The Roots of Mass Incarceration 1969Elizabeth Hinton’S Unsettling Discoveries

Home , Elizabeth Hinton, Hannah Duston, Harvard Magazine, Harvard Science Center, Johnston Gate, Michael Shinagel

Global Literature • Life Lessons • Unsung Suffragist

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019 • $4.95 The Roots of Mass Incarceration 1969Elizabeth Hinton’s unsettling discoveries

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 INVEST IN YOUR CLASSMATES. WE DO.

We are a private venture capital fund exclusively for Harvard alumni. Our fund invests in a diversified portfolio of venture-backed companies founded or led by fellow alumni. If you are an accredited investor and looking for a smart, simple way to add VC to your portfolio, join us. This year’s fund — The Yard Ventures 4 — is now open to new investors.

LEARN MORE Visit www.theyardventures.com/alumni Email [email protected] Call 877-299-4538

The manager of The Yard Ventures 4 is Launch Angels Management Company, LLC, dba Alumni Ventures Group (AVG). AVG is a venture capital firm and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Harvard University. For informational purposes only; offers of securities are made only to accredited investors pursuant to the fund’s offering documents, which describe the risks and other information that should be considered before investing. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Contact Michael Madden at [email protected] or [email protected] for additional information.

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

190929_AVG.indd 1 7/22/19 10:01 AM SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019, VOLUME 122, NUMBER 1

FEATURES 40 Color and Incarceration | by Lydialyle Gibson Elizabeth Hinton probes the origins of mass imprisonment in America 46 Throw Your Fastball | by Chad Oldfather Recalling a life lesson on how to navigate Harvard

48 A World of Literature | by Spencer Lee Lenfield David Damrosch expands the reading list, globally and through time p. 20 54 Vita: Adella Hunt Logan | by Adele Logan Alexander Brief life of a rebellious black suffragist: 1863-1915

JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL 20 The campus under construction, President Bacow: Year One, an applied mathematician, celebrating America’s unschooled singers, a third boost for bioengineering, the registrar’s long ride, a half-century-plus in admissions, Jane Pickering for the Peabody, a coach cashiered and a professor sanctioned, life lessons from divestment, new Undergraduate Fellows, and a soccer star finds her footing

DEPARTMENTS 2 Cambridge 02138 | Letters from our readers—and a comment on counseling students p. 48

3 The View from Mass Hall

11 Right Now | Vaping and mass media, what John Rawls wrought, “exceptional responders” to medical therapies

16A Harvard2 | Autumn events, visualizing science, New England oddities, Purgatory Chasm and greater Worcester, a very old house, exploring North Shore horse country, Boston Public Market, and more

56 Montage | A YouTuber’s progress, how the American Dream got tarnished, caring for a loved one, stage set designer, 1,001 great books, a dark animator, when urban renewal worked, and more

67 Alumni | Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s animal insights, the Alumni Association’s president from Down Under

72 The College Pump | Talking turkeys, toe-touching traditions, summer in the city p. 67 80 Treasure | A treasured pocket globe On the cover: Police officers frisk suspects against a bus in New York City, 1980.

FROM TOP RIGHT:JIM HARRISON; STU ROSNER; JIM HARRISON; RICHARD BEACHAM (3) 73 Crimson Classifieds Photograph by Jill Freedman/Getty Images

p. 15 www.harvardmagazine.com

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

LETTERS

editor: John S. Rosenberg

senior editor: Jean Martin Cambridge  managing editor: Jonathan S. Shaw art director: Jennifer Carling Dani Rodrik, opioid associations, origins of life associate editors: Marina N. Bolotnikova, Lydialyle Gibson

staff writer/editor: Jacob J. Sweet assistant editor/special sections OTHER TRUTHS however, I learned that manager: Nell Porter Brown Like Professor Stuart they too had been abused Schreiber, I found out by their father, my bio-dad. berta greenwald ledecky undergraduate fellows by accident that my dad Not until my twenty- Isa Flores-Jones, Catherine Zhang was not actually my bio- ffth reunion did I come to logical father (“Truth: A the realization that I had daniel steiner undergraduate editorial fellow Love Story,” July-August, to quit dwelling on the Nina Pasquini page 53). Unlike Schrei past and concentrate on ber, however, I discov- the future. My classmates contributing editors ered this at age 16, and have been so helpful and John T. Bethell, Lincoln Caplan, was able to determine supportive in my healing Dick Friedman, Adam Goodheart, within 24 hours the iden- process, and I thank them Elizabeth Gudrais, Jim Harrison, tity of my bio-dad, when for that. Courtney Humphries, Christopher S. I walked into my girlfriend’s home room Jeff Gerken ’71 Johnson, Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, and told her “I found out the most amazing Leland, N.C. Spencer Lee Lenfield, Stu Rosner, thing last night.” She replied, “I know what Deborah Smullyan, Mark Steele you’re going to tell me. Everyone in Logan Stuart Schreiber’s story is extraordi- harvard magazine inc. [our small town in southeastern Ohio] has nary on many levels: for its honesty and in- president: Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. known about it for years.” I learned that bio- timacy, but also for what it tells us about the ’69. directors: Ann M. Blair ’84, Peter K. dad was a doctor who had graduated from false nature-nurture dichotomy. Schreiber Bol, Scott V. Edwards, Ann Marie Lipinski, Ohio State and who had met my mother couldn’t be more successful in the terms the NF ’90, Philip W. Lovejoy, Susan Morris when she was a nursing student. world and the world of Harvard value. We Novick ’85, John P. Reardon Jr. ’60, The discovery explained a lot of myster- credit his intellect, hard work, character Bryan E. Simmons ’83 ies, such as why both my younger brothers traits, resilience, and luck among other fac- Board of Incorporators were six inches taller than me, why I received tors. Without knowing the back story told This magazine, at ﬁrst called the Harvard Bulletin, was much more physical and especially mental by his DNA/family tree studies, we would founded in 1898. Its Board of Incorporators was char- abuse from my dad, and why he would go look to his “brilliant” father and “angel” tered in 1924 and remains active in the magazine’s governance. The membership is as follows: Stephen into a rage whenever my mother even talked mother and muse that “the apple does not J. Bailey, AMP ’94; Jeffrey S. Behrens ’89, William I. with a doctor. fall far from the tree.” We might also give Bennett ’62, M.D. ’69; John T. Bethell ’54; Peter K. Bol; We never talked about this in the family due credit for his success to the environment Fox Butterﬁeld ’61, A.M. ’64; Sewell Chan ’98; Jona- than S. Cohn ’91; Philip M. Cronin ’53, J.D. ’56; James until after Dad died. At that time, around he grew up in—“zip code” advantages. But F. Dwinell III ’62; Anne Fadiman ’74; Benjamin M. 2001, I wrote a letter to my bio-dad, but never then he tells us of abuse, adultery, prostitu- Friedman ’66, Ph.D. ’71; Robert H. Giles, NF ’66; Rich- received a response. Then, in 2016, my wife tion, moonshine, and even murder, all part ard H. Gilman, M.B.A. ’83; Owen Gingerich, Ph.D. ’62; Adam K. Goodheart ’92; Philip C. Haughey ’57; Brian determined that she was going to get some of his family story. It’s also likely that being R. Hecht ’92; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy ’68, Ph.D. ’75; Ellen answers, and fnally located my half-sister in Cajun in Louisiana/Mississippi didn’t confer Hume ’68; Alex S. Jones, NF ’82;Thomas F. Kelly, Ph.D. Fort Bragg, California. After a series of letters much advantage. ’73; William C. Kirby; Bill Kovach, NF ’89; Florence Ladd, BI ’72; Jennifer 8 Lee ’99; Randolph C. Lindel ’66; and emails, we fnally met with my half-sister I gained from Schreiber’s story a new re- Ann Marie Lipinski, NF ’90; Scott Malkin ’80, J.D.- and two half-brothers in Santa Rosa in 2017. spect both for the science he practices and M.B.A. ’83; Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. ’69, Ed ’77, L I had often wondered how my life would for the vast unknowns that make us what ’78; Lisa L. Martin, Ph.D. ’90; David McClintick ’62; Winthrop L. McCormack ’67; M. Lee Pelton, Ph.D. have been different if I had grown up in a we are. It also gave me a new appreciation ’84; John P. Reardon Jr. ’60; Harriet Ritvo ’68, Ph.D. ’75; family headed by a successful doctor rather of the variegated fabric that makes up this Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98; Barbara than in the abusive environment that I was so amazing American people in this amazing Rudolph ’77; Robert N. Shapiro ’72, J.D. ’78; Theda Skocpol, Ph.D. ’75; Peter A. Spiers ’76; Scott H. Stossel happy to escape when I headed east to Har- “land of opportunity.” From “wretched re- ’91; Sherry Turkle ’69, Ph.D. ’76; Robert H. Weiss ’54; vard. When I fnally met my half-siblings, fuse,” slaves, refugees, indentured servants, Jan Ziolkowski.

2 September - October 2019

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

Climate Change

niversities are among the most creative and powerful forces for shaping the future. At our best, we prepare students to devote their lives to causes larger than themselves. We bring together scholars whose insights Uhelp illuminate and address society’s greatest challenges. We con- vene conversations that help envision how tomorrow might be better than today. If the future is our genuine concern, we must face up to the stark reality of climate change. The scientifc consensus is by now clear: the threat is real, the potential consequences are grave, and the time to focus on solutions is now. Climate change poses an immediate and concrete test of whether we, as members of a university and responsible inhabitants of our planet, will fulfll a sacred obliga- tion: to enable future generations to enjoy, as we are privileged to enjoy, the wonders of life on Earth. As we redouble our research, education, and engagement, we While there is much we are already doing, we have far more still must also pursue sustainable practices on campus—with emphasis to do. Our faculty, students, and staff are seeking to understand the on reducing our energy consumption, embracing renewable sources, mechanisms and effects of climate change, and to devise technologies and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and their harmful effects. that can accelerate the transition to cleaner, greener energy. They are Through the Climate Action Plan adopted in 2018, we hope to be- exploring how best to shape policies and incentives conducive to dec come fossil fuel-neutral by 2026 and fossil fuel-free by 2050. With arbonizing the global economy and mitigating climate risks locally, the guidance of our Office for Sustainability, we are committed to nationally, and internationally. They are imagining the future of build- serving as a living lab for innovative approaches, hoping our work ings, transportation systems, and communities and cities large and can help others as well. Sustainability is the daily work of each of small, in a world where sustainability progresses from emerging ideal us—in what we choose to consume, how we travel, how we live to pervasive practice. They are addressing the crucial role industry our everyday lives. must play in reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels and em- Amid our larger academic and institutional efforts, debate over bracing an ethos of sustainability. They are asking how individuals, investment policy—including demands to divest from the fossil organizations, and entire societies can be motivated to pursue trans- fuel industry—will no doubt continue at Harvard and beyond. This formative and disorienting change in the face of uncertainty, inertia, debate is healthy. And while I, like my predecessors, believe that en- and sometimes outright denial. Our efforts must include addressing gaging with industry to confront the challenge of climate change is the concerns of people understandably anxious about the impact of ultimately a sounder and more effective approach for our university, such change on their jobs, their families, and their ways of life. Ef- I respect the views of those who think otherwise. We may differ on fectively confronting climate change is a social, economic, political, means. But I believe we seek the same ends—a decarbonized future and human challenge no less than a scientifc and technological one. in which life on Earth can flourish for ages to come. This work is not easy, and the solutions are not obvious—all Reaching that goal means recognizing climate change as a defn- the more reason they demand our attention. We must build on ing challenge of our time. I hope we can all fnd common cause in the efforts of our Climate Change Solutions Fund, our University the wider search for innovative, collaborative, effective solutions. Center for the Environment, and the growing array of programs We owe the future nothing less. and initiatives across our schools that regard climate change and the future of energy as a focal concern. We must meet a perennial Sincerely, Harvard challenge: not just multiplying our distributed efforts but fnding ways to connect and amplify them. We must be a willing partner and active convener in the search for solutions. The stakes are too high, and the need for cooperative effort too great, for us not to engage others in forging pathways forward.

Harvard Magazine 3

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

Letters One of Trump’s themes has been globalization’s negative impact on “the working classes.” publisher: Irina Kuksin and convicts, as well as pious pilgrims and have more accurately described the Trump planters, emerges a strong diverse people government as concerned with the same as- director of circulation and fundraising Felecia Carter that includes stars like Stuart Schreiber. pects of globalization that Professor Rodrik : Ann Barnet, M.D. ’55 is. One of Trump’s central themes has been donor relations and stewardship Washington, D.C. that globalization has had an extraordinari- manager: Allison Kern ly negative impact on “the working classes” director of advertising: I was struck by the amount of domestic in this country. Unlike Rodrik, Trump has Robert D. Fitta violence in this article. The author says that been able to do something about it. The new england advertising manager: his maternal grandmother was forced into reality is that Rodrik, as an academic, has Abby Shepard prostitution at the age of 14 and that both reached many of the same conclusions that he and his mother were physically abused Trump and his advisers have: globalization classified advertising manager: Gretchen Bostrom by his father for what seems to be at least 10 has hurt the American working class and years. Both the author and his mother were severely weakened our manufacturing abil- creative marketing director: trauma victims. For the effects of trauma, ity; has benefted those in the upper income/ Jennifer Beaumont which are severe and long-lasting, see Trauma investment classes disproportionately; has production and design manager: and Recovery by Dr. Judith Herman and other not had the benefcial impact hoped for in Lydia S. C. Rosenberg works in this feld. I was very impressed that developing countries; and has endangered web and technical support specialist: the author eventually gained the respect of American sovereignty by subordinating our Walter Augustine his father and was able to come to terms interests to countries like China. I know it gift processor and office manager: with his father by his own, unaided efforts. would get the editor fred if he/she had tak- Robert Bonotto I think that’s rare for trauma victims. en this approach, but it would have been Lynn Lichtenstein ’65 interesting to read what Rodrik sees as ben- ivy league magazine network Chevy Chase, Md. efcial about Trump’s trade moves. director of operations: Charles C. Kessler ’64, M.B.A. ’71 Heather Wedlake, Heatherwedlake@ THE TRILEMMA Houston, Minn. ivymags.com I see that the Ford Foundation profes- editorial and business office sor of international political economy at the Editor’s note: Neither editor nor author is at 7 Ware Street Kennedy School, Dani Rodrik, thinks pro- risk of, or in fear of, being fred for the maga- Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 moting unionization and Elizabeth War- zine’s reporting. Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 ren’s proposal for worker participation on Website: www.harvardmagazine.com corporate boards marvelous ideas (“The Tri- OPIOID ASSOCIATIONS E-mail: [email protected] lemma,” July-August, page 46). Gee whiz, I As a concerned alumnus and physician, I @harvardmagazine would never have guessed that. would urge Harvard to take a strong stand John Braeman ’54 against the purveyors of opioids in the cur- facebook.com/harvardmagazine Champaign, Ill. rent health crisis that is contributing to de- Harvard Magazine (ISSN 0095-2427) is published bi- clining life expectancy in the United States. monthly by Harvard Magazine Inc., a nonprofit cor- I skimmed the article because it is longer In my view, the best way to do this is to sever poration, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, phone 617-495-5746; fax 617-495-0324. The magazine is than need be. I was irritated right at the ties to the Sackler family and remove the supported by reader contributions and subscriptions, beginning with the author’s characteriz- Sackler name from the museum that is part advertising revenue, and a subvention from Harvard University. Its editorial content is the responsibility of ing Trump’s administration as “authoritar- of the Harvard Art Museums. the editors. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Mass., ian,” which is false. Had she thought some The Sackler family needs to be held ac- and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Circulation Department, Harvard more about what she was writing she might countable for their role in the opioid epi- Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037. demic in this country, much as the to- Subscription rate $30 a year in U.S. and possessions, $55 SPEAK UP, PLEASE bacco magnates were held accountable in Canada and Mexico, $75 other foreign. (Allow up to 10 weeks for first delivery.) Subscription orders and Harvard Magazine welcomes letters a past era. There hasn’t been any remorse customer service inquiries should be sent to the Cir- on its contents. Please write to “Let- expressed by the Sacklers for their role in culation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, or call 617-495-5746 or ters,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, the opioid epidemic, which is particularly 800-648-4499, or e-mail [email protected]. Cambridge 02138, send comments by e- troubling. Single copies $4.95, plus $2.50 for postage and han- dling. Manuscript submissions are welcome, but we mail to yourturn@harvard.edu, use our By not taking a strong stand for victims cannot assume responsibility for safekeeping. Include website, www.harvardmagazine.com, of opioid addiction, my concern is that Har- stamped, self-addressed envelope for manuscript re- or fax us at 617-495-0324. Letters may vard’s reputation on this issue is being sul- turn. Persons wishing to reprint any portion of Harvard Magazine’s contents are required to write in advance for be edited to fit the available space. lied. The public outcry against the Sacklers permission. Address inquiries to Irina Kuk- is growing, and it is seems clear at this point sin, publisher, at the address given above. Copyright © 2019 Harvard Magazine Inc.

4 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters 7 WARE STREET who come to college having internalized the case, and there is even research conducted strong parental pressure to be premed— by a Harvard Graduate School of Education A Chill in the Air? only to fnd they neither want to pursue Ed.D., all the way over on Appian Way, dem- On June 3—four days after Commence- that path, nor really know how to set out onstrating that students have embraced such ment, with graduates gone and undergrad- on another? Or whose families rupture once identities (see “Mastering the ‘Hidden Cur- uates scattered for the summer—the College they leave home—or require their continuing riculum,’” November-December 2017, page announced a shift in its academic-support fnancial contribution to make ends meet? 18). But the Crimson culture famously prizes paradigm, from counseling, provided since 1947 These tensions, loaded on to an adolescent every tub on its own bottom—both structur- through the Bureau of Study Counsel (BSC), newly enrolled in a community lacking fa- ally, in terms of the individual schools, and to skill-oriented coaching, to be delivered miliar friends and family supports, may call in its assumption that everyone admitted to through a new Academic Resource Center for some level of counseling and support that the community can cut it individually: going (ARC). The emailed note from dean of under- does not rise to the level of full mental-health to office hours for extra help, seeking other graduate education Amanda Claybaugh and care. And for some of the students who most kinds of support. College dean Rakesh Khurana began briskly: need that intermediate support between aca- The brand is wildly successful (consult “Nothing is more important to us than ensur- demic coaching and mental-health services the application data, admission rate, and ing that you thrive academically at Harvard.” (which may be far more stigmatized than yield). But there are those who will tell you Rightly so: this is an educational institution, a “counseling” relationship), BSC may be a that Harvard can be an impersonal place, and students’ learning is central to its work. kinder, gentler, more effective acronym, and especially for people who fnd, or feel, they There is much to be said for the change (de- organization, than the new ARC. aren’t winning at every moment of every day. tailed at harvardmag.com/bsc-to-arc-19). More broadly, today’s students at Harvard It ought not to be excessively proud of that. • Students report a lot of academic stress, (and other similarly selective, elite institu- and techniques exist to help them do their tions) differ from their predecessors in an- The ARC may focus resources productively work better—and make academic and extra- other way not associated with familiar ethnic, on academic needs, applying the best current curricular commitments more manageable. racial, or socioeconomic metrics. Nearly all techniques from learning science and cogni- • The students who might beneft from of them got into a college or university that tion to real problems, thus helping students such skills are far more diverse than those has the narrowest of funnels—which all but succeed academically at Harvard. Resources thronging Cambridge after World War II. requires the highest levels of prior perfor- aren’t infnite, and innovative universities like They arrived then with varying degrees of mance, academically and otherwise, to make this one too infrequently close legacy opera- study savvy and combat trauma—but were the cut. In the prevailing high-stakes admis- tions in an effort to be at least a little lean. So otherwise more uniform (read: white, male). sions game, many undergraduates seem hyper- the business case is clear. • Other forms of diversity have cropped up, developed intellectually and in their extracur- Nonetheless, in moving simultaneously to too—among them, the nation’s commitment riculars (valedictorian and state champion in close the BSC, the place may inadvertently to understanding and addressing the learning soccer/orchestra/debate)—and underdevel- cast some students adrift: interpreting their challenges of students formerly cast aside but oped emotionally. Advisers and tutors can needs in terms that seem more efficient but now known to be coping with ADD, ADHD, tell stories about binge drinking and sexual are in fact less effective, thereby making their dyslexia, and physical limitations, for which hookups that have nothing to do with class- experience chillier and more challenging. there are effective solutions. room challenges or grades. At least some of *** • Among today’s campus cohort, the gap in this seems to come from young people with Varsity blues Postscript. “Thinner Ice” K-12 preparation is probably wider—perhaps high IQs and low EQs who don’t know how (the July-August column) focused on the much wider—than for their mid-century pre- to have casual conversations, or go out on a crooked admissions scandal. Higher-ed econ- decessors; ditto their families’ socioeconomic date, or accept a minor setback without flip- omists Sandy Baum, emerita from Skidmore, circumstances. Some observers have noted ping out. (Advocates of collegiate sports say and Michael S. McPherson, past president of that the distinctions among such students in- that one thing most student-athletes have the Spencer Foundation and of Macalester clude different degrees of willingness to con- going for them is losing without losing it: go- College, usefully observe that the students sult or accept anything associated with men- ing out to compete again the next day. Many involved are a tiny fraction of the tiny fraction tal-health counseling—which can be seen as teachers lament that students who arrive of those at selective schools—which educate inappropriate, or even socially stigmatized. with stellar transcripts refuse to take real less than 5 percent of undergraduates. So, there is much to favor changing aca- risks in a seminar, lest they be seen making Given the real issue (“opportunities to demic support—from alignment with Har- a mistake.) prepare well for demanding colleges are so vard’s mission (educating undergraduates Finally, there is the matter of Harvard’s unequally shared”), Baum and McPherson and training graduate students), to bringing distinctive culture. Some years ago, when the conclude, the scandal “invites close scruti- effective skills to bear on the sources of stress. College was considering whether to create a ny of the admission practices of the colleges summer academic enrichment program for themselves,” including preferences for the Much, but not everything. entering students from frst-generation back- children of alumni and the rich and famous: Not all sources of stress that affect aca- grounds or under-resourced high schools, “Colleges have their own reasons…for main- demic performance are associated with read- one reason for not doing so was that partici- taining these practices, but there will never ily coachable study or time-management pants would be stigmatized. Peer schools like be a better time for colleges to weigh their skills. What is one to make of students, say, Princeton and Yale have not found that to be costs and benefts.”vjohn s. rosenberg, Editor

Harvard Magazine 5

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters that history will not view these purveyors of and a pleasanter atmosphere than Lamont I suspect I’m not the only reader who no- opioid addiction in a favorable light. anyhow. And it allowed men. ticed the interesting juxtaposition of cover Theodore T. Suh ’88, M.D, Ph.D., M.H.S. Sue Bass ’65 “headlines” for two pieces in the July-August Ann Arbor, Mich. Belmont, Mass. issue—“Life’s Origins” and “Commence- ment”—since for many the latter is in fact Editor’s note: The University has issued this Senior editor Jean Martin responds: Women as- what the former is. If not intended, a nice statement in response to questions about sociated with Emmeline Pankhurst’s move- stroke of continuity. Among certain ethnic the use of the Sackler name: “Dr. Arthur M. ment in Great Britain are generally referred groups, the theological question of when life Sackler generously donated funds in 1982 to as “suffragettes,” which is why Cynthia begins is reputed to be “On graduation from that contributed to the construction of the Wachtell used the term in one sentence of law school.” original building that housed the Arthur M. her Vita. The other two references to the suf- Robert H. Goldstein ’53, Ph.D. Sackler Museum at 485 Broadway. In 2014, frage movement in her text use “suffragist,” Professor emeritus of psychiatry (psychology) the Arthur M. Sackler Museum was relocat- the term preferred by suffrage activists in the University of Rochester School of Medicine ed to 32 Quincy Street, as part of the reno- United States such as Alice Paul (Vita, No- Rochester, N.Y. vation and expansion of the Harvard Art vember-December 2010, page 46). But “suf- Museums. Dr. Sackler died in 1987, before fragette” is still the term many people think VERSE DEBUGGED OxyContin was developed and marketed. of frst in connection with “Votes for Wom- In a letter to this department (July- August, page 1), Murray Levin recalls from “Suffragette” was used by those who thought it Chem 1 with Eugene Rochow a couplet about bugs being bitten by smaller bugs. cute that the “girls” were asking for a vote. The version I am familiar with is: Big fleas have little fleas upon their Given these circumstances and legal and en”; perhaps the events being planned to hon- backs to bite ‘em, contractual considerations, Harvard does or the centennial of the Nineteenth Amend- And little fleas have lesser fleas, and not have plans to remove Dr. Sackler’s name ment will help change that. The Vita in this so ad infinitum. from the museum. The Arthur M. Sackler issue, on page 54, continues in this vein. When Levin took chemistry in 1953, I Foundation does not fund the Arthur M. And Diana Altman acknowledges her er- would have been nine or 10 years old, but Sackler Museum at Harvard.” ror: “Yikes! I hope Houghton will forgive us!” knew the above lines already: my parents For Harvard Magazine reporting on the cri- had been taking night courses, and my sis, see “The Opioids Emergency” (March- ORIGINS OF LIFE mother enjoyed that couplet, from a text April 2019, page 37) and harvardmag.com/ Certain phrases run the risk of reinforc- in (I think) parasitology. opioids-summit-19. ing the overwhelmingly common, unscien- A few years ago I did an online search, and tifc view of evolution as something that has found that this goes back to Jonathan Swift, NOMENCLATURE been done “on purpose” (“How Life Began,” who in a poem, On Poetry, wrote: Cynthia Wachtell’s wonderful article July-August, page 40). When, for example, So, nat’ralists observe, a flea on Ellen Newbold LaMotte in the July-Au- in the third sentence, author Erin O’Donnell Hath smaller fleas that on him prey, gust issue unfortunately uses the word “suf- asks rhetorically, “How did those primitive And these have smaller still to bite fragette” (Vita, page 54). The diminutive -ette cells start…passing on advantageous traits to ‘em, ending was used by opponents of suffrage the next generation?” she may give the im- And so proceed ad infinitum. and those who thought it cute that the “girls” pression that these cells—and, perhaps by Thus ev’ry poet in his kind were asking for a vote. As my Random House extension, whole organisms and even spe- Is bit by him that comes behind. Dictionary notes, the suffix tends to have a cies—were deciding which traits to pass on. George Bergman, Ph.D. ’68 “trivializing effect.” Suffrage supporters The truth is that all sorts of traits, ben- Orinda, Calif. should be more respectfully called suffragists. efcial and otherwise, and including mu- Also, a letter from Diana Altman (July- tations, are constantly being transmitted, LONG-TERM INVESTING August, page 6) recalls being kept out of blindly and automatically. It is only with Tell me you’re kidding, right? That’s my Houghton Library when she was a gradu- hindsight that one might call certain ones comment on “Long-Term Investing, Short- ate student in the early 1960s. I was there “advantageous”; these are the traits eventu- Term Thinking” (July-August, page 9). Any- then, too, as an undergraduate. My memory ally associated with higher survival rates for one who thinks that “some top institutional is that Houghton was as accessible as any future generations. Nowhere in the whole managers move to the private sector, where holder of rare documents is. The library gen- wondrous process (until perhaps the most they will be paid more but are scrutinized erally closed to women was Lamont, which recent 0.0003 percent of it, among homo sa- less” may have an opinion relative to the va- is also where poetry readings like the one piens) is any cell, organism, or species selec- garies of markets, but few should take them Altman remembers were commonly held. tively trying to endow the next generation seriously. To also add that “patience is more As a special favor, women were allowed to with the “right” characteristics, nor is there than a virtue, it pays,” would have some attend those. Smart Harvard undergradu- any plausible way they might do so. credibility, but only if they added “some- ates often discovered that the Radcliffe Li- Roland Stark ’87, M.Ed. times yes, sometimes no.” Pros, or anyone brary had more copies of books on reserve Maynard, Mass. else who think they can measure up, are

6 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 BECOME THE CFO THAT YOUR CEO NEEDS.

NEW SUCCEEDING With capital markets in a constant state of fl ux, CFOs must do more than safeguard fi nancial information. Succeeding as a Strategic CFO helps AS A STRATEGIC CFO fi nance practitioners prepare for these demands by developing new skills in strategy, communication, and leadership. You will leave the program ready 11–14 MAR 2020 to round out your core competencies, contribute to your organization on a strategic level, and take on a broad set of responsibilities.

LEARN MORE AND APPLY GO. WWW.EXED.HBS.EDU

190720_HBS_ExecEd.indd 1 5/24/19 3:03 PM Letters judged versus their peers, and know that so bad. The burly man behind the counter to the school prior to performance is measured year to year, and smiled and shared with me that he was a their admission. Are that they have a chance of being among the former police officer and that the technique these incidents not Visit harvardmag.com missing at next year’s commencement. was to slide your billy club down the sleeve to be considered di- for additional letters. Marshall Sterman, M.B.A. ’55 so one could show an open hand and still rect “legal” bribes to Beverly, Mass. club someone in the face unexpectedly. the University rather than to individuals, as My point is: there was no one profle of po- in the current episodes involving athletic MORE ON POLICING lice officers; many were dedicated profession- coaches? How prevalent were and are these The letter “1969” on anti-police bias and als who practiced their role with integrity “donor preferences”? its response (July-August, page 5) reminded and courage, but others were indeed bullies, Arthur M. Friedlander ’61, M.D. me of numerous experiences as a student. I and did take out a resentment of “privileged” Montgomery Village, Md. mention only one. During a peaceful antiwar students with sadistic enthusiasm. demonstration in 1968, I appreciated the po- Roy Smith ’64 OVERSEERS OVERSIGHT lite uniformed police, but also noticed some Silverdale, Wash. An announcement in the July-August is- tough-looking apparent “plain clothes” offi- sue of the new Harvard Overseers (page 71) cers. When I asked one of them if he were a ADMISSIONS AND DONATIONS reminded me that as a graduate of both Tufts policeman, he asked why, and I said I want- “Thinner Ice” and the letter concerning (’77) and Harvard, I have the chance to reflect ed to know from whom I should take or- Harvard’s and other selective schools’ ad- on one of President Lawrence S. Bacow’s ac- ders. He responded “no,” with a sneer. As mission challenges and the reference to the complishments at Tufts that should be rep- the crowd moved, I turned my head and he “complication involving a Harvard coach,” licated at Harvard: the removal of the word clubbed me to the ground. I did a pushup to raise additional questions regarding this be- “overseer” from various boards. hold myself off the body of a uniformed of- havior of exchanging money for admissions Once brought to their attention, most peo- fcer who had lost his footing, and on whom (7 Ware Street, page 3, and letters, page 5, ple grasp immediately that “overseer” has a blood from my face was dripping. July-August). It would be of great interest for negative connotation dating back to slavery After receiving stitches at the hospital, Harvard to conduct a detailed review of all and that there are less offensive and more in- I visited my usual Harvard Square liquor the incidents where parents whose children clusive alternatives. In an era in which statues store and had to explain why my face looked were applying for admission gave donations and other relics of prior eras are being ques-

Welcome to Harvard’s Home Buying Benefits

Available to alumni, faculty & staff Learn about preferred mortgage lenders Attend a free home-buying seminar in Cambridge or Boston; participate in a webinar from your computer

The only Harvard-sponsored home buying service. Visit huhousing.harvard.edu/homebuying

8 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Letters “Overseer” has a negative connotation dating ing on core competencies it considers essential for all degree candidates to prepare back to slavery. There are less offensive terms. them for diverse careers in education. Stu- dents would also apparently choose areas of tioned and removed in our country, changing liberal education, here is more ammo for that special, focal interest, within their courses the name of a board should be achievable. questioning. If the status quo can be changed of study—but the number of such areas, Seth A. Barad, M.B.A. 81 by political action, then it was political in how they are defned, and how students’ San Rafael, Calif. the frst place. one-year degree programs (a limiting con- Marian Henriquez Neudel ’63, Div ’67 straint, as opposed to the multiyear courses DIVESTMENT REDUX Chicago of study in other professional schools) will I remember writing this same letter, or a be reshaped are all in the process of being very similar one, 30-odd years ago, about Har- AMPLIFICATIONS & CLARIFICATIONS determined by the faculty during the com- vard pulling its considerable endowment in- “Educating Educators” (July-August, ing academic year. vestments out of South Africa. page 25) reported that the Graduate School “The Director’s Half Decade,” based on a Now it’s fossil fuels. The University once of Education faculty had voted to approve conversation with Harvard Alumni Associa- again deplores the politicization of its in- a “new framework” for the school’s master tion executive director Philip Lovejoy (May- vestment decisions. of education (Ed.M.) program, in part by June, page 78), referred to the Harvard Gay Gentlemen and ladies, the decision to put “elevat[ing] the status of the education pro- and Lesbian Caucus. It has long since been those investments into fossil fuels in the frst fession by defning its key aspects, including renamed the Harvard Gender & Sexuality place was political. The status quo is not pris- core knowledge and skills that all educators Caucus, as its president, John Sylla ’81, noted. tinely apolitical. should have.” That suggested identifying the The classes studied in the legendary Har If the University officials who chose to “core skills, knowledge, and ways of think- vard Student Study (Commencement Con- make those investments did not see them as ing that are central to the profession of edu- fetti, July-August, page 20) enrolled in 1960 political at the time [given the large number cation,” and embedding them in 13 separate and 1961, respectively, but were the graduat- of Harvard alumni who hold these positions], Ed.M. tracks. That account was based on a ing classes of ’64 and ’65, not those of ’60 and that was a failure of Harvard. Now that ev- misunderstanding. As part of revisiting its ’61. That is why Michael Kaufman spoke at eryone seems to be questioning the value of a Ed.M. program, the HGSE faculty is focus- the class of 1964’s ffty-ffth reunion dinner.

See Venice with an Ecologist

Expert travelers know that local expertise can transform a place. Context tours are led by chefs, architects, historians, archaeologists, and artists— all passionate professionals in their ﬁ elds. With half- to multi-day tours in over 60 global capitals, let us show you the world with Context.

Visit https://alumni.contexttravel.com to learn more and get 15% o your ﬁ rst tour.

Privately guided tours for travelers who love to learn

Harvard Magazine 9

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

SOLD

Only For those Only one realty brand holds the keys on a journey to your most exceptional home and life.

17 Offices from Cape Ann to Cape Cod | GibsonSothebysRealty.com | Each office is independently owned and operated.

190941_GibsonSothebys.indd 1 7/26/19 9:15 AM Right Now The expanding Harvard universe

SMOKE OUT health, together with Winsten, Stanton director of SPH’s Center for Health Commu- nication (CHC), are raising the alarm over The Resurrection of the a disturbing confluence of new enticements to smoking that target the nation’s most vulnerable cohort. Marlboro Man The latest contests are being waged in movies and video games, on social media, and even in middle- and high-school bath- attles about the future of smok- affect how many youngsters will die pre- rooms, where students are reportedly inhal- ing have always been waged over maturely from smoking, the leading cause ing flavored tobacco-free products, predom- children. For tobacco companies, of preventable death in the United States inantly those made by JUUL (pronounced B the young represent the next gen- (each year, smoking claims nearly half a mil- “jewel”), which dominates the e-cigarette eration of smokers. Public-health advocates lion lives, and leads to five million prema- market, with more than 70 percent of all like Barry Bloom and Jay Winsten, on the ture deaths). Now Bloom, formerly dean of sales. Like nearly all e-cigarettes, JUUL’s other hand, know that attitudes shaped as the School of Public Health (SPH) and cur- devices deliver nicotine. The company says early as elementary school will ultimately rently Jacobson Research Professor of public its products are designed to help adults quit smoking. But the marketing and flavor- ing (mint, menthol, mango, and fruit), ease of use (the devices are recharged via USB in any computer), and re- semblance to a thumb- drive have made JUUL use popular in schools— and easy to conceal. “The argument,” says Bloom, is “‘Oh, it’s only nicotine that doesn’t have tobacco tars and cancer agents.’ Nicotine is one of the most addic- tive substances known. And the object of the tobacco companies, if you get addicted to nicotine, the next step is cigarettes.” Altria, the parent company of tobacco giant Philip Morris, pur-

Illustration by James Yamasaki Harvard Magazine 11

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now chased 35 percent of JUUL in 2018. Nicotine The incidence of smoking in movies rated PG-13 use in adolescence can harm the parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood, (with material that may be inappropriate for and impulse control, according to the Cen- ters for Disease Control (CDC), and may also children 12 and under) “has been creeping up.” lead to increased risk of future addiction to other drugs. (Even the second-hand aerosols Surgeon General’s office quantified the ef- to market to people under 16, or 18, or 21, from e-cigarettes contain substances—in- fect of MPAA action, concluding in a report depending on the state; and no constraints cluding fine particles, chemicals linked to ir- that if movies depicting smoking received whatsoever on video games, where smoking reversible lung disease and cancer, and heavy an “R” rating, that would “reduce the num- has become prevalent”—and in some cases metals—that are probably not safe, partic- ber of teen smokers by nearly 1 in 5 (18 per- is necessary in order to win the game. ularly for children). The average age when cent), preventing up to 1 million deaths from The shifting media landscape notwith- young people begin smoking, says Winsten, smoking among children alive today.” standing, are there lessons that can be was 12.4 in the year 2000. (A study of data Although there is less smoking overall extrapolated from the 2007 appeal to the from 2014-2016 indicated an average age for in films than there was prior to 2007, says MPAA? Bloom and Winsten believe so. The cigarette smoking initiation of 12.6 years, and Bloom, the incidence of smoking in movies MPAA still has enormous influence on what for e-cigarettes of 14.1 years.) rated PG-13 (containing some material that goes into movies and television shows, they Bloom, Winsten, and CHC deputy direc- may be inappropriate for children age 12 and say. Google, which owns YouTube, could re- tor Susan Moses are veterans of these bat- under) “has been creeping up.” And, he adds, strict smoking messages from reaching chil- tles. In 2007, building on the work of oth- “There is more smoking per film than there dren. And companies like Netflix, whose er advocates, they successfully persuaded used to be, and few of those films have been own productions reportedly depict smok- the Motion Picture Association of America R-rated at the level one might have expected ing at twice the rate of other studios, they (MPAA), which includes all the Hollywood because of that.” say, must also be persuaded of the imminent studios, to include smoking among the cri- What concerns Bloom and Winsten harm that smoking in entertainment can ex- teria used to assign an “R” rating to a film. most, however, are the new contexts in ert, years hence. The pair believe it is time Dan Glickman, then chairman of the MPAA, which children are socially conditioned for a renewed effort to enlist the entertain- had met Bloom while serving as director of about behavioral norms. Much has changed ment industry’s help, beginning with an ap- the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Ken- since 2007, from smartphones, to YouTube, peal to the MPAA through its current CEO, nedy School, and invited him to come speak to streaming services, to targeted advertis- Charles Rivkin, M.B.A. ’88. to the organization. Bloom, Winsten, and ing on social media. “What’s really wor- vjonathan shaw epidemiologist Jonathan Samet ’66, S.M. ’77, risome is that there are no constraints on then at Johns Hopkins, presented the scien- streaming films, which is now an increasing barry bloom email address: tific evidence and consensus, after an intro- part of what kids watch at home; no legal [email protected] duction from Glickman in which he “point- constraints on JUUL other than that the the center for health communication: ed out that both his parents were smokers manufacturer has agreed, in principle, not www.hsph.harvard.edu/chc and both died of lung cancer,” Bloom recalls. Screenwriters raised objections over First Amendment free-speech rights, but RICH OR POOR? Bloom felt that none of their concerns represented a substantive constraint on artistic freedom and cited the Supreme Court deci- The Rawlsian Revolution sion Schenck v. United States; Baer v. United States (1919), in which Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., A.B. 1861, LL.B. ’66, LL.D. ’95, wrote, “The ohn Rawls is to modern political phi- some of the most influential philosophers most stringent protection of free speech losophy, perhaps, what John Maynard in the world today. But he, and the nuanc- would not protect a man in falsely shout- Keynes is to economics. Many Harvard es of his work, are also widely misremem- ing fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” Jstudents and graduates will remember bered, argues assistant professor of govern- Winsten illustrated for his audience the his 1971 work A Theory of Justice, mandatory ment and social studies Katrina Forrester. power of the Hollywood creative communi- reading in Bass professor of government Mi- Her forthcoming book, In the Shadow of Justice: ty to effect social change for good by recall- chael Sandel’s “Justice,” and in a number of Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political ing its critical role in promulgating the con- philosophy and intellectual-history courses. Philosophy (Princeton University Press), except of the designated driver in the 1980s, Rawls famously posed the “original posi- cavates the complex history of Rawlsian a concept CHC borrowed from Scandina- tion,” a thought experiment in which people thought, showing how his work remade via that was rapidly adopted in the United must decide how they would organize their political philosophy, and how philosophers States when writers, at Harvard’s request, ideal society without knowing what social today grapple with contemporary problems incorporated the idea into scripts of top- position they will hold in it: rich or poor, in Rawls’s shadow. rated television series such as Cheers, L.A. man or woman, majority or minority. The To understand Rawls’s impact, it’s impor- Law, and The Cosby Show. In 2012, the U.S. late Conant University Professor trained tant to understand the state of political phi-

12 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 The incidence of smoking in movies rated PG-13 (with material that may be inappropriate for children 12 and under) “has been creeping up.” Coming this fall, a podcast from Harvard Magazine... Ask a Harvard rofessor We’ll sit down with the world’s most thoughtful scholars to talk about everything from academic ethics to hip hop music and medical marijuana. Join us in September for office hours with: Lawrence Lessig, Dr. Staci Gruber, Ed Glaeser, Marcyliena Morgan, Robin Kelsey, and more…

Podcast_FullPage_final.indd 1 8/5/19 10:49 AM Right Now losophy before him. He started was wary of government, For- his doctorate in 1946, just after rester notes, “today his moder- the war against Nazi totalitari- ate schemes for redistribution... anism had cost millions of lives look very radical….This in itself and destruction worldwide, shows how far to the right our and left Eastern Europe under politics has moved since the mid Stalinism. Political thinkers twentieth century.” were concerned about state Much of In the Shadow of Justice control over people’s lives, turns on this final point: on how and skeptical of government effectively or not Rawlsians expansion. They focused on have responded to neoliberal- restraining state power, not ism, the loose concept that de- imagining the good that gov- scribes the rise of privatization, ernment could do for people. austerity, and deregulation all With Rawls, that all over the world since the 1970s. changed. “Rawls complete- “Rawls himself grew quite wor- ly transformed how political ried about the rise of marketiza- philosophy was done, and the tion,” Forrester says. Her analy- kinds of questions philoso- sis deftly makes sense of what phers asked,” says Forrester. might seem to a lay reader to be He “showed that philosophy, a paradox of the Rawlsian revo- which had been hard hit by lution. If Rawls was one of the the war…, could be ambitious most influential thinkers of the and dream big,” she contin- last century (Forrester notes ues. “He made political phi- that he “had a substantial influ- losophy about finding the ence on professional elites, from right conception of distribu- lawyers to policymakers”), then tive justice—of who gets what. why have his social-democratic After Rawls, that’s what phi- ideas remained so marginal in losophers focused on—not on actual politics? other questions of order, sta- Part of the answer, she bility, legitimacy, revolution, writes, is that “much debate transformation, domination, oppression. Rawls cared more about protecting proper- [in political philosophy today] still takes They asked questions about distribution ty rights, Forrester noted in a lecture, than place in the shadow of a set of ideas that and redistribution—about…how to limit “active redistribution by a planning state.” reflect the assumptions of a different age.” social inequality and how to justify inequali- This matters, Forrester says, not just be- Concretely, she says, this means that “in the ties that existed.” cause “the most influential political philos- 1960s when the liberal philosophers who Although Rawls represented a departure opher of the late twentieth century isn’t al- made Rawls essential reading at all univer- from his time, a thinker who enabled the ways who we think he is,” but also because sities came of age, the assumption was that field to emerge from the shadow of World it displays just how different today’s political the civil-rights movement would bring ra- War II, Forrester argues that it’s also cru- reality is from that of Rawls’s era: “The main cial equality and desegregation. Things were cial to understand him as a product of that worry for many liberals then was the expand- getting better—and the reformism at the period. In his early, unpublished writing ing state; today it’s the weakness of the state heart of political philosophy reflected that. from the 1950s, held in Harvard’s archives, in the face of the dominance of corporations.” Today, it’s not at all clear things are getting he shares “a skepticism of the state with Although Rawls came from a tradition that better.” Societies face climate change, in- anti-statists, who opposed the expansion of the state that came with the New Deal For additional, online-only, articles and the Second World War,” Forrester ex- Explore More on research, see: plains. “He emphasizes that government BARCIN/ISTOCK should leave people alone and not As Atmospheric A Dressing That APPIGNANI BLACKLOW SERENA control their lives, except inso- Carbon Dioxide Rises, Pulls Wounds Shut far as it has to provide the mini- Nutrient Content of A wound-dressing mum necessary for them to have a Rice Falls design that works like fair chance in life.” The purpose of A new study quantifies the human skin to heal the state was to enforce a minimal global impact of declines injuries rapidly set of rules, like contracts and traffic laws; in a single nutrient in a crucial crop. harvardmag.com/ the government as “umpire” was a popular harvardmag.com/rice-bvitamin-19 skin-dressing-19 metaphor among liberals at the time. Young

14 September - October 2019 Illustration by David Johnson

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now creasingly short-term and precarious types CANCER BEATERS of work (see “How U.S. Companies Stole American Jobs” July-August 2017, page 10), “as well as new and persistent forms of in- Are “Super equality. Our questions are also different: the political and economic instability that has followed the financial crisis of 2007-08 Responders” Special? means that the worth of capitalism and the possibility of socialism are on the political agenda in ways they haven’t been for de- s a medical student in the these stories, he’s seeking them out. A year cades.” The Rawlsian tradition hasn’t pro- 1980s, Isaac “Zak” Kohane heard ago, he began a project to find “exception- vided a path to realizing its goals of redistri- stories—from patients, mentors, al responders” to cancer treatment—those bution, and in an age of dramatic inequality, A and colleagues—of nearly mirac- who have beaten the cancer odds many Forrester says, that is no longer enough. It ulous recoveries from cancer. A patient giv- times over—in order to figure out what also has little to contribute to newly urgent en weeks to live instead survives for years. makes them special. questions, such as the future of work, which An experimental drug works exceptional- He was inspired initially by a very dif- has been unsettled by radical shifts in con- ly well—in only one patient. Or, most con- ferent group of patients. Since 2014, Koha- tingent labor and automation. “Should we troversially, a patient rejects chemotherapy, ne has coordinated a nationwide program characterize the data we provide to Face- radiation, and surgery, and somehow lives. to study and aid patients whose affliction book as a form of work?” Forrester asks. As a trainee, Kohane found many such sto- with rare, undiagnosed diseases mark them “What do philosophers think of as the big ries quite literally unbelievable. “Frankly,” as statistical outliers. “Outliers, by defini- political puzzles of our time? The answer he says, “I assumed that they didn’t really tion, are interesting,” he explains, because should not be the same as ‘what Rawls have a cancer.” they are different from everybody else, “so thought.’” vmarina n. bolotnikova Now Nelson professor of biomedical in- there are things to be learned. By finding formatics at Harvard Medical School (see these outliers, we have been able to make katrina forrester website: “Toward Precision Medicine,” May-June breakthroughs both for the patient but scholar.harvard.edu/katrinaforrester 2015, page 17), Kohane not only believes also scientifically,” diagnosing more than

Students Aiming for Top Tier Colleges... A SURE THING Give and receive with a Charitable Gift Annuity Receive strategic advice, tools, and guidance from the nation’s premier college consultants, helping to help alleviate suffering and improve students for over 20 years: health and well-being for all. DR. MICHELE HERNANDEZ Former Assistant Director of Admissions at Dartmouth Author of A is for Admission

MIMI DOE Parenting guru, educator & author of CGA Rates: Rates vary by age Busy but Balanced Age 60: 4.9% | Age 70: 6% | Age 80: 7.7% • Unparalleled success rate • Advising and facilitating every step of the way • Lessen stress and increase college choices

Join our small group of students for personal Calculate your fixed income for life admissions consulting. Call now for information. with our free gift calculator:

hms.harvard.edu/giftcalculator or call 1-800-922-1782 toptieradmissions.com 781.530.7088 [email protected]

Harvard Magazine 15

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Right Now 300 patients suffering from newly discovered genetic diseases in five years. By investigating exceptional responders, Kohane now hopes to find new paths to cancer treatment, rather than new diseases. The study has thus far recruited more than 75 participants from around the United States, representing 24 different types of cancer. Many of the subjects responded exceptionally well to a conventional combina- tion of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy; others took part in clinical trials of new therapies, and were profoundly successful. At least one survived with no conventional therapy at all. By col- shared exposure to a particular infectious Technological advances aside, though, Ko- lecting as much data as possible from these disease long before cancer struck. “Doc- hane says the study has also been enabled patients—sequencing their DNA, invento- tors, human beings, will look for individual and inspired by a newly powerful trend af- rying their gut microbes, and even asking things,” says Kohane. “These programs are fecting and directing medical research. “The them for access to data from their social- looking for everything.” notion of patient-driven, advocacy-driven media pages and FitBit fitness trackers— Of course, there’s a sizable gap between medicine is very different from the pater- Kohane hopes to draw connections between finding something a few exceptional re- nalistic view of medicine of even 30 years their successes and the underlying causes sponders have in common and understand- ago,” he explains. He describes the excep- that may have saved them. ing whether—and how—that explains their tional responders—eager to share their Such comprehensive study, he says, is pos- success. “Certain kinds of associations will health data for research, with little or no sible in large part because of recent medical be indistinguishable from a fluke,” he says, benefit to themselves—as “data altruists.” advances, not only in the genetic sequencing especially when they pertain only to a hand- Though he’s careful to warn them that ge- that will give the researchers gigabytes of ful of participants. “For those rare cases, netic information is difficult to keep entirely anonymous, and the data, though not public, “We get letters from patients saying, will be shared widely with other researchers, “They’re urgently passionate that we ‘I’ve been wondering why I alone of all my need to look at them.” To empower this altruistic impulse, the cohort in this clinical trial survived.’ ” exceptional-responder study will give participants access to all the data it collects on data about the participants’ genomes, tu- we’ll have to find a mechanism, something them, to discuss with their own physicians, mors, microbiomes, and immune systems, that actually explains the association.” or share with other studies. But Kohane says but also in the machine-learning systems But he also hopes the study will find some they see another benefit of joining the study. that make it possible to sift through all that trait that many exceptional responders pos- “We get letters from patients saying, ‘I’ve biometric data, and other, more narrative sess, across their different cancer types. “We been wondering why I alone of all my cohort information. “Some of our patients,” Koha- think in addition to the smattering of ex- in this clinical trial survived,’” he explains. ne points out, “will have hundreds if not ceptional but rare [responses], there will “This is giving meaning to their experience, thousands of pages detailing their [medical] be some common mechanism for a subset that maybe their experience could actually history.” He aims to use automated systems of these patients that will have to do either help others.” vbennett mcintosh to sift through those histories for common with the immune system or with the way it elements, to make connections that unaided manages chromosomal instability” (the abil- isaac kohane website: humans couldn’t—for example, noticing a ity to repair DNA copying errors). www.zaklab.org

16 September - October 2019 Illustration by Richard Beacham

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 2

Harvard 16B Extracurriculars Cambridge, Boston, and beyond Events on and off campus in September and October

16E “Visual Science: The Art of Research” At Harvard’s Science Center

16N A Day in Purgatory —and Beyond Nature, art, and food in and around Worcester

16P The Air of Contentment The Fairbanks House reflects Puritan-era life in Dedham.

16R Wenham Museum A new exhibit explores equestrian life and sport on Boston’s North Shore.

16J Classic, Funny, Macabre Explorer J.W. Ocker’s quest for what remains 16U All About the Food Boston Public Market’s year-round cornucopia

MIKE RYAN

Harvard Magazine 16A

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

Democratic Republic of Congo documen- Extracurriculars tarian Dieudo Hamadi, director of Kin- shasa Makambo, the extraordinary 2018 Events on and off campus during September and October account of three young political activists, is this year’s McMillan-Stewart Fellow in Dis- FILM other genre films from the mid 1930s to the tinguished Filmmaking, and will be on hand Harvard Film Archive 1948 Paramount Decree, underscoring the to share and discuss his work. (October 4-9) harvardfilmarchive.org argument that they should be “recognized “The B Film” series screens The Octopus!, as a unique and quintessentially American GlobeDocs Film Festival Kid Glove Killer, and Weird Women, among art form.” (September 13-November 25) filmfest.bostonglobe.com This annual event, sponsored by The Boston From left: Child 1980, a dye-diffusion print, among works by photographer Olivia Parker at the Peabody Essex Museum; the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, in Sanders Theatre; from Globe, features timely films, community FROM OLIVIA LEFT: PARKER/ COURTESY OF THE PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM; HARVARD RADCLIFFE ORCHESTRA; Fruits in Decay, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History gatherings, and conversations with journal- HARVARD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

HarvardTHE JOSEPH B. MARTIN Medical SchoolConference Center AT HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

Research the possibilities...

Host your next event in the contemporary New Research Building at Harvard Medical School.

• Distinctive conference center in a unique location • Elegant Rotunda Room with views of the Boston skyline • State of the art amphitheater with seating for up to 480 • Catering provided by

77 Avenue Louis Pasteur Boston, MA 02115 617-432-8992 theconfcenter.hms.harvard.edu

16B September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 We’ll home school you.

Gail and Ed have an encyclopedic knowledge of the real estate business, an unwavering commitment to exceptional service, an insane work ethic and, oh yeah, a crazy fun sense of humor. So if you’re thinking of making a move, give them a call. 617-245-4044 • gailroberts.com

190909_GailRoberts.indd 1 7/10/19 10:25 AM Harvard Squared ists. Brattle and Coolidge Corner Theatres. art prints, made from pressed leaves and Perry and Harvard professor of studies (October 2-6) other materials, by Steffanie Schwam and the of women, gender, and sexuality Robert citizen-science Tree Spotters Program. Reid-Pharr, discuss how their work as NATURE AND SCIENCE (Through October 6) biographers addresses timely topics. Knafel Garden In the Woods Center. (October 11) nativeplanttrust.org LECTURES Step out for late-bloomers, libations, live mu- Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study “Science Symposium on Gene Edit- sic, and after-hours strolls during Asters in radcliffe.harvard.edu ing” brings together leading international the Evening. (September 27) “Writing Black Lives.” Institute dean scientists, clinicians, and ethicists to explore and Harvard Law School Paul professor of case studies of select gene therapies—and The Arnold Arboretum constitutional law Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the bioethical implications of such research. arboretum.harvard.edu joined by Princeton’s Hughes-Rogers pro- Knafel Center. (October 25) Fabric, Fiber & Phenology offers botanical- fessor of African American studies Imani MUSIC Harvard Music Department music.fas.harvard.edu The Blodgett Chamber Music Series features the Parker Quartet performing works by Shostakovich and Dvořák. Paine Concert Hall. (September 20)

REVEL IN THE Excitement OF FALL IN HARVARD SQUARE Friday Spotlight 7pm – Park & Dine You survived the drive so you deserve a generous pour of wine and a beautiful plate of housemade pasta at Benedetto.

10pm – Late Night Sit back and enjoy an intimate show at Regattabar Jazz Club. Saturday 8am – Skip the Line Avoid the crowd and order Henrietta’s Table breakfast straight to your room. Catch the last of this year’s family- 11am – Go Crimson! Cheer on the Crimson at Harvard Stadium! friendly “traveling biergartens” hosted

Thankfully it’s just a quick sprint back to by The Trustees and Notch Brewing. TRUSTEES THE your room if you need an extra layer. The European-style community gatherings (at various beautiful and historic 8pm – Warm Up Catch up and celebrate a big win with sites owned by the conservation organi- classmates over a mug (or two) of zation) offer locally crafted, lower-alco- mulled wine at Noir Bar. hol “session” beers, along with activities like lawn games, live music, scavenger hunts, and property tours. This fall, the Sunday gatherings are held at: Minton Stable 9am – Bike Away Hop on one of the hotel’s complimentary Community Garden, in Boston’s Jamaica bikes for a quick morning tour of Cambridge Plain neighborhood (September 20-21); – making frequent stops for baked goods. Appleton Farms, in Ipswich/Hamilton (October 4-6); and at Weir River Farm, 1pm – Take Your Time in Hingham (October 12-13). If biergar- Extend your check out time and bask in a few moments of quiet before battling tens aren’t appealing, then check out the trafﬁ c. Until next time, Cambridge... “After Work Adventure: Bonfire on the Beach” (September 19 and 24), featuring BOOK YOUR HARVARD SQUARE GETAWAY Now! a twilight hike in the dunes, sunset views, and a cozy blaze at The Trustees’s Crane 1 BENNETT STREET • CAMBRIDGE, MA • 800.882.1818 • CHARLESHOTEL.COM Beach, on Boston’s North Shore.

16D September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared The riveting Canadian conductor and soprano Barbara Hannigan, subject of the STAFF PICK: Seeing Science documentary I’m a Creative Animal, delivers the Elson Lecture on “Equilibrium.” Paine “Visual Science: The Art of Research,” open- Concert Hall. (September 23) ing September 20, explores how objects and images have long been used to prove or convey scientific Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra principles. The works, drawn from collections and harvardradcliffeorchestra.org laboratories across the University, can “record fleet- The student-managed, professionally con- ing observations, whether a painting of an animal ducted symphony orchestra opens its 212th glimpsed in the field, or an interaction between sub- season with Gustav Mahler’s monumental atomic particles that lasts a fraction of a second,” the Ninth Symphony, his final completed work. exhibit notes. “They can also make unseen things Sanders Theatre. (October 5) visible.” Like vibrational patterns of sound. “Sand plate” im- EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS ages, based on experiments by eighteenth-century Harvard Museum of German physicist and musician Ernst Chladni, reveal Natural History how stroking a string instrument’s bow across the hmnh.harvard.edu edge of a metal plate sprinkled with sand shifts the A temporary special exhibit of the celebrat- grains into variable designs that trace the vibrational

ed glass flowers, Fruits in Decay, features waves. COURTESY OF THE HARVARD COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS fascinatingly precise renditions of formerly Also on display at the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments (chsi.harvard. edible objects. (Opens August 31) edu), gallery in the Science Center, is the picture of an electron spiraling in a high-powered magnetic field (at Harvard Art Museums left), recorded at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, harvardartmuseums.org in Berkeley, California. (Lab founder Ernest Orlando Winslow Homer: Eyewitness high- Lawrence, Sc.D. ’41, won the 1939 Nobel Prize in phys- lights illustrations that the American ics for inventing the atom-smashing cyclotron, a pivotal realist produced for Harper’s Weekly. breakthrough in conducting high-energy physics.) (Opens August 31) The “Mondrian” color-paper collage (above) is among the 1970s materials used by scientist Edwin H. Land ’30, Through more than 40 works by a S.D. ’57, to develop his influential “Retinex Theory of cross-section of global contemporary Color Vision.” Land studied chemistry at Harvard, but artists, the ambitious exhibit Crossing dropped out and went on to invent Polaroid photogra- Lines, Constructing Home: Dis- phy (and co-found the eponymous Cambridge-based placement and Belonging in Con- corporation; see Treasure, March-April 2017, page 76), temporary Art examines the concepts which popularized the art form—arguably setting the of both national, political, and cultural stage for today’s image-driven digital revolution. vn.p.b. boundaries and “evolving hybrid spaces, COURTESY OF THE HARVARD COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS identities, languages, and beliefs created by nous Languages,” Mexican designer Gabri- activism and in chronicling homelessness the movement of peoples.” (Opens Sep- ella Badillo, among others, presents her and derelict urban environments, especially tember 6) work during a program about “Maintain- during the tumultuous 1970s. (Opens Sep- ing Heritage Languages in Our Com- tember 21) Peabody Museum of Archaeology & munities” (October 12). Badillo is also a Ethnology featured guest for “Animated Tales for deCordova Sculpture Park and peabody.harvard.edu All,” a series of short films narrated in 68 Museum To help mark 2019 as the “Year of Indige- different indigenous languages of Mexico. decordova.org (October 14) Truthiness and the News highlights the evi- dentiary role of photography, from the first Rose Art Museum half of the twentieth century and the hey- brandeis.edu day of print newspapers to the current era Through photographs, prints, of “alternative facts.” (Opens October 11) drawings, sculptures—and rarely seen archival materials—Gor- RISD CRAFT don Matta-Clark: Anarchitect risdcraft.com explores the role of an artist in A smorgasbord of unique, cutting-edge works by more than a hundred of the Six, at American Repertory Theater, features tales told by school’s student and alumni artists, like

IDIL SUKAN.DRAW HQIDIL the wives of King Henry VIII. Candy Barr, Susan Freda, and Ahrong

Harvard Magazine 16E

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared Kim. Peruse everything from wearable art THEATER Central Square Theater and housewares to photographs, sculptures, American Repertory Theater centralsquaretheater.org and fine jewelry—with plenty of holiday-gift americanrepertorytheater.org The Crucible. A well-timed production of options. (October 12) In Black Light, performance artist Daniel Arthur Miller’s American classic about cor- Alexander Jones sings, struts, and tells it rosive power. (September 12-October 13) Peabody Essex Museum like it is as his glamorous alter-ego Jomama pem.org Jones. Oberon. (September 19-29) Huntington Theater Order of the Imagination: The Photo- huntingtontheater.org graphs of Olivia Parker reveals the artist’s Billed as a galvanizing musical testament to Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award-winning tragi- masterly ability to spur dialogues among “girl power,” Six spotlights the historic sto- comedy Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are “nature and abstraction, permanence and ries of King Henry VIII’s doomed wives. Dead envisions the trajectories of two mi- ephemerality.” Loeb Drama Center. (Through September nor characters from Hamlet. (September (Through November 11) 27) 20-October 20)

Boston Lyric Opera americanrepertorytheater.org The season’s debut, Pagliacci, stars tenor Rafael Rojas and soprano Lauren Michelle. (September 27-October 6)

Events listings are also available at www. harvardmagazine.edu. Spotlight Works by Colby Char- pentier and Natalia Ar- Experienced in serving the financial goals belaez, Harvard Ce- ramics Program artists of Harvard alumni in residence, stretch the expressive language We focus on the big picture by creating customized plans that consider of clay—in the dis- your entire financial life. We actively look for ways to connect, educate and parate directions support our clients’ strategic growth through our comprehensive financial of mind and body. planning, wealth management and concierge services. In “Devitrified,” which refers to Recent client events the growth of – UBS Signature Series at the Mandarin Oriental, featuring former crystalline struc- Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta tures, Charpenti- – Fenway Event Series, featuring former Harpoon Brewery CEO and er’s technically pre- including private tour and photos with World Series trophies cise, clean forms explore – Women’s Luncheon Series at the Harvard Club, featuring Boston Food Bank CEO and owner of Flour Bakery material questions: “What if we took clay out of the vessel and glaze was all NATALIA ARBELAEZ NATALIA Contact us for a complimentary portfolio evaluation that remained?” and “What does it mean and to learn more about our events. to replicate a 3-D printing process by hand?” (September 3-27) The Swett Wealth Management Group The Miami-born, Colombian-raised UBS Financial Services Inc. Arbelaez, however, creates earthy fig- One Post Office Square, 34th Floor, Boston, MA 02109 ures, like Montañas de Fuego (above). They 617-439-8004 [email protected] evoke collective human memory and cultural identity, namely of Latin American ubs.com/team/swettgroup and Amerindian people. As Arbelaez explains, these objects “contribute to a contemporary dialogue while simultaneously UBS Financial Services Inc. and the Swett Wealth Management Group are not affiliated with Harvard University. Harvard University continuing the work of my ancestors.” does not endorse or approved this ad. As a firm providing wealth management services to clients, UBS Financial Services Inc. offers both investment advisory services and brokerage services. Investment advisory services and brokerage services are separate and (October 5-November 1) distinct, differ in material ways and are governed by different laws and separate arrangements. It is important that clients understand Harvard Ceramics Program the ways in which we conduct business and that they carefully read the agreements and disclosures that we provide to them about the products or services we offer. For more information, visit our website at ubs.com/workingwithus. © UBS 2019. All rights 224 Western Avenue, Allston (Boston) reserved. UBS Financial Services Inc. is a subsidiary of UBS AG. Member FINRA/SIPC. CJ-UBS-2055441780 Exp.: 07/31/2020

16F September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 LBGreen.com 800.524.7336 LBGreen.com 800.524.7336

190934_LuxBondGreen.indd 1 7/23/19 12:20 PM 190937_Compass.indd 1 2019 09HM agentbrandR2.indd AllPages $1,700,000 3BD2.5BA 1,798 SF 16 Brattle Circle Cambridge $14,000,000 5BD4BA 3,636 SF1600acres Forest44 Road Seven Gates Farm Martha’s Vineyard 1100 Massachusetts Avenue, 5th Floor Cambridge, MA 02138 Cambridge, Lisa J. Drapkin &Team True HomePartners 617.930.1288 [email protected] 508.627.0599 508.627.0599 [email protected] Peyton Wallace The MVTeam 617.303.0067 508.367.2918 [email protected] Bill Rossi

Compass is a licensed real estate broker and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdrawal without notice. No statement is made as to the accuracy of any description. All measurements and square footages are approximate. This is not intended to solicit property already listed. Nothing herein shall be construed as legal, accounting or other professional advice outside the realm of real estate brokerage. “Todd isasmuch areal estate educator ashe isanagent, and Explore these and other exclusive listings at compass.com at exclusive other and listings these Explore [email protected] 617.697.7462 Todd Denman — - Kelvin MA) M. (Somerville, a purchase so important. Hisempathy for hisclients speaks ever have inhelping you ﬁ nd your best home.” detail, and there was never anything left to interpretation. It existing home. Everything about the process was explained in volumes, and Todd as apartner isabout asgood you could purchase ofournew home whilepreparing the sale ofour was the least stressful experience we could have imagined for went above and beyond coaching my wife and Ithrough the his passion forhis passion hiswork isreadily apparent. Heand histeam $810,000 4BD3BA 2,145 SF 55-57 Beachview Road Boston $789,900 3BD1BA 1,073 SF 435 Washington Street Somerville Unit404 $775,000 3BD2.5BA SF 2,038 371 Broadway Street Unit2Somerville 7/23/19 2:42 PM 7/23/19 2:41 PM 190937_Compass.indd 1 2019 09HM agentbrandR2.indd AllPages $1,700,000 3BD2.5BA 1,798 SF 16 Brattle Circle Cambridge $14,000,000 5BD4BA 3,636 SF1600acres Forest44 Road Seven Gates Farm Martha’s Vineyard 1100 Massachusetts Avenue, 5th Floor Cambridge, MA 02138 Cambridge, Lisa J. Drapkin &Team True HomePartners 617.930.1288 [email protected] 508.627.0599 508.627.0599 [email protected] Peyton Wallace The MVTeam 617.303.0067 508.367.2918 [email protected] Bill Rossi

Compass is a licensed real estate broker and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdrawal without notice. No statement is made as to the accuracy of any description. All measurements and square footages are approximate. This is not intended to solicit property already listed. Nothing herein shall be construed as legal, accounting or other professional advice outside the realm of real estate brokerage. “Todd isasmuch areal estate educator ashe isanagent, and [email protected] 617.697.7462 Todd Denman Explore these and other exclusive listings at compass.com at exclusive other and listings these Explore — - Kelvin MA) M. (Somerville, a purchase so important. Hisempathy for hisclients speaks ever have inhelping you ﬁ nd your best home.” detail, and there was never anything left to interpretation. It existing home. Everything about the process was explained in volumes, and Todd as apartner isabout asgood you could purchase ofournew home whilepreparing the sale ofour was the least stressful experience we could have imagined for went above and beyond coaching my wife and Ithrough the his passion forhis passion hiswork isreadily apparent. Heand histeam $810,000 4BD3BA 2,145 SF 55-57 Beachview Road Boston $789,900 3BD1BA 1,073 SF 435 Washington Street Somerville Unit404 $775,000 3BD2.5BA SF 2,038 371 Broadway Street Unit2Somerville 7/23/19 2:42 PM 7/23/19 2:41 PM EXPLORATIONS

Classic, Funny, Macabre Explorer J.W. Ocker’s quest for what remains by nell porter brown

ew England is filled with peculiar places, and J.W. Ocker plans to find them all. N The New Hampshire-based explorer—and creator of the OTIS: Odd Things I’ve Seen travel blog, podcast, and related books—gravitates to anything offbeat, haunting, or macabre. “It’s just my aesthetic,” he says on a crisp morning stroll among the 40 shuttered red- brick buildings of historic Medfield Clockwise, from top: buildings at the State Hospital—once a pioneering in- historic Medfield State Hospital complex; USS Albacore, in Portsmouth, New stitution that housed chronically ill pa- Hampshire; spray-painted skull mural on tients for more than a century. climbable rockface near the Lynn Woods OTIS began in 2007 as a hobby that got Reservation; Ocker, out and about at the Ocker away from the TV and out of the ruins of Bancroft Castle, in Groton, Massachusetts; and the “Rocking Horse house, and now features his funny, slight- Graveyard,” in Lincoln, Massachusetts— ly snarky accounts of many of the more “It’s a fun, whimsical thing with a flea- than 1,000 such sites and objects he has market feel,” Ocker says. “But at night it’s one of the creepiest sights on the planet.” visited—across the country and abroad, including hundreds in New England. Old not live people, unless they collect oddities— unique, abandoned world that anybody can OF J.W. OCKER/OTISOF J.W. HARVARD MAGAZINE/JC; (4); mills, factories, and esoteric inventions fit that concretize the complexities, absurd access.” COURTESY RIGHT: TOP FROM COUNTERCLOCKWISE his catch-all “odd” criterion, as do cemeter- and sorrowful alike, of human nature and Opened in 1896 as the Medfield Insane Asy- ies, ruins, historic literary haunts, movie-set history. That explains his fascination with lum, the Massachusetts institution featured locales, kitschy attractions, and purported the Medfield site. “Thousands of people an innovative “cottage-style” design: smaller centers of paranormal events. walked and worked around here, were in buildings, a chapel, and a central common— Mostly because he’s an introvert, Ocker these wards—some for their entire lives,” all meant to provide restorative fresh air, sun- seeks eccentric physical sites and objects— he says. “It’s not a story in a book. It’s this light, walking paths, and occupations, such as

16J September - October 2019

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

128 Cherry Street Unit 3 Cambridge $975,000 3 BD 2 BA

5 West Place Cambridge Nature reclaiming the stones of Madame Sherri’s Castle, in New Hampshire $1,175,000 3 BD 1.5 BA

laboring on its affiliated farm, in a village-like setting. Unlike similar institutions that were closed, razed, or turned into condominiums, the Medfield property was bought by the town in 2014 and opened as a public park. ERIN DONOVAN/ALAMY PAUL STOCK PHOTO Plans are in the works to re-develop the complex, which includes buildings on the Nation- al Registry of Historic Places, while preserv- ing some open space as well as aspects of its critical role in the history of mental-health care in the United States. 10 Pine Hill Lane Sudbury Ocker also recommends stopping at the $1,495,000 5 BD 4.5 BA hospital’s cemetery down the road. More than 800 patients were buried there under small plaques bearing only numbers, until the grounds were refurbished, starting in 2005. Then names replaced the numbers on new headstones, and a sign was installed: “Remember us for we too have lived, loved and laughed.” Cemeteries not only reflect local history, they are often “beautiful, quiet places, with funerary art, animals, plants, and trees,” Ocker notes. “Every family trip, I try to squeeze one in.” Currier, Lane & Young Strange monuments are another unoffi- — cial OTIS subgenre. Take the two statues of [email protected]

Hannah Duston, an English colonist from condition, in price, changes omissions, errors, to but is subject reliable deemed sources from is compiled Information only. purposes informational for is intended herein presented All material Housing Opportunity Equal laws. by abides and broker estate real Compass is a licensed profes- or other accounting as legal, be construed shall herein Nothing listed. already property solicit to intended This is not approximate. are footages square and All measurements description. of any accuracy the as to is made No statement notice. without or withdrawal sale, brokerage. estate of real realm outside the advice sional 617.871.9190 Haverhill, Massachusetts, who was captured in 1697 by Native Americans toward the end

Harvard Magazine 16K

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared wields an axe, and in the granite monument As Ocker puts it: “Just the fact that there’s on a Merrimack River island north of Con- something around the next bend beyond cord, New Hampshire, she holds scalps—for poison ivy makes it a much more pleasur- which she was paid. able experience than your average hiking Not everything on OTIS is as grim. Ocker trail.” It’s open daily, year-round, from dawn raves about the whimsical “Rocking Horse to dusk—and it’s free. Ocker’s picks tend to Graveyard” (a.k.a. Ponyhenge), in Lincoln, cost nothing more than gas money. Massachusetts. Nobody’s sure what en- gendered the herd of more than 30 plastic The idea for OTIS arose when Ocker, out and wooden horses in a field on Old Sud- of college and an aspiring writer living in bury Road, but around 2010 one appeared, his native Maryland, just wasn’t that happy. and, over time, “as a sort of community in- “I didn’t really like my life. I didn’t really joke or light-hearted art display, people have like me,” he says. To help break a sense of

NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO added to it,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll go and inertia, he began driving to unusual places. The Hannah Duston statue in Haverhill someone’s rearranged it all—into lines fac- Digital cameras were becoming popular, so memorializes the axe-wielding English ing each other, like in battle, or in a circle, he took pictures and posted them online colonist.

or paired off.” with humorous, informative texts. It pro- RANDY DUCHAINE/LALMY STOCK PHOTO of King William’s War. She finally managed Similarly, he appreciates the creative to escape by killing and scalping nine of her drive behind the Andres Institute of Art, a captors, and her story was recorded by the 140-acre sculpture park in Brookline, New prominent Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Hampshire. Scattered along trails on Big A.B. 1678. “Was she a hero, or not?” Ocker Bear Mountain, contemporary works of- asks. “This is about the history of surviv- fer an active day out, tinged with culture. al. But it’s also the story of a woman killing people. And these are believed to be the The Phoenix (1999), made by Latvian artist Janis Karlovs from granite found on the first official statues of a woman in the United property of the Andres Institute of Art, States.” The bronze figure in her hometown stands 15 feet high and weighs 11 tons.

IF YOU COULD HAVE THE HOUSE OF Come Outside with YOUR DREAMS THIS WOULD BE IT! Outward Bound Professional Custom programs that inspire leadership, cultivate teamwork, and drive meaningful change Offered year-round at the location of your choice

In the sought-after area of Jason Heights in Arlington. New construction in 2017 with exquisite detail. 5 bedrooms and 4 marble-appointed bathrooms. 4,018 square feet. Captivating views of Spy Pond and the Boston skyline. 2 decks to enjoy the view from. Two-car garage. Four miles to Harvard Square and convenient to transportation, shops, restaurants, and the universities. Exclusively Offered - $1,995,000 WWW.BARBARACURRIER.COM THE CURRIER TEAM THOMPSON ISLAND Coldwell Banker 171 Huron Ave, Cambridge, MA OUTWARD BOUND For more information, contact: EDUCATION CENTER [email protected] Call or text 617.593.7070 [email protected] Boston Harbor Islands thompsonisland.org BARBARA CURRIER • RICHARD CURRIER • RYAN FERRO

16L September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared vided a focus, even meaning, and became “a life-changing time of discovering the world outside myself.” Kindred curated urban explorer or “off- the-beaten-path” sites like Atlas Obscura, RoadsideAmerica, and Roadtrippers are slicker; they have cinematic visuals and battalions of scouts and writers across the globe. OTIS is personal and homegrown—one man’s nearly obsessive project. By 2008, Ocker had moved to New Eng- land, where he was thrilled to find that “Ev- erything is old!” Now living in Nashua, New Hampshire, with his wife, Lindsey, a professional photographer, and three young daughters, he adds, “Just going to the grocery store, I pass three historic cemeteries.My friends who grew up here don’t even know any of this stuff—but it’s all so ripe for exploring.” He has a full-time day job, as an execu- Atlifecare Brookhaven living is as good as it looks. tive at a digital creative agency in Boston, Brookhaven at Lexington offers an abundance of opportunities for but OTIS has also morphed into far more intellectual growth, artistic expression and personal wellness. Our residents than a pastime. He still travels for it, often share your commitment to live a vibrant lifestyle in a lovely community. taking along willing family members, like five-year-old Hazel. In addition toThe New Call today to set up an appointment for a tour! CAMPUS England Grimpendium: A Guide to Ghostly and EXPANSION A Full-Service Lifecare Retirement Community 49 NEW Macabre Sites, and a sister volume focused www.brookhavenatlexington.org APARTMENTS on New York State (both won top awards (781) 863-9660 • (800) 283-1114 from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation), his book on Edgar Allan Poe- related sites earned an Edgar Award from Mystery Writers of America. A Season with the Witch chronicles the month-long Halloween extravaganza in Salem, Massachusetts, and due out for the holiday this year is his adult horror novel, Twelve Nights at Rotter House. It’s about a travel writer drawn to the paranormal who plans to produce a bestseller based on his time in a haunted mansion. Sound familiar? Ocker laughs. “Yeah, I originally conceived of it as a nonfiction account of staying in a haunted house for a few weeks, and then I realized that would be boring, so I turned it into fiction.” His worldview easily flexes both ways. Re- searching his sixth book, now titled Cursed Objects, has brought him closer than usual to notions of psychic phenomena and the spirit realm. He’s intrigued by the staying power of claims like “Ötzi’s curse,” the idea that people linked to the “iceman” found preserved in the Alps “come to a bad end,” he intones melo- dramatically. “You can try and go see him. Or maybe not. Maybe play this one safe.” Does he believe in ghosts? He laughs. “I don’t, unfortunately. I like the paranormal, the stories, and the people who chase phenomena. But I just don’t believe in it— kennardarchitects.com // (617) 292-8989 // Boston, MA 02127 // (617) 292-8989 Boston, kennardarchitects.com

Harvard Magazine 16M

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

ALL IN A DAY: Purgatory—and Beyond Shimmying through “Fat Man’s Misery,” a cleft in towering granite bedrock, is among the pure, kid-like joys of scrambling in Purgatory Chasm State Reservation. The entire site is a geological funhouse—of uncertain origins. “It’s a fault,” posits Nichols College geology professor and glaciologist Mauri S. Pelto, who has studied the area south of Worcester and updated previous theories, “and the fault was exploited by a glacier that plucked out the rocks” that now litter the adjacent Purgatory Brook Valley. It was also likely a sacred place for the regional Nipmuc peoples—and given its pejorative name, conventional wisdom holds, by colonists intent on Christianizing them. Whatever the history, the very essence of the 70-foot gorge and its cavernous, perhaps ominous, terrain still captures the imagination. Check out the precipitous outcroppings—“Lovers’ Leap” and “Devil’s Pulpit”—or take the half-mile loop that winds through the boulder-strewn bottom and then circles back on a rough path along the cliffs. For those less eager to test their agility by clamber- ing, the 1,800-acre park—celebrating its centennial this year—has tamer trails following brooks or through the woods, along with a playground, grilling zones, and a visitors’ center. After everyone’s exercised, drive through pastoral scenery,

stopping for snacks or lunch at the Sutton Center Store, en NORMAL BARRETT/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO route to exploring art, culture, and food in Worcester. rants. A self-guided walking tour ex- Clockwise, from top: The Worcester Art Museum’s exhibit “Knights!?” offers plains the 1820s Blackstone Canal, adventures in Purgatory Chasm; medieval arms and combat—with live demonstrations—using which linked to Providence’s seaport, picturing reproduc- objects from the Higgins Armory Collection (through November and the ensuing industrial boom. Lock tion, at the Worcester 6). “With Child: Otto Dix/Carmen Winant,” opening Sep- 50 serves super-fresh salads, burgers, Art Museum; wild cats tember 21, looks at women’s social, political, and medical condi- and crêpes, or go to El Patrón Mexi- at the Ecotarium; and outdoor markets in tions, notably during the Weimar Republic, and includes “The can Restaurant for enchiladas and the resurgent Canal Trouble with Pregnancy: A Forum on Art and Reproduction,” tortas. Binh An Market offers Asian District on October 18, as teas and take-out fare, such as Vietnam- well as a communi- ese spring rolls and honey-soaked pastries; walk a few blocks and ty arts showcase on eat them in the courtyard of a converted factory that now holds the subject. the Crompton Collective—stalls of vintage clothing, antiques, Check out the and local artwork. Upstairs, don’t miss the “lifestyle and plant city’s emerging art- boutique” Seed to Stem, packed with ingenious botanical crea sy Canal District, tions and home goods. with its giant mu- Get back into nature at the nearby Ecotarium, a kid-orient- rals, Saturday farm- ed science center. It has hands-on experiment stations, a plan ers’ market, shops, etarium, walking trails, and a new Wild Cat Station featuring

TRACY LEVIN bars, and restau- sibling mountain lion kittens found orphaned in California. Worcester’s food evolution makes dinner easy. For inventive grilled fish, meat, and vegetarian dishes, go to deadhorse hill, or dig into the artisanal pies at Voltur- no Pizza Napoletana. Sole Proprietor is a traditional favorite for seafood cooked every which way, while the newer Fatima’s offers Africa-centric cuisine, like Ethiopean injera (spongy flatbread) and Kenyan ugali (cornmeal porridge). Eat before or after a show at the historic Hanover Theatre, where groundbreaking comic actress Carol Burnett appears for An Evening of Laughter and Reflection on October 17. A day in purgatory, it turns out, is not that bad.vn.p.b. ART RESOURCE, NY ©2019 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK BILD-KUNST, / VG BONN. PAINTING AT LEFT: BPKPAINTING LEFT: BILDAGENTUR AT / KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN CHEMNITZ / BERTRAM KOBER (PUNCTUM PEIPZIG) / COURTESY OF THE ECOTARIUM

16N September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Celeating 46 Ya

FINE HANDCRAFTED VERMONT FURNITURE

Vernon Double-Pedestal Table, Mansﬁ eld Dining Chairs + Grand Isle Sideboard

E THETFORD, VT FLAGSHIP SHOWROOM + WORKSHOP • S BURLINGTON, VT • HANOVER, NH • CONCORD, NH NASHUA, NH • BOSTON, MA • NATICK, MA • W HARTFORD, CT • PHILADELPHIA, PA POMPY.COM • 800.841.6671 • We Offer National Delivery

Harvard Alumni Mag_Sept_Oct 2019.indd 1 7/24/19 2:48 PM

190940_PompanoosucMills.indd 1 7/26/19 12:52 PM Harvard Squared and this is coming from a guy who’s spent The “Clinton Train the night in an abandoned prison in West Tunnel,” built in 1903 near the Wachusett Reservoir, Virginia, at Lizzie Borden’s House in Fall goes “from nowhere to River, Massachusetts, and in all kinds of nowhere.” graveyards—all the places that ghosts are supposed to be, and there’s not even a single but many are posted with experience that’s even twistable into a real placards and images of the paranormal phenomenon.” buildings that comprised a What he likes about the “Dana Ghost thriving community—the Town,” among the communities disincorpo- church, school, and black- rated to construct the Quabbin Reservoir in smith. “So it’s another fam- central Massachusetts, is walking through ily-friendy place, where you

the forest and finding a stone marker: “SITE can wander around and un- LINDSEY OCKER OF DANA COMMON 1801-1938 To all those derstand what was there,” he says. “Some He typically doesn’t get scared, at least not who sacrificed their homes and way of life.” of the cellar holes even have doors you can anymore. Perhaps as a secondary gain from Only cellar foundations remain, he explains, walk through.” founding OTIS, Ocker has inured himself to common human fears, such as mortality—or small, tight spaces. A big guy, he confesses to having claustrophobia, yet he boarded the

STAFF PICK: The Air of Contentment pioneering research vessel USS Albacore, now When Jonathan and Grace Fairbanks were invited to live in Contentment, a Puritan installed on land and open for tours in Ports- community formed in 1636 (now Dedham, Massachusetts), it was likely because of mouth, New Hampshire. Used from 1953 to his crucial skill: spinning-wheel maker. 1972, the submarine’s design helped Every family needed at least one revolutionize the capabilities of un- wheel, to spin flax and raw wool into derwater military maneuvers. “It’s thread for weaving cloth, says Leslie much smaller than those giant nu- Griesmer, business manager at the clear subs,” he reports, “and it’s ter- Fairbanks House historic site—“the rifying. You see where they slept, on oldest wood-frame structure still shelves on top of each other, and standing in North America.” It is open even just walking around is hard.” for guided tours through October, One section holds a few multipur- and hosts an annual fall festival, this pose, foldout tables with checker- year on September 29. boards; “You squeeze yourself out Walking around the dark, low-ceil- from some tiny slot, and you get to inged dwelling that includes a warren go play checkers. That’s what keeps of rooms added over time, it’s easy to you from going bonkers,” Ockers imagine hunkering down there on what was then a frontier. says. “It takes a certain special The homestead ultimately accommodated eight generations mindset to do that job.” of Fairbankses, who changed very little before turning it Over the years, he has become into a museum in 1904. To site curator Dan Neff, therefore, increasingly cautious, traveling to it “feels a lot more like a home than many house museums.” isolated or potentially dangerous Photographs, furnishings, farm tools, and dishware reflect places only in the daytime—and the lives of previous occupants, giving the interior a ghostly he does not condone trespassing or air. A beautiful gateleg, flame-maple table built in the 1650s other illegal urban-exploring activi- remains, Neff says: “It’s a giant piece of wood—there aren’t ties; even so, he has been escorted trees here big enough to make this table from a few sites. It’s legal to scramble around anymore.” There’s also a pack saddle and a Skull Cliff, the ghoulish 2001 mural painted yoke for oxen that are likely from the 1600s, on a 30-foot rockface on a ridge in Saugus, he says, along with a sundial and eight spin- Massachusetts. “To get to it you have to go ning wheels. Whether any were made by a through car dealerships on Route 1,” Ocker Fairbanks is unclear, but contemporary says, “but at the top you can look out over an craftspeople demonstrating spinning, and old quarry and see the Boston skyline.” other traditional skills, will be at the fall fes- He plays with “pushing beyond the fear” tival, along with historic re-enactors por- factor at many site visits, and knows that traying soldiers, farmers, doctors, and oth- getting active outside on weekends and ers who were essential to keeping colonial learning something new about the world communities alive. vn.p.b. benefit himself and his children. Not long ago the family explored the “Clinton Train

16P September - October 2019

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

Tunnel,” built in the early 1900s near the The Quabbin Reservoir’s Wachusett Reservoir in Massachusetts. At “Dana Ghost Town” is an archaeological landscape; two-tenths of a mile, it “literally goes from at a Catholic retreat nowhere to nowhere,” he says, but as you center on Enders Island, in walk through it, graffiti-covered concrete Mystic, Connecticut, the walls eerily shift to raw rock, dripping with chapel holds a relic: the severed right arm of Saint slimy earthy wetness. And it’s dark. A flash- Edmund, a learned light was required in the disorienting space archbishop of Canterbury as he and his little daughter moved toward who died in 1240. a porthole of light at the far end. She some- something macabre about how lost the head of her doll along the way, it,” Ocker clarifies, toward and Ocker had to go back to find it. the end of the visit to Med-

More hauntingly beautiful is Madame field State Hospital. “For in- JAMES M. HUNT/ ALAMY STOCK PHOTOS Sherri’s Castle, within a forest that bears stance, there’s this island off Connecticut Document1Document1 11/20/03 11/20/03 11:51 11:51 AM AM Page Page 1 1 her name in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. A that has the severed arm of Saint Edmund in visit to the once majestic stone chateau, built a glass case. And it’s a sacred religious object, Document1Document1 11/20/03 by 11/20/03 a theatrical 11:51 New11:51 AMYork AM PageCity Page costume1 1 de- which I respect and is interesting, but, at the signer, can easily be combined with Mount end of it all, it’s macabre. It’s a body part.” Monadnock-region hiking, because it only “Dad?” takes a few minutes to take in all that re- Hazel, who’s been gamely trotting along, mains of her home, destroyed by fire in 1963: collecting pinecones, interrupts the adults a foundation, a few pillars, and a crumbling, to ask for a ride on Ocker’s shoulders.

winding staircase. “I tell everyone to go now,” “Maybe later,” he says gently, and OCKER J.W. OF COURTESY Ocker says, “because places like this don’t then adds, “Look around, see this? This “This entire thing is a playground.” stick around forever.” is an abandoned hospital.” He ges- And he means it in the most seri- OTIS rarely veers into such sentimental- tures toward the boarded-up chapel, the ous sense. OTIS allows his—and anyone ity. Ultimately, “if it’s truly ‘odd,’ there’s wards, and the swathes of open lawns. else’s—imaginations to run free.

ASSISTEDASSISTEDLIVINGLIVINGRETIREMENTRETIREMENTCOMMUNITYCOMMUNITY Independent and Assisted Living

ASSISTEDASSISTEDSpecializedLIVINGLIVINGRETIREMENTR ETIREMENTMemoryCOMMUNITYC OMMUNITYCare IndependentHere’sHere’s what andwhat Assistedpeople people Livingare are Here’sWhatSpecializedHere’ssayingsaying whatdo what Harvard about Memory people about people us. Care alumniare us. are Whatsayinghavesaying do Harvard inabout common?about us. alumni us. Cadburyhave in common? Commons CadburyA Remarkable Commons Senior Residence A Remarkable Senior Residence

Name:Name:MiltonMilton R. R. Occupation:Occupation:Name:PostalName:MiltonPostal Supervisor,Milton Supervisor,R. R. Retired Retired Occupation:Hobbies:Occupation:Hobbies:Reading,PostalReading,Postal Supervisor,Walking, Supervisor,Walking, Exercising Retired Exercising Retired Hobbies:Hobbies:Lifestyle:Lifestyle:Reading,Reading,Independent, Walking,Independent, Walking, Exercising Active Exercising Active ChoiceLifestyle:ChoiceLifestyle: of Senior/Assisted Independent,of Senior/AssistedIndependent, Active Living:Active Living: ChoiceChoice ofCadbury Senior/Assisted ofCadbury Senior/Assisted Commons Commons Living: Living: The HarvardCadburyCadbury Commonsalumni Commons who chose “ThereThe“There Harvard is a is stable a stable alumni and and gentle who gentle atmosphere chose atmosphere Cadbury“There is a Commons stable and gentle may atmosphere have of“There Cadbury helpof is help aand stable andCommons empathy and empathy gentle throughout may atmosphere throughout have the the community.ofretired helpofcommunity. help from and I andfeel empathy Iwork, feelassured empathy assured but throughout that throughout not thatI am fromI partam the part theoflife. of community.retiredcommunity.others’ from lives,I feel Iwork, feelasassured they assured but arethat ofnot thatI mine.am fromI partam For part oflife. myself, of others’others’ lives, lives, as theyas they are are of ofmine. mine. For For myself, myself, Iothers’ feelIMuseum feellives, that that Cadburyas they CadburyVisits are Commonsof • mine. CommonsPlay For Reading provides myself, provides a a I feelIMuseum feel that that Cadbury CadburyVisits Commons • CommonsPlay Reading provides provides a a wellwell trained trainedtrained and and andcaring caring caring group group group of of•people ofpeople people who who who wellSymphony aretrained interested and caring Selections Selectionsin my group welfare.” of •people Lecture Lecture who are interestedare interested in in my myin welfare.”my welfare.” welfare.” Series •• YogaYoga • • Organic Organic Gardening Gardening CallCall (617)(617) (617)(617) 868-0575 868-0575 868-0575 868-0575 to to arrange toarrange to arrange arrange a personala apersonal personala personal tour,tour, or visit or visit www.cadburycommons.com www.cadburycommons.com tour,Calltour, (617) (617)or visit or 868-0575 868-0575 visit www.cadburycommons.com www.cadburycommons.com to to arrange arrange a personala personal tour, tour, WhereWhereWhereoror visit visitTheThe www.cadburycommons.com Thewww.cadburycommons.comEmphasisThe Emphasis Emphasis Emphasis Is Is On IsOn IsOnLiving OnLiving Living Living 6666 Sherman66Sherman6666 Sherman Sherman Sherman Street, Street, Street, Street,Street, Street, Cambridge, Cambridge,Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge, EQUAL EQUALEQUAL EQUAL MA MA02140MA 02140 02140 ◆◆(617) ◆ ◆(617)(617) 868-0575 868-0575 868-0575HOUSINGHOUSINGHOUSINGHOUSING MAMAMA 02140 02140 02140 • (617)•(617)868-0575 (617)868-0575 868-0575 OPPTY OPPTYOPPTY OPPTY

Harvard Magazine 16Q

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

For the Love of Horses Contemporary echoes of nineteenth-century sport by nell porter brown

questrian life and sports have long shaped Boston’s North Shore. In the late E nineteenth century, that primarily agricultural region, with industrial hot spots along the coast and Merrimack River, evolved into “the premiere summer colony of af- fluent Bostonians, many of whom were avid equestrians,” according to a new exhibit at the Wenham Mu- seum: “They rode, hunted, drove carriages, played polo, golf and tennis, swam, A continual driver of A child’s carriage (ca. and sailed their yachts and steam launches.” these traditions is the 1907), tack-room gear like bridles, blankets, Within a 25-mile radius of the museum, Myopia Hunt Club, in and saddles—along says its director of external affairs, Peter G. abutting South Hamil- with competition and Gwinn, sporting grounds and facilities for ton, with its foxhunts, polo-playing dress— fox hunting, polo, dressage, and three-day polo grounds, and golf and a collection of toys help celebrate eventing emerged over time, drawing riders course (designed in 1894 equestrian activities. and fans from across the world. The exhibit by Herbert Corey Leeds, strives to “bring riders and non-riders togeth- A.B. 1877). It was established by a group large- the public. The $15 tickets are sold on site er to learn about, and share, the importance ly composed of Harvard graduates, and, apart the day of a game; tailgating parties be- of these sports and traditions,” he adds. “We from two wartime breaks, polo players have fore and during the match are allowed. In also hope to highlight the land, and the im- competed on Myopia’s Gibney Field on sum- addition, the Harvard Polo Club and its portance—to everyone—of open landscapes mer Sundays since 1887. men’s and women’s teams—which feature and conservation, which all began here be- Those matches, held this year from in the museum exhibit, along with current cause of the love of horses.” June 2 to September 29, are still open to head coach Crocker Snow Jr. ’61, a Myopia

16R September - October 2019 Photographs courtesy of Peter G. Gwinn/Wenham Museum

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

Vintage photographs of riders in motion and displays of full regalia depict the disciplined nature of equestrian sports.

The museum highlights the 1910 union of another Ayer family member, Beatrice Banning Ayer, and a member and former championship-team eventing, also known as horse tri- young U.S. Army lieuten- polo player—are based at the Harvard Polo als. Generally comprising dressage, ant named George S. Pat- and Equestrian Center. It’s a short wood- show-jumping, and cross-country, ton Jr.—the future four-star land ride from Myopia’s grounds, where eventing is rooted in historic mili- general. In 1928, they moved the club’s fall-season opening match will tary competitions during which offi- into a South Hamilton home- be held on September 22. cers showcased their cavalry horses’ stead, with 27 acres of fertile Besides polo, the sprawling museum “obedience, maneuverability, and en- fields and horse trails along show covers dressage (performance of a durance.” In 1973, Myopia club polo the Ipswich River, that be- precise series of movements), foxhunting, player and huntsman Neil R. Ayer came their family base— and the resurgent Gilded Age coaching re- Sr., M.B.A. ’54, established a world- and then that of their son, vival (with harnessing and driving tour- renowned eventing course on his family’s George Smith Patton IV, a highly decorated naments), along with displays of saddles, Ledyard Farm, in Wenham—vestiges of U.S. Army major general in his own right. bridles, and garb, horse-themed vintage which remain. It was the site of numerous (His widow, Joanne Holbrook Patton, do- games and toys, and a play paddock for chil- Olympic pre-trials; England’s Princess nated the property and family archives to dren. Gwinn notes as well that the North Anne and her then-husband, Captain Mark the town of Hamilton and the nonprofit Shore played a significant role in American Phillips, competed there in 1975. Wenham Museum, respectively; both are

Think BIG by going small

A growing group of pioneers are changing how people think about Assisted Living in a big way. They’re forming new bonds and encouraging one another to embrace a new sense of independence in The Woodlands Inn community.

DISCOVER MORE Call 978-228-3878 or visit WoodlandsatEdgewood.com

575 Osgood Street, North Andover, MA 01845 A NOT-FOR-PROFIT COMMUNITY

Harvard Magazine 16S

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared now open to the public for guided tours, by featured in the exhibit’s montage of Patton soon became infatuated with fox hunting. appointment only.) The famous World War family home movies narrated by their son. By 1883, the club was officially re-christened II commander “was raised on a California Myopia Hunt Club and relocated to South ranch,” Gwinn says, “and was one hell of a Harvard connections to the region’s Hamilton, where members brought a pack rider and polo player.” In a quote from the equestrian community run deep, as the ex- of hounds over from England and purchased exhibit, Patton clearly savored the “virtue hibit reveals. Myopia’s predecessor, Myopia the Gibney Farm (its main building still of polo as a military accomplishment….It 9, was a baseball club formed and named, serves as the clubhouse) with Harvard polo makes a man think fast while he is excited; half-jokingly, by a group that included four player Randolph M. Appleton, A.B. 1884, it reduces his natural respect for his own near-sighted sons of Boston mayor and stee- serving as Master of the Hounds from 1883 safety—that is, makes him bold.” His wife, plechase racer Frederick O. Prince, A.B. to 1900. Since 1952 the club’s hunts, which Beatrice, who grew up in Boston’s Ayer 1836. They all played baseball at Harvard, currently run through numerous open-land Mansion, was also an expert competitive and built the original club house in 1879 in trails, from Essex and Ipswich to Newbury- rider, as were other family members, and is Winchester. Many in the group, however, port, have been “drag hunts”: they follow a pre-laid scent instead of live prey. Polo, perhaps the world’s oldest team sport, took root in America in the 1870s, and spread to Danvers, Wenham, and Hamilton, the exhibit notes, where spectators arrived “by train, carriage and coach” to enjoy “half- time teas and divot-stamping—but it was the breathtaking speed and the ever-present possibility of risk that gave polo its loyal local following.” Harvard played an integral role here, too. It formed the first United States intercollegiate polo team in 1883, and in 1890 moved its ponies and operations to land offered by Myopia; the two clubs were among the five charter members of the U.S. Polo Association in 1891. After a decades-long up-and-down history during the second half of the past century, Harvard polo revived in 2006 (see “Polo Renaissance,” Historic 1893 Victorian: Handsomely restored, Queen Anne fi lled with modern features Built November-December 2007, page 85) largely by Peabody & Stearns. Located just off Brattle, through “horses, a stable, and financial sup- this home offers a fl exible fl oor plan and over port,” the exhibit notes, from famous actor 8,000 sq ft on an over-sized lot. Rare three- car garage and ample off street parking. Tommy Lee Jones ’69, a veteran polo player Beautiful light-fi lled rooms, nine working himself. Its Hamilton equestrian center, a re- fi replaces, a grand period staircase with furbished historic horse farm, opened in 2014. Palladian windows, and room sized baths are just some of the notable features. First fl oor Although American polo and other layout is ideal for entertaining. State of the art equestrian sports are typically expensive, [email protected] systems make this historic home updated for rarefied pursuits, these traditions have in- 617.834.0838 modern living and comfort. $8,900,000 fluenced the regional character of the North [email protected] Shore, affecting its residents, economy, and 301.802.3284 MYRA & AMY topography. In developing this new exhibit, the Wenham Museum—best known as a family-friendly place with an extensive model-train gallery and collections of an- tique dolls and toys—is building on its mission to “share local histories that continue to have a connection to and important impact on current and future generations,” Gwinn says. “‘Equestrian Histories’ offers a fun look back at the origins of horse in sport in New England—and beyond—and vivifies, for all ages, the universal values of sport activity, animal appreciation, and ongoing preser- vation of today’s North Shore landscapes.” vnell porter brown

16T September - October 2019

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

All About the Food Boston Public Market’s year-round cornucopia by nell porter brown

t lunchtime, Law of Pasta seating or steps of owner Avery Perry darts around City Hall Plaza, a his Boston Public Market shop, terrific spot to A stopping just long enough to ex- watch thronging plain himself: “They call me the ‘bad boy of humans. pasta,’” he says, gesturing to cases of freshly More than a extruded noodles, “because I do semolina and decade in the whole-wheat—but then I go crazy—throw- making, the mar- ing in garlic, roasted beets, spicy cocoa, cran- ketplace finally berry, blueberry. My limit is my imagination!” opened in 2015. Perry, who’s been cooking since he was a Focused on seasonal goods, it offers ev- MELISSA DIPALMA; COURTESY OF MELISSA LAW OF PASTA; DIPALMA child and now teaches pasta-making at the erything from prepared and take-out market’s KITCHEN (see below), is just the meals to meats, dairy products, fish, and kind of spirited culinary entrepreneur whom produce, to flowers, herbs, nuts, and Clockwise from top left: the market as a the nonprofit, year-round venture promotes. chocolate, to hand-crafted wooden bowls, community gathering point; flowers from Field & Vase/Stow Greenhouses; fresh CLOCKWISE FROM TOP MELISSA RIGHT: DIPALMA/BOSTON PUBLIC MARKET; © MATT CONTI; “Our mandate is to support New England stone platters, lotions, and woolens. produce at the Siena Farms shop; Red’s farmers and food producers,” says marketing The family-owned Chestnut Farms, in Best regional seafood; Law of Pasta owner coordinator Tim Johnson, “so we are always Hardwick, Massachusetts, began with the Avery Perry going to have a balance of vendors.” 2004 reinvigoration of a former dairy farm, The Public Market’s 34 shops fill the first and now operates a community-supported- Across the way, Red’s Best sells regionally floor of a building at the busy nexus above the agriculture (CSA) program as well as the sourced fish and shellfish, including lobsters MBTA’s Haymarket station, amid City Hall, marketplace shop. It sells grass-fed, pasture- and other raw-bar-quality seafood. Found- the North End, and the Freedom Trail. Adja- raised beef, pork, lamb, goat, and poultry, and ed in 2008 by Jared Auerbach, the company cent outdoor tables and chairs on the Rose underscores the environmental reasons to buy works with a network of about 1,000 fish- Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway offer space to local with a posted chalkboard diagram that ermen, processing their daily catches and eat and relax—or you can carry food to the asks: “How Far Does Your Meat Travel?” locating buyers—eliminating expenses re-

Harvard Magazine 16U

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared lated to the traditional wholesale-auction feta cheese. Next door, (both open through No- system. Red’s also tracks the fish loads, so as the weather cools, vember 19), and at the the origins and processing are traceable, try the nutritious rice, Seaport (through Octo- which helps monitor environmental sus- ramen, or noodle bowls ber 30), but the organi- tainability. Red’s marketplace menu extends loaded with toppings— zation is eager to expand to classic New England crab cakes, lobster enoki mushrooms, silky its outdoor locations. rolls, salmon burgers, and fried calamari tofu, pork loin, bok choy, Later this year, it will laced with cherry peppers. For dessert, head or soft-boiled eggs—at open a second indoor to the counter of Crescent Ridge, a family- Noodle Lab. For bagel hub at Logan Airport’s owned creamery in Sharon, Massachusetts, sandwiches smeared Terminal C. Five ven- for ice cream made with milk from the St. with deluxe salmon and dors offering prepared

Albans Cooperative Creamery in Vermont. bluefish paté, check out KITCHEN INNA’S and take-out food will “We get a lunch crowd and a tour- Boston Smoked Fish Shakalatkes, at Inna’s Kitchen form a “food court-style ist crowd,” Tim Johnson says, along with Co., or try the smoked- experience,” Johnson ex- hordes of downtown-area workers who salmon and -haddock soft tacos slathered plains. There will also be a market bar with stop by on their way home, via the subway at with a cumin-lime-spiced purple-cabbage local beverages. Haymarket, and pick up groceries or dinner. slaw and cilantro crema. Alcohol is also sold at the Haymarket lo- Inna’s Kitchen features take-home fresh The marketplace also attracts sports fans cation’s Massachusetts Wine Shop, oper- or frozen entrées, like chicken and vegetable on their way to the nearby TD Garden, John- ated by the Massachusetts Farm Wineries pot pies and sweet-and-sour brisket, along son says, “but our sustaining crowds are area & Growers Association. Some 90 varieties with other “Jewish cuisine from around the residents who are doing their grocery shop- of reds, whites, and sparkling wines, along world,” like knishes, latkes, and the inevi- ping here and at our outdoor farmers’ mar- with mead and hard ciders, are stocked, and table chicken noodle soup. Don’t miss the kets. We’re in what’s called the ‘emerging rotating daily tastings feature products from trade-marked “Shakalatkes”—potato pan- market district,’ one of the fastest-growing Westport Rivers, Plymouth Bay Winery, cakes topped with shakshuka (poached areas in Boston.” and 1634 Meadery, among others. eggs in a sauce of tomatoes, garlic, papri- Currently, the three farmers’ markets are Other local products at the marketplace, ka, and chili peppers) and sprinkled with held at City Hall Plaza and in Dewey Square along with produce, are sold by Siena Farms,

VINEYARD HAVEN HARBORFRONT

OFFICE & ART SUPPLIES Ballet classes: FINE STATIONERY age 3 / - teen & WRITING INSTRUMENTS 6 Bedroom | 6.5+ Bath | 1.55 Acres | $11,500,000 adult and pointe Wake up to spectacular sunrises over the harbor from this impeccably detailed, CARDS & GIFT WRAP three-story home with its own sandy beach, Fall classes start easy stroll to downtown and the ferry. The Monday, 9/11 INVITATIONS 5,787-sf main house on 1.55 acres makes entertaining a breeze. Floor-to-ceiling & ANNOUNCEMENTS windows offer expansive water views from View Fall schedule: an open-flow living and dining areas with freshpondballet.com dramatic fieldstone fireplace, gourmet 30 Brattle Street kitchen, and cherry-paneled den. Spacious Visit us on Facebook: master suite, three more bedrooms, third- Cambridge, MA 02138 floor office and widow’s walk, and a lower facebook.com/FreshPondBallet 617.547.1230 level work-out room, mini-bar, and wine cellar. A two-bedroom, 1,314-sf guest Nina Alonso, Director, FPB www.BobSlateStationer.com house,two-car garage, outdoor kitchen, 1798a Mass Ave spa, and mature landscaping round out this Cambridge, MA 02140 Hours: Mon-Sat 9:30-6:30, Sun 12-5 lovely seaside picture. Exclusive. 508-693-0222 | VIEWPOINTSMV.COM 617.491.5865 71 Main Street, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568

16V September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Squared owned by Chris Kurth and his wife, chef Anna Sortun, in Sudbury, Mas- Our sachusetts. Artisanal items include Mi Tierra’s corn tortillas, Buenas’s chimi- churri and spicy Chilean pebre sauces, Residents and ginger and turmeric-honey syr- ups from Old Friends Farm. Or try are a lot of things fermented products made in Maine: miso by Go-en Fermented Foods, and • Involved the hot kimchi and gingered carrots from Thirty Acre Farm. • Vibrant For bouquets of fresh-cut blooms

and foliage (which can also be cus- CONTI ©MATT tom-made and sent to loved ones), stop American Stonecraft transforms foraged • Interested by the floral design studio and shopField stones into unique bowls and platters. & Vase, run by Stow Greenhouses. More • Educated than 90 varieties of flowers and plants are ets, cooking slabs, and platters that stand grown, without pesticides, on the 14-acre the test of time. Stow, Massachusetts, property, including For those eager to learn more about such inside a one-acre-sized greenhouse heated regional natural resources and sustainable with bio-mass (wood-chip) boilers. horticultural practices—or just get news A few blossoms would sit nicely in a about the local New England food commu- hand-crafted “bowlder”—bowls crafted nity—Boston Public Market is a hub of in- from boulders—produced by another mar- formation. It hosts speakers and workshops, ketplace vendor, American Stonecraft Inc., along with special events like summer’s Fer- based in Lowell, Massachusetts. The com- mentation Festival and winter’s Fiber Farm pany depends on about a hundred farmers Festival. “Beyond just being a food market, a throughout New England to salvage stones place for people to be nourished,” Johnson from the land that might otherwise be dis- explains, “we are also a guide to the local carded as junk. “We’re up-recycling those agricultural system.” stones and making them into objects to use One founding member of the market- in the home,” says the helpful saleswom- place, the nonprofit Trustees, oversees The an. Company owner Gerald Croteau began KITCHEN, a “community gathering place” Retired “foraging” for heirloom-quality stones, and featuring regional chefs and other culinary then founded American Stonecraft in 2012. innovators. In addition to periodic work- isn’t one of them. “We do all the cutting, shaping, and pol- shops taught by Law of Pasta’s Avery Perry, We are a community of seniors ishing—everything—in our studio, and I experts from the Everett-based Short Path emphasize studio because we want these Distillery will teach a craft-cocktail mix- living with vibrancy, dignity, to be used, but they are also artistic prod- ology class on September 27—and on Sep- engagement and fun. ucts,” she adds. Croteau carefully assesses tember 30, chef Peter Ungár, of the haute- organic vein-patterns, shapes, colors, and styled Tasting Counter, in Somerville, offers Tour The Commons in Lincoln heft in selecting the raw materials for triv- a three-course vegetarian cooking class. and discover our activities, There’s a session on baking hardy, healthy volunteer opportunities and Dine alfresco beside the market. breads on October 6, and a chance to learn creative meatless-cooking techniques available programs. with Epic Vegan author Dustin Harder on October 19. The marketplace invites anyone to The join its volunteer ranks, and/or attend Commons its October 24 Harvest Party fundraiser. I N L I N C O L N Proceeds support community engage- A Benchmark Signature Living Community ment efforts. “We are a place where people come to learn new skills—about the science of food and agriculture,” 781-728-3043 Johnson notes, and to get any help they TheCommonsInLincoln.com might need “to make sure they are making intentional choices about their food.”

MELISSA DIPALMA vnell porter brown

Harvard Magazine 16W

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

BETTER TOGETHER: Creative Artistic Collaborations When it comes to art, Boston and Cambridge mix classic iconography with edgy risk-taking. At legendary venues such as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, plus newer destinations such as SoWa Open Market, it’s possible to enjoy traditional expressions of the form — as well as imaginative collaborations with dancers, filmmakers, craft brewers, and more. Visit some of the area’s most beloved institutions this fall for innovative pairings that make art come alive. For years, the South End’s SoWa Open Market has given up-and-coming artisans, from painters to soap-makers to jewelers, a platform to showcase their work. This year, SoWa enhances the experience with a pop-up beer garden, inviting the region’s best brewers to pour drinks normally reserved for their own taprooms. Browse SoWa’s wares every Sunday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. through October and relax over drinks courtesy of Banded Brewing, Finback Brewery, SingleCut Beersmiths, and Schilling Beer Company. Pair your beer with treats from

IMAGE COURTESY OF PROCLAMATION ALE COMPANY some of Boston’s favorite food trucks, including Blackbird Doughnuts and Bon Me. See the lineup at www.sowaboston.com. Meanwhile, Thursdays are the marquee day at the Isabella Honor Stewart Gardner Museum. Enjoy their Third Thursday the Past programming on the third Thursday of September and October, with activities facilitated by local artists and thinkers, ranging Celebrate from live music in the museum’s courtyard to talks with city horticulturalists about how to preserve urban green spaces. the Future Learn about their programming at www.gardnermuseum.org. And on Friday, October 25, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, hosts the latest installment of its ongoing Late Nite series in partnership with local artists. Expect DJs, dancing, Become A and interactive experiences until 2 a.m., along with small plates and cocktails, all while exploring the galleries after

Redwood hours. Browse the lineup at www.mfa.org. IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ISGM / PHOTOGRAPH LENA BY CASTRO Across town at the Seaport, the Institute of Contemporary Art is known for its Shareholder First Friday events, 21-plus theme parties that kick off each month with specialty cocktails, DJs, and dancing. This fall, the ICA will also host several dance performances featuring talents discovered during ICA curators’ scouting trips. From September 19 until 21, enjoy choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s A Gift for “Fase,” set to music by renowned minimalist composer Steve Reich. On October 18 and 19, watch Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire perform pop, Generations punk, and Congolese rumba, highlighting the music of icons such as Grace Jones and Patti Smith. Get tickets ($35; $25 for members) at www.icaboston.org. Finally, the Harvard Art Museums present a new documentary film, Voices of the Rainforest, on Monday, October 21. Directed and produced by acclaimed ethnomusicologist redwoodlibrary.org/shares Steven Feld, Voices of the Rainforest is an experiential documentary about the ecological and tel: 401.847.0292 x 115 aesthetic coevolution of Papua New Guinea’s Bosavi rainforest region and its inhabitants. Through sound and image, the film immerses viewers in the rainforest and makes audible connections between the sounds of the rainforest biosphere and the creative practices of singing about it by the Bosavi people. Feld discusses the film with Redwood LibRaRy Amahl Bishara, associate professor of anthropology & athenæum at Tufts University, after the screening. Admission is 50 Bellevue Avenue free; doors open at 5:30 p.m. Learn more at chartered 1747 Newport, Rhode Island 02840 www.harvardartmuseums.org.

PHOTOGRAPH ALI BY CAMPBELL v kara baskin

16X September - October 2019

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

190925_H2-roundup_v2.indd 2 8/6/19 12:26 PM CRIMSON CLASSIFIEDS 7th-12th Grade a place Private School The Newman School of many At our International Baccalaureate paths school, students experience a world of learning in the heart of Back Bay. OPEN Coed, grades 7-12. HOUSE OPEN HOUSE Sunday, October 20th A Harvard Magazine special 11:00am - 1:00pm section advertising private 247 Marlborough Street, schools, boarding schools, and Boston, MA 02116 specialty after-school programs. Come and meet our teachers and students. We hope to see you there!

MATIGNONMATIGNON HIGH SCHOOL At Choate, you will find a place to Questions? Contact Patricia Lynch, Ph.D. pursue your passions, inspire your 20192019 OPEN HOUSES Director of Admissions [email protected] creativity, and forge your own path. OctoberOctober 20th20th October 30th 1:001:00--3:003:00 PM 6:00 - 8:00 PM QUESTIONS?QUESTIONS? CContactontact OfficeOfficeofof AdmissionsAdmissions [email protected]@matignon.org newmanboston.org (617) 267-4530 ororvisitvisitwww.matignon.orgwww.matignon.org Wallingford, CT • www.choate.edu

GRADES 7 - 8 OPEN GRADES 9 - 12 SATURDAY, HOUSE SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26 OCTOBER 27 www.bchigh.edu 150 Morrissey Blvd, Boston

DID YOU MISS OUT ON THE PRIVATE SCHOOL OPEN HOUSE SECTION? Advertise in the next one in our Nov-Dec 2019 issue. Contact Gretchen Bostrom at: 617.496.6686, [email protected], or Skype: hmagclassifieds DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 OPEN HOUSE Lexington Saturday, Montessori November All School School 16th Open House toddler through 8th grade 10am - 12pm SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2019, 10 AM - 1 PM Meet parents, TM 2019 45 Matignon Road, Cambridge, MA 02140 L M S students, WINNER faculty and staff! Compassion. Resilience. Courage. To learn more, call 617.499.1459 or visit www.isbos.org

H M 77

190916_PSOH_6.indd 77 7/26/19 2:13 PM CRIMSON CLASSIFIEDS Transforming Education Into An A leader among America’s Art progressive independent schools.

OPEN HOUSE Sunday, October 20, 1 – 4:30 p.m. OPEN HOUSE: October 26, 10 a.m. WALDORF SCHOOL of Lexington Saturday, November 9, 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. 739 Massachusetts Avenue, Lexington, MA 45 Georgian Road | Weston, MA 02493 | www.csw.org/open-house Preschool—Grade 8 thewaldorfschool.org

10:00

oaring.

St. Paul’s Choir School provides an extraordinary Fall Open Houses academic and musical experience that forms young Thursday, October 24 men of achievement, integrity, service, and conﬁ dence. 5:30–7:30 p.m. • Grades 3-8 Sunday, November 3 • Teachers support the ways boys learn best 12:30–2:30 p.m. • Rooted in Catholic faith and values Contact Us • Graduates attend the Boston area’s to Learn More strongest secondary schools (617) 868-8658 SAINT PAUL’S CHOIR SCHOOL SAINT PAUL’S CHOIR SCHOOL 29 mount auburn street harvard square 29 mount auburn street harvard square 617.868.8658 • www.saintpaulschoirschool.us www.saintpaulschoirschool.us EDUCATE & ELEVATE EDUCATE & ELEVATE

78 November - D ecember 2015

190916_PSOH_6.indd 78 7/26/19 11:40 AM CRIMSON CLASSIFIEDS Emergent Curriculum Language Immersion Program • Mandarin, Spanish, French Preschool - Grade 8 Fall Open Houses Cambridge-Ellis School All School OPEN HOUSE Sunday, November 3 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Program School November 2, 2019 Middle 10-12noon Middle School Wednesday, November 13 cambridge-ellis.org 7:00 - 8:30 p.m. Cambridge, MA 34 Winter St. | Arlington, MA 02476 | lesleyellis.org

Beginnings a begin to ECSELTM school Building Emotional Intelligence for Children 3 Months to 6 Years since 1985 Please Join Us for Our OPEN HOUSES Family Fall Festival & Open House OCT 14 & NOV 11 Saturday Oct. 19, 2019 10 AM–12 PM 210 South Avenue Weston, MA www.beginningsschool.com 207-824-7777 | [email protected]

HIGH SCHOOL. REIMAGINED. We’ve created a curriculum taught by college faculty that sets students on a path to college, early. But we haven’t condensed the high school experience—we’ve reimagined it.

CREATIVITY OVER CONVENTION. INTELLECTUAL DISCOVERY AS A WAY OF LIFE.

Fall Open House! Saturday, October 19 Registration required. simons-rock.edu/openhouse PreK through 8th Grade • Est. 1967 765 Concord Ave, Cambridge MA 84 Alford Rd. Great Barrington, MA 01230 | simons-rock.edu/academy 617.876.4746 • www.fayerweather.org

Harvard M agazine 79

190916_PSOH_6.indd 79 7/26/19 2:29 PM JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNALJOURNAL

Under Wraps project, is concluding; it will house School way directly across Mount Auburn Street Nominally, Harvard’s official color is of Engineering and Applied Sciences staff, (seeharvardmag.com/adams-renewal-19). crimson. But this summer, a lot of the place classrooms, and a new childcare center.) But The Lowell flag and shield came down at the went green—with numerous sites swaddled in toto, Harvard’s numerous lower-profile former Inn at Harvard, now swing housing, in or fenced off by construction wrapping, jobs probably create just as much work for and Adams insignia took their place. Christo-style, during another busy season of architects and members of the building A year-long updating, inside and out, of renewal, renovation, and repair. trades, if not more. Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library The big-ticket new construction remains As contractors put the finishing touches neared completion, yielding new exhibit the action in Allston, during the final year on Lowell House—the largest House-re- spaces, a technologically spiffed-up semi- of work on the billion-dollar science and newal project to date—the hard, hot work nar room, and other twenty-first-century engineering complex, to which much of that of tearing into Adams House’s below-grade enhancements. faculty will relocate next summer. (Renova- utilities and infrastructure, and of gutting Last year, in Harvard Yard, Massachusetts tion of 114 Western Avenue, part of the same Claverly Hall and Senior House, got under Hall underwent its own makeover, welcom-

20 September - October 2019 Photograph by Jim Harrsion

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

ing a new president to refreshed offices (see tiles themselves; fixing part of the Carpenter Facing page: Harvard Hall renovation page 22). But no peace in the neighborhood: Center roof (do you detect a theme?) and begins. This page, clockwise from upper left: the science and engineering complex beginning in June, just across the roadway installing ventilation for new, laser-cutting in Allston; three views of demolition (and entering from Johnston Gate, Harvard Hall equipment being brought online for the cut- interior protection) at the Divinity was “taken offline.” Its mechanical systems ting-edge artists; and forging ahead on re- School’s Andover Hall; scaffolding Adams were in dumpsters within days, the first step placing the biological laboratories’ massive House; and the Allston cogeneration plant toward a wholesale redoing of the teaching heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning Graduate School of Design invested in re- spaces within, and restoration of the ma- systems with more energy-efficent ones. waterproofing Gund Hall’s entry plaza.

MICHAEL NAUGHTON/HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL DIVINITY NAUGHTON/HARVARD MICHAEL sonry and cupola. Classes will resume by Unaccountably, mere months after its open- Farther afield, adjacent to Harvard Busi- January, at the start of what is (laughably) ing (“Harvard Hubs,” November-December ness School, a massive, multiyear renovation called “spring” semester. 2018, page 24), Smith Campus Center was of the Soldiers Field Park housing complex Notable high-altitude nips and tucks ad- scaffolded again, for reroofing—adding to continued apace. And to the north, in Cam- ministered during the long-daylight months intense construction, both commercial and bridge, other faculties joined in the uproar, included redoing the roof atop Sanders The- for the MBTA’s elevator and bus tunnel, in with two big jobs breaking ground. The atre—the first phase of an ambitious reroof- tourist-clogged Harvard Square. (Note to Law School started to refurbish and aug- ing of the entire Memorial Hall, after 140- sidewalk superintendents: if you missed out ment its Lewis International Law Center, plus years of service by the original slates; making millions in software, think scaffold- with a western addition and a new top COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM UPPER OXBLUE LEFT: CONSTRUCTION CAMERAS JIM (2); HARRISON (2); tweaking the subroofing ’neath the Sever ing; somebody is billing handsomely for all floor, all scheduled for completion in mid tiles, and touching up some stonework and those pipes and joints.) On terra firma, the 2021. And perhaps the largest project, relative to the size of the facilities and campus, is the wholesale reshaping of the Divinity IN THIS ISSUE School’s central space, including catching up on deferred maintenance, replacing in- 22 Year One 30 Admissions, through the Ages ternal systems, and augmenting and adding 23 Harvard Portrait 31 Brevia to classrooms and common spaces—all be- 26 Yesterday’s News 33 News Briefs hind spiritually soothing patterned green 28 Catalyzing Bioengineering 35 The Undergraduate fencing. When complete in 18 months, the 29 Commute Cycle 38 Sports 1911 building née Andover Hall will have

Harvard Magazine 21

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal emerged transformed, earning its way into try will have nearly a billion reasons to say projected huge first stage of developing the its new identity as Swartz Hall. “thank you” to Harvard. Given the projects commercial “enterprise research campus” in For the third year running, it looks as on deck—remaining House renewals, the Allston (page 34), the hard hats’ good times though the Boston-area construction indus- Design School’s planned expansion, and the seem likely to roll on. vjohn s. rosenberg

August 28, 2018: An on-the-run president, out for a run with students Tufts, “means that I have to work harder to engage.” In town and farther afield, Bacow invested heavily in meeting “some of our best supporters, our alumni, around the country and around the world.” And how. After an initial alumni gathering in Detroit, he appeared in New York, San Diego, Miami, Phoenix, Hous- ton, and Chicago. He broke bread with the Varsity Club and had a pre-Game reception in Boston. During the winter, he visited London on the way to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. In March, he attended alumni events in Hong Kong and Tokyo, bracketing

ROSE LINCOLN/HPAC ROSE an official visit to Beijing (where he met with President Xi Jinping) and a stop in Shanghai. Year One stitute’s vision and justice “convening”; a And of course he and many alumni met in Ter- The Harvard community learned at least summit on gender equity; the Institute of centenary Theatre at Commencement, where two things about Lawrence S. Bacow during Politics; a School of Public Health gather- he hosted German chancellor Angela Merkel. his first year as the University’s twenty-ninth ing; a Medical School conference celebrat- Alongside those engagements, Bacow had president: he is very much a people person, ing an enormous gift; the Harvard Heroes another travel agenda. From the announce- and very peripatetic. The two are connected. staff-recognition event; andmany more for- ment of his appointment in February 2018, During a conversation at Massachusetts mal occasions. Faculty members briefed he conveyed deep concern about rising criti- Hall a couple of weeks after Commence- the president as he prepped for his trip to cisms of higher education and eroding public ment, Bacow said, “This was a year in which Asia, and for his presentations across the perceptions of the value of college. Accord- I learned a lot about Harvard.” That is say- United States and in Silicon Valley (see ingly, he traveled widely and often to address ing something. He first dipped a toe into below). He engaged spontaneously with the public, showcasing Harvard scholarship higher education in Boston by entering MIT proponents of divesting fossil-fuel invest- in service to society. He spoke with high- as an undergraduate in 1969; earned three ments (who aim to reverse University op- school students about the worth of postsec- graduate and professional degrees at Har- position to doing so), and with picketers ondary education at a meeting in Pontiac, vard; had a long and increasingly senior run supporting the graduate-students’ union Michigan, his hometown, before appearing at MIT; and then presided at Tufts. Begin- (now in protracted contract negotiations; at an economic-development forum in De- ning in 2011, as a retirement activity, Bacow page 34). And he dropped in on lunch at troit—and unveiling research partnerships honed his view of the University from the Annenberg, accepted invitations to dine in with the University of Michigan on opioids top, serving as a fellow of the Harvard Cor- the Houses, and welcomed students to join and urban poverty and inequality. His San poration. Nonetheless, he said, during the his runs around the Charles River. Of min- Diego visit showcased a high school’s use of a past academic year he scheduled lots of time gling with students, he said, “I hope to do a HarvardX online humanities course, and the to get to know people, beginning with fac- lot more next year.” Not living on campus, Phoenix stop highlighted the University’s ulty and staff members. he noted, unlike his former arrangement at partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies Locally, he said, “[I]t was important that I get out and around so that people could get some idea of who this new president is.” Accordingly, he spoke at forums on the economy and on social enterprises at the Business School; a Kennedy School citizenship ceremony; the Radcliffe In-

October 4, 2018: Five Harvard presidents appeared at the installaton of Larry 29. The day before, Bacow conversed with immediate predecessors Drew Gilpin

Faust and Derek Bok (interim 2006-2007). MITCHELL/HPAC STEPHANIE

22 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 to train mayors nationwide. A separate Cali- fornia trip (he made three during the year) HARVARD PORTRAIT brought faculty members Gary King, Latanya Sweeney, and Alison Simmons together with leaders in Silicon Valley to discuss digital technology, artificial intelligence, and urgent social concerns: privacy, ethical use of algorithms, and the future of work. That outreach only adds to the president’s expected, and increasingly demanding, role in representing the University and higher education in the political arena. In early summer, Bacow made his seventh trip to Washington, D.C., as Harvard’s leader, during which he has met with about four dozen members of Congress (from both parties) and of the administration. The higher-education agenda encompasses federal support for research and the taxation of en- dowments, as well as immigration, financial aid, free speech and the diversity of opinions expressed on campuses, and other issues— none of them susceptible of swift resolution. In conversation, Bacow said he needed to attend to Washington outreach continuous- ly “because so much of the future of higher education rests in the hands of congressional leaders and our government.” From the time of Vannevar Bush’s coordination of research during World War II, spelled out in his 1945 report, Science—The Endless Frontier, Bacow said, the nation has supported a federal partnership with its leading universities. But, he cautioned, “Every so often that Na Li partnership is examined, reconsidered, and in some cases, reconstituted.…It feels like As a pure-mathematics student at China’s Zhejiang University, Na Li often asked this is one such moment.” Airborne mem- professors how her courses applied to real-life systems. If she stuck to her non- bers of the community can expect to see overlapping science and math classes, they said, she’d figure it out. Hoping to study their president en route to the capital fre- mathematical biology at a UCLA summer research program before senior year, she quently, because “Harvard needs to be an was instead assigned to an engineering lab. “I was like, ‘What do you mean? I don’t know important part of that conversation.” what mechanical engineering is, I don’t know what electrical engineering is.’” To prepare, Nor will the University go it alone. Ba- she read Signals and Systems, a systems theory textbook that applied math to the study cow has joined the board of the American of complex entities. It clicked: this was the field for her. Li, now Cabot associate profes- Council on Education, whose 1,700 mem- sor of electrical engineering and applied mathematics, deals mostly with the electric bers include two- and four-year degree- power grid in her research, transforming an outdated system to handle variable, alter- granting institutions, public and private. native energy sources like wind and solar. Though some scoff at the possibility of a It is much broader in scope and reach than, cascading power failure, Li, who experienced frequent power outages while growing say, the 62-member Association of American up in rural China, does not: “I know the grid is not really reliable if you don’t have the Universities. “We can’t afford to be seen as right infrastructure and the right algorithms.” Her expertise expands beyond power standing apart” from community colleges systems. She remains fascinated with biology and physiology, and grabbed a copy of and other entities, he said. “We are all part How the Immune System Works from her bookshelf to demonstrate the omnipresence of the broader community of higher educa- of networks in the human body. “I still treat biology systems as a network. It’s just the tion” at a fraught time, and so he has made network has different nodes and different interactions.” At home with her two young that additional commitment. children, Li takes a break from systems and devours books on early childhood education. Even then, she can’t turn off her analytical approach: “It helps me think about why As he met with and listened to constitu- I have emotions. What is a rational way, what’s the irrational way, and how to control ents around the world, Bacow said, “I came them….I have a lot of scientific theorems to explain what’s going on.” vjacob sweet to understand and appreciate how much at-

Photograph by Stu Rosner Harvard Magazine 23

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal repression in western China). “Part of what Turning to matters more directly under I’ve experienced this year,” he said, “is com- the institution’s control, Bacow cited several ing to understand the power, if you will, of substantive and intellectual priorities that the megaphone that one is privileged to hold advanced during the year and may serve to as the president of Harvard”—and the ac- dispel the perception that, as he often puts companying responsibility. it, members of elite academic communities The flip side is the sometimes inordinate are more concerned with making them- attention paid to the University. This year, selves great than making the world better. the spotlight shone on matters ranging from He pronounced himself “very pleased” with the decision not to reappoint the Winthrop the College’s “Service Starts with Summer” House faculty deans (Bacow deferred to the initiative for entering freshmen (harvard- authority of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences mag.com/service-summer-19)—and by the

ROSE LINCOLN/HPAC ROSE and the College deans when asked about donor response to his call, in his installation December 5, 2018: Speaking at a breakfast the matter during an FAS faculty meeting) address, for funding such opportunities. And briefing for new members of the U.S. to the trial of the Students for Fair Admis- based on his discussions with faculty mem- Congress at the Kennedy School sions’ lawsuit alleging that Harvard unfairly bers about their research in rural and “heart- tention people pay to Harvard.” For example, discriminates against Asian-American ap- land” American venues, he said, it is “fasci- he noted, his March speech at Peking Uni- plicants for admission to the College (“Ad- nating to see how much is going on” there. versity was immediately downloaded hun- missions on Trial,” January-February, page He has also been “very energized by how dreds of thousands of times (see harvard- 15). Given the unrelated “Varsity Blues” ad- people have responded to my talks” in Davos mag.com/bacow-china-19), an outcome he missions scandal that revealed bribes and and Silicon Valley “about understanding the attributed to his role as president. (In the test cheating at other schools—heighten- second- and third-order consequences of speech, he made the case for academic free- ing scrutiny of admissions at selective col- new technologies” like artificial intelligence dom, with references to both the centennial leges—Bacow said, “One of the things likely and machine learning—challenges that span of the liberalizing May Fourth Movement to shape this coming year is [U.S. District] Harvard’s intellectual capital in the schools and a verse by the late Abdurehim Ötkür, Judge [Allison] Burroughs’s decision” in the of business, engineering and applied scienc- widely recognized as a Uyghur—and thus SFFA suit; symbolizing the high stakes, he es, government, and law, plus fields like phi- a proxy for the Muslim people under severe attended the closing argument. losophy and units such as the Safra Center for Ethics and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. One can imagine collaborative research projects with industry, addressing privacy, big data, and, Bacow said, Explore More “how these new technologies will change the way in which we work and the way in Harvardmagazine.com brings you which we organize work”—both as new opportunities arise and as existing positions continuous coverage of University and alumni news. are displaced, necessitating retraining and Visit to find these stories and more: the acquisition of new skills. “We need to be “I Can’t See My Family” engaged,” he said, “and we will be.” DACA recipient Daishi Miguel Tanaka ’19 Similarly, he said, he was “determined to graduated without his parents in attendance. find new ways for Harvard to use its im- harvardmag.com/tanaka-19 mense resources to respond to the challenges posed by climate change—and there’s a tremendous interest within our community, Harvard Entrepreneurs’ Summer Road Trip and an appetite for doing more.” The Office of Technology Development He also cited “real progress in my drive hosts a Palo Alto venture-capital night for to partner with other universities,” from the Harvard start-ups. Michigan initiative to local ventures, includ- harvardmag.com/startup-roadtrip-19 ing prospective projects for graduate-student or faculty housing and, at the frontiers Curricle, the Course Catalog Matrix of science, biomedical research facilities and A new course-exploration tool presents the an emerging engagement with MIT on quan- curriculum as a rich network of connections. tum science and engineering. The latter field, harvardmag.com/curricle-19 Bacow said, feels today much the way life sciences appeared in the 1970s, when scientists had “just started to explore our capac- visit harvardmagazine.com ity to sequence and edit the genome”—work FROM TOP: ELA CHAVEZ ELIZA ’21; GRINNELL/SEAS; SCREENSHOT FROM CURRICLE that is now finding application in “therapies,

24 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JOIN MORE THAN 10,000 HARVARD ALUMNI

Whether you’re in the Square or across the world, show your true Crimson pride by carrying the Harvard Alumni World MasterCard®.

Join more than 10,000 Harvard alumni already taking advantage of best-in-class rewards and unrivaled service you won’t get with any other card.

THE ONLY CREDIT CARD OFFERED EXCLUSIVELY TO HARVARD ALUMNI FEATURING:

NO Annual Fees NO Foreign Transaction Fees NO Blackout Dates or Travel Restrictions

HARVARDCARD.COM

190530_HUECU.indd 1 3/22/19 2:07 PM John Harvard's Journal drugs, and whole new industries.” In the quantum realm, he said, “It feels to me like Yesterday’s News we’re in a similar position today”—on the From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine verge of exciting science, to be followed by new technologies and practical applications. Along with those initiatives in public 1914 The Class of 1918—with 704 ma- 19341 American Ballads and Folk Songs, policy and emerging science, the president triculants (up from 622 a year before)— compiled by John A. Lomax, A.M. ’07, and emphasized another theme from his instal- moves into Gore, Standish, and Smith Alan J. Lomax ’34, with a foreword by lation address that he wished more people Halls, the new dormitories created by Professor George Lyman Kittredge, is focused on, and to which he remains strong- President Lowell as a way to plunge in- praised as evidence that the United ly committed. In a world overwhelmed with coming students quickly into college life. States, “at least the part of the population digitally available information—and misin- The editors suggest the new dorms and which has not been trammeled by excess formation—“I continue to believe that we’re scholarships have made the College more of schooling, is in fact a singing land.” going to see a renaissance of interest in a attractive, and also credit the past year’s truly liberal education.” More than ever, that efforts to publicize Harvard nationally. 1939 A New York Times article head- means teaching critical-reasoning skills, lined “Harvard Descends on Student helping learners do “more to distinguish 1924 A number of “radical changes in Communists; Burns 5,000 Soviet-Hitler the signal from the noise.” policy and service have been made in Me- Pamphlets” prompts a swift reply from morial Hall.” Instead of being charged the Corporation denying destruction of Also within the president’s influence, at board by the week, students may buy the circulars; pointing out that the single least, is securing the resources to advance single meal tickets or six- or 30-day cou- student leafleter had simply broken a rule aspirations as professors articulate them pon books (breakfast is 35 cents, lunch requiring distribution of printed matter and as the University pursues its institu- 65 cents, dinner 75 cents). White wait- by mail, not in person; and denouncing the tional interests. During most of his trav- resses will replace black waiters. And article’s mention of an alleged “quiet drive els for alumni events, Bacow’s schedule set “for the first time in the history of the by the University authorities against stu- aside time to meet privately with some of dining hall, women will be allowed at the dent communism” as “utterly incompati- those best University supporters: in the ag- transient tables” in the main dining hall, ble with the well-known traditions of aca- gregate, probably scores of such visits. They rather than being restricted to a private demic freedom in Harvard University.” seem to be having an effect. dining room. Even with the conclusion of the $9.6-bil- 1969 The Harvard Independent debuts. lion Harvard Campaign just before Bacow became president, the Corporation’s senior 1999 A standing-room only crowd fellow, William F. Lee, indicated in May that estimated at 1,500-plus (including stu- “[I]t was a great fundraising year” (see har- dents who slept on the steps to get a vardmag.com/srfellow-update-19). The an- seat) hears the Reverend Billy nual financial report will presumably show Graham deliver a Sunday- the results this fall. Among those already morning sermon in the Me- publicized are: morial Church. • A $100-million anonymous gift in support of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences 2004 Founded-at- (FAS), math, and science, announced last Harvard website The- autumn. facebook has been • Weeks later, a further landmark gift from sued by rival Con- Len Blavatnik, M.B.A. ’89, whose foundation nectU, founded by gave $200 million to the Medical School fellow Harvardians. (harvardmag.com/hms200mgift-18), and, the week after Commencement, $131 mil- 2014 To encour- lion more for bioengineering from Hansjörg age undergraduates Wyss, M.B.A. ’65 (see page 28). to relax, and avoid • And sandwiched in between, $100 million a disciplinary sum- from David E. Goel ’93 and Stacey L. Goel for mons, Lamont Library a new American Repertory Theater facility, a and the Administra- new element in Harvard’s plans for Allston tive Board distribute (harvardmag.com/art-allston-19). “I said I “Practice Safe Cit- wanted to accelerate development in Allston,” ing” squeeze balls at Bacow noted. The ART gift will make an im- the start of fall term. pact some years hence (an architect has been named for the project, as reported at harvard-

Illustration by Mark Steele

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 mag.com/artallston-architect-19, but ad- alumni-association global ditional fundraising, plus design and regu- gathering in Amsterdam latory review, all are on the horizon). On a this fall, a convenient faster track, the entity Bacow created last fall jumping-off spot for other to oversee development of the commercial European cities, too. properties opposite the Business School dis- Harvard in 2019 is clear- seminated its request for proposals to private ly not Tufts in 2001. Dur- developers in June; a developer for the project ing his second winter as may be chosen late this year (see page 34). president there, in 2003, Bacow laid out principles In one sense, after an energetic, even hy- and a strategy for that peractive, first year of meeting the Har- university, focusing on vard community and external constitu- need-blind undergradu-

ents worldwide, Bacow’s second year might ate admission to attract CHASE/HPAC JON promise to be more settled. He is again based the best students in competition against May 4, 2019: The musical Adele Fleet in Massachusetts Hall (it was undergoing its best peers; better compensation for and Bacow and Larry Bacow make noise with The Harvard Undergraduate Drummers. renovation when he took office), and, as of more aggressive hiring of the best faculty April 2, housed in the president’s residence members; and belt-tightening elsewhere Then again, Bacow may be drawing from at Elmwood (which was also being renovat- (a centralized budget with rigorous pri- other lessons he learned during his first uni- ed): proximate to campus and the students ority-setting, deferred building mainte- versity presidency. At Tufts, he said, “every with whom he hopes to engage more. nance) to pay for the upgrades, along with year was unto itself, often shaped by cir- On the other hand, he expressed no res- fundraising. cumstances that could not be foreseen at the ervations about maintaining a busy travel Harvard, with its vastly larger endow- start of the year”—beginning, for him, at the schedule: “I do anticipate continuing to get ment and tradition of autonomous schools, outset of his presidency, with the tragedy out and engage with folks in D.C., and I’ll may not lend itself to comparably unified of 9/11, and followed later in the decade by continue to meet with alumni around the strategies, or at least not immediately after the Great Recession. A leader can plan, he country”—and indeed beyond, including an a stupendous fundraising campaign. said, but not predict. vjohn s. rosenberg

Calling All Harvard Authors!

THE DEADLINE IS: SEPTEMBER 13, 2019 to showcase your book in Harvard Magazine and reach 258,000 Harvard alumni, faculty, and staff. The November-December 2019 Harvard Magazine will feature the —Holiday Reading List, a special advertising section for authors (adjacent to Montage coverage of books and the arts). Your book ad includes a book jacket photo and 8 lines of text. Your ad will appear both in print and online. For pricing and information go to: harvardmagazine.com/hauthors, call 617.496.6686,Harvard or Authors’email [email protected]. Bookshelf

Harvard Magazine 27

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal Catalyzing across the University and its affiliated hos- tunities for collaboration and growth. We pitals, guided by a provostial committee co- are deeply grateful for his support.” Bioengineering chaired by the Medical School’s Folkman University provost Alan Garber, an econ- With his $131-million gift in support of the professor of vascular biology Don Ingber, an omist and physician who leads Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired En- affiliate of Children’s Hospital Boston, and life-sciences initiatives and chairs the Wyss gineering, announced by the University on Pinkas Family professor of bioengineering Da- board of trustees, added that the institute June 7, Hansjörg Wyss, M.B.A. ’65, has now vid Mooney, a common interest arose. Wyss has advanced the field of bioengineering made three gifts to the eponymous institute, sought ways to put significantly. “From totalling $381 million, which bring his total physicians, physicists, developing singular philanthropic support for Harvard to more mathematicians, me- insights and cutting- than $400 million. The institute seeks to chanical engineers— edge approaches, to bridge the gap between academia and indus- every pertinent dis- creating bioinspired try by drawing inspiration from nature’s de- cipline—together to materials and feats of sign principles to solve some of the world’s work on various proj- engineering, the Wyss most complex challenges in healthcare and ects with high poten- Institute had and will the environment—and to commercialize tial for life-changing continue to have a those solutions to maximize their impact. applications. He powerful impact,” It has had notable success during its first de- agreed to make an he said. Elaborating cade. Wyss’s decision to continue investing initial gift of $125 mil- in an email, he ex- in the institute, just months after the Medi- lion in 2009, with the plained: “Biologically cal School unveiled a $200-million gift from University investing inspired engineering the foundation of Len Blavatnik, M.B.A. ’89, as well. was an unconvention- to support basic research (see “Accelerating The institute that al approach when the Medical Research,” January-February, page has resulted, led Wyss Institute was 18), indicates the University’s life-sciences by Ingber in rented Hansjörg Wyss created in 2009, but it prowess, and leading philanthropists’ will- space in the Long- is now recognized as a ingness to underwrite it. wood Medical Area, now engages a rotat- powerful approach to solving a wide range of Wyss was CEO of Synthes, a biomedical ing cast of about 375: 150 to 170 full-time staff, problems. Some of the technologies that have research and device company that pioneered and 200-plus others, including 18 core and come from the Wyss Institute are simply as- new techniques for healing traumatic bone 16 associate faculty members, and numer- tounding, such as…3-D bioprinting of living breaks. In the middle of the last decade, ous postdoctoral fellows and students. The tissue, and versatile ambulatory microrobots. Howard Stevenson, then a Harvard Business exact numbers change frequently, because The Wyss Institute was created to move the School professor and University vice provost, when a project results in a startup, members scientific advances of bioengineering faculty and a friend and classmate of Wyss, recalls of the project team often leave to join the at Harvard and collaborating institutions be- that company’s focus this way: “How do you new company. Initially, “It was like a startup yond academic labs, developing real-world marry materials with biology?” As Harvard on steroids,” said Ingber: since its launch, products that treat and diagnose human dis- sought to organize its bioengineering research the Wyss has produced 2,085 publications, ease. Endeavors to translate research advances with one paper per month on average in in this way have a long history; the Wyss In- Science or Nature (the holy grail for scientists stitute has demonstrated that we can do so publishing their discoveries); filed for 2,623 quickly and successfully.” patents—and been issued 392; launched 29 Among the current fields of inquiry are: startups; and entered 53 agreements to li- • soft, wearable robots that increase the cense technology. Since 2009, 23.8 percent user’s balance, endurance, and strength, ei- of Harvard’s patent applications have been ther during ill health or in environments that linked to Wyss research. place extreme demands on the human body; Hailing the new gift, President Lawrence • adaptive materials that are respon- S. Bacow said, “Hansjörg Wyss has helped to sive and self-optimizing, such as coatings expand what we know and what we can ac- that prevent barnacles from sticking to the complish across a wide range of disciplines. hulls of ships, thereby producing huge en- The advances that his generosity has enabled ergy savings; will change the future for countless people. • biomimetic microsystems, such as or- His third gift to support the work of the gan-on-a-chip microfluidic cell-culture de- Wyss Institute will ensure the continued vices that recapitulate the complex func- success of our extraordinarily talented fac- tions and disease states of living human ulty and staff, as well as create new oppor- organs—useful for drug testing and per- sonalized medicine; Proteins engineered to capture pathogens, to prevent sepsis (top); • materials that can modulate immune and an organ-on-a-chip responses in order to treat cancer and in-

28 September - October 2019 Photographs courtesy of the Wyss Institute

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 fections, for example; • functional, vascularized 3-D organ re- interested in funding visionary researchers • engineered, living, cellular devices pro- placements for implantation in the human and their ideas: new capabilities that will grammed to detect pathogenic viruses, or body. advance an entire field, yielding not single reduce off-target drug delivery; The scientific output goes hand-in-hand breakthroughs but entire technological ca- • programmable swarms of molecular ro- with the institute’s organizational innova- pabilities. A significant cohort of professional bots that can aid in sequencing, imaging, tions. Research proceeds from laboratory to engineers with product-development expe- and drug delivery; licensing or start-up enterprises through a rience is embedded with the Wyss. “Because • synthetic biology, for editing genes changing roster of core and associated facul- they sit in open spaces,” Ingber explained, and proteins in applications ranging from ty members, postdoctoral fellows, and stu- “when somebody says, ‘I need something for healthcare and chemical manufacturing to dents—brought together as the problems a knee joint with these lubricant or material information storage; and being investigated change. The institute is properties,’ someone else might say, ‘Well, Commute Cycle

For years Mike Burke, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ registrar, had a long and unex- ceptional daily commute to work from Dan- vers, Massachusetts. Then one day in 2014, his car broke down. He, his wife, and his two young children were, at least temporarily, now a one-car family. How would he get to his office? The wheels began to turn. Growing up in Philadelphia, Burke had been a frequent bike rider. In college, he’d Mike Burke gotten used to steep hills while riding through Syracuse, New York, and he’d become accustomed to riding with probably within the first four or five miles, I realized this was not city traffic during a study-abroad program in London. He had even going to be okay, and I might have to stop.” Not wanting to call tried biking around Zimbabwe as a member of the Peace Corps, his wife for a rescue, he willed his borderline hypothermic body but after dealing with frequent flat tires, he gave up. through about 20 more miles, refusing to warm up at the many Though he hadn’t done much cycling in decades, he decided Dunkin’ Donuts en route out of fear that he would be unable to he would bike to the local commuter rail station, ride the train will himself back onto the bike. By the time he arrived home, he to Boston, and then take two subways (or hop on another bike) had tunnel vision. He drank hot chocolate his wife had prepared, for the remaining portion. It worked fine, but he was constrained and his kids lay on top of him, sharing their body heat. After 30 by a variable schedule, stuffed into crowded cars, and subject to minutes, his body warmed enough to shiver. weather delays. “And then I decided, you know what, maybe I In 2018, Burke and his family moved to Pforzheimer House’s should just ride the bike the whole way.” Faculty Row, and his trip to work went from 25 miles to about He attached a pannier and waterproof bags to his bike, bought one. He doesn’t miss the time-consuming commute, but he does some heavy-duty lights for visibility, and got on his way around miss the 50 miles daily, to which he attributes improved health sunrise. The most direct route—between 20 and 25 miles—took and focus. Now, when his family takes a trip to New Hampshire him through Peabody, Lynn, Revere, Everett, and Charlestown. or Maine, he often opts for a bike—meeting them at their desti- The trip was hilly and strewn with stoplights, but biking didn’t nation later in the day. take any longer than riding a train or slogging through bumper- In the summer, he gets a chance to recreate his former daily to-bumper traffic. After posing questions about certain tricky feat, biking from a Gloucester seasonal home to Cambridge on intersections on biking Facebook groups, he developed a less Monday and back on Thursday. At its shortest, it’s about a 35- direct but more enjoyable 25- to 30-mile course through Win- mile trip one-way, but Burke often takes the scenic route, stray- chester, Lynnfield, Stoneham, Medford, and Arlington—and so ing far enough from traffic that he can wear headphones—and committed himself to a three-hour daily round-trip cycle ride. extending his pedaling by around 20 miles. “I catch myself singing For four years, almost nothing could spoil his morning trip. Rain as I’m riding sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes it’s me and the was merely a nuisance, and wind and light snow (as long as it didn’t cows and the horses out there and I’m singing some lyrics from accumulate) were par for the course. Cold wasn’t a deterrent, The Clash or something like that.” but sometimes it should have been. One January morning, Burke Of his attempts to get others to embrace a bike commute, ventured off in 25-degree weather—manageable with proper Burke calls himself an “unsuccessful disciple” or a “failed prophet.” layers. By the time he left work that evening, it was dark and It’s hard to convey how a two-wheeled commute can brighten up below zero with wind chill. “I was like, ‘All right, I’ve ridden in a day. “The people who get it are the ones who are already doing weather like this, it should be okay,’” he recalled. “But I would say it,” he said. “I’m working on my kids, though.” vjacob sweet

Photograph by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 29

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal we used something that had those properties as an airplane-engine insulation.…’ You Admissions, through the Ages don’t see that at companies because they’re usually focused on their [specific] exper- Eight years out of Yale—after stints as a Early on, he divided his time between ad- tise,” he pointed out, “and you don’t ever see U.S. Marine platoon leader and a teach- missions and service as senior advisor in that in academia.” In turn, engineers and er—Dwight D. Miller joined the Harvard the freshman dean’s office—and he was a researchers are supported, as ideas evolve, College admissions office in July 1967. That proctor in the Yard from 1967 to 1990, by a half-dozen staff members of Harvard’s was before the merger with Radcliffe; be- the longest tenure known. Those engage- Office of Technology Development, who can fore the Supreme Court first ruled on af- ments gave him deeper insight into the accelerate commercial application in the firmative action in admissions, inRegents of College experience and how applicants most effective way (see “Accelerating In- University of California v. Bakke (1978—and might get the most from, and contribute novation,” March-April, page 18). again in Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003; the mul- the most to, the place. Increasingly, those Overall, said Ingber, the institute’s ap- tiple rounds of Fisher v. University of Texas at admitted have represented a far wider proach might be called self-assembling in- Austin, decided in 2016; and the current range of minority and ethnic backgrounds, terdisciplinary research. Instead of erecting Students for Fair Admissions litigation and of socioeconomic circumstances. buildings and placing experts from different against Harvard, possibly also headed to On the downside, today’s applicants are disciplines who have “no reason to work to- Washington on appeal); and before the “certainly much more uptight about the gether” in proximity to one another, he ex- global frenzy to gain a place at the nation’s process,” Miller said, citing “the pressure plained, “You identify problems that are so selective colleges led to a tsunami of ap- on them to get into college A, B, or C— exciting, and so difficult, and you get the best plications, plummeting admissions rates— especially from the parents.” Withal, the people who want to solve them, but who can’t and, in turn, a parental/high-schooler arms experience accumulated within the admis- do it on their own. And then, when you bring race to gain an edge through private coun- sions staff across the decades has enabled other scientists and engineers that have the selors, test-prep courses, and ever-more Harvard to winnow the applicants to find right expertise to complement them nearby, applications filed by each anxious student. the “offbeat” ones who can thrive here, you just get out of their way, and it happens.” At Harvard, where navigating thro’ this and contribute to the community in spe- Because faculty members commonly operate change and storm has meant attracting cial ways. And he is grateful that “the like “independent entrepreneurs, who have sense of entitlement” that prevailed at mid their own cultures,” he continued, “we creat- century, when the applicants were so ed a new culture: we let our faculty keep their heavily weighted toward eastern prep own labs,” but move some portion of it—gen- schools, has dwindled away. erally their most entrepreneurial postdoctoral As he worked with alumni volunteers fellows, research assistants, and graduate stu- who interview applicants and support their dents—to the Wyss. education through philanthropy devoted “When you see the research that has to financial aid, Miller set out in the 1980s been done in the first five years,” said Wyss, to gain formal recognition for their efforts. speaking from Paris and reflecting on his The resulting Hiram Hunn Award, created 2013 decision to double his initial support, in 1986, honors the schools-and-scholar- “the intellectual property, the papers pub- ships foot soldiers; the eponymous Hunn, lished in top scientific magazines,…the in- A.B. 1921, who did such work for 60 years fluence it had on teaching at Harvard, the in Iowa and Vermont (where he and Miller influence it had on collaborative research Dwight Miller intersected for a decade and a half); and throughout [the School of Engineering and Miller himself, for his advocacy on their Applied Sciences] and the Faculty of Arts and reviewing an applicant pool that in- behalf. He was also recognized, directly, by and Sciences—you have to continue.” creased from fewer than 5,000 annually the James ’72 and Rita Cain Scholarship Having recently looked at some great when Miller appeared on the scene to fund, established by a former student in paintings, he added, “When Cezanne cre- 43,330 hopefuls for the class of 2023, ex- Grays Hall when he was proctor; it will be ated one of his landscapes, he had to go and perience and perspective have been es- renamed upon Miller’s retirement. paint another one. He could not stop. So, pecially valuable. No one has personified That moment, amazingly, is now at hand, when you create the Wyss and then think that better than Miller, who served under effective September 1. His Harvard admis- about the second gift, you almost have to do admissions deans Chase N. Peterson, L. sions service extended nearly as long as it.” Now he has done so again, assuring the Fred Jewett, and William R. Fitzsimmons. Hunn’s, and accounts for more than a half- institute’s momentum and further anchor- Now senior admissions officer, Miller, century of College classes, numbering ing Harvard’s expanding dexterity in mak- Ed.M. ’71, has covered most of New Eng- thousands of undergraduates. No matter ing fundamental life-sciences and biomedi- land; the Atlantic seaboard; a chunk of the what changes in admissions unfold in the cal discoveries, and translating them to the Midwest; four southwestern states; for a next five decades, no one in sight is likely real world of application to human needs. quarter-century, Long Island; and Canada. to equal Miller’s record.vjohn s. rosenberg For a full report, see harvardmag.com/ wyss-gift3-19. vjonathan shaw

30 September - October 2019 Photograph by Jim Harrison

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Early Decision Redux $350-million naming gift for MIT’s new Selective colleges and universities, including College of Computing, and has previously Harvard, have tried to contain guaranteed Brevia donated $150 million to Yale, his under- early admissions, on the ground that they graduate alma mater, for a campus center. may be unfair to qualified applicants from under-resourced Development News backgrounds where, for in- The Pritzker Foundation has stance, counseling is limited. made a $100-million commit- Thus, Harvard offers “early ment to the University of Chica- action,” but not binding “early go to underwrite a new Pritzker decision” (under which those School of Molecular Engineer- offered a spot in an entering ing—that university’s first engi- class, typically in December neering school. (Harvard Corpo- or January, must commit to ac- ration member Penny Pritzker cepting it), to applicants who ’81 is herself a prominent phi- want some assurance about lanthropist. Locally, she sup- their college choices. In May, ported the conversion of Cabot the University of Virginia, Library and the Science Center which had eliminated binding commons—see harvardmag. early decision in 2006, reintro- com/cabot-redo-17.)… Emory duced it, alongside regular and University’s global-health in- early-action options. This may stitute has received $180 million ignite a competitive response from the Bill & Melinda Gates from peer institutions, at a time Foundation to support its net- when they have been trying to work that monitors child health level the playing field for appli- and mortality prevention, bring- cants from lower-income and ing the foundation’s total invest- first-generation families, who ment in the program, established are more likely to need to compare financial- MUSEUM MANAGEMENT. Jane in 2015, to $271 million. aid offers from several schools, rather than Pickering—executive director of the Harvard Museums of Science & committing early to one. Culture since 2013—has been Curatorial Changes appointed Howells director of the The Harvard Art Museums Across the Pond Peabody Museum of Archaeology and have appointed Joachim The University of Oxford now shares its Ethnology, reporting to Faculty of Homann the new Abrams Arts and Sciences dean Claudine Gay. peer American institutions’ passion for ad- The dean said a new faculty executive curator of drawings, ef-

mitting undergraduates from under-repre- committee will help shape the fective in mid August. He STUDIO HILL GRIGGS/TANNERY DIANA AND DENNIS sented backgrounds (see “Mastering the museum’s strategy, and that it was an was formerly curator of Joachim appropriate time “to consider how we Homann ‘Hidden Curriculum,’ ” November-Decem- engage with the communities from the Bowdoin College Mu- ber 2017, page 18). Opportunity Oxford and which [its] collections derive.” seum of Art.…Ethan Lasser, Stebbins cura- Foundation Oxford, unveiled by vice-chan- tor of American art and head of the divi- cellor Louise Richardson in May, aim to University of St Andrews, was Radcliffe sion of European and American art (see “The recruit students from socioeconomically Institute executive dean from 2001 to 2008.) Lost Museum,” May-June 2017, page 42), has disadvantaged backgrounds, and from been appointed Cabot chair of the art of the personally disadvantaged or educational- Humanities Meet AI Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Bos- ly disrupted circumstances, respectively. Stephen A. Schwarzman, M.B.A. ’72, chair- ton, effective September 14.…AndCarmen The goal is to boost their presence among man and CEO of the Blackstone investment Arnold-Biucchi, the museums’ inaugural entering students from 15 percent of each firm, has given £150 million to theUniver - Damarete curator of ancient coins (Harvard class now to 25 percent by 2023. Opportu- sity of Oxford to underwrite the epony- Portrait, September-October 2003, page 74), nity Oxford will extend structured home mous Centre for the Humanities. The new has retired after nearly 17 years of service. study, plus a two-week residential immer- facility will house the humanities depart- sion, to help up to 200 students transition ments together; incorporate concert, audi- Online Investments to the university in its first year. The Foun- torium, and exhibition spaces; and become Coursera, the for-profit online learning dation is a full-year program of instruction home to a new Institute for Ethics in AI (ar- platform (a competitor to the nonprofit for refugees, children responsible for caring tificial intelligence)—an area of burgeon- Harvard-MIT edX), announced a fifth for their families, and others. (Richardson, ing interest at many universities, including round of equity financing, totaling $103 past principal and vice-chancellor of the Harvard. Schwarzman last fall made the million and bringing its valuation to a re-

Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs and Communications Harvard Magazine 31

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

ported $1 billion. One of the investors, the ance on how the tax would work (“Taxing stem cell and regenerative biology (SCRB; Austrialian-based SEEK Group, a jobs plat- Matters,” January-February 2018, page 17). itself a collaboration between the Faculty of form that also has interests in international Many questions remain—for example, re- Arts and Sciences and the Medical School), enrollment services and online academic garding the government’s suggestion that and management and entrepreneurship at programs, separately invested $65 million interest income on student loans and rent- HBS, with the aim of preparing to apply bio- in the Open University, which operates al income on institutions’ student housing medical research in business and commer- FutureLearn (which is especially active in units both count as taxable investment in- cial contexts. About half of current SCRB Australia and Great Britain). Both entities come. The University, which continues to graduates enter biomedical and biotech seek to manage online programs for uni- lobby against the tax, has not updated its fields, or finance. versities, and to provide degrees or other prior guidance that Harvard faces an an- credentials to their learner-users. nual tax bill of $40 million or more. Nota Bene Development dean. Admissions Fallout An A.B.: Still Worth It. Armin Afsahi has been In the wake of the Varsity Blues admissions Although the opportunity cost of attending appointed associate vice scandal (see “Thinner Ice,” July-August, page college has increased as employment pros- president and dean of de- 3), U.S. senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has pects and wages have risen (and as public velopment for the Faculty BRIAN VON SCHULZ Armin Afsahi introduced legislation that would require institutions’ tuition bills have soared in the of Arts and Sciences, ef- colleges to bar the consideration of family wake of the Great Recession), an analysis fective August 1, reporting members’ donations or ability to donate in by Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz of the to FAS dean Claudine Gay and University evaluating applicants for admission; require Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicates vice president for alumni affairs and devel- reporting (which would be made public) on that a college degree continues to confer a opment Brian K. Lee. Afsahi was vice chan- the number of applicants, admitted students, $30,000-plus wage premium for the average cellor for academic development at the Uni- and enrolled students who are the children graduate, compared to the earnings of those versity of Denver, and previously worked in of donors; and limit the deductibility of gifts, who have only a high-school diploma. That fundraising at the University of California, for institutions that don’t comply with the implies an internal rate of return of 14 per- San Diego, and Georgetown. first provision, to $100,000 for a six-year pe- cent on the investment made to earn a bach- riod surrounding an applicant’s enrollment elor’s degree—well above the expected re- Undergraduate guides. The Harvard (and prohibiting standard tax deductions for turn for investing in, say, stocks and bonds.… Art Museums have received a $1-million larger gifts). Colleges could avoid the limits Separately, survey research by Third Way, gift from George Ho ’90, Henry Ho ’95, and on tax-deductibility, Wyden said, by adopt- a think tank, revealed that despite underly- Rosalind “Sasa” Wang to establish the Ho ing policies that bar consideration of gifts in ing partisan attitudes toward higher educa- Family Student Guide Fund; it will sup- admissions decisions. tion found in other polls (see “News Briefs,” port research and training for undergradu- January-February, page 26), voters across the ate guides. Henry Ho is chairman and CEO Endowment Tax spectrum believe in the value of college—and of Tung Ho Steel Enterprise, in Taipei City; In late June—at the end of the first fiscal that educational institutions “can and should his brother George, a visual and environ- year in which Harvard would have to pay do more to provide value to the students they mental studies concentrator, is an artist, the 1.4 percent excise tax on endowment are supposed to serve,” particularly in equip- and his wife, Sasa, is a volunteer docent at investment income enacted in late 2017 as ping them with job skills. the National Palace Museum. part of the sweeping federal tax legislation—the U.S. Treasury issued initial guid- Mastering Biotech Fellowship flap. On June 28, the Taub- Harvard Business School and man Center for State and Local Government the Graduate School of Arts at the Harvard Kennedy School announced and Sciences have launched that former Michigan governor Rick Sny- their joint two-year S.M./ der had been named a senior research fel- M.B.A. biotechnology: life low. Critics within the University and be- sciences degree. Enrollment yond assailed the appointment, because of begins next August, with sev- his involvement in the decisions that led en to 10 degree candidates ini- the citizens of Flint, then overseen by the tially. Students will study life state, to be exposed to lead-tainted water sciences in the department of (the subject of Mona Hanna-Attisha’s Medi-

ART ARCHITECT. The American Repertory Theater announced that London-based Haworth Tompkins will design its new Allston facility—the firm’s first U.S. building. Haworth Tompkins was the architect for the prizewinning Liverpool Everyman theater, among other performing-arts projects (see harvardmag.com/art-architect-19). Principal Steve Tomp- kins is shown here with the ART’s Bloom artistic director, Diane Paulus.

32 September - October 2019 Photograph courtesy of A.R.T.

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 News Briefs petition. Line items for sums to be reported cal School class day address on May 30; see include a dozen categories such as speaking harvardmag.com/hanna-attisha-19). On A Coach Cashiered engagements, housing benefits, and camps, July 3, dean Douglas Elmendorf announced On July 9, The Harvard Crimson and The Boston plus “other (please specify).” The language that Snyder had withdrawn. He noted that Globe reported that Peter Brand, head fenc- notes that a conflict “exists when an indi- Flint residents had “suffered acutely,” and ing coach since 1999, had been dismissed. A vidual commitment to the University may that the HKS community had much to statement released by director of athletics be compromised by personal benefit,” learn from studying “both failures and suc- Robert L. Scalise said: “In April, Harvard among other definitions. And, “Employees cesses of government” but now believed, was made aware of allegations involving Pe- should pay special attention to ensuring with Snyder, that the proposed fellowship ter Brand….An independent investigation of that they maintain the proper relationship “would not enhance education here in the the matter is now complete, and Mr. Brand between themselves and third parties with ways we intended.” has been dismissed from his position for vio- whom they come into contact in the course lating Harvard’s conflict of interest policy. of performing their jobs for the University. Data science: the magazine. Harvard Harvard Athletics is committed to uphold- These parties may include, but are not lim- Data Science Review, published online by ing the integrity of our athletics program, ited to…potential students. Personal gain the eponymous initiative (see harvard- and it is our expectation that every coach resulting from a relationship with a third mag.com/datascience-17) and distributed and staff member adhere unambiguously to party must be avoided.” vjohn s. rosenberg by MIT Press, debuted in July. It bridges our policies.” research, education, and popular com- In an email to the athletics staff, he elab- A Professor Sanctioned munication, with authors from diverse orated, “Harvard’s conflicts policy specifi- Continuing the run of adverse summer institutions. The first issue https://hdsr.( cally addresses ‘personal benefit’ and states news, on July 10, Faculty of Arts and Sci- mitpress.mit.edu) features an essay by that ‘[a] conflict of interest exists when in- ences (FAS) dean Claudine Gay notified Lee provost Alan M. Garber on what educat- dividual commitment to the University may professor of economics and professor of edu- ed citizens need to know about the field. be compromised by personal benefit.’ The cation Roland G. Fryer Jr. and the econom- policy also states that ‘[f]ailure to disclose ics department that Fryer has been placed Miscellany. The Poets and Quants blog, on possible conflict of interest or commit- on administrative leave for two years, to be business education, reported that the cost ment…may be grounds for disciplinary ac- followed by two years of supervised proba- of an M.B.A. (tuition, fees, and expenses) tion and may lead to termination.’” tionary return to academic engagements, exceeds $200,000 at nine top programs, Neither Scalise nor officers of the Fac- as a result of investigations of his “unwel- led by Stanford ($231,672); Harvard Busi- ulty of Arts and Sciences, which oversees come sexual conduct toward several indi- ness School ranks seventh (at $218,248). In athletics, were available to elaborate, and viduals, resulting in the creation of a hostile return, HBS graduates earned an average the athletics website merely noted in a re- work environment over the course of sev- annual starting compensation of $160,000- markably anodyne message on its home eral years” within his Education Innovation plus.…As students continue to express page, “Harvard to begin national search for Laboratory (EdLabs). strong interest in ethnic studies, Faculty men’s and women’s fencing coach.” That Based on the Office of Dispute Resolution of Arts and Sciences dean Claudine Gay linked to the underlying observation that investigation of allegations made against announced a plan to hire a cluster of three “Peter Brand…will not be returning for the Fryer, who joined the faculty as an assis- to four “cross divisional scholars” in Asian- 2019-2020 season….” tant professor in 2006, Gay also determined American, Latinx, and Islam in America/ The Globe reported in April that Brand that he had engaged in “behavior that was Muslim American “ethnicity, indigene- had sold his suburban house for an above- not sexual harassment but that constituted ity, and migration” during the new aca- market price to the father of a varsity fenc- violations of the FAS Professional Conduct demic year.…Fourteen members of the U.S. er, and of an applicant for admission (who Policy.” House of Representatives, including Ru- subsequently gained admission and joined During the two-year administrative (un- ben M. Gallego ’02/’04 (D-Arizona) and the fencing team). Brand reportedly then paid) leave, Fryer cannot teach or advise Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-New York), have bought a condominium near campus for within FAS, or conduct research involving introduced a College Freedom of Asso- an inflated price, and the purchaser of his Harvard resources, and the EdLab is closed. ciation Act; it would amend federal law house subsequently sold it, without having During the subsequent two-year proba- to prohibit actions like Harvard’s sanc- occupied it, at a significant loss. (See links tionary period, he may return to academic tions on undergraduate membership in to the Globe and other coverage at harvard- work (but not to a supervisory role), sub- single-sex final clubs, fraternities, and so- mag.com/brand-19.) ject to the conditions that: his undergradu- rorities.…Mehra Family professor of South The conflict-of-interest reporting re- ate teaching is at the dean’s discretion and Asian studies Sunil Amrith, an historian quired of staff annually is not ambiguous. It subject to monitoring by a Title IX-trained (Harvard Portrait, September-October covers all “athletic-related outside income”; individual, and will not involve any graduate 2017, page 19), has been appointed inter- use of the institution’s name or logo for en- teaching fellows; and his graduate teaching im director of the Mahindra Humanities dorsements; and accepting outside compen- is limited to a class format, excluding work- Center, succeeding Rothenberg professor sation or gratuities from shoe, apparel, or shops. At the end of that two-year, super- of the humanities Homi Bhabha. equipment manufacturers in exchange for vised period, Gay will assess whether Fryer using their merchandise in practice or com- may be reinstated to regular academic privi-

Harvard Magazine 33

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal leges. No mention was made about whether of the science and engineering spaces. And because the profit Fryer’s tenured status has changed. complex, set to open next year. margins for the labs and offices On July 11, Harvard Graduate School of Uses approved by Boston’s de- will likely exceed those for the Education dean Bridget Terry Long issued a velopment authority for this hotel and residential buildings, statement saying she had “decided that the tract—the initial piece of the Glynn suggested that including sanctions determined by Dean Gay are also 36 Harvard-owned acres des- them in one RFP creates cross- appropriate and necessary to apply to Pro- ignated for the ERC—include subsidies that are likely to re- fessor Fryer’s partial appointment at HGSE.” 400,000 square feet of lab/of- sult in a better outcome. Read a The case attracted enormous attention fice space (presumably in two complete report at harvardmag. because Fryer is a leading economics re- buildings); a 250,000-square- MITCHELL/HPAC STEPHANIE com/rfp-erc-2019. searcher (he is both a MacArthur Fellow foot hotel/conference center; Thomas Glynn vjonathan shaw and a John Bates Clark Medalist—conferred and 250,000 square feet of resi- by the American Economic Association on dential facilities. There is also provision for New Union Negotiations the best American economist under age 40); 800 to 900 parking spaces. More than a year after graduate stu- he is a prominent African American in a dis- HALC CEO Thomas Glynn described dents voted to form a labor union, in April cipline struggling to become more diverse; a two-part process. First, developers will 2018, the Harvard Graduate Student Union- and his case, meant to be conducted confi- present their capabilities and relevant ex- United Auto Workers (HGSU-UAW) and dentially, had leaked extensively, beginning perience: have they, for example, built ho- the University are still negotiating an initial in May 2018 in The Harvard Crimson. Accord- tels and life-sciences labs, or worked pre- contract agreement. On July 15, about 300 ing to some of those prior reports, Fryer was viously in a similar urban setting and with HGSU-UAW members wrote in an open prohibited from entering his lab during at an academic institution? Second, early this letter to President Lawrence S. Bacow that least part of the protracted investigations. fall, Harvard will seek details of financing, they intended to hold a strike authoriza- Locally, Gay’s decision comes at a time of building proposals, and design. Glynn hopes tion vote “if the Harvard administration’s heightened attention to sexual assault and to have a recommendation for the HALC’s bargaining team continues to put forward harassment, and follows her decision to board, chaired by business school dean Ni- untenable positions for negotiation and pre- strip long-time professor Jorge Domínguez tin Nohria, by year’s end. vents us from attaining a fair contract.” An of his emeritus status, effectively banning By then, who pays what for infrastruc- authorization would not necessarily result him from the community, following “unwel- ture (roads, sewers, utilities) and the terms in a strike. Instead, it would empower the come sexual conduct toward several indi- for use of the University property will have HGSU-UAW bargaining committee to call viduals, on multiple occasions over a period to be settled. Boston’s permitting process one when it believes necessary, prompting spanning nearly four decades.” will follow, Glynn said, with input from the graduate students to withhold their work A complete report on Gay’s decision ap- community and regulatory authorities. If all as course instructors and lab researchers. pears at harvardmag.com/fryer-19. vj.s.r. proceeds smoothly, two years of construc- The past year has been punctuated by tion would ensue, meaning the area—now a protests and petitions in which organizers Allston Partnership Proposal cleared expanse of former trucking yards— for the more than 5,000-member union have The Harvard Allston Land Company might open for business by mid decade. called on the University to be more accom- (HALC), organized in late 2018 to direct de- The site is the gateway to a larger commer- modating of members’ bargaining priorities, velopment of the commercial “Enterprise Re- cial zone. Development of 22 adjacent acres and to schedule more frequent negotiation search Campus” (ERC) across Western Av- will occur in a second phase, with details and sessions so that progress can be made more enue from the Business School, has set a brisk timing turning on realignment of the nearby quickly. On the latter point, Harvard officials pace, issuing a request for proposal (RFP) to Massachusetts Turnpike and construction of have responded that this is a first contract developers nationwide on June 14. It seeks a a new mass-transit station—complex, ex- for a new, large union across many Univer- partner to build on a 14.1-acre parcel just east pensive undertakings. sity schools, so it will have wide-ranging Hiring a single development and complex consequences that need to be firm, with its own architects, worked through. HGSU-UAW’s goals in- engineers, financial and conclude better pay and health benefits (for struction managers, govern- example, graduate students don’t currently ment-relations personnel, and have access to subsidized dental insurance, others, will help ensure that as Harvard employees do); and the creation the resulting project is coher- of neutral, third-party grievance procedures ent in all its elements, from the for complaints of sexual harassment, for ex- look of the streetscape to inte- ample. Currently, sexual-harassment cases gration with designated open are investigated by Harvard’s Office for Dis- pute Resolution, which the union argues Harvard is soliciting developers’ could result in findings biased toward the proposals for the first phase of University; in turn, the institution has ar- the “enterprise research campus,” across the street from gued that it cannot have separate processes the Business School. for evaluating such complaints.

34 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Although the wage and compensation pro- offered funds that students could draw on for versities including Brown, Georgetown, posals haven’t been publicly released, Har- dental care, childcare, and other needs, and Tufts, and Brandeis have also unionized, but vard officials have said that HGSU-UAW’s pay raises of 3 percent in year one of the con- the security of students’ collective bargain- proposals would have a significant fiscal im- tract, and 2.25 percent in the next two years. ing rights is uncertain. The National Labor pact. An April message from Provost Alan M. (This past year, graduate students received a Relations Board ruled in August 2016 that Garber said of the economic proposals, “Uni- 3 percent stipend increase.) It also proposed graduate students at private universities had versity expenditures per graduate student raising its minimum wage for non-salaried the right to form unions, but this past May would approximately double….Were the Uni- student workers to $15 an hour. According to the federal agency announced it would re- versity to agree…there would likely be direct the Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation in the visit that decision—suggesting that it might consequences for the number of graduate stu- Boston area was 2.3 percent over the last year. reverse its position for the fourth time since dents who could be supported.” Harvard has Graduate students at other private uni- 2000. vmarina n. bolotnikova

ally reserved for the truth, I’d offered a cir- THE UNDERGRADUATE cuitous answer: I’ll figure that out when it’s over. It seems that a lot of Harvard graduates end up siding, at least for a while, with Alejo’s recruiter. According to The Harvard Crimson’s an- Movement Ecology nual senior survey (just under half my classmates responded), 34 percent were headed by isa flores-jones ’19 to consulting or finance positions, consistent with the past several years. But with my garden conversation fresh in mind, I went to he afternoon was cloudless, a ing the incredible, my friend said, as if it knock on my House tutor’s door. I’d like to brief window of calm in an oth- were impossible to both pay the bills and request more than marigolds, I told him— erwise hectic spring semester. live a more than unethical life. specifically, advice on my next few years. Alejo and I sat in the backyard Our circumstances were different, but I I had thought about law school. I grew Tof the Dudley Cooperative house, regard- understood my friend’s dilemma on prin- up in California’s Central Valley, where mu- ing the pots of planting soil and trowels be- ciple. With barely a month left in the term, nicipal warnings confirmed the toxicity of fore us. That morning our house tutor had my inbox was flooded with reminders for bad-air days: Don’t play outside. Limit driving and dropped 50 seed packets on the dining-room late library books and notices of the Office of A.C. usage. Even in winter, when the polluted table and ordered us to treat them better Career Services’ office hours, the very last of air dissolves into rain, I felt tightly sealed in, than we’d been treating ourselves: “Noth- our college careers. I had so far avoided any specimen-like, beneath a cap of air. During ing grows that way,” he’d said. reckoning with the latter. To my parents, the past year, I had watched news reports My friend shook a packet of marigold friends, and the space in my diary gener- as smoke from the Butte Fire blanketed my seeds. The antidote to the stressors of the past few months was almost certainly not inside. Two days earlier I’d found him in the kitchen, glumly beheading a mound of carrots. He’d just come from another job interview— a recruiter from McKinsey, the latest in a series of high-strung encounters, each leaving him more frustrated than the last. He’d asked the interviewer how she recon- ciled the company’s partnerships with auto- cratic regimes and human-rights abusers— she’d mentioned Saudi Arabia—with the day-to-day requirements of her job description. It was not a question meant to provoke, he told me, pushing a carrot with the tip of a knife. But the tone of the interview immediately shifted. “You ought to try someplace else,” the recruiter said curtly, “for that kind of work.” She made it seem as if I were ask- The author and fellow activists at a Divest Harvard rally this past April: (from left) Caleb Schwartz ’20, Flores-Jones, Anand Bradley ’19, Owen Torrey ’21, Eva Rosen- feld ’21, and Sophia Higgins ’21

Photograph by Lydia Carmichael Rosenberg/Harvard Magazine Harvard Magazine 35

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal city, bearing advisories that fluctuated be- mental” about their display was a tiny hand- attending a large university, which so often tween “Very High” and “Serious,” a distinc- drawn image of Earth. The students, Naima meant complicity, into action. Naima came tion between severely aggravated asthma and Sidni, began to talk about “divestment.” from New York City, recently savaged by and premature death. Friends posted photos Had I heard of the campaign? (I had not.) Superstorm Sandy. That disaster, combined of childhood homes, blackened in the blaze They continued, undeterred. Dis-investment, with her work at a Harlem community-re- or simply disappeared. Images of farm work- or divestment, draws on a long history of boy- siliency organization, had informed her ers picking fruit against a beet-red sky were cott tactics. Rather than rely on any one indi- decision to join the divestment campaign. shared and re-shared: people who couldn’t vidual’s purchasing power, the campaign tries Three years later she would accept a place simply move away, or find a new home. to flex participants’ collective muscles from at Harvard Law School to study public-in- Those images might have incited despair, within an enormous corporation. If Harvard, terest law. anger, or apathy, as they did for some of my the wealthiest university in the world, could But this was getting too far ahead. Did I friends. But I could read their larger mean- be persuaded to stop investing its endowment want to come to a mixer? ing, because at the activities fair my fresh- in fossil-fuel industries, it would send a pow- man year, I’d found a group of people who erful political and economic message. This past year, I stood on the other side taught me how. The most liberating thing about the cam- of the recruitment table. I was the one dis- paign, Naima added, was that it enabled stu- tributing buttons and analogies to any- The table was manned by two sopho- dents to represent their communities within one who would listen. Now, the students I mores. The only thing that seemed “environ- an institution: to convert the advantages of spoke with were a little more familiar with the case. More than 400 graduat- ing seniors pinned orange squares on their caps for a joint protest by New Fellows the campus fossil-fuel and prison divestment campaigns, together Joining the editorial staff this fall as the 2019- interrupting the Class Day exer- 2020 Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergrad- cises with their calls to “Disclose, uate Fellows are seniors Julie Chung and divest, or this movement will not Drew Pendergrass. They will contribute in rest”; a standing ovation greeted Al print and online throughout the academic Gore’s exhortations for immediate year, taking turns writing the “Undergradu- climate action [see harvardmag. ate” column, beginning with the November- com/gore-19]. December issue, and reporting on other as- Four years ago, such support pects of student and University life, among seemed impossible. In 2016, the other responsibilities. Crimson editorial board opined that Chung, a proud first-generation collegian “Divestment is a profoundly hypo- from Los Angeles and Adams House, is a so- critical answer”—arguing that social anthropology concentrator who interns cietal change is impossible until at the Harvard College Women’s Center, complete individual change is made. served as associate editorial editor for The And although the editorial board re- Harvard Crimson’s editorial board, and writes versed its stance on divestment this personal essays and short fiction as well. She past spring, the popularity of their spent the summer in Honolulu, at the Univer- earlier reasoning remains. sity of Hawai‘i medical school’s Department Sometimes, the counterargu- of Native Hawaiian Health, where she inves- ments slip out as a kind of first- tigated the relationship between traditional world elitism. In my section for Polynesian canoe voyaging and health while droughts change the global food-trade system, Earth and Planetary Sciences 20: conducting senior-thesis research on making and has published as lead author research he “Earth Resources and the Environ- scientific knowledge more accountable to did at the Harvard Paulson School on the im- ment,” after students pointed out people. pact of climate change on air pollution in Bei- that nuclear energy should replace Pendergrass, of Huntsville, Alabama, and jing. He spent the summer in Princeton, where our dependence on carbon-inten- Pforzheimer House, is a joint physics and he ran climate models on a massive super sive fuels, someone raised the envi- mathematics concentrator with a secondary computer cluster for the National Oceanic ronmental and human price asso- field in English. He has served as publisher and and Atmospheric Administration. ciated with the technology. “Easy,” assistant U.S. politics editor of the Harvard The fellowships are supported by Jonathan said the boy across from me. “Just Political Review and as associate editor and J. Ledecky ’79, M.B.A. ’83, and named in honor ship the waste to Africa. They’ll use comp director of Fifteen Minutes, the Crimson’s of his mother. For updates on past Ledecky it for development there.” weekly magazine. He does research at the Fellows and links to their work, see harvard- In grappling with such casual Harvard Chan School, analyzing the way mag.com/ledecky. and unconscious environmental racism, I wrestle with a split I have

36 September - October 2019 Photograph by Stu Rosner

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 felt throughout my time at Harvard. Peers, successful student referendum nor appeals tips from my job as a campus tour guide. faculty, and community members might to President Drew Faust had broken any Anything that didn’t make it into an exist- vote for climate-change referenda and fill ground. The following spring, the campaign ing bucket just soaked my feet and clothes. the Yard at rallies. They might place little decided on another tactic. Four students, in- A meeting with the Overseers would over- squares of fabric on their mortarboards. But cluding my friend Naima, sat in at Harvard fill the divestment bucket, yet there wasn’t as soon as there is profit at the other end of Management Company’s office, where finan- much choice: like any other undergraduate the equation, the calculus gets a little more cial decisions about investing the endowment club or team, we lost key players every year, lopsided. Leaders of the College call on stu- are actually made. All four were arrested. so by fall of 2016 I was tapped to sub in. dents to view themselves as thoroughly ca- It’s easy to misunderstand the two active Like all the conversations since with the pable of launching tech start-ups, partici- campus divestment campaigns as compris- Board of Overseers, this one was off the re- pating in major research projects, helping ing student agitators either unappreciative cord. I cannot relate the details, but I can develop educational programs: in short, con- of their education or willful in misconstru- describe exactly how it felt. We students sidering ourselves as empowered actors in ing the financial realities of the endowment. spoke about our futures: the places we’d like every way—so long as we do not question Administrators, professors, and even fellow to see and the lives we want to lead; the chil- our own entanglement in the institutions students often express the sentiment that dren we hoped to have, but think we might around us. the administration must know best. “Ci- not; and the fact that we considered our- vil discourse” is advocated, as a means of selves not only students or future parents, At Harvard, would-be student change- blunting the emotional appeal of “bellige- but also members of a global community. makers must funnel their voices through the rent” students. But that spring 2016 sit-in, The Overseers were polite. They shook echo chamber of the Undergraduate Coun- and a long-sought meeting with members of our hands, twice. Our convictions, they cil, or bring their concerns to the frequently the Board of Overseers that finally followed said, were admirable. Really, they were right closed doors of Massachusetts Hall, as orga- it, taught me differently. there with us. But they couldn’t make the nizers with the Harvard Prison Divestment We met in October of my sophomore year, change we ask for. It wasn’t in their power. Campaign (HPDC) did this past year. By the at which point I’d begun to visualize the time I joined the climate campaign in the fall hours in my day as an increasingly full set On Commencement day, a photographer of 2015, its activists had already tried both of buckets: one for divestment, one for lit- snapped a picture of my decorated mortar- options. Neither the results of a sweepingly erary comp meetings, and one reserved for board and asked, “What does it say?” I held

Get Harvard news every Friday.

harvardmagazine.com/email

Harvard Magazine 37

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal up the cap, hoping that the lettering—“Make police officers who flocked to the edges of How can you say you’ve failed when you’ve my degree, fossil fuel and prison free”—would our celebration like late guests to the party. only just begun?” make it into one of the official streams of grad- Three of them stood in the doorway of Sev- Until that point I had thought of college as uation coverage. “What is this for?” I asked. er Hall, an uncertain barricade. Who were just one more bucket, meant to hold all these “The Gazette,” she replied, naming the Universi- they intending to stop? The organizer from thoughts and encounters and keep them away ty’s in-house publication, and snapped a sec- the labor union who spoke about learning from the rest of the real world. I had consid- ond picture. “Of course they can’t publish any Spanish only two years before, in order to ered progress in the same way, as a number of of it now, but you know. It’s like in the ’80s, advocate for her family? The Youth Cli- containers that might hold only so much wa- or in ’69. Good for the records.” mate Strikers who had begun cutting their ter and no more. I saw myself jealously guard- I did know. This year marks the fiftieth high-school classes every Friday because ing these buckets of experience as if I had only anniversary of the Harvard strike fueled for them the reality of a wrecked planet is played a role in filling them to the top. by antiwar efforts and the historic strug- not a fat paycheck, but rather a drowned Now I asked myself: What if I’d gotten gle for an academic department devoted classroom? it wrong? What if the role of these buckets to African-American studies [see “Echoes Some members of the class of ’69 had joined was not to continue taking on water? What of 1969,” March-April, page 53], a moment us at the rally. It began to rain, and the crowd, if it was time to pour some out? that caused students to protest by the thou- initially attracted by the music and speeches, I thanked the tutor. I walked downstairs, sands. It had been impossible to ignore the began to dwindle. I wondered whether our into the kitchen, where the bell above the fire- photographs of that moment, which seemed event seemed pitiful by comparison. place was ringing to announce dinner, where to be everywhere this past spring: a Yard we would sit down to eat, discussing this day, filled with striking students, fists raised. In my tutor’s office, I related this an- and tomorrow, and then the next. So when protestors, students, and friends ecdote as proof of my failed capacity as an gathered at the steps of Memorial Church organizer. He cut me off. “Why don’t you try Isa Flores-Jones ’19 now works for the Sunrise Move- at the culmination of this year’s Heat Week, it in the real world?” I looked at him. “Not ment, a youth-led climate campaign to win good jobs in April, it was impossible not to notice the law school—a campaign, another campaign. and a livable future, and is trying to enjoy the present.

SPORTS No Doubt Linda Liedel ’21 always knew how good she could be.

t four years old, Linda Lie- del ’21 decided she wanted to play soccer, following in the footsteps of her older brother. Her parents Asaid sure, go for it. The trash talk started immediately, not just from opposing players, but also from their parents, who made it clear that a girl didn’t belong on a field of boys. “They were like, ‘You should not be playing this sport, was always, ‘What is this girl doing here?’” Liedel (at left), representing Germany in what are you doing here, this is the wrong (Soccer is Germany’s number one sport, Lie- Spain’s 2019 La Manga Tournament, competes for the ball with a Danish rival. gym,’” Liedel recalled. She remembers her del clarified, but mostly for boys. Most cit- mother’s shock at the taunts—were they ies, like Mainz, didn’t have girls’ teams; to ting noticed by scouts and was selected for really saying that to her daughter? play that way would have required selection the “Southwest” state team, one of 21 region- Most players fight for playing time. Lie- by a competitive regional team.) With no al German squads with teams in each age del, born and raised in Mainz, Germany, had reasonable expectation of local crowd sup- division. Once a year, the states gathered to prove she even deserved consideration. “If port, she focused on what she could control: for a massive tournament, with prominent a guy plays, it’s like, ‘Okay, he has probably her on-field performance. Usually, after a German coaches in conspicuous attendance, worked out, has the talent,’” she said in a few minutes, she earned their silence. searching for the best athletes. When she spring interview. “For me, the assumption At around 10 years old, Liedel started get- was 13, she received a call-up for the U-15

38 September - October 2019 Photograph by Quality Sports Images/Getty Images

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 German girls’ national team. In two inter- felt some of her instincts had faded. Still, she national games against Sweden, she took the knew her potential exceeded what others ex- field as one of the team’s youngest members. pected of her. “Even though I might not be It was an exceptional achievement—a re- able to show it and other people might not pudiation of those who thought she didn’t see it, I’ll get there,” she thought. belong on any field. But that’s not how she Liedel earned another chance to repre- saw it. “I’ve never been someone who put a sent Germany, this time on the U-16 national lot of value in external judgment,” she said. team. In her first tournament back, months “Either way,…selected or not, I would have after battling chronic pain, she broke her left kept believing in myself.” foot. That disappointed but didn’t crush her. This belief would be put to the test. As After sitting out for years with an ambigu- she grew, Liedel began feeling pain and ous injury, she was thankful she had a clear swelling in her knees. Playing soccer was diagnosis and a timeline to return. Quitting impossible; even walking up the stairs wasn’t an option. proved challenging. For some, inflammation related to a growth spurt can go away with- Liedel acknowledges now that when in a few weeks or months with rest. For Lie- she arrived at Harvard in 2017, the coaches del, the inflammation kept her out for nearly didn’t really know what to expect. Her re- two years. She switched among local teams, cord was riddled with injuries, and she had Linda Liedel hoping an affiliated doctor could guide her never stuck to a specific position. Whether COMMUNICATIONS ATHLETIC HARVARD through her chronic inflammation, but one her potential would manifest itself was any- midfield experience made her more confident physician after another suggested that, given one’s guess. During her freshman fall season, than most defenders in taking on opponents the lack of progress on her recovery and her she bounced among offense, midfield, and with the ball at her feet, even when an er- tall, thin stature, she should think about do- defense, never quite settling. ror could cost the team a goal. Given Liedel’s ing something other than soccer. Adjusting to the game was a struggle. unconventional style, defense could become Unable to practice or compete and lacking While her American teammates had com- offense in a split second. Potential scoring support, she missed out on national team se- peted all their lives with girls in their age drives often began with an arching long ball lection and fell out of organized soccer entire- group, she had played mostly against boys from her, a skill she’s honed with both feet. ly. She began going to the gym alone, to ride and semi-professional women twice her Liedel takes a highly focused approach in the stationary bike—one of the few exercises age. And though the European game plac- all facets of her life. When she’s not on the that didn’t agitate her knees. She hoped that if es a strong emphasis on skills, American field or training, she’s either eating (often she kept in shape, she could hop back on the players tend to be stronger, because they on the run), sleeping (eight to nine hours a field as soon as the pain stopped. incorporate weightlifting into training ear- night), or studying (as a psychology concen- At 15, Liedel was back in action. But even lier. At the start, Liedel struggled to com- trator). “If I didn’t put everything I had into though the pain had faded, her time on the pete with her teammates’ endurance, speed, my studies, I feel like I wouldn’t be able to field didn’t last. She was nagged by aches and and strength. Off the field, she spent most of play as well,” she said. “I just like knowing pains, her body getting re-acclimated to in- her time in the library. “Probably too much,” that I give the two sides everything I can.” game competition. “It was just so tough not she joked. She had always excelled academ- During her freshman summer—a time when being able to express yourself on the pitch ically—a huge reason for deciding to come her friends were studying abroad or taking as you like to,” she recalled. Before her knee to the United States in the first place—but internships—she decided to give training problems, she’d most often played defen- she had attended a German-French bilin- her full attention. Back home in Mainz, she sive or central midfielder, two of the posi- gual school where English was spoken about worked out two to three times a day, lifting tions most constantly involved in the action. three hours a week, and not at a high aca- weights, running, and jumping in with lo- The best midfielders are the most intuitive, demic level. Freshman fall is a time of flux cal boys’ teams. picking off opponents’ passes, controlling the for most, but Liedel had faced instability be- When she returned for sophomore year, tempo, and getting the ball by ground or by fore. Her goals, though, remained constant. the vision she’d always had of herself start- air to the players best positioned to strike. At the end of the fall semester, her coaches ed lining up with her performance. She an- Elite midfielders seem to have a sixth sense began placing her at central defender—the chored Harvard’s defense on the way to six for what’s happening around them within and final line of defense. The position clicked. shutout performances and in the process, beyond their fields of vision—a skill honed Highly skilled, with great field earned a place on Germany’s U-19 national by constant practice. After a long layoff, she vision, she pushed herself team. Her goal is to play professionally after during the spring to be- college and, she hopes, someday, to make the come fit enough to keep full German national team. On the side, she To receive weekly up with the league’s most plans to continue studying and possibly to football reports, sign up at explosive attackers and start a nonprofit or enter politics. It’s a lot to harvardmag.com/email strong enough to wrestle hope for, but as those long-ago parents who the ball away from them on taunted her learned, there’s no use doubting the ground or in the air. Her Linda Liedel. vjacob sweet www.gocrimson.com Harvard Magazine 39

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Color and Incarceration Historian Elizabeth Hinton probes the roots of a gathering crisis.

by lydialyle gibson

n 2005, during her first year of graduate school, Elizabeth Hin- punishment. That path would lead eventually to a career in a field ton traveled from New York to California to visit her cousin in that was just beginning to coalesce: the study of mass incarceration. prison. In some ways, she understood what to expect: for most Even if prison was a familiar concept, though, witnessing it first- of her childhood, she’d known family members who cycled in hand was shattering in ways she hadn’t anticipated. Her cousin and out of jail, caught up in drugs and addiction and poverty. was at the High Desert State Prison in Susanville, and to get there, Their experience was a large part of why, as a little girl, she had she and her mother had flown to Reno, and then driven a rental wanted to become a criminal defense attorney, and later, why she was car five hours to a motel in a town where everyone they saw knew Idrawn to African-American history and explorations of crime and why they were there. 40 September - October 2019 Photograph by Stu Rosner

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Inside the gates, the two were screened, their clothing examined son, a historian at the University of Michigan (and a graduate and to make sure it conformed to the rules: nothing too tight-fitting, no postgraduate advisor to Hinton), whose 2010 journal article “Why jeans, no bras with metal. “Especially as a woman visiting a man in Mass Incarceration Matters” was one of the early publications that prison,” Hinton says, “you undergo a process of dehumanization and broke open the field. A flood of scholarship followed, but most of it, scrutiny—and criminalization—where you can be searched, where Thompson says, examined elements of present-day incarceration; your body can be commented on, where you can be ridiculed by “Elizabeth’s work shows how we got here. It helps us understand the guards, and where, if you don’t behave a certain way, you can be a part of the past we just didn’t understand before.” prevented from seeing your loved one.” She understood this humili- Hinton’s research led her through the White House Central Files of ation to be an extension of the power dynamic and cruelty inherent every administration from John F. Kennedy’s to Reagan’s, looking for in prison life. She knew that on the other side of the locked doors, any shred of information related to crime, punishment, and African her cousin was being strip-searched in preparation for the visit. Americans. Her requests to declassify documents turned up tens of And then she stepped into the room where they would see him, thousands of pages of internal memoranda, reports, meeting notes, and a big space full of low tables and plastic chairs that reminded her correspondence (a few declassification requests are still pending with of an elementary school. There were dull pencils for playing games the Reagan Library). “Her work has definitely changed the narrative,” like Scrabble (pens were forbidden), and vending machines along says Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race, and public the wall, where people would line up to buy frozen foods—sand- policy, whose 2010 book The Condemnation of Blackness documented the wiches, chicken wings, pizzas, pies—that tasted better than the Progressive Era origins of the discourse linking crime and race (see prison meals they were used to. Most of the incarcerated were Af- “Writing Crime into Race,” July-August 2018, page 57). Tommie Shel- rican American or Latino, and nearly all the guards were white. by, Titcomb professor of African and African American studies and “And I looked around and saw all these black and brown families,” philosophy, was on the search committee that hired Hinton. “She’s Hinton says: men talking to their children, sitting with their wives, a person whose work you have to engage with if you’re studying the with whom they could interact only in this room, whom they could penal dimensions of the state,” he says. “And not just in history—in touch only twice—hello and goodbye—and then only briefly. She political science, law, sociology; she cuts across fields.” thought about what all this meant for generations of children. The story that unwinds in From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime “It was really stark,” she says. “And I just thought, ‘Oh my God, is chilling. In March 1965, Hinton writes, President Johnson sent how did this happen?’” three bills to Congress that epitomized the federal government’s ambivalent response to the civil-rights movement: the Housing and Origins of the Carceral State Urban Development Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Law En- A little more than a decade later, Hinton had an answer. In 2016, forcement Assistance Act. The latter bill, signed into law a month she published From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of after violent uprisings in Los Angeles’s segregated Watts neighbor- Mass Incarceration in America, a book that cemented her reputation, at hood, marked the official start of the War on Crime. For the first the age of 33, as a rising star in a burgeoning field. In it, Hinton, Loeb time in U.S. history, the federal government began to take a direct associate professor of history and of African and African American role in local police, courts, and prisons. studies, tells the story of how federal policies—shaped by presi- Three years later, the Safe Streets Act created the Law Enforce- dential administrations and endorsed by Congress—ratcheted up ment Assistance Administration, which figures as a main culprit surveillance and punishment in black urban neighborhoods from in her account. It funneled federal money into local police depart- the 1960s through the 1980s, how criminalization was steadily ex- ments—a total of $10 billion by 1981 ($25 billion in today’s dol- panded, and how all of this was driven by deeply held assumptions lars)—to increase manpower, modernize forces, and arm officers about the cultural and behavioral inferiority of black Americans. with military-grade weapons. And it helped widen local law-en- Her biggest revelation—the central irony in a book full of them— forcement patrols and surveillance operations in cities with large is that the contemporary carceral state began to take hold, not under African-American populations. law-and-order conservatives like Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon, Meanwhile, Johnson’s poverty initiatives increasingly gave way the men usually held responsible, but under liberals, most notably to crime-fighting, as programs dedicated to health, housing, educa- Lyndon Johnson, whose Great Society social-welfare programs were tion, recreation, and job training came to be partly—or sometimes enacted at the height of the civil-rights movement. Those programs wholly—administered by law-enforcement agencies. Even as federal began with sincere intentions but were never independent, Hin- policymakers recognized that joblessness, failing schools, inade- ton argues, from federal policymakers’ “desire for social control, quate housing, and inequality lay at the root of urban ills—including or from their concerns about crime.” In meticulous detail, she lays crime—they repeatedly turned to law enforcement as the solution. out how “the War on Poverty is best understood not as an effort These measures were backed by scholars at the time. Harvard to broadly uplift communities or as a moral crusade to transform political scientists James Q. Wilson and Edward Banfield advocat- society by combating inequality or want, but as a manifestation of ed divesting from social-welfare initiatives, and sociologist Daniel fear about urban disorder and about the behavior of young people, Patrick Moynihan’s famous publication, The Negro Family (known as particularly young African Americans.” the Moynihan Report), popularized the idea of a self-perpetuating The notion that mass incarceration was a bipartisan project from “tangle of pathology” among black families. All three, Hinton writes, the beginning—indeed, that its earliest innovators were social lib- came to view black poverty “as a fact of American life,” and black erals concerned about poverty—was a significant finding. “And -re crime and violence as innate. Their ideas helped push the Nixon member, when Elizabeth started this research, nobody was really administration, several years later, toward a belief that black cul- working on the history of this crisis,” says Heather Ann Thomp- tural pathology, not poverty, was the real cause of crime.

Harvard Magazine 41

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 And so, in low-income black neighborhoods, law enforcement to improve safety but made housing projects into pipelnes to prison. became a ubiquitous part of the social and political landscape, and The book ends in the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan, the War on Drugs, strategies intended to identify residents at risk of becoming crimi- and the prison population mushrooming as new laws put drug users nals encouraged authorities to provoke interactions with them, behind bars, especially African Americans: policies hardened penalties creating, Hinton notes, a feedback loop of crime and enforcement. for crack cocaine, associated with black drug users, far beyond those A few saw the danger looming. She quotes James Vorenberg, a for- for powder cocaine, more commonly associated with whites. The Rea- mer dean of Harvard Law School and director of Johnson’s Crime gan administration tightened the connections between the military Commission: “As soon as we start dealing with the kids in [certain] and police and initiated, under the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, the asset-forfeiture system allowing police to seize cash and property from accused drug deal- ers, incentivizing increased arrest rates and what amounted to theft among corrupt officers. Yet for all the law-enforcement initiatives tar- geting urban black neighborhoods, those places remain plagued by crime and violence, Hinton observes, over-policed and under-protected: “The War on Crime and the War on Drugs are two of the largest policy failures in the history of the United States.” In the century between the end of the Civil War and the start of Johnson’s War on Crime, “a total of 184,901 Americans entered state and federal prisons,” she writes. Between 1965 and the launch of the War on Drugs less than 20 years later, state and federal prisons added another 251,107 inmates. Today, roughly 2 million people are incarcerated in this country, 60 percent of them African Ameri- can or Latino. The United States, with 5 percent of the global population but 25 percent of its prisoners, is home to the largest prison system in the history of the world, with an incarceration rate

STAN WAYMAN/THESTAN LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES/GETTY IMAGESthat is five to 10 times that of peer nations. Alto- categories as potential delinquents, and we put that label on A police officer plays gether, the federal, state, and local penal systems them,” he told a congressional committee in 1967, “we may cards with locals at a cost taxpayers $80 billion per year, and some states, Washington, D.C., teen be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Yet Vorenberg, too, center in 1968, part of Hinton writes, spend more money imprisoning supported a strategy of surveillance. a push to link policing young people than educating them. The Nixon administration ushered in dramatically more and social services. The human cost is incalculably more: generations punitive policies, withdrawing further from social reforms of young people of color, systematically removed and rehabilitative measures in favor of harsher punishments: lon- from their communities, now living, she says, in “faraway cages.” ger sentences, preventive detention, broad wiretapping, no-knock raids. Sting operations often created crime, setting up decoy fencing The Sociology of Saginaw operations and whole underground economies that incentivized Hinton spent her childhood in the shadow of those crime the poor and unemployed to steal from one another. policies. She grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the daughter of Ann Using flawed predictions of African-American population Pearlman, a psychotherapist and writer, and Alfred Hinton, a pro- growth, the administration set in motion a long-range plan to vastly fessional-football-player-turned-art-professor at the University of expand and modernize prisons—“one of the first declarations,” Michigan. But deeper roots lay about an hour north, in Saginaw, a Hinton says, of policymakers’ decision “to try to manage inequal- once-thriving industrial city to which her father’s parents had mi- ity rather than to ameliorate it.” Meanwhile, block grants pushed grated from Columbus, Georgia, in the 1950s, joining thousands of states to spend money widening their own corrections programs. other African Americans who came to the city during the war years When Nixon took office in 1969, the country had fewer than 20 and afterward to work in its factories and foundries. federal prisons; by 1977, the government had opened 15 more—4,871 “It’s a very typical American story,” Hinton says: General Motors new beds, which came to be filled, Hinton writes, by the 4,904 new offered her grandfather a job and a bus ticket, and he rode north black and Latino inmates taken in during those same years. in search of a better life for his family. “And just like so many,” she Her narrative carries through the administrations of Gerald says, “he bought a house”—a little bungalow on a pretty residential Ford, under whom juvenile-detention facilities multiplied and street—“and integrated a white neighborhood.” Within five years, white youths were treated as merely troubled while black youths all the white residents had moved out, and in the decades that fol- were dealt with as criminal; and of Jimmy Carter, who, despite lowed, manufacturing slowed and plants started closing. By the time his progressive intentions channeled millions of federal dollars to Hinton was young, visiting from Ann Arbor on weekends, the vibrant public-housing authorities for surveillance and patrols that failed autoworker neighborhood her grandparents had moved into was

42 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Hinton wanted to beginning to fall apart. Study of Repression in America” (her mother had a copy at home). The home next door be- Hinton arrived at New York University’s Gallatin School in 2001 chart a history of gang came a crack house; oth- and carved out an individual major in historical sociology, explor- ers stood abandoned. ing, from a black-studies perspective, the experiences of people of violence, to show Eventually, her grandfa- African descent in the Western Hemisphere. She worked as a re- ther (“Big Papa,” she calls search assistant for historian Robin D.G. Kelley, who was writing a how, for instance, him—her book is dedicat- biography of jazz musician Thelonious Monk, and fell in love with ed to him) left the neigh- the archives. She began to see how research and storytelling could drive-by shootings borhood, too. lift unseen narratives out of the slough of history. Amid the joblessness She started graduate school at Columbia with questions in mind. were not simply natural and hopelessness and “I really wanted to write about violence,” she says. “Because one of worsening crime, some the big injustices I saw, and that frustrated me in those early debates events, but distinct and of Hinton’s cousins began with friends back in Ann Arbor, was that there was no historical to get into trouble. They explanation of violence in low-income communities of color.” It was particular, a behavior were using drugs. They still seen as something inevitable, a result of the “tangle of pathol- were in and out of prison, ogy” Moynihan had theorized about 40 years earlier. Hinton wanted rooted in history and in and out of recovery and to chart a history of gang violence in the late twentieth century, to relapse. “And I understood show how, for instance, drive-by shootings were not simply natural circumstances. why,” she says. “I mean, Big events, but distinct and particular, a behavior that came from some- Papa bought this house where, rooted in a history of policies and disinvestments. and had so many hopes and dreams. And was soon living next to a But the archives she needed didn’t yet exist, she soon discovered, crack house. The environment itself told the story.” To her, that story in part because the data were difficult to obtain, stacked away in felt like a continuation of another one, which her family had been tell- countless diffuse newspaper accounts and oral histories, and in of- ing for as long as she could remember: about slavery and sharecropping ficial police records that often weren’t open to the public. and Jim Crow, about segregation and the civil-rights movement and At about that same time, she began visiting her cousin in prison. centuries of racial oppression. The way she saw it, her cousins’ addic- And in that big room with the low tables and the vending machines tion and incarceration were inseparable from the poverty all around and all those other black and brown families, everything shifted. them in Saginaw: “I knew they were human, and I knew that like anybody else, they were complicated and contradictory, and that they “How We Got Here” were dealing with a particularly devastating set of circumstances.…It On a late afternoon in mid March, Hinton is standing at the was something that weighed heavily over my childhood.” front of a first-floor Boylston Hall classroom packed to the walls The sharp contrast to her own life and pros- with students and backpacks and the mild commotion of mid- pects in Ann Arbor, a college town with resourc- Harlem residents term anxiety. Her “Urban Inequality after Civil Rights” class is es and a robust social fabric, corroborated her confront police in embarking on a discussion of policing and incarceration. “Every 1970; the drastic rise sense that what was happening to her family of police presence in time rights are extended to African-American groups,” Hinton in Saginaw was deeply sociological, deeply tied black neighborhoods tells students, a diverse bunch of about 30 undergraduates and to history. “I remember getting into arguments often led to friction. a few grad students, “there’s a subsequent turn toward crimi- with friends in Ann Arbor about things like welfare and violence and incarceration,” Hin- ton says. “Because most of them didn’t have the same exposure—they didn’t have people in their families or in their lives who were on welfare, or in prison, or addicted to drugs. And so they didn’t have the same perspective.” Those debates, too, fueled a desire to figure out the factors she perceived to be at work, to map the contourrs more precisely. Her first chance to do original research came in high school. She took an American studies class her junior year and wrote a paper, based on her reading of slave narratives collected in the 1930s, arguing that the Declaration of Indepen- dence legitimized slave revolts—“basically,” she says, “that, under its principles, they had a right to rebel.” A second research paper looked at FBI actions against the Black Panther Party, drawing on party co-founder Huey P. Newton’s 1980 doc-

toral dissertation, “War Against the Panthers: A JACK GAROFALO/PARIS VIA MATCH GETTY IMAGES

Harvard Magazine 43

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 (see “Two Women, Two Histories,” November-December 2007, Revisiting Angela Davis page 29), and legal scholar Patricia Williams. Phillips flew to Oakland, California, in late 2017 to help box up When news broke in early 2018 that the Schlesinger Library materials from Davis’s garage and bring them back to Cambridge, had acquired the papers of radical activist and academic Ange- and Hinton and two graduate students spent months sorting and la Davis, an icon since the 1970s, perhaps no one on Harvard’s organizing. “It felt like such a privilege,” says Ph.D. student Jackie campus was more thrilled than Elizabeth Hinton. “She’s one of Wang, “I mean, in carceral studies, Angela Davis is the person. She’s the most important figures of the twentieth century, and her one of the founding figures of the prison-abolition movement.” life story and political commitments intersect with pretty much “Angela Davis: Freed by the People,” opening September 12 every major social movement of the last 50 years—not just on a in the Schlesinger’s newly renovated gallery, explores the racial national scale, but a global scale,” explains the historian of mass violence of Davis’s childhood neighborhood; her philosophy stud- incarceration, whose own work is deeply influenced by Davis’s ies in the Northeast, Europe, and California; and her decades of ideas on black liberation, the “prison industrial complex” (a Davis scholarship and activism as a radical feminist, civil-rights ad- coinage), racism in the criminal-justice system, and the conse- vocate, and organizer on behalf of political prisoners—and as a quences of incarceration for women and families. member of the Black Panther Party and Communist Party, and, This fall, Hinton is curating an exhibit and conference draw- later, co-founder of the prison-abolitionist organization Critical ing on materials from those archives, which stretch from Davis’s Resistance. And it covers her work as an author. One of Hinton’s childhood in Birmingham, Alabama, to the present and include favorite objects is a typescript of Davis’s 1974 autobiography an- more than 150 boxes of documents, photographs, pamphlets, notated with handwritten comments from her editor, Toni Mor- letters, political buttons—and the famous FBI “Wanted” poster rison, Litt.D. ’89. Another is Davis’s “Open Letter to Black High from the weeks in 1970 that Davis spent in hiding. It’s a collec- School Students,” composed in prison and set down in handwrit- tion of striking breadth, which historian Jane Kamensky, the ing so perfect that it almost looks typed. Schlesinger’s Pforzheimer Foundation director, believes will Some of the most affecting artifacts come from Davis’s early years: childhood photographs, including one as a baby with her mother, Sallye; and a card from a memorial service, sent by the family of Carol Denise McNair, one of the four young girls killed in the 1963 Birming- ham church bombing. The McNairs and the Davises were friends. Much of the exhibit centers on the turbulent period stemming from Davis’s activism for the Soledad Brothers, three incarcerated men accused of killing a white prison guard in California. In 1970, guns she had purchased were used in an attack on the Marin Coun- ty Courthouse that was intended to free the Soledad Brothers but instead left four people dead, including one of the attackers. Davis was not present, but was charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy. After eight weeks underground (hence, the “Wanted” poster), she was captured and spent 18 months in prison, most of it in solitary confinement, before being tried and acquitted. The episode brought her international fame; “Free Angela” became a global rallying cry, and the exhibit includes numerous buttons, posters, banners, and letters of support from around the world—

STU ROSNER as well as hate mail calling her a public enemy. There are also more help fill out the picture of a figure Hinton arranges intimate glimpses at her ordeal: letters and cards to and from loved who is “known as an icon, but not as materials for the ones from the time of her incarceration and trial. Angela Davis exhibit richly understood as a thinker.” Kenvi with (from left) A related conference, “Radical Commitments: The Life and Legacy Phillips, curator for race and ethnic- Radcliffe arts program of Angela Davis,” takes place October 28-29; Davis herself is expected ity, puts it another way: Angela Davis manager Meg Rotzel, to attend. One focus will be the incarceration of women and its ef- gallery coordinator Joe is “someone people absolutely love or Zane, and Pforzheimer fect on families, an issue she has studied—and lived—and some- absolutely hate but don’t necessarily fellow Jackie Wang. thing “we need to know a lot more about,” explains Hinton. “It’s know much about.” But “she came one of the tentacles of the carceral state.” Among those contribut- from somewhere, and she’s very much rooted in specific expe- ing to the conference will be a group of incarcerated women who riences and ideologies.” have earned college degrees in prison and participated in a summer The Davis papers, purchased in partnership with the Hutchins workshop that Hinton co-organized; they studied Davis’s major Center for African and African American Research, join kindred works and conducted research using documents from the archive. Schlesinger collections: those of poet-activists June Jordan and “It was really important to me—and I know important to Angela, Pat Parker, composer-activist Shirley Graham Du Bois, feminist too—to include those voices,” Hinton says. “To talk not just about Florynce Kennedy, attorney and civil rights activist Pauli Murray these women, but with them.”

44 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 nalization and incarceration.” After Emancipation came discriminatory state laws known as “black codes,” then chain gangs and convict leasing. A hundred years later, amid the civil-rights movement, “We get another turn toward policing and confinement.” Hinton’s lecture draws on some of the threads in her book—lingering on Nixon’s long-range plan for prison construction, Reagan’s militarization of the police during the War on Drugs, and the sting operations and mass arrests that came to characterize the War on Crime—but a couple of moments seem to hit the class especially hard. When Hinton explains that Nixon officials recognized early on the correla- tion between unemployment and incarceration rates, and took that link not as a motivation to create jobs, but as a justification for expanding prisons, an aghast silence fills the room. Hinton nods. “That’s something I can’t get my mind around,” she says. “That you can ignore the factors that fuel crime and incarceration and at the same time use those same figures as a basis for further incarceration.”

For many of the students, it is not the first course GIBOUX/LIAISON/GETTY JEAN MARC IMAGES they have taken with Hinton. Since joining Harvard Los Angeles police with the global history of prisons taking on a new urgency: in 2014, she has amassed what one colleague calls “an men in custody after a “Suddenly we were learning this history not only to 1988 anti-gang sweep; enormous following.” Jackie Wang, a Ph.D. student officers arrested 1,400 know it, but to grasp our own moment and to change in African and African American studies (and one of residents in one two- it.” The following semester Hinton taught “African- Hinton’s graduate advisees), served as a teaching as- day span that year. American History from the Civil War to the Present,” sistant last fall for Hinton’s course “Mass Incarceration and her classroom filled with students. Some of them in Historical Perspective.” Enrollment was capped at 35, but Wang had never taken a history course before, let alone African-Amer- remembers that on the first day, more than 150 students showed ican history. They told her they wanted to understand “how we up. The winnowing was difficult. “Students adore her,” Wang says got here.” (this past spring Hinton was awarded a Phi Beta Kappa prize for Outside the classroom, she was equally busy, helping students excellence in teaching). Brandon Terry, assistant professor in Afri- sort through the turmoil. “Elizabeth really rose to that challenge can and African American studies, calls Hinton “already bedrock” more than anybody else on the faculty,” says Terry. “She was doing for the department, and for the study of inequality at Harvard. “She multiple events a week”—student-organized panel discussions attracts as many graduate students as some of the senior faculty,” about race and policing—“and having students routinely break says Terry. “And her students are producing pathbreaking work down in tears in her office.” Hinton, he says, is someone students on incarceration and the activism around incarceration.” turn to “when their sense of what their society is capable of deliver- Hinton’s arrival (after three years at the University of Mich- ing on has fallen apart. She’s a real source of support in those dark igan—a postdoc followed by a faculty appointment) coincided moments. And that doesn’t go on a person’s CV.” with an inflection point in the national conversation on race and Hinton remembers those days too. “There were a couple of weeks policing: about a month there where it felt like Brandon and I were doing an event every before her first semester night,” she says, “and we’d have a line out the door during office Hinton is someone in Cambridge, Michael hours, and, you know, you can’t get out of there.” But it’s an im- Brown was killed in Fer- portant part of the job, she believes. “It’s hard for me to say no to students turn to “when guson, Missouri. She re- students. I think for a lot of young faculty of color, this is a kind of members packing for her invisible labor that we do.” their sense of what move amid the protests and watching in amaze- Scholars as Activists their society is capable ment as a new national Just as she has found that teaching doesn’t only mean instruction, consciousness coalesced working as a scholar in carceral studies doesn’t only mean research. of delivering on has around the issues at the “She is a committed activist,” Heather Ann Thompson says. “In heart of her work. She ar- this field, it’s a logical expression of one’s work—you want to help fallen apart. She’s a real rived to find the campus try to undo the trauma in your findings. And she’s also a first-rate in upheaval. Sonya Kara- scholar. She’s a model for how to strike that balance.” Hinton has source of support in bel ’18 was a freshman advocated for changes to incarceration policy, and she is “incredibly that year and remembers important,” Terry says, “for the movement toward a real reckoning those dark moments.” Hinton’s fall course on with our history of incarceration.” (please turn to page 78)

Harvard Magazine 45

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 COLOR AND INCARCERATION Education for the incarcerated and the porting faculty research is not enough to ac- (continued from page 45) formerly incarcerated has become a cen- tually change lives,” she says. Education helps tral concern in her work. “It’s a huge part not only by improving the well-being of those At Harvard, the scholar-activism balance of her commitment to bringing her scholar- imprisoned, but also by cultivating their ex- has sometimes been uneasy. In 2017, Hinton ship into the real world of criminal justice pertise: “People who have been through this and other history department colleagues en- reform,” Khalil Gibran Muhammad says. In system firsthand really need to be at the fore- dorsed the graduate-school application of Mi- her book, she notes that people in prison are front of a lot of the policy discussions that chelle Jones, who became an accomplished among the least educated in society, and that we’re having about these issues,” Hinton says. historian while serving more than 20 years lack of education is a stronger predictor of “And colleges and universities can begin to in prison for the murder of her four-year-old future incarceration even than race. Taking facilitate these kinds of conversations.” son. Countermanding that recommenda- classes while behind bars, meanwhile, has In March 2018, Hinton co-organized a tion, though, the University rejected Jones’s been shown to markedly reduce recidivism conference, “Beyond the Gates,” proposing application (she’s now a Ph.D. candidate at rates, and prisons with education programs a Harvard-run prison education program. NYU), a decision that made national news are often safer than those without. The University has not yet taken up that and sparked controversy; Hinton, who had But for Hinton, the imperative goes deep- proposal, a point of frustration for Hinton championed Jones vigorously, was devastated. er. Bringing education into prisons is an and the other organizers; but “We all knew More recently, she has been pressing Har- affirmation that the people locked up -in this was going to be a long-game situation,” vard to launch a prison education program side are human beings capable of learning says Elsa Hardy, a Ph.D. student and Hin- for people in Massachusetts correctional fa- and self-knowledge, that they deserve the ton advisee who researched Harvard’s his- cilities. All of Harvard’s Ivy League peers ex- chance to grow. That includes, she adds, tory of prison education for the conference cept Dartmouth already offer courses or de- those sentenced to life without parole: “It (and is planning a career in prison educa- gree programs in prisons near their campuses, is a human right,” a good unto itself. tion). “We wanted to hear from people who taught by faculty members and students, and Which brings her back to Harvard. Univer- have been incarcerated and have had their usually accredited through their schools of sities, she argues, are uniquely positioned— lives changed by these programs, and from continuing education or local community col- and morally bound—to invest in prison edu- practitioners who have developed them,” leges; Hinton particularly admires the pro- cation, an investment she believes is key to says conference co-organizer Garrett Fel- grams run by Columbia and NYU. ameliorating the incarceration crisis. “Sup- ber, a University of Mississippi historian

Did you know?

50% of our articles appear only online.

harvardmagazine.com

78 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 who was a Warren Center visiting scholar ter his release, delivered the introductory Bringing education into that year. “To say, ‘Look, this is what can be remarks that night. “It is possible to live in done.’” Muhammad moderated a panel of a different world, to think of wrongdoing prisons is an affirmation formerly incarcerated speakers now work- and rehabilitation differently,” Allen said. ing in prison education and in re-entry ef- “It’s not crazy; it’s not a utopia.” that the people locked up forts for those released. They talked about * * * the hell they’d been through and the college Recently, Hinton’s research has returned inside are human beings courses they’d clung to like a raft. her to an old question, and to a place that in The following evening, listeners filed into some ways feels like home. For the past few capable of self-knowledge, Sanders Theatre for a discussion among ac- years, she has been working with the police tivists, scholars, and former inmates (includ- department in Stockton, California, a small that they deserve the ing Jones). “I am one of 70 million Americans city in the Central Valley with a gun-vio- who have a criminal conviction,” said Bard lence rate higher than Chicago’s and a black chance to grow. College graduate Darren Mack. “Education population that has historically distrusted is meant to transform, to change us, and to the police. She was awarded a Carnegie fel- adds, “I mean, I’ve always wanted to write change the world,” said conference co-orga- lowship to spend this academic year there; about Saginaw”—and in Stockton, she sees nizer Kaia Stern, a Harvard Graduate School she’s been helping the department conduct elements of her cousins’ hometown: segre- of Education lecturer and director of the Pris- a “reconciliation process” with the commu- gated, struggling economically, with areas of on Studies Project, which for several years led nity, uncovering and addressing longstand- deep poverty that are heavily policed. “inside-out” courses bringing students from ing sources of tension. In return, Chief Eric “In some ways these places, like Stock- Harvard and Boston University together with Jones granted her access to decades of police ton and Saginaw and Ferguson, this is what incarcerated students to attend classes. administrative files—exactly the kind of ar- much of America looks like,” she continues. Conant University Professor Danielle Al- chive that could help put together a history “These cities have a lot to teach us about len, director of the Safra Center for Ethics, of gang violence. She’s still in the early stages how we got to where we are.” whose 2017 memoir Cuz told the story of of her research, but, she says, “I’m trying to her cousin who spent more than a decade tell the history of a city in order to histori- Associate editor Lydialyle Gibson profiled physician- in prison and was murdered a few years af- cize violence.” She pauses for a moment, then poet Rafael Campo in the May-June 2019 issue.

IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO BECOME As seen in HARVARD MAGAZINE A DOCTOR • Intensive, full-time preparation for medical school in one year • Early acceptance programs at select medical “Advertising in Harvard schools—more than any other postbac program • Supportive, individual academic and Magazine allows me to serve premedical advising the incredible Harvard alumni VISIT US AT WWW.BRYNMAWR.EDU/POSTBAC community–and to do the [email protected] 610-526-7350 rewarding work of connecting them to each other and BRYN MAWR COLLEGE helping them attain the romantic and personal life DON’T MISS OUR they dream about and deserve.” SPECIAL SECTION Sandy Sternbach Founder, Managing Director The Right Time Consultants 10 year Advertising Partner Private School

Contact us to ﬁ nd out more about OPEN our audience and how advertising in HOUSE Harvard Magazine can help your business. www.harvardmagazine.com/advertise TURN BACK TO PAGE 17

Harvard Magazine 79

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Throw Your Fastball a life lesson from Willie Banks

E s I look back on the path that’s taken me from who repaired farm equipment. Our house was not filled with books, adolescence to middle age, my overwhelming sense is and our dinner conversations were not sophisticated explorations S that the processes of maturation and personal growth of the issues of the day. I associate no value judgments with those S have largely been gradual, indeed almost impercep- descriptions, other than that none of it prepared me for what I en- A tible. Nothing seems to change from one day to the countered in Cambridge. Anext, and only when I pause to look back over the decades do I see just So there was culture shock. I had never lived in a city. More than Y how different the “me” of today is from his 18-year-old counterpart. that, when it came to socioeconomic status I lagged well behind my Only once in my life have I experienced what I’d regard as a true new peers on both the socio and economic components. No doubt moment of epiphany. It happened the summer after my freshman I wandered through the Yard throwing off class markers like crazy, year in college. July 23, 1987, to be precise. And it was prompted while at the same time being largely unable to recognize the existence by an otherwise long-forgotten article in the sports section of the of, much less interpret, the ones confronting me. Things were differ- Minneapolis Star Tribune. ent, that I knew. What took me a long time to figure out was how and why they were different. I had gone off to Harvard from a tiny town in rural Minnesota And then there were the academics. I had never dealt with mate- and its tiny public high school. My mom was rial of that volume or complexity. I had never a secretary and my dad was, mostly, someone by chad oldfather struggled to make sense of things. It was a year

46 September - October 2019 Illustration by Daniel Baxter

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 of reading Kant and laboring to understand a single paragraph, not, not here. Once he realizes that, he’ll be all right.” then having no real ability to tie the ideas from multiple paragraphs It’s no shiny aphorism or motivational-poster-worthy quote. I doubt together. Of having to write papers that I had no idea how to ap- that, in the moment, I even realized that it would stick with me for the proach. Of not appreciating what it meant to work at something, rest of my life. I was not some high-profile, high-school superstar like because I had never had to do it before. Meanwhile it seemed like Willie Banks. Harvard didn’t accept me thinking it was only a matter everyone else knew what was going on, or at a minimum had learned of time before I collected my Nobel Prize. Rather than a first-round things in high school that I hadn’t even dreamed of. pick I was a kid from the sticks whose ability to take standardized I vividly recall walking through Harvard Yard during my first tests made him akin to an unpolished player worth a late-round pick semester and thinking to myself, “Well, even if I fail out it will still because he can throw the ball really hard and you just never know. be pretty cool to say I went here for a little while.” Yet even with all these differences I saw my problems in Willie I was intimidated in the full “made timid” sense of the word. Banks’s problems, and my solution in his. The phrase stuck with I held back. I wasn’t sure my thoughts were worthy of class dis- me. I had to learn to trust my fastball, to not be afraid to go with cussion, and I certainly wasn’t about to offer up anything that my best stuff just because it might get hit. I’d get nowhere simply seemed to me like it might be a novel take. I spoke when spoken by trying not to look stupid. to, and as little as possible. A common side effect of trying not to Measured by whether I could intelligently hold forth about look stupid is that you end up not looking smart, either, and that the subjects of the classes I had taken my freshman year, I hadn’t is exactly how I pulled it off. learned much. But I had, it turned out, absorbed something. I I didn’t fail out, or even come close, really, but that first year’s had, apparently, intuited a few lessons about how to be a bet- transcript is not attractive. The word “disaster” isn’t entirely inapt. ter student. And I had a better approach, more courage to take You wouldn’t exactly call the nonacademic side of the year a rous- some risks, a resolve to put forth my best effort and my best ing success either. I made a handful of good friends, but fewer than ideas and see what they might get me. To throw my fastball. I would were I to do it again. I talked myself out of doing things the 51-year-old version of myself very badly wishes he had done. Perhaps improbably, it worked. That very next semester every And so there I sat in a parking lot in suburban Minneapolis, in a car single one of my grades was an A. And while I can’t tell you that I I had borrowed from my grandmother, the wisdom of the past year’s performed at that level for the entire remainder of my time in Cam- timidity seemingly confirmed by the results it had brought. I was there bridge, things in the classroom were never again like that first year. waiting for my girlfriend and her family to meet me for some now- Of course, my process of becoming wasn’t over. I had to figure out forgotten activity. The parking lot was nearly empty and drenched in how to navigate law school, then the law firm world, and then the sun. I bought a newspaper from a box outside a fast-food restaurant. world of legal academia. Each has involved moments of uncertainty, and times where I’ve caught myself falling back on the curveball. Whether it was on the front of the sports section or buried Three-plus decades on I still remind myself, when I’m about to do inside, I can no longer tell you. But what I vividly recall is an ar- something that seems big and intimidating, to throw the fastball. ticle about a kid named Willie Banks. Banks was a pitcher, and had been “I wasn’t sure my thoughts were worthy of class the Minnesota Twins’ top pick in the most recent draft. He had absolutely discussion, and I certainly wasn’t about to offer dominated at the high-school level, and to this day he remains the high- up anything that seemed like a novel take.” est-drafted player out of New Jersey. So far, however, his professional career had not lived up to expec- Speaking in front of an audience including some big names? Might tations. He had been, as the article put it, “knocked and swatted as well let it rip. It could get hit, sure. But then again it might not, around like some middle-aged man at a fantasy camp.” and there’s only one way to find out. Why? Well, there was some culture shock. He had gone from All of this would make for a better story if Willie Banks had Jersey City to a small town in the South. The stadiums, while still figured everything out and gone on to have a Hall of Fame career, in the minor leagues, were impressive. This was the next level. and if I were writing this from my faculty office at Harvard. But And he had changed his approach. His fastball was his best pitch, that’s not how it happened. He managed to play nine years in the but he was relying on the curveball. He had watched too much bat- big leagues, which is no small feat, but he never approached great- ting practice, and seen the players on the other team crushing the ness. For my part, well, I can’t complain. I found my way to a place ball. He was intimidated. What if they did that to him? in the world that was unimaginable to the 12-year-old version of me Thanks to the magic of the Internet, I recently found the article, pedaling his bike around Kiester, Minnesota. There’ve been tough and I reread it for the first time since I sat in that parking lot in 1987. stretches, sure, and while I’ve managed to accumulate a handful of It doesn’t build to a punch line in quite the way I had remembered, plaques over the years, none of mine will be for the Hall of Fame but it makes its point just the same. either. But it’s been solid enough, and better than this kid from a Banks himself had an idea about the nature of his problem, saying, tiny school in a tiny town had any right to expect. And I’m grateful “I just got to go out there and get my cockiness back.” And the key for that, and to Willie Banks for the inspiration. quote—the one I’ve carried with me all these years—is there. It’s from a catcher named Mark Ericson: “[H]e’s a little afraid to throw Chad M. Oldfather ’90 is professor of law at Marquette University Law his fastball. I don’t know, he thinks they’re gonna rip it. But they’re School, in Milwaukee.

Harvard Magazine 47

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 A World of Literature David Damrosch’s literary global reach by Spencer Lee Lenfield

he résumé of Harvard’s Bernbaum professor of com- in one or two centuries of one or two regions; Damrosch’s work parative literature might create the impression that across time and space makes him an outlier. He says he tells people, “comp lit” means “the study of any literature from “I work mostly on literature between roughly 2000 and 2015. But Tanywhere, ever.” At various points in his career, David Damros- ‘2000’ means 2000 b.c.e.” ch has written about the epic of Gilgamesh, the Hebrew Bible, He is best known for his advocacy of “world literature,” which the Sanskrit verse dramatist Ka-lida-sa, visions of medieval Belgian he defines in his (sensibly titled) 2003 bookWhat Is World Literature? nuns, Aztec poetry, Kafka, the Chinese intellectual Hu Shih, the as “all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, and the oral either in translation or in their original language.” This does not autobiography of K’iche’ Guatemalan Nobel laureate and activist mean all literature ever created: some stays within the culture and Rigoberta Menchú. Most scholars define themselves as specialists language that produced it, and never leaves. World literature happens

48 September - October 2019 Photograph by Stu Rosner

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 when Russian novels remake English literature; when a Turkish twentieth-century writers in English, but what about those who writer takes inspiration from a Colombian writer; when Japanese wrote in Urdu or Albanian? You may enjoy the nineteenth-century critics review translations of Lebanese poetry. It almost always in- novel, but what about the poetry of eighth-century Persia? “North volves re-interpretation and misunderstanding: a Spanish monk American audiences, especially in the United States, tend to be quite sent to suppress Aztec literature ended up disseminating it instead; provincial—a kind of great-power provincialism, paying little at- subsequently, Aztec hymns envision a Christian God urging revolt tention to the rest of the world and poorly understanding it,” he against the Spaniards. World literature is also nothing new under reflects. “If the history of literature runs roughly 5,000 years, a lot the sun: Damrosch’s first book,Narrative Covenant, is about the in- of the time we just read work from the last 50 or 100 years, which fluence of a range of Mesopotamian literatures from the first mil- is the most recent 2 percent of the history of literature.” He wants lennium b.c.e. on the composition of much of the Bible. to encourage readers to engage with the other 98 percent—“these The field first gained traction in American universities around earlier periods that tell us a lot more about the world.” the turn of this century. Damrosch’s book appeared within a few Such ambitions may sound unreachable; critics inside the field years of works by two other scholars commonly tied to the concept: worry they can collapse into dilettantism. Damrosch counters that the late Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters and Franco even though no one can read everything (“I’ve tried—and failed Moretti’s article “Conjectures on World Literature.” Though their completely!” he admits cheerfully), he wants to expand readers’ individual views differ, the three are often seen as the center of the sense of the dimensions of the literary universe. His own work is new global focus in comparative literature. But Damrosch empha- littered with odd couples: Vladimir Nabokov’s Russian transla- sizes that he doesn’t want world literature seen as a purely aca- tion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is invoked to make sense of demic notion. “One of the things that’s interesting about [it] is that ancient Egyptian love poems; Kafka’s fiction sheds light on P.G. it didn’t come from elite graduate schools and percolate down, the Wodehouse’s. He believes ranging even a little more widely beyond way literary theory had,” he explains. “It’s much more bottom-up— one’s own era and language can in fact improve appreciation for from K-12 schools and community colleges, because they’re having and understanding of one’s home turf: “If you’re interested in a par- these influxes of people from around the world, and they wanted ticular period and a particular literature, if you can test it against to reach them. So they started teaching world-literature courses.” some knowledge of what’s outside, then you can understand better He also doesn’t want to be taken as a central figure in a move- what’s in the system you’re interested in.” ment, stressing that a lot has happened in the field since his 2003 The urge to push outward is, by his account, deeply dyed into book. He wishes other literary scholars would pay greater atten- his character. He grew up in Maine, the child of Episcopal mission- tion to studies of world literature more recent than his own, as aries who had returned to the United States after being interned well as work by scholars outside the old European imperial lan- by the Japanese in the Philippines during the Second World War. guages (English, French, Spanish, German). “If you’re writing in (Damrosch’s older brother, Leo, is Bernbaum research professor of English or French, you’re going to get more attention than if you’re literature emeritus at Harvard.) The family moved to New York City writing in Slovakian,” Damrosch notes. “We really need to look at as Damrosch entered high school; he enjoyed having regular access work that’s being done in Italian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and in to the Metropolitan Museum (where he developed a fascination Eastern Europe—in trans- with ancient Egypt) and at- lation if we can’t read it in tending a prep school that the original—and we need encouraged his ambitions: to be getting more transla- “In ninth grade, my Eng- tions of things that aren’t lish teacher gave me a copy translated...One of the of Tristram Shandy by Lau- things world literature has rence Sterne—a great eigh- to talk about is its own un- teenth-century novel, which even playing field.” was the first novel for real Damrosch’s writing, grown-ups that I had read. I teaching, and conversa- thought it was hilarious and tion heighten the contrast wonderful, and said, ‘Well, I between how much liter- want to read more like this.’ ature exists in the world, Tristram gives his life and and how little of it reach- opinions, and he says that es even voracious readers. his favorite authors are ‘my You may have read the great dear Rabelais and my dear Cervantes.’ I didn’t know The "Flood Tablet" of who those people were, but the Epic of Gilgamesh, recounting the gods' plan I thought, ‘If he likes them, to destroy the world in a I should like them!’ So then flood. The epic's oldest I got the Penguin Classics parts date to the twenty- of Gargantua and Pantagruel second century b.c.e.; this tablet is a copy made in and Don Quixote, and I read the seventh century b.c.e. ©THE BRITISH MUSEUM/TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM those. I really liked those, so

Harvard Magazine 49

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 I said to myself, ‘Well, I like these A fragment of a funerary hilarious satirical works, so what papyrus with text from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead else can I read?’ At the back of the in hieratic script (from the Penguin Classics there were these Late Period, late eighth century other books; I see this book called b.c.e. to 332 b.c.e.) the Divine Comedy, so I went, “Oh, I should read that!” I soon found it ing term,” he opined; “the epoch of wasn’t quite the knee-slapper that world literature is at hand, and ev- I thought it was. But one author led eryone must strive to hasten its ap- me to other authors, and then the proach.” Goethe could talk about publisher led me to other books, Horace (Latin) alongside Hafiz and that had already brought me (Persian) and compare one of his to Europe.” own novels to fiction from England He also mentions two children’s and China. His conception had its writers as influences on his early limits: distinctly elitist, distrustful years: Madeleine L’Engle (who of any kind of popular taste, and was one of his father’s parishio- convinced of the existence of sepa- ners in Manhattan) and J.R.R. rate national characteristics under- Tolkien—both builders of elabo- pinning the greater Weltliteratur. But rate fantasy worlds spread across it contrasted with the traditional many volumes who reveled in the way of studying literature one lan- abundance of languages, real and guage at a time—as though French fictional. “Gandalf is a philologist! existed in a separate box from Ger- And of course Tolkien was a phi- man and the two traditions never lologist…I was totally into that idea interacted. of a world with a deep history and The national approach neverthe-

many cultures, languages, and even GROUP/GETTY IMAGES IMAGES FORMAN/UNIVERSAL WERNER less won out for most of the follow- ways of writing.” ing century, as the modern research university consolidated and tended to organize the study of literature into language families— “Arabesques around the literary tradition” classics, Romance, Germanic, Slavic, et cetera—with scholars usual- The breadth of works on which Damrosch draws seems even ly specializing in a single language. The idea of comparative literature more expansive in light of comparative literature’s continuing focus gained currency after the 1886 publication of a foundational work by on European and U.S. works when he began graduate school at his H.M. Posnett; it made sense as a kind of reaction or complement to alma mater, Yale, in 1975. The department required proficiency in the language-family model. Departments of comparative literature French, German, and Latin before allowing students even to begin arose, but Goethe’s elitist notion of a world literature, with Horace the program. (He recalls that at the time he felt as if half his fellow and Hafiz considered side-by-side, lay mostly dormant. students were writing theses on Henry James.) By the 1970s, comparative literature, especially at Yale, tended to That focus reflected in part the impact of the Second World War. be concerned with the shape of literature abstracted from historical In its wake, reconstructing the idea of a Europe that was more context. The field emphasized formal and linguistic consideration than the sum of its nations held great moral urgency for comp- of works of literature as grounds for building general theories of lit researchers. Many of the field’s most prominent scholars were how literature creates meaning, built almost entirely on studies Europeans, often Jewish, who had fled the war. Erich Auerbach’s of modern European works. At the time, many schools of thought landmark 1946 book Mimesis, still regarded as a monument within within comp-lit were almost proud of their lack of interest in au- comparative literature, is subtitled “The Representation of Real- thors’ lives and literary history. ity in Western Literature,” but 13 of its 20 chapters cover Italian or Damrosch, however, focused on Egyptian, Biblical Hebrew, Old French literature—a very small West, and certainly not the globe. Norse, and Nahuatl. (He currently works in 12 languages.) Hearing Damrosch mentions that when Conant University Professor emeri- him account for his linguistic development sounds like Friday at tus Stephen Owen, a scholar of Chinese poetry, applied to doctoral Babel (“Once I started studying Nahuatl, I realized I needed Spanish programs in comparative literature in the late 1960s, he was turned just to deal with dictionaries… One of my teachers said, ‘If you like away, despite knowing a dozen languages, because he wanted to Middle High German, you’d love Old Norse!’ So I did...”). He spent a work on Chinese, and that simply wasn’t done. (Owen had the last lot of time in the very different intellectual climate of Yale Divinity laugh, becoming one of Damrosch’s predecessors as chair of Har- School (for a time, he had considered entering a seminary), which vard’s comparative literature department.) encouraged an interest in historical context. These factors sometimes Yet the idea of a “world literature” encompassing the entire globe set him at odds with the comp-lit department. “My director of had first gained currency a century before. Most scholars, including graduate studies one year warned me that some hiring committees Damrosch, date the first use of that term to 1827, when Johann Wolf- might think I was only doing ‘arabesques around the literary tra- gang von Goethe started invoking Weltliteratur in conversations with dition,’” he remembers. “I thought that was an interesting phrase: friends and followers: “National literature is now a rather unmean- first of all, the idea that there wasone single literary tradition; and

50 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 second of all, ‘arabesques’ sounds sort of orientalist, as if I should have been doing This was an edgier version of world literature, Judaeo-Christian-esques within the tradition.” For a while, he considered other far more attuned to power and inequality, careers; uncertain of whether he would inflected by the new critical vocabulary of find a faculty job in the same city as his wife, the legal scholar Lori Fisler Dam- interactions among diasporic communities, rosch, he interviewed for the Foreign Service and was briefly a speechwriter postcolonial nations, and former empires. for President Jimmy Carter’s drug czar. Ultimately, he submitted an eclectic dissertation on ancient Egypt, in 2003, followed by How to Read World Literature in 2009, as well as a the Midrash, and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (the topic was the use pair of edited books, Teaching World Literature and World Literature in of scripture as a basis for fiction), and started teaching at Columbia Theory, that included various colleagues’ views of the subject. But after earning his doctorate in 1980. he may have exerted his widest influence as editor of theLongman Anthology of World Literature, which attempts—in about 3,500 pages— “Comparatists were always trying to save the world” to build a history for roughly four millennia of literature and four Discerning Damrosch’s specialties from his publication record continents, dropping off around the year 1700. The anthology is at can be difficult, but he says he continues to feel most at home in its most striking when it makes accidental neighbors between its two fields: English literature, and that of the ancient Near East regional sections: Paradise Lost sits next to the Mayan Popol Vuh, the (Egypt, Sumer, Assyria, Israel). At Columbia, English and compara- Malian Epic of Son-Jara between Beowulf and the Persian Shahnameh tive literature have been technically one department since 1910, (Book of Kings). so Damrosch enjoyed more freedom than he might have if he had This quality of chronological and geographical vertigo has pro- ended up in, say, a department of Egyptology. During the next 20 voked keen criticism from other comp-lit scholars, as well as from years, he wrote a characteristically broad range of articles, and two national-language and area-studies departments. Arguments dif- very different books—a monograph and a quirky campus novel of fer, but the most prominent concern reflects fear of a kind of “Ep- ideas—on academic culture and the humanities. cot lit”—raiding the globe for raw material that can be processed Around the same time, as the academic conversation on multi- and presented (at a profit) to readers and students, mainly in the culturalism and curriculum change accelerated, Goethe’s old term United States and Europe, to reassure them of their cosmopoli- “world literature” began to reappear with transformed meaning. tanism and broad-mindedness. Emily Apter, Silver professor of It no longer meant an aristocratic klatsch of literary elites, each French and comparative literature at New York University, makes representing a national language. the case in her 2013 book Against It also aimed to avoid being a sort World Literature that the concept of Cold War-era “United Nations can lead students to underesti- bookshelf” with a masterpiece mate the true extent of cultural from each country. Instead, it and linguistic differences, par- served as an analytical lens that ticularly by teaching texts in could cover old forms of interna- translations that conceal or omit tional exchange as well as new deep difference in cultural out- kinds of interactions among dias look. Aamir Mufti, professor of poric communities, postcolonial comparative literature at UCLA, nations, and former empires. This contends that the only ethically was an edgier version of world lit- viable form of world literature erature, far more attuned to pow- must confront the worldwide er and inequality, inflected by the history of “relations of force and critical vocabulary of the previ- powers of assimilation and the ous two decades. ways in which writers and texts Damrosch began to publish respond to such pressures.” Read- on the subject in the mid 1990s, ing Paradise Lost and the Popol Vuh leading to What Is World Literature? in the same way risks either understanding neither, or else read- Page showing Aztec gentry ing the latter in a way that scrubs from book four of the sixteenth- away the distinctiveness of the century Florentine Codex, a history of the Aztec people society that produced it and its in the Nahuatl language modern descendants. that was compiled by the Comparative literature is a Spanish Franciscan Bernardino small world; Apter edited the se- de Sahagún with extensive help from Aztec informants ries that published Damrosch’s and artisans DEAGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES What Is World Literature? and has

Harvard Magazine 51

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 served as a board member for the First page of the book of Genesis Institute for World Literature (see from the Xanten Bible, an illuminated Tanakh (Hebrew sidebar), as well as a keynote speak- Bible) completed by the scribe er; Damrosch’s enthusiastic blurb Joseph ben Kalonymus in 1294 for Mufti’s book Forget English! calls it “a vital contribution at the inter- true—for the individual reader, what section of postcolonial, compara- you read comes into your mind and tive, and world literary studies.” At can coexist. But it’s also true that times, he seems almost eager for the what’s able to come into your mind is chance to agree with his critics, or not merely your choice. So much de- at least meet them halfway. Mari- pends on cultural, political, and eco- ano Siskind, professor of Romance nomic factors that thinking critically languages and comparative litera- about those ellipses—the capitalist ture at Harvard, who has taught system that creates them, and the at multiple sessions of the Insti- colonial heritage and other politics tute for World Literature (which behind them—is very important.” Damrosch directs, see “Enlarging He teaches, for example, a semi- the Field,” opposite), says that his nar on “Peripheral Modernisms” that colleague “understands how im- flips the normal allocation of class portant it is to create a space that time to ask how the story of mod- is open to a wide diversity of posi- ernism changes when Brazilian and tions from which to study or ad- East Asian writers become the focus, dress world literature as a scholarly with European writers presented as critical problem.” context, or when Indonesian writ- Damrosch has often described er Pramoedya Ananta Toer is read at

the intersections where different NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS length and James Joyce studied only cultures’ literatures meet as the overlapping space between two el- through a handful of short stories. He writes in his foreword to Teach- lipses, one representing literature’s life in its home culture, the other ing World Literature, “World literature surveys can never hope to cover outside; in retrospect, he says, “I agree with the critiques that say too the world. We do better if we seek to uncover a variety of compelling often it looks as though these ellipses are all on a level playing field, works from distinctive traditions, through creative combinations and and it’s just a happy merger. Which I think to some degree may be juxtapositions guided by whatever specific themes and issues we

Enlarging the Field A number of IWL participants have described the experience as an important part of justifying and explaining the discipline in Since arriving at Harvard in 2009, Damrosch has attempted various ways. Karen Thornber, professor of comparative literature to open the conversation on world literature—and with it, the and East Asian literature, taught environmental literary criticism discipline of comparative literature—through a collaborative in- at past IWL sessions, and concluded, “It makes us better commu- ternational program, with 54 institutional affiliates, called the nicators. And that sounds kind of trite in a way, but I think one Institute for World Literature (IWL); it held its ninth summer of the challenges facing the humanities now is that we’re not as session in July. The four-week program assembles a core faculty clear as we might be about why the humanities matter and why of literary scholars and some 150 fellow scholars and graduate it’s important for students to study the humanities. Since the IWL students for a month of seminars on a range of relevant topics; takes place in different parts of the world, [students] learn how those for past sessions have included: “How Do Literary Works to become much better communicators about their own research. Cross Borders (Or Not)?” “Science Fiction and the Imagination of We take them—and ourselves—outside of our research bubbles Planetary Futures,” “Environmental Humanities and New Mate- and talk more clearly.” rialisms.” “There’s a lot of interest in the idea of world literature, Rebecca Walkowitz, chair of the Rutgers English department, but at a lot of places, people are not really trained to work beyond who has taught a class on close reading and world literature at a single century in a single country,” Damrosch, who also directs two IWL sessions, notes that all universities pay lip service to the IWL, explains. “The institute is meant to train people”—not the goal of educating people for “global citizenship,” but “those just to pay lip service to “thinking globally,” but to urge schol- of us coming out of the humanities feel strongly that there is ars to “be in the world” and have conversations in person across no global citizenship without multilingualism: you can’t be an nations and languages. The venue of the IWL rotates in three- educated citizen if you only have encounters with the language, year cycles; for two years, it convenes at universities outside the literature, history, and culture of one place. The IWL, it seems to United States; the third year is always at Harvard. Past hosts me, is a chance to think about what the humanities can contrib- have included universities in Istanbul, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Hong ute, and shows how humanistic learning in multiple languages Kong, Beijing, and Lisbon. helps us understand what it means to participate internationally.”

52 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 wish to raise in a particular course.” Damrosch says the number of Damrosch is sanguine about the future of undergraduates taking classes and concentrating in literature has risen the field. “I think that globalization has been on modestly, bucking the trend across balance a positive challenge for comparative the humanities: “Our own enroll- ments are holding steady and have studies,” he avers, “opening up new possibilities actually been increasing over the last several years, in part because we’re and new problems of competence….” quite enthusiastic about general education…An increasing number of our concentrators are doing joint broadening linguistic range of the department’s core faculty, which degrees with [departments like] physics or statistics, as well as with now includes Polish, Malaysian, Wolof, and Korean. A current gradu- other literatures or arts. You get very smart students from a major ate student is, to the best of his knowledge, the first scholar to draw like biochemistry who are not afraid to ask very basic questions together Spanish, Mayan, and Basque literature in one study. “She about a text. They’re excellent students, and they read with great may be the only person in the world who’s a specialist in those three enthusiasm and care.” He sees this as a spur to re-evaluate the role things. And she’s doing fantastically interesting work.” of his field in students’ educations: knowledge of literature, he sug- Damrosch himself is finishing a book, tentatively titledComparing gests, offers less cultural prestige to today’s undergraduates than it the Literatures: What Every Comparatist Needs to Know. “A lot of my polemic once did, so faculty members “need to explain what we’re doing and is against picking sides narrowly and saying, ‘The kind of comp lit I justify it. And then it can relate to the rest of their do is the only kind to do,’ which I think is lives. It doesn’t have to be the [only] thing they do.” just self-defeating and unnecessary.” He Damrosch is sanguine about the future of the field envisions the department as a nexus for at large, as well. “I personally think it’s the most ex- approaches from dif- citing time in comparative literature since the 1870s, ferent languages and when they were really hashing out what the disci- methods. “What’s re- Visit harvardmag.com pline was going to be,” he avers. “I think that glo- ally good is that com- to read “Why Diverse Literature Matters,” balization has been on balance a positive challenge paratists today have by Josiane Grégoire, for comparative studies, opening up new possibili- the benefit of the the- J.D. ’92. ties and also new problems of competence, language, ory boom of the 1970s and politics...Many more and the postcolonial studies that rose in people are think- the 1980s, and we still have very seriously ing globally, [in- engaged work on the theory of literature cluding] profes- that people like Emily Apter and my col- sors of French or league John Hamilton [Kenan professor of of English—but German and comparative literature] do. At now their work the same time, comp lit is opening to the has a global dimen- broader world.” sion, so it makes He remains confident that the study sense to have comp of literature has a role to play in under- lit as a place to air standing and mending the world: “Lit- their views.” erature is not a simple mirror reflecting; He also feels the rather, it refracts the culture times have reinvigo- from which it comes. But it rated the field’s sense provides a way to think deep- that it is trying to ly—it’s a little bit like the slow find ways to address food movement in a world of fast real-world problems: foods. To read deeply and atten- “Comparatists were tively a rich work of literature always trying to save gives us a unique way of think- the world. In the years ing about ourselves and our place after the Second World in the world.”

© BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD War, that took the form of trying to put Europe Pages from the first Contributing editor Spencer Lee Lenfield back together. Now we increas- editions of various ’12 has previously profiled eighteenth- ingly find people working on is- volumes of Laurence century English literature scholar Dei sues [like] migration, diaspora, Sterne's novel The Life dre Lynch (January-February 2017) and and Opinions of Tristram ecocriticism, medical humani- Shandy, Gentleman, political philosopher Danielle Allen (May- ties.” He mentions the ever- dating from 1759 to 1767 June 2016).

Harvard Magazine 53

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 VITA Adella Hunt Logan Brief life of a rebellious black suffragist: 1863-1915 by adele logan alexander

oon after meeeting Susan B. Anthony in 1895 at a conven- SA’s Woman’s Journal, where in 1901 (using the pseudonym “L.H.A.”) tion of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association she wrote about “Mrs. Warren Logan’s” recent public presentation S(N-AWSA) in Atlanta, Adella Hunt Logan wrote to the suf- on suffrage for black women. She wrote for other publications as fragist leader, “I am working with women who are slow to believe well, including a notable 1905 article about woman suffrage in the that they will get help from the ballot, but someday I hope to see Colored American, the country’s most widely read journal by, for, and my daughter vote right here in the South.” She strove to spur often about African Americans. “If we are citizens,” she asked, “why not frightened or otherwise reluctant black women to political action treat us as such on questions of law and governance where women through gaining access to the ballot; she lobbied for equal pay as are now classed with minors and idiots?” To those who argued that well, and ultimately espoused women’s reproductive rights. men represented their wives at the polls, she argued that many of The letter and Hunt Logan herself were virtually unique, because her sex either had no spouses or had “callous husbands who patron- in her own eyes, and as specified by law, she was “a Negro.” Due to ize gambling dens and brothels.” Such women, she concluded, often her predominantly Caucasian ancestry, however (both her mother stayed home, “to cry, to swear, or to suicide.” and her black-Cherokee-white maternal grandmother maintained In 1912, in “Colored Women as Voters,” written for W.E.B. Du Bois’s longstanding, consensual relationships with slaveholding white popular new NAACP magazine, The Crisis, she argued in part, “More men), Hunt Logan herself looked white. As an adult, she occasion- and more colored women are participating in civic activities, and ally “passed” to travel on the Jim Crow South’s railways, and to attend women who believe that they need the vote, also see that the vote segregated political gatherings, such as the N-AWSA’s, from which needs them.” But by then, she was already physically ill—from long- she brought suffrage tactics and materials back to share with her own term, painful, and debilitating kidney infections—and increasingly people. At the time, she was the N-AWSA’s only African-American depressed, a condition due partly to marital and family stress, but lifetime member, and the only such member from ultraconservative aggravated by outside events. Du Bois, though Hunt Logan’s friend, Alabama, where she lived with her husband, Warren Logan, and their was Booker T. Washington’s philosophical archenemy, and he failed children, and taught for three decades at Booker T. Washington’s to request a contribution from her for his second issue of The Crisis to Tuskegee Institute, the agricultural and industrial school for black be devoted to woman suffrage. Early in 1915, the Alabama legislature Southerners that drew such prominent visitors as Frederick Doug had refused to allow a referendum on votes for women even to appear lass, Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and on that fall’s ballot. Enforced electroshock treatment at Michigan’s philanthropists Andrew Carnegie and Julius Rosenwald. Battle Creek Sanitarium, after she’d set a small fire in her husband’s Hunt Logan was also a woman of rare privilege and education. office, was cut short that November following Washington’s death. She’d first been tutored by a white cousin, a schoolteacher. She gradu- She returned to find a campus deep in mourning, and to face ru- ated at 18 from Atlanta University, where dedicated New England- mors of her husband’s infidelity. Just before Washington’s December ers taught a small cadre of black Southerners, and 20 years later she memorial service, she jumped to her death from the fifth floor of a earned a master’s there—“honorary” only, though, because no school campus building before hundreds of appalled onlookers—as perhaps for African Americans anywhere in the country then was accredited she’d prophesied in her 1905 suffrage article. to bestow “earned” graduate degrees. Despite her struggles, Hunt Logan boldly challenged the status Her interactions with Anthony continued, despite a fractious inci- quo and conventional wisdom about politically empowering African- dent in 1900. A white friend and fellow suffragist suggested that Hunt American women. Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in Logan speak at a Washington, D.C., convention honoring Anthony’s 1920 officially granted women the right to vote, but Southern black eightieth birthday, noting, “her hair is as straight as yours or mine and women, her main constituency, largely had to wait until passage of she looks white but must call herself colored.” But Anthony demurred: the 1965 Voting Rights Act to exercise the franchise. “I cannot have speak for us a woman who has even a ten-thousandth portion of African blood who would be an inferior orator in matter Historian Adele Logan Alexander ’59 is Adella Hunt Logan’s only granddaugh- or manner, because it would so mitigate against our cause…Let your ter. Her family memoir, Princess of the Hither Isles: A Black Suffrag- Miss Logan wait till she is more cultivated, better educated, and better ist’s Story from the Jim Crow South (Yale), appears this month. The prepared and can do our mission and her own race the greatest credit.” portrait of Hunt Logan opposite, by the Parisian-trained, African-American Despite that affront, Hunt Logan cajoled white suffragists, Anthony painter William Edouard Scott, was begun in 1915 while he was in residence at among them, into visiting Tuskegee, and contributed to the N-AW- Tuskegee and completed at her daughter’s direction in 1918.

54 September - October 2019 From Adele Logan Alexander’s personal collection; reproduction photograph by Mark Gulezian

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

58 Open Book 59 Creating a Scene 60 Off the Shelf 62 “Kind of Dark and Scary” 64 Toward the Negotiated City 66 Chapter and Verse

In “Taking Time Off When I’m Most Inspired,” Fish explains the benefits of rest to his nearly 600,000 followers.

accolades, and athletic recruitment. The 10-min- ute opus brought him hundreds of thousands of views. On YouTube, the Harvard name is pow- Figuring It Out erful. Search for it, and you’ll find dozens of popular videos in which students (or ac- On YouTube, watch John Fish grow. cepted students) discuss how they got in, by jacob sweet vlog through a typical college day, or discuss an aspect of campus culture, like the dating or party scenes. In the “college decision” he first two years of college Those interested could watch him spend category, for which people record their joy- were a time of adjustments for time with friends, cook, and prepare for ful or subdued reactions to an acceptance, John Fish ’21. Like any other stu- track meets. waitlist, or rejection, Harvard videos are es- T dent, he made mistakes, contem- A few days into that daily vlogging, a dis- pecially in demand. plated new ideas, and tried to best manage tracted driver blind-sided Fish’s car (the im- Often, though, Harvard-centric videos are his time. But most students don’t go through mediate aftermath of which is on YouTube). one-hit wonders. Someone being swarmed this process in front of an audience of hun- His vehicle was crushed, and even though by classmates moments after getting accept- dreds of thousands. Fish does. his injuries weren’t major, doctors told him ed might generate a few hundred thousand During his senior year of high school in to rest. Confined to his house and unable views (or an appearance on The Ellen DeGe- Waterloo, Canada, Fish started making dai- to take viewers—to the extent there were neres Show), but in the competitive world of ly video blogs (vlogs) and posting them on any—out and about with him, he decided to YouTube, it doesn’t guarantee a sustained YouTube. Much in the style of one of the make a video exploring a popular YouTube audience. The few handfuls of Harvard site’s most popular video-makers, Casey topic: college admissions. His first college- students who’ve tried building a following Neistat, he shared stylized summaries of related video, “HOW I GOT INTO HAR- usually receive only a fraction of their peak his everyday life, filming his daily routine. VARD,” detailed his test scores, running viewership for non-Harvard material, and

56 September - October 2019 Courtesy of John Fish

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage often struggle to maintain an audience after graduation, when making a video recollect- Nicholas Lemann ’76—past dean of Co- ing Harvard parties seems strange. o p e n b o o k lumbia Journalism School, New Yorker staff Nevertheless, Fish, like many who taste writer—has an uncanny ability to reveal YouTube fame, began obsessing over his society’s undercurrents through smaller views and likes. When he reached 100,000 Things stories (standardized testing, selective ad- subscribers—people notified when he posts missions, etc., in The Big Test: The Secret His- something new—in a month, he felt com- tory of the American Meritocracy; the flight of pelled to roll his success over to the next, Fell Apart rural blacks toward opportunity up North, churning out crowd-pleasing videos. “HOW in The Promised Land: The Great Migration and TO GET INTO HARVARD,” “HOW IVY How It Changed America). In Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the LEAGUE RECRUITING WORKS,” and American Dream (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28), he traces dislocations in the politi- others drew thousands of viewers to his cal economy to developments during the New Deal, at Harvard Business School, and channel. Even on his non-college videos, on Wall Street. His point of departure, in the prologue, is a car dealership. commenters requested tours of his dorm, a review of the computer-science concentra- On May 15, 2009, FedEx dropped off an Nick had lived his whole life in Chicago. tion, and general inside looks into the allur- ominously slender package from General He thought he knew how life was supposed ing world of Harvard. Motors at the parts department at to work: it was far from perfect, but at When he finally arrived in Cambridge, D’Andrea Buick, on the South Side of Chi- least it was understandable. Loyalty, being the potential for YouTube growth was un- cago.…The parts department got the pack- straight with people, and maintaining con- deniable. A sharply edited daily vlog from age to Nick D’Andrea, the owner, a strut- nections was everything.…GM used to a Harvard student would likely work won- ting bantam rooster with a broad chest, a send a guy around to visit D’Andrea Buick ders. But Fish realized that attracting a huge head of curly white hair, and sharp eyes every so often—a good guy, who could see audience wasn’t why he’d started making that move around, taking everything in. He how well Nick was running the dealership. YouTube videos in the first place. “Mak- tore it open and found out that he was out Then the Internet came along, and the vis- ing a video a week was fun for me,” he of business. its were replaced with teleconferences. At said recently. “But then over the summer, What was happening? The world was one of the teleconferences it was an- it kind of progressed into something that falling apart.…General Motors…had gone nounced that GM was going to start com- I was doing for external pressures.” Mak- bankrupt. It meant that the whole dense, bining several brands into single dealer- ing videos had been ships; Buick was going to be put together a creative challenge. with Pontiac and GMc trucks. Now it was a burden. …[I]n 2007 the company gave [Nick] an During that first Sep- ultimatum: do this, or your business will be tember and October, as in jeopardy, because we control your sup- his viewers requested ply of cars and…the franchise that lets you and expected a num- operate as a GM dealer. So Nick, who’d ber of College-related been proud to operate a debt-free dealer- videos, Fish’s account ship, borrowed money—from GM’s cred- went silent. it company, GMAC—and bought out the When he reap- Pontiac dealer. Then he had to get a “floor peared in December, plan”—another loan, also from GM—to

his tone was differ- VELGOSPAUL / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO stock his dealership with new Pontiacs. ent. Standing on the Science Center roof, Remote corporate decisions devastate And he had to renovate the building, using with the campus sprawled out behind him, local employers: a defunct Saturn dealer a GM-approved architect, again with mon- he looked into his camera and confessed: ey borrowed from GM. By the time he “Things might be a bit different because built-up web of arrangements that gave reopened, he was in debt to GM for close taking a few months off YouTube made me some protection to a small one-store to a million dollars…and he had mortgaged realize that I put on a bit of a persona on auto dealer like Nick was null and void. both the dealership and his house. camera. People here were kind of surprised President Barack Obama had appointed a Nick started selling Pontiacs along with when we met because I was a completely “car czar,” a guy from Wall Street…and Buicks in August 2008. In September, the different person, so I want to change that.” he had decreed that in exchange for its financial crisis hit. On the South Side of Instead of talking about how he got $50 billion in government bailout money, Chicago, everybody buys cars with bor- something—a college acceptance, a cod- GM, along with Chrysler, which was also rowed money—but suddenly you couldn’t ing internship—he began focusing more on bankrupt, would have to close more than borrow….Then, in October, Nick got a the day-in, day-out work that helped him a thousand dealerships all over the coun- letter from GM saying that in a few achieve his goals, hoping others would find try.…The letter told Nick to sell his inven- months it was going to terminate Pontiac his perspective useful. Soon he didn’t have tory and close his store in a month. as a brand. to include “Harvard” in his titles to draw

Harvard Magazine 57

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage an audience. “How I Fight Unproductivity” Arthur Kleinman—Rabb received hundreds of thousands of views; o p e n b o o k professor of anthropology, “Reading a Book a Week Is Changing My professor of medical anthro- Life” drew millions. pology, and professor of psy- Fish has a distinct confessional style in “Find My chiatry—crosses disciplinary his videos, mostly sitting on a chair in his and cultural boundaries (he bedroom and addressing viewers directly. has long worked in China) to He speaks animatedly from a script, but Real Husband” explore and enrich the di- leaves room for improvisation. One could mensions of care beyond the argue he fits into the YouTube world of self- familiar domains of health technology and finance. InThe Soul of Care: The Moral help, but he tries to show the process be- Education of a Husband and a Doctor (Viking, $27), his most personal work, he looks hind his decisionmaking, rather than dole inward, to the demands imposed by, and the caregiver’s response to, his late wife’s out inspirational quotes and promises. He catastrophic dementia. From the prologue: explains, for example, why he decided to read one book a week (not a day, like other “Get out! Get out!” gurus), how the wide My wife, Joan, is scream- variety of books has ing, and hitting out wildly changed his think- at the stranger in her bed. ing, and how he re- She is greatly agitated and members what he’s frightened. “Get away read. The “hidden from here. Get out!” secret” that he tries But the man she per- to express, he says, ceives as a stranger is me, “is that everything her husband of more than in the self-improve- 40 years. Joan has just wo- ment niche is going ken up from a midday nap. to change a lot based It is summer 2009 in Cam- on what you want, bridge, Massachusetts. We who you are, and why are in the bedroom of the you’re doing this.” In home we have lived in for a note-taking video, 27 years. he presents stud- I try to keep my voice ies that convinced

calm and hide the panic BRIAN LIGHT/ALAMY STOCK PHOTOS him to take notes by rising inside me. “I’m your husband, Ar- she is occupying as unreal and fake. As in hand, but acknowledges that typing may thur. Don’t be so upset, I’m here with Joan’s case, it most often is episodic, work better for others: the particular mech- you!” short-lived, and readily forgotten, but for anism is less important than the process as “You are not! You are not Arthur! You those close to the sufferer, it can be a whole. Fish often stresses that he’s just are an impostor! Get out! Now!” she world-shattering—as if a bond that has figuring outhis life, too. yells, shaking and intensely alert, like a taken decades to forge can be broken in High school and college students across trapped animal. an instant. the world likely relate most to his videos, I try in all the ways I can think of to I’m a trained psychiatrist. I should but for those outside that group, his chan- calm her and to prove to her that I am have the tools to deal with this. But right nel provides a look inside the head of a indeed her husband, but she insists, deny- now, in this moment, I am a shocked and highly motivated student trying to do his ing who I am, growing more and more devastated husband. This episode, like best. Viewers can watch how he dealt with adamant, more and more upset. I begin the first, lasts a few terrible hours. Dur- heartbreak, mental health, or a creative lull, to wonder if this is real or if I have woken ing that time,I have to retreat to anoth- and then click a later video to see how his up in a nightmare. Joan feels only terror, er part of our house, and wait until it thinking has evolved. His personal website caught in the grip of a delusion that fright- burns itself out and she has returned to lists every book he’s read for the past year ens her to the core. This has happened a calm state. I am also, however, a care- and a half, and which he plans to read. The once before…but still I feel totally unpre- giver—Joan’s primary caregiver. Several growth that Fish focuses on is what’s most pared to deal with her delirium. times I try to engage her in normal con- fascinating to observe. Joan is almost blind and suffers demen- versation, but she rejects me. Finally, I “There are some videos that I look back at tia as a result of an atypical kind of early- make believe I am someone else, there and I cringe and I go, ‘Oh man, I can’t believe onset Alzheimer’s disease.…The affected to help her. that I did that,’ but it’s all genuine, right? It’s person systematically misperceives those “Well, get rid of this impostor and find all real,” he said. “So, if it’s cringy to me now, close to her and even the physical space my real husband,” she implores. that just means I’ve grown and that I am a different person than I was then.”

58 September - October 2019

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

Mak designed lighting for a 2019 staging of The Bridges of Madison County (bottom RICH HEIN RICH images), and for Ofrenda (top), a play

RICH HEIN RICH about immigration, home, and belonging.

the end of the performance, the dancers asked Creating a Scene each audience member to waltz with them, and eventually rose petals began to sprinkle Lighting and set designer Elizabeth Mak communicates stories. down on the crowd: they became a part of the by nina pasquini set. “And it ends,” Mak says, “with the audience being sent out into the world.” Mak grew up in Singapore, always assum- lizabeth Mak ’12, a theater set and freedom of conveying precise emotion, rather ing that the next phase of her life would lighting designer, doesn’t feel threat- than the hyperrealism of digital effects. An- be the one when she would have to give up ened by the era of computer-generat- other is communal experience: “having 500 art. She was a dancer as a child—mostly E ed effects and green screens,Avengers people in the same room experiencing the modern, with some ballet and tap—but and Game of Thrones. In fact, she thinks the same emotion.” Mak’s work often takes this her middle school fed into Singapore’s top rise of television and blockbuster films has a step further—she frequently collaborates high school, which didn’t offer dance. Her been good for artists who work in theater: it on performances that are immersive, in which middle-school choreographer, however, challenges them to re-examine what stories performers interact directly with audience happened to teach at a high school that was they are trying to tell, why and how they are members. For her senior thesis, she directed starting a theater program. “I thought, okay, trying to tell them. “Because TV especially a danced version of The Graveyard Book, Neil maybe I’ll transfer and we’ll see what comes has gotten so big in the past 10 years, I think Gaiman’s children’s novel about a boy who of this,” Mak says. She did, and continued people are starting to think about what sepa- is raised by ghosts but who grows up to real- to dance throughout high school. rates the two art forms,” she says. “What can ize that he must eventually enter the human When she arrived at Harvard, she braced theater do that TV and film can’t?” world. Mak used the story to explore what herself again to part ways with dance. One thing theater offers, the New York it means to grow up, to preserve childhood “Where I come from, people don’t really have City-based Mak points out, is the creative memories while also moving on from them. At careers in the arts. I had never met an artist

Harvard Magazine 59

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage growing up,” she explains. She thought she The same thing happened when help was would concentrate in English or philosophy, needed to build sets. And though her first then return to Singapore to be a teacher. But love was dancing, she had always been in- freshman year she discovered the Harvard- troverted, and she discovered that designing Radcliffe Modern Dance Company, where the visual elements of a work was a way to she both danced and choreographed. communicate stories without the anxiety She also started volunteering as a stage of performing. manager for the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Eventually she found herself working at Club. “And somewhere along my freshman the American Repertory Theater and do- year, someone said, ‘We’ve got our spring ing theater internships. She created a special concert coming up, but there’s no one to concentration in performance and theater do the lighting,’” Mak recalls. “And I said, arts, and went on to an M.F.A. in design at Elizabeth Mak ‘Well, I don’t really know anything about the Yale School of Drama. Now she has the

COURTESY OF ELIZABETH MAK ELIZABETH OF COURTESY lighting, but I’ll press some buttons for you.’” artistic career she once thought impossible,

Kerr professor of English history and solutions may well be effective—but read- culture at the University of Texas at ers have to put up with a lot of Upper Off the Shelf Austin delivers a bracing message: Cased Tips and Suggestions (“Conception, Recent books with Harvard connections reading will persist, it is worth the Planning, and Execution,” etc.), and what work, and here are 1,001 curated must be one of the worst typefaces ever suggestions for doing so. The helpful deployed across 300-plus pages. Believers: Faith in Human Nature, by categories range from those clearly Melvin Konner, Ph.D. ’73, M.D. ’84 (W.W. good for you (history, literature, etc.,) to Sharenthood: Why We Should Think Norton, $27.95). The biological anthropolo- enticing vices (A.J. Liebling on cooking and before We Talk about Our Kids On- gist/neuroscientist at Emory University ex- food; Calvin Trillin on crime). A healthy line, by Leah A.Plunkett (MIT, $24.95). A amines the origins of faith from his upbring- dose of optimism, at the most opportune faculty associate of Harvard’s Berkman ing (as an Orthodox Jew, who became a time. Klein Center for Internet and Society nonbeliever at age 17), his work in Africa warns about the terabytes of accessible, among the !Kung, and the perspectives of, You’re It, by Leonard J. Marcus et al., of trackable information about their progeny yes, modern science. Faith, he finds, is “an the National Preparedness Leadership Ini- that parents are spreading about. “If Tom evolved, biologically grounded, psychologi- tiative (PublicAffairs, $28). The nation isn’t Sawyer were a real boy, alive today,” she cally intimate, socially strong set of inclina- acting to stave off hurricane disasters, so it begins, “he’d be arrested for what he does tions and ideas that…will never go away.” should welcome guidance on “crisis, in the first chapter” of Twain’s novel—be- change, and how to lead when it matters cause of Aunt Polly’s social-media posts Indispensable Reading: 1,001 Books most” (the subtitle) from four affiliates of about his exploits. Time to carve out a from the Arabian Nights to Zola, by the public-health/Kennedy School NPLI. little private space for childhood. William Roger Lewis, A.M. ’63 (I.B. Tauris, Their examples (an active shooter, a data $35). As Barnes & Noble is taken private breach, etc.) are distressingly familiar, and Bleeding Out, by Thomas Abt, adjunct and students express outrage at being the jacket copy about “turbulent times” lecturer in public policy (Basic Books, $30). asked to read, you know, a whole book, the can be read as a sad commentary on “A young man, unconscious, lies before you stormy weather—and the times on a gurney,” bleeding profusely from a in general. gunshot wound in the thigh. What to do? “First you stop the bleeding”—absent that, Fair Play, by Eve Rodsky, J.D. nothing else counts. With that vivid image, ’02 (Putnam, $26) A checklist the author, a criminal-justice policymaker, sort of book offering a “game- says the response to urban violence has to changing,” project-management focus first on the violence (homicides, for solution for the real inequalities example), before trying to address it of domestic life, particularly as through attacks on drugs, gangs, or guns. they impinge on women, wheth- “Murder on the streets of our cities is a er they work outside the home deadly serious problem,” he says, “but it is or not. The cause is noble, the also a solvable one.”

In a world of bite-sized Twitter John Rawls: The Path to a Theory of posts, William Roger Lewis reminds us of the classic works Justice, by Andrius Gališanka (Harvard, that reward deep reading. $45). The late political philosopher remains

60 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage but with it comes a burden she was not ex- presented this past February and March members, many of whom are immigrants. pecting. Art, she says, is “something that I do by the Philadelphia Theater Company, and She recently designed lighting and pro- every day now, and it’s something that I 100 Mak was behind the lighting changes cru- jections for one of these plays, Ofrenda, based percent think has an irreplaceable role in social to the plot, literally (light dawning over on interviews with Albany Park residents ciety, but also, with war and poverty and cli- a bridge) and emotionally (the softening of about “the meaning of home.” One storyline mate change, every day I ask myself: how do light that evokes falling in love). followed a Syrian refugee who immigrates we speak to these important issues with art?” Still, she says, “What I’ve been most in- to Chicago with her family. “It was really She continues to design more traditional terested in working on is art that is a call important, for design, to think about how performances, art whose purpose is “enter- to action.” She collaborates with the Alba- to recreate—not recreate—mmm, what’s tainment, to make us feel good, to make us ny Park Theater Project, a company in Chi- the word I’m looking for?—for the design laugh”—like a staged version of The Bridges cago that employs local high-schoolers as to echo the journey that she had been on,” of Madison County, about a mid-twentieth- actors and professional artists like Mak as Mak explains. century Italian war bride who falls in love the surrounding team. Its shows are based In the play, the woman is unable to bring with a traveling photographer. The play was on interviews conducted with community photos of her home and family with her foundational to political theory and the caust might inform Americans’ modern construction of liberalism (for an coming to terms with their his- example of the continuing scholarship, see tory of slavery and racialist vio- “The Rawlsian Revolution,” page 12). An lence. assistant professor at Wake Forest under- pins the foundations of Rawls’s contribu- The Geography of Risk, by Gil- tions through an intellectual and historical bert M. Gaul, NF ’83 (Farrar, Straus excavation of the origins of his ideas. & Giroux, $28). In time for hurricane season, a Pulitzer Prize-win- Won Over, by William Alsup, J.D. ’70, ning journalist and former Nieman M.P.P. ’71 (New South Books, $27.95). A Fellow explores the human-planned memoir by a (white) federal judge who catastrophes in the making, as seas grew up in Jim Crow Mississippi, clerked at rise, coastal development acceler-

the Supreme Court, and practiced civil- ates, and tax breaks and federal GILBERT M. GAUL rights law back home before being ap- flood insurance subsidize—indeed encour- Dauphin Island, Alabama, after Katrina, pointed to the bench in San Francisco in age—building in increasingly dangerous 2005: a recurrent, man-made disaster that ignores nature—and climate change 1999. When he rules against an African- zones. The author’s warnings about flood- American plaintiff, in 2011, his lawyer seeks plain and barrier-island development aren’t lapse of the Soviet Union, a nineteenth- Alsup’s disqualification because “You can new, but they merit repeating in an age of century strain of chasing after immortality go to Harvard, and you can clerk for Justice climate change—before the next $100-bil- has manifested itself anew. An enthno- Douglas, but old institutionalized race and lion-plus disaster bill, and the associated loss graphic, scholarly examination of techno- class attitudes are deeply ingrained early.” of life. scientific (cryonic and biogerontological), He stays on the case and says growing up religious, and other strivings after futur- in Mississippi had “opened, not closed, my Something Deeply Hidden, by Sean ism—in a place that could really use some eyes to the cruelty of racism.” Carroll, Ph.D. ’93 (Dutton, $29). As if you of these ideas panning out. didn’t have enough trouble making this Learning from the Germans: Race world great again, the author, research Wildhood: The Epic Journey from and the Memory of Evil, by Susan Nei- professor of (theoretical!) physics at Adolescence to Adulthood in Hu- man ’77, Ph.D. ’86 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Caltech, calls attention to the weirdness mans and Other Animals, by Barbara $28). In late May, President Lawrence S. of quantum mechanics, the need to under- Natterson-Horowitz ’83, A.M. ’83, and Bacow, whose mother survived Auschwitz, stand it better—and the unsettling implica- Kathryn Bowers (Scribner, $27). A UCLA listened as Commencement speaker An- tion that there are many worlds to contend cardiologist (and visiting professor in Har- gela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, spoke with in the universe. vard’s human evolutionary biology depart- of “the betrayal of all civilized values that ment) and her coauthor reinterpret that was the Shoah.” Neiman, a Jewish daughter The Future of Immortality, by Anya human awkwardness through the lens of of the South, who lives in Berlin, combines Bernstein, Loeb associate professor of the other species, investigating the tasks of philosophical inquiry, personal experience, social sciences (Princeton, $75/$22.95 pa- staying safe, living with others, “communi and conversations with pioneers like Bryan per). And now for something completely cat[ing] sexually,” and leaving the nest. Stevenson, J.D.-M.P.A.’85, LL.D. ’15 (see different: within the Russian Federation, Homo sapiens parents may find the sweep- harvardmag.com/stevenson-17) to ex which suffered an historic decline in lon- ing overview helpful, or not, but it is sure- plore how efforts to atone for the Holo- gevity after the political and economic col- ly interesting.

Harvard Magazine 61

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage when she flees Damascus—but because ings, starting with the woman’s school, the “Make art that isn’t afraid to stare down her father taught her how to draw when tree that grew outside her family’s farm— what the rest of the world is afraid to look she was young, she memorializes Syr- and ending with the bombings that reduced at,” it reads in part. “Be desperately in love ia through her own art. One of the high- much of the city to rubble. “We didn’t want with the world, with everything that is right schoolers working for the project created to actually recreate realistically what was about it and everything that is wrong about charcoal drawings of Damascus based on happening,” Mak says. “It was more impor- it.” This insistence on loving the world, even the interviewee’s descriptions. To display tant to show the journey that she and her while uncovering and displaying its flaws, is the woman’s memories of violence, Mak family had been on.” unmistakable in the work that Mak brings and her colleagues chose to use a 20-min- In 2015, Mak wrote an “artist manifes- to life on-stage: horrifying, gritty, hopeful, ute stop-motion sequence of these draw- to” that she keeps posted on her website. beautiful.

get in Western animation.” It fascinated her. “Kind of Dark and Scary” But it wasn’t until she started college in 2012 that she took her first animation class, Animator Renee Zhan finds self-discovery in strange landscapes. a freshman seminar with Ruth Lingford, a by S.I. Rosenbaum senior lecturer in visual and environmental studies and an accomplished animator whose own work uses poems, fairy tales, enee Zhan ’16 was hiking along only vaguely human-shaped, plop and ooze and biblical stories to ask questions about a humid mountain trail in Japan through the landscape in a way that makes sexuality, violence, aging, death, and iden- when she looked down to discover you think of body fluids. It’s unlike any oth- tity. Zhan was hooked from the initial as- R that her legs and feet were covered er animation you’ve ever seen. signment: “The first time I saw something with more than 50 leeches. “True terror is Born in Texas to two scientists—her fa- I had drawn move, it was so exciting,” she what I felt,” she recalled in a recent inter- ther is a geophysicist, her mother a geneti- said. “I wanted to keep doing it, despite the view. “I spent maybe 30 minutes just pick- cist—Zhan loved cartoons. “It was always amount of work it took.” Even today, she ing them all off.” sort of something I thought was almost animates by drawing each image by hand But as an animator, Zhan has long been like magic,” she explained. She watched on paper—about 12 of them make one sec- interested in the disgusting and the visceral. Disney movies, but also “weird old Chi- ond of film—and using watercolors for the Her short films often feature things that eat nese cartoons my mother showed me,” like backgrounds. each other—and themselves. In her latest, the classic 1965 Monkey King: Havoc in Heaven. Her first animated short “was very love- “Reneepoptosis”, three versions of herself Adapted from the Chinese epic novel Jour- ly and sweet,” she recalls, before adding, “I go hiking through the humid folds of her ney to the West, originally published around think my work has gone on a different tra- own body, and their quest ends in an auto- 1592, “It was kind of dark and scary,” Zhan jectory since then.” Indeed. Things got dark cannibalistic feast. recalls. “Sometimes it talked about punish- There’s something grossly satisfying ment and repentance…there were a lot of In “Reneepoptosis,” by animator Renee about the way Zhan animates. The figures, weird themes in there that you don’t really Zhan, three versions of the artist go on a quest for God, traversing an unfamiliar terrain that turns out to be her own body. MARCO ABRAM MARCO

62 September - October 2019 Film stills courtesy of Renee Zhan

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

COME TO THE HARVARD ALUMNI BOOK FAIR SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26TH, 2019, 2–4 PM

Location: The Harvard Coop/Harvard Square Zhan draws each image by hand on paper, 3rd ﬂ oor, 1400 Massachusetts Ave using watercolors to create backgrounds. Cambridge, MA 02138 very fast: her next film was about an aquar- ium of neglected and starved fish who eat FOR DETAILS: harvardcoop.eventbrite.com first their lead-laced tank decorations and then, inevitably, each other (“The stench of cannibalism was overwhelming,” reads one of the film’s title cards). An introvert and only child, Zhan took well to the isolation of an animator’s life. She tried making documentaries during a Harvard summer-school session in Berlin, but they were unpredictable, and “having to talk to people in the world was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to do,” she said. With animation, “I can just make the film at my desk and not talk to anyone, and I have control over everything that happens on the screen, and the limitless possibility of it is what I found so attractive.” Nonetheless, she also joined the Har- vard Lampoon, and a dark sense of hu- “Israel is, by many measures, the mor emerged in her work. She made a film about a suicidal pigeon, “Pidge,” and the avi- country, relative to its population, an theme carried over into her thesis film, “Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw),” about a man that's done the most to contribute and a bird in a co-dependent relationship. There’s a lot of man/bird sex, and, of course, to the technology revolution.” someone ends up getting eaten. (Several of Zhan’s short films, including this one—as well as a trailer for “Reneepoptosis”—can BILL GATES be streamed online at Vimeo.com) “Reneepoptosis” was the first film she made after graduation, but—like “Hold Me”—there’s nothing amateur about it. Find out more about Israeli cutting edge Zhan animated it while on a postgraduate traveling fellowship in Japan. “The fellow- technologies at untoldnews.org ship afforded a lot of freedom, which was amazing—exactly what I needed,” she said. Download a free copy of our ebook about “I did a lot of hiking and spent a lot of time alone, which is where the new film came Israeli inventions at tinydynamobook.com from. It’s about a bunch of Renees who go on a quest to find God, who’s also me.”

Harvard Magazine 63

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage The film explores the ideas of loneliness show it to Lingford. “She seemed to like it,” Currently Zhan is studying at the Na- and growth and self-discovery. Its title is Zhan said, “so I was encouraged”—and in tional Film and Television School in Lon- adapted from “apoptosis,” the programmed January, the film took the top prize for ani- don. It’s likely that the themes she’s been cell death that occurs as a normal part of mated shorts at this year’s Sundance Film working on will be those she continues to an organism’s growth and development. At Festival. CineVue critic Christopher Machell, explore. “[‘Hold Me’] started out a much first, she said, she was “quite embarrassed” reviewing its appearance at the Toronto In- larger film—there was this whole narra- about the film. “I have no idea what I just ternational Film Festival, called it “strange tive where the bird goes to a bird club and made,” she thought. “If no one likes it, I’ll and charming in equal measure…an often there’s a bird rave,” she said. “I’m writing bury it forever.” beautiful and funny journey through the a feature now, and the bird club is back Eventually she worked up the nerve to landscape of self-discovery.” in there.” Toward the Negotiated City In the history of urban renewal, a glimmer of the possibilities of social policy today by ann forsyth Lizabeth Cohen, Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue that everyone and creating a framework so that everyone from the 1950s to the ow to ensure and the Struggle to Renew can live a life with opportunity contributes toward the common good? At a 1980s. Like Winston Urban America in the Sub- and meaning is an enduring ques- time when such questions are barely being Groom’s Forrest Gump urban Age (Farrar, Straus tion. It is also a question related asked, at least at a national level, an histori- or Virginia Woolf’s H and Giroux, $35) in part to where people live. Are homes and cal perspective is especially valuable. Orlando, Logue dur- neighborhoods vibrant, safe, affordable, and In Saving America’s Cities, Lizabeth Cohen— ing his working life found himself in the nurturing? Do they support different kinds dean emerita of the Radcliffe Institute and center of a series of major federal and state of people living different kinds of dreams? Jones professor of American studies—ad- approaches to revitalizing urban areas. A con- What are the roles of the private sector, dresses these larger questions about what troversial figure who died in 2000, he was very individuals, and experts in building these people owe each other in society. She uses the active in taking advantage of programs and good communities? What roles do govern- life of “ ‘top city saver,’ ” “ ‘Mr. Urban Renew- creating new opportunities, using his skills ments have in making places healthy, sup- al,’ ” and “ ‘master rebuilder’ ” Ed Logue to tell as a negotiator to capture funds from newly porting local initiatives and preferences, the story of urban policy in the United States approved programs and his capacity as an innovator to launch additional policy and program initiatives in three cities. Focusing The redeveloped Government Center, Boston, 1971, and surrounding private buildings; development czar Ed Logue COURTESY OF PEI COBB FREED & PARTNERS CITY OF BOSTON ARCHIVES

64 September - October 2019

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

Explore More Crossing

For an additional, online-only, article Lines, on the arts and creativity, see: Constructing Seven-Hundred- Year-Old Secrets A Harvard Art Home Museums exhibit explores a captivating thirteenth-century Japanese statue containing vibrant relics of the history of Buddhism. Displacement © Lili Almog © Lili harvardmag.com/shotoku-19 and Belonging in Contemporary Art most attention on the central cities of medium to larger metropolitan areas, he also dabbled September 6, 2019– in working at a metropolitan and state level. January 5, 2020 He had a lifetime commitment to racial equity, particularly notable in his hiring practices. Cohen’s project is, in part, one of rescu- ing urban renewal from the image of “abject failure” cultivated from both the left and the right. As Cohen argues, her book “aims to present an alternative, more nuanced history of postwar American city building that does not dismiss the federal role in renew- ing cities and subsidizing housing as pure WALTER C. SEDGWICKWALTER IN MEMORY OF ELLERY SEDGWICK SR. AND ELLERY SEDGWICK JR., 2019.122. folly. It claims instead that there is a usable past of successful government involvement in urban redevelopment from which we can

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS/ARTHUR M. SACKLER MUSEUM, PARTIAL AND PROMISED GIFT OF benefit today as we grapple with the current challenges of persistent economic and racial inequality, unaffordable housing, and crumbling infrastructure.” In this history those who led urban renewal certainly made mistakes, insensi- tively displacing people, imposing flawed design theories, and underestimating resistance to racial inclusion. However, they learned from their mistakes and did better the next time. As Cohen argues, “Ur- ban renewal as experienced in 1972 was far different from that in 1952.” By 1982, it had become almost unrecognizable. The first phases of urban renewal gener- STRUGGLING? ally included a great deal of demolition and rebuilding in single-use zones, along with WE HAVE ANSWERS innovative social programs; in later years Treatment and skills training for self-harming there was more revitalization, mixed use, or suicidal teens and adults. and human-scale design. In the early years, Logue used a pluralist, expert-led model that too often alienated neighborhoods; in 844.779.7974 later years his approach to democracy was mclean.org/bpd more direct. He faced opposition throughout his work life, however, both from those not wanting to be displaced and those re-

Harvard Magazine 65

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage sisting racial and economic integration. approach, eventually creating hous- Logue’s major projects roughly parallel ing for 100,000 people. In this pe- fashions in renewal and redevelopment and riod, he also attempted to launch divide fairly conveniently by decades, and Co- a Fair Share affordable-housing hen uses these periods to organize the book. project in the suburbs, suffering a Logue started in New Haven in the mid 1950s, difficult backlash. After the UDC having earlier graduated from Yale and its law experiment collapsed amid the school, and having worked as both a labor financial and political turmoil of organizer and Connecticut labor secretary. the mid 1970s, he had a final chap- With Mayor Richard Lee, Logue attracted ter in the South Bronx, working at “more redevelopment funds per capita than a smaller scale and in a more par- any other city received,” testing both physical ticipatory manner, finally really do- redevelopment and social programs that being what he had long claimed to do, came part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. “planning with people.” Redevelopment reactions: The South He was then in Boston until the late 1960s as End community versus the Boston head of the Boston Redevelopment Agency The book is more than a biography of Redevelopment Authority (BRA), arriving after the West End had been Logue. Cohen spends time finishing the in the wake of federal pullback, LISC has demolished but in time to be responsible for stories of the cities where he worked, even invested $20 billion sponsoring more than the swath of modernist design called Govern- after he moved on. Staff colleagues in early 400,000 affordable housing units and tens

ment Center. In this period he retained more projects later became leaders of major ini- of millions of square feet of community and COURTESY OF BOSTON CITY ARCHIVES historic urban fabric and engaged neighbor- tiatives elsewhere, linking the personali- commercial space. The world of the Bos- hood groups. Recruited to New York, where ties in Logue’s life with a larger narrative. ton-Washington corridor in the 1950s to the he spent much of the 1970s and 1980s, he first For example, the leader of the social-de- 1970s was a small one with many intercon- led the innovative statewide Urban Develop- velopment organization Logue sponsored nections among key players, and these are ment Corporation (UDC) under Governor in New Haven, Community Progress Inc., fully evident in the book. Nelson Rockefeller. As the federal govern- later became the first president of the Ford Cohen’s analysis is aided by the location ment retreated from developing affordable Foundation-sponsored Local Initiatives of Logue’s projects in university towns. Yale housing, Logue pioneered a new quasi-public Support Corporation (LISC). Since 1979, political scientist Robert Dahl used Lee and Logue’s New Haven as the focus for his important book, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (1961), and two Yale C hapter & Verse graduate students, Nelson Polsby and Ray- Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words mond Wolfinger, conducted parallel work and produced books. Boston and New York also contributed their share of research on Laurinda Morway writes, “Years ago to the 1970s. It is clear Wood derived it urban issues. These studies were not always an author described the phenomenon of from some other source, unknown to me.” sympathetic to Logue, but they provided hearing or seeing something for the first Cohen a rich empirical base from which to time and then experiencing it repeatedly “a bum in boots” (July-August). John work—complemented by assistance from as a ‘Juno Sparrow’ (that being the name Gordon identified the poem in question the Logue family, approximately 80 of her that popped up unexpectedly again and as “Sketch from Loss of Memory,” by So- own interviews, multiple oral histories and again). I can’t remember where I read it, nya Dorman, published in Saturday Review transcribed interviews with Logue and asso- and I love the expression. But if I use it I in 1968 and later included in Sounds and ciates, and numerous archives and libraries. ought to be able to explain where I got it. Silences: Poetry for Now, compiled by Rich- As an urban planner, one of the pro- Can anyone help?” ard Peck (1970, page 93) and Currents: fessions low on the pecking order in ur- Concerns and Composition (1971, page 438), ban renewal, I was of course interested in Charles Cassady seeks a source for edited by Thomas E. Sanders. Gordon Logue’s story. Some of the contemporary “It’s not the dark I fear. It’s the things mov- writes: “The passages remembered by Mr. debates about his work were conducted ing around in the dark,” or “a more popular Kennelly are: ‘The neighbor’s boy / shines in the journal I now edit (then called the variation: ‘I’m not afraid of the dark. I’m his motorcycle in the evenings. / “A bum in Journal of the American Institute of Planners). As afraid of the things moving around in the boots,” they call him./’ and ‘...a smell of a scholar of new towns, I was interested in dark.’ I think the second version has been burnt grease / as sweet as horse sweat.’” Logue’s attempts to build them in the 1970s, popularized by the Web phenom of even though Cohen sees Logue’s attempts creepypasta. The first version I came Send inquiries and answers to Chapter more positively than I do. Importantly, be- across was quoted by infamous filmmaker and Verse, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware yond this planning context, Cohen makes a Ed Wood Jr. in his posthumously published Street, Cambridge 02138, or via email number of arguments that loom larger than Hollywood Rat Race, so it goes back at least to [email protected]. Logue himself or even urban policy, making her history relevant to a wider audience.

66 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI One insight is that improving communi- phasize developing processes for improving photography of the communities today. ties with multiple disadvantages is no small communities. Cohen’s overriding interest lies in the task—and the goalposts are always shifting, Another large question is the role of ex- possibilities for social reform. The programs as Cohen’s detailed narrative makes vividly perts in defining problems, proposing solu- she examines and people associated with clear. Reformers like Logue certainly learned tions, and working toward justice. Cohen them defy easy categorization. There were from experience and shifted their approach. proposes that “as Logue learned from hard liberals and conservatives for urban renewal But the world around them changed con- experience over his career, the fate of cities and against it, depending on the context. stantly, so even a program or policy success- cannot be left solely to top-down redevel- Logue himself embodied contradictions: he ful in one period was not viable in another. opers or government bureaucrats or market was an often difficult person and a commit- Places had changed physically and socially forces or citizens’ groups. Rather, the goal ted social reformer, a design modernist and compared to earlier rounds of renewal, resi- should be a negotiated cityscape built on a pragmatist, a strongly principled person dents had different expectations, business- compromise.” One part of this negotiation is willing to push the boundaries of programs es assumed different roles, and the federal about good design. Logue began his career at- for the greater good. Today, when inequal- government changed strategies and gen- tracted to stripped-back modern design, but ity is on the rise, Saving America’s Cities warns erally scaled back its financial and policy over time came to embrace rehabilitation and against easy solutions while offering hope commitments. With less federal attention, designs that, more than early modernist ex- that people can improve the places where state and local governments, and an increas- periments, signaled a sense of home to their we live—and with that, people’s lives. ing number of nonprofit agencies, stepped prospective residents. Cohen richly describes in. But they brought different interests and the various places and projects Logue worked Ann Forsyth, Stanton professor of urban planning and experiences to urban renewal. This is why in and on; as I read I found myself gravitating director of the Graduate School of Design’s master in improving urban areas is so difficult—and to my computer where I could find images, urban planning program, is editor of the Journal of why urban planners have moved to em- zoom in to maps, and search recent aerial the American Planning Association.

ALUMNI A New Way of Being in the World Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s “laser beam” insights into the lives of animals and humans by marina n. bolotnikova

itting in her kitchen in Peter- ing by their sudden hush, they might. ogy texts to novels to studies of cats, deer, borough, New Hampshire, Eliza- Thomas would know: she has spent half a and canines. The Hidden Life of Dogs (1993)— beth Marshall Thomas ’54 is talk- century chasing stories about life on earth, for which she traveled to the Canadian ing about animal consciousness and has written 14 books, from anthropol- Arctic to research wolf packs—became Swhen her two dogs, an unexpected New chihuahua Chapek York Times bestseller. and pug mix Kafka, As she explains in begin madly snarl- her memoir Dream- ing at each other. ing of Lions (2016), “What are you do- “While wandering ing, and why?!” she down the road of demands. She ap- life, it helps to look pears to believe the for something more dogs really under- meaningful than stand her, and judg- oneself. Some find it in religion...I find it Elizabeth Thomas at home with her by keeping my eyes own small dogs, open.” Chapek and Kafka, Virtually every and her son’s large dog, Clover, whom book she has writ- she watches ten—including when he is away. HARRISON JIM two memoirs and

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI her forthcoming reflections,Growing Old— ing their day-to-day lives. “Women weren’t to their water. “Lions are very smart. Very. has been shaped by her early experiences of allowed to have anything to do with hunt- They are very, very observant.” trekking through South West Africa’s Ka- ing,” she explains. “We think of hunting as Some of what Thomas has written about lahari Desert. In 1951, Thomas had just fin- the big exciting thing, but I went gathering the Ju/’hoansi is not uncontroversial. In The ished her sophomore year at Smith (before with the women and it was incredibly inter- Old Way, she treated the culture as though it transferring to Radcliffe) when she and her esting….They knew everything about their were frozen in time, a faithful representation brother, John ’55, and their parents set out to ecosystem.” She remembers how people dug of how humans lived as semi-nomadic hunt- find the hunter-gatherer people then called deep into the ground to find a specific spe- er-gatherers before the agricultural revolu- “Bushmen”—today known as Ju/’hoansi or cies of poison grub, and squeezed its insides tion. She attributed facets of the culture to !Kung, in present-day South Africa and onto hunting arrows, carefully avoiding the human evolution, rather than to the develop- Namibia. Thomas says her father, Lau- tip so it wouldn’t accidentally scratch some- ment of one specific society, because, as she rence Marshall, a co-founder of Raytheon, one. “A scientist from Harvard came there puts it, “there are only so many ways you can had recently retired, after working so hard much later and he interviewed some of them live as a hunter-gatherer.” But these specula- through World War II that he barely saw and ended up saying they know almost as tions are highly questionable, argued Emory his children, and wanted to explore “some much as we do,” Thomas reports. “Well, I University anthropologist Melvin Konner, place where there was nothing on the map. have never heard such bullshit in my life. Ph.D. ’73, M.D. ’84, in The New York Review of It was ‘unexplored,’ as the whites called it.” They knew a hundred times more.” Books: !Kung society “probably resembles just He approached Harvard’s Peabody Mu- She calls the !Kung lifestyle “the old one of the environments of evolutionary ad- seum of Archaeology and Ethnology about way,” a reflection of how humans lived be- aptation,” he wrote. “Most of our ancestors mounting an ethnographic study as part fore agriculture and permanent settlements, lived in richer environments: some had high of their sojourn. Thomas’s mother, Lorna when their task was to focus on the pres- enough population densities to develop some Marshall, A.M. ’28, conducted fieldwork ent, the world immediately around them. social stratification, which does not exist in It “clings to us still, Bushmen societies...The Bushmen are rele- in our preferences, vant, but they are not, as Thomas implies, the in our thoughts and entire story of our Old Way.” But for Thomas, dreams, and even in the academic claims are less important than some of our behavior,” what she learned directly from the people she wrote in her book, she got to know and lived among: such as The Old Way (2006). how to raise children (kindly, without harsh disciplining and scolding) and how to re- Thomas’s experien press negative emotions for the good of the ces also made her group. It opened up to her a whole new way see humans as part of being in the world. As Konner further of the natural world, notes, “The Old Way is at its best when read not separate from— as a fluid, evocative narrative of an adventure or masters of—it. “If with people whose extremely challenging you’re a hunter-gath- way of life is now gone.” erer,” she says, “you

JIM HARRISON JIM can’t think of your- Thomas’s love of the natural world also Claude the cat keeps watch while Thomas self as having dominion over animals”: there goes back farther, to the summer/weekend works on her sewing. was no such thing as domestication. She house in rural New Hampshire that Lau- during their stay and later wrote two eth- noticed the careful interactions of animals rence Marshall built for the family in the nographies on the !Kung; John Marshall in the wild, the ways they negotiated with 1930s. Although she grew up a few blocks went on to a career in anthropology, and one another and made decisions about how from Harvard Yard, it was the woods around chronicled daily life in the Kalahari through to use their energy. And she saw how tiny Peterborough where she felt most at ease. “I documentaries. The family’s work provided changes in the balance of resources can shift only wanted to be here,” she remembers. It an invaluable account of the !Kung before how they relate to one another. She remem- was where her father taught her to be still, their traditional lifestyle disappeared in the bers noticing that the lions and people there to sit silently for hours and listen for the qui- late twentieth century. An exhibition high- didn’t harm each other. She wondered why. et footsteps of wildlife nearby. Once, they lighting that contribution, “Kalahari Per- Some of her !Kung hosts told her that “if we saw the fresh tracks of what Thomas was spectives: Anthropology, Photography, and don’t bother them, they don’t bother us,” sure was a panther in snow. the Marshall Family,” was held at the Pea- she remembers, “But I don’t think so.” She Thomas has lived in the house full-time body through this past March (see “Shift- thinks it was because in the Kalahari, water since the early 1980s—with her husband, ing Sands,” September-October, page 84). is scarce, and humans and lions needed to Stephen Thomas ’54 (who died in 2015), and All told, Thomas herself spent almost share water holes. If they attacked one an- many cats and dogs. There have been hard three years among the Ju/’hoansi, in three other, then one group would have to leave, times there, too. Peterborough was where separate trips. She picked up some of the she explains, and the lions might be forced her daughter, Stephanie Thomas ’80, at age !Kung language and spent her days observ- to battle another group of lions for access 17, was riding in the bucket at the front of a

68 September - October 2019

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 SUPPORT JOURNALISM NOW–AND IN THE FUTURE

Study a cross-section of your favorite Harvard alumni “in writing and editing, and you’ll find that a startling proportion of them were Ledecky Fellows in their callow youths. The program has become a valuable institution not only at the University but in American journalism broadly. Whoever picks the fellows has an eerie eye for talent, and the editors are patient teachers skilled at helping unformed writers do work that they can be proud of. Most of all, because the magazine gives its fellows a byline and an income—regardless of their backgrounds—the program provides a truly open stage for skill in a field that often favors privilege at the entry point. Becoming a Ledecky

Fellow was one of the luckiest things that happened to me at Harvard. It gave me the confidence, or at least the“ fruitful illusion, that this was something I could do. Nathan Heller ’06, New Yorker staff writer

When you make a donation to Harvard the academic year and the summer. They Magazine, you are supporting quality initiate story ideas, cover news, and write journalism now and in the future. feature items for print and online publication such as Steiner Fellow Nina Pasquini’s Your donation enables our writers to pursue profile of lighting and set designer Elizabeth the best possible journalism about the Mak ’12 in this issue (page 59). Harvard community, with a deep focus on the teaching, research, and learning under While many of these former undergraduates way throughout the University. remain professionally engaged in writing and editing (above), all have seen the value of Did you realize that your donation also this mentorship in a diverse array of careers. supports our writers in mentoring and training Harvard undergraduates to become Please send your most generous gift today future journalists? in support of our writers who provide the quality journalism found in every issue of These Undergraduates, as Ledecky and Harvard Magazine and train undergraduates Steiner Fellows, join the editorial staff during to become skilled journalists.

Go online to make your donation and select the thank-you gift of your choice:

HARVARDMAGAZINE.COM/DONATE

Fund-LETT_v2.indd 1 7/26/19 11:32 AM ALUMNI

Thomas’s family It was while roaming meadows and forests owns a large stretch near her house that Thomas began gathering of land in New Hampshire, which is anecdotes and scenes of nature and animal conserved and sustain- life, like those in her The Hidden Life of Deer ably managed through (2009). “You don’t need scientific training,” a state program. she insists. “You need to keep your eyes open and sit there and watch.” Act. “Boy, did she make These assertions have sometimes made a life for herself,” Thomas her unpopular with scientists. She chal- says now. “She’s been to lenges the rejection of “anthropomor- jail 30 times: I’ve never phism” in biology—the idea that it’s ceased to boast about wrong to assign human attributes, emo- that.” tions, or internal experiences to animals. From her New Hamp- Twentieth-century scientists largely stuck shire home, Thomas instead to observable and quantifiable be- wrote most of her books havior, rather than the squishy potential

JIM HARRISON JIM and co-wrote, with close subjectivity, of animals. For Thomas, the tractor, when she fell out and was acciden- friend and naturalist Sy Montgomery, a Bos- two are inseparable. tally run over. Suddenly, she was a paraplegic ton Globe column about human relationships Increasingly, the scientific community has for life. The event was so shocking, Eliza- with animals, now anthologized in Tamed & come around to a similar view, and is con- beth wrote in Dreaming of Lions, that she never Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind. ceiving new methods for studying animal cried while tending to her child that first Both women have always rejected the prem- consciousness. In 2012, for example, an inter- day in the hospital—she was beyond crying. ise that nonhuman animals don’t think, feel, national group of scientists issued the “Cam- But Stephanie eventually became an activ- and know things as humans do, and writing bridge Declaration on Animal Conscious- ist with American Disabled for Attendant for the public has provided an ideal platform ness,” which stated that nonhuman animals Programs Today, the group instrumental in for communicating that message. They also have the neurological structures required for passage of the Americans with Disabilities believe in the power of direct observation. consciousness. But Thomas has never made

“Harvard Belongs to All of Us” As president, she plans to build on a theme voiced by University presi- While crisscrossing continents during the past few decades, dent Lawrence S. Bacow: “Harvard the new Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) president has always is its people.” In meetings and events, she will “talk about ‘people found her Harvard “home.” “I’ve been a member of Harvard clubs and place,’ how place shapes people, how this place shaped every- everywhere I’ve lived—Washington, D.C., Ottawa, London,” says one who has been here, and how that experience means: you Alice Hill ’81, A.M. ’88, Ph.D. ’91, “and when I moved to Mel- belong to Harvard, no matter who you are, no matter where bourne, Australia, I only knew two people: my husband, Mark you’ve come from, and that Harvard belongs to all of us.” Nicholson [M.B.A. ’87], and my classmate Dana Rowan.” Hill herself came from Inuvik, a small town in Canada’s Northwest Rowan urged her to join efforts to reinvigorate the Harvard Club Territories about 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle. When she of Victoria, which Hill gladly did, ultimately helping to boost member- was a child, the trip with her mother, Cynthia Creelman Hill ’54, to ship and events, and serving as president from 2004 to 2008. Hill visit maternal grandparents in Boston every summer took two full has also chaired the club’s fellowship program, which each year sends days, mostly on propeller planes, with an overnight stop. “She used local leaders of nonprofits to a weeklong management course at to say she had thought Edmonton, Alberta, was the end of the Harvard Business School. “Our club started this scholarship from world,” Hill adds, “but that’s the city you have to fly through to get nothing,” she says. “What I love about being part of this Harvard to Inuvik.” community is that people will come together to do things.” Hill’s mother and father, Richard Hill, M.B.A. ’57, met at Har- She joined the HAA’s board of directors as director for Aus- vard. He was from Ontario, and the couple moved to the re- tralasia in 2008, and spent four years on the executive committee cently established Inuvik in 1963 when he became the director of before becoming HAA president in July. This year, she will travel the Inuvik Research Laboratory, created as “a hub for research, and work with alumni, including the 60,000 graduates who live discovery, and innovation” by the Canadian government. Her and work internationally, as the first Australian, first Canadian, mother was a teacher and then a superintendent of continuing and first person from the Asia Pacific region to lead the HAA. and special education for the Territorial Government. “Growing “Access to the alumni association has meant a lot to the interna- up in this community was an immersion in indigenous cultures and tional community, and the outreach, especially over the last five politics and the formal acknowledgement of indigenous peoples,” years, has been amazing,” she says. “I’m really thrilled about what says Hill, referencing that in her Class Day address in May—and it says about the HAA and the University that someone like me that awareness will also be a feature of her HAA leadership. would have the opportunity to do this.” Because her parents were both first-generation to college, she

70 September - October 2019 www.alumni.harvard.edu

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 ALUMNI Thomas thinks it’s clear that animals evolved tinctly human matter: “Most animals don’t die of old age. They die of something else: minds and emotions, just like humans. starving or a fight or predator.” Still, she seems to take some comfort academic claims: she is more interested in breath. Then a wolf-size coyote ran out of in knowing that all animals will die; that writing entertaining stories and promoting the woods, right on her trail....He stopped death is just a condition of life. That inevi- empathy for animals than in scientific preci- in his tracks when he saw us, though, gave tability has provided her with another lens sion. She thinks it’s clear that animals’ minds us a deep, bitter look, then turned his head through which to empathize with animals, and emotions evolved, just as humans’ did, aside and grimaced, showing his teeth, as if especially those dying in conditions much and if we can’t access these qualities directly, saying to himself, damn those people.” less fortunate than hers. A “vole was in the we can use our imaginations. Her writing corner of my porch with two of my cats begins with simple observations about what Today, it’s just 87-year-old Thomas and approaching from either side,” she writes. animals around her are doing and what she her three dogs and three cats in the house, “She couldn’t escape, she knew the cats gathers they might be thinking and feeling. although she is about to move in with her would kill her, and she covered her eyes Her prose is short, light, and cut to the bone; son, who lives across the road. Growing Old is with her hands.” Thomas’s watchfulness Montgomery calls it a “laser beam into what written in her usual chatty tone, and filled gives voice to these moments in the lives she sees as true.” with candid, funny, warm accounts of the of small creatures—moments we might In The Hidden Life of Deer, for example, natural process of aging, which she likens not otherwise even notice—and allows Thomas describes how deer use humans to “wandering around a shopping plaza, us to see ourselves in their vulnerabilities. to their advantage: “Once, a deer used us looking for the supermarket in a setting “All animals fear death—even insects fear personally. My husband and I were stand- that seems familiar, except you’re not sure death,” she notes, “and do what they can to ing outside when a doe came bounding you recognize everything you see. Have avoid it.” out of the woods. Almost before we knew they changed things what was happening she changed course around here, or are and ran straight for us, dashing by so close you in the wrong we felt the wind of her passing. Her mouth place?” Getting old, was wide open. We heard her gasp for she writes, is a dis- says, they were “adamant” that their two daughters go to college as well, and sent them to prepare at Concord Academy, near Boston. “They expected I would go back to university in Canada, but when I was accepted at Radcliffe,” Hill adds, “my mother said, ‘Well, we can’t say no to that.’” She concentrated in economics. Outside class, she helped establish the Canadian Club, was a yearbook photographer, played on the women’s soccer team, and was a founding member of Har- vard’s women’s ice-hockey team, coached by Joe Bertagna ’73. Hill quickly found her niche at left wing defense (“The enforcer,” she laughs; “It makes you a little bit fearless”), and scored the first goal in the first match of the varsity team’s inaugural 1978-79 season. Hill earned a master’s in economic history at the London School of Economics, then returned to Canada and worked as a political assistant to the minister of state for social development before pursuing her doctorate in business economics, on the good advice Alice Hill of then-professor of economics and business administration (and HARRISON JIM soon-to-be dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences) Michael cation Program, which, helps at-risk children realize “their full Spence. While at Harvard a second time, she also met Nicholson, potential and ensure that they enter school as confident and suc- a native Australian. cessful learners, developmentally equal to their peers.” She also As a microeconomist, she has worked at the World Bank, the serves as a director of other nonprofit social-justice and educa- International Finance Corporation, and McKinsey & Co., among tional organizations, and of The Antipodean Family Foundation, other firms. In 2004, she and Nicholson (by then married, with two which she and Nicholson established to serve “people in need.” young sons—Hamish ’20 and Alasdair ’17) settled in Melbourne, to “I just decided that there was nothing I could do that would be closer to his extended family. He is currently a non-executive have more impact than protecting the early childhood develop- director with several investment firms and not-for-profits. ment of vulnerable children,” she says. “It’s all about doing good Since then, Hill has pursued what she calls “full-time, unpaid, wherever you are. You might not solve all the problems in the for-purpose work,” which includes founding the Early Years Edu- world, but you can do your bit.” vnell porter brown

Harvard Magazine 71

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

Summer in the City

depth report at harvardmag.com/poults-19). Harvard is, of course, steeped in history, so the newest avian infatuation brings to mind an earlier incident: the duck and her ducklings atop Quincy House in 1996. Then- master (as the position was then known)

“Your wooden arm you hold outstretched Michael Shinagel told the reporter on duty, MAGAZINE CARLING/HARVARD JENNIFER to shake with passers-by.” managing editor Christopher Reed, “It just parts are said to do locally.) Similarly for the shows to what lengths a determined mother immortalized Ben Franklin at Penn. will go to get her children into Harvard,” As the tradition is not unique—and not ake way for poults. Vis- suggesting that history repeats itself in other that traditional, and surely neither healthy for itors to Harvard Yard—and ways, too—and the wisdom of nature. people nor good for the statues—perhaps it these days, there are throngs of is time to give it a rest? them—often wish to capture Man iconic photo: Johnston Gate; the Widener steps; John Harvard’s gleaming toe (about Foot fetishes. Those many visitors to the which, see more below). But a surprising Yard also, inevitably, huddle around John Pleasant prospect. Turkeys, tourists, and number, from other climes, are enchanted by Harvard, and someone burnishes the favorite, traditions aside, Harvard’s campus is often the resident (not very wild) wildlife. Univer- famous toe further, while cameras click (see, at its loveliest in seasons when students sity-based squirrels could retire easily, with- for example, harvardmag.com/harvard-chi- and alumni, ironically, are not resident: ear- out burying an acorn, if they could collect a na-15). There is no warning sign about the ly summer, Thanksgiving weekend, during nickel per pose for each picture taken. other, disgusting undergraduate tradition a winter-break snow. Of late, the opportuities for such snapshots associated with the statue, although brief One of the best places to veg out dur- have multiplied with the arrival of wild tur- contact with uric acid, in small doses, is not ing the clement months is the small plaza keys—competitors for those acorns. Some of known to be fatal. atop the Carpenter Center’s sweeping ramp these large birds patrol Mass. Ave., but most Turns out that the tradition of rubbing the overlooking Quincy Street. There is a some- hang out at ground level in the Yard, on the statue for good luck is neither rooted in the times-book store, sometimes-gallery space, roofs of freshman dorms, etc. Where there are mists of time nor unique to Harvard. Yale tour but not much traffic. There are now tables turkeys, inevitably, there guides tell a story about a and chairs, and usually a sitter’s choice are poults, and in the Crimson-Blue regatta at of sun or shade. The views of the Memo- weeks immediately after which Theodore Dwight rial Church spire and the restored Memo- Commencement a moth- Woolsey gave the Yale rial Hall tower are simply smashing. And er and her seven young- boat a foot nudge at the the surrounding, elevated garden space is sters grazed on the lawn start of a race, leading to pleasing if a bit eccentric. At one time, it between Lamont and a victory—and the listen- was planted to tomatoes, but is now largely Widener libraries with ers learn that students rub given over to lavender. To some, the Duke/ some regularity. Viewers that statue for good luck. Yale blue may seem treasonous. But the ge- were agog—including, we (It is unknown whether ometry, the occasional unruly weed (in de- must confess, some hard- the guides tell them that fiance of Harvard’s careful grooming of its bitten reporter types from Yalies are also rumored to storied landscape), and the contrast with this publication’s staff water Woolsey the way the surrounding leafy canopy of trees are

(read the resulting in- MAGAZINE KERN/HARVARD ALLISON their Cambridge counter- all just right. vprimus vi

72 September - October 2019

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

It’s a Small World Ebenezer Storer’s pocket globe

ikely distracted by the American Rev- olution, John Han- cock, A.B. 1754, un- Lderperformed as Harvard’s Treasurer. When Ebenezer Storer, A.B. 1747, A.M. 1750, took over in 1777, he had to deal not just with his predecessor’s blunders, but with a country lacking standardized currency. A prominent textile merchant, he would hold the treasurer position until 1807, a stabilizing force in a time of upheaval. gores, which were In 1914, Francis Storer Eaton donated then glued onto papier-mâché spheres and some of his great-grandfather’s possessions hand-painted. Storer’s globe was produced to the University. One such keepsake was a by John Ferguson, a Scottish astronomer and “pocket globe” about the size of an orange natural philosopher who bought the copper and a bit heavier than a Wiffle® ball. In an plates of prominent cartographer John Senex. wouldn’t be lost on them.” 1802 inventory of his instruments and ap- Ferguson didn’t buy Senex’s pocket-globe Ferguson’s pocket globes were a bit larger paratuses, Storer listed the shellacked and gores, though. He designed his own. than standard—three inches, not two and slightly cracked knickknack among his least Pocket globes, not made with painstak- three-quarters—and most surviving exam- valuable. Two hun- ing accuracy, were of ples have the imprint of dred years later, the limited scientific and engraver James Mynde. miniature globe in a navigational use, but Storer’s doesn’t; the only Visit harvardmag. shagreen case (lined they were a handy other Mynde-less ex- com to view addtional with vivid images of reference for school- ample is at the National images of the globe. constellations de- children and adults. Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. picted as animals) is Though inexpensive, The globe’s exact age is unknown, but one of two of its kind they likely served as clues exist. A dashed line depicting the in the world. status symbols. “It is 1744 circumnavigational path of Commo- Joseph Moxon, hy- something that shows dore George Anson (which resulted in the drographer to Charles that you are an intel- death of about 90 percent of his crew) runs II, produced the first lectual in a sense, that along China’s coastline and through “The pocket globes between you’re thinking about Eastern Ocean.” Poor California, depicted 1659 and 1670, and oth- the world as a whole as an island on 1730s pocket globes, is por- ers continued produc- and not just your lo- trayed as a greatly exaggerated peninsula tion through the early cal environment,” said jutting southward into the Pacific. All this 1800s. The globes’ de- Harvard archivist Ross indicates an origin around 1755. It couldn’t signs were etched onto Mulcare. “Having the have been much later: in 1757, Ferguson copper plates and im- world in your hands sold his plates due to poor business man- pressed on paper globe is a metaphor that agement. vjacob sweet

80 September - October 2019 Photographs courtesy of the Harvard University Archives

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Harvard Fans Catch the Crimson this Fall ESPN+ (logo) or SOPE ADELEYE ’20 AUSTIN SECHREST ’20 GILLIAN MEEKS ’20 Visit GoCrimson.com for tickets and schedule information CATCH THE CRIMSON ON THIS FALL

OR VISIT GOCRIMSON.COM FOR TICKETS AND SCHEDULE INFORMATION

MEG TVEIT ’20 DOMINIQUE CANTAVE ’20 WILL BATTERSHILL ’20 TANER DOGAN ’20

FACEBOOK @HARVARDCRIMSON | TWITTER @HARVARDCRIMSON | INSTAGRAM @HARVARDATHLETICS

WESLEY OGSBURY ’20 BENTE VAN VLIJMEN ’20

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

HarvardAthletics_v11.indd 1 8/7/19 10:35 AM Choose Your Adventure with Harvard Alumni Travels

By land or by river. With a small group or with your family. However you prefer to explore Egypt, Harvard Alumni Travels gets you closer to the majesty of its ancient treasures. These trips to the “Gift of the Nile” are just a few of more than 70 worldwide programs offered by Harvard Alumni Travels. Book today for an experience you’ll never forget.

FULL TRIP LIST: alumni.harvard.edu/travel +1 617-496-0806 | [email protected]

FEATURED TRIPS TO EGYPT

EGYPT & THE NILE ABOARD A FAMILY ADVENTURE: EGYPT & EGYPT & SANCTUARY SUN BOAT III AND EGYPT & THE NILE ABOARD THE ETERNAL NILE THE ETERNAL NILE PRIVATE CHARTER TO LUXOR SANCTUARY NILE ADVENTURER JAN 21–FEB 4, 2020 OCT 5–19, 2020 AND ABU SIMBEL AND PRIVATE CHARTER TO LUXOR DEC 26, 2019–JAN 6, 2020 DEC 27, 2019–JAN 5, 2020 SOLD OUT

Alumni Travels

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

HAA 19-2783 Travels Harvard Mag Ad Sept/Oct19 F.indd 1 7/3/19 11:00 AM

190907_HAATravel.indd 1 7/8/19 2:06 PM