not al- of exchange, credit, and state-run debt col- there, uses the glass creatures as her point ways easy, unfolded on farms and in the lection: the “plunder” of the title. White House, from Russia and Prussia to Washington. And dur- Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art,  ing its course, she emerged as a by Virginia Heffernan, Ph.D. ’02 (Simon & distinctive, towering figure in her Schuster, $26). An observer of digital cul- own right, here vividly portrayed ture for The New York Times (profiled in in full for the first time. “Savant of Screens,” September-October 2007, page 19) here sets out to address Hogs Wild, by Ian Frazier ’73 “the trippy, slanted, infinite dreamland” of (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26). the Web, assembling “a complete aesthet- A collection of the author’s essays ics—and poetics—of the Internet” from and journalism. The title piece, its basic building blocks of design, text, grounded as ever in fact—domes- photos, video, and music. ticated hogs become feral “readi- ly,” and reproduce “quickly and Putin Country: A Journey to the Real Russia, by Anne Garrels ’72 (Farrar, Straus A star is born (in glass): a juvenile common sea star, and Giroux, $26). Life in the country today,

GUIDO MOCAFICO/COURTESY OF THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF IRELAND Asterias rubens. outside Moscow, emerges in the little de-

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Tsurumi’s first book the relative calm. New documents her many York provided endless enthusiasms. Explore More material for inspiration, rumi adapted the cura- as shown in her people- For more online-only articles on tor’s catalog essays into watcher diary comic the arts and creativity, see: a historical comic. Nar- Eavesdropper, which re- rating why and how Ru- cords happenings in the Michael Pollan’s bens painted Prometheus city. But the relentless Crooked Writing Bound, she depicted the pace grew over-stimu- Path old master as a child, do- lating. It turned her off At Radcliffe, the ing pushups and nursing as an observer, she says, author talks on schoolgirl-like crushes and she grew numb nature, food, and on Michelangelo and to her environment— altered states of Titian. She takes humor dangerous to an artist consciousness. harvardmag.com/ just as seriously as she does her subjects, whose job requires paying close attention pollan-16 which makes her shy away from treating to what’s going on around her. Tsurumi’s anything too reverently. Humor can help dedication to her work prevents her from 2016 Norton readers access unexpected ideas and ways moving through her days on autopilot. It Lectures of thinking, she says: “It’s a great horse that keeps her mind fed, imagination active, Toni Morrison can bring you into a common experience, and art exuberant. “Art is a way to fight speaks on race and which is very uniting and empathetic.” the shorthand,” she says. “To quote Vonne- literature. harvard- She recently moved from New York gut—oh god, I’m quoting Vonnegut—art mag.com/toni-16

COURTESY OF ANDREA TSURUMI OF COURTESY City to Philadelphia, where she’s enjoying is not a living, it’s a way to live.” FROM TOP: COURTESY OF MICHAEL POLLAN; TIA CHAPMAN

tails: an “ideal prisoner,” up for early re- paigner probes what it feels like lease, pays the judge’s $10,000 price—but to reside as a member of a politi- when the head of the prison is left unhappy, cal minority (in this case, liberals not having received his cut, he blocks the in conservative redoubts, but one deal. Solid on-the-ground reporting. can imagine the opposite) in an increasingly polarized, and geo- Unequal Gains: American Growth graphically divided, country. And and Inequality since 1700, by Peter H. speaking of fish out of water, Joel Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Bell pro- K. Goldstein, J.D. ’81, a law pro- fessor of economics emeritus (Princeton, fessor, has explored America’s $35). A scholarly economic history details least-scrutinized, but potentially alternating periods of egalitarian and of most important, leaders in The unequal incomes in the United States. The White House Vice Presiden- authors don’t shy from the implications: cy (University Press of Kansas,

“The second great rise of American in- $34.95); the subtitle refers to FROM THE BOOK come inequality after the 1970s was prob- “the path to significance” during the past A typical example of informal ably avoidable,” had the country not fallen four decades. Scrutinize the entire ticket urbanization, in Medellín, Colombia short in education, financial regulation, and this fall, voters! breaching the barriers that have separated the taxation of heritable wealth. urbanism and landscape; the aim is a more Metropolis Nonformal, by Christian coherent view of what cities can be. What Works: Gender Equality by Werthmann, former director, master in Design, by Iris Bohnet, professor of pub- landscape architecture program, Graduate Illiberal Reformers, by Thomas C. Leon- lic policy (Harvard, $26.95). A behavioral School of Design, and Jessica Bridger, ard ’82 (Princeton, $35). A reinterpretation economist suggests overcoming uncon- M.L.A. ’09 (Applied Research and Design, of the Progressive Era economic reformers, scious biases indirectly, by altering institu- $34.95). Multiple perspectives on the per- whose enthusiasm for taming laissez-faire tional arrangements in the workplace— vasive phenomenon of self-assembled ur- capitalism did not extend to everyone, as from reviewing résumés in new ways to ban growth (via slums, favelas, and shanty- they also embraced Darwinism, racial sci- looking at how hallways are decorated and towns), with wonderful photographs. ence, and eugenic theory to exclude im- what role models are available. Separately, in Landscape as Urbanism migrants, people of color, women, and (Princeton, $45), Charles Waldheim, Ir- “mental defectives.” A timely complement Blue in a Red State, by Justin Krebs ’00 ving professor of landscape architecture, to “Harvard’s Eugenics Era,” featured in this (New Press, $24.95). A MoveOn.org cam- advances a theoretical underpinning for magazine’s March-April issue.

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Sarah Ruden (2008, the first by a woman), With Seamus Heaney and Barry Powell (2016). In 2011, A.T. Reyes published C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid (book 1 and most of book 2, in rhymed alexan- in Elysium drines). Each has its appeal, each its ad- herents. Let a thousand Aeneids bloom, I A new translation from the Aeneid say, for to read the poem in the Englished versions of some of by richard f. thomas our age’s best poets Aeneid Book VI: A New is to be doubly en- Verse Translation, by riched. There has Seamus Heaney, Litt.D. n the fall of 2002, in those war-dark- lightning striking in a clear sky. At the time been no compa- ’98 (Farrar, Straus and ened days when Seamus Heaney was still of the seminar, Heaney was still living with rable period in the Giroux, $25) among us at Harvard (then as Emerson the poem, first published as “Jupiter and the 600 years since the I Poet in Residence), he generously agreed Thunder” in The Irish Times of November 17 of first English (Middle Scots, actually) trans- to come to a session of my freshman semi- that year. He would continue to do so until it lation by Gavin Douglas, written in 1523, nar on poetic translation. For two hours he was published as “Anything Can Happen, af- published in 1553. Others followed until joined in discussions of the Horace trans- ter Horace Odes 1.34” in District and Circle (2006), Dryden’s great Aeneis of 1697 silenced trans- lations by some of the 12 entranced 18-year with Horace made new: “Anything can hap- lators throughout the eighteenth century olds, some now published poets and writ- pen, the tallest towers | Be overturned.” and into the nineteenth. (Wordsworth ers. He also talked about his own Horatian Since that visit, fully five verse transla- started a version and got through most of translation, of Odes 1.34, written the year tions of the entire Aeneid, the Roman epic book 3, before abandoning it.) before in response to the terror attacks of of Horace’s contemporary Virgil, have ap- Into this abundant stream steps Seamus September 11, 2001. The poem concerns life’s peared: by Stanley Lombardo (2004), Rob- Heaney with the posthumous Aeneid Book unpredictability, in the metaphor of Jupiter’s ert Fagles (2006), Frederick Ahl (2007), VI, marked “final” in his hand a month be- fore he died. In fact, Heaney had been in this stream for some time. As he put it in Stepping Stones (Dennis O’Driscoll’s series of interviews with the poet): [T]here’s one Virgilian journey that has indeed been a constant presence, and that is Aeneas’s ven- ture into the underworld. The motifs in Book VI have been in my head for years—the golden bough, Charon’s barge, the quest to meet the shade of the father. By then he had already begun the trans- lation, “in 2007, as a result of a sequence of poems written to greet the birth of a first granddaughter,” he writes in the Transla- tor’s Note that leads off this new volume. It is also “the result of a lifelong desire to hon- our the memory of my Latin teacher,” Father Michael McGlinchey, with whom he read Aeneid IX at St. Columb’s College in County Derry. He recalls McGlinchey’s “sighing, ‘Och boys, I wish it were Book VI.’” Even earlier, in 1991, “The Golden Bough,” a translation of Aeneid 6.124–48, came out as the first poem inSeeing Things. Twenty years later, “Album” (also in 2010’s The Human Chain) fondly recalled three separate embraces of the father dead since 1986, culminating in a simile “just as a mo- An iconic motif: Aeneas and the Sibyl (at upper left) in the Underworld, c.1530 (a plaque with enamel and gold on copper)

60 July - August 2016 Image from the Fitzwilliam Museum, , United Kingdom / Bridgeman Images Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage ment back a son’s three tries | At an em- brace in Elysium”—a clear invocation, in words full of their own literary memories, C hapter & Verse of Aeneas as the hero tries and fails to Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words embrace the shade of his own father. The 12 sections of “Route 110” (in The Human W.H. Levit hopes  someone can pro- the theory, change the facts.’ If Einstein Chain) “plotted incidents from my own life vide an exact citation for a statement did say it, some say he was joking, while against certain well-known episodes in generally attributed to Voltaire: “I was others argue he was emphasizing that Book VI” (vii–viii), by way of the bus route never ruined but twice; once when I lost there can be bad experimental data and from Belfast to Heaney’s home in County a lawsuit and once when I won one.” that good theories should not necessar- Derry. In “Route 110,” the poet buys a ily be discarded because of contradictory “used copy of Aeneid VI,” then takes the “something wrong with the exper- results from a single experiment.” bus ride home, reading of Lake Avernus iment” (May-June). Mark Davis noted and “Virgil’s happy shades” to the sound of the similarity of Professor William Doer- Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter “Slim Whitman’s wavering tenor.” ing’s comment to “a famous quote attrib- and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware uted to Einstein, though no one seems to Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail Lingering Where It Matters be able to confirm it: ‘If the facts don’t fit to [email protected]. Aeneid VI starts with the hero’s making landfall at Cumae, the northern point of the Bay of . There the Trojan exile meets most pathetic of the Aeneid’s books. Rare is Heaney gets the same effect in nine words, the Sibyl, prophetess of Apollo, who guides the translation that brings over into true by doubling “hands” (manus), supplying him down into the Underworld, directs him poetry, as this one does, the words, the the noun (“of a father”), with the indefi- to the golden bough that will give him ac- tone, the music of the original. nite article universalizing the catastrophe. cess, and joins him on his ghostly journey: Heaney’s 1,222 lines convey the entirety “Fall” and “failed”—cognates in Latin as encounters with Charon’s ferry of the dead, of Virgil’s 908, printed on facing pages— well (casu….cecidere)—get to the heart of the the hellhound Cerberus, Trojan comrades clearly important for Heaney. The mor- noun and verb. This sort of exercise could and Greek foes fallen in the war at Troy, the phological and syntactical compression of be repeated over and over again through- shade of Dido who died for love of him, and Latin, relative to English, make this just out the translation. Or just read it, and finally to the desired meeting with his father, about right (Dryden needed 1247 lines, know you are close to the poet with whom Anchises (replacing the mother visited by Mandelbaum, 1203). Heaney, like them Heaney was living these last years. Homer’s Odysseus). unconstrained by the Latin line, can linger The lines of “The Golden Bough” from where lingering matters, as when Aeneas English, in Touch with Metaphor 1991, now iambic pentameter like the looks his last at the unresponsive shade of English for the most part has lost touch whole book, have been tightened and Dido, in a single, packed line of Latin that with the metaphor in its (frequently Latin) trimmed, overhauled and reordered in a here becomes almost two: “gazes into the etymology, but Heaney’s English nestles up process revealed at the end of the preface: distance after her | Gazes through tears, to those origins, again keeping a version of rhythm and metre and lineation, the and pities her as she goes.” The expansion the Latin in his words. He clearly cares about voice and its pacing, the need for a by repetition draws attention as well to the language and about his representation of diction decorous enough for Virgil Virgil’s striking use of the verb prosequor, it. The body of a dead comrade “Lies emp- but not so antique as to sound out here used in Latin for the first time to mean tied of life” (iacet exanimum, literally, “breath of tune with a more contemporary “follow after with the eyes.” Elsewhere, gone out of it”); the cave to the Under- idiom—all the fleeting, fitful anxiet- memory of a son’s fall, through failure of a world is “A deep rough-walled cleft, stone ies that afflict the literary translator. father’s art, leads to a second failure of art, jaws agape” (hiatu, often with the meaning Virgil’s language is not ornate: “neither and the falling of the artist’s hands: “Twice bodily gape, yawn). Down below we meet overblown nor understated,” as a Roman | Dedalus tried to model your fall in gold, various personified evils, including “Death contemporary put it. All great poetry is twice | His hands, the hands of a father, too, and sleep, | The brother of death,” as al- modern, that is, readable in the modernity failed him.” The consecutive lines of Virgil ways eschewing the Latinate (consanguineus) of its idiom—whatever the occasional re- begin with bis (“twice”), a word effectively with the Anglo-Saxon “brother” underscor- course to high style, to archaism, to tech- moved to line-end in the English. In the ing the metaphor. And where Heaney finds nical language, to neologism. The job of Latin, Virgil’s description ends mid-line, pure metaphor, he translates that, too, as in the translator is to create poetry out of mirroring the unfinished artwork, but the Virgil’s “rowing with wings” for Daedalus, poetry, idiom out of idiom, and Heaney translation needs two full English lines. or his “prows frill the beach” for the Trojan has done that job superbly, capturing Virgil in three words gets the horror of the ships on the shore of Italy. the energy of the original, emptying the father trying and failing to depict the death Among many vivid descriptive passages word-hoard with narrative, description, of the son: patriae cecidere manus. He does so are the lines on Charon, the ferryman dear and character speech brilliantly repre- by placing the adjective (“belonging to a to Heaney, as to Dante, Dryden, and Delac- sented and renewed, always in tune with father”), which in Latin can have the force roix, among many others: the varying emotional registers of this, the of a noun, in the emphatic first position. And beside these flowing streams

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and flooded wastes in New Hibernia Review). The much reduced A ferryman keeps watch, surly, use of such language in Aeneid Book VI con- filthy and bedraggled firms this more creative view of the mat- Charon. His chin is bearded with ter. Not that Virgil cannot be treated that unclean white shag; way at times, as with “scringe” (“scratch- The eyes stand in his head and ing sound”) above. In fact the practice of glow; a grimy cloak domesticating into Hibernian—never in- Flaps out from a knot tied at the trusive, but unmistakable—continues that shoulder. found in Heaney’s translation and adapta- All by himself he poles the boat, tion of Virgil’s pastoral eclogues in Electric hoists sail Light, from 2001: “Bann Valley Eclogue,” And ferries dead souls in his rust- where the Virgilian golden age is thoroughly ed craft Irish: “Cows are let out. They’re sluicing the Old but still a god, and a god in milk-house floor”; or the translation, “Virgil: old age Eclogue IX,” where a bull is “The boyo with Is green and hardy. the horns,” while the older shepherd says,

Not a single Latinate word, as the vital- “That’s enough of that, my boy. We’ve a job MUSEE NATIONAL DU BARDO, LE BARDO, TUNISIA / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES ity and squalor come fully across. Later to do.” Virgilian pastoral and Irish poetry Virgil (70-19 b.c.e.) sits between Clio, Charon delivers his unwonted mortal car- are akin, both close to the soil, in Heaney as the Muse of history, and Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy, in this third-century go to the further shore, in Patrick Kavanaugh and John Montague. mosaic from a site at Sousse, Tunisia. Under that weight the boat’s Below, Seamus Heaney plied timbers groan At Home in Ireland And thick marsh water oozes So it is that this Aeneid can feel at home in chises’s, not Virgil’s own—are not without through the leaks, Ireland: “fell like a dead man | On a heap of pathos, and resist being called encomium, But in the end it is a safe crossing, their slobbered corpses” for confusae (“jum- Heaney here thought the translator’s task and he lands bled”)—perhaps recalling the “warm thick “is likely to have moved from inspiration Soldier and soothsayer on slithery slobber | of frogspawn” from “Death of a to grim determination,” as his preface puts mud, knee-deep Naturalist”; “nor bury in home ground”; it. Not that his translation fails them in In grey-green sedge. “in the very lowest sump”; of Silvius, “the any way. But his heart is elsewhere, as was Every word has an analogue in Virgil’s lad you see there.” Heaney’s Aeneas, at the Virgil’s, in Aeneas’s encounters with dead Latin, but the voice is that of Heaney. The funeral of his captain Misenus, even takes comrades and his dead lover Dido, in the re- sounds of Hell are well represented, as in on the look of Father McGlinchey, “asperg- union with his father and the embrace that the punishment of Salmoneus for imitating ing men lightly | From an olive branch.” This cannot happen, and in the loss, memory, and Jupiter in his thunder cart with “the bat- all works because we want to hear Heaney consolation that come through the music of ter of bronze and the clatter | Of horses’ along with Virgil. Does he go too far when these scenes. The poets are also in Elysium, hooves,” the alliteration responding to and the Sibyl, to subdue Cerberus, “flings him an inviting spot as the legendary Musaeus extending that of Virgil (cornipedum pulsu). a dumpling of soporific honey | And heav- describes it in Heaney’s evocative verse: Or in the noise of the Fury Tisiphone’s tor- ily drugged grain”? I think not. It is worth None of us has one definite turing sinners: “Sounds of groaning could it to think of our poet smiling at that line, home place. be heard inside, the savage | Application of even in the Underworld. We haunt the shadowy woods, the lash, the fling and scringe and drag | Of In a fragment of an Afterword, Heaney bed down on riverbanks, iron chains.” Or “a grinding scrunch and called it “the best of books and the worst On meadowland in earshot of screech | Of hinges as the of books.” Best because of running streams. dread doors open.” “the pathos of the many It is not hard to imagine Seamus Heaney, Some critics, chiefly encounters it allows the who spent so much time with Virgil in this Anglo-Saxonists, found living Aeneas with his world, now reunited in the next, haunting fault with the Hiberno- familiar dead.” Worst such woods with the Roman poet, as they Englishisms of Heaney’s “because of its imperial do in this breathtaking new translation. translation of Beowulf, certitude, its celebration as indicating inept ap- of Rome’s manifest des- Richard F. Thomas, Lane professor of the classics, propriation. But others tiny, and the catalogue of is the author of several works and commentaries on rightly saw it as an act of Roman heroes…,” down Virgil, and co-editor, with Porter professor of Medi- stealing in the best sense, to the man under whose eval Latin Jan M. Ziolkowski, of the three-volume transforming “the song of new monarchy Virgil The Virgil Encyclopedia (2014). For more on the suffering that isBeowulf would find himself: the Encyclopedia, see “A Poet’s March of Ages” (Jan- into a keen for his own “last of the war-lords,” as uary-February 2014, page 11). For more about the people’s troubles,” (as Augustus has been called. poet, read “Seamus Heaney, Digging with the Pen,” by

Thomas McGuire wrote LEVENSON/GETTY IMAGES DAVID Though these lines— An- Adam Kirsch (November-December 2006, page 52).

62 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI would soon start changing dramatically. The Fishery Conservation and Manage- ment Act of 1976 (commonly referred to as “Magnuson-Stevens”) officially asserted Teach a Man to Fish U.S. jurisdiction over waters within 200 miles of shore. This boon for domestic fishermen, who supported it, initially How Gloucester’s Russell Sherman got hooked spawned optimism and an influx of new- by nell porter brown comers, especially in Gloucester. Yet the law simultaneously addressed overfishing, a concern voiced as early as the turn of the aving spent the last days you worked a little harder, that’s all.” last century, by mandating unprecedent- of the groundfishing sea- A high-school football player, he reveled ed management of American fisheries. son on the open ocean east in the physical labor, the manly camara- John Bullard ’69, regional administrator of Cape Cod, Russell Sher- derie at sea, and standing up to gale-force of the National Marine Fisheries Service, Hman ’71 chugged into Gloucester Harbor in winds and 15-foot swells “that knocked a branch of the National Oceanic and April and docked his Lady Jane at the Jodrey me around,” he added. “Being young and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), State Fish Pier. Running the 72-foot trawl- vigorous, full of fire in the belly, I loved the credits the act with foreseeing the need to er around the clock, he and two crewmen life I led.” safeguard fish stocks from domestic ves- had taken shifts at the wheel and ultimately But the North American fishing indus- sels as well, especially given the advances caught 6,000 pounds of bottom-dwelling try, already wrangling with foreign fleets, in dragging gear. species, mostly haddock, Regional governing flounder, redfish, and cod, councils were established, along with a slew of lob- and the law, tightened sters. He netted $9,000. to increase conservation A decent haul, Sher- and enforcement efforts man said, given the de- in 1996 and 2006, set in cades-long decline of the motion the constantly New England saltwater shifting, often labyrin- groundfishing industry, thine, federal regulations but laughable compared that have since frus- to his days on deck in the trated groundfishermen 1970s. Then, Gloucester like Sherman. The coun- was home to generations cils and NOAA can now of fishermen at the cen- specify everything from ter of a thriving business fishing-ground closures, that had been feeding catch quotas, bycatch re- Americans since the sev- quirements and protected enteenth century. Fresh species, to boat monitors out of Harvard, Sherman and their fees (paid by the took a summer job on fishermen), and compo- a boat, and essentially nents of gear. never left. “You came and The most recent ground­­ went as you wanted,” he fishery management sys- said. “Plenty of dough in tem to be adopted in my pocket. And when New England, in 2010, is times were a little tough, the quota-based Annual Catch Limit (ACL); it re- Commercial fisherman Russell Sherman still placed the age-old effort- admires the fishermen he based “days at sea.” The worked for in his early ACL percentages are set days: “Strong, and strong- annually, based on NO- willed, independent men. Most were veterans of AA’s Northeast Fisheries World War II, and had Science Center stock as- been through a lot—they sessments, and represent had tremendous work the number of pounds of ethic. And I wanted nothing but to earn their 16 different monitored respect.” species a given boat can

Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 63 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI land (bring ashore) each season. Aboard the Lady Jane, Sherman Groundfish historically dominated the gears up for his forty-fifth year on the water. regional industry, but now represent only one of 16 Northeast fisheries, including surf stricted] species? It’s very hard clams and quahogs, herring, and deep-sea to do.” Some of the different red crab, many of which, like sea scallops, species tend to swim together. are flourishing. The fishermen of New Bed- And once fishermen fulfill their ford, Massachusetts, where Bullard used quotas for cod, for example, to be mayor, are the country’s leading sell- they are precluded from fishing ers of sea scallops, a nearly $500-million in waters where cod live. business, for example (compared to the More pointedly, the overall $60-million average annual revenue from population of groundfish will groundfish). Various stock levels can and never return to the 1970s levels Sherman fresh fish on our tables, he says, and “then do fluctuate, even year-to-year: the quotas and others knew, Bullard asserts. Ulti- we collectively put carbon into the atmo- for Georges Bank Cod were cut more than mately, “You’re not going to have happy sphere that makes [their] place of business a 60 percent this year, but hiked very slightly groundfishermen,” he adds, “because there more hostile environment. It’s not fair.” for Gulf of Maine Cod: “They are still in is no longer enough groundfish for all of NOAA measures, although aimed at trouble,” Bullard says. On the other hand, them to catch and make a good living, and balancing the often competing interests in the quotas for redfish, pollock, and Georg- the managers are going to have to restrict the ocean’s health and resources, spur con- es Bank haddock rose, he adds, because the catch no matter what system they use.” tinuing, often volatile debates. The Gulf of surveys show they are the most plentiful of Human contributions to climate change, Maine codfish, for example, has been the the 20 groundfish stocks. But because cod and the resulting deleterious effects of poster child for all groundfish. “And be- and other low-quota species often swim warmer temperatures and acidification on cause they regulate to the weakest stock,” among them, “the challenge is, how do the ocean and its marine life, he adds, share Sherman points out, “we’re set up for a fall fishermen catch the fish that are abundant much of the blame for declining fish stocks right away.” Yet based on his own experi- without catching the cod and other [re- across the globe. Fishermen are asked to put ence, and what he hears from fishermen in

Harvard Medalists Harvard’s beloved music man for more than four decades, you calmly guided the Harvard Bands “through change and through storm,” setting the stage for the Four people—Thomas G. Everett, Roger W. Ferguson Jr. ’73, jazz program and touching the lives of generations of students, alumni, faculty, A.M. ’78, J.D. ’79, Ph.D. ’81, John H. McArthur, M.B.A. ’59, D.B.A. ’63, and staff through your prodigious creativity, your trailblazing scholarship, and and Betsey Bradley Urschel, Ed.M. ’63—received the 2016 Harvard your boundless generosity of spirit. Medal for “extraordinary service to the University” on May 26, during the Harvard Alumni Association’s (HAA) annual meeting • Roger W. Ferguson Jr., pres- on the afternoon of Commencement day. President Drew Faust ident and CEO of the financial read the citations, printed in italics below. services provider TIAA, is also • When Thomas G. Everett, now director emeritus of the Har- a member of President Obama’s vard Bands, arrived in 1971, he found the campus to be (in the Economic Recovery Advisory words of The Harvard Crimson) “a jazz wasteland.” He started the Board and a former vice chair- Harvard Jazz Bands, developed courses on the genre and its history, man of the Federal Reserve Board and brought in artists for of Governors. Besides serving as master classes and resi- president of the Board of Over- dencies. Meanwhile, he seers from 2008 to 2009, Fergu- directed the Harvard son has contributed to a number University Bands for of committees at the University: decades—and in that ca- he chaired the standing commit- pacity, oversaw football tee on institutional policy and game halftime shows, Harvard’s audit committee, and the Harvard Wind En- also served as a member of the Roger W. Ferguson Jr. semble, and the Harvard executive committee and the Summer Pops Band. Ev- board’s standing committees on social sciences and alumni af- erett has also been a fairs and development. supporter of the Har- Esteemed economist and trusted advisor to presidents from Mass Hall to vard Alumni Jazz Band Pennsylvania Avenue, you have served the University with humility and wis- and the Harvard Band dom, leading the Board of Overseers and countless committees with a steady Foundation. hand, a sharp mind, and a deep devotion to Harvard’s educational mission. Thomas G. Everett

64 July - August 2016 Photographs by Stu Rosner Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI

Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hamp- from trading his ACL quotas (which is al- 2014, he won the industry’s National Fish- shire, the cod “are everywhere. When we’re lowed) among fellow fishermen. The ACL erman Highliner Award for his efforts. out there, we can’t avoid catching cod.” system “has done its work, which was to Regulators should “cease focusing on The “right answer,” Bullard allows, re- pare us down to very few participants,” he us as the bête noire,” he said during a re- ferring to balancing these competing agen- adds. “But they keep cutting the quotas. cent interview at his Gloucester home, das, is ever elusive. That’s partly because And now we are in the death throes.” four miles from the downtown pier. They the resources shift and scientific data can Educated and outspoken, Sherman has should “focus on the other problems that lag such trends, but also “because the fish- often been drafted to advocate for his com- exist: natural predatory mortality—seals, ing industry is incredibly complicated and munity, which he was glad to do—believ- dogfish, and skates are doing a better job litigious—for every action, there are mul- ing that “we could reach fair and equitable than fishermen; pollution—sound and tiple counter-actions.” solutions for the environment and the tra- chemicals; and water quality. I am not say- Sherman agrees that relations are acri- ditional fishing folk.” He started in the late ing we’re lily-white, but the majority of us monious. “We feel there is more interest in 1980s (when some fishermen and environ- have done exactly what we’ve been told getting rid of fishermen than in saving the mentalists were actually working together since they have been in charge since 1976. fish,” he explains. The problem, as he sees it, productively), and was heartened by the Now, where the hell is the result?” is worsened by “over-used and unenlight- hard-won battle that helped lead to a ban ened” policies produced by bureaucrats on oil exploration and drilling on Georges Painfully aware of his role as a relic, who fear lawsuits by the “enviros,” and Bank, a particularly nutrient-rich stretch the 68-year-old wants to retire, but can’t. In have therefore “privatized what have been of sea floor between Cape Cod and Nova 2000, against the wishes of his wife, Chris- common resources for 400 years” (the fish- Scotia. Sherman has since testified before tine, he invested in a bigger boat that could ing grounds) and destroyed “the industry Congress, served on advisory panels for the operate both inshore and offshore, there- that built this Republic.” He has learned to New England Fishery Management Coun- by hedging unpredictable fishery closures. live with the ACL system, and has survived cil, helped co-found the nonprofit North- That’s the main reason he’s still in business by “stubbornness” and a canny ability to east Seafood Coalition—and even engaged at all. But having done that, he now cannot switch up his targeted species, fish inshore in brainstorming sessions with environ- get a decent price for his nest egg, Lady Jane. and offshore, and gauge ways to benefit mentalists, scientists, and politicians. In So Sherman hangs on, and this spring he

• John H. McArthur, dean emeritus of Harvard Business School, counsel to Schools and institutions across the University and around the joined the HBS faculty in 1962, teaching courses in corporate fi- world, earning the respect and admiration of colleagues and communities nance; he became dean in 1980. During his 15-year tenure, he in- from Cambridge to Canada. troduced new fields of study and overhauled the school’s M.B.A. program and publishing arm, and also improved its campus. Re- • Betsey Bradley Urschel is highly regarded for her volunteer porting in 1995 on how McArthur brokered the merger that created service in Texas and in Cambridge. She has contributed her lead- the Partners HealthCare System—now the state’s largest private ership in a variety of capaci- employer (and the provider network where the University spends ties, including as an elected most of its health-benefits money)—theCrimson wondered, “Is director, regional director John H. McArthur the Most Powerful Man at Harvard?” A Uni- for Texas, and vice presi- versity professorship was named for him and his wife, Natty, in dent of University affairs 1997; HBS’s McArthur Hall was dedicated in 1999. of the HAA Board of Direc- McArthur has also served elsewhere at Harvard: at the College, tors. A past president and as honorary coach of the men’s director emerita of the Har- ice hockey team; at the medi- vard Club of Dallas, she co- cal school, as a member of the chaired the club’s centennial Board of Overseers; and at the events in 2014 and, with her schools of education and pub- late husband, Harold, started lic health, as a member of their the community service fund Dean’s Councils. He is the hon- that bears their name and orary chair of the current HBS provides financial assistance Roger W. capital campaign. to a College undergraduate Betsey Ferguson Jr. Bradley Urschel Distinguished Harvard statesman working in a public-service and visionary leader with an unpar- internship in north Texas. alleled gift for building consensus The heartbeat of the thriving Harvard Club of Dallas, you have given gen- and cultivating warm personal rela- erously and passionately of your time and talents to many areas of the Uni- tionships, you expanded the frontiers versity, galvanizing the alumni community and mentoring other volunteer of intellectual thought at Harvard leaders with exemplary grace, unwavering dedication, and Texas-sized en- John H. McArthur Business School and provided wise thusiasm for Harvard.

www.alumni.harvard.edu Harvard Magazine 65 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI geared up, despite a titanium hip and bursi- tis in both shoulders, for his forty-fifth year Cambridge Scholars on the water, saying simply: “You do what you have to do.” Four seniors have won Harvard Cambridge Scholarships to study at Cambridge That ethic, he says, grounded family life University during the 2016-2017 academic year. Alona Bach of Berkeley, California, while he was growing up in modest cir- and , a history and science concentrator, will be the Lionel De Jersey cumstances in the small “backwater mill Harvard Scholar at Emmanuel College; Vivek Banerjee, of Studio City, Califor- town” of Putnam, Connecticut. His father nia, and Dunster House, a social studies concentrator, will be the William Shirley was a World War II veteran who worked Scholar at Pembroke College; Ramya Rangan, of Los Altos Hills, California, and hard at any job he got, on railroads, as a Currier House, a joint concentrator in computer science and mathematics, will be meat-cutter, truck driver, and insurance the Charles Henry Fiske III Scholar at Trinity College; and Tamara Fernando of agent, and ultimately as a bank-debt col- Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Adams House, a history and literature concetrator, will lector repossessing cars in Hartford’s be the John Eliot Scholar at Jesus College. toughest neighborhoods. “He was a real gentleman, he was calm and rational,” Sherman says. “And after the war, nothing excitable boy at that age, a young Irish Sherman catalogs his life choices, and scared him. He used to say, ‘Put your best spalpeen. Big mistake. Billy club. I got tak- knows he had more than many because foot forward, always, but if somebody steps en to pieces.” Perhaps more privately trau- of his Harvard education. Turning one’s on it, all bets are off.’” matic was his personal life. At the end of back on a professional career was not that A top student and football player on freshman year Sherman married his prep- unusual among his classmates, he says, at scholarship at St. George’s School in Rhode school sweetheart, Marion Pratt, who was least in the years following graduation, Island, Sherman arrived at Harvard, also pregnant; the couple moved off campus largely as a consequence of political activ- on scholarship, in the fall of 1967. Political and shared brief roles as parents to two ism—the fight against the , and cultural tensions already were roiling infants—both whom died of a rare genetic the fight for social and economic equality. the campus, and by sophomore year, things disease—before separating at the end of His only regret about college, where he turned violent. He recalls “seeing the cops his senior year. Moving to Gloucester soon concentrated in history, is that he didn’t drag a young lady out of building who had after that, he fell in love with the place, study hard enough. beautiful blond hair, and it was soaked with “her people and history, the bedrock In 1982, when he married Christine (a in blood, and I lost it. I charged. I was an of our Republic,” as much as with fishing. Gloucester native from a fishing industry family), his parents, always disappointed by his career decision, urged him The Senior to return to school for an advanced degree. But he “wanted to be the Alumni captain of my own boat, my own The oldest graduates business.” He put $10,000 down on of Harvard and Radcliffe his house, and in 1984 borrowed present at Commence- another $10,000 to buy the Captain ment were 99-year-old Dutch. In 2000, at age 52, Sherman Ruth Rabb ’37, of New York took on a second mortgage to buy City, and Leon Starr ’40, of the Lady Jane, knowing that the in- Boston, due to turn 98 in creased financial burden would July. Both were recognized mean spending more time on the during the afternoon cer- water, catching more fish, and emony by Harvard Alum- adding crew. The industry out- ni Association president look had somewhat improved, he Paul Choi ’86, J.D. ’89. Starr, Ruth Rabb and Leon Starr recalls. In an interview with producers of whose seventy-fifth reunion was last year, was accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline. the 2002 documentary filmEmpty Oceans,

“There are a lot more women here than when I was at college,” he said, adding that HARRISON JIM Empty Nets, in which he is featured, Sher- the custom in his day, of having Harvard professors teach the men and then walk over man agreed that although the industry to to teach the women separately, “was cuckoo”; they should have was shrinking, a “hard-core” group of fish- “had the classes together.” Rabb, seated a few chairs away beside her daughter, Emily ermen “who stick it out for this interim Livingston (wife of David Livingston ’61), said she was “very pleased to be a ’Cliffie,” period [of] the next three or four years, are although “it was awful in my day that we were not recognized.” Harvard does seem going to be rewarded at the end. I have to to run in the family: her late husband was Maxwell Rabb ’32, J.D. ’35, her other chil- believe that.” dren include Bruce Rabb ’63 and Priscilla Rabb Ayres, M.B.A. ’69, and her grandson Sherman has never been against “intelli- is Jeremy Maltby ’90. Rabb was glad when, in 2000, the College began granting only gent” regulation that conserved fish stocks, Harvard degrees, she added, “because now we’re on the same playing field.” and has voiced his beliefs even if they ran counter to those around him—“often to my

66 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI detriment,” he reports. “I’ve had my gear sabotaged, I’ve had personal threats.” But Centennial Medalists he does think regulation has “gone too far now.” So far, he worries, that the next time The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Centennial Medal, first awarded in 1989 federal leases for offshore exploration or on the occasion of the school’s hundredth anniversary, honors alumni who have made extraction are proposed for sites in the mid contributions to society that emerged from their graduate studies. It is the highest and south Atlantic Ocean (a process that honor the Graduate School bestows, and awardees include some of Harvard’s most could begin as early as 2019), there won’t accomplished alumni. The 2016 recipients, announced at a ceremony on May 25, are: be any independent fishermen “screaming Francis Fukuyama, Ph.D. ’81, a political scientist, political economist, and author; and hollering like scalded cats, ‘Don’t drill! David Mumford ’57, Ph.D. ’61, a theoretical and applied mathematician who studies Georges Bank is too rare a jewel.’ Because,” visual perception; John O’Malley, Ph.D. ’65, a priest, professor of theology, and histo- he says, “we are gone.” rian of early modern Catholicism; and Cecilia Rouse ’86, Ph.D. ’92, an economist who served as adviser to two presidents and is now dean of the Woodrow Wilson School In 2012, when Sherman’s blood pressure of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. For more about the honorands, see hit 190 over 90, his doctor warned him to harvardmag.com/centennial-16. bow out of political activity, or risk having a stroke. He is now out of the danger zone, but it was nevertheless a relief, he says, to come ashore after finishing the 2015-2016 season, to work on repairs and maintenance for the Lady Jane, and to sleep in his own bed. By mid June he was back on the wa- ter, following a business plan revised to reflect the new ACL allocations and grounds-closure timetables, volatile mar- ket auctions, weather patterns, the state of his health, and that of his crew. “I’ve been 30-odd years a captain now, and I’ve never been a high-liner—what we call a guy who just made the fish dance aboard. What I did was by rote, by cuss- edness,” he says. “So I did okay. We raised our daughter and had our house. And in a business full of corruption, I’ve never cheated anyone, always played by the rules. Took care of my crew. And if I can just retire out, please, without ever hav- ing hurt anyone or lost anyone on my boat, TONY RINALDO/GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES From left: John O’Malley, Cecilia Rouse, David Mumford, and Francis Fukuyama and knowing people will say, ‘Jeez, that Russell did all right by me,’ then I will be a happy guy, my career a success.” human development and social policy, tant to nonprofit organizations. Northwestern University. Rye Barcott, M.B.A.-M.P.A.’09, Char- Helena Buonanno Foulkes ’86, M.B.A. lotte, North Carolina. Managing partner Election Results ’92, Providence, Rhode Island. President, and co-founder, Double Time Capital. CVS/pharmacy; executive vice president, David Battat ’91, New York City. Presi- The names of the new members of the CVS Health. dent and CEO, Atrion Corporation. Board of Overseers and of the new elect- Ketanji Brown Jackson ’92, J.D. ’96, Susan M. Cheng, M.P.P. ’04, Ed.LD. ’13, ed directors of the Harvard Alumni Asso- Washington, D.C. Judge, United States Washington, D.C. Senior associate dean ciation (HAA) were announced during the District Court. for diversity and inclusion, Georgetown HAA’s annual meeting on the afternoon of Alejandro Ramírez Magaña ’94, M.B.A. University School of Medicine. Commencement day. For complete cover- ’01, Mexico City. CEO, Cinépolis. Farai N. Chideya ’90, New York City. age of the contested Overseers election, see Kent Walker ’83, Palo Alto. Senior vice Distinguished writer in residence, Arthur harvardmag.com/overseerelection. president and general counsel, Google Inc. L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York University. For Overseer (six-year term), voters chose: For elected director (three-year term), Michael C. Payne ’77, M.D. ’81, M.P.H. ’82, Lindsay Chase-Lansdale ’74, Evan- voters chose: Cambridge. Attending physician, depart- ston, Illinois. Associate provost for fac- Janet Nezhad Band ’83, M.B.A. ’89, J.D. ment of internal medicine, division of gas- ulty and Frances Willard professor of ’90, New York City. Development consul- troenterology, Cambridge Health Alliance.

Harvard Magazine 67 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 THE COLLEGE PUMP 26 Ways to Get into Harvard

instructors was is- sued later in 2013 as a Nieman Foundation e- book (see harvardmag. com/harvardgates-16). Now a new paperback puts those essays, with fresh color pho- “Your wooden arm you hold outstretched tographs, drawings, to shake with passers-by.” and a map, into your coat pocket. uick trivia quiz. What do Gates are for getting these names have in common: through, but Kamin, Bradstreet, Bacon, Dexter, Mor- his fellow instructors, Q gan, McKean? and their students All are gates to Harvard Yard. Clock- ask us to pause and wise, from due north, they are: the newest contemplate: a fence The long-gone Dudley Gate, caught with no hands on its clock gate, opposite the Science Center, a 1995 excludes, a gate ad- gift from Radcliffe honoring seventeenth- mits—but selectively. Both assert power. 1936, the Yard was fully fenced and gated. century poet Anne Bradstreet; the Robert No wonder Harvard’s wrought-iron pick- But of today’s 26 gates, nine are locked Bacon or Class of 1880 Gate, monumen- ets bristle with spear points. permanently or opened only rarely. Some tal and unused, just south of Lamont; the Until the 1880s, Harvard had made do have been blocked by new buildings, made Samuel Dexter or Class of 1890 (or “Enter with rustic wooden rails on granite posts. useless by new traffic patterns, or denied to grow in wisdom”) Gate; the Edward D. Monumental ironwork enclosures were the spacious malls they were supposed Morgan or Class of 1877 Gate, the largest of part of Charles William Eliot’s imperial to face. Some languished in disrepair. Ka- all, just south of Widener; and the “Porcel- ambitions for his university. min’s work inspired repairs to the John- lian” or “Boylston” gate, ornamented with a The —the first to be ston Gate, but two of these essays point boar’s head, dedicated to Joseph McKean, built, in 1889—was the work of Charles out other gates still in need of restoration. who founded the Porcellian Club in 1791. McKim of McKim, Mead, and White, the It’s too late for the Dudley Gate, com- So says Gates of Harvard Yard (Princeton New York architects who would shape pleted in 1915 and demolished in 1947. On Architectural Press, $15.95), a collection much of Harvard’s and the nation’s rise to Quincy Street, where there is now a self- of essays edited, introduced, and partly international prominence in the next few effacing nonentity of a gate leading to written by the Chicago Tribune’s Pulitzer decades. McKim set the pattern for Har- , there once stood a proud Prize-winning architecture critic, Blair vard gates: Georgian, not Gothic; “Har- folly as fanciful and impudent as the Lam- Kamin. vard brick” of variegated hues with stone poon Castle: a triple gate with a helmeted This is a book that began as a week- accents; iron spear-points with floral clock tower commemorating Thomas long Harvard Wintersession 2013 class in flourishes. From gates, the neo-Georgian Dudley, erroneously identified, by letters arts journalism led by Kamin during his style spread to buildings and made much carved in stone, as “First Governor of Mas- year as a Nieman Fellow. Its collection of of the Harvard we know today. sachusetts.” (Take that, John Winthrop!) essays and photographs by students and By the University’s Tercentenary in vprimus pro tempore

68 July - August 2016 Photograph courtesy of the Harvard University Archives Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters

(continued from page 8) City, on May 5, 1941, and, on the front page, phrase means “to have a share in the con- The New York Times published an article enti- stitution” (singular), rather than “to share petition among our immensely different tled “‘Giant’ Germicide Yielded by Mold.” the constitutions” (plural) (i.e., πολιτει´ας institutions and types of institutions—es- It was the treatment of police constable is f. gen. sg. rather than f. acc. pl.). Taking pecially competition for faculty, students, Albert Alexander, the first of Howard Flo- genitive objects is also true of verbs with and resources—is a healthy aspect of the rey’s patients to receive systemic penicil- related meanings like μεταδιδο´ναι (to U.S. “non-system” (alas, much less healthy lin at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, that give a share in) and κοινωνει˜ν (to have in my own view has become their often incorrectly established the 1941 date. Alex- something in common). The use of the out-of-control athletic competition— ander’s treatment was begun on February genitive in this situation is similar to the which much less importantly, but more 12. However, after an initial improvement partitive usage of the genitive (as in Eng- visibly and often insidiously, heavily char- of his massive mixed staphylococcal/strep- lish, we say sometimes, “have a share of a acterizes American culture). tococcal ocular-orbital-facial infection, firm,” “share some cake,” etc.). Competition is, however, most positively the patient died. Please don’t give it a second thought: effective when those engaged in it are open Fortunately for all of us, the great work of it is a finer point of Greek usage, and I to learning from one another. This can be Lyons and so many others ultimately estab- am glad to be in a spot to help out a fel- taken too far—it is possible for dangers of lished the wonder of the “wonder drugs.” low friend of the classics. My main con- the antitrust sort to emerge (as the Depart- John D. Bullock, M.D. ’68, M.P.H. ’03 cern in transliterating, rather than using ment of Justice did indeed conclude was Dayton, Ohio a Greek typeface, was to make the term occurring in regard to student financial as- a bit more translucent for the 50 percent sistance several decades ago). But greater Editor’s note: Thank you for the historical or more of Greek-less readers—especially lost opportunities for the general benefit— amplification. The Lyons article was refer- the word politeia, with its clear relationship toward the common objectives of increased ring to more widespread use of the therapy. to “politics,” “polity,” etc. And it made knowledge and more effective teaching— some sense in writing about Allen—such have resulted from institutional failures to IT’S NOT GREEK TO THEM a skilled Hellenist herself—to follow her learn from one another. I am puzzled by the transliteration of the own books’ democratizing practice on this Especially now, at a time when higher Greek letters in the phrase metechein tês polite- point. education is facing severe stresses, includ- ias in the inspiring article about Danielle Al- ing, it appears, significant losses of public len (“The Egalitarian,” May-June, page 40). GENDER EQUITY confidence,Harvard Magazine’s commentary Especially the word tês seems strange to me. The article on Professor Claudia Goldin’s and recommendations deserve a vigorous I don’t think that it should be tais, but maybe work (“Reassessing the Gender Wage Gap,” Three Cheers! tas. I wish that you had had the courage to May-June, page 12) cites interesting research Thomas H. Wright, J.D ’66 use the Greek script, which I estimate that about how some fields pay their senior pro- Emeritus vice president and secretary, at least 50 percent of your readers can de- fessionals more per hour for working more cipher, and a Library of Congress mode of than 40 hours per week. As an experienced transliteration, rather than the one which I consultant, I can offer some possible expla- PENICILLIN suspect may come from a computerized ver- nations. One key may be that in some set- I read with great interest the article sion. I may be entirely wrong, and I apolo- tings (e.g. the larger law, consulting, or ac- “Champ Lyons” (Vita, May-June, page 48). gize if this is the case. counting firms), the value created for the The authors mentioned Lyons’s early use Mary Frances (Raphael) Dunham ’54, firm by the expert is almost entirely due of penicillin and further stated that even M.A.T. ’59 to the number of staff used in an engage- though penicillin was discovered in 1928, it New York City ment—since there is a big profit margin “was not used to treat humans until 1941.” on their fees. The large, complex engage- In fact, the world’s first authenticated Editor’s note: We doubt that that many ments that use numerous staff seldom fit a therapeutic use of penicillin occurred on readers know Greek! One who does is au- straight 40-hour-week model, and evenings August 28, 1930, at the Sheffield Royal In- thor Spencer Lenfield, who responds: and weekends may not be optional. firmary in England by doctors Cecil George Many thanks for your query. Metechein Another key to high earnings is a will- Paine (a pathologist) and Albert Boswell tês politeias is a translation of μετε´χειν τh˜ς ingness to accept new work whenever it Nutt (an ophthalmologist). They used crude πολιτει´ας; I was following the translitera- appears, even if one is already busy with penicillin mold juice topically to cure a bi- tion procedure used in the work of writers other projects. An expert’s reputation also lateral neonatal gonococcal eye infection. like Allen herself and Martha Nussbaum. matters for attracting well-paying busi- Purified, extracted penicillin was first I can see where you might think that tas ness, and a key to that is a demonstrated used systemically on October 16, 1940, by (fem. acc. pl.) would be appropriate here, willingness to be available to the client at Martin Henry Dawson at the Presbyterian but the verb μετε´χειν usually takes a geni- all times, and to work as hard as necessary Hospital (Columbia University, New York) tive object, and only rarely an accusative to meet the client’s needs. to treat a case of subacute bacterial endo- object, as is noted in the Liddell-Scott-Jones In other words, rather than hired work- carditis. He presented a series of unsuc- Greek-English Lexicon entry here (“1. mostly ers performing assignments allocated by the cessfully treated cases to the American So- c. gen. rei only”). The usage that Allen cites employer, in these fields the best-paid pro- ciety for Clinical Investigation in Atlantic is exemplified by Lysias (6.48, 30.15). So the fessionals can be more like entrepreneurs

74 July - August 2016 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters using the firm as a base of operations. Oc- told everyone who Attention cupations where hourly earnings are more asked that he was CLASS OF 2017 linear might not share these characteristics. an “Indian Agent,” Visit harvardmag.com Enroll Now... Carl Danner Ph.D. ’86 which better fit for additional letters. Alamo, Calif. their expecta- tions. The follow-up question was usu- OVERSEERS’ ELECTION ODDS ally, “What does an Indian Agent do?” College Application A candidate whose name appears first and I always responded that he did a lot of Boot Camp® on a ballot has an advantage. To assure a things but principally was concerned with fair election, some states, including my Cali- “keeping firewater off the reservation.” 4-day Intensive Camp Summer 2016 in Boston, MA fornia, mix up the order of candidates on Not once in four years did anyone question different ballots so the advantage is evenly the veracity of my answer. Complete your college applications distributed. Keep up the good work with your writers. with leading admission pros: The current ballot for the Board of Bill Schwartz ’62 DR. MICHELE HERNANDEZ Overseers [for coverage of the contested Nashville Former Assistant Director of Overseers’ election, see http://harvard- Admissions at magazine.com/overseerelection; the re- AMENDMENTS AMENDMENT Author of A is for Admission sults appear at page 67] makes use of the Richard johnson states (Letters, May- MIMI DOE first-place advantage by listing all the “of- June, page 4), “The Thirteenth Amend­ment Parenting guru & author of ficial” candidates—those nominated by accorded citizenship to African Americans. Busy but Balanced the Alumni Association—first on the bal- Since then protections have been granted to...” – Last 12 years sold out – lot and first in the voter information pam- The Thirteenth Amendment abolished phlet. Petition candidates—the officially slavery but did not mention citizenship. disfavored—appear at the tail end. The Fourteenth Amendment granted citi- The position of all candidates should be zenship to all persons born or naturalized determined by lot. Why isn’t this done? Be- in the United States but that is all such ApplicationBootCamp2016.com cause a quarter-century ago, a petition can- persons, regardless of race. African Ameri- 781.530.7088 didate (a “mere” graduate student and the cans are not mentioned. The original text [email protected] youngest candidate in Harvard’s history) did say citizenship “denied to any male was elected to the Board by a narrow mar- inhabitants...twenty-one years of age,” so gin. It should be no surprise that, by lot, I suppose you could say, “The Fourteenth she appeared first among all candidates. Amendment accorded citizenship to Afri- Maybe next year the petition candidates can American males twenty-one or older will appear first and the “official” candi- and to all other males twenty-one or older.” dates will bring up the rear. Maybe—but Roberta B. Ross ’57 don’t hold your breath. Fairness was never Baltimore the Overseers’ strong point. John Plotz ’69 AMPLIFICATIONS AND ERRATA Hayward, Calif. “Theater, Dance, and Media’s ‘Next Act” (May-June, page 18), reported that “Aside Calling All Editor’s note: The University, when asked, from the Harvard Dance Project, a for-credit declined to comment on the balloting pro- ensemble led by OFA Dance Program direc- HarvardThe deadline is SEPTEMBER Authors! 14, 2016 cedures used in such elections. tor Jill Johnson, the concentration offered to showcase your book in no dance classes in the fall, and two in the Harvard Magazine and reach NOT FROM KANSAS ANY MORE spring.” Elizabeth Epsen, program assistant 255,000 Harvard alumni, faculty, I thoroughly enjoyed Bailey Trela’s for dance, reports there were, in fact, two and staff in time for the holidays. Flyover State essay (The Undergraduate, for-credit dance courses offered in fall 2015, The November-December 2016 March-April, page 25). When I arrived in both shown on TDM’s online course listing. Harvard Magazine will feature the Cambridge in 1958 from Kansas, it didn’t Reporter Sophia Nguyen notes that her –Holiday matter that I had been to probably 35 or so source, the Harvard course catalog, did Reading List, a special advertising section states (but, let the record show, not Paris not list the fall courses under the TDM for authors (adjacent to Montage coverage and not Florence); I was deemed a hick. concentration, but under Music. ofHarvard books andAuthors’ the arts). Bookshelf Your ad includes: During my four years of undergraduate a full-color book jacket photo and 7 lines study, I was occasionally asked what my In the May-June Off the Shelf (page 71), of text—and will appear in both the print father’s occupation was. Even though he author Lesley Lee Francis’s name appeared and online editions of Harvard Magazine. in actuality owned and operated a bank, correctly in the accompanying photo cap- For more information about pricing and ad that was entirely too conventional an ex- tion, but was misspelled in the book listing. specifications, go to: harvardmagazine.com/hauthors, contact Gretchen Bostrom at 617-496-6686 planation for a Flyover State resident, so I We apologize for the mistake. or e-mail [email protected].

Harvard Magazine 75 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 TREASURE A Queen’s Seat “Experimental archaeology” at the Harvard Semitic Museum

use in daily life or in the afterlife is out how to reproduce always the question.” the faience tiles took a The throne was discovered year. “The Egyptians’ Visit harvardmag. by accident, shattered into artists were far better,” com to see images of the construction of the thousands of pieces, by a joint jokes Rus Gant, lead throne Harvard-Museum of Fine Arts technical artist of the expedition in 1925, when a pho- Giza Project. tographer stumbled (literally) To be fair to the Semitic Museum, the into a burial shaft containing the royals had vast resources at their dis- queen’s tomb. Three years after posal. “This was a very tightly centralized the discovery of Tutankhamun’s period in Egyptian history,” Manuelian tomb, the public remained hun- says, “where the ruling family and their gry for stories about the trea- relatives were totally in charge.” He calls sures of ancient Egypt. “This the project “experimental archaeology,” a was a sensational discovery,” process meant to shed light on the Egyp- says Manuelian. “For the next tians’ artistic methods, and tell us some- two years the team spent all thing of their hidden lives. their time down there, lying on vmarina bolotnikova mattresses with twee- zers, picking up every tiny fragment.” Most of the furniture uch is still unknown about in the queen’s tomb—a bed, a more the world of the ancient modest wood throne, a handsome Egyptian elites, whose lives sedan chair—had been recon- are fossilized in the riches of structed for display in Cairo and Mthe ruins at Giza —and reflected by the lu- at the MFA, but no one had tried minous throne that sits on the second floor to reproduce the grander of the of the Harvard Semitic Museum. Crafted two thrones. Flanked with falcons from cedar wood, covered in delicate gold on either arm and inlaid with tiny foil, and inlaid with turquoise-colored fa- pieces of tile depicting beetles, ar- ience tile, the piece replicates a 4,500-year- rows, and other Egyptian iconog- old chair that belonged to Queen Hetep- raphy, it appeared too complex to heres, the mother of King Khufu, who built imitate, even working from the ex- the Great Pyramid at Giza. How the throne cavation team’s detailed sketches. was used, or whether it was used at all, re- It took a crew of craftsmen at mains elusive. “Sometimes things are used in the Harvard Giza Project three daily life and put into the tomb, and some- years and 1,000 hours of labor, times they’re dummy objects created for plus 3-D imaging technology and a burial,” says King professor of Egyptology computer-driven carving machine, Peter Der Manuelian. “Whether it’s built for to rebuild the throne. Just figuring

76 July - August 2016 Photographs courtesy of the Harvard Semitic Museum Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 “I give to the Radcliffe Institute “The Radcliffe Institute provides because I know my gift can Harvard College students with have an immediate impact on incredible learning opportunities cutting-edge programs and to do advanced research with research that contribute to new renowned scholars, scientists, and knowledge at Harvard and artists from around the world. We beyond.” are delighted that our support can help give undergraduates these —Andrew D. Klaber MBA ’ 09, kinds of transformative JD ’ 10 experiences.”

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