For Five Generations My Family Has Been Haunted by a Disease So Rare It Doesn’T Have a Name
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MAGAZINE | SPRING 2017 For five generations my family has been haunted by a disease so rare it doesn’t have a name. It took my father and now it’s got a hold of me, too. We will not be passing it along to a sixth generation. By Joselin Linder, J97 TUFTS MAGAZINE Contents SPRING 2017 44 Features 18 SOMETIMES A ROBOT IS JUST A ROBOT 38 THE FAMILY GENE “There’s a disease you’ve Terrified of our coming AI overlords? The never heard of. The disease has killed many of World’s First Robotic Psychiatrist is here for the people I love and now I’ve got it, too. But my you. BY SHANNON FISCHER generation will be the last.” BY JOSELIN LINDER, J97 20 FAKING NEWS Tufts Professor Kelly Greenhill 44 PERIODS AND QUESTION MARKS At least half a maintains that to diminish the disruptive power billion women worldwide lack the basic resources of “alternative facts,” we must understand their to manage their menstrual health. Cristina disturbing history. BY BETH HORNING AND Stadler Ljungberg, J94, decided to do something FRANCIS STORRS about that. BY JENNIFER MCFARLAND FLINT 24 THE CORRIDOR The new Tufts Science and Technology Corridor along Boston Avenue is a whirl of innovation, collaboration, and discovery. BY LAURA FERGUSON On the Cover Five generations ago, Joselin Linder’s THE NUMBERS GAME As advanced statistical 32 family was invaded by a deadly disease analysis takes over baseball, Tufts-bred data that’s so rare it doesn’t have a name. crunchers are storming the big leagues. Now the family has decided that no BY JOHN TOMASE, A95 one will ever get it again. 10 Tufts Now 5 PURE AND SKIMMPLE Danielle Weisberg, A08, didn’t see news media reaching millennial women like herself. So she cofounded theSkimm, the wildly successful newsletter that speaks their language. BY KIRSTEN HUNT 7 YOU MAY WANT TO READ HER LOVE LETTER Dying of cancer, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, J87, penned a goodbye for the ages. BY BETH HORNING 8 PIPE DREAMS Meet Christian Lane, music director for the University Chaplaincy, and one of the nation’s most accomplished organists. BY LAURA FERGUSON Connect 10 LIFE BY THE SPORKFUL Dan Pashman, A99, started 48 ADMISSION ACCOMPLISHED How did Tufts go from out cracking late-night jokes on WMFO. These a regional commuter school to the top of those days, his hit podcast is the toast of food lovers college-ranking lists? For starters, it hired these three everywhere. BY KIRSTEN HUNT outstanding deans of admission. BY SOL GITTLEMAN QUICK READS 6 SUN POWERED | 10 GOT MUSCLE 52 A MENTOR REMEMBERED A new field hockey venue CRAMPS? | 10 POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE | 12 ALL THE celebrates Dan Ounjian, the Tufts economist who PRESIDENTS’ TEETH | 14 TRY, TRY AGAIN | 15 MIXED MEDIA shaped the lives of countless students and faculty. BY MONICA JIMENEZ 54 A BOOST FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION $1 million federal grant will be used to encourage low-income students to pursue graduate study. BY HELENE RAGOVIN 55 A TEAM PLAYER Get to know young philanthropist 32 Emily Ruff, A11. BY DIVYA AMLADI 76 TUFTS’ LOST HERITAGE Beneath the university’s deepest principles lies a forgotten faith. BY CHARLES A. GAINES, A58, CRANE61 QUICK READS 53 NEWSWIRE | 55 LAURELS 56 CLASS NOTES | 63 GREAT PROFESSOR 64 IN MEMORIAM | 68 THE BIG DAY In Every Issue 2 PRESIDENT’S PAGE On Poetry, Physics, and Prosperity 3 LETTERS 4 FROM THE EDITOR ILLUSTRATION: MATT HERRING; SCOTT BLEICHERPHOTO: GORDON President’s Page ON POETRY, PHYSICS, AND PROSPERITY THE NEW ADMINISTRATION in Washington has Academic research drives our knowledge-based, created a lot of uncertainty for American innovation economy; it ensures U.S. competitiveness in higher education. I want to take a few the global market. The return on that investment has minutes to talk about one unknown— been nothing short of spectacular: Even though research federal funding for scientific research, funding represents a sliver of the total budget, the Science the arts, and the humanities. Coalition estimates that such activity has stimulated as It is disheartening that among the much as half of the nation’s economic growth since 1945. agencies targeted for cuts in President While the proposed cuts to research are daunting Trump’s preliminary budget plan are indeed, the Trump budget would, for the first time in four that have powered American progress history, eliminate all funding for the NEH and the NEA. and prosperity for a generation, much of Each receives $148 million in federal support, a fraction that in partnership with higher education. As a of a $4 trillion budget. “We have not always been kind, in university president, I am deeply troubled about the fate America, to the artists and scholars who are the keepers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National of our vision,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, Science Foundation (NSF), the National Endowment for when he created the NEH and the NEA. the Humanities (NEH), and the National Endowment for The arts also create economic benefits. The advo- the Arts (NEA). Other proposed cuts would likely affect cacy group Americans for the Arts estimates that local the U.S. Agency for International Development, which investments by the NEA contribute to a $730 billion arts supports research that improves global human security. and culture industry, which supports 4.8 million jobs. The NIH, the largest supporter of research at U.S. At Tufts, we reaffirmed our own commitment to the colleges and universities, stands to lose almost 20 importance of the arts in educating our future leaders, percent of its budget. Basic science research has led to creators, and problem solvers with the acquisition of the innovations that have improved the lives of millions. School of the Museum of Fine Arts last summer. But overall, government funding for it would decline The arts, humanities, and sciences are the lenses 10.8 percent—and that’s on top of dollars lost through through which we make sense of the world. The nation sequestration, those automatic cuts that began in 2013. needs poets and physicists, seismologists and sculptors, The NIH was the brainchild of Tufts alumnus dreamers and data scientists. Colleges and universities Vannevar Bush, the engineer who headed the Office of are the incubators of that talent. Scientific Research and Development during World War At Tufts, we are making the case for federal funding. II. In a 1945 report to the president, titled “Science, the I meet regularly with our congressional delegation and Endless Frontier,” Bush urged increased government funding agencies, as do many of our distinguished fac- support for scientific research. His call to action created ulty. We are active in national coalitions that advocate on a social contract that fueled the nation’s economic behalf of science, the humanities, and the arts. I remain growth and gave rise to life-altering discoveries. hopeful that policymakers and the public will recognize It has enabled us to map the human genome, leading that we must continue to champion each of these disci- to monumental advances in human health and disease plines as esssential to our national welfare. prevention. Government funding of university research produced the internet, supercomputers, the Google search engine, smartphone technology, GPS, artificial intelligence, MRI, and other medical diagnostics. The NIH and NSF also support social science research that is ANTHONY P. MONACO critical to evidence-based public policy. President, Tufts University 2 TUFTS MAGAZINE | SPRING 2017 PHOTO: ALONSO NICHOLS Letters MEMORIES OF BARNUM that I didn’t rent a graduation School of Occupational Therapy. I FINDING MARY STEARNS I enjoyed the Fall issue of Tufts gown—but Bud knew who I was and was infuriated when I learned that “Finding John Brown” by Geoff Magazine, especially “The Great took pity on me. I got a D-minus. (If some people believed my four-year Edgers, A92 (Fall 2016) got me Barnum Fire” by Francis Storrs you look at my graduation photo, education at Tufts and Bouvé was interested in the family of George and “Thriller Whales” by Shannon you’ll notice that my gown doesn’t “not up to Jackson standards.” Stearns, the businessman who Fischer. match any of the others.) The truth is that my 1955 diplo- helped John Brown with his aboli- The fact that they ran back to Thanks, Bud, wherever you are. ma from Tufts and my certificate tionist mission, and I was annoyed back is interesting, since Roger DAVID WARREN, E68 in physical therapy from Bouvé to find that you did not include Payne, who is mentioned in “Thriller MELVIN VILLAGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE required me to meet very rigorous a picture of Stearns’ wife, Mary Whales” as a pioneering student academic demands. In addition, Elizabeth Preston Stearns. This was of whale songs, taught freshman Reading “The Great Barnum Fire” physical education majors had to especially disappointing because, biology and animal behavior in Bar- reminded me that during a visit in complete practice teaching assign- as the article notes, it was Mary num Hall as a junior faculty member 1962 to the Museum of Natural ments in area schools, and physical Stearns who enlisted the sculptor in the early and mid-1960s. He History in New York City, I came therapy students went for hands-on Edward Augustus Brackett to me- and Nancy Milburn, who shared so upon the skeleton of Jumbo. I training at hospitals and clinics morialize Brown with the bust that many of her memories in “The Great noticed that the last bone of the throughout Boston and beyond. is now part of Tufts’ art collection.