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. 33.20_COVER-F0CC.indd 1 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE MAMAGAZINE.COLUMBIA.EDUGAZINE.COLUMBIA.EDU WINTER 2020-21 A BRILLIANT MOVE

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PAGE 20 CONTENTS

FEATURES

14 IMAGES OF CHANGE A photojournalist captures one of the most environmentally vulnerable areas of the world. By Katie Orlinsky ’12JRN

20 LET THERE BE LIGHT After 75 years, the University Seminars at Columbia remain one of academia’s shining intellectual traditions. By Paul Hond

24 IN PURSUIT OF DARK MATTER Columbia physicists confront one of the most confounding mysteries in science. By David J. Craig and Lily Padula

30 SOUL SURVIVOR Forty years ago, Barry Rosen ’74GSAS was one of ﬁ fty-two American hostages released from Iranian captivity. It’s been a long road home. By Paul Hond

36 THE LOST ART OF DYING WELL A Q&A with physician and medical ethicist Lydia Dugdale on the importance of confronting our mortality.

JOE CIARDIELLO By Cherie Henderson ’14SPS

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33.20_CONTENTS.indd.20_CONTENTS.indd 1 112/14/202/14/20 110:240:24 AAMM COLUMBIA CONTENTS MAGAZINE DEPARTMENTS Executive Vice President, 5 University Development & Alumni Relations FEEDBACK Amelia Alverson

Deputy Vice President for Strategic Communications 8 Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS COLLEGE WALK Monumental Justice \ Overheard at the J-School \ Art Won’t Wait \ From Prison to Editor in Chief Sally Lee Programming \ Zooming in Mongolia Art Director Len Small 40 EXPLORATIONS Managing Editor Rebecca Shapiro Diagnostic test for gluten sensitivity could PAGEPAGE be on horizon \ Lab in a box \ Columbia, 3414 Senior Editors Amazon to launch new AI research center \ David J. Craig, Paul Hond What you need to know about COVID-19 Copy Chief now \ Researchers call for clean-energy push \ Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN

Explaining the ‘Blue-Ring Nebula’ \ Genetic Digital Editor study reveals causes of many stillbirths Julia Joy

46 NETWORK Senior Director for Strategic Communications Tracy Quinn ’14SPS Early Riser \ The Memory Makers \ Ask an Alum: How to Beat Work-from- Director for Marketing Research Linda Ury Greenberg Home Burnout \ Dunking on COVID \ You Glow, Girl \ Intoxicating Mocktails Communications Ofﬁ cer Ra Hearne

52 PAGE 42 BULLETIN University news and views

56 BOOKS TOP: KATIE ORLINSKY; CENTER: SERGIO MEMBRILLAS; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF BENEDICT NWACHUKWU A Promised Land, by Barack Obama \ Subscriptions: Address and subscription assistance What Are You Going Through, by Sigrid [email protected] Nunez \ Well-Versed \ The Offi ce of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans \ The Last To update your address online, visit alumni.columbia.edu/directory, Million, by David Nasaw \ Plus, Carl L. Hart or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). discusses Drug Use for Grown-Ups Advertising: [email protected] 64 Letters to the editor: BACKSTORY PAGE 49 [email protected] Lorenzo Da Ponte’s Second Act Columbia Magazine is published for alumni and friends of Columbia by the FOLLOW US Ofﬁ ce of Alumni and Development.

@columbiamagazine COVER ILLUSTRATION BY BOB STAAKE

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THREE CHEERS

An issue I will WISE WORDS share with my indeed ignore a lot of facts. you can solve arguments. The granddaughter! Each issue of Columbia The middle ground is disap- framing question is far more Caroline M. Staples Magazine is better than pearing. And facts them- important than the space ’68SOA the last — if that is possible. selves are malleable. You and position given to it. Bryans Road, MD Thanks for the consistent tend to fi nd what you want to My daughter Heather and high quality in a publication fi nd. Issues are often framed I were discussing the fasci- that keeps the Columbia wrong — by social and mass nating and infuriating story I never leave the family not only informed media, politicians, activists, from September that the but also proudly loyal to trolls, and so on — and that’s CDC did not write the CDC country without the University. where Coleman’s research is advice for COVID-19 testing. the latest copy The in-depth reporting and should be. Heather is a world-class of Columbia on subjects that are timely All that said, I can go epidemiologist, now working Magazine! Great and of utmost importance is through issue after issue, on ways to get the public to most appreciated. There is a from global warming to war understand vaccines. She writers from a constant need for an under- in the Middle East, and the “marches for science” in the great university. standing of today’s complex truth content of the far right annual event. This CDC mess Shawn Brown ’05SIPA issues to assist readers in is substantially below the was a triumph of politics Jericho, NY taking appropriate action truth content of the far left. over science in an area where now and in the future. The far left talks a good game facts are clear. The Columbia Magazine but boosts mainly elites. The Steve Ross ’70JRN I always enjoy editors and staff are most far right boosts mainly those Revere, MA reading your defi nitely up to the task of who believe (sometimes magazine. So providing well-written, rele- correctly) that they have been Peter Coleman’s approach vant information. left behind. to resolving confl ict suf- many interesting Suzanne Wise ’73GS Obama did appoint many fers defects of messenger, people on your Santa Fe, NM Republicans to key positions. substance, and timing. First, campus are It did him little good. he has already taken a side. “making things NO MIDDLE The interview does not, in Associating with Timothy GROUND? my opinion, focus on what Shriver does not enhance happen”! The interview with Peter Coleman knows and acts Coleman’s standing with con- Sue Spaid ’99GSAS Coleman (“Healing the Red– upon — that the arguments servatives or Republicans. Lasne-Chapelle-Saint- Blue Divide,” Fall 2020) was between left and right are His idea that our represen- Lambert, Belgium profound and necessary. But not symmetrical. Too many tatives distance themselves it did leave me uneasy. The readers may get the idea that from their constituents and far right and the far left do if you just get the facts right, instead form a more perfect

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union with other politicians It is difficult to see what the centralizes power in Wash- point of compromise might ington at the expense of our be with people who do not representative democracy. define what a human being Vote-splitting suppresses is in the same way that a Republicans’ strength where patriot does. Indeed, the only their voter turnout is higher. way to save the Union is to Though adding someone remove the traitors from all from the other party to a positions of authority in our cabinet is neither novel nor personal, professional, and rare, replacing multiple public lives. We must then cabinet officials with mem- complete the Reconstruction bers of the other party is that was halted by Northern disloyal and would likely and Southern white suprem- result in selecting opposition acists in 1877. Anything less party members on their last than this will lead to the stop to retirement or who Twilight on Low Plaza. demise of the republic. have little following within Paweł Grajnert ’05SOA their own party. rhetoric is regrettable and For the past forty-plus years Beverly Shores, IN More immediately, there disconcerting; but violence we have been subjected to can be no compromise and cancel culture directly the neo-Confederate agenda MALTHUS MOMENT between conservatives and threaten the safety and wel- of the modern Republican Every action taken by anarchists, or their enablers fare of nearly every American.) Party, which seeks to limit humanity to prevent climate in the Democratic Party, at Government has to func- the power of the govern- change from causing one major universities and in tion, so compromise on spe- ment until its members or more major worldwide the media. People who seek cific legislation will continue. can “drown it in the bath- catastrophes will fail, due to the violent overthrow of the If and when traditional Dem- tub.” The current Putinist the ever-increasing human United States or the cancel- ocrats regain control of their presidency is just the latest population and the ever- lation of the free speech and agenda, compromise among symptom of the three deadly increasing per capita usage livelihoods of those who are the center-right, center, and diseases spread by this party: of resources (“New climate insufficiently fervent in sup- center-left constituencies white supremacy, misogyny, studies show how earth is porting their dogma must be who represent most Ameri- and nativism. The mem- changing,” Explorations, Fall stopped by all lawful means. cans will be welcome, though bers of this party regularly 2020). Any article discussing Unless traditional centrist preferably utilizing means subvert the rule of law for climate change that does not and center-left Democrats and messengers other than short-term political gain and discuss population growth is who (presumably) disagree Coleman or Shriver. have gone so far as to collude misleading and useless. with the anarchists’ tactics Kenin M. Spivak ’77CC, with a hostile foreign power Jason G. Brent ’57BUS, and their extreme positions ’80BUS, ’80LAW to disenfranchise the major- ’60LAW on ending capitalism, private Beverly Hills, CA ity of fellow voting citizens. Las Vegas, NV property, the nuclear family, and democracy cease appeas- KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS ing and effectively supporting CODE SCHOOL CODE SCHOOL anarchists, compromise with BC Barnard College NRS School of Nursing Democrats on many core BUS Graduate School of Business OPT School of Optometry principles is tantamount to CC Columbia College PH Mailman School of Public Health

DM College of Dental Medicine PHRM School of Pharmaceutical Sciences PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY TIFFANY THOMAS appeasing terrorists. GS School of General Studies PS Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (As an aside, Donald GSAPP Graduate School of Architecture, SEAS Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Trump’s intemperate tweets Planning, and Preservation Applied Science GSAS Graduate School of Arts and Sciences SIPA School of International and Public Affairs are hardly the equivalent of HON (Honorary degree) SOA School of the Arts the violent acts and McCar- JRN Graduate School of Journalism SPS School of Professional Studies JTS Jewish Theological Seminary SW School of Social Work thyist tactics of a substantial KC King’s College TC Teachers College number of anarchists and LAW School of Law UTS Union Theological Seminary LS far-left Democrats. Heated School of Library Service

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33.20_FEEDBACK.indd.20_FEEDBACK.indd 6 112/14/202/14/20 110:210:21 AAMM NURSING’S author would benefit from the English women called STAND, COLUMBIA CHAMPION more in-depth research. themselves “suffragettes.” I Just as Alma Mater rep- What a pleasure to read Nightingale fought for equal had always heard that using resents all Columbians “The Nightingale Effect” in opportunity for women to that word for suffragists was a near and far, I’m proud that the College Walk section of advance and for equal-quality sexist way of demeaning them this stunningly beautiful, the Fall 2020 issue. I clearly care for the sick. Her lamp by the use of a diminutive. poetic even, visual tribute to remember doing research cleared her way through the More such stories of wom- George Floyd (“Sign of the in the Florence Nightingale darkness of Scutari Hospital en’s history should be drama- Times,” College Walk, Fall collection in Maxwell Hall, and shed light on the poor tized for TV or the movies so 2020) allows me to stand the Columbia School of state of patient conditions. that everyone can appreciate with him too. Nursing’s previous home. Her zeal should be a model what went into the struggle. William Taylor Nightingale’s dedication for those who wish to stress Anton J. Mikofsky ’68JRN ’70GSAPP to the patient was complete. nurses’ pivotal role in pro- New York, NY Christiansted, She was a champion despite viding attention to patients’ St. Croix, VI the obstacles of family and well-being and dignity. The term “suffragette” was political pressure. When Monica Donnelly Williams first used in 1906 in a London my daughter was an under- ’71NRS newspaper to mock the suf- QUESTIONS? graduate (not at Columbia), Port Jefferson, NY frage movement in Britain. she took a women’s studies Prominent British suffragists COMMENTS? course whose text described SUFFRAGETTE CITY responded by appropriating WE WELCOME THEM ALL! nurses as members of the Great article on the women’s the word, proudly calling E-MAIL US AT: “pink-collar ghetto.” My com- battle for the vote (“Suffra- themselves “suffragettes,” [email protected] ment at that time was that gist City,” Fall 2020)! Please while the Americans stayed Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity. her professor and the text’s explain to me if it’s true that with “suffragists.” — Ed.

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NOTES FROM 116TH STREET AND BEYOND

Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court, 1997. Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders ’74CC. Monumental Justice How Columbia helped Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59LAW, ’94HON carve out her place in history

fter her death in September, flowers in Brooklyn, she went to college at Cornell and handwritten notes addressed and had completed two years at Harvard Law Ato Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59LAW, School when her husband, Marty, a tax lawyer, ’94HON piled up at the base of the got a job in New York. Ginsburg transferred to Alma Mater statue on the Low Plaza steps. Columbia, a step that would transform her life Apart from a statue of Ginsburg herself, and eventually the country. there could hardly be a more appropriate A shy, quiet student with a command- spot to honor the Supreme Court justice who ing intellect and relentless will, Ginsburg finished at the top of her class at Columbia relished her time on campus. She joined the Law School and was Columbia’s first female law review and made it a point to speak up tenured law professor. in her male-dominated classes, even as she Long before she became the second woman felt, when answering questions, the burden of on the high court — before the incisive, literate representing all women. opinions and echoing dissents, before the lace While any man with Ginsburg’s academic collars and pop-culture stardom — Ginsburg record could expect a clerkship in a federal gained wisdom on Morningside Heights. Born appeals court or the Supreme Court, Ginsburg,

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33.20_CW.indd.20_CW.indd 8 112/11/202/11/20 99:50:50 AAMM a woman and a mother of a four- William McGill ’70HON, noting year-old daughter, was passed that a statement attributed to over. Answering this injustice, law McGill in the New York Times professor Gerald Gunther ’50GSAS implied that Ginsburg had been THE SHORT LIST contacted judges in the Southern hired to satisfy federal diversity District of New York to endorse requirements rather than on Theaters may have his star pupil, and Ginsburg was her merits. With precision and gone dark for the time fi nally hired by Judge Edmund L. tact, Ginsburg explained that the LISTEN being, but the performing arts are alive and Palmieri 1926CC, 1929LAW. idea that women sought “reverse well. Catch two of Miller Theatre’s virtual discrimination” proceeded from a pop-up concerts this winter: on January 19, fl awed assumption of male supe- harpist Brandee Younger teams up with riority. Later in 1972, she cam- bassist Dezron Douglas for a unique duet, and paigned against unequal retirement on February 16, the JACK Quartet performs benefi ts at the University (women music by contemporary German composer received less than men) and, as the Helmut Lachenmann. millertheatre.com law school’s representative in the University Senate, supported an equal-pay salary review. Job seekers Gender discrimination was at the CONNECT and the social- heart of her work. In 1973, again media savvy are invited to join the Columbia for the ACLU, Ginsburg argued her Alumni Association LinkedIn group, where fi rst case before the Supreme Court you can network with fellow alumni from RBG teaches sex-discrimination law, 1970s. in Frontiero v. Richardson, which across industries and around the world. disputed the legality of unequal mili- linkedin.com/groups/55739/ But even after her clerkship she tary benefi ts for men and women. To couldn’t get a job with a law fi rm, prepare for her nerve-racking debut and in 1961, when law professor she enlisted Columbia professors Mark your calendar for Hans Smit ’53GSAS, ’58LAW Benno Schmidt Jr. ’76HON and WATCH The White Tiger, a new asked her to coauthor a book on Harold Edgar ’67LAW, along fi lm adaptation of the celebrated 2008 the Swedish legal system as part of with her students, to pep- novel by Aravind Adiga ’97CC. Directed Columbia’s Project on International per her with questions. by Columbia fi lm professor Ramin Procedure, Ginsburg said yes. It The work paid off : her Bahrani ’96CC, the movie, which was Smit who urged her to speak in ten-minute address to takes a humorous look at India’s public and write for law journals, the Burger Court led class struggles, premieres on and who kindled her passion for to an 8–1 ruling that Netfl ix on January 22. civil procedure, the body of rules the unequal benefi ts nnetfletfl iix.comx.com governing civil litigation. When were unconstitutional. the book was fi nished, Ginsburg OOff tthehe ssixix ccasesases GGins-ins- joined the faculty of Rutgers Law burgburg arguedargued beforebefore thethe courtcourt Explore the digital School, where she stayed for nine in the 1970s, advocating for both LOOK collections of Columbia’s years until Columbia recruited her women and men seeking equal Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where in 1971. That year, as a volunteer treatment under the law, she won you can fi nd curiosities ranging from John lawyer for the ACLU, she cowrote fi ve. The decisions rippled through Jay’s papers to hundreds of vintage photos of the petitioner’s brief in Reed v. government agencies. By the time Coney Island sideshows. library.columbia.edu Reed, challenging an Idaho law that President Jimmy Carter appointed /libraries/rbml/digitalcollections.html favored men in the appointment of her to the US Court of Appeals executors of estates. The Supreme for the DC Circuit in 1980, ending Court ruled unanimously for the her teaching career, Ginsburg had Looking to replenish your plaintiff , Sally Reed. already reshaped society. “She’s WEAR T-shirt and loungewear Ginsburg returned to Colum- one of a handful of people in collections? Want to fl aunt your Columbia bia with purpose. Shortly after American history who fundamen- pride on Zoom calls? Find the best branded accepting the off er, she sent a tally changed the law,” says David swag through the Columbia online bookstore.

COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL; NETFLIX SCHOOL; LAW COLUMBIA letter to University president Schizer, a Columbia law professor columbia.bncollege.com/shop/columbia/home

COLUMBIA WINTER 2020-21 9

33.20_CW.indd.20_CW.indd 9 112/11/202/11/20 99:50:50 AAMM COLLEGE WALK and former law-school dean who clerked Overheard at the J-School- for Justice Ginsburg in 1994–95. “That’s a monumental achievement.” At the New Journalism symposium, hosted by Columbia When Ginsburg’s name was in the mix Journalism School and the Columbia Journalism Review, for the Supreme Court in 1993, Columbia president Michael Sovern ’53CC, ’55LAW, media experts discussed where the field is today and ’80HON lobbied President Bill Clinton on where it needs to go. Here are a few of their insights. her behalf. Ginsburg’s legal genius won Clinton over, and she was nominated and overwhelmingly confirmed. “Not since the 1960s “We have a technological challenge, a As an associate justice, Ginsburg adju- has there been such a business-model challenge, a challenge of dicated with sober regard for the real- confluence of fundamental better representing our communities, and world effects of the law on regular people, questions about journalism: that’s all happening against the backdrop crafting a body of penetrating, rigorously about its weaknesses, its of a rapidly changing America, one in researched majority opinions and dissents shortcomings, but also the which four in ten people now identify aimed at jurists, lawmakers, and citizens opportunity to remake it.” as people of color.” alike. “Her mantra was ‘Get it right and — Steve Coll — Sewell Chan keep it tight,’” says Schizer. “She scruti- dean, columbia editor of the editorial pages, nized every word and would write and journalism school los angeles times rewrite until she’d said exactly what she’d wanted to say.” Ginsburg’s clerks describe her not only as a brilliant jurist but also as a loyal mentor who led by example. “She held herself to an extraordinarily high standard and taught us how to bring that deliberate care to our work,” says Columbia law professor Gillian Metzger ’96LAW, who clerked for Ginsburg in 1997–98. “It’s a lesson her clerks carry: we all have a little RBG on our shoulders.” Likewise, millions of Americans stand on her shoulders. To honor this legacy, Gover- “The best journalism has a moral resonance. nor Andrew Cuomo named a commission to It is fact-based and complex. supervise the creation of a Ginsburg statue But it has a moral resonance.” in Brooklyn. The commissioners include — Susan Chira, editor in chief, the marshall project Metzger and Columbia law professor Jane Ginsburg, Justice Ginsburg’s daughter. The statue will be a site of inspiration and hope, “We need to be in “Anyone looking at news independent from much as Alma Mater was in September, regular conversation social media, Google search, and the web of where among the many tributes was a note with underrepresented advertising around them is fooling themselves. from a nine-year-old girl: communities, ... to invite We are in a more complex ecosystem.” them to criticize us. — Ethan Zuckerman Dear Ruth Bader Ginsburg, To tell us what we are visiting research scholar, knight first getting wrong and amendment institute at columbia university I’m using my fountain pen for you. what we are getting You are such an inspiration to girls right. That’s a really “If you create an ecosystem where good, and women. It’s devastating to hear important part of what accurate information is information you have you died. But death does not mean an accountable media to pay for, then free information may be less

that you’re gone. You are with us looks like.” valuable and less accurate. And you create an EILEEN BARROSO Americans still. information divide. That concerns me.” — Ashton Lattimore editor in chief, — Andrea Valdez — Paul Hond prism editor in chief, the 19th

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33.20_CW.indd.20_CW.indd 1100 112/11/202/11/20 99:50:50 AAMM From Uptown Triennial 2020: (left) Where it’s at (detail), 2020, by Derrick Adams ’03SOA; (below) Choir, 2020, by Hugh Hayden ’18SOA.

Art Won’t Wait Wallach Art Gallery director Betti-Sue Hertz stays ahead of the curve

ast March, when is dedicated to bridging the For Hertz, whose colleagues more equitable New York. COVID-19 shut academy and the community, out west would joke that she A painter and sculptor down the Wallach and most of the twenty-five was “too academic,” Columbia by training, Hertz brings LArt Gallery at the artists in Uptown live and has been an ideal fit. “I felt intellectual inquiry into all Lenfest Center for the Arts, work in Harlem and Upper welcomed and found that I her work. “I think of curating Betti-Sue Hertz was already Manhattan. Though the speak the same language as a as knowledge production, looking ahead. Hertz, who gallery has been closed to the lot of my colleagues,” she says. not just a decorative enter- ran the Longwood Arts public during the COVID-19 A native New Yorker who has tainment,” she says. She also Project in the South Bronx crisis, art lovers can take taught at Stanford and UC insists that the exhibitions for seven years and was later virtual 360-degree tours by Berkeley, Hertz envisions col- be “relevant and timely” — director of visual arts at the visiting wallach.columbia.edu. laborations with the Univer- which doesn’t necessarily Yerba Buena Center for the Hertz is now planning sity libraries as well as depart- mean that the art itself has Arts in San Francisco, joined The Protest and the Recu- ments in the arts, humanities, to be contemporary. “All art the Wallach as director in peration, scheduled to open and sciences. Recently, the was contemporary when it September 2019. Six months in June. The exhibit, which Wallach featured a Zoom talk was made,” says Hertz. “It’s into her tenure, the virus hit. showcases artists from by English professor Robert part of a continuum.” The gallery went dark, yet Malaysia, Sudan, Hong O’Meally on the Harlem That continuum stretches Hertz didn’t hesitate to move Kong, the US, and more, Renaissance vaudeville into the future as well as the forward with plans for the looks at both demonstra- performer Johnny Hudgins, past: Hertz was at work on Wallach’s next show, Uptown tions and the strategies accompanied by the vibrant The Protest and the Recuper- Triennial 2020, on view of activists to recover and jazz-themed collages of ation well before the mass through February. regroup. “I’m interested in Romare Bearden. In another protests of 2020. The 2017 “We were determined to the aesthetics of protest, virtual event called “Uptown Women’s March had gotten get this show up, though the visual and performative Triennial 2020 Town Hall: her thinking about protest we knew anything could components that enliven Building for the Future,” art- and democracy. “That’s the happen,” Hertz says. The what we’re seeing today,” ists, scholars, activists, urban trick of being a curator — Wallach, which moved Hertz says. “I think about planners, and community projecting into the future to Manhattanville from that a lot in relationship to leaders reflected on the pos- and hoping you’re right.”

TOP LEFT: EILEEN BARROSO; TOP RIGHT: WALLACH ART GALLERY ART WALLACH RIGHT: TOP EILEEN BARROSO; LEFT: TOP Schermerhorn Hall in 2017, contemporary art.” sibilities of a post-pandemic, — Paul Hond

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Left: Aedan Macdonald. Right: Antwan Bolden, a graduate of the coding boot camp and current TA for the course, works at home in Jersey City. From Prison to Programming A Columbia boot camp teaches formerly incarcerated people the skills they need to build a career in tech

hen you’re in prison, “With the right resources, anyone Enterprise and codirector of the Tamer all you hear is that your can learn computer skills,” says Mac- Center. Using the B-school’s intensive life is over now,” says donald. “Technology can be a great coding program for reference, they “W Aedan Macdonald, equalizer. Society tells us there’s one developed a course for people recently who spent four years in a federal type of person who works in tech, but out of prison. penitentiary for selling marijuana. that’s not true. We need people of The pandemic has created an even “You’re told that the best you can hope all backgrounds.” tougher job market and more urgent for when you’re out is a minimum- The high US incarceration rate purpose for JTC. In addition to impov- wage job.” disproportionately impacts low-income erishing families, increased unem- Macdonald, thirty-two, is ready to people of color, and statistics show that, ployment makes it likelier that newly challenge that assumption. As the on average, formerly incarcerated peo- released prisoners will end up back in founder and director of the Justice ple are five times as likely to be unem- prison: studies show that 77 percent of Through Code (JTC) program at ployed as the population overall. Those people are rearrested within five years Columbia, he’s equipping the formerly who do have jobs often live below the of release, and unemployment is a sig- incarcerated with skills to start careers poverty line, earning a median yearly nificant predictor of recidivism. in technology, rewriting the script on income of under $11,000 three years “The criminal-justice system right who gets to be a software engineer. after release from prison. now wastes human potential,” says JTC, a joint venture between Colum- Macdonald understands that his Macdonald. “We want and need the for- bia’s Center for Justice and the business journey after prison was atypical. merly incarcerated to help society, not

school’s Tamer Center for Social Enter- When he was released in July 2019, he be imprisoned by their pasts. Learning LEFT: AEDAN MACDONALD; RIGHT: JUSTICE THROUGH CODE prise, offers people recently released from enrolled in Columbia’s School of Gen- to code is one way to tap into their prison a free ten-week boot camp in cod- eral Studies, and he plans to graduate potential.” Macdonald, citing a 2019 ing. Students learn the basics of Python, in May. Living in New York, he noticed Bureau of Labor Statistics report, says a popular programming language used that the booming technology sector a Web developer can earn a median by companies like Google and Dropbox. offered a steady supply of high-pay- salary of $73,760 without a four-year JTC also provides workshops on career ing jobs. He took a coding boot camp college degree. skills like negotiating salaries, building outside Columbia and thought the JTC is now accepting applications networks, and finding mentors, and University could run one too. Mac- for its third cohort of students. Its first works with partners to supply laptops to donald met with Damon Phillips, the class of seventeen students graduated in students who need them. Lambert Family Professor of Social spring 2020, and it received more than

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33.20_CW.indd.20_CW.indd 1122 112/11/202/11/20 99:51:51 AAMM 1,260 applications for the twenty places in its fall 2020 Zooming in Mongolia program. Some alumni have Catching up with one of our Obama Scholars started tech apprenticeships. Others are being mentored The Obama Foundation Scholars Program at Columbia, a collaboration with the nonprofi t by business-school students created by former president Barack Obama ’83CC, invites rising leaders from around the world who are helping them meet to participate in a year-long residency at the University. This year’s cohort is currently studying their career goals. reremotely.motely. We caugcaughtht uupp wwithith scscholarholar MMaralmaaaralmaa MunkMunkh-Achith-Achit iinn MMongolia.ongolia. At Emergent Works, a nonprofi t software company, two JTC alumni have built a mobile app called Not911. It directs New York City residents in specifi c types of emergencies to local social services rather than the police. If a homeless person needs mental-health help, for example, the most eff ective fi rst responder might be a counseling service. The formerly incarcerated engineers understood that. Antwan Bolden, a spring graduate and a teaching assistant in the program, speaks to the transformative impact of JTC. He studied engineering before his incarceration but says that after his 2009 The Scholars Program is designed Due to COVID-19, I wasn’t able to release, “so many doors were to help me build the policy, travel to the US, so I spent the fi rst slammed in my face.” development, and social-advocacy semester at home. There’s a twelve- “This coding program skills that support the work I do in hour time diff erence, so sometimes has been a lifesaver for me. Mongolia. The curriculum is very diverse. I fi nd myself in meetings in the middle Literally. There were times Right now, I’m auditing two classes: of the night. While I’m still not used when I felt like I had nothing International Nonprofi t Management and to the virtual programming and the and suicide went through my Communications for Corporations and hectic schedule, I already feel connected mind,” says Bolden. “I’m just Nonprofi ts. I’m also in Zoom workshops to the other scholars. I love hearing so grateful to the instructors with prominent leaders and experts. about the work they’re doing in their at Columbia who treat us like I’m currently on sabbatical from my communities, from educating the next human beings.” job as the executive director of the Zorig generation of journalists in India to The credibility of an Ivy Foundation, a nonprofi t located in the combating climate change in Brazil. My League program made capital, Ulaanbaatar. We focus on youth fellow scholars are truly inspiring. We Bolden feel empowered. and education, good governance, voter organize informal meetings outside the When he got a University registration, and community develop- offi cial programming so we can share e-mail address, that Columbia ment. One of my passion projects is our stories and expertise, but I just wish name next to his initials made the Sustainable Employment for Youth we could all be on campus together. The a huge diff erence to him. Program. In Mongolia it can take almost situation can be frustrating, but I try to “It’s the small stuff , but that three years for a university graduate to focus on my goals. I remind myself that gave me hope,” says Bolden. transition to full-time employment. We Mongolia is a country of only “Give us a chance to prove are trying to close that gap by teaching three million people and that ourselves. That’s all we ask.” essentials like résumé writing, commu- one person can make a signifi - — Rebecca Kelliher ’13BC MICHELLE KONDRICH nication skills, and networking. cant diff erence here.

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33.20_CW.indd.20_CW.indd 1133 112/11/202/11/20 99:51:51 AAMM IMAGES OF CHANGE Photojournalist Katie Orlinsky ’12JRN has spent over six years capturing the ever-shifting relationship between people, animals, and the land in one of the most environmentally vulnerable areas of the world

or close to a decade I worked as a photojournalist covering stories in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, F and Latin America. I documented sex trafficking in Nepal and women’s rights activists in Mali, and I spent time in Mexico photographing women and children whose lives have been upended by the drug war. Then, in 2014, a chance assignment for an Austrian magazine sent me to the Arctic to photograph the Yukon Quest, a thousand-mile sled-dog race along the historical route traveled by prospectors, adventurers, and mail carri- ers during the Klondike Gold Rush. At that time, a trip to the frozen North American hinter- lands was about as far out of my wheel- house as you could get, both profession- ally and personally. I was born and raised in New York City, and my work revolved around conflict and social issues. Though I’d had plenty of experience with roughing it on assignment, the closest I’d come to living in the wilderness was as a preteen at summer camp in Vermont. I’d never been farther north than Montreal — which was already far too cold for my liking. The Arctic was a part of the world I rarely thought about. ASH ADAMS

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33.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd 1144 112/14/202/14/20 110:260:26 AAMM ▲ A BOY WAITS FOR HIS FATHER AFTER A SEAL-HUNTING TRIP For thousands of but these ancient traditions are increasingly threatened by the realities of climate years, Inupiat villagers along Alaska’s North Slope have hunted marine mammals such change in the Arctic. Weather conditions have become dangerous and unpredictable, as seals, walruses, and whales. A child’s first seal hunt is an important rite of passage, and the communities that rely on hunting are being pressured in countless ways.

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33.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd 1155 112/14/202/14/20 110:260:26 AAMM That February, when I arrived in the Canadian Yukon, average temperatures hovered around −30°F. But I couldn’t focus on the cold. The places where the Yukon Quest teams race and train are some of the most beautiful untouched landscapes in the world, and I was blown away by the sparkling snow, dramatic vistas, and muted pastel light. The race, along with the more well-known Iditarod, is one of the toughest sporting events on the planet, and the intense bond between the mushers and their incredible canine athletes both fascinated and moved me. Still, it was just one assignment. I assumed that after a few weeks I would go home to New York City and then return to covering projects in Latin America. Yet as the race went on, something began to change. About three days in, I was driving around Dawson City, Canada, with Eva Holland, a local writer who has been covering the Yukon Quest for years. Dawson City marks the halfway point in the race, and all the teams were required to take a mandatory thirty-six-hour rest. Eva and I had started to drive across the frozen Yukon River to interview and photograph mushers who had set up camp on the other side of town. We were about twenty feet away from the shore when Eva realized that the ice road — one she had driven on every winter — was no longer frozen. After slamming the car into reverse and getting back on solid ground, we had to take a moment to get over the shock of what had just happened. Eventually we made our way to the camp upriver. Once we got there, mushers told us their own stories about the dangers caused by erratic weather conditions. I learned that warm spells followed by cold weather create pockets of water in between decep- tively thin layers of ice, destroying the trails and ice roads that both the mushers and numerous rural and indigenous villages rely on. This further isolates those communities and, worse, makes it unpredictable and dangerous to hunt by snow- mobile or sled. Hunting and fishing are the cultural and economic anchors of the North’s many indigenous groups, and in addition to creating dangerous conditions for

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33.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd 1166 112/14/202/14/20 110:260:26 AAMM ◀ THE ALATNA RIVER IS A CORRIDOR FOR WILDLIFE MOVING NORTH I took this photo from a floatplane as I began my journey home after a sixty-four-mile rafting expedition. As a result of warming weather, a number of animal species — such as beavers, snowshoe hares, and moose — are migrating north. Beaver numbers in particular are booming, and you can see several of their ponds here. The beavers have the ability to transform a landscape, because by building dams, clearing trees, and creating ponds and meadows they help acceler- ate permafrost thaw.

▼ A SLED-DOG TEAM COMPETES IN THE YUKON QUEST Dog mushing has a long history. It’s said that thousands of years ago, hunter-gatherer communities used dogs to pull sleds in the Arctic Circle. Once highways were built and snow machines became widespread in the 1960s, mushing became recreational and the world of competitive sled-dog racing began.

◀ FLAMMABLE METHANE BUBBLES UP FROM THAWING PERMAFROST Trapped under a frozen lake in winter, the gas escapes when you punch a hole through the ice, and it can be set on fire (with the help of a trained scientist). Arctic permafrost is thawing much faster than expected, releasing potent greenhouse gases that could drastically speed up climate change. In 2018 I began a multiyear story about permafrost for National Geographic, and what I learned is terrifying. Thaw has accelerated, and what was once hundreds of years away could now happen in our lifetime. The greenhouse gases this will release will make today’s fossil-fuel emissions look insignificant.

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33.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd 1177 112/14/202/14/20 110:260:26 AAMM humans, warming weather means that animals are now dying off or migrating in new patterns. This further impacts those who rely on hunting not only for nutrition and income but as a mainstay of their spiritual practices. People told me about how village elders used to be able to predict the weather by looking for certain signs in the landscape. These careful observations, preserved and adapted over hundreds if not thousands of generations, ▲ BOYS CROSS A FLOODED WALKWAY were no longer useful. I also learned about The Yupik village of Newtok in western Alaska (population 380) is sinking and shrinking as the places farther south in Alaska, which permafrost beneath it thaws. In a few more years I would visit years later, where climate it could be totally underwater. Newtok is the first change is exacerbating erosion, accelerat- community in Alaska that has begun relocation as a result of climate change. The villagers’ new home, ing permafrost thaw, and creating storms Mertarvik, is built upon rocky land about nine miles and floods that are forcing entire villages to the south. to relocate. All over the world, communities are being displaced as a result of climate change, and in the US the majority of them are in Alaska. These tiny towns occasionally make headlines, only to recede into the background once the news cycle moves on. It wasn’t until I saw the day-to-day impact of climate change that I grasped the severity of what is happening to our planet. I knew I had to share this understanding with others, and what started as a random assignment has led to a life-changing new mission. For the last six years, I have spent much of my time in Alaska documenting the real impacts of our changing planet and exploring how climate change is transforming the relationship between people, animals, and the land. A majority of my work has been focused on the resilience, persever- ance, and survival of the Alaskan Native communities that are struggling valiantly to adapt their traditional practices to increasingly hostile environments. Scientists call Alaska ground zero for climate change, and 2019 was its warm- est year on record. What is happening there should serve as a warning to the rest of the world. In my work as a pho- tographer I try to frame big-picture political issues by capturing the intimate moments of everyday life behind the headlines. I hope that by focusing on these human stories of our warming climate, I will inspire both empathy and action.

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33.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd 1188 112/14/202/14/20 110:260:26 AAMM ◀ THE BATAGAIKA CRATER IS KNOWN AS THE “HELL CRATER” Half a mile long and more than three hundred feet deep, this depression in northeastern Siberia started forming in the 1960s after forests were cleared, exposing the land to the sun. This caused the permafrost to thaw and the earth to collapse. The ancient soils of Arctic permafrost, seen in the wall of the crater, hold the organic remains of leaves, grass, and animals that died thousands of years ago, during the Ice Age.

▲ BOYS CROSS A FLOODED WALKWAY The Yupik village of Newtok in western Alaska (population 380) is sinking and shrinking as the permafrost beneath it thaws. In a few more years it could be totally underwater. Newtok is the first community in Alaska that has begun relocation as a result of climate change. The villagers’ new home, Mertarvik, is built upon rocky land about nine miles to the south.

◀ A CURIOUS POLAR BEAR INVESTIGATES THE HOOD OF A TRUCK Climate change has affected the migration and diet of polar bears, which have grown increasingly hungry as melting sea ice impairs their ability to hunt seals. Now polar bears come to the city of Kaktovik after the community’s annual whale hunt, to feed off the scraps. With a steady stream of tourists and scientists arriving to view and study them, the bears are growing increasingly accustomed to interaction with humans — the most dangerous predators on the planet.

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33.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd.20_FEAT_Orlinksy-F.indd 1199 112/14/202/14/20 110:260:26 AAMM 33.20_FEAT_Seminars_ALT.indd.20_FEAT_Seminars_ALT.indd 2200 112/10/202/10/20 110:120:12 AAMM let there be light

After 75 years, the University Seminars at Columbia remain one of academia’s shining intellectual traditions

By Paul Hond Illustration by Joe Ciardiello

n the days leading up to the seminar, Rob- ninety-two groups engaged in constructive, cre- ert Pollack ’61CC wrestled with his chosen ative dialogue. “The principle of the University Itext. Pollack’s credentials are impeccable: Seminars is the honest but non-hostile exchange a biology professor and dean of Columbia of views on a topic which may be tendentious College from 1982 to 1989, he is a former Gug- and troubling or just interesting and difficult,” genheim Fellow and recipient of the Alexander says Pollack, who started his seminar in 2018 Hamilton Medal, the highest honor bestowed by and directed the program from 2011 to 2019. the Columbia College Alumni Association. Yet The avenues of interrogation are implicit in still he fretted. In a matter of days, twenty people the seminars’ names: Language and Cognition, — scientists, writers, educators, artists — would Memory and Slavery, Energy Ethics, Ecology convene on Zoom to discuss I and Thou, by the and Culture, Religion in America, Economic German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. The History, Women and Society. Usually lasting book is a short, aphoristic, notoriously opaque ninety minutes, seminars are closed to the pub- work, and Pollack, who with Peter Gruen- lic and press (thus their low profile) and, to fur- berger ’58CC, ’61LAW is co-chair of a Univer- ther ensure academic liberty, are autonomous sity Seminar called Science and Subjectivity, from the central administration. A paid gradu- hoped it wouldn’t be too off-putting. ate student, called a rapporteur, takes minutes The word “seminar” may rouse images of a of the meetings, which may be kept under seal circle of students and a professor, but the Uni- for five years at the choice of seminar members versity Seminars are a different beast: a net- before being archived in Columbia’s Rare Book work of thinkers who convene regularly during and Manuscript Library. There is no audience the academic year to discuss issues of peren- for the sessions, no remuneration, no academic nial concern. They gather not in classrooms credit, no acclaim. What the program does but in the meeting rooms and dining rooms of offer is a chance for participants to take intel- Faculty House (currently they meet virtually), lectual risks without fear of judgment — and to where they hold democratic, freewheeling, encounter new ideas. civil, sometimes excited, and always revelatory The lure of that opportunity is reflected in conversations about everything from American the roster of University Seminars members over studies to Zoroastrianism. Members include the decades. Columbia professors like historian not just the faculty of Columbia and other Richard Hofstadter ’42GSAS, anthropologist universities but also public officials, business- Margaret Mead ’28GSAS, ’64HON, Nobel- people, and labor leaders, as well as historians, winning physicist I. I. Rabi ’27GSAS, and jurist doctors, linguists, painters, and poets. Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59LAW, ’94HON, as well At seventy-five, the seminars are a thriving as guest speakers like poet W. H. Auden and polit- institution with a remarkable tradition of intel- ical philosopher Hannah Arendt, all joined the lectual ferment. Pollack’s seminar is just one of seminars to challenge themselves and each other.

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33.20_FEAT_Seminars_ALT.indd.20_FEAT_Seminars_ALT.indd 2211 112/10/202/10/20 110:120:12 AAMM That dynamic continues today, furthering with By the 1950s, the program had taken off. every spirited roundtable what Pollack calls “an The decade saw twenty new seminars, includ- ongoing experiment in continuity and novelty.” ing American Studies, Medieval Studies, and Studies in Contemporary Africa, all of which n 1944, with the world at war, professor are ongoing. (The lifespans of the seminars, like of Latin American history Frank Tannen- their styles and subject matter, vary.) The 1960s Ibaum 1921CC and eighteen other human- brought further expansion, with the addition ities professors approached acting presi- of offerings like The City (1962), which pre- dent Frank D. Fackenthal, who had just replaced sented such diverse speakers as architect Philip the retired Nicholas Murray Butler. The profes- Johnson, psychologist Kenneth Clark ’40GSAS, sors wanted to start a program that would break ’70HON, and police captain Carl Ravens of the down the walls of academic specialization and 26th Precinct. The seminar on The Nature of combine the brainpower of the University to Man (1968), which was chaired by Mead, com- tackle subjects beyond the limits of any one dis- prised an equally eclectic group that included cipline. Fackenthal approved the initiative. mathematician Richard Courant, political sci- Tannenbaum was an unlikely figure to start a entist Hans Morgenthau, and Columbia his- pedagogical revolution. Born in 1893 in a shtetl torian Morton Smith. One session featured a in Galicia (in what is now western Ukraine), he rollicking, erudite address by Auden, who riffed immigrated to rural Massachusetts with his on Darwinism, Carnival, and the hippies while family and at age thirteen ran off to New York, dropping Latin phrases and pouring himself where he worked menial jobs (busboy, elevator glass after glass of wine. operator) and got involved in labor politics. In In 1982, the program inaugurated what is now 1914, as a member of the Industrial Workers of the largest seminar, Shakespeare, which has fifty the World, he was arrested for his role in lead- members. And in 1998, Chauncey G. Olinger Jr. ing protests on behalf of unemployed laborers ’71GSAS, who was Mead’s rapporteur while get- and spent a year in prison. On the strength of ting his master’s in philosophy, started a semi- recommendations from influential patrons nar with Barnard historian Robert McCaughey who had followed his trial, Tannenbaum, who on the history of Columbia. That seminar has never finished high school, was admitted to delved into the University Senate and the Core Columbia College in 1916 at age twenty-three. Curriculum and devoted a full year to discussion He graduated with honors, and after writing of the campus upheaval of 1968. For Olinger, “The University Seminar a landmark book on penology, he worked as a who was a student and friend of Tannenbaum’s, is an independent journalist in Mexico and later got his PhD in the University Seminars “were an invention as universe. Its boundaries Latin American history before returning to significant as the Core Curriculum.” are limited only by Columbia in 1934 as a professor. More than fifty new seminars have emerged in its horizons.” In 1945, Tannenbaum launched the University the twenty-first century, and today the program Seminars with five broad subjects: The State, involves some three thousand people. Anyone — frank tannenbaum, professor of latin Rural Life, Studies in Religion, The Renaissance, wishing to join a group must e-mail the chair american history and The Problem of Peace. Believing that aca- (find more information at universityseminars demic specialization hindered the University’s .columbia.edu) and may attend meetings as a potential as an incubator of solutions to multifac- guest with the option of applying for member- eted problems, Tannenbaum sought, as he once ship. “We’re always trying to bring in younger stated, “to reassemble specialists so that they can faculty,” says Alice Newton ’08SIPA, the longtime see the whole again.” This standard could only be assistant director of the University Seminars achieved in a state of pure independence: “The who is currently the interim director. “One of the group must feel completely free to follow its own great advantages of joining a seminar is that you bent, it must be responsible only to its own aca- come with something you’re working on, a topic demic conscience, and it must be untrammeled in that everybody knows, and you get input.” THE UNIVERSITY SEMINARS ARCHIVE organization, method, and membership.” Newton calls the University Seminars “a “Tannenbaum’s extraordinary invention was holistic method of looking at problems,” lead- to ensure that if you wanted to place the impor- ing to “new types of collaborations.” This ideal is tance of ideas before your reputation, the Uni- well illustrated in the seminar on Death, which versity would create a forum for that to hap- attracts philosophers, ethicists, nurses, psycholo- pen,” Pollack says. “That’s so important.” gists, architects, and anthropologists who grap-

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33.20_FEAT_Seminars_ALT.indd.20_FEAT_Seminars_ALT.indd 2222 112/10/202/10/20 110:120:12 AAMM ple with issues of aging and quality of life, cultural of their chairs and members, offering a rich attitudes, suicide, and the disposal of corpses. The sampling of the program’s range. chair, Christina Staudt ’01GSAS, earned her PhD “The University Seminars, in many respects, in art history (she focused on images of death), represent the very essence of Columbia’s intel- was cofounder and president for fifteen years of lectual community,” says University President the Westchester End-of-Life Coalition, and has Lee C. Bollinger. “I could not be more proud been a hospice volunteer for over twenty years. to share my regard and appreciation for this “How we treat the dying and the dead has always program, which offers the stability of tradi- been an indication of the values of the culture at tion while providing ample space for the novel large,” she says. “One of the main intentions in the and inventive.” seminar is to make people more aware of their mortality and to live accordingly.” he “novel and inventive” can arise at The seminars, of course, are more than ephem- any moment, in any number of ways. eral conversations. In 2005, Robert Belknap T As Pollack deftly steered the Science ’57SIPA, ’59GSAS, a renowned professor of and Subjectivity cohort in a discus- Russian literature and director of the University sion of Buber’s I and Thou, the participants on Seminars from 2001 to 2011, started a project Zoom offered observations, interpretations, “The seminars can be to digitize half a million pages of typed, carbon- and questions. Published in 1923, I and Thou indestructible, as strong copied, and sometimes handwritten transcripts, is all about subjectivity, or rather, intersubjec- as the freedom and as summaries, and notes in order to create an intel- tivity, a philosophical term denoting the shared flourishing as the play of lectual history of the seminars. The program also experience of two minds. It argues that human intellect they encourage.” boasts more than four hundred books that were relationships come in two categories: the I–It — margaret mead, influenced by participation in a seminar. Among (transactional, exploitative, limited) and the professor of anthropology them are the Holocaust study Desolation and I–Thou (intimate, transparent, boundless); Enlightenment, by Columbia interim provost and that only through the latter — person-to- Ira Katznelson ’66CC; The Encyclopedia of New person encounters that spark an ineffable con- York City, edited by history professor Kenneth T. nection — do we fully realize our humanity and Jackson; Between Women: Friendship, Desire, glimpse the divine. and Marriage in Victorian England, by Sharon Pollack expected mixed reviews, and he got Marcus, professor of English and comparative them. Some rebuked the book’s opacity and literature; Globalization Challenged, by former stated unapologetically that they didn’t under- University president George Rupp ’93HON; stand a thing. and Pollack’s The Faith of Biology and the Biol- And then Ray Lee chimed in. Lee, a senior ogy of Faith. research scientist at the Zuckerman Mind Upon his death in 1969, Tannenbaum, with his Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia, devel- wife, Jane Belo, an anthropologist and daughter oped the world’s first dual brain scanner — an of a Dallas newspaper magnate, left $1.5 million MRI for two — and studies what happens to for the University Seminars, an endowment that the brains of two people who interact. Buber’s has grown over the years to meet the program’s notion that the I–Thou encounter creates a new “The University Seminars needs. These funds cover administrative costs spiritual sphere gave Lee a shock of recogni- at Columbia have had and events as well as travel and lodging for guest tion: his MRI experiments showed that when a powerful, if too often speakers, meals at Faculty House, salaries for two people communicate, new neural path- unacknowledged, impact graduate-student rapporteurs, and conference ways light up: a kind of physical affirmation of on the intellectual life of funding. And the Leonard Hastings Schoff and Buber’s thesis. In his reading of I and Thou, Lee the city and the nation.” Suzanne Levick Schoff Memorial Fund supports saw his data explained in mystical terms. seminar-based books published by Columbia Lee’s articulation of this thunderbolt sent a — eric foner ’63cc, ’69gsas, dewitt clinton professor University Press. palpable charge through the faces arrayed on emeritus of history One of those books, A Community of Schol- the Zoom screen. When asked about it after- ars, was released this past November in honor ward, Pollack gave perhaps the definitive sum- of the University Seminars’ seventy-fifth anni- mation of the University Seminars. versary. A volume of thirteen essays edited by “That thunderbolt,” he said, “struck a very Thomas Vinciguerra ’85CC, ’86JRN, ’90GSAS, fertile garden. But the real point here is not the with prefaces by Newton and Pollack, the book thunderbolt; it’s that the garden is there for it

TOP: KEYSTONE PRESS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; BOTTOM: EILEEN BARROSO EILEEN BARROSO BOTTOM: PHOTO; / ALAMY STOCK PRESS KEYSTONE TOP: examines individual seminars through the eyes to strike.”

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33.20_FEAT_Seminars_ALT.indd.20_FEAT_Seminars_ALT.indd 2233 112/10/202/10/20 110:120:12 AAMM 33.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd 2244 112/10/202/10/20 110:330:33 AAMM 33.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd 2255 112/10/202/10/20 110:330:33 AAMM 33.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd 2266 112/10/202/10/20 110:330:33 AAMM 33.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd 2277 112/10/202/10/20 110:330:33 AAMM 33.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd 2288 112/10/202/10/20 110:330:33 AAMM 33.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd.20_FEAT_Dark-Matter.indd 2299 112/10/202/10/20 110:330:33 AAMM 33.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd 3300 112/10/202/10/20 110:020:02 AAMM SOUL SURVIVOR Forty years ago, Barry Rosen ’74GSAS was one of fifty-two American hostages released from Iranian captivity. It’s been a long road home.

By Paul Hond Photography by Frankie Alduino

hen COVID-19 hit New York and Iran as a Peace Corps volunteer in the the city shut down, Barry Rosen 1960s, was fluent in Farsi, and had great W’74GSAS took things in stride. affection for the people and culture of People around him grew restless, anxious, Iran. And then came the Iranian Revo- and depressed, but Rosen, seventy-six, lution. Fueled by zealous anti-American was unperturbed. “I’m inside a lot, but sentiment, the uprising led directly to I can take a walk, I can see grass, I can the Iran hostage crisis, which destroyed enjoy the sunshine, I can read anything I Iran–US relations, battered the Ameri- want,” says Rosen, who lives on the Upper can psyche, brought down an American West Side with his wife, Barbara. “I feel president, and changed the lives of Rosen freer than most people who are con- and the other embassy staff — attachés, strained by COVID because of my experi- officers, and military guards — who got ence in Iran. In my 444 days as a hostage, caught in a geopolitical whirlwind. I spent maybe twenty minutes outdoors. During his confinement, Rosen suffered I was in darkness most of the time. This beatings, mock executions, and unbear- is far better than captivity,” he says with a ably long, desolate stretches of isolation. faint chuckle. “Far, far better.” He lived in anguish and acute fear, cut off Rosen was one of sixty-six Americans from the world and from his wife and two seized inside the US embassy in Tehran small children, never knowing if he was on November 4, 1979. Ultimately, he and going to live or die. When he was finally fifty-one others would be held in appall- freed, on January 20, 1981, he had lost ing conditions for more than fourteen forty pounds and much of his spirit. months. This winter marks the fortieth “Healing has been a very slow process,” anniversary of the end of the hostage cri- he says. “In the beginning I was trying sis, but for Rosen the memories are still to get my head around it all — especially fresh. Seated in his apartment on Riv- coming home and trying to integrate into erside Drive a short walk from Teachers the family and restart my life. It was very College, where he spent ten years as an hard.” Rosen gradually discovered that administrator, Rosen talks about those what he needed more than anything was horrific 444 days with the disarming to be with people — his family, friends, openness of a person who has worked for and colleagues, whose support kept him years to make sense of his experience. afloat in rough mental seas. Only after As the embassy’s new press attaché, years of therapy, meditation, and reading Rosen had arrived in Iran in 1978 full of has Rosen come to understand what hap- enthusiasm. He had spent two years in pened to him and how to live with it.

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33.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd 3311 112/10/202/10/20 110:020:02 AAMM Rosen was born in East New York and appeal for Rosen. He spent three months tion,” says Rosen. “But I had just gotten raised in East Flatbush by his mother, a learning Farsi before flying to Tehran in married and felt pressure to get a job.” housewife, and his father, an electrician. 1967. He was twenty-three, and it was Rosen worked for four years at VOA. Brooklyn was his whole world. Grow- his second trip on a plane. (The first was Then, in 1978, his former boss there, who ing up blocks from Ebbets Field, Rosen to Syracuse.) He loved his Peace Corps had become the public-affairs officer at loved the Dodgers and was heartbroken duties — teaching Iranian police cadets the US embassy in Iran, asked Rosen to when they left. He attended Yeshiva English, teaching kindergartners at a be the embassy’s press attaché. Going Rabbi David Leibowitz in East Flatbush school near the Caspian Sea — and in his from VOA to the Foreign Service was a for nine years, graduated in 1961 from free time he’d leave his small apartment huge leap, and Rosen, adventurous and Tilden High School, went on to Brooklyn and wander into the bazaar. He reveled service-minded, embraced the idea. He College, and entered a graduate program in the rhythms of conversation, the long hadn’t imagined that he’d ever go back to in public affairs at Syracuse University. meals, the ancient etiquette. “It was a Iran. There was a hint of destiny in it. His research was on a Pakistani mul- place where you felt the guest was always Iran, however, was in turmoil: in 1977, lah who had formulated a notion of an paramount,” he says. He made friends Iranians calling for a liberal democracy Islamic state — a kind of forerunner to easily and felt a thrilling sense of belong- began confronting the country’s auto- Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. Wanting to ing. On holidays he visited historical sites, cratic leader, the shah Mohammad Reza visit Pakistan, Rosen applied to the Peace marveled at the mosques, and lost himself Pahlavi ’55HON, over censorship and Corps, a program started by President in Persian poetry. When his two years abuses of the judiciary. The shah had Kennedy in 1961 that sent young people were up and it was time to return to New been installed with US support after abroad to assist in civic-minded projects. York, he felt the sadness of leaving home. the CIA backed the overthrow in 1953 of the democratically elected Moham- mad Mossadegh (“a brilliant man,” says Rosen), whose desire to nationalize Iran’s oil supply did not sit well with Britain or the US. Now, after twenty-five years, anger against the shah erupted in mass demonstrations. The shah imposed martial law, and on September 8, 1978, known as Black Friday, the military fired on demonstrators, killing dozens. That same month, the Rosens, living at Barbara’s parents’ house in Brooklyn, had their second child, a girl. They gave her a Persian name: Ariana. Two months later, Rosen left for Tehran. As press attaché, Rosen was spokesperson for the US ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, and led a staff of Armenian-Iranian and ethnic Persian interpreters who translated articles from the Iranian press. Events were moving quickly. In January 1979, with protests mounting, the shah fled the Demonstrators burn an American flag atop the wall of the US embassy in Tehran on November 9, 1979. country, and on February 1, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the But Pakistan was under military rule, Though Rosen never planned to return opposition, returned to Iran after nearly and there were no openings. There was, to Iran, he wanted to pursue Farsi and fifteen years in exile. Rosen had never however, an opportunity in Iran. enrolled in Columbia’s Middle East Lan- seen such adulation for a human being “It was a chance to see the world,” says guages and Cultures program to study as he did among the millions of work- Farsi and Uzbek. One of his professors, ing-class people who greeted Khomeini’s Rosen. “The idea of being in the Peace BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES Corps, of helping others, intrigued me, Edward Allworth ’59GSAS, a leading motorcade as it moved through Tehran. and I really wanted to get out of a more scholar of Central Asia, told him after his Two weeks later, in the power vac- parochial life and the comforts that I had oral exams that Voice of America (VOA) uum of Iran, armed leftist militants as an American.” Few Americans ever was seeking a new head of its Uzbek stormed the embassy. Rosen was beaten gave Iran a thought, which heightened its desk. “I wanted to work on my disserta- and thrown up against a wall — he was

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33.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd 3322 112/10/202/10/20 110:020:02 AAMM certain that he would be executed. But as Khomeini referred to the US, by the forces from Khomeini’s provisional tail, and — fearful of American plots and government intervened, the attackers reprisals — they could not let go. For abruptly withdrew, and Rosen escaped Rosen, the situation was beyond terrify- further harm. The embassy was closed, ing. “There are no words for it,” he says. and personnel were sent back to the US. The captors held guns to his head and Officials reopened the embassy in March ordered him to sign a confession that he and gave the staff the option to return. was a spy: he had ten seconds or he’d be Many chose not to. Rosen went. The shot. Rosen resisted until the last two plan was for his family to join him when seconds. After that, he felt utterly broken. things settled down. Each night, he tried to stay awake. If But conditions grew worse. Rosen you’re up they can’t kill you, he told him- knew the embassy was vulnerable, yet self. Stay alert, stay alert. Students would through the Tehran spring and summer barge into his room to scare him. “They’d he pressed on, committed to performing point guns and then pull the trigger and his duties in a volatile environment. The there was nothing. It was a psychological crisis deepened on October 22, 1979, game.” Some hostages attempted suicide. when President Jimmy Carter, bowing One man banged his head repeatedly to domestic political pressure, allowed against a wall. Another tried to cut his the cancer-stricken shah to enter the US wrists with glass. Rosen was not immune. for medical care. The reaction in Iran “Every day,” he says, “I wanted to die.” The was intense. Outside the embassy, angry students controlled when the hostages students, many of them from traditional ate and when they were allowed to use middle-class families, burned US flags the bathroom, and as the days of hunger, and effigies of Carter. Rosen, in his office, humiliation, and terror dragged on and could hear shouts of Marg bar Amrika! the unheated embassy got colder and — Death to America. colder, Rosen lapsed into a depression. That first winter, a delegation of US he morning of November 4 was gray clergy, including Reverend William T and rainy, but the demonstrations Sloane Coffin Jr., senior minister of Riv- continued. Then, from his window, erside Church, traveled to Iran to check Rosen noticed that the students were on the hostages. Before his departure, climbing over the embassy walls. The Coffin received a visitor at the church: it next thing he knew, there was pound- was Barbara, who handed him a letter ing at his door. When Rosen’s secretary and a family photograph. In Tehran, opened it, the students, who looked more Coffin gave the picture to Rosen. Deeply like boys than men to Rosen, poured into moved, Rosen did his best to appear the room and accused him of being part cheerful to Coffin. He did not want his of a “nest of spies.” family to worry — nothing was more “I stupidly said, ‘This is the US embassy, important to him — and when Coffin and according to the Geneva Accords …’ returned to New York he told Barbara They threw me down in my chair, tied that Rosen was in good spirits. my hands. Before they led me away I said That was balm for Barbara, but of goodbye to my staff. Everyone was crying. course she still worried and had to push TOP: Blindfolded Americans are paraded I told the students, ‘Leave these people herself through the countless days. For- before the media on the first day of the US alone — they have nothing to do with us.’” tunately, she had help: everyone — her embassy takeover. Bound and blindfolded, Rosen was parents, her grandmothers, her siblings, CENTER: Rosen (bottom) and other former detained at first in the kitchen of the her in-laws — pitched in to care for the hostages disembark from a US Air Force ambassador’s quarters. Like the other kids. “They say it takes a village,” she plane in West Germany after their release. hostages being kept tied to chairs in dark says, “and I was lucky to have a village.” BOTTOM: Barry and Barbara Rosen ride rooms in the sprawling embassy and In April 1980, Barbara traveled to Europe in a parade for the former hostages in watched round the clock, he assumed to rally support for international sanc- Lower Manhattan. the ordeal would be over in a few days. tions on Iran. While she was in Germany

TOP: BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES; CENTER: MARK MEYER / GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: KEYSTONE PRESS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO / ALAMY STOCK PRESS KEYSTONE BOTTOM: IMAGES; CENTER: MARK MEYER / GETTY IMAGES; / GETTY BETTMANN TOP: But the students had the “Great Satan,” meeting with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt,

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33.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd 3333 112/10/202/10/20 110:020:02 AAMM the US staged a rescue mission, but it was he and the others would walk in a line now two, and with Alexander, now four; aborted when a sandstorm in the Iranian around the tiny cell for miles and miles. after meetings with Carter and Reagan; desert disabled the rescue helicopters. One On January 20, 1981, president-elect after the standing ovation in St. Pat- of the grounded helicopters backed up and Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in rick’s Cathedral, the prayers at Temple struck a refueling plane, causing an explo- Washington. In Tehran, the hostages were Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue, and the sion that killed eight service members. told to pack their things. Cut off from ticker-tape parade in Lower Manhattan News of the failed attempt prompted the outside world, Rosen and the others — Rosen had to readjust. He was home, the captors to divide the hostages into had no idea that the United States, with but at the same time he was far, far away. groups and send them to different Algeria as the intermediary, had agreed locations around the country. Rosen to unfreeze $8 billion in Iranian assets as came back to a situation where landed in a windowless cell in what he part of a deal to release the hostages. They ÒImy family was different in certain believes was the city of Isfahan, 250 had spent 444 days in captivity. ways,” Rosen says. “My integration miles south of Tehran (he saw “Isfahan” “The students blindfolded us, marched back into the family was slow. I wanted written in Farsi on a bottle of milk). His us out, put us on buses,” says Rosen. to be very gentle with the kids, especially with Ariana, who was just a baby when I left. I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t seeing me as a stranger.” Major League Baseball played an unexpected role. It was the only organization that reached out to the former hostages, offering them free tickets to games. Though the kids were very young, Rosen would take them to Shea Stadium. “Barbara would urge them to go out with me, because in the very beginning they wouldn’t go out with me at all,” Rosen says. “The ball games played a very important role in strengthening our relationship.” There is a slight catch in his voice when he talks about this. “It was so good to be with the kids. They made it easier on me. They were there for me in so many ways, even though they were just little ones. It was great to just spend time with them Barry and Barbara Rosen at home in Morningside Heights. and to be more of the father that I wasn’t during that period.” cellmate was Dave Roeder, the embassy’s “We didn’t know where we were. We’re Shortly after Rosen returned, Air Force attaché. The reading material screaming at them, they’re screaming at Columbia president Michael Sovern supplied by the captors was limited to us. The bus stopped, and as we got out ’53CC, ’55LAW, ’80HON offered him the boating classifieds of theWashington they tore off our blindfolds, and there was a fellowship to do research on Iranian Post, and it happened that Roeder knew a gauntlet of students, and they spat at novelists and Central Asian history. boats. So Rosen and Roeder would pick us. We were at the airport. I saw a light Rosen accepted, and the family moved out boats from the listings and then lie pointing toward us — an Algerian Airlines to Riverside Drive. “It was a daunting back and close their eyes, and Roeder plane. We got onboard and waited.” The period, because I was undergoing treat- would narrate a boat trip on the Chesa- plane did not move until after Reagan was ment for depression,” says Rosen. After peake Bay. They did that every night. sworn in. Over Turkish airspace someone the fellowship, “there was the question One day, without notice, the hostages uncorked champagne, but Rosen was too of going back into the Foreign Service. I were led outside, packed into a truck, dazed to celebrate. “I was jubilant in one had a great opportunity to go to Italy or and transferred to the notorious Evin way and fearful in another. I thought: India, but Barbara could not agree to this Prison in Tehran. The site of torture and Am I ready for this? Am I really ready for for fear of something happening again.” executions of dissidents, the prison was freedom? Am I really ready to see Barbara Instead, Rosen became assistant to the an improvement in that it was warmer and the kids? Am I sane enough?” president of Brooklyn College, where he and the hostages were four to a cell, so After the homecoming — after the organized the first academic conference Rosen had people to talk to. For exercise, reunion with Barbara and with Ariana, on post-revolution Iran. He gave press

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33.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd 3344 112/10/202/10/20 110:020:02 AAMM interviews, and he and Barbara wrote remorse. “He saw my family, saw who we writers, and quarrels over the role of reli- a book, The Destined Hour, about how were, saw that I really cared about Iran gion in the books. They worked seven days the hostage crisis affected the family. and wanted it to be a free and open state.” a week for two and a half years to produce “Working on the book helped me process At the conference, however, they the country’s first illustrated textbooks, what had happened,” he says. In 1995, he both stiffened their stances, with Rosen written in Dari, Tajik, Pashto, and Uzbek. was named executive director of exter- condemning the takeover. The state-run “It took a lot out of us,” says Rosen. “But nal affairs at Teachers College, where he Iranian press vilified both Rosen and no matter what, we forged on.” became a beloved staff member. Still, he Abdi. “When we said goodbye, I told him, That level of commitment is typical of suffered recurring bouts of PTSD — what ‘I hope I haven’t caused you any problems.’ Rosen. “Barry is such a positive person,” he describes as “an overwhelming sense And in fact he did go to jail. The first says Shepherd. “He’s thoughtful, open, of a loss of self.” indictment against him was as a pollster authentic, and gregarious and has a Yet for all the natural feel for trauma, Rosen never diplomacy. When he lost his perspective. “I’M NOT GOING TO DESTROY MY OWN goes into a country, “When it was over, he becomes a part of I could at least say WORLDVIEW. I DON’T WANT TO LIVE IN HATE.” it to the extent that that as bitter as I he can. He believes was toward those in public service who held me, I kept a sense of ‘There’s — he had polled Iranians about how they not only because he thinks it’s important Iran, and there’s the revolution.’ I still feel felt about the US, and the results showed for people to help each other but also that way. I was a victim of the revolution, that despite everything, many Iranians because it can be helpful to the person but that doesn’t change my basic attitude had a positive feeling. The second indict- providing the service.” about Iran and Iranians. Many are suf- ment was for meeting with me.” Rosen remains engaged with human- fering under this regime, and I feel bad rights issues in Iran and is involved with for them as much as I felt bad for myself osen has always been a teacher. He Hostage Aid Worldwide, a nascent orga- during that hostage crisis. I’m not going Rtaught English in Iran for the Peace nization of survivors of hostage ordeals to destroy my own worldview. I don’t Corps and afterward taught high- that uses data, including recently unclas- want to live in hate.” school science in New York. And months sified State Department documents, to Rosen has backed up that philosophy after the terrorist attacks of September better understand the issue of hostage- with action. In 1998, he accepted an invi- 11, 2001, he embarked on an educational taking. And he has maintained contact tation to a conference in Paris to appear mission as demanding as anything he’s with some former Iran hostages, mostly with Abbas Abdi, the mastermind of the ever done. The job was in Afghanistan. in their ongoing, frustrating effort to get embassy takeover, in a symbolic gesture of In the 1950s, Teachers College began compensation from the US government. conciliation. Knowing that Abdi had had working with the ministry of education “A group of us are working with lawyers, run-ins with the Iranian regime, Rosen in Afghanistan on creating textbooks so we’re always in touch in some way,” figured that their meeting might show and curricula for high-school students, a he says. “But many people don’t commu- hard-liners on both sides that there was project that ended abruptly with the 1978 nicate anymore. Some are in their late room in the middle to build trust. So he, Soviet-backed coup. But in 2002, with eighties. It gets harder as time goes on.” Barbara, and Ariana went to Paris. Rosen the Taliban government ousted, UNICEF Retired since 2016, Rosen has arrived remembers entering the hotel lobby days approached TC president Arthur Levine at a place of security and self-knowledge. before the conference and he and Abdi about reviving the program. Levine asked His kids have children of their own, spotting each other. “He called me over, Rosen to lead it. “I didn’t want to give up and he and Barbara are busy grandpar- and we sat and started talking as if noth- my position, which I loved, but this was ents. Rosen still thinks every day about ing had happened,” Rosen says. “It was an amazing opportunity,” Rosen says. Iran, and his heart is with the Iranian wild. We discussed US–Iran relations and Rosen and Margaret Jo Shepherd, a human-rights activists who are being our families, then we said goodbye until professor emerita of education at TC, detained in the same prison that had the meeting a few days later. were tasked with creating new textbooks held him and his fellow hostages. And if “The next morning he knocked at our from scratch, assisted by TC students and he can’t heal Iran–US relations, he has door and held out a book on Iranian art Afghanis. They flew to Kabul and soon managed, through love and hard work, and architecture and said, ‘This is a gift found that doing the job in such a chaotic, to heal himself. from me to you and your family.’ And depleted country was nearly impossible. “It’s been a long process, but it’s also every day, whenever we met, he gave Aside from safety concerns, Rosen and taught me a lot, and I think it’s made me me something from Iran.” Rosen read Shepherd dealt with spotty electricity, a better person,” he says. There could in Abdi’s gestures more than a twinge of poorly educated teachers, inexperienced hardly be a greater journey than that.

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33.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd.20_FEAT_Rosen-3.indd 3355 112/10/202/10/20 110:020:02 AAMM THE BIG IDEA The Lost Art of Dying Well A physician and medical ethicist argues that modern society has lost sight of the cultural, spiritual, and practical resources we need to confront our mortality

Lydia Dugdale is the director of the — life or death. My colleagues and I seek ulum and incorporate philosophy, human- Center for Clinical Medical Ethics to resolve quandaries in a manner that ities, and art. I want students to take a and the Dorothy L. and Daniel H. prioritizes the good of the patient. more thoughtful and deliberate approach Silberberg Associate Professor of Our ethics team might be called to to medicine. I suppose you could say I’m Medicine at Columbia’s Vagelos the bedside when a patient refuses a an advocate of “slow medicine.” College of Physicians and Surgeons. lifesaving intervention, for example. The Her book The Lost Art of Dying looks doctors want to know whether it’s OK to What do you mean by “slow medicine”? to the Middle Ages for wisdom on treat over the patient’s objection. Or we The physician and writer Victoria Sweet how to prepare for the end of life. might be asked to consult when a patient has a book on this. Just as slow food is wants to be discharged to a setting that healthier than fast food, slow medicine You’ve said that your passion is not optimal for healing. Or we might is healthier than fast medicine. Too often Q is the ethical practice of be called when families insist on aggres- patients find themselves on medical medicine. How does that sive therapies for actively dying patients. conveyor belts that move swiftly and inform your daily work? Usually the cases are not straightforward, efficiently through treatments and proce- Ethics imbues everything I do. At the emotions run high, and there is a lot of dures. If no one presses pause, the med- ethics center, I teach, write, fundraise, nuance. Some can be readily resolved by ical machine keeps moving and patients research, and consult on ethical issues in clarifying what’s legal. Others require a become passive recipients of procedures the hospital. I weigh in on very complex much lengthier investigative approach. or medical techniques, including aggres- challenges in health care and research When I teach, I try to engage medical sive interventions at the end of life. and help stakeholders — including students on medicine’s moral questions doctors, patients, and families — make and get them to think about its aims and Your book The Lost Art of Dying centers the best decisions. The discipline of philosophy. A friend of mine calls medical on the question of how we might die ethics asks, “What is good or right in this training a doctor factory: it’s soulless, and better. What prompted you to write it? particular situation?” When applied to you grind through. My strategy is to offer I have taken care of so many patients medical practice, the stakes can be high avenues that go beyond the formal curric- who arrived at their life’s end completely

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33.20_BIG-IDEA-Death.indd.20_BIG-IDEA-Death.indd 3366 112/11/202/11/20 99:40:40 AAMM unprepared. They haven’t considered the almost no pain we can’t treat, yet there sure who wrote the first version of these many decisions they might be asked to are fewer opportunities to reflect on mor- how-to-die-well handbooks, it was likely make about end-of-life medical inter- tality and what it takes to die well. And someone connected to the church. The ventions. They aren’t familiar with the even when patients ask us doctors to help books empowered the laity so they could benefits and harms of things like CPR them make sense of death, many doctors prepare for death themselves without or mechanical ventilation. They haven’t are unwilling to engage those questions. needing a priest. thought about what sort of memorial or After the printing press developed, funeral they’d like. They haven’t invested The book takes inspiration from the illustrated versions of the ars moriendi in the relationships that matter most to ars moriendi, a form of writing that began circulating to meet the needs of them. And they’ve not thought about the emerged in the 1400s to help people the illiterate and semiliterate. Over time, bigger questions of life and death. They’re prepare for their own deaths. other religious and even non-religious suddenly asking, What do I believe? How Yes, ars moriendi is Latin for “art of groups picked up the idea and developed do I make sense of my life? I talk in the dying.” The ars moriendi refers to a liter- their own versions. These handbooks book about the great writer Susan Sontag ary genre that asks us to think about the were in widespread use all over the West ’93HON, who thought deeply about so way we live and die. Its earliest iterations for more than five hundred years. many things. Yet she never wanted to talk developed during the aftermath of the about death, even when she was actively bubonic plague that decimated Western What was the main theme of the dying. Her son was at her bedside, but Europe in the mid-1300s. ars moriendi? he felt he could not even say goodbye, Historians estimate that up to two- To die well, you have to live well. That because that would require admitting to thirds of Europe’s population died means recognizing your finitude and her that she was dying. during that plague, including priests wrestling with related questions of As doctors we can and should help and other spiritual authorities. With meaning and purpose within the context people die better and die wisely. We have so much death, there weren’t enough of a community. an incredible toolkit of resources to help religious leaders to attend to the dying The earliest iterations of the ars moriendi SHOUT ease suffering at the end of life. There is and bury the dead. Although we aren’t were particularly interested in

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33.20_BIG-IDEA-Death.indd.20_BIG-IDEA-Death.indd 3377 112/11/202/11/20 99:40:40 AAMM I have a couple of good friends, but I How did the changing role of hospitals don’t really have a community.” But a affect our relationship with death? couple of friends is fine. It doesn’t have In the late nineteenth century, we had to be the medieval conception of com- about two hundred or so hospitals munity, with the whole village parading nationwide. That grew to more than six past the deathbed. thousand by 1920, contributing to major Someone once asked me, “I know advances in medicine and science. By whom I want to be with when I die, the 1950s and ’60s, we were attempt- but I’m not ready to reconcile with them ing artificial resuscitation and organ now. Why can’t I just wait a while?” transplantation, and by the 1960s and My response was that we don’t know ’70s, offering combination chemotherapy when we’re going to die. And if we to stave off death. The hospital became choose to reconcile today, while we are the preferred site for taking care of the healthy, those relationships are going sick and dying. Hidden from view, death to be so much richer when we’re at the replaced sex as the ultimate unmen- end of life. tionable. The English anthropologist We must also acknowledge that we will Geoffrey Gorer called this phenomenon eventually die. We can’t wait until the “the pornography of death.” last minute to think through what our We have to rethink dying in a hospital, life means and what we believe happens which is chaotic and expensive and a when we die. In the ancient world, a place where both patients and doctors victorious Roman general had a servant can be tempted into overtreatment. Lydia Dugdale whose only job was to whisper in his ear, We have fantastic hospice facilities for “Remember that you are but human!” those who want to focus on maximizing five temptations commonly faced by the And in medieval Europe, memento quality — not quantity — of life, but dying: lack of faith, despair, impatience, mori — such as locks of hair, skulls, or many people, particularly those outside pride, and greed. The texts offered a hourglasses — served as visual reminders urban centers, don’t have access to them. consolation for each temptation: faith, that death is inevitable. What’s more, most patients say they hope, patience, humility, and generosity. We need to live with the knowledge of want to die at home. Home hospice is It’s interesting to me that they did not our finitude constantly present — not in one option, but logistically it requires a suggest that people were tempted to a macabre way, but in a way that helps us lot of family support, so it’s not for every- fear death. My sense is that our modern value our time and our relationships and one. There’s also an enormous toll on reaction to death is probably best charac- that which is good in life. unpaid caregivers, who are often family terized as fear. members — usually women — who sac- The ars moriendi was sometimes The ars moriendi and the idea of rifice their careers to care for the dying. described in theatrical terms. Each lifelong preparation for death was This is good, noble work, but it comes at death represents a drama. The dying still around during the Civil War and a high and un-reimbursable cost. person is the lead actor, and community even into the twentieth century. members all play supporting roles. But What happened? How do we get over the denial of at some point every supporting actor is In World War I, there was a massive loss death? going to become the lead — the dying of life, and it was immediately followed It takes time. We have to walk with person — so they spend their lives as by the 1918 flu pandemic, which also those we love toward the fear and understudies for that role. The practices decimated the population. After the sadness. Walking toward fear of death of the ars moriendi were rehearsed over pandemic, death was the last thing — slowly, deliberately — does much to and over again. people wanted to think about. Everybody mitigate denial. had suffered loss. Traditional mourning In updating the ars moriendi for the rituals and deliberate attention to ars Has the pandemic changed anything? twenty-first century, what advice did moriendi practices lost their appeal. I had hoped it would make people you find that we can still use today? And then, in the US at least, we went more aware of their need to engage There’s a lot. For one thing, make sure into a period of enormous economic with death, and I’ve seen an uptick in you’re cultivating your relationships. prosperity: the Roaring Twenties. The interest in the subject, but not as much People live and die much better if they idea of living well as an end in itself took as I had thought I would. And now with are a part of a meaningful community. root. People did not want to concern the good news of an effective vaccine, I had somebody say to me, “I’m a loner. themselves with dying well. people may be tempted to think they

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33.20_BIG-IDEA-Death.indd.20_BIG-IDEA-Death.indd 3388 112/11/202/11/20 99:40:40 AAMM don’t have to face their mortality. But mortality is still 100 percent. We need to “Make sure you’re cultivating your begin the conversation and circle back to it again and again. I liken it to trying relationships. People live and die to talk to my adolescent daughter about the birds and the bees. The first time much better if they are a part of a I tried to explain it, she was awkward and I was awkward. We put a little bit meaningful community.” out there, circled back, had a second conversation, and it was a little better. By the third conversation, it was getting It’s easy to start the conversation by How can people raise the odds that more natural. discussing advance directives. If your they die well? heart stops, would you want CPR? Would Start now. How are you thinking about Whose role is it to get these you want to be on a breathing machine? your finitude? How are you discussing conversations started? There are advance-directive forms online, this within the context of your family, As a primary-care doctor, I’m required and there’s a program called Five Wishes your community? My goal is to get by Medicare to ask about end-of-life care that literally scripts this conversation for people to think and to engage, and if we decisions during the annual wellness you. And you move from there to: Have do that — even if we don’t resolve all the visit. But all physicians who have long- you thought about your apartment? Have questions — we’ll be much further along term relationships with patients who are you thought about your will? Have you the path of being prepared for death. If chronically and progressively ill should thought about where you’d want to be we live deliberately, with gratitude and be having these conversations. And fam- buried, if you want to be buried? Do you with attention to what matters most, our ily members need to have these conversa- want a funeral? If so, what music or read- lives will be richer and our dying better. tions with aging loved ones. ings matter to you and why? — Cherie Henderson ’14SPS

Your connection to everything Columbia

Get the best stories, the latest research, and even more alumni news at Columbia Magazine online.

Visit magazine.columbia.edu.

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FRONTIERS OF RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY

Diagnostic test for gluten sensitivity could be on horizon

here are an estimated three million They believe their discovery could lead to the people in the US today with celiac first diagnostic test for NCGS. “We’ve been Tdisease, an autoimmune condition pretty convinced for a few years that NCGS is that is triggered by the wheat protein its own condition, but until now we haven’t gluten. But millions more who test negative had any good biomarkers for the disorder,” for celiac say that they, too, become ill after says Alaedini. consuming wheat, which has led physicians The Columbia scientists’ past work has to wonder: is there another form of gluten shown that people with NCGS, like those intolerance that they have failed to recognize? with celiac, have an immune response to Armin Alaedini, an assistant professor gluten, with the small intestine mistaking of medicine at Columbia University Irving the unusually long and sticky protein for a Medical Center and a leading immunologist, toxin and attacking it in order to protect the has spent the better part of the past decade rest of the body from the threat. However, trying to answer this question. His team has Alaedini’s team has identified crucial differ- produced a number of influential studies ences between the conditions. For example, that suggest that many people do suffer from the researchers have found that people with “non-celiac gluten sensitivity,” or NCGS, a NCGS are likelier to experience a sudden condition that is physiologically distinct from onset of gastrointestinal symptoms and to celiac disease. endure mood swings, anxiety, headaches, and Now Alaedini and his colleagues say they mental fogginess — symptoms that are less

have achieved another big breakthrough: common in celiac disease. RYANJLANE / GETTY IMAGES they have identified a group of specific anti- Physicians diagnose celiac disease by bodies that are prevalent in people who test looking for a particular antibody in the blood negative for celiac disease but who experience and a distinct form of intestinal damage frequent abdominal pain, bloating, and other that is caused by chronic inflammation. celiac-like symptoms after eating gluten. No such tests are available for NCGS, and

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33.20_EXPL-4.indd.20_EXPL-4.indd 4040 112/10/202/10/20 110:390:39 AAMM experts suspect that large numbers of cases go unde- LAB IN A BOX tected, with many people enduring health problems What happens when a pandemic keeps engineering students away from campus, working that neither they nor their in their homes instead of their laboratories? For professors at Columbia Engineering, the doctors realize are caused by solution was obvious: you send the labs to them. gluten. “We don’t yet have a firm handle on the long- term health consequences of NCGS, but there is evidence that the condition heightens a person’s risk for certain autoimmune disorders, most notably hypothyroidism.” Alaedini and his colleagues are now planning follow-up studies that aim to further 1. The Prep 2. The Kit identify the characteristics of At the start of the fall semester, faculty from across The package mailed to seniors in the mechanical- the antibodies that are indic- the engineering school prepared boxes of tools engineering program contained motors, electrical ative of the condition. They and materials to be delivered to students working components, remote sensors, moldable plastics and anticipate creating a blood remotely, so that they could conduct experiments clay, a variety of metals, a soldering iron, clamps, test capable of detecting and design projects at home. The contents differed adhesives, and protective gear. NCGS within the next three depending on the student’s year and major. to five years. “When you’re dealing with a condition that’s treatable with dietary modifications, providing a patient an accurate diagnosis can be tantamount to delivering a cure,” Alaedini says. “At the same time, a diagnostic test that rules out NCGS could provide clarity for those who 3. The Home Lab 4. The Results are considering removing Many students also received a 3D printer, which Working in teams over Zoom, the students gluten from their diet on the they could use to produce any additional tools or transformed the raw materials into inventions, false hope that it will address parts their projects called for. ranging from water-testing systems to highly unrelated health problems.” efficient rocket engines to medical devices.

Columbia, Amazon to launch new AI research center

olumbia Engineering and Amazon have formed a part- “Artificial intelligence will have an enormous impact on nership to create a new center for artificial-intelligence every aspect of our lives, fundamentally changing how we Cresearch and education at the University, with Amazon work, learn, access resources and services, and connect to providing $5 million in funding over the next five years. one another,” says engineering dean Mary C. Boyce. “We are The new Columbia Center of Artificial Intelligence Tech- thrilled to be partnering with Amazon to leverage our col- nology in Collaboration with Amazon will support a broad lective expertise and advance AI in a way that is responsible, range of programs, including fellowships for engineering PhD effective, and beneficial to society.” students; faculty-led research projects with students, post- Shih-Fu Chang, a Columbia computer scientist known for doctoral fellows, and research staff; and public events that his research on computer vision and multimedia information

YEVGENIY YESILEVSKIY / COLUMBIA YESILEVSKIY YEVGENIY promote AI ventures in and around New York City. retrieval, will serve as the center’s inaugural director.

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33.20_EXPL-4.indd.20_EXPL-4.indd 4141 112/10/202/10/20 110:390:39 AAMM EXPLORATIONS What you need to know about COVID--19 now

s excitement builds about the release of a COVID-19 decisively, they say, but rather wind down gradually, with vaccine, many are now wondering: could the end incremental advances in vaccines, treatments, and social- A of the pandemic finally be in sight? But while the distancing measures eventually bringing them under control. rapid progress made by Pfizer, Moderna, and other And so, at Columbia and other major universities, the quest companies on COVID-19 vaccines is unequivocally good to better understand the SARS-CoV-2 virus and develop new news, top scientists are cautioning that the virus could be clinical interventions continues. Here are just a few of the with us for years to come. Pandemics rarely end abruptly and most recent research developments.

How deadly COVID-19 will prove to be in the future will depend on many factors, such as the pace at which treatments improve and whether the virus evolves to become more aggressive or less so. But the bottom line, Shaman and Galanti suggest, is that the disease isn’t going anywhere soon. “Holding out hope that a vaccine will be enough to save us isn’t the level of preparation we need,” Shaman says. “We have to regard COVID-19 as a disease that we could be elderly, people with immune disorders, contending with for a very long time.” cancer patients, and others for whom vaccines are problematic. She says that it could also be distributed in develop- Simple new treatments could ing countries where vaccines may not We’re in it for the long haul protect us quickly become available. “If it works as Jeffrey Shaman ’03GSAS and Marta Imagine if a daily spritz of nasal spray well in humans as it does in animals, you Galanti, Columbia public-health could protect you against COVID-19. could sleep in a bed with someone who researchers who use mathematical A team of Columbia microbiologists has COVID-19 or be with your infected modeling to predict the spread of led by Anne Moscona ’82PS and Matteo children and still be safe,” she says. infections, recently published an article Porotto has developed such a spray — in the journal Science that explores one that, when inhaled, permeates the how prevalent COVID-19 could respiratory tract and shields it from any Keeping your baby healthy doesn’t remain in the years ahead. A key factor SARS-CoV-2 viral particles that may have to interfere with bonding influencing the disease’s future threat, subsequently enter the body. If it encoun- A team of researchers at Columbia Uni- they say, will be the length of time ters the virus, the medication will latch versity Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) people remain immune to COVID-19 onto and dismantle the spike protein that has found that mothers with COVID-19 after either contracting the disease or SARS-CoV-2 uses to pry open its host’s have little risk of transmitting the dis- being vaccinated. Widespread testing cells, thus neutralizing its attack. ease to their newborns so long as they will help answer this question, but the In a study in ferrets, the Columbia follow basic infection-control practices, researchers predict that if immunity researchers have found the spray to be such as wearing a mask, washing their lasts less than twelve months, COVID-19 safe and effective, completely prevent- hands frequently, and cleaning their will be a constant public-health threat ing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 breasts before breastfeeding. for years to come, possibly recurring among animals in close quarters. The The study, which represents the seasonally, like the flu. If immunity scientists, who hope to soon launch most detailed investigation yet on lasts significantly longer, COVID-19 human trials, say the therapy begins the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission SERGIO MEMBRILLAS could be nearly eradicated by well- working immediately and offers protec- between moms and infants, finds that organized vaccine programs but then tion for at least twenty-four hours. more aggressive measures like separat- return with a vengeance a few years According to Moscona, the medication ing sick mothers from their babies and down the road. would be especially beneficial to the avoiding breastfeeding — which some

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33.20_EXPL-4.indd.20_EXPL-4.indd 4242 112/10/202/10/20 110:390:39 AAMM by seven thousand viruses — and he Donna Farber and Matteo Porotto (the believes that his analysis holds clues microbiologist who also helped develop for fighting COVID-19. For example, the nasal spray) recently conducted an Shapira has found that SARS-CoV-2 has in-depth comparison of children’s and a particular talent for disguising itself adults’ physiological responses to the as immune cells that constitute one of disease. The scientists found a “stark the body’s first lines of defense against invaders, and that its mimicking of these cells plays a crucial role in pushing the immune system into a dangerously hyperactive state that can prove fatal to some COVID-19 patients. health-care experts had previously recom- Shapira recently teamed up with mended — are not typically warranted. Nicholas Tatonetti, a Columbia data Led by obstetrician-gynecologist scientist and bioinformatics expert, to Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman ’14PH, the turn this observation into insights that study is based on observations of more could improve patient care; together than one hundred COVID-19-positive they have since identified several genes mothers and their newborns at CUIMC that increase the likelihood of a patient’s in the spring of 2020. immune system going haywire in the contrast” in the types and amounts of “During the pandemic, we continued presence of SARS-CoV-2, leading to immune cells they produce. For example, to do what we normally do to promote severe disease. they discovered that children generate bonding and development in healthy fewer antibodies, which are among newborns, while taking a few extra the last, heaviest weapons the immune precautions to minimize the risk of system deploys against pathogens. The exposure to the virus,” says Gyamfi-Ban- researchers say this suggests that chil- nerman. “We think it’s particularly dren do a better job of fighting off the important that mothers with SARS- disease in its earliest stages. CoV-2 have the opportunity to directly “In kids, the infectious course is breastfeed their newborns, as breast much shorter,” Porotto says. “They may milk is known to protect newborns clear this virus more efficiently than against numerous pathogens, and it adults and may not need a strong anti- may help protect newborns against body immune response to get rid of it.” infection with SARS-CoV-2.” The Columbia researchers are now pursuing follow-up studies to learn “One of the things we really need how children’s immune systems are The virus is a clever mimic moving forward in the fight against able to dispense with SARS-CoV-2 so Viruses are remarkably adept at evading COVID-19 is a way to quickly iden- quickly; one popular hypothesis they the body’s natural defenses, often hiding tify patients who will benefit from are testing is whether children’s pro- among the very immune cells that hunt immune-suppressing drugs and other pensity to catch seasonal colds, many them by mimicking their chemical and aggressive treatments,” says Shapira. of which are caused by other coronavi- physical structures. And coronaviruses, “Our research shows that studying the ruses, may help prepare their bodies to including SARS-CoV-2, are among the basic biology of the virus can help guide recognize and fight off SARS-CoV-2. world’s most creative and successful those discoveries.” “There are so many aspects of practitioners of “viral mimicry,” as this COVID-19 that we still have very little survival strategy is known, according to information about,” Porotto says. “The research by Columbia systems biologist Children are often better equipped interaction between the virus and the Sagi Shapira. to conquer COVID-19 individual host is the reason why we see Shapira made this discovery while One of the striking things about so much diversity in clinical responses, conducting the largest survey of viral COVID-19 is that children tend to cope but we don’t understand enough about mimicry to date — he used big-data with it much better than older people do. this virus yet to really determine what analytic techniques to identify more To understand why, a team of Colum- leads to severe disease or what leads to than six million examples of mimicry bia researchers led by immunologist mild disease.”

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off the most catastrophic consequences has already proposed as a goal, echoing of global warming. It calls for a tripling commitments made by dozens of other of federal investments in clean-energy nations in recent years. The authors say research and development over the next entirely new technologies will be needed five years and for the creation of a new to improve energy efficiency in areas interagency authority to coordinate like agriculture, shipping, aviation, and such spending. steel and cement manufacturing. To this Currently, the US devotes about $9 bil- end, the researchers provide detailed lion a year to clean-energy R&D — just recommendations for how an expanded one-quarter of what it spends on medical R&D budget could be distributed across research and less than one-tenth of what numerous federal agencies and programs. it spends on defense innovation. A three- Regarding their plan’s political feasi- fold increase in funding for new energy bility, the authors note that bipartisan Researchers technologies would bring the country’s support for clean-energy R&D has been investments in this area roughly in line growing in recent years; they point call for clean- with China’s as a share of GDP and would out that although the Trump adminis- deliver “economic returns that far outstrip tration proposed slashing funding for energy push investments,” according to the report. such research in every one of its annual Energizing America was written by budgets, congressional Republicans and team of researchers from Varun Sivaram, a visiting senior fellow Democrats both refused to make the cuts. Columbia’s Center on Global at the Center on Global Energy Policy, “There’s a consensus emerging that Energy Policy, together with which is housed within the School of the development of new energy tech- Acollaborators at the nonprofit International and Public Affairs; Julio nologies is going to be essential not only Information Technology and Innovation Friedmann and David Sandalow, both for fighting climate change but also for Foundation (ITIF), have issued a report former Obama-administration energy advancing America’s international eco- calling for the US government to launch officials and now senior research nomic competitiveness in the coming an ambitious effort to spearhead the scholars at the center; and ITIF’s Colin decades,” says Sivaram. “Leaders on development of new climate-friendly Cunliff and David Hart. both sides of the aisle are recognizing energy technologies. The scholars argue that the rapid that if the US establishes itself as an The book-length report, titled deployment of existing renewable-energy innovator in this area, creating the Energizing America, provides a com- systems — wind, solar, geothermal — will next generation of energy systems that prehensive roadmap for how the US can not be enough for the US to achieve net- eventually get adopted throughout the assert itself as an international leader zero carbon emissions by mid-century, world, we’ll benefit economically and in in clean-energy systems and help stave which president-elect Joseph Biden terms of our global influence.”

Scientists decipher the hidden past of the ‘Blue-Ring Nebula’ TOP: PEDROSALA / SHUTTERSTOCK; BOTTOM: NASA / JPL-CALTECH / M. SIEBERT

or years, astronomers have been paper in the journal Nature, the scien- puzzled by a massive gas cloud, or tists posit that the nebula is the result nebula, that encircles a star some of a collision between two stars, the Fsix thousand light-years away in larger of which engulfed its neighbor the constellation Hercules. and remains visible amid the cataclysmic Now Columbia astronomer Brian event’s gassy aftereffects. Metzger and colleagues at the Califor- “This finding not only explains a single nia Institute of Technology say they mystery,” says Metzger. “It sheds new can finally explain the origins of the light on how such mergers occur, the “Blue-Ring Nebula,” so called because impact they have on their large-scale of its striking appearance when viewed environments, and the detailed proper- through an ultraviolet telescope. In a ties of the final merged star.”

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33.20_EXPL-4.indd.20_EXPL-4.indd 4444 112/10/202/10/20 110:390:39 AAMM STUDY A crowded universe, full of Genetic study reveals simpletons? Based on how HALL quickly life emerged on Earth RESEARCH BRIEFS (within a few hundred million years causes of many stillbirths of the planet’s formation) and how long it took for intelligence to subsequently very year some twenty-four thousand expectant mothers evolve (another four billion years), Columbia astrono- in the US lose their babies in the fi nal stages of preg- mer David Kipping has calculated that the universe is Enancy. For most of these women, the pain of the loss is likely teeming with life but short on conscious beings. compounded by a lack of explanations, since more than 60 percent of stillbirths have no known cause. Designer babies still a no-go Columbia geneti- “Not only are they devastated, but they’re left to wonder if they cist Dieter Egli has demonstrated that the powerful did something wrong or if it might happen again,” says Ronald gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 is still not safe for use in human embryos. In a series of experiments on Wapner, the director of reproductive genetics at Columbia Uni- early-stage embryos, he has shown that fi xing a com- versity Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and the vice chairman mon blindness-causing gene with CRISPR-Cas9 often for research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. destroys neighboring genes. In a quest to further understand the causes of stillbirths, Wap- ner recently joined forces with Columbia geneticist David Gold- Keep it real on Facebook People who resist the stein, the founding director of the Institute for Genomic Medi- temptation to exaggerate their accomplishments cine at CUIMC, to genetically analyze tissue from 246 stillborn on social media in favor of presenting authentic fetuses. Advanced analytic methods developed in Goldstein’s lab versions of themselves benefi t psychologically enabled the scientists to inspect the fetuses’ genomes in unusual and are happier overall, according to a study by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Sandra Matz detail and identify tiny abnormalities in thirteen genes. Together, of Columbia Business School. these genetic mutations accounted for about 9 percent of the stillbirths that couldn’t be explained by infections, preeclampsia, The bone makers Researchers in the laboratory and other common pregnancy complications. of Columbia biomedical engineer Gordana Vunjak- The scientists say their fi ndings, which appeared in the Novakovic have successfully synthesized bone and New England Journal of Medicine, could improve clinical care cartilage from stem cells and will soon launch a clinical in multiple ways. “First, this knowledge will help us facilitate trial in which people with severe facial injuries will closure and bereavement,” Wapner says. In addition, he says, it receive replacement jawbones grown in the lab. may help women who have experienced stillbirths think through Making sense of schizophrenia A team of Colum- future family planning. “Often parents who’ve gone through this bia neuroscientists led by Steven Siegelbaum has are apprehensive about conceiving again, for fear of repeating identifi ed a group of brain cells that are responsible for the trauma,” Wapner says. “But if we can determine that a fetus forming social memories. The scientists say the dis- didn’t die because of a genetic variation that was passed down covery could lead to new treatments for schizophrenia, from the parents but rather because of a mutation that occurred whose symptoms include extreme social diffi culties. within the fetus by chance as it was developing, as often seems to be the case, then we can assure them it probably won’t False promises A widely publicized 2019 pledge happen again.” by more than one hundred US corporations to adopt socially responsible business practices has turned It will likely be years before such information is widely avail- out to be mere window dressing, according to a study able to families, because only major academic medical centers coauthored by Shivaram Rajgopal of Columbia Business currently possess the technology needed to detect the types of School. Rajgopal determined that companies that subtle genetic variations the new Columbia study identifi es. signed the “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” (Simpler genetic tests capable of spotting large chromosomal have since committed more labor and environmental abnormalities linked to 10 to 20 percent of stillbirths are avail- violations, on average, than have their competitors. able in many hospitals and health centers.) But Wapner and Goldstein anticipate that as future research projects identify Ice sheet reveals surprise Columbia earth scientists more and more genetic mutations capable of disrupting fetal Jacqueline Austermann, Guy J. G. Paxman, and Kirsty J. Tinto have discovered a huge ancient lakebed sealed development, genomic sequencing will come to be used more beneath more than a mile of ice in northwest Green- routinely to explain stillbirths and miscarriages. land. The researchers suspect that the lakebed, which “Eventually, we may get to the point where we’re able to inter- is the fi rst such subglacial basin found anywhere in vene and help save some of these fetuses in the womb, based on the world, may contain fossil evidence of past climatic what our genetic discoveries teach us about the earliest stages of conditions and thus provide important clues about how human development,” Wapner says. Greenland’s ice sheet will respond to global warming.

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YOUR ALUMNI CONNECTION

Early Riser Morning Edition host Rachel Martin ’04SIPA on radio’s subtle power

t about 3:30 a.m. most weekday and holding them accountable in real time,” mornings, Rachel Martin ’04SIPA she says. Martin credits studying international Aheads to the guest bedroom in the affairs at SIPA, with an independent concen- basement of her Washington, DC, tration in media and democracy, with prepar- home, where the windows are stuffed with ing her for these conversations, and she says pillows for soundproofing and an assortment that she still refers to an international-law of tech equipment links her makeshift studio book from graduate school when she needs to to National Public Radio’s nearby headquar- distill legal frameworks, such as those related ters. Martin has been cohosting Morning to the targeted killing of Iranian general Edition — the nation’s most-listened-to Qasem Soleimani in 2020. “It has had a very radio news program — from home since the practical influence on my job: understanding coronavirus pandemic started. And like many the laws of war, just wars, unjust wars, details other parents, once Martin signs off, she has of the Geneva Conventions,” Martin says. to transition seamlessly into her second job: Broadcast journalism was an early ambi- tag-teaming with her husband to homeschool tion for the Idaho native, who started their first- and third-grade boys. “It’s like her career as an intern at San Francisco’s living in an endless loop,” Martin says. “There KQED-FM. But when Martin applied to is no sense of place, so distinctions like ‘work’ SIPA shortly after 9/11, she planned to even- and ‘home’ don’t matter.” tually work for the US State Department or In the fourteen years that she has spent on United Nations. “I felt very called to foreign air at NPR, Martin has become known for her policy … how different nations and cultures STEVEN VOSS / NPR incisive interviews, especially with world lead- interact to hopefully build a more peaceful ers, from Hillary Clinton to Hamid Karzai. world,” Martin says. She interned at the UN “I like the challenge of drawing someone out while studying at Columbia but ultimately

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33.20_NETWORK-F.indd.20_NETWORK-F.indd 4466 112/10/202/10/20 99:47:47 AAMM decided that working for a monolithic institution felt limiting. “I wanted to be out in The Memory Makers the world more, more connected to foreign policy,” she says. hen Spencer Bailey ’10JRN was three years old, in 1989, After a class on Afghanistan sparked he was in a plane crash that killed his mother and 111 her interest in the region, Martin decided other people. The next day, a photograph of a National to travel to Kabul. She spent the summer WGuard officer carrying the young Bailey to safety between her first and second years at SIPA appeared in newspapers and on televisions across the country. Four reporting for Public Radio International years later, that image was further immortalized — in the form of a six- on children living under the Taliban. “My foot-tall bronze statue outside of Sioux City, Iowa, the site of the crash. parents were totally freaked out. It was an active war zone,” she recalls. “But I’d met and befriended people at Columbia who had lived and worked there. It made it seem possible to go.” The stint sealed her commitment to journalism. Within months of graduating, Martin returned to Afghanistan as a stringer for NPR. That led to her long career with the storied nonprofit media organization, including roles as a religion correspondent, foreign correspondent, and national-security correspondent. Before becoming a host of Morning Edition, in December 2016, she spent four years anchor- ing Weekend Edition Sunday. For Martin, the focus on COVID-19 has been a departure but also an opportunity to explore. Hoping to capture this moment, she conceived of “Learning Curve,” a series that dissects the daily struggles of parents and teachers during the pandemic. Martin interviews mothers of varied economic and racial backgrounds across the country, checking in with them periodically throughout the school year: a Tennessee mother who resigned from her teaching job to keep her nine-year-old immunocompromised son safe, a California teacher with five school- age children of her own, a North Carolina grocery-store clerk who is also a single Top left: Author Spencer Bailey being carried to safety after a 1989 plane crash. Top right: A bronze statue based on the same photograph, Sioux City, Iowa. mother of four. Bottom: National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama. Radio has always been Martin’s favored news medium. “I like the performative aspect Now a journalist who writes about architecture, art, and design, of it. I like using my voice,” she says. Plus, Bailey lends a unique perspective to the purpose and power of Martin says that radio cultivates connection contemporary memorials in his new book In Memory Of. He shares in a unique way. “There’s a trust in conversa- striking images of iconic monuments, from Maya Lin’s Vietnam tion, I think, and an intimacy on radio,” she Veterans Memorial to the much newer National Memorial for Peace says. “I brandish a microphone, and people and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and writes thoughtfully about tell me their innermost thoughts and views, our “physical acts of memory,” acknowledging that each structure has even if they’re controversial. People stop personal grief, loss, and hope attached to it. thinking about the mic and say what “Seeing myself in a statue remains a strange, out-of-body feeling,” they mean.” he writes, “despite my being able to look at — and think about —

TOP LEFT: GARY ANDERSON / SIOUX CITY JOURNAL / ZUMAPRESS.COM; TOP RIGHT: SPENCER BAILEY; BOTTOM: © ALAN RICKS / MASS DESIGN GROUP DESIGN / MASS © ALAN RICKS BOTTOM: SPENCER BAILEY; RIGHT: TOP / ZUMAPRESS.COM; CITY JOURNAL / SIOUX ANDERSON GARY LEFT: TOP — Mitra Malek ’01SIPA that memorial and every memorial within a much larger context.”

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33.20_NETWORK-F.indd.20_NETWORK-F.indd 4477 112/10/202/10/20 99:47:47 AAMM NETWORK ASK AN ALUM: HOW TO BEAT WORK-FROM-HOME BURNOUT Liz Wilkes ’13BUS is the founder and CEO of Exubrancy, a startup that offers virtual and in-person wellness programs to more than six hundred corporate clients worldwide.

What led you to start Exubrancy? Has the pandemic changed your work I founded my first company, a Christmas- in other ways? light design and installation business, Before, there was a lot of focus on when I was twenty-two. It was an amazing how wellness can increase employee experience, but I ran myself ragged. I put productivity. Now the focus has really aside good nutrition. I was energetically shifted to reducing stress and building Liz Wilkes depleted. I couldn’t sleep well. I didn’t feel resiliency, community, and empathy. like my best self. When I started business Those are some of the most important What advice do you have for people school, I realized that I wasn’t alone. Many tools for getting through this time. feeling pent-up and restless? of my classmates had also come from As Exubrancy has moved most of our For me, taking a moment to roll back work environments that weren’t support- offerings online, we’ve been encourag- my shoulders and breathe deeply makes ive of their well-being. I started Exubrancy ing people to leave their cameras on a world of difference. There has been so in 2013 to help companies encourage their during live fitness classes. It’s a way much research supporting the benefits of employees to lead healthy lives by offering for them to visually connect with their meditation and yoga. For example, one ongoing wellness programming like fit- coworkers in an informal way and study from Aetna and Duke University ness and yoga classes, meditation sessions, strengthen social bonds at a time when found that Aetna employees reduced and, until the pandemic, chair massages. it’s hard to do so. stress levels by a third after the company introduced weekly yoga classes. Plan your time strategically. Those natural gaps in our workday — the commute, lunch break, etc. — have kind of evaporated, so establish new breaks that allow you to regroup. It might be helpful to move some video calls to phone calls to give your eyes a rest. If possible, take walks during phone meetings to get some fresh air. Strive to have moments of casual conversation with your colleagues throughout the day. It might be less natural to chitchat over Zoom than next to the coffee machine, but it’s still important to maintain some level of connection.

Do you have advice for parents? Know your limitations. Have clear com- munication with your manager about the

constraints you’re facing during work. TOP: AMBIKA SINGH; BOTTOM: KRISTEN LOKEN Noise-canceling headphones can be a AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER Nico Muhly ’03CC conducts Throughline, godsend if you need to work near a child. a piece written specifically with COVID-19 safety restrictions in mind. Commis- My general advice for everyone working sioned by the San Francisco Symphony, Muhly’s new work features performances at home, both parents and non-parents, by eight soloists who filmed their parts separately in locations around the world. is to realize that other people are also The components were then digitally spliced together into a single nineteen- struggling. We need to give each other minute video, a feat the New York Times called a “bellwether” for music-making flexibility and be kind to ourselves and during the pandemic. Throughline is currently streaming at sfsymphony.org. everyone else. — Julia Joy

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enedict Nwachukwu “Usually as a team physi- living together, so not only hadn’t yet heard about the ’08CC knows how cian, I’d be covering a few was I seeing them play every shooting and was shocked Bto keep professional games a week,” Nwachukwu day, but I could check in with when instead of starting the athletes healthy. says. “In the bubble, it was a them over dinner,” he says. game, the Bucks remained in In addition to working as a few games a day. The level of But though Nwachukwu the locker room in protest. sports-medicine surgeon and intensity presented diff erent caught some exciting action “The players were clearly codirector of research for the challenges for the players on the court, he says that the communicating to the world Sports Medicine Institute and made it more interesting most memorable experience that there are more impor- at the Hospital for Special for me as a doctor.” had nothing to do with jump tant things than basketball,” Surgery in New York, he has Nwachukwu says. “Before been a team physician for the that game, the atmosphere New York Red Bulls, the Chi- inside the bubble was jubi- cago Bulls, and the Chicago lant. After that, it took on a White Sox. But this past fall, more somber tone. People Nwachukwu masked up for had to refocus their energy a diff erent kind of challenge on the bigger picture, which — serving as an onsite physi- felt entirely appropriate.” cian for the National Basket- For Nwachukwu, a Black ball Association’s experimen- man working in a ﬁ eld in tal “bubble” season. which he is a clear minority, “It meant putting the rest of the protests were especially my life and work on pause for moving. “Aside from the several weeks,” Nwachukwu players themselves, the says. “But it also felt like a bubble was not diverse. I felt once-in-a-lifetime opportu- tremendous solidarity and nity to help bring the sport pride when I saw the players back for players and fans.” use their platforms for In August, after quar- change,” Nwachukwu says. “I antining for two weeks, remember at one of the early Nwachukwu moved into the games, a fellow physician now-legendary NBA bubble asked me what I would write — a campus within Walt on my jersey if I was a player. Disney World, just outside My response was simple: Orlando, Florida, where ‘Stop Killing Us.’” 341 players and around a Many have heralded the thousand staff members Nwachukwu at work in New York (top) NBA bubble as an example of lived communally while and in the NBA bubble (bottom). how sports teams can safely playing a truncated season. resume play during the pan- Nwachukwu started every Nwachukwu, who played shots or buzzer beaters. In late demic. But Nwachukwu says day with a rapid COVID-19 varsity basketball at Colum- August, as a new wave of pro- that he hopes the season will test and was then allowed bia, says that he went into tests raged across the country have a bigger impact on the to move freely around the sports medicine because he following the shooting of world of professional sports. bubble. After meeting with relishes the job of helping Jacob Blake in Kenosha, “I hope that people look to players and monitoring both people get back to what they Wisconsin, Nwachukwu was the NBA not only for how to injuries and any potential do best. A bonus to working assigned to cover an afternoon behave during a health crisis, COVID-19 infections, Nwa- in the bubble was getting game between the Orlando but also a social one,” he says. chukwu would spend the rest more time with his patients Magic and the Milwaukee “It should be a model for how of the day on duty at games and being able to see how Bucks. Because he had been to bring people together to — sometimes for up to ten his work impacted their particularly busy for the previ- work for justice.”

COURTESY OF BENEDICT NWACHUKWU COURTESY hours at a time. performance. “We were all ous few days, Nwachukwu Ñ Rebecca Shapiro

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between diff erent cultures, were instant hits at Sephora. and I felt like I could apply “The mask comes in a jar that knowledge.” that’s shaped like a melting At the time, “K-beauty” was ice cube, an homage to our on the cusp of exploding into grandmothers and the chilled an international phenome- watermelon,” says Chang. non. “Global companies were The product, which initially starting to look to Korea for generated a waitlist of more the latest skin-care trends than fi ve thousand people, is and innovations,” says Chang. still a bestseller. Sensing a business opportu- Chang attributes much of nity, she connected with her Glow Recipe’s success to the friend and L’Oréal colleague strong community it has built Sarah Lee, who is also Korean online. “People are increas- (and whose grandmother ingly enjoying skin care on You Glow, Girl also used watermelon as a social-media platforms,” she skin salve). Over sheet masks says. The company produces hristine Chang watermelon, plum, or and wine one evening, they a wide range of content for ’10GSAS remembers avocado and infused with came up with the idea for YouTube and Instagram Chow, when she was ingredients such as retinol, Glow Recipe. “We were both on everything from dealing growing up, her hyaluronic acid, and gentle bicultural, bilingual, and with breakouts to the magic Korean grandmother used to chemical exfoliators. uniquely positioned to trans- of enzymes to the secrets of rub chilled watermelon rinds Chang, who was born late Korean trends for the US hydrated, “bouncy” skin. on her skin to heal rashes in Korea and spent her market,” says Chang. Though K-beauty is in the and other irritations. “It was childhood in Louisiana and Glow Recipe started out midst of a viral moment, a DIY anti-infl ammatory teenage years in Australia, as an e-commerce com- Chang doesn’t believe it’s treatment, rich with anti- considers herself a lifelong pany for existing Korean a passing fad. She sees oxidants and amino acids,” translator of culture and cosmetics. Chang and Lee it as more of an ongoing says Chang, who explains consumer habits. After would scout out the best movement. “If a brand as that Koreans have a long attending college in the US, cruelty-free products and established as Neutrogena is tradition of using natural, she started a career in mar- sell them on their website. launching a water-boost gel everyday ingredients — from keting at L’Oréal Korea’s In 2015, they appeared on cream, or Burt’s Bees is sell- rice water to green tea to Seoul headquarters. There the ABC reality show Shark ing sheet masks, you know snail slime — to soothe and she helped turn Kiehl’s, an Tank and landed — but that Korean infl uence has hydrate their skin. American brand owned by ultimately turned down — trickled down throughout Today, Chang is the L’Oréal, into a top player in a $425,000 investment. the industry,” she says. cofounder and co-CEO of Korea’s hyper-competitive In the spring of 2017, Glow Through Glow Recipe, Glow Recipe, a cosmetics beauty market. Recipe introduced its own Chang hopes to educate brand that is harnessing the In 2008, Chang moved to product line. The fi rst off er- people about skin-care power of fruit (not snails) New York and began a mas- ings, a blueberry cleanser and techniques and convey to and bringing Korean beauty ter’s program in East Asian watermelon sleeping the world that there’s more rituals to a global audience. studies at Columbia with mask, to K-beauty than cutesy Since launching in 2014, plans to become a translator packagingpackaging andand exotic-exotic- the New York–based startup of Korean novels. But she soundingsounding ingredients.ingredients. has earned the attention missed the cosmetics indus- “K-beauty“K-beauty isis a philos-philos- of skin-care enthusiasts try and after graduating ophy,”ophy,” sheshe says.says. “It’s“It’s and infl uencers for its face decided to join the global- aboutabout havinghaving a self-self- masks, moisturizers, serums, marketing team at Kiehl’s carecare routineroutine thatthat youyou cleansers, toners, and lip in New York. She says her looklook forwardforward to.to. balms. Designed to achieve education was a huge asset: It’s aboutabout skinskin

a youthful, dewy “glow,” “Columbia taught me how care being joyful GLOW RECIPE each product is concocted to really look at cultural and fun.” from a fruit extract like nuances and translate them — Julia Joy

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33.20_NETWORK-F.indd.20_NETWORK-F.indd 5500 112/10/202/10/20 99:49:49 AAMM NEWSMAKERS

Intoxicating ● Ayad Akhtar ’02SOA was named the next president of PEN Mocktails America, the nonprofit organi- ohn deBary ’05CC has spent his zation dedicated to championing career behind the bar — first at freedom of expression in litera- Manhattan’s legendary speak- ture. Akhtar is the Pulitzer Prize– Jeasy PDT, then as the director winning playwright of Junk, as of the beverage program for the well as a filmmaker and novelist. Momofuku group, where he worked for nearly a decade creating cocktail what he preaches — he decided not ● Several Columbians have been menus for dozens of restaurants. to drink alcohol in 2020, a pledge named or will be nominated to But while deBary certainly knows that he kept despite the challenges of positions in president-elect Joe — and loves — his spirits, he also quarantine. “I actually found that I Biden’s administration. Antony firmly believes that you don’t need rarely missed it,” he said. “There are Blinken ’88LAW, a former deputy alcohol to make a great cocktail. so many ways to create unique and secretary of state, is expected to After leaving Momofuku in 2018, exciting drinks without relying on be nominated as Biden’s secre- he launched Proteau, a line of non- the traditional tools.” tary of state. Karine Jean-Pierre alcoholic botanical beverages, and Here he shares one of his signa- ’03SIPA, who served as vice pres- published Drink What You Want, ture mocktails, a toned-down take ident–elect Kamala Harris’s chief a recipe book with a full booze-free on the classic mai tai that is perfect of staff during the campaign, will chapter. And deBary is practicing for Dry January and beyond. be Biden’s deputy press secretary. Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón ’01LAW, a Columbia trustee, was named chief of staff to soon-to-be Morning(side) Mai Tai Makes 1 drink First Lady Jill Biden. Reynoso served in President Obama’s GINGER SYRUP state department and later as the Makes about 1 cup ambassador to Uruguay.

1 pound fresh ginger, thoroughly ● Interior Chinatown, a novel by scrubbed Charles Yu ’01LAW, won the 2020 About 1 cup granulated sugar National Book Award for fiction. (depending on juice yield) Additionally, the National Book Foundation named Naima Coster Using a juice extractor, juice the ’15SOA to its 2020 “5 Under 35” ginger. Pass the liquid through a cohort. Coster is the author of gold coffee filter to remove all solids. the 2018 novel Halsey Street and You should have about half a cup. the forthcoming novel What’s 1½ ounces chilled apple cider Combine the ginger juice and sugar Mine and Yours. ½ ounce apple-cider vinegar in a small saucepan. Cook, stirring ½ ounce ginger syrup (recipe follows) occasionally, over medium heat until ● Former Democratic presi- ½ ounce orgeat* all the sugar has dissolved. Remove dential candidate Andrew Yang Garnishes: apple slices and fresh the pan from the heat and allow the ’99LAW won the Vilcek Prize mint leaves syrup to cool for a few minutes. Place for Excellence in Public Service. the pan in an ice bath and stir every Yang is the founder of two non- In a shaking tin, combine the drink few minutes until the mixture is below profits — Venture for America, a ingredients. Add ice and shake for fifteen room temperature. Use immediately fellowship program in entrepre- seconds. Strain into an ice-filled old- or store in an airtight container in the neurship, and Humanity Forward, fashioned glass. Garnish with a few slices refrigerator for up to two weeks or in an organization dedicated to the of apple and a couple of mint leaves. the freezer for up to six months. ideas that Yang espoused during his presidential run, such as a

PHOTO: NAIMA GREEN; ILLUSTRATION © SARAH TANAT-JONES © SARAH NAIMA GREEN; ILLUSTRATION PHOTO: HOUSE. RANDOM AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN POTTER/PUBLISHERS, CLARKSON BY PUBLISHED © 2020. COPYRIGHT JOHN DEBARY, BY COCKTAILS DELICIOUS MAKING OBJECTIVELY TO GUIDE THE SUBJECTIVE WANT: YOU DRINK WHAT FROM REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION * A Middle Eastern almond syrup, available for sale on Amazon. universal basic income.

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UNIVERSITY NEWS AND VIEWS

MARY C. BOYCE APPOINTED UNIVERSITY PROVOST

ary C. Boyce, the dean of Columbia forms,” said President Lee C. Bollinger in MEngineering, has been appointed announcing Boyce’s new appointment. “Pro- University provost, effective July 1, 2021. She pelled by a firm belief in the value of interdis- will be the first woman ever to serve in that ciplinary work, Mary has led in establishing position at Columbia. connections between Columbia Engineering As provost, Boyce will be the University’s and other parts of the University. Due to chief academic officer, overseeing all faculty her determined efforts, we now have more appointments and tenure decisions, as well faculty working together in areas such as data as the development of the University’s annual science, nanoscience, sensing and imaging, academic budget. Ira Katznelson ’66CC, a sustainability, and engineering in medicine.” professor of political science and history, has Under Boyce, the engineering school served as interim provost since John Coats- has also significantly expanded its faculty, worth stepped down in 2019. increased financial aid for students, and Boyce, who is an expert in nanotechnology added a wealth of new research opportunities and materials research, taught at MIT for for undergraduate and graduate students. twenty-five years before coming to Columbia “Mary has also been influential in her to lead its engineering school in 2013. The contributions to the University at large,”

first female dean of Columbia Engineering, Bollinger wrote. “She has been an important JEFFREY SCHIFMAN / COLUMBIA ENGINEERING she has since helped to establish the school advisor on virtually every one of the many as a leading center of multidisciplinary and new initiatives we have set forth over the past translational research, encouraging faculty several years. In short, Mary is an accom- to collaborate with colleagues in other plished scholar, an effective leader, and a con- fields to find creative solutions to pressing summate University citizen. I am delighted global problems. she has agreed to serve as Provost and look “The school has thrived, buoyed by her forward to working even more closely with celebration of intellectual creativity in all its her in the years to come.”

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33.20_BULLETIN.indd.20_BULLETIN.indd 5252 112/11/202/11/20 99:43:43 AAMM SAIDIYA HARTMAN NAMED UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

aidiya Hartman, a prominent author vocal about the challenge of using such Sand scholar of African-American troubling documents, the risk one runs literature and history, has been named a of reinscribing their authority,” wrote University Professor, which is the highest the New York Times in a review of rank that Columbia bestows on its faculty. Hartman’s most recent book, Wayward A Columbia professor of English Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate and comparative literature since 2007, Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Trou- Hartman writes genre-bending books blesome Women, and Queer Radicals, in that combine elements of historical 2019. “Similarly, she is keen to identify scholarship, biography, and fiction moments of defiance and joy in the lives to vividly portray the experiences of of her subjects.” African-American enslaved people Raised in Brooklyn, Hartman received and their descendants. In works like her PhD from Yale and taught at the Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, University of California, Berkeley, for and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century more than a decade before coming to America and Lose Your Mother: A Columbia. She is a former director of Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, the University’s Institute for Research Hartman uses historical data about real on Women, Gender, and Sexuality and individuals — often culled from slave remains part of its core faculty. In 2019, owners’ diaries, captains’ logs, bills of she won a MacArthur “genius” grant. sale, and other commercial records — reconsider the value of traditional histor- “She is also a person of expansive as a jumping-off point to create rich, ical scholarship that relies primarily on warmth and caring,” said President semi-fictional narratives that immerse materials produced by slavery-era whites Lee C. Bollinger in announcing Hart- readers in slaves’ emotional lives. Her to understand past Black lives. man’s new appointment, “and, not methodology, which she calls “critical “Hartman is a sleuth of the archive; surprisingly, she is beloved by her fabulation,” has proven to be highly she draws extensively from plantation undergraduate and graduate students influential in academia, prompting other documents, missionary tracts, what- and revered as a committed, incisive, scholars of African-American studies to ever traces she can find — but she is and encouraging teacher and mentor.”

KIM LEW LEADS COLUMBIA INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT COMPANY

im Lew, an invest- A native of New York City Kment professional with and a product of its public decades of experience in schools, Lew graduated from asset management, was the Wharton School of the KEEPING CAMPUS recently named president University of Pennsylva- HEALTHY and chief executive officer nia and Harvard Business of the Columbia Investment School. She began her career With cases of COVID-19 Management Company, with as a credit analyst at Chem- rising throughout the US, responsibility for overseeing ical Bank, later joining the Columbia has announced the University’s endowment. Prudential Group and then that it will continue to hold Lew comes to Columbia the Ford Foundation, where many of its classes online after thirteen years at the she spent more than a decade As the head of Columbia and to limit gatherings on Carnegie Corporation of handling technology and Investment Management its campuses this spring. New York, where she served private-equity investments. Company, Lew is responsi- For the latest information as vice president and chief She joined the Carnegie ble for the management of about course delivery, investment officer and Corporation to direct its an $11 billion endowment safety and health protocols, managed an endowment private-equity stakes in 2007, whose income provides a student life, and more, visit that supports a wide range of becoming its chief invest- perpetual source of support

TOP: COURTESY OF THE MACARTHUR FOUNDATION; BOTTOM LEFT: COLUMBIA CREATIVE; BOTTOM RIGHT: CARNEGIE CORP. CARNEGIE RIGHT: BOTTOM CREATIVE; COLUMBIA LEFT: BOTTOM FOUNDATION; OF THE MACARTHUR COURTESY TOP: COVID19.columbia.edu. education programs. ment officer in 2016. for University programs.

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sales positions at Citicorp and J. Walter Thompson advertising before becoming an entrepreneur. In 1994, she founded Plast- pro, which has won numerous awards for its streamlined manufacture of environmentally friendly fiberglass doors, door frames, and CHANGING MINDS related products. ABOUT MASKS An active philanthropist, Wang has supported a wide array of housing, educational, and public-health organizations, through Columbia-led online PR both her company and a foundation she runs A campaign to promote with her husband, Walter. The Walter and the use of face masks during Shirley Wang Foundation also funded the the COVID-19 pandemic has PBS documentary Becoming American: The achieved a major milestone, hirley Wang ’93BUS, the founder and Chinese Experience and sponsored the Acad- reaching more than one mil- SCEO of the Los Angeles–based building- emy Award–winning AIDS documentary The lion people. materials company Plastpro, has been elected Blood of Yingzhou District. At Columbia, Wearing is Caring, which to Columbia’s Board of Trustees. Wang and her husband are supporting the was launched by a dozen Wang, who earned her MBA at Colum- construction of the business school’s new postdoctoral researchers and bia Business School, held executive and home in Manhattanville. undergraduate students last summer, produces playful infographics, slide shows, and PRESIDENT BOLLINGER’S TERM EXTENDED TO 2023 true-false quizzes on topics such as how to properly wear

he co-chairs of Colum- remarkable period of growth, a mask and the pros and cons TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; TOP RIGHT: DAMIAN LUGOWSKI / SHUTTERSTOCK; BOTTOM RIGHT: EILEEN BARROSO Tbia’s Board of Trustees, overseeing the development of various types of personal Lisa Carnoy ’89CC and of the Manhattanville campus protective equipment (PPE). Jonathan Lavine ’88CC, in West Harlem and the The group’s content, which recently announced that construction of several new can easily be downloaded and President Lee C. Bollinger buildings elsewhere, including shared via social media, also has agreed to extend his the Northwest Corner Building addresses common myths term through the 2022–23 for multidisciplinary science in about mask-wearing — such academic year. Morningside Heights, a new as that a mask can make a The board’s decision to home for Columbia Nursing wearer sick — with links to ask Bollinger to stay on as School, and the Roy and Diana relevant scientific publications. president, Carnoy and Lavine Vagelos Education Center “The fiscal management, “Shifting public-health wrote in a statement, reflects on the medical campus. He fundraising success, and guidelines and misleading “both a recognition of his suc- also established nine Colum- active alumni engagement claims have caused confusion cess in steering the University bia Global Centers on four needed to sustain this trajec- over whether face coverings for nearly two decades, as continents and championed tory of growth are firmly in are effective,” says Tiffany well as a determination that the launch of ambitious new place, and are bolstered by the Chen, a research staff assis- his steady hand and wealth research programs in areas like launch of two major capital tant at Columbia’s Zuck- of experience will continue neuroscience, data science, and campaigns, including the erman Mind Brain Behav- to provide critical leadership climate change. On Bollinger’s completion of one of the larg- ior Institute who oversees the and stability” for Columbia watch, the University has est capital campaigns in the group’s PPE guidelines. “Our during a time of “undeniable also created one of the most Ivy League,” wrote Carnoy and goal is to present scientific uncertainty here in the United diverse communities in higher Lavine. “This fundraising suc- evidence, in a way that is States and around the world.” education, driven in part by cess is more critical than ever credible and easy to under- Since becoming president new investments in student now to help sustain students stand, that will help persuade in 2002, Bollinger has led financial aid and the recruit- in need of assistance and to the undecided that face the University through a ment of minority scholars. keep the campus healthy.” masks really do save lives.”

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33.20_BULLETIN.indd.20_BULLETIN.indd 5454 112/11/202/11/20 99:43:43 AAMM RECENT GRAD NAMED RHODES SCHOLAR

antiago Tobar Potes ’20CC, Swho graduated cum laude from Columbia College last year, has received a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. He plans to pursue a master’s degree in global and imperial history at the University of Oxford. Potes, who was born in Colom- bia and raised in Miami, was a John W. Kluge Scholar, a King’s Crown Leadership and Excel- lence Award winner, and a Holder Initiative Student Advisory Board member at Columbia College. He is also an accomplished violinist and an outspoken advocate for HUGH HAYDEN ’18SOA FUNDS ART FELLOWSHIPS

he sculptor Hugh Hayden will be funded partially by the Clearing T’18SOA, in partnership with Gallery and the Lisson Gallery. Columbia and two prominent Hayden, whose work was featured New York galleries, has created a in the Summer 2019 issue of scholarship program for students Columbia Magazine, credits the of visual art and art history who Black Lives Matter movement have demonstrated leadership in with inspiring the new fellowship the African-American and African program. He hopes the program diaspora communities. will address racial inequities in the The Solomon B. Hayden Fellow- art world by providing recipients ships, named for Hayden’s father, mentorship and networking oppor- will support MFA students focused tunities through the participating on sculpture and MA students in galleries, in addition to financial the Modern and Contemporary support. “These fellowships can give Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies artists access to things that money undocumented immigrants in the (MODA) program. The fellowships can’t buy,” he says. US who have received quasi-legal status under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals GIVING DAY 2020 BREAKS RECORDS (DACA) policy. “Santi’s irrepressible love of he ninth annual Columbia Giving Day raised a record-breaking $24 million learning, commitment to advo- Ton October 28, with thousands of alumni, students, parents, friends, neigh- cating for immigration reform, bors, faculty, and staff members contributing a total of 19,173 gifts. The twenty- and work with vulnerable youth four-hour University-wide fundraising drive, in which schools and programs make him a wonderfully deserving compete for matching gifts, raised $2 million more than the previous year’s recipient of the Rhodes Scholar- event. Among the programs rewarded for improving their gift counts compared ship,” says Ariella Lang ’03GSAS, to last year were the Earth Institute, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, associate dean of academic affairs and the Women Creating Change initiative at the Center for the Study of Social and director of Undergraduate Difference. The top five schools for alumni participation were Columbia College, Research and Fellowships. “I’m Barnard College, the College of Dental Medicine, Columbia Law School, and delighted to see his successes

TOP: WILLIAM JESS LAIRD; CENTER: COURTESY OF THE MACARTHUR FOUNDATION OF THE MACARTHUR LAIRD; CENTER: COURTESY WILLIAM JESS TOP: Columbia Business School. acknowledged in this way.”

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33.20_BULLETIN.indd.20_BULLETIN.indd 5555 112/11/202/11/20 99:43:43 AAMM BOOKS A Promised Land By Barack Obama ’83CC (Crown)

nyone who has read the earlier books of Barack Obama ’83CC A— particularly Dreams from My Father — already knows that he’s a wonderful writer, with an eye for telling detail and a voice that is by turns introspec- tive, witty, self-deprecating, uplifting, elegiac, and laugh-out-loud funny. Those qualities are showcased once again in A Promised Land, the fi rst of the forty-fourth president’s pro- jected two-volume memoir, which focuses on Obama’s role as a husband and father and his pursuit of a political career up to and including his fi rst term in the White House. Reading A Promised Land resembles nothing so much as the heady, pulse-quickening experience of taking an honors seminar with the hands-down best professor on campus An account of the Deepwater Horizon disas- (who also happens to be the former leader ter of April 2010 — one of a series of crises of the free world). The Obama we encounter that beset his new administration — gives rise here is dazzling — a master educator at the to some of Obama’s most virtuosic feats of top of his game who entertains, informs, illumination. He describes the proliferation clarifi es, enlightens, inspires, and often soars of off shore drilling (“by 2010 more than three to near-poetry in his thoughtful explora- thousand rigs and production platforms sat tions of thorny topics. In A Promised Land, off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Obama’s uncanny knack for synthesizing and Alabama, dotting the horizon like castles and condensing diffi cult concepts and com- on stilts”) and explains in elegant, lucid prose plex histories produces a rolling montage of the improbable technology underlying it. one “aha” moment after another. Check out Along the way he underscores the sheer arro- his analysis of why fundamentalist Islam gance, addiction to risk, and near-insanity of has become so dominant in the twentieth petrochemical companies that spend upward and twenty-fi rst centuries; it is a marvel of a million dollars a day to operate a single of compression and clarity. (He traces the rig dedicated to “siphoning up the remains movement to Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, who of the ancient plants and animals converted founded modern Saudi Arabia in 1932 on by nature into the viscous black gold pooled the principles of an “uncorrupted” form of beneath the ocean fl oor” at depths exceeding Islam promulgated by an eighteenth- “the height of Mount Everest.” When one of century cleric.) Want a précis of how health these rigs, the thirty-story-high Deepwater care became such a hot mess in the USA — Horizon, explodes in a huge ball of fi re in an a mess that, in 2009, desperately cried out American section of the Gulf of Mexico, injur- for a cure? Read his lead-in to the riveting ing seventeen of the 126 people onboard and tale of how he and his team (David Axelrod, leaving eleven platform workers permanently David Plouff e, Robert Gibbs, Rahm Emanuel, unaccounted for, it results in a catastrophic oil and a host of other vividly drawn characters) spill that dwarfs all others in US history. And — with the help of a not-so-secret weapon none of this, Obama fumes, will ever change, named Nancy Pelosi — manage to pass the “because at the end of the day we Americans Aff ordable Care Act (ACA) without a single loved our cheap gas and big cars more than Republican vote. we cared about the environment.”

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33.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd 5566 112/14/202/14/20 110:220:22 AAMM That last rant notwithstanding, Obama is no fi rebrand (though he’s often accused of being one by critics on the right and expected to be one by hopeful backers on the left); by his own reckoning, he’s “a reformer, conserva- tive in temperament if not in vision.” As such he enters the White House intent on forging some sort of bipartisan consensus (he even asks Robert Gates, George W. Bush’s secretary of defense, to stay on in that position — though his eff orts at bipartisan compromise ultimately prove fruitless). Yet he is equally determined, as he recently told the Atlantic’s Jeff rey Goldberg, “to hang on to who I am — my soul, my sense of right and wrong, my character — while operating at the highest level of politics.” This idealism, while challenged, never fl ags — but it nearly always makes room for a clear-eyed realism. President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take the oath of offi ce in January 2009. (“What is it about sixty votes these folks don’t understand?” Obama snaps, with the Deepwater Horizon, his leaves readers with little doubt that understandably irked, when Howard depictions of his family (rendered after eight bruising years in the Dean and others rail at him for not throughout with palpable tenderness White House, his soul remains very including a public option in the ACA and love), and his deliberations over much intact. that would surely have doomed it.) whether to save the lives of some teen- Volume Two cannot arrive fast enough. Still, in passages like those dealing age Somali terrorists, Barack Obama — Lorraine Glennon

What Are You Going Th rough By Sigrid Nunez ’72BC, ’75SOA (Riverhead)

went to hear a Fans of Nunez will fi nd Woolf’s pet marmoset; she man give a talk,” both the themes and the also wrote a memoir of her ÒI writes Sigrid voice familiar. She fi rst 1970s friendship with Susan Nunez ’72BC, earned acclaim with her 1995 Sontag ’93HON), Nunez ’75SOA in the opening sen- debut, the autobiographi- returned to the unnamed tence of her new novel, What cal novel A Feather on the narrator in The Friend, a Are You Going Through. Like Breath of God, narrated by touching examination of much of her prose, the line is an unnamed mixed-race grief that won the 2018 simple and direct. But readers immigrant girl growing up in National Book Award. What should not be fooled by the a Brooklyn housing project Are You Going Through straightforward tone; Nunez’s in the 1950s and ’60s. After appears to be the next chap- seventh novel is stunningly experimenting with literary ter in the character’s life. complex, a nuanced, layered forms over the next two The man in the novel’s fi rst look at aging, friendship, love, decades (the novel Mitz was sentence is not some random

PETE SOUZA / WHITE HOUSE SOUZA PETE and death. a mock biography of Virginia stranger: he’s the narrator’s ex

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— though theirs is not the Through these encounters relationship that drives the and reflections, Nunez Well-Versed- narrative. The protagonist gives us tender and fraught went to the talk while on a glimpses into people’s compli- These three new collections, all by trip to visit a sick friend, and cated lives. Columbia alumni, are a testament she uses the visit to explore It takes some time for to poetry’s power to comfort, to the ideas of aging and love, Nunez to introduce the central empathy and the necessity plot point: the narrator’s sick inspire, and to encourage reflection of connecting with others. friend is dying of cancer and on the world around us Nunez shows how easy it wants her to stay by her side is to let the bonds of friend- as she prepares to kill herself. A TREATISE ON STARS ship fray. “I will not go out in mortifying By Mei-mei Berssenbrugge The narrator’s tone is inti- anguish,” the friend says. ’73SOA mate not just as she describes “I can’t be completely alone. Like her previous twelve encounters with her close I mean, this is a new adven- collections, Mei-mei friends but also as she reports ture — who can say what it Berssenbrugge’s A Treatise on conversations and inci- will really be like. What if on Stars — a finalist for the dents in the lives of others. something goes wrong? National Book Award — is a deep meditation on For much of the book, we are What if everything goes the natural world. As the title suggests, this time wrong? I need to know there’s she focuses on the cosmos, seeking connections someone in the next room.” between society and celestial bodies above. “Epic struggle to keep my composure, to choose my BETWEEN LAKES words,” Nunez’s narrator By Jeffrey Harrison ’80CC notes grimly, before asking if Many of the poems in there is anyone else who can Jeffrey Harrison’s sixth take on this role. But What collection grapple with Are You Going Through is his father’s death and the not a sad book, despite the unique grief and intro- tears shed or fought back. spection that come after When the narrator finally losing a parent. In “Higher agrees to aid her dying Education,” also included friend, the friend texts back, in a volume of the Best “I promise to make it as American Poetry series, Harrison recalls choosing in her head, gaining insight much fun as possible.” to attend Columbia against his father’s wishes. At into her character from And indeed, there is a life- Columbia, Harrison studied the Beat poets and seemingly mundane events. affirming quality and even the core values of Western civilization. “I can’t She recounts, for example, a humor in the evolving com- remember,” he writes now, thinking of his father, conversation with a woman at panionship as the two women “is forgiveness one of them?” her gym who strives to main- prepare for one’s death. The tain her figure. “She knew it book may not quite have the BLIZZARD sounded crazy, the woman narrative engine or emo- By Henri Cole ’82SOA in the locker room said, but tional engagement of some Henri Cole is known for when her sister got cancer of Nunez’s previous work, sonnets that focus on a and lost thirty pounds she but the novel has much to single moment, encounter, couldn’t help wishing it would recommend it. The writer’s or experience — distill- happen to her. And was it so willingness to examine the ing it into perfect lyrical crazy? After all, always hating power of compassion for a sound bites. In Cole’s tenth the way she looked, always friend and the human fear collection, he turns the fighting against her own body of dying alone of a terminal quotidian acts of peeling a MARION ETTLINGER and always, always losing illness has never felt more potato and swatting away the battle meant that she potent or more relevant. an unwelcome bee into profound observations was depressed all the time.” — Stuart Miller ’90JRN about daily life.

58 COLUMBIA WINTER 2020-21

33.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd 5588 112/14/202/14/20 110:220:22 AAMM Th e Oﬃ ce of Historical Corrections

By Danielle Evans ’04CC (Riverhead)

darker,” can’t even fake it; he’s consid- In another story, “Richard of York Gave ered suspicious and is thrown out of Battle in Vain,” a very unlikely wedding CVS Pharmacy when he tries to pick up guest — dealing with her own personal the mother’s prescription. demons — takes a jilted bride on a road Claire, the narrator of “Boys Go to trip that ends up at a cheesy water park. Jupiter,” is white but also reeling from “This is going to be hilarious someday,” her mother’s illness and death, which says the bride. She’s right. It is. sets in motion a tense series of events. The crown jewel of Evans’s collection Hoping to get a rise out of her new step- is the titular novella, about a professor, mother, Claire posts a picture of herself Cassie, who takes a job as a fi eld agent or many young writers, short posing in a skimpy Confederate-fl ag for the “Institute for Public History,” fi ction is a mere launching pad, bikini. The picture goes viral, making a new government body made up of Fa way to hone their skills before her a pariah at her liberal-arts college. fact-checkers and historians tasked with moving on to the more popular But Claire — full of rage, youthful pig- confronting the “contemporary crisis (and lucrative) novel. Thankfully, that headedness, and trauma stemming from of truth,” by correcting “decades of bad isn’t the case for Danielle Evans ’04CC. an incident with a Black ex-boyfriend information” let loose in the real world. Her fi rst story collection, Before You — stubbornly doubles down. Claire isn’t For her fi rst few years on the job, Suff ocate Your Own Fool Self, earned a sympathetic character, but Evans is an Cassie’s work is low-stakes. She ducks into her a slew of awards and a place in the empathetic writer and seems to accept if souvenir shops to change incorrect dates National Book Foundation’s 2011 not forgive Claire’s actions as a conse- and, in a particularly amusing scene, “5 Under 35” cohort. Now, with The quence of her profound grief. educates the cashier at a bakery about Offi ce of Historical Corrections — a why the history behind its promotional selection of stories plus a standout Juneteenth dessert is wrong. novella — Evans proves herself not just But then Cassie is sent on a more committed to the genre but also a mod- important mission, which turns into a ern master of the form. thought-provoking historical mystery. A To suggest that the seven stories fall former colleague has caused havoc in a under a single theme would do a dis- rural Wisconsin town by questioning a service to Evans’s creativity. It’s fair to long-believed story — that in the 1930s, say that nearly all of them tackle grief, the town’s sole Black resident was race, and romantic relationships — and burned to death inside his leather-goods often the complicated intersection of store by a racist mob. As a new mob the three. gathers, unnerved by this interloper Loss is prevalent in many of the digging into the town’s past, Cassie stories, and Evans, whose own mother Despite the emphasis on heavy topics, begins to uncover secrets and truths recently died of cancer, writes viscerally this is not a dour book. Evans is very — ones that resonate far beyond the and specifi cally about experiencing funny and puts her characters in absurd town’s limits. grief as a person of color. In the fi rst situations that are just realistic enough In a year defi ned by both racial dis- story, “Happily Ever After,” a young to be entirely believable. Lyssa, the nar- cord and the spread of disinformation, woman realizes that she has to present rator of “Happily Ever After,” watches The Offi ce of Historical Correctionsfeels herself in a certain way at her mother’s her own life tank while she’s working in particularly timely, and Evans’s voice hospital bed to get the information she the gift shop of a replica of the Titanic. stands out as one to watch. She’s doing needs. “Tell me what you would tell a Her supervisor, “who mumbled some- important work here; but with riveting white woman, her face said. A white thing about historical accuracy,” tells her storytelling and wit to spare, it doesn’t woman with money, her clothes said.” she isn’t allowed to attend the birthday feel like work at all.

BEOWULF SHEEHAN BEOWULF The woman’s boyfriend, “several shades parties held there because she is Black. — Rebecca Shapiro

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33.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd 5599 112/14/202/14/20 110:220:22 AAMM BOOKS Th e Last Million

By David Nasaw ’72GSAS (Penguin Press)

n The Last Million, a tour de force leaders of Canada, Australia, and other of historical reckoning, historian Allied nations, posed a logical question: IDavid Nasaw ’72GSAS rubs the why should they accept these refugees sepia off the gauzy images of when the US would not? (Truman was triumph, liberation, and joy that live sympathetic to their plight, but Con- in our collective imagination of the gress stood fast.) Allied victory in Europe. In their place, Faced with severe postwar labor Nasaw leaves us with a grim reality: shortages, many of these countries came the estimated seven million displaced to recognize that the camps represented persons (DPs) who were left stranded, a rich source of workers and began to Palestine after the war, but Israel’s malnourished, and utterly bereft in the recruiting DPs to work in agriculture, emergence as a nation — via the UN’s wreckage that had been Nazi Germany. mines, and factories, and as nurses and 1948 decision to partition Palestine and While most of this number eventually domestic servants. Yet these laborers Truman’s immediate endorsement of repatriated to their home countries, were rarely Jewish, in part because that decision — hastened their exodus Nasaw, whose previous books include the job descriptions, with thinly veiled to a place they considered their histor- Pulitzer Prize–nominated biographies anti-Semitism, deliberately omitted ical homeland. (In the 1950s, nearly of Joseph P. Kennedy and Andrew Car- work that Jews were thought suited for. 57,000 of Europe’s displaced Jews also negie, zeroes in on the “last million” DPs In 1948, after years of dithering, the US emigrated to the US.) who languished for up to fi ve years in Congress fi nally passed the Displaced Yet Nasaw underscores the irony that refugee camps, waiting to be resettled Persons Act, though it too was designed the resettlement in Israel brought about because they no longer had countries to keep Jews out: the bill stipulated that the displacement of 750,000 Palestin- to return to. Among these were Poles, only DPs who had entered Germany ians, who have been forced to live as ref- Ukrainians, and Balts who’d worked for before December 22, 1945, were eligible ugees for generations. Indeed, the Allied the Nazis and now refused to return to for visas, thereby excluding 90 percent victors, in their gross mishandling of Soviet-dominated homelands, as well as of the Jews in the DP camps. It also World War II’s DP crisis, “paved a path — most tragically — the quarter million blocked anyone suspected of harboring the developed world would follow when Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, whose Soviet sympathies — a charge leveled at confronted by similar refugee crises in homes in Europe had vanished and who Jews because many who’d survived had the second half of the twentieth and the could not remain in the place where their done so only because they’d escaped to fi rst quarter of the twenty-fi rst centuries,” families had been murdered. the USSR during the war. Nasaw asserts. One reads this prodigiously Meanwhile, refl ecting the anti-Soviet As this book so powerfully illustrates, researched, multilayered story with fervor in postwar America, the 1948 the war in Europe did not end when ever-more-horrifi ed fascination as the bill eased visa restrictions for DPs the fi ghting stopped: the casualties victorious Allies, having prevailed over from western Ukraine and the Baltic mounted for years. Today we inhabit a the great evil of Nazism, proceeded to nations, whose homelands had been world of endless war, where the fi ghting play politics and pass the buck — amid “annexed by a foreign power” (namely never stops. (Consider that an American a global frenzy of anti-Semitism, xeno- the USSR). As a result, thousands of college freshman in 2020 has not lived phobia, and Cold War saber-rattling Nazi collaborators and even war crim- a single day when her country was not — while desperate people suff ered. No inals immigrated to the US, a shocking at war, and the same situation applies country on earth seemed willing to open number of whom went to work for much more brutally to millions of other its borders to these stateless casualties the CIA, the US military, and other young people around the globe.) The of war. President Harry Truman tried anti-communist organizations. terrible upshot is that there are cur- to persuade Prime Minister Clement As for the Jews, their fate was inex- rently nearly eighty million displaced Attlee to open Palestine, then under a tricably bound up with the story of people worldwide, or 1 percent of the British mandate, to the Jewish sur- Palestine and its transformation into world’s population. It’s safe to say that vivors, but Attlee refused, fearful of the modern state of Israel. Thousands of the dismal legacy of the last million is in arousing the ire of the UK’s allies in the displaced Jews in Europe had under- no danger of fading. Arab world. And Attlee, along with the taken the harrowing illegal journey — Lorraine Glennon

60 COLUMBIA WINTER 2020-21

33.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd 6600 112/14/202/14/20 110:220:22 AAMM READING LIST New and noteworthy three centuries of Ameri- can essays beginning in the releases Colonial period, seeking a diverse selection to represent SHE COME BY IT NATURAL the complicated history of a By Sarah Smarsh ’05SOA nation. The result is an eclec- For decades, Dolly Parton tic and engaging mix, with was for many people authors as wide-ranging as more of a punch line than George Washington and an icon. But for Sarah Zadie Smith, Frederick Doug- Smarsh, who grew up lass and Dorothy Parker. in rural Kansas, country music was “how we talked CRITIQUE AND PRAXIS to each other in a place By Bernard E. Harcourt where feelings aren’t dis- With the overlapping ten- cussed.” And Dolly Parton sions of a global pandemic, reigned supreme — par- a national reckoning on race ticularly among the tough, and policing, and a fraught hard-working women in presidential election, 2020 Smarsh’s life. Smarsh was was a year of unparalleled a National Book Award turmoil. In his new book, finalist for her first book, Columbia Law School profes- and by the time she found an from fellow Columbia alums Heartland, an incisive sor Bernard E. Harcourt — a alternative — hours away in Selena Gambrell Anderson look into the rural working longtime social-justice activ- Pittsburgh — it was too late. ’10SOA, Theresa Hottel ’18SOA, class. With her new book, ist — uses critical theory to Parravani’s memoir about her and Hilary Leichter ’12SOA she takes a deep dive into help readers strategize about pregnancy and the choices (also a Columbia writing Parton’s cultural contribu- becoming more engaged citi- that she was forced to make instructor), whose story tions to communities like zens during this unique time. is candid, eye-opening, and about a witch casting a spell her own, paying homage The most important shift in heartbreaking. In addition on an unsuspecting hipster to the ways the singer gave mindset, Harcourt argues, is to telling her own story, she couple is a standout. a voice to so many women thinking specifically about paints a broad picture of how otherwise overlooked. what each of us can do as decreased access to abortion THE STORY OF individuals rather than what correlates directly with prob- EVOLUTION IN THE GLORIOUS broad changes need to be lems like infant mortality 25 DISCOVERIES AMERICAN ESSAY made in society. and child hunger. By Donald R. Prothero ’82GSAS By Phillip Lopate ’64CC Geologist and paleontologist With the country deeply LOVED AND WANTED TINY NIGHTMARES Donald R. Prothero is an divided and new questions By Christa Parravani ’03SOA Coedited by Lincoln Michel expert at explaining complex about the future of democ- Christa Parravani was forty ’09SOA A story doesn’t have scientific breakthroughs in racy arising every day, there years old when she found to be long to have staying easily digestible forms. In has never been a better time herself unexpectedly preg- power, especially if it’s as the previous three volumes for an anthology that looks nant with her third child. terrifying as the selections of his “25 discoveries” series, at the American experiment The news was not welcome in this horror anthology, Prothero tackled rocks, through some of its greatest — Parravani’s marriage and coedited by Lincoln Michel, a fossils, and dinosaurs. Now thinkers and writers, from finances were both shaky, writing instructor at Colum- he turns his attention to the Founding Fathers to the and she was about to start a bia’s School of the Arts. None evolution, chronicling twenty- present day. For this new new job as a creative-writing of the forty-two “flash fiction” five major moments that collection, editor Phillip instructor at West Virginia entries are more than a few advanced our understanding Lopate — a prominent University. Parravani wanted pages long, but all are inven- of our place in the history essayist and professor of to end the pregnancy, but tive, surprising, and often of the universe. As always, writing at Columbia’s School there was little access to downright blood-curdling. Prothero is an entertaining, of the Arts — sifted through abortion in West Virginia, Michel includes original work informative guide.

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33.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd 6611 112/14/202/14/20 110:220:22 AAMM BOOKTALK A High--Minded Argument Carl L. Hart, the Ziff Professor of Psychology at Columbia, studies the effects of drugs on the mind and body. In Drug Use for Grown-Ups, he critiques current drug laws and argues that recreational drugs can enrich the lives of responsible adults.

unemployment rates and that it made So we have to take the focus off the people violent. I no longer believe in drug and look at other issues in people’s this harmful fantasy. The problems that lives to understand why they become plagued my community had every- addicted. The eff ects produced by thing to do with poverty, inadequate drugs depend upon multiple factors, access to aff ordable health care, lack of including dose, the method used to economic opportunities, racism, and take the drug, and the setting in which police brutality, among other instances drug use occurs. of long-standing governmental neglect and abuse. In other words, drugs didn’t CM: You have sampled many controlled cause the problems, they exposed them. substances, including heroin, which seems like the scariest of drugs. CM: What role did your research play CLH: Heroin is just another opioid, no in altering your views? more or less scary than other drugs. Columbia Magazine: What is your CLH: It played a huge role, of course. book’s fundamental argument? My research entails giving drugs to CM: Would you like to see all these Carl L. Hart: The most vital argument people and carefully studying their drugs legalized and regulated? focuses on the concept of liberty as guar- immediate and delayed responses. CLH: Yes. They should be regulated and anteed by our Declaration of Indepen- The data did not support my precon- legally available for adult consumption. dence. The Declaration states that each ceived notion that drugs were bad, This would create numerous jobs and of us is endowed with certain rights, period. For example, research partici- generate hundreds of millions of dollars including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit pants consistently reported feelings of in tax revenue. Legal drug regulation of Happiness,” and that governments magnanimity, joy, empathy, euphoria, would markedly reduce drug-related are created for the purpose of protecting and other positive moods after taking deaths caused by accidental overdoses. these rights. I use the topic of drug use drugs such as MDMA (a.k.a. Molly, A large proportion of these deaths are to show how we, as a society, are failing Ecstasy), methamphetamine, and even caused by adulterated substances pur- to live up to the country’s noble promise crack cocaine. I have given thousands chased on the illicit market. A regulated to all citizens. Hundreds of thousands of doses to research participants and market, with uniform quality standards, of Americans are arrested each year for have never observed anything remotely would virtually put an end to contam- pursuing pleasure and happiness by resembling violence or aggression inated drug consumption and greatly using drugs. The book also demonstrates following the administration of crack reduce fatal accidental drug overdoses. that US drug laws and their enforcement or any other drug. are racist. Black people are four times These data are ignored and distorted CM: Are you hoping other professionals as likely to be arrested for marijuana in order to keep the public fearful and come out about their drug use? possession as their white counterparts, outraged about drug use, and Black CLH: I hope people see that current even though the two groups use and sell and brown bodies continue to pile up laws violate the spirit of the Declaration drugs at similar rates. behind bars. This is dead wrong. of Independence. I hope readers also see that our drug laws are ruthlessly CM: You used to believe that drug use was CM: With drugs such as heroin and unjust, especially because of how they a major cause of violence in urban neigh- methamphetamine, you say that 10 to are weaponized against Black people borhoods, like the one where you grew 30 percent of users become addicts. and the poor. Martin Luther King Jr. up. How has your thinking changed? Isn’t that still a considerable risk? aptly noted that “one has a moral CLH: I believed, like many Americans, CLH: It’s not a tiny number. But what responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” JONNY RUZZO that drug addiction — crack addiction, I wanted the reader to know is that the I take this responsibility seriously. speciﬁ cally — was the cause of high vast majority don’t become addicted. Ñ Julia M. Klein

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WANT TO ADVERTISE IN OUR NEXT ISSUE? ¡ Contact: [email protected] ¡ Rate: $6 per word ¡ Deadline: April 1, 2021

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33.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd.20_BOOKS-8PP.indd 6633 112/14/202/14/20 110:230:23 AAMM BACKSTORY Lorenzo Da Ponte’s Second Act How Mozart’s librettist became the father of Italian studies at Columbia

ne day in 1807, a fifty- to remarry, and Emanuele, as was eight-year-old man with the custom, took the name of the Ohollow cheeks and deep- converting bishop. To further his set eyes walked into the education, he became a priest, Isaac Riley & Co. bookstore at and after writing polemical poems 123 Broadway. He was Lorenzo Da against the ruling class — and Ponte, a defrocked Italian priest fathering two children with his who twenty years earlier had writ- mistress — he was banished from ten the libretti to three Mozart Venice. Through the connections operas — Don Giovanni, The Mar- of a poet friend, Da Ponte, the riage of Figaro, and Così fan tutte. witty, scholarly sensualist, became But gambling debts, love affairs, the librettist for the Italian the- and politics had chased him from ater company in Vienna. There Europe, and in 1805 Da Ponte he worked with Mozart as well as arrived in America, where he tried with Mozart’s archrival, Antonio to support his family by opening Salieri. After Mozart died in 1791, a grocery in New Jersey. The store Da Ponte’s chronic mishaps in failed, and he opened another. amore and finance would send It also failed. him fleeing across the sea. Da Ponte had a special genius In 1825, long after his Euro- for doomed business ventures. pean triumphs and travails, and He brought dozens of Italian after years of tutoring, Da Ponte, books with him from overseas and at seventy-six, became the first ordered more in hopes of reselling professor of Italian at Columbia. them in his new country. This led He was not salaried: students him to Riley’s, “a famous importer paid him directly, and registra- of European books and a pillar of culture,” says Barbara Faedda, tion fluctuated. It was another perceived slight for a man for- executive director of Columbia’s Italian Academy for Advanced ever bemoaning the perfidies of an ungrateful world. But he Studies in America and author of From Da Ponte to the Casa never stopped promoting Italian culture, and he produced Don Italiana. When Da Ponte asked Riley if he had any Italian books, Giovanni in New York in 1826. “Lorenzo’s students were the another customer, Clement Clarke Moore 1798CC, 1829HON, only ones able to understand the Italian libretto,” says Faedda. interjected that he could count the great Italian writers on one Desperate as always for cash, Da Ponte sold 264 books to hand. “Lorenzo was offended,” says Faedda. “He said, ‘I could Columbia. Seven of them, including works by Machiavelli, spend a month naming eminent Italian writers and poets.’” historian Angelo di Costanzo, and painter-poet Lorenzo Lippi, The twenty-eight-year-old Moore, a biblical scholar who survive in Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. And AVERY ARCHITECTURAL AND FINE ARTS LIBRARY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY later gained fame for the poem known as “The Night Before Da Ponte himself, who died in 1838 just shy of ninety, remains Christmas,” was impressed by Da Ponte and introduced him a Columbia presence. His portrait (by an unknown artist) to his father, the Right Reverend Benjamin Moore 1768KC, hangs in the Casa Italiana, and in 1929 the Italian department 1789HON, who was the president of Columbia College. created a Lorenzo Da Ponte chair, currently held by Dante Through the Moores, Da Ponte became a private Italian tutor scholar Teodolinda Barolini ’78GSAS. for the offspring of elite New York families. This winter, the Mozart Week festival in Salzburg, Austria — “He made friends with writers, painters, intellectuals,” says Mozart’s birthplace — features a performance of Don Giovanni. Faedda. “Everyone was aware that he had worked with the Da Ponte may have based his tragic philanderer in part on his great Mozart and spent years in the best courts and opera friend Casanova, but the character’s Act 2 utterance could be houses in Europe. Lorenzo was a star.” Da Ponte’s epitaph: Long live the women! Long live good wine! Da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano in a Jewish ghetto Forever may they sustain and exalt humanity! near Venice in 1749. His widowed father converted to Catholicism — Paul Hond

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33.20_BACKSTORY_DaPonte.indd.20_BACKSTORY_DaPonte.indd 6644 112/14/202/14/20 22:16:16 PPMM “Columbia changed my life. I want other young people to have that chance.”

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Grace at Columbia in 1977

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