FALL 2016 COLUMBIA MAGAZINE

COLUMBIAMAGAZINE

FALL 2016 Snack Attacks 5 STARTUPS DISRUPTING THE FOOD SCENE

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PAGE 12 CONTENTS

FEATURES 12 THE BITE STUFF By Rebecca Shapiro 5 alumni startups that are disrupting the food industry

20 MVP: MOST VALUABLE PHYSICIAN By Eric Kester ’15SOA For Yankees doctor Christopher Ahmad ’90SEAS, getting better isn’t just about healing

24 TRUTH + BEAUTY Look at these photographs produced by Columbia research- ers and you can appreciate why artists take their cues from nature

32 BRIDGES TO CUBA By Paul Hond Will the quiet power of cultural diplomacy change a nation?

40 THE BIG IDEA By Eric Jaff e ’06JRN A Q&A with roboticist and mechanical-engineering Entrepreneur Eddie Song ’08CC professor Hod Lipson about

NATHAN PERKEL NATHAN the future of driverless cars

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33.16_TOC_FINAL.indd.16_TOC_FINAL.indd PP11 88/11/16/11/16 33:01:01 PPMM CONTENTS COLUMBIA MAGAZINE DEPARTMENTS Executive Vice President, 3 University Development & Alumni Relations LETTERS Amelia Alverson

Deputy Vice President for Strategic Communications 6 Jerry Kisslinger ’79CC, ’82GSAS COLLEGE WALK Dr. Doodle \ The Short List \ The Little Class that Could \ Rights of Passage \ Editor in Chief Sally Lee Corridors of Power Art Director Jeffrey Saks 44 EXPLORATIONS Managing Editor Rebecca Shapiro A shark in the dark \ Education: the great unifi er? \ Beneath Bangladesh, a tectonic PAGE Senior Editors 32 David J. Craig, Paul Hond time bomb \ A mystery of the infant brain, Copy Chief revealed \ New method for storing CO2 Joshua J. Friedman ’08JRN is rock-solid \ Is anybody out there? Let’s do the math \ Cambodia’s orphanages are Assistant to the Editor Lauren Savage packed — but not with orphans \ Study Hall Editorial Assistant Sophia Wetzig 50 NETWORK

Leave Them Laughing \ 5 Alumni TED Director of Digital Strategy Talks You Might Have Missed \ Signs of Life Gwynne Gauntlett

\ Televisionaries \ Newsmakers Director for Marketing Research Linda Ury Greenberg

54 Director for Strategic Marketing and Communications BULLETIN PAGE Tracy Quinn ’14SPS 24 University news and views

Subscriptions: 58 Address and archive assistance BOOKS [email protected] 212-851-4155 Love for Sale, by David Hajdu \ Black Hole Blues, by Janna Levin \ Chronicle of a Last To update your address online, visit alumni.columbia.edu/directory, Summer, by Yasmine El Rashidi \ Behold the or call 1-877-854-ALUM (2586). Dreamers, by Imbolo Mbue \ Plus, Laurence Leamer discusses The Lynching Advertising: 212-851-4155 [email protected] FROM TOP: EDEL RODRIGUEZ; ALEXANDRA BAUSCH; © NEW YORK YANKEES

63 To download our advertising brochure or CLASSIFIEDS submit a classifi ed advertisement online, visit www.magazine.columbia.edu/advertise.

Letters to the editor: 64 PAGE [email protected] FINALS 20 What’s Your Line? Columbia Magazine is published for alumni and friends of Columbia by the Offi ce of Alumni and Development. FOLLOW US © 2016 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York

/ColumbiaMag @columbiamag COVER ILLUSTRATION: R. KIKUO JOHNSON

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COVER GIRL I was just so moved when I read the cover story about Myrrah Shapoo. I am very proud OUR NEW LOOK You’ve turned this proud MYRRAH’S STORY of all the staff The redesigned summer issue alumnus into an avid reader I am a scientist and have of the Columbia of Columbia Magazine is a of Columbia Magazine. worked actively in develop- home run! The articles were Mark Kaminsky ’81GSAS ing genetic-testing‘‘ services University Medical interesting, well-written, New York, NY in India akin to the one Center. Please and illuminating. The new described in your cover story convey my good format and features kept me I got the most recent issue and on Myrrah Shapoo (“Meet wishes to them. reading to the end — I think was pleasantly surprised to the Girl with Gene NUP214- it’s the fi rst time I’ve read the see what looks like an entirely ABL1,” Summer 2016). I May God bless magazine from cover to cover. new magazine. First off , the wanted to congratulate you them all. I always complained that my new design is just great: on bringing out such a great Afshan Imtiaz ’11GSAS husband’s alma mater, Prince- clean, modern, and inviting. story. It explains the scientifi c Allama Iqbal Town, ton, produced a far more I usually fi nd I read some of and technical challenges of Pakistan interesting alumni magazine. the magazine, but this time I exome sequencing very well But now I am proud to say literally read everything and for the lay reader, and retains that ours is as good or better. it was all superb. I thought the humane aspects of the Roar, Lions, Roar for a job the writing throughout was story. Indeed, it is heartening well done. fi rst-rate, and each and every to read about how PIPseq Sandra Jerez ’92CC story was compelling and led to a positive outcome for Seattle, WA thought-provoking. Great job! Myrrah, as the fi eld actively Michael Bendit ’91BUS debates the costs and benefi ts Summer’s when I cart off New York, NY of these as yet investigational a sack full of unread mate- tests with a lot of unknowns. rial and plow through it on So now Columbia Magazine Kudos also to the medical getaways, and this year the represents itself in hot-pink and scientifi c teams at Colum- standout was the wonder- type, blows up a picture of bia for making this happen! fully modern and refreshed the cutest market-researched Nandita Mullapudi Columbia Magazine. youngster for knee-jerk sym- Bangalore, India It’s a compelling and pathy, and prints a generic, great-looking read — with elbow-in-the-ribs Shakespeare SWEET HARMONIES alluring illustrations and quiz?? You can change your Thank you for publishing that terrifi c photos. Everything is name from Columbia to lovely story about Art Garfun- interesting and easy to fi nd. Generic-but-Hip Intellectual. kel and Sanford Greenberg It’s going to be one of my Wade Dizdar ’84CC (“Old Friends,” College Walk, must-reads going forward. McAllen, TX Summer 2016). I was about

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seventeen and an upperclass- to see what students were its founder Robert Martin We met. Two of the stu- man at Forest Hills High doing there. (AKA Stephen Donald- dents organizing the group School, in Queens, New York, Not long after, I climbed son); he seemed weird to attended the meeting: a when my mother said to me: to the top fl oor of Avery. Art me at the time because I man from the College and a “Bobby, those two boys who kindly and quietly showed was sexually repressed and woman from Barnard. For come over and go downstairs me around. I was fascinated would not come out until the petition to be approved, with you to play music — I by what I saw. The next fall, I after the Stonewall riots of there needed to be fi ve bona like the tall one, Artie. He has enrolled in Columbia’s four- 1969. Author Bill Retherford fi de student signatories. I good manners and does well year architecture program is to be commended on his asked the University vice in school, and I can tell he will while completing my major research and encapsulation president if the signatories make something of himself, in government. This decision of the personal pain and were registered as students. so he can keep on coming resulted in my career as an triumph of a gay trailblazer as He said yes. So I said we over here. But that other one, architect, one I have never well as our society’s move- should approve it. Pauly, with the leather jacket regretted. Hence my con- ment toward equality in the Why? I saw it as basic civil and the DA haircut, he’s just a siderable gratitude for the decades since. rights. All we were doing bum! I don’t want you to hang fortuitous connection I might Russell Needham ’68CC was affi rming that a legiti- around with him any more.” otherwise have never made. New York, NY mate number of bona fi de This was how my mother My guilt, however, arose students wanted to start an saw Paul Simon and Art because Sandy needed more Thanks for such a fi ne article organization. General Studies Garfunkel. I have told this reading than I could provide, on Stephen Donaldson and students are diff erent; they story often (too often) and as I struggled to complete LGBTQ history in the sum- have been out in the world. preceded the telling with the assignments and take exams mer issue. Do more! My world was then the East admonition that sometimes while holding down three Allen Young ’62CC, Village, mostly, and a little of you should not listen to part-time jobs. I have always ’64JRN, ’64SIPA the West Village, where there your mother. After reading felt bad, especially since I Orange, MA were many gay people living about Art’s wonderful caring benefi ted so much from the as happily as any of us might behavior toward his classmate discovery of my interest I was the executive vice be living, defi nitely out of the who lost his sight, I realize my in architecture. president of the University closet. Friends and neighbors, mother had more insight than George B. Terrien Student Council in 1966–67, even roommates had been I knew (at least about Art!). ’63CC, ’66GSAPP when I was a senior at the gay; that year, living near Robert D. Blank ’70DM Rockland, ME School of General Studies. Columbia on the west side, Southold, NY One day the president, David my landlords, who lived in RAINBOW POWER Langsam, said to me, “You the building, were a gay cou- Reading the article by Paul Kudos for your Summer 2016 probably don’t know this, but ple who had met in a foxhole Hond about Sandy Greenberg article “Under the Rainbow,” you are on the committee that during WWII — or so they and Art Garfunkel’s return to about the 1966 emergence at recognizes student organi- said. Who cared? It was their Columbia last March stung Columbia of the fi rst college zations. A group of students life, and it had no negative me with much gratitude and LGBT organization. want to start something impact on mine. And while I more than a little guilt. I casually knew called the Student Homo- did not appreciate getting hit In the spring of 1962, phile League. Usually such on by men, sometimes even during my junior year, I, like groups would be approved in classes at Columbia, this Art, read assignments out QUESTIONS? pro forma, but for this group, seemed to me to be a separate loud to Sandy for several gov- because of its nature, the vote issue entirely. ernment courses in which we COMMENTS? is split two to two, and you Soon the committee recon- were both enrolled. I remem- WE WELCOME THEM ALL! will be the deciding vote.” vened. One of the signatories ber one evening asking Art, He told me that the com- was now missing from the E-MAIL US AT: then Sandy’s roommate, what [email protected] mittee consisted of a faculty list (the result, I imagined, studying architecture was representative, the coach, the of a heart-to-heart with a like, since he was enrolled in OR WRITE TO US: chaplain, and a University parent). Now there were only Columbia Magazine the program. Art suggested Columbia Alumni Center vice president. And of course, four. I sat there thinking. that the best way for me to 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 as I had just learned, there The charter of the Student get an answer was to come to New York, NY 10025 was a student representative Homophile League specifi - the drafting studios in Avery Letters may be edited for brevity or clarity. — as it turned out, me. cally stated that its purpose

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3.16_Letters_FINAL.indd 4 8/5/16 10:34 AM New from WISH FULFILLMENT Columbia University Press I was baffl ed by some of the college abbreviations in the summer issue, and after rummaging through the magazine twice for the key concluded you had ditched it. Please bring it back, even if it is in very small type, or I will have to clip out an old one and paste it on my fridge. Andrew Nemethy ’73JRN Adamant, VT KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS CODE SCHOOL CODE SCHOOL BUS Graduate School of Business NRS School of Nursing CC Columbia College PH Mailman School of Public Health DM College of Dental Medicine PS College of Physicians and Surgeons GS School of General Studies SEAS Fu Foundation School of GSAPP Graduate School of Architecture, Engineering and Applied Science Planning, and Preservation SIPA School of International GSAS Graduate School of Arts and Public Affairs and Sciences SOA School of the Arts HON (Honorary degree) SPS School of Professional Studies JRN Graduate School of Journalism SW School of Social Work LAW School of Law TC Teachers College Reductionism in Art was to encourage openness and accep- rights of others whose appearance, hab- tance; there was no requirement that its, and outlooks do not match our own. and Brain Science one be gay to be a member. We fuel our own divisions by accepting Bridging the Two Cultures That meant I could be a member. and endlessly attempting to justify and If needed, I decided, I could be the explain LGBTQ — and fi ve more. ERIC R. KANDEL fi fth name. So once again, I voted for Joseph Schaaf ’48CC recognition. To their credit, the other Bennington, VT WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE members of the committee accepted this decision. HEART OF A LION “Eric R. Kandel seamlessly moves It was only later in my life, as I heard Thank you for your eulogy for Bill between the intricacies of science stories of attempted and successful sui- Campbell (Bulletin, Summer 2016). and art, weaving their histories into a cides, as I learned how unaware I was Some of us remember Ballsy best as common narrative . . . It is a fun and of the many people who lived in closets, one of the founding members of the informative read that anyone with a as I understood the story told to me by Columbia University Rugby Football curious mind can enjoy a fellow student about his incarceration Club, still going strong fi fty-fi ve years and learn from.” by his parents in a mental hospital to later. Roar, Lion, Roar. —Joseph LeDoux, author of Anxious: straighten him, that I came to appreci- George D. Carey ’64CC Using the Brain to Understand ate the good we had really done. Boise, ID and Treat Fear and Anxiety Walter Jonas ’67GS Milton, MA Thanks for a very nice sendoff for and “Kandel’s book, with one foot in the respectful tribute to “the Coach.” Bill humanities and one foot in the sciences, The time has come to abandon the was indeed a titan of Silicon Valley. He stands comfortably in both. . . . ever-increasing array of letters used was known by many, even those outside Kandel lucidly states the biological to account for a great range of human the tech world. case for how abstract art challenges us sexuality and individual practice. My son, Walker, played fl ag football to look so that we can see.” The “Acronym Acrobatics” sidebar to under Bill at Sacred Heart Prep, the “Under the Rainbow” undertakes to school where his memorial services —Jim Coddington, chief conservator, explain fi ve common classifi cations (L, were held and where he coached for Museum of Modern Art G, B, T, and Q), and then adds another many years. Bill, purposefully or not, fi ve. There is apparently no end to the called our son Walter (rather than complexity of the subject. We recognize Walker) and it has stuck: “Walt” human diversity in many aspects of remains his nickname to this day. our being, and in our best selves work Scott Barnum ’82BUS CUP. COLUMBIA. EDU to accept and honor diversity and the Menlo Park, CA CUPBLOG. ORG

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of symptoms on a checklist. DR. DOODLE They experience it as story — A cartoonist draws from his experience and not as the story of illness but as this chapter of illness in the story of their lives. We ast November, Benja- er in the narrative-medicine need to listen attentively to min Schwartz ’03CC, program at the College of those stories and know how ’08PS, a cartoonist Physicians and Surgeons. In- to extract the parts we need, for the New Yorker, evitably, Trump presented the and the parts that are most L was placed on daily quandary, Schwartz says, of important to the patient. cartooning duty for the maga- a subject “so over-the-top in Reassembling this informa- zine’s website. Schwartz had real life that you think, ‘What tion in a way that satisfi es the established himself in the can I add to this?’” medical perspective and the weekly print magazine with For Schwartz, cartoons are human perspective is a form his chuckle-raising panels puzzles to be solved: each one of storytelling.” that, for reasons that will starts with an idea — an ob- For his classes, Schwartz become clear, often take place served behavior, an overheard has students do exercises in a doctor’s offi ce. (Example: phrase, an image — that that build those skills. For in- A middle-aged Wilford Brim- must be tinkered with until it stance, he’ll ask them to draw, ley type in a sweater vest and comes together. “Comics are from memory, Mickey Mouse. round wireframes is seated a great way to train yourself “Everyone knows what on the examination table. The to tell stories,” says Schwartz. Mickey Mouse looks like, but doctor: “It’s avunculitis.”) “One of the most effi cient as you’re drawing you realize But the daily gig was dif- ways you can tell a story is by you don’t know what he looks ferent: Schwartz had to come trying to communicate it in like,” says Schwartz. “You’ve up with one topical cartoon a just a single panel.” seen him over and over but day, fi ve days a week, for three In the narrative-medicine you don’t remember if he’s months. “There were a lot program, Schwartz says, stu- wearing a shirt. But the real BENJAMIN SCHWARTZ of Donald Trump cartoons,” dents are taught to listen and takeaway is what happens Schwartz said recently over to become storytellers them- afterward: the refl ection on coff ee on Columbia’s medical selves. “Patients experience your attention to detail. As a campus, where he is a lectur- their illness not as this set student, you spend so much

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3.16_CW_FINAL.indd 6 8/9/16 2:43 PM time with textbooks memo- some cartoons to the New rizing facts and fi gures that Yorker and got a face-to-face it’s very easy to not have time meeting with the cartoon THE SHORT LIST to think about this other stuff editor, Bob Mankoff , which The Wallach Gallery showcases he calls “a tremendous that you know is important. SEE four contemporary photogra- Narrative medicine gives you opportunity for any aspiring phers who have set out to challenge the that time.” cartoonist.” Six months later, boundaries and assumptions of portraiture Schwartz grew up in Schwartz sold his fi rst cartoon in The Expanded Subject: New Perspec- Scarsdale, the son of Allan to the magazine. tives in Photographic Portraiture from Schwartz ’74PS, who is chief Occasionally, the magazine of cardiology at CUMC. As a will reject a caption but buy Africa. Through December 10. child, Ben Schwartz wanted to the illustration, and those are columbia.edu/cu/wallach be a doctor and a cartoonist. the cartoons that end up on Composer John Zorn, He loved comics, especially the magazine’s back page for New York Times The Amazing Spider-Man; its popular caption contest. LISTEN whom the the margins of his school- “It’s fun to see the caption- once called an “all-purpose impresario of books were fi lled with sketch- contest results,” Schwartz the avant-garde,” will return to Miller es of superheroes. For humor says. “Every once in a while Theatre on October 8 to premiere fi ve he read Mad and Cracked, a reader will hit the exact new works and to demonstrate the and also the single-panel caption you’d thought of. Or breadth of his musical palette. cartoons in the New Yorker. else take it in a direction you millertheatre.com But for one-panel punch, didn’t see coming.” nothing topped the menag- For daily cartooning, there’s An exhibit of promotional erie of guff aws that was Gary the added pressure of heart- VISIT pamphlets from the last Larson’s The Far Side, whose beat-quick deadlines. The century, Viewbooks: Window into sharp, twisted silliness was news cycle waits for no one. America, unexpectedly reveals how ur- unlike anything else in the “It’s amazing how fast some- ban and suburban funny pages. Schwartz had all thing goes from being topical development have the collections and calendars. to obsolete,” Schwartz says. transformed our His doodling habit persist- Nor do all current events national landscape. ed through college. But once call for humor. Last January, Through October 31, Schwartz started medical Schwartz awoke to news at Avery Library. school, he had no time for that one of his heroes, David library.columbia.edu/ cartoons. As he went through Bowie, had died. “Culturally, locations/avery his internship and residency, that was such an important he learned, among many in- moment, you want to say Carol Becker, dean of the teresting things, that his real something,” Schwartz recalls. READ School of the Arts, delivers passion lay with his pencils. Schwartz’s cartoon that day a short but powerful meditation on grief “I’d always wanted to be a shows an astronaut standing and loss in her new book, Losing Helen. cartoonist, and needed to just on the surface of a planet, On September 20 she will discuss these go full blast on that,” he says. looking up at the night sky. themes with Phillip Lopate at the Maison (One imagines a single-panel In the blackness shines a Française in the fi rst event of the new cartoon, perhaps involving constellation in the shape of SOA series Complex Issues. a window ledge, in which a a lightning bolt, Bowie’s sym- arts.columbia.edu/public-programs-calendar young doctor tells his parents bol. The caption is a line from that he’s quitting medicine Bowie’s song “Space Oddity,” Learn more to draw funnies. But in fact, about an astronaut fl oating about the says Schwartz, “People were into oblivion: “The stars look BOOKMARK new Manhattanville buildings and get more surprised when I be- very diff erent today.” updates on events and public program- came a doctor.”) The cartoon went viral, and In 2009, while getting by not in the medical sense. ming on a website dedicated to both the with freelance illustration — Paul Hond campus and its community. manhattanville.columbia.edu

AVERY ARCHITECTURAL & FINE ARTS LIBRARY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY COLUMBIA LIBRARY, & FINE ARTS ARCHITECTURAL AVERY jobs, Schwartz submitted Enter our caption contest on page 64.

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again. Dinosaurs fall into the “safe” kind of scary because they don’t exist anymore; “showing” may sometimes not register, so embrace “telling” in straightforward exposition; and Love You Forever isn’t the best children’s book because, well, it isn’t really a children’s book. “Love You Forever is a story written for parents,” Catala- notto explained to his class. “Trust me: young kids aren’t lying in bed pondering deep questions of mortality and legacy and how they’ll feel when their parents are old and dying. It’s a story of sen- timentality, and sentiment comes from time and experi- ence, which kids haven’t had yet.” And while Catalanotto conceded that it’s adults, not children, who typically buy and review children’s books, he nevertheless advised THE LITTLE CLASS THAT COULD against writing with parents, How do you write a children’s book? editors, and reviewers in mind. “Don’t try to connect with adults. Try to connect nce upon a time, years — Catalanotto urged Squeeze the brakes a little. A with their inner children.” there was a chil- the aspiring authors in the kid’s daily life is nothing but Those inner children come dren’s-book author room to push back against lessons and rules and advice, in grown-ups of all ages, as named Peter Cata- some of their instincts. so any moralistic takeaway Catalanotto’s class shows. Olanotto who taught Worried about using big should be subtly embedded “One of the elements of the adults how to write picture words in a book for children? in the fabric of the story. class I enjoy the most is the books for kids. He had soft, Don’t be. Kids love learning Think that dinosaurs are various age groups each wavy hair, seven teen pub- new terms, and since they too scary, that “Show, don’t year,” he says. “It’s most- lished children’s books to his can deduce meaning from tell” is the golden axiom of ly twentysomethings, but name, and a habit of calling illustrations, they’d much creative writing, and that there’s always a sprinkling of adults “grown-ups.” He also had a fi rm belief that to be ANY MORALISTIC TAKEAWAY SHOULD BE SUBTLY a successful children’s-book writer, you had to leave all EMBEDDED IN THE FABRIC OF THE STORY. your notions about the genre at the gingerbread door. rather read about the story’s the universally cherished older folk. Everyone benefi ts

At the fi rst meeting of his hero going “incognito” than Love You Forever by Robert from the diff erent perspec- SOPHIA FOSTER-DIMINO 2016 summer class — a six- wearing a boring old “dis- Munsch and Sheila McGraw tives and life experiences.” week, twelve-session course guise.” Have an important is among the greatest chil- Most of the class is made that he’s taught at Columbia’s life lesson you want to pass dren’s books of all time? up of SOA students, and the School of the Arts for three along to your young readers? Wrong, wrong, and wrong rest are Columbia alumni

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3.16_CW_FINAL.indd 8 8/9/16 8:49 AM or undergrads from other colleges — this year’s class RIGHTS OF PASSAGE had students from Barnard, A scholar of immigration looks at some borderline claims Princeton, and Vanderbilt. One thing people tend to have in common, no matter he appearance on history’s stage twenty-three million people from their ages, is a fi xed idea of of a presidential candidate of a eastern and southern Europe (most- how a children’s book should major political party who says, ly Italians, Greeks, Poles, and Jews) look and feel, based on the at his campaign kickoff rally, immigrated to America. Diff erent massive success of titles like T“When Mexico sends its people, from the Anglo-Protestant majority in Love You Forever, Good- they’re not sending their best. They’re religion, language, customs, and phys- night Moon, and The Cat not sending you . . . They’re bringing iognomy, the new immigrants were in the Hat. It’s not that one drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re not always greeted warmly. “There are shouldn’t aspire to follow in rapists”; and who, a year later, at his apt comparisons between immigration these footsteps (“I’m not here nomination speech, speaks of “illegal today and a hundred years ago,” says to stop you from making a immigrant families” being “released by Ngai, who is the author of Impossible million bucks,” Catalanotto the tens of thousands into our commu- Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making quipped). But being infl u- nities,” and makes unsubtle rhetorical of Modern America. “In both periods enced by childhood favorites connections between said immigrants you had a growing economy but also is an all-too-common trap for and the killing of young white women a change in the economic structure. new children’s-book writers. — the rise of such a fi gure, one imag- With industrialization and urbaniza- “Write something honest tion, there was enormous demand for that comes to you authenti- “When people say of unskilled labor as mass production cally,” says Catalanotto. “The became more dominant. Skilled crafts- best stories don’t come from undocumented immigrants, people lost power in the job market, an idea — they come from an ‘They should go to the back and they blamed the new immigrants emotion. And that emotion of the line,’ they don’t for taking their jobs. But the immi- should come from your per- grants didn’t take their jobs; there was sonal childhood.” realize that for some, the a structural shift in the economy. Catalanotto credits his wait is as long as forty years “Similarly, from the 1990s until 2008 success as a children’s-book — while for other countries we had a huge economic expansion and author to being an outsider. a shift from manufacturing to fi nance The Long Island native there is no line.” and service. This created a demand for received his BFA from the mostly low-skilled, low-wage immigrant Pratt Institute, and in 1987 ines, would set off the same professional labor. The casualties of this change got he was asked to illustrate the sirens for an immigration historian that very upset, and one reaction was to cover of Judy Blume’s Just as a 9.0-magnitude earthquake would for blame immigrants for taking their jobs, Long as We’re Together. a seismologist. when in fact immigrants took new jobs.” Writing soon followed For Mae Ngai ’98GSAS, a historian In the earlier period, xenophobia the art gigs. And because of US politics and the Lung Family was also blatant in high places: by Catalanotto didn’t start out Professor of Asian American Studies 1924, nativist anxieties over the as an author, it was easier at Columbia, the specter of such a changing complexion of the country for him to buck tradition presidency means a busy phone and an led Congress to pass the Johnson- and formulas, and to come opportunity to correct some popular Reed Act, which placed strict quotas up with fresh stories like misconceptions. “Immigration is an on immigration from eastern and Ivan the Terrier and issue about which many people have southern Europe. The law also Monkey & Robot. Most fi xed opinions and very strong feel- doubled down on the 1882 Chinese importantly, though, he was ings,” she says. “But they’re often based Exclusion Act — the fi rst law to deny unaware of stale conven- on a poor understanding of history and immigration of an entire ethnic group tions, which in turn made even contemporary facts.” — by banning all East Asian peoples. him unafraid of risk — and Ngai zooms out with her historian’s The new draconian restrictions result- incognito dinosaurs. lens to reveal a familiar pattern. ed in what Ngai calls a “mass phenom- — Eric Kester ’15SOA Between the 1880s and 1924, some enon” of illegal immigration.

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As for Mexicans, immigration policy in the 1920s and 1930s treated them “as an inexpen- Corridors of Power sive, disposable labor force, desired for work in Neiman Center artists hijack a high-rise the fi elds but undesirable for inclusion in the polity,” Ngai says. By the 1950s and 1960s, however, the assimi- or all its gleaming But how to really set it lated children and grandchildren of ethnic Euro- glass and steel, 66 apart? pean immigrants became a powerful voting bloc Rockwell Place, the Art. in the urban industrial north. “For them,” says new high-rise soaring That’s what the develop- Ngai, “the immigration quotas established in F457 feet above the site er decided. “We wanted to 1924 still carried a stigma of inferiority. So they formerly known as 29 Flat- create an opportunity for our organized to repeal those quotas. Immigration bush Avenue, is but one tall residents to live surrounded reform was their civil-rights movement.” shoot in the bamboo thicket by art,” says Andrew Levison, On Capitol Hill, the fi ght was led by Brooklyn of apartment towers growing director of acquisitions and congressman Emanuel Celler 1910CC, 1912LAW, in Downtown Brooklyn. Thus asset management at Der- the grandson of Jewish-German immigrants. the marketing challenge for mot. “By giving young artists The Hart-Celler Act of 1965 abolished national- its developer, the Dermot the opportunity to create origin quotas (allocated to ensure that the fu- Company: how to distinguish works on the site, we hoped ture US population would maintain the ethnic this particular building and to establish an immersive proportions of 1890) and replaced them with attract those $2,500-to- and community-building evenhanded quotas that gave each country the $6,000-a-month renters? experience.” same limit. “That’s a civil-rights era logic,” says Ngai. “Treat every country the same. But it’s a formal rather than substantive kind of equality, because it meant, for example, that Mexico or China had the same limits as New Zealand. This is the system we live under today.” With a per-country limit of 26,500 people per year, says Ngai, countries like Mexico, India, Chi- na, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic always max out. “When people say of undocu- mented immigrants, ‘They should go to the back of the line,’ they don’t realize that for some, the wait is as long as forty years — while for other countries there is no line.” Some people have chosen not to wait. There are an estimated 11.3 million undocumented people residing in the US, but most of the immi- grants crossing the Mexican border today aren’t If these One could tout the “taupe To run the project, Mexicans: they come from Central America, fl ee- walls linen tile” fl oors, “absolute Dermot turned to Phong could talk: ing drug-gang violence in Honduras, El Salvador, Neiman black granite” countertops, Bui, publisher and editor and Guatemala. (Honduras and El Salvador have Center and dinner-plate-sized of the Brooklyn Rail, a hip the two highest murder rates in the world.) artists showerheads. And of course art-and-culture journal. Bui leave their But no matter who is elected president in No- mark on there are the state-of-the-art then enlisted his old friend vember, Ngai says, no border walls can be built, a luxury health club, attended coff ee and collaborator Tomas no mass deportations can proceed, without fund- tower. bar, library, Zen garden Vu-Daniel, artistic director PHOTOS COURTESY OF MIGUEL DE GUZMÁN ing from Congress — “and I don’t think Congress with fi re pit and waterfalls; of Columbia’s LeRoy Neiman is going to foot that bill.” For Ngai, it’s our na- lounge with chef’s kitchen, Center for Print Studies, tional ethos that’s at stake. “Depending on who’s game room with pool tables, which promotes printmak- elected, the climate toward immigrants could be air hockey, and foosball; and ing through education, one of restriction and hate or one of inclusion the forty-second-fl oor Sky production, and exhibitions. and reform,” she says. “We’ll soon fi nd out.” Lounge and rooftop sundeck, Vu-Daniel, whose own — Paul Hond with drop-dead views. works have been displayed

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33.16_CW_FINAL.indd.16_CW_FINAL.indd 1100 88/9/16/9/16 88:49:49 AAMM es, melting pigs. Nothing is people being stacked on top anything you’d ever expect to of each other.” see in an apartment building. On fl oor 33, Xu Wang Jesse Weiss’s undulating ’13SOA made a couple hun- Pepto-Bismol-pink forms on dred line drawings of every fl oor 31: are those hillsides kind of taxi, from moped to or intestines? “I just kind of van to camel, then hung a wanted it to be a desolate, carton of crayons on the wall. stratifi ed desert cross sec- Residents (or visitors) have tion,” says Weiss ’10SOA. “I carefully colored in some, but was thinking about stratifi ca- have also added scribbles, tion of class, and the idea of snide comments, a stick fi g- ure of a person being struck by a car — all of it fi ne with Xu. “He’s one of these concep- tual artists who really wants to interact with whoever is going to be interacting with his work,” explains Vu-Daniel. “The people who live here are allowed to do their own art interventions on top of ours. Relational aesthetics is where we’re at.” Some residents even put the art to practical use. “When you get off the elevators, it’s from Songzhuang, China, sometimes confusing, because to Ludwigshafen, Germany, the elevators are on two sides recruited seventeen present of the hallway, so — which and former fellows of the way’s my apartment?” says Neiman Center and handed Amanda Daquila, thirty- one fl oor’s hallway to each, to three, a nonprofi t program decorate as he or she saw fi t. director. Fortunately, a bold (He and Bui teamed up to do tableau by Nathan Catlin two fl oors themselves.) ’12SOA on fl oor 21 portrays “I said to the Dermot men on horseback chasing a people, ‘You can’t tell us what fox from one end of the hall to do, and we will not take to the other. “The animals suggestions from you, either,’” run toward my apartment, Vu-Daniel recalls. “And they regardless of the side I get out were fi ne with it.” on,” Daquila observes happily. Unleashed on the dull “So I use that.” green, seventy-foot corridors Problem solved. But for in January, the artists had how long? “I don’t think made them their own by there’s a timeline,” says June. The results, collectively Vu-Daniel of Hallway Hijack. entitled Hallway Hijack, vary “What I’m hearing is they’re so widely as to defy gener- going to leave the art up — al description: drawings, until it gets vandalized, or paintings, photos, and prints until the next project comes depicting toilets and teacups, along, right?” dinosaurs with egg sandwich- — James S. Kunen ’70CC

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33.16_CW_FINAL_Revise.indd.16_CW_FINAL_Revise.indd 1111 88/10/16/10/16 22:42:42 PPMM THE BITE 5 ALUMNI STARTUPS THAT ARE DISRUPTING THE FOOD INDUSTRY

STUFF CREDITS GO HERE 33.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd 1122 88/10/16/10/16 11:13:13 PPMM BY REBECCA SHAPIRO \ PHOTOGRAPHS BY NATHAN PERKEL CREDITS GO HERE CREDITS

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33.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd 1133 88/10/16/10/16 11:13:13 PPMM THE WAY WE EAT IS CHANGING. Twenty years ago we counted fat grams and calories. Now, we scrutinize food labels, calibrate carbs, protein, and healthy fats, and demand ingredients that are vegan or paleo or gluten-free. We want to know if our food is organic, seasonal, and sustainable. We try to eat local, and yet our palates have never been more global. As our tastes have evolved, so has the food business, says Vince Ponzo ’03BUS, a professor at Columbia Business School and the senior director of the Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center. Thousands of small startups are entering the market to address these new consumer demands. And the money is following. According to Dow Jones VentureSource, venture capitalists are investing in these businesses in record numbers. In 2015, food and beverage deals totaled $603 million, compared with just $377 million the year before. Alumni entrepreneurs have attracted some of that capital. Indeed, Columbia- affi liated startups were among the fi rst to break into the food industry, with niche brands like Siggi’s Icelandic yogurt (founded in 2004 by Sigurður Hilmarsson ’04BUS) and Happy Family organic baby food (founded in 2006 by Shazi Visram ’99CC, ’04BUS). “The food industry was built with mass production in mind,” says Ponzo. “But that’s not what people want anymore.” And Ponzo thinks the trend is just beginning. “Pardon the pun,” he says, “but this is an industry that’s ripe for disruption.”

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33.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd 1144 88/10/16/10/16 11:14:14 PPMM UNTAMED SANDWICHES ndy Jacobi ’12BUS is a marketing for Wild Idea, a South carnivore, enthusiastically Dakota–based grass-fed buff alo- and unapologetically. meat company. “I’ve eaten thousands of “It’s an amazing family-run burgers and steaks over the company with a loyal customer course of my life,” he says. base willing to pay premium prices “But that doesn’t mean I’m for excellent free-range products,” not thoughtful about what he says. AI put in my body.” While working there, Jacobi Jacobi, the owner of Untamed became friendly with one of his Sandwiches, a New York shop clients — a New York chef named that specializes in environmen- Ricky King, who had bought meat tally friendly slow-braised meats, from Wild Idea for his restaurants. started thinking seriously about his Over sandwiches and beers, they diet when he was an undergrad at started brainstorming ways to Middlebury College. In addition make organic meats more accessi- to playing varsity tennis, he had a ble to customers. part-time job as a short-order cook “High-end restaurants can serve in a local restaurant and another at grass-fed steaks and pork chops, be- an on-campus dining hall, where he cause they’re charging thirty or for- Andy Jacobi opened his helped with some of the purchasing. ty dollars an entrée,” he says. “But restaurant “In rural Vermont, farm-to-table we fi gured out that we could use in 2014. CREDITS GO HERE CREDITS isn’t a novelty; it’s the default,” he cheaper cuts, like brisket and pork says. “Even in the early 2000s, peo- shoulder, and slow-braise them to ple were getting all of their ingredi- make aff ordable sandwiches.” ents from local farm vendors. The The result was Untamed Sand- rest of the country didn’t catch up wiches, which opened in Midtown for a while.” in 2014. The meats go through a After graduating, Jacobi moved fi ve-day braising process — brisket to New York and started a career cooks in port wine, pork shoulder in in fi nance, but the food industry cider, chicken in habanero barbecue was never far from his mind. He sauce — and can be assembled into switched gears fi ve years later and sandwiches in minutes. Combined simultaneously started both a full- with interesting toppings like wal- time MBA program at Columbia nut-nettle pesto, fried-almond but- and a job as director of sales and ter, pepper jelly, and crispy tobacco onions, the sandwiches are quickly becoming a lunchtime favorite for offi ce workers and food critics alike (last year, they edged their way onto best-of lists from Thrillist, Time Out New York, and Food and Wine). In addition to the grass-fed meats, Untamed Sandwiches uses only organic produce and donates a portion of its profi ts from daily spe- cials to charities like Heifer Interna- tional, a nonprofi t that provides livestock to developing communi- ties around the world. Jacobi says that he’s glad he’s helping people feel good about their lunch. “It really is food with a conscience,” he says.

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33.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd 1155 88/10/16/10/16 11:15:15 PPMM KORILLA BBQ

hen Eddie Song ’08CC graduated from Columbia with a degree in economics, he probably didn’t envision himself making Korean- inspired burritos in a Wneon-orange tiger-striped food truck on a cross-country road trip for a reality- TV show. “Seriously, I was just going to work in fi nance like everyone else,” Song says. But when he graduated, in 2008, those jobs were few and far between. Instead of Wall Street, Song headed back to Queens, with a diploma and $100,000 of debt. Song had grown up in an enclave of Korean immigrants, and settling back into his childhood home meant return- Eddie Song ing to a steady diet of his favorite dishes stands in front of his Korilla BBQ — rice bowls topped with marinated food truck. thinly sliced rib-eye called bulgogi, grilled meats marinated in gochujang Even in the depths of the (a spicy-sweet chili paste) and plenty of recession, New York rents kimchi, the traditional cabbage pickle were too high for Song to served at every meal. open a restaurant. Instead, “As an undergrad, I would take my he teamed up with a high- friends out to Korean restaurants and school buddy (both were bring things back from Queens,” Song graduates of Manhattan’s says. “I was kind of an ambassador for prestigious Stuyvesant High Korean food.” School), who, like Song, Song fi gured that if his college was having trouble fi nding friends liked Korean fl avors, plenty a white-collar job. With a of others would, too, especially when little help from family and packaged as the quintessential street friends, they were able to food: the burrito. Despite having en- pool their resources and buy thusiastic taste buds, though, Song had a used food truck, which no culinary experience. But after taking was then a novel idea. a community-college crash course “Now it seems like there’s chiefl y geared toward immigrant line a new food truck on every cooks, and then forming a partner- corner,” Song says. “But ship with a chef, he developed a menu or chicken marinated in gochujang, or when we fi rst started, six years ago, it modeled on popular fast-casual restau- tofu and shiitake mushrooms mari- was just hot-dog carts and street meat. rants like Chipotle. Diners would pick nated in a bean paste and gochujang We were really in the fi rst wave.” a format (burrito, rice bowl, noodle blend), and toppings (cheese, salsa, Song and his partners also fi gured bowl, taco, or salad), a protein (bulgogi fermented black beans, and a variety of that a mobile business would help them marinated in soy sauce, pork shoulder vegetables and kimchis). attract more customers.

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33.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd 1166 88/10/16/10/16 11:16:16 PPMM MISHA DAIRY “At the time, if you wanted Korean food in Manhattan, you had to go to Korea- town, on 32nd Street,” he says. “That’s great if you happen to live or work near there. But we wanted to be able to make amilya Abilova ’13GS grew up in Almaty, Kazakhstan, a city of apple- several stops in a day and catch people in tree-lined streets and snowcapped mountains. Her house was busy — diff erent neighborhoods.” Abilova is an only child, but her father was one of eight, and there was a Korilla BBQ offi cially launched in 2010 steady stream of visiting aunts and uncles who needed to be fed. “We had from a parking spot on 55th Street and two refrigerators,” Abilova says, “and one of them was just for quark.” Lexington Avenue, in Midtown. Song Most Americans have never heard of the oddly named quark. But across was shocked when he opened the win- Central and Eastern Europe, quark is a beloved staple — a cultured dairy dow to see a line stretching down a full product similar to yogurt, but without the tart taste. Abilova’s family city block, to Third Avenue. would mix it with sour cream and homemade jam and eat it as snack. Song soon racked up several wins at KWhen Abilova came to New York to study at Columbia, she was surprised to fi nd that quark New York’s Vendy awards for street ven- was not readily available. “I would wander the yogurt aisle at Westside Market after class,” dors, did a short-lived stint on the Food Abilova says. “There were plenty of options, but nothing tasted quite as good.” Network’s The Great Food Truck Race, Nothing was as satisfying, either. Quark, which is actually a cheese (like farmer’s cheese, and even had a cameo on Sesame Street. or a smoother cottage cheese), has nearly twice the protein of most yogurt. All that recognition brought a loyal “In Kazakhstan, no one thinks following and enough capital to take the about things like protein and fat. business to the next level. But when I started learning a little more about the nutritional benefi ts of quark, it seemed like something Americans would respond to,” she says. Abilova found a compatriot in classmate Daniyar Chukin ’11CC, who had grown up in Kyrgyzstan, just across the mountains from Abilova. Together, they began tak- ing steps to establish Misha Dairy, which makes what they call “new American quark.” Misha Dairy founders Daniyar Chukin (left) and Kamilya Abilova “We were lucky that our grew up eating quark. primary investors were family and friends, because we were defi nitely in a state of blissful ignorance,” Chukin says. “We thought we’d be able to launch the company in six months. But just developing the product took a year and a half.” Abilova and Chukin started by consulting with an Illinois dairy producer who had spent time in Europe and was familiar with quark. He helped them tweak the recipe for the American consumer, making the texture less grainy and reducing the fat content. The team then met with farmers in upstate New York to begin the production process. Using milk from grass-fed cows and steering clear of artifi cial sweeteners, colors, and Today, Song can still be found roaming preservatives, they developed quark in plain, strawberry-rhubarb, Key-lime, blueberry, and the city in the company’s truck (he posts vanilla bean–coconut fl avors and packaged it in snack-sized containers, which makes it the route daily on Twitter and Insta- more competitive in the American yogurt market (in Kazakhstan, quark only comes plain gram). But now he’s more focused on the and is sold in family-sized tubs). wheels-free locations: several are in the “We love introducing quark to new customers,” Abilova says. “But we also get a special pride works, and so far one is open, in the East when Europeans tell us that it tastes exactly like the stuff they’d get at home.” Village. With two full stories of fl uores- Misha Dairy’s products are now in nearly 150 stores in the New York region, as well as Wegmans cent-orange façade slashed with Korilla’s supermarkets across the East Coast. A deal with Whole Foods is pending. Abilova is particularly signature black tiger stripes, the building happy that quark has found its way onto the shelves of an old favorite: Morningside Heights’ own is bold, fun, and a little unconventional Westside Market. — just like its founder. “I hope other Columbia students fi nd it and love it as much as I do,” she says.

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33.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd 1177 88/10/16/10/16 11:16:16 PPMM MR BING

stuff ed with scrambled egg, was too old to join the Amer- sesame seeds, scallions, hoisin ican training program. But as sauce, chili paste, cilantro, and a Jew he was eligible for dual crunchy wontons. citizenship with Israel, where “It’s like the bacon, egg, competition wasn’t exactly and cheese of China. But a stiff (think Cool Runnings thousand times better.” in the Negev). Goldberg When Goldberg came spent his undergraduate and home, his heart wasn’t in graduate years training with medicine anymore. He the Israeli team and ulti- fi nished his BA, then en- mately qualifi ed for the Salt rolled in a master’s program Lake City Olympics in 2002. in East Asian languages But Israel ended up sending and cultures at Columbia. a smaller delegation post- Though he mostly focused 9/11, so Goldberg wasn’t able on fi lm, he took one class at to compete. Still, working the business school, where with NBC on a documentary he wrote a very early draft about his Olympic dreams Brian Goldberg’s of a business plan to bring inspired his next step: Mr Bing carts sell jianbing to New York. TV production. Chinese savory crepes “I was ready to start Mr Goldberg worked for a at street fairs and functions. Bing fi fteen years ago,” Gold- year as an NBC page in berg says. “But a few other New York; his fluency in ow do you say Brandeis, he was accepted things got in the way.” Mandarin then helped him Renaissance into an early-decision medical Those other things involved land a gig as a television man in Man- program, where participants the luge, the 2002 Winter producer and financial-news darin? are guaranteed acceptance Olympics, and Israel. reporter in Singapore. Seven Ask Brian at Tufts University’s medi- Goldberg had gotten a late years later, he jumped from Goldberg cal school upon graduation, start at the luge. By the time reporting on the markets to ’02GSAS, a and encouraged to pursue the sport caught his interest, trading in them, becoming man of seem- non-medical interests during when he was seventeen, he an investment banker. ingly limitless their undergraduate years. energy, who Goldberg took advantage by Hjust might have the most spending his junior year in a improbable LinkedIn profi le language-immersion program in New York. A Chinese-fi lm in China. scholar turned Olympic-level “It was basically language luger turned TV producer jail. If they catch you speak- turned investment banker, ing English three times, they Goldberg is now the founder send you home,” he says. of Mr Bing, a food cart and Goldberg thrived in catering company that sells China. He loved its cinema, Beijing-style savory crepes. art, and especially its food. Naturally. Every morning before class, But before any of that, Goldberg would visit the Goldberg planned to be a bicycle-drawn carts selling doctor. As a sophomore at jianbing: savory crepes

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33.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd 1188 88/10/16/10/16 11:17:17 PPMM BEYOND MEAT But Goldberg never stopped thinking about those savory crepes, which were ubiquitous in northern China but hadn’t yet migrated south than Brown ’08BUS doesn’t to Singapore and Hong Kong, think there’s anything wrong with where his banking career eating meat every day. had taken him. He partnered There’s just one caveat. with a local restaurateur and “It has to be plant-based started courting investors and meat,” he says. developing a recipe. Brown is aware that to most “Every time I went back to people, this sounds like the Beijing, I would talk to my ultimate oxymoron. His company, favorite vendors. I convinced EBeyond Meat, is seeking to change that. Its goal is to one of them to teach me her make vegan meat substitutes that mimic the taste Brown started the research and Ethan Brown’s recipes, and even to come to and texture of animal protein so well that they are development process shortly after plant-based burger is sold in Hong Kong with me to train indistinguishable from the real thing. business school, teaming up with the meat aisle. my staff .” he says. “There are two ways to think about meat,” says a group of chemists who began to He opened the fi rst Mr Brown. “One is that it has to come from an animal. analyze the molecular structure of animal protein and Bing, a brick-and-mortar The other is that meat is just a composition of amino to replicate it with plants. At the same time, Brown fast food restaurant in Hong acids, lipids, carbohydrates, and water. That kind of was busy raising capital. Kong, while still working at demystifi es it.” “We had to go through several rounds of funding to the bank. The schedule was While there is a personal component to Beyond even get through the product-development process. untenable — Goldberg was Meat’s origin story — Brown has been a vegetarian for It was incredibly risky, fi nancially, because we were managing the restaurant raising a lot of initial capital without knowing if it during his lunch break and was going to sell. But I wasn’t afraid to spend a lot of after work — but he realized money to get the product right,” he says. that the food and the concept In 2013, Beyond Meat came out with their fi rst were resonating with custom- offerings — a beef-like veggie crumble, a veggie- ers. That gave him the con- burger patty, and a chicken substitute. Since then, fi dence to leave banking and the company has grown to two hundred employees, bring jianbing to New York. including twenty PhDs. But as much as Brown owes “I’ve always known that his company’s success to science, he also knows that New Yorkers would love there’s something about the experience of eating that them,” he says. can’t be replicated any other way. Goldberg was right — in “I’m a vegan who eats animal meat every single July, New York magazine day,” Brown says. “I spit it out, but if our mission is to named the jianbing the city’s replicate the experience of eating meat, I want to “Cheap Eat of the Year” — make sure fi rsthand that that’s what we’re doing.” and business is thriving. At This past spring, Brown’s team created what he present, Mr Bing is a mobile decades — his motivations go beyond his dinner plate. considers the Holy Grail of meat substitutes — a fresh cart and caterer, appearing Brown spent the fi rst part of his career working for a plant-based burger that browns on the outside and at street fairs and corpo- clean-energy company, which is where he became stays pink on the inside when it cooks. And, in a feat of rate functions. In the long interested in our diet’s role in climate change. pure magic (and pulverized beets), it actually bleeds term, Goldberg envisions a “It became increasingly clear to me how much when you cut into it. The Beyond Burger debuted in semi-permanent home at a the meat industry is contributing to greenhouse-gas a Colorado Whole Foods supermarket in May. It sold food hall. But he hopes that emissions. And that’s not to mention its role in other out in less than an hour and earned praise from Eater, the bulk of the business will societal problems, like heart disease, diabetes, and Tasting Table, the New York Times, and dozens of be in Central Park and on city cancer,” Brown says. other media outlets. It will roll out to stores nation- corners. He anticipates a fl eet Brown knew that there was going to be no way to wide this fall — but customers should be mindful not of carts on bicycles — just like make sweeping change without providing a viable to look for it with the frozen veggie burgers. the ones that grabbed his at- alternative that appealed to meat lovers. “We’re proud to say that we’ve made a product so tention outside a Beijing dorm “Black beans and quinoa aren’t going to cut it when close to animal protein that we’re being sold right next

PHOTOS ON THIS PAGE COURTESY OF BEYOND MEAT OF BEYOND COURTESY ON THIS PAGE PHOTOS room nearly twenty years ago. what they really want is a juicy burger,” he says. to it in the meat aisle,” says Brown.

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33.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd.16_FoodStartups_FINAL.indd 1199 88/10/16/10/16 11:18:18 PPMM © NEW YORK YANKEES

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3.16_Baseball_FINAL_Revised.indd 20 8/10/16 4:23 PM The refrain had been chanted thousands of times before, but it had never sounded like this. Its discordance echoed in a famil- iar setting: a chilly October night in the Bronx, playoff baseball, Game 1 of the 2012 American League Championship Series. The New York Yankees were battling the Detroit Tigers, and the crowd at Yankee Stadium was standing as one. Their claps were muf- fl ed by mittens, so they stomped their feet to the cadence of their chant: “Der-ek Je-ter, Der-ek Je-ter.” P The din rattled around the bleachers, MOST swept through the grandstands, and rever- berated down the concrete stanchions into the depths of the stadium, into the training VALUABLE room, where the Yankee captain lay writhing on a training table. The chant from above was infused with an unfamiliar restlessness, because at that moment the crowd’s hopes PHYSICIAN didn’t depend on a pitch but on a picture: an X-ray of Jeter’s left ankle, which he had just twisted diving for a ground ball at shortstop. FOR YANKEES DOCTOR Baseball gods willing, the X-ray would come back clean, and the fi fty thousand stomping CHRISTOPHER AHMAD fans, along with millions more worldwide, could exhale. ’90SEAS, GETTING Underneath the grandstands, the Yan- kees’ team physician, Christopher Ahmad BETTER ISN’T JUST ’90SEAS, held the news that the sports world waited upon. But he wasn’t think- ABOUT HEALING ing about the fans or the media. He wasn’t thinking about the Yankees brain trust that now surrounded Jeter in the training room, a group that included Yankee legends Joe Torre, Tino Martinez, and Reggie Jackson, as well as Yankees senior vice president and general manager Brian Cashman. Ahmad wasn’t even thinking of Jeter’s ankle. He was thinking only of his patient’s emotional state. He was focused solely on one of the most diffi cult moments a doctor of sports medicine can face: telling a player who can play through anything that he can’t play through this. “You always have to remember that a professional athlete puts every ounce of himself into his sport — into his body,” says Ahmad. “And if you take that away from him, in a way you’re taking away who he is as a person.” Ahmad, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Columbia University Medical Center,

CREDITS GO HERE CREDITS BY ERIC KESTER ’15SOA understands that for an athlete, a split

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33.16_Baseball_FINAL_Revised.indd.16_Baseball_FINAL_Revised.indd 2211 88/10/16/10/16 44:24:24 PPMM tendon or a torn ligament is more than he’s refi ned a communication skill set Ahmad collected his insights into an injury. It’s a rip in the fabric of his that helps athletes through the lowest self-betterment in his recent book Skill: identity, an unraveling of a self that’s points of their careers. 40 Principles that Surgeons, Athletes, been meticulously woven in practices and “First, you have to be humble — don’t and Other Elite Performers Use to Achieve games since childhood. Major injuries use technical language they can’t under- Mastery. In this guide, Ahmad empha- often leave a scar, but in an athlete’s case stand,” Ahmad advises. “Sit down next sizes the diff erence between “soft skills” they also leave an abstract hole, a vague to them and talk to them eye-to-eye. and “hard skills,” and stresses the impor- emptiness. When asked in the post-game Don’t stare down at them as they sit on tance of distinguishing and cultivating press conference about Jeter’s reaction to the training table. And when giving bad both types of abilities. Soft skills, Ahmad the diagnosis — a season-ending frac- news, don’t be ambiguous. Explain that says, are more abstract, rooted in creative tured ankle — Cashman answered quietly, they can’t play through the injury, no improvisation, foresight, and adaptive “He didn’t have one.” matter how hard they try. Then explain problem solving, “like a quarterback look- That night, as Ahmad drove home that there is a solution and that you’ll do ing across the fi eld and reading a defense.” from Yankee Stadium to Lower Man- everything you can to fi x the problem.” He argues that soft skills separate elite hattan, where he lives with his wife, Ahmad’s guiding principle in these surgeons from good ones: a good surgeon, orthopedic surgeon Beth E. Shubin Stein interactions is to put himself in the ath- for example, can work around the spate ’91CC, ’96PS, and their three children, he lete’s shoes — an easy fi t for a man who of blood that comes from operating in a

“I ALWAYS HAD A SENSE I COULD PUT THINGS BACK TOGETHER,” AHMAD SAYS.

immediately got to work. Not on Jeter, spent much of his childhood wearing region with an unusually high number of but on himself. Like a professional athlete soccer cleats. He grew up on Long Island blood vessels; elite surgeons notice these reviewing his game fi lm, Ahmad analyzed with a nurse mother and a psychiatrist vessels before they even begin, clamping his performance in the training room, father. But despite family roots in med- them down preemptively. using a voice recorder to document any icine, Ahmad fi rst set his aspirations on That’s not to say that “hard skills” — observations or areas where he felt he professional soccer. the technical abilities that one develops should have been better. Did he deliver As a young player he was gifted, through meticulous repetition — are the news as well as he could have? How but it was his defi ciencies — or more unimportant. They are, after all, the might he have done it diff erently? For accurately, his response to them — that foundation upon which soft skills are Ahmad, honest self-critique is a corner- propelled him to elite levels. If a team- built. Ahmad began developing his hard stone of genuine self-improvement. mate had better foot skills, for instance, skills in orthopedic surgery before he was “Many professionals don’t like to face Ahmad would design and execute drills aware of it. His fi rst summer job was for the reality that maybe they’re not as good that would isolate the skill for improve- an engineering fi rm that made helicopter NEW YORK YANKEES, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED as they can be,” he explains. “And when it ment. The payoff was substantial: he components, and this internship illumi- comes to medicine it’s especially diffi cult was selected to play in the Olympic nated his mechanical gifts. “I always had to think, ‘I didn’t perform well, and that Development Program and was recruited a sense I could put things back together,” aff ected my patient.’” for Columbia’s nationally ranked soccer Ahmad says. When it was time to declare That’s why he dissects all aspects of program. This success validated Ahmad’s his major at Columbia, Ahmad chose his role as the Yankees’ team physician, approach to personal improvement and mechanical engineering. including his bedside manner. By analyz- would later translate to all aspects of his Still, soccer was Ahmad’s passion. In ing his interactions with injured athletes, life as a surgeon. 1988 he earned an All-Ivy honorable

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33.16_Baseball_FINAL_Revised.indd.16_Baseball_FINAL_Revised.indd 2222 88/10/16/10/16 44:24:24 PPMM mention, and following graduation he Frank Jobe, who in 1974 changed base- the New York Daily News called Rodri- strongly considered trying to go pro. ball forever by developing a way to sur- guez’s “scorched-earth battle to dodge his However, after discussing it with his gically reconstruct a torn ulnar collateral historic Biogenesis steroid ban”). The suit family, Ahmad made the hard decision ligament, or UCL, the absolutely vital was later dropped. to retire from the game he loved. “It’s — and all too fragile — part of a pitch- Ahmad has never let a distraction very diffi cult,” he says. “You play this er’s elbow. The operation, known today disrupt his game. “I’m always looking game your whole life, train almost every as “Tommy John Surgery” after the fi rst to contribute to orthopedics,” he says, day to get to this level, then one day baseball player to undergo it, captivated “always looking to develop a better surgi- your college career is over.” the rookie surgeon. “The idea of taking cal technique.” It wasn’t goodbye, though — not to a pitcher’s ligament that’s torn — that’s And baseball needs it. Between 2012 soccer or to Columbia. While playing soc- stopping him from throwing — and then and 2015, Major League Baseball players cer, Ahmad was fascinated by the eff ect getting him to throw ninety-fi ve miles underwent Tommy John surgery 114 injuries had on his body, and determined per hour again, all through a very precise times, compared to 69 operations from to reduce their impact on his abilities. If surgery that relies on your technical skill: 2008 to 2011. Even more concerning is he twisted his ankle, he didn’t just have a it’s like playing World Cup soccer. That the growing number of youth baseball trainer tape it — he studied the trainer’s was the stage I wanted to be on.” players who suff er elbow injuries. In a technique, then experimented on himself Since his one-on-one training with recent CUMC study, Ahmad discovered to devise a better taping procedure Jobe, Ahmad has established himself as that the number of UCL reconstructions that gave his ankle the care it needed one of the world’s preeminent Tommy per hundred thousand people has tripled while minimizing its encumbrance. His John surgeons, winning multiple from 2002 to 2011. Almost all of that devotion to athletics, coupled with his research awards and publishing over two growth occurred in males seventeen to studies in mechanical engineering, led hundred articles and fi fty book chapters twenty years old. Ahmad naturally to sports medicine, on elbow, shoulder, and sports medicine. Major League Baseball has asked with a specifi c interest in two fulcrums Ahmad became Yankee team physi- Ahmad to join the advisory board of of the human body, the knees and cian in 2009, a post in which he regu- its Pitch Smart program, an initiative elbows. “Derek Jeter dreamed of being larly deals with players’ sprains, pulls, to better educate players and coaches a shortstop for the Yankees; I dreamed fractures, ruptures, bruises, soreness, and on how to keep elbows healthy. Ahmad of leading sports medicine at Columbia,” muscle tears. is also meeting with orthopedic and Ahmad says. “And choosing this fi eld “One of the things that initially drew sports-medicine specialists as he builds allowed me to stay connected to soccer.” us to Dr. Ahmad was his vast experience a database of UCL reconstructions in Ahmad earned his medical degree at in diagnosing and treating athletes who the US, a trove of information that will New York University and completed his perform at the highest level of sports,” provide invaluable insight into the scope residency at Columbia Orthopaedics. says Cashman. “As our head team physi- and root causes of the injury. One of Ahmad’s biggest career breaks cian, he has been thorough, thoughtful, Evidence of Ahmad’s achievements can came in 2000, when he was selected and dedicated to improving his craft.” be found on his offi ce walls, which are for the sports-medicine fellowship at He has also seen some curveballs. In fi lled with pictures of sports stars. The the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in 2013, Yankees star Alex Rodriguez fi led inscriptions go beyond mere pleasantries. Los Angeles. There, Ahmad provided a malpractice lawsuit against Ahmad, A signed photo from a track-and-fi eld treatment for the Los Angeles Dodgers claiming the physician didn’t inform him athlete says it all: “Dr. Ahmad — Thank and worked with the orthopedic pioneer about a joint tear in his hip (part of what you for putting me back together.”

GET BETTER Skill-Sharpening Tips from Dr. Ahmad

DON’T FALL FOR THE ALWAYS CARRY A REVERSE ENGINEER LET GO OF EGO. ISOLATE THE PRODIGY MYTH. NOTEBOOK. YOUR MENTOR. Self-critique is diffi cult SWEET SPOT. Too often it’s believed that High-level performers keep Identify the heroes but essential. People You reach the sweet spot naturally gifted people a performance journal. or mentors who have who pay deeper atten- when you put yourself at can effortlessly do things They write and refl ect. Get inspired you, and watch tion to an error learn the edge of your ability, that others will never be a journal and write your them closely: study their signifi cantly more than which is where you learn able to do. But talent in results from today, your preparation, their work those who don’t. Address the best and the quickest. any fi eld is honed through ideas for tomorrow, and ethic, their leadership skills, mistakes immediately, and The sweet spot is diffi cult, specifi c regimens, like your goals for next week. and how they respond to take them seriously but elicits frustration, creates persistent training and pressure. Do not passively never personally. alertness to errors, forces a study. Remember that observe them. Take struggle, and requires full talent is not bestowed — command and immerse engagement. Push to fi nd it’s acquired. yourself in their excellence. your personal sweet spot. Adapted from Skill: 40 Principles that Surgeons, Athletes, and Other Elite Performers Use to Achieve Mastery

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3.16_Baseball_FINAL_Revised.indd 23 8/10/16 4:25 PM truth+

BBEAUTYColors, patterns,E symmetries,A textures.U Just TY look at the photographs produced in recent years by Columbia scientists and you can begin to appreciate why so many artists take their cues from nature.

For the Lamont-Doherty geochemist or the èRHAPSODY IN RED Zuckerman Institute brain researcher, such This image of a red Noctiluca alga images are portals to information, fi lled was produced by Alexandra Bausch, a PhD with clues and questions and evidence. But student in earth and environmen- for the rest of us, there are still rewards. tal sciences who is studying how After all, one person’s microscopic portrait the single-celled organism can proliferate to form of a single-celled organism may be another massive blooms in oxygen-depleted person’s Miró. waters. The pink orbs are caused by refl ected light from smaller, bio- fl uorescent algae passing in front of the Noctiluca.

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CCU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.inddU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.indd 2244 88/10/16/10/16 11:48:48 PPMM BEAUTY ALEXANDRA BAUSCH ALEXANDRA

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CU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.indd 25 8/10/16 1:49 PM é THE METAMORPHOSIS è PORTRAIT OF A MEMORY Anna Claire Barth, a PhD student in Each stroke in this chart represents the earth and environmental sciences, fi ring of a single neuron in the brain of photographed a cluster of minerals a test subject. The study, conducted in that underwent a transformation on the laboratory of Zuckerman Institute their way to the earth’s surface. The neuroscientist C. Daniel Salzman, garnet crystal in the center formed explored how neural responses change under intense heat and pressure, while as subjects form memories about a the mica around the edges took shape picture on a computer screen.

under less severe conditions. ANNA CLAIRE BARTH C DANIEL SALZMAN

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CU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.indd 26 8/10/16 1:49 PM C. DANIEL SALZMAN DANIEL C.

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CU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.indd 27 8/10/16 1:50 PM çSTILL LIFE This lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano hard- ened just a few weeks before Columbia seismologist Einat Lev photographed it, in February 2015. Its texture is the result of a crust forming while the molten lava was still moving. This is char- acteristic of a type of lava fl ow that scientists call pahoehoe, from the Hawaiian verb hoe, meaning “to paddle,” since the surface resem- bles ripples of water.

è ORANGE DIPTYCH Emily H. G. Cooperdock ’11CC took these two photographs of minerals being heated in a furnace at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. The top photo shows three graphite crucibles fi lled with powdered rock just moments after being placed in the furnace. The bottom photo shows the crucibles heated to 1,050 degrees Celsius, their contents now liquefi ed and ready for chemical analysis. EINAT LEV

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CCU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.inddU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.indd 2288 88/10/16/10/16 11:50:50 PPMM EMILY H. G. COOPERDOCK G. H. EMILY

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CU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.indd 29 8/10/16 1:51 PM éNEURON DANCE èTHE RING CYCLE Zuckerman Institute neuroscientist This sample of tree rings was taken Nate Sawtell is studying the brain of the from an ancient Siberian pine in elephant-nose fi sh to understand how Mongolia by the late Columbia neurons assimilate sensory information. dendrochronologist Gordon Jacoby Pictured here are a half-dozen neurons. ’71GSAS. The two distorted rings in the Their main bodies are the dark ovals center, which represent the years 536 at the bottom of the image. They have and 537, indicate a drastic cooling that sent branches, called dendrites, upward occurred in the northern hemisphere, to receive signals from the thread-like possibly the result of volcanic activity or axons of other neurons streaming in an asteroid impact. from the left. NATE SAWTELL

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CU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.indd 30 8/10/16 1:52 PM DEE BREGER

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CCU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.inddU_3.16_Art_Science_FINAL.indd 3311 88/10/16/10/16 11:52:52 PPMM CREDITS GO HERE

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33.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd 3322 88/9/16/9/16 22:27:27 PPMM Bridges to

CubaWill the quiet pow er of cultur al diplom acy change a nation ? By Paul Hon d \ Illustr ation s by Edel Rodriguez

s a light rain fell on José Martí It was March 20, 2016. Not since 1928, when International Airport in the USS Texas carried Calvin Coolidge a hundred Havana, the Boeing VC-25 miles from Key West to Havana, had a sitting US aircraft appeared against a president come to Cuba. battleship-gray sky. The plane got closer, and the Obama stepped onto the tarmac, and a line of words on the fuselage became visible: UNITED Cuban and American offi cials welcomed him. “Hi, ASTATES OF AMERICA. Jeff . Good to see you. How are you?” Obama said, Air Force One touched down on the runway, shaking hands with Jeff rey DeLaurentis ’78SIPA, taxied, and stopped. The door opened, and the the chargé d’aff aires at the US embassy in Havana president of the United States, Barack Obama and the top US diplomat in Cuba. ’83CC, emerged at the top of the stairs. He An hour later, DeLaurentis stood on a podium snapped open a black umbrella and disembarked beside the president in the Meliá Habana hotel. with his wife, Michelle; their two daughters, Sasha DeLaurentis had fi rst been sent to Cuba twenty- and Malia; and Michelle’s mother, Marian. fi ve years earlier, during the worst economic

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33.16_Cuba_FINAL_Revise.indd.16_Cuba_FINAL_Revise.indd 3333 88/10/16/10/16 22:39:39 PPMM disaster to ever hit the Communist-led country. Now, in a the country opens up, it becomes exposed and vulnerable to scene he could not have imagined then, he was in Havana being overrun. There’s rarely been a country where every rem- introducing three hundred US embassy employees and their edy is such a double-edged sword.” families to the president of the United States. “Mr. President,” he said, “this is your embassy team, Amer- icans and Cubans, and they want to say thank you for giving Three weeks after Obama’s visit, Jeff rey DeLaurentis, wear- them the opportunity to live history.” ing a light-blue seersucker suit, sits in a cushioned chair in his offi ce at the US embassy in Havana, a concrete and glass box built in 1953 in the International Style. The building sits A ngela Mestre, a Columbia College junior, was living two in modest atmospheric isolation on the edge of the Vedado histories that rainy day in Havana. As President Obama’s neighborhood, overlooking the Malecón and the sea. motorcade crept along the highway beside the Malecón, the DeLaurentis had joined the Foreign Service with visions of seawall esplanade that skirts the Straits of Florida, Mestre Prague and Budapest dancing in his head. But the world had watched it go by. The whole city was watching: people lined other plans. In 1991, Cuba, crippled by the collapse of the Sovi- the streets or leaned out over their fl aking balconies to et Union, suff ered food shortages and blackouts, and DeLau- glimpse a leader who, Mestre says, “of all US presidents is rentis was dispatched to the US Interests Section in Havana, the most relatable to Latin American and Caribbean people. a consular niche set up in the 1970s in lieu of formal relations There’s real aff ection for Obama. People love him.” and based in the erstwhile US embassy building. There, he Mestre was one of four Columbia students who were spend- served as vice consul, processing visas and managing the ref- ing the spring semester in Cuba through the Consortium ugee program. He left in 1993 and returned in 1999 for three for Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA), an eight-university years as the political-economic section chief. He never did get collaboration that gives college juniors access to the Universi- to the Danube. His latest Cuba tour began in August 2014. ty of Havana and Casa de Las Américas, Cuba’s leading center Now, as head of the US embassy in Havana (the title “chargé for Latin American studies. As another Columbia student, d’aff aires” is an interim designation until an ambassador is Caleb Murray-Bozeman, puts it, “The classes are great” — he nominated and confi rmed), DeLaurentis recounts one of the studied Cuban cinema and Latin American thought and took more sensitive diplomatic forays of the post–Cold War era. Tendencies of Contemporary Capitalism (“not as propagan- “When President Obama came into offi ce, in 2009, the distic as I’d expected”) — “but the focus of the program really administration made some initial changes to facilitate more isn’t on the coursework. It’s to get us out into Havana to travel to Cuba, more remittances, more people-to-people con- experience Cuban culture.” tact,” he says. “But eff orts to develop a diff erent approach with For Mestre, the decision to go to Cuba was fraught. Both her Cuba really came to a halt in December 2009 after the unfair — parents are Cuban-American. Her mother was born in Bogotá, and unjustifi able — incarceration of Alan Gross, the develop- Colombia, to Cuban parents, and her father was born in Cuba ment worker.” Gross, a contractor with USAID, was imprisoned but left in the early 1970s. Mestre was the fi rst in her family to for smuggling illegal Internet equipment to Cuban civilians. return to the island, and the older generations were torn. “The In 2013, the US and Cuba began secret negotiations in Can- emotional component, the identity issues, are very complicat- ada, with the backing of Pope Francis, resulting in an exchange ed,” says Mestre. “It’s diffi cult to consider that somebody you of intelligence offi cers. “The Cubans also agreed to release love would go back to a country that you feel ousted you.” Alan Gross as a humanitarian gesture, free fi fty-three political Mestre was raised on stories of the lost paradise of the prisoners, look at increased Internet access, and engage with 1950s: the one-movie-theater town where her father grew the Red Cross and other international organizations,” DeLau- up; the houses and mansions; the vibrant Havana life. “To see rentis says. “And President Obama announced our decision the remnants, the ghosts of these stories, is really cool, but of to do a full and scrupulous review of Cuba’s place on the State course there have been monumental changes in the past sixty Department’s terrorist list.” (That review, which was complet- years,” Mestre says. ed in April 2015, found that Cuba should be taken off .) Obama’s visit was one of them. In the days before his Finally, on December 17, 2014, Obama and Cuban president arrival, some buildings, their pink and blue arcades long Raúl Castro addressed their nations. “We are taking steps sunk into a peeling grandeur, had been slapped with fresh to increase travel, commerce, and the fl ow of information to coats of paint, and stores (most are state-run) were closed and from Cuba,” Obama said. “This is fundamentally about (Murray-Bozeman heard that this was because the Cuban freedom and openness, and also expresses my belief in the government, sensitive to Soviet-era imagery, didn’t want the power of people-to-people engagement.” Americans to see any lines). There was a buzz, a fl utter, a DeLaurentis was in Havana that day. He could feel, in the high anticipation mixed with uncertainty. streets, a palpable excitement. People stopped whatever they “People are excited that things are opening up,” says Mestre, were doing to hear Castro. “Today, despite the diffi culties,” the “but also apprehensive. The challenge for society is that once Cuban president said, “we have embarked on the task of up-

34 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

33.16_Cuba_FINAL_Revise.indd.16_Cuba_FINAL_Revise.indd 3344 88/10/16/10/16 22:40:40 PPMM dating our economic model in order to build a prosperous and tion, doing service to the government and the community; it’s sustainable socialism.” Cuban and American fl ags were draped very diffi cult for them to get research time. We off er them a over balconies, and church bells rang in Old Havana. semester to work on their own research in the US.” Eight months later, on August 14, 2015, DeLaurentis stood Much of that research focuses on current socioeconomic with Secretary of State John Kerry outside the US embassy issues in Cuba, especially in the non-state sector (tens of building. A crowd of Cubans and Americans watched as thousands of small businesses, such as restaurants, are now Marine guards unfolded a US fl ag and hooked it to a fl ag- semi-private). “This is where the problems are going to be,” pole’s halyard; as the colors scurried up, cheers broke out, says Crahan. “The majority of Cuba’s workforce works for the and an Army band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The state, so managing a semi-private enterprise is a challenge.” US Interests Section was now the US embassy. The Cuba Program has brought in Cuban economists, Cuban Then, this past March, inside the Grand Theater of Havana, management experts, Cuban political scientists, Cuban entre- DeLaurentis listened as Obama spoke to a select audience of preneurs, even a Cuban blogger. In return, Crahan makes one Cubans and Americans. “I have come here,” Obama said, “to request: that scholars give a talk at ILAS, open to the public. bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.” Says Coatsworth, “There have been two groups in American But on matters of democratization and freedom of expres- society that have systematically sought to undermine the em- sion — central disputes between the two governments — bargo and the ban on travel. One group is tourists. The other DeLaurentis counsels patience. “We’re not going to see prog- is academics. What Meg Crahan is doing is part of a tradition ress overnight,” he says. of keeping ideas fl owing and people moving in ways that have prevented Cuba and the US from being entirely isolated from each other for the past sixty years.” Margaret Crahan ’67GSAS fi rst went to Cuba in 1973 for academic research. “People from the US in Cuba were scarce as hen’s teeth,” she says. “It was very unusual for Americans to The big driver of that isolation, of course, has been the fi fty- get a visa to do research in Cuba.” Crahan’s subject was pre- six-year-old US economic embargo, which forbids tourism and 1959 cultural penetration in Cuba by US Protestant religions trade. “The US embargo against Cuba is a real anomaly in US — a topic deemed suffi ciently benign that Crahan got her visa foreign policy,” says Christopher Sabatini, who teaches Latin extended by a month. Her fascination with the country only American political economy and US foreign policy at SIPA. grew: she has been back more than sixty times. “There’s never been a democratic transition in a country under In 2009, Crahan, a senior research scholar at the Institute an embargo as tight as the one we have on Cuba.” of Latin American Studies (ILAS) at Columbia’s Graduate In October 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, respond- School of Arts and Sciences, started a program to foster the ing to Cuba’s seizure and nationalization of American-owned academic exchange of Cuban and US-based scholars. She properties and businesses, cut off US exports to Cuba; and “Ther e’s rar ely been a cou ntr y wher e ever y remedy is such a dou ble-edged swor d.”

called it, in her no-nonsense way, the Cuba Program. At the in January 1961, with Havana turning to Moscow for aid, he time, she and John Coatsworth, the former dean of SIPA and severed diplomatic ties and closed the US embassy. A year now Columbia’s provost, could joke that they were the only later, President John F. Kennedy expanded the trade embargo Cuba specialists at Columbia (Coatsworth fi rst went to Cuba in “to include all imports from Cuba, eff ectively cutting off the 1963, in violation of a US travel ban that was later found to be Cuban economy from the US market,” Sabatini says. unconstitutional). Now the Cuba fi eld was exploding. The sanctions remained in place and have since been While CASA caters to undergraduates, the Cuba Program strengthened by legislation. The Obama White House, unable assists working academics, advising scholars in the US who to lift the embargo unilaterally, has sought advice from a num- are traveling to Cuba for educational purposes, and — its main ber of experts, including Sabatini and younger, more moderate thrust — covering the research and living expenses for Cuban Cuban-Americans, on how best to legally chip away at the scholars pursuing projects in the US, with Columbia as their embargo without having to go to a divided Congress. home base. “The demands on Cuban academics in Cuba are “The president cannot allow for unfettered tourism to the enormous,” Crahan says. “They’re teaching, doing administra- island, or for unfettered investment and commerce with the

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33.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd 3355 88/9/16/9/16 22:28:28 PPMM Cuban state,” Sabatini says. “But there are things that can be coined the term “manifest destiny,” and who, in 1848, talked legally justifi ed if you can argue they’re helping the Cuban peo- President James K. Polk into off ering to buy Cuba from Spain ple: travel to the island under the twelve approved categories for $100 million. (Spain declined.) announced in 2014, cell-phone service, direct mail, academic But this was 1959, and if one alumnus fl ickered in Castro’s and cultural exchanges, professional delegations — Obama mind, it was Herbert Matthews ’22CC, the New York Times has argued that all this is benefi ting the Cuban people.” reporter. In 1957, Matthews, amid rumors fanned by Cuban DeLaurentis, too, advocates engagement over isolation: from dictator Fulgencio Batista that the rebel leader Castro was his vantage at the embassy in Havana, as 1950s tail-fi nned dead, made his way to a remote encampment in the Sierra automobiles of turquoise and lipstick red cruise the coastal Maestra mountains in southeastern Cuba and found journalis- highway, the chargé d’aff aires leaves no doubt as to the political tic gold. “This is the fi rst sure news that Castro is still alive and temperature. “The president has made it clear,” he says, “that still in Cuba,” Matthews famously wrote. “No one connected the embargo should be lifted. But that is up to Congress.” with the outside world, let alone with the press, has seen Señor Castro except this writer.” Castro credited Matthews’s fl attering articles with helping to bring him to power. On April 21, 1959, a bearded man of thirty-two, dressed Perhaps Kirk had read the Matthews pieces. In his remarks, in olive-drab fatigues and a fi eld cap, stepped onto Columbia’s as reported by the Spectator, Kirk “expressed the opinion that College Walk. Surrounding him were police, city offi cials, and Cuba ‘will become one of the great democracies of the Western a few men similarly bearded and dressed for guerrilla activity. hemisphere.’” A rapturous crowd lined his path. As the world’s most famous Castro spoke to the press and met with students. Eight revolutionary and the new leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro was a months later, in Havana, Jorge Zayas, his newspaper censored socialist-fl avored political Elvis. and attacked as “counterrevolutionary,” walked into the Ecua- Castro was on his way to the Graduate School of Journalism dorean embassy and asked for diplomatic asylum. to give a press conference. As he passed Low Library, he might have seen, on the steps, the bronze statue of Alma Mater and done a double take — for the steps and the sculpture were The Obamas weren’t the only American family on holiday almost identical to those at the University of Havana, where in Cuba in March. Olivia Nutter, a Columbia urban-studies he had studied law. Maybe he knew (history buff that he was) major in the CASA program, was heading back from the beach that the Havana statue’s sculptor, Mario Korbel, had been in- with her parents when Obama landed. Her father, Michael spired by Columbia’s campus while living in New York. Maybe Nutter, had recently fi nished his second term as mayor of Phil- he knew, too, that Columbia’s journalism school was founded adelphia and was now teaching urban policy at SIPA. by the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, whose New York Nutter had chosen Havana because she wanted total Span- World, with its lurid accounts of Spanish cruelty in rebellious ish immersion, and also because, from an American perspec- Cuba, whipped up support for US intervention on the island tive, the city held the allure of the unknown. In the end, her and the Spanish-American War. social experience in Cuba could be summed up in a single Once inside the journalism building, Castro met Grayson word: complicado. Kirk, Columbia’s president. According to the Spectator, “There is a lot of dogma and propaganda in the education Kirk “greeted the Cuban leader with warm comments about system, and I think a lot of people struggle to think beyond the many Cubans who have studied at Columbia.” Such a that in the classroom,” Nutter says. To her surprise, conversa- list would have to begin with Gonzalo de Quesada 1890CC, tions about race (Nutter is Black) and colorism were extremely who, with Cuban national hero José Martí — both men limited. “To even talk about racism was deemed divisive after were exiles living in New York — drew up instructions for Fidel Castro declared it abolished in 1961,” Nutter explains. the start of Cuba’s war of independence. (Martí, weeks “An entire generation grew up never talking about race. There before his battlefi eld death in 1895, named Quesada his lit- are problems with race in Cuba, but if you ask questions, it erary executor; Quesada later became Cuba’s fi rst minister doesn’t go over well. People are not taught to question societal to Washington.) Kirk could have also mentioned former norms. It’s a social thing: you just don’t go there. In my class student Jorge Zayas, who was editor, at that moment, of the on Afro-Caribbean studies, I learned more from the silence.” Havana newspaper Avance. Most of her contact was with Cuban university students, There were, of course, other Columbians with Cuban ties, whom she found to be politically self-aware, resigned to though it was the better part of discretion to elide mention of the everyday ineffi ciencies (“That’s Cuba” was a familiar Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia’s president from 1901 to refrain), and guarded about the future. “They understand 1945, who strongly supported the 1901 Platt Amendment, a that their opportunities are limited, and that not everything proviso in the fi rst Cuban constitution that gave the US a naval the government says is true,” Nutter says. “They don’t see base at Guantánamo Bay and the right to intervene at will in things changing politically with any immediacy, but they Cuban aff airs; or John L. O’Sullivan 1831CC, a journalist who always have hope.”

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3.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd 37 8/9/16 2:29 PM Nutter keeps in touch with her Cuban friends through Face- exile community in Miami persists, though now it’s largely ob- book (Cubans can buy Internet time from the government, but solete. Newer generations and remittances from Miami have it’s costly). One recent exchange in particular struck her. She long helped to sustain Cuba’s economy.” was chatting with an Afro-Cuban friend about racial problems As Dopico listened from New York to Obama’s speech, in the US and in Cuba. “Yes,” the friend wrote, “but you have a Mirta Ojito ’01JRN, author of Finding Mañana: A Memoir of lot more power to change your country than we do ours.” a Cuban Exodus, followed it from her home in Miami. Ojito left Cuba in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift, in which some “ 125,000 Cubans fl ed their homeland. She was sixteen. Cultivo una rosa blanca,” President Obama began, and “I was very scared but excited,” Ojito recalls. “The moment I the audience applauded the reference. “In his most famous arrived at my uncle’s house in Miami I asked for a writing pad poem,” said Obama, “José Martí made this off ering of friend- because I knew I had witnessed something extraordinary.” ship and peace to both his friend and his enemy. Today, as the Ojito became a journalist and was part of a New York Times president of the United States of America, I off er the Cuban team that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. people el saludo de paz.” She says the Cuban community in Miami is confl icted about It was the morning of March 22, 2016, and Ana Maria Obama’s trip. Some people wanted more in return — changes Dopico ’00GSAS, a professor of comparative literature at in the very structure of the Cuban political system — while NYU, was seated in a studio at public-radio station WNYC, others think the visit stripped the Cuban government of a clas- listening live to Obama’s speech at the Grand Theater of sic excuse for its problems: that it has to fi ght the enemy. “The Havana. Across from her was host Brian Lehrer ’96PH. government can still point to the embargo,” says Ojito, “but it’s Obama spoke of Hemingway and Martí, of baseball and harder for Cubans to see the US as the enemy when you have boxing. He stated that the US “has neither the capacity nor this man come to the island with his family.” the intention to impose change on Cuba.” Then he said, “This is about family: the memory of a home that was lost; the desire to rebuild a broken bond; the hope for a better future; Shortly after Obama’s star turn in Havana, Margaret Crahan the hope for return and reconciliation. For all of the politics, sat in a packed room on the eighth fl oor of the International people are people, and Cubans are Cubans. And I’ve come here Aff airs Building and introduced Soraya Castro (no relation), a — I’ve traveled this distance — on a bridge that was built by professor at the Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacio- Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits. It is time, now, for nales in Havana and the evening’s Cuba Program speaker. The us to leave the past behind.” topic: US-Cuba relations. It was one of the Cuba Program’s When the speech ended, Lehrer asked the Havana-born virtues that the audience, which included John Coatsworth, Dopico for her reaction. would hear not from an American expert on Cuba, but rather, The emotion of the moment was audible in Dopico’s voice. a Cuban expert on the US. “That was a beautiful speech,” she said. “It was an important “There are some things,” Castro began, “we have to take into speech. It was eloquent. I was immensely moved.” Dopico and consideration.” Lehrer took calls from Cuban-American listeners who, with The speaker called the process toward normalization that Dopico, articulated the complexities of Cuban consciousness. began on December 17, 2014, “the biggest change in US–Cuba Not everyone was ready to leave the past behind. “The project relations since 1959,” and cited two major underlying factors of political memory that we’re confronting is a heavy one,” not to be ignored: asymmetry (“Not only population or size; I Dopico told a man whose father had been executed by the mean the capacities of the two countries to infl uence each oth- Castro regime. “It involves confronting these huge wounds and er”) and distrust (“We must understand the historical context trying to fi gure out how to mend.” in which Cuba was born — under US occupation — and how, Dopico left Cuba in 1967, at age four. She and her family in our fi rst constitution, the Platt Amendment was imposed”). took a plane to Miami under the Freedom Flights program, “At the same time,” she said, “we need to understand why a joint US-Cuba operation that ran from 1965 to 1973. Her December 17, 2014, happened. For many years, there were parents, both doctors, had initially embraced the revolution. universities, people, professors, and think tanks that advocated “For them, Batista represented all that was terrible,” she says. for improved relations between our countries. The new actors “Revolution meant salvation. But my father was kind of an are important, but we cannot deny what had been building up iconoclast, and he found life diffi cult under Castro: you had to between our two societies during those long years when there be politicized, take loyalty oaths. He couldn’t do it.” was very little communication.” Dopico grew up in a progressive household in Miami at The speaker then described a perception among some a time when anti-Castro groups regularly set off bombs Cuban scholars and state offi cials that the US, with its rhetoric against supporters of dialogue with Havana. “There were of economic empowerment, was trying to “seduce” the Cuban Cuban-American progressives, but their voices were drowned people, hoping “to drive a wedge between the Cuban people out,” Dopico says. “The Cold War stereotype of a hard-line and the Cuban government, to wean the Cuban people off

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33.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd 3388 88/9/16/9/16 22:29:29 PPMM their dependence on the state by subsidizing the market econ- in 1941 in an outlying section of Havana once known as Coun- omy, with the expectation that the Cuban people, thus empow- try Club Park. The Obamas stayed there during their visit. ered, would be motivated to act in defense of private economic But DeLaurentis’s real home is the embassy building, to interests and therefore act as agents of political change. which he fi rst came twenty-fi ve years ago. It’s from this base “In this view, the US is embarking on normalization to that he conducts his diplomatic duties: e-mails, meetings change Cuba: to restructure its economy, to remake its po- with the foreign ministry and other Cuban offi cials, talks with litical system, to reorganize the character of Cuban society,” Cuban and American groups and members of civil society, she said. “But the reality is that there are too many diverse contact with diplomatic counterparts and businesspeople, and interests in Cuba. You can’t talk about one path or one idea a lot of phone calls to Washington. prevailing. It is too early.” “We’re trying to build an embassy here,” he says. In some ways, DeLaurentis began building things — bridg- es, call them — when he was twelve. He could remember the For some, this is the heart of the matter: what eff ect will morning he walked into his kitchen and told his parents that limited private enterprise and increased exposure to Ameri- he wanted to be a diplomat. His father, an electrical engineer, cans have on the values that most Cubans want to preserve: had been reading the newspaper, and the paper slowly came universal health care, universal education, egalitarianism, down. “He was a science guy,” DeLaurentis says, “and he didn’t anti-imperialism? really understand where that came from.” “Economically, no one knows what’s going to happen,” says DeLaurentis ended up going to the Georgetown School of Murray-Bozeman, who majors in economics and comp lit. Foreign Service, and then to Columbia, never suspecting that “But things are opening up. Cubans have access to more ideas. his bridge would cross a strait and not an ocean. There is censorship, but freedom of the press is growing with Outside the embassy windows, the sun passes over the fi ve- blogs. Americans are coming, and Cubans can travel more. hundred-year-old city and resolves into a fl at disk of orange People I met see these as positive changes, and they want them in the blue-opal sky; Havana’s mottled colors, the walls and to continue, even if they don’t know where they’ll end up.” archways of yellow and pink and Key-lime green, ripen in the One place they aren’t likely to end up, according to SIPA’s golden hour. Sabatini, is shareholder heaven. “The intention of the Obama “The bottom line,” DeLaurentis says, “is that the best way administration was always to get businesses engaged and see to promote US interests and values is by engaging, develop- “Econ om ically, no on e know s what’s goi ng to happen. But things ar e op ening up.”

what’s possible, and we’re seeing that,” Sabatini says. “But Cuba ing contacts, communicating, in some cases arguing. Having is not going to be a paradise for US investors. That’s because wider and deeper contact with the Cuban government and it’s a country of eleven million poor people, with very stringent the Cuban people obviously puts us in a better place to advo- requirements on investment.” cate for the universal values that we believe in, and believe all Coatsworth says that what the Cuban authorities have in societies should protect.” mind is a process “similar to the Chinese or Vietnamese mod- els, where you liberalize the economy without changing the political structure. I think the Cuban government has some L ater that evening, on the Malecón, people stroll, talk, time to demonstrate that it can organize the economy in a way laugh, drink rum, play music, catch a breeze, and talk about that not only provides basic services, but also grows rapidly everything but politics. and off ers a future to its citizens. Beyond the seawall, the dark water stretches out, black, “If they can do that,” says Coatsworth, “it would be great for wide, fusing with the night sky, a gulf of darkness, a hundred the Cuban people, and in the long run it would probably lead miles of it between here and Key West. And though you can’t to greater liberalization in politics.” see them, there are crossings here, their towers planted long ago, their cables slung over the deepest political chasms by the lonely ambassadors and explorers who came to see, to learn, to Jeff rey DeLaurentis lives in the US chief of mission resi- teach, to help, to connect. Now, more Americans are coming, dence, a sixty-fi ve-room neoclassical limestone mansion built over bridges quietly built.

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33.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd.16_Cuba_FINAL.indd 3399 88/9/16/9/16 22:30:30 PPMM THE BIG IDEA Robots On Th e Road

Hod Lipson, a professor of mechanical engineering and the director of the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia, is a roboticist who researches artifi cial intelligence and digital manufacturing. In a new Columbia Magazine: People have been talking about book, Driverless: Intelligent Ú driverless cars for decades. Why is this a critical moment? Cars and the Road Ahead (MIT Hod Lipson: Even back in the 1930s, the automotive compa- nies — General Motors in particular — thought driverless cars Press), Lipson and his coauthor were the future. They talked about building smart highways, Melba Kurman assert that which are roads that can communicate with vehicles. But the technology was in the infrastructure, which made it impossible

recent advances in software to implement. It was just too expensive per mile. LINDSAY FRANCE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHY The more recent approach is focused on autonomous robot- and robotics will accelerate the ics. It puts the smarts and technology in the car. An intelligent development of autonomous machine has to deal with the same infrastructure and driving challenges as humans — lane markings, traffi c lights, poor vehicles. We asked Lipson to weather. It needs to see as humans see. explain the technology and In the past few years there’s been an explosion in artifi cial intelligence (AI), and in particular “deep learning.” For driverless where it will take us next. cars, deep learning trains the vehicle to drive by feeding it huge amounts of visual data gathered by camera during trips. That’s By Eric Jaffe ’06JRN provided that last piece of the puzzle, which is artifi cial percep-

40 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

3.16_BigIdea_FINAL.indd 40 8/5/16 10:15 AM in a straight line, and it’s not about calcu- lating the optimal route. It’s about going around obstacles, stopping at a stoplight, negotiating an intersection, merging into traffi c, hitting the brakes because a child is running after a ball, not hitting the brakes because there’s a shadow on the street. Everything else was solved decades ago. This was the part nobody knew how to do.

How has your own research contributed to deep learning? Our work focuses mostly on the question of how an AI network learns and how we can transfer learning from one network to another. That’s one of the great advantages of The latest version of Google’s self-driving driverless cars. No human driver can have car is tested in Mountain View, California. Below, the GM exhibit at the 1939 World’s more than one lifetime of driving experi- Fair, Futurama, featured an automated ence. A car that is part of an AI network can, highway system. within a year, have a thousand lifetimes of experience, because it can get information from all the scenes and situations that every other car has expe- rienced. It’s another reason why these cars will drive better than any human has ever driven. They will have experienced every possible situation.

So when will we start to see these autonomous vehicles on our roads? It’s impossible to pinpoint a year, but we can pinpoint a range. About ten years from now it will begin, and forty years from now it will end, meaning that by 2065 all cars will be autonomous. That’s kind of the range. It also won’t be uniform, in the sense that it will start in certain places but not others. New York might determine that all cars in Manhattan should be autonomous. The technology could be adopted in vacation resorts or in some brave city like Detroit that is willing to pioneer the technology. It could start in trucks but not private cars. That’s why you can’t pinpoint beyond a range. We know it will start in spots and gradually spread. tion, or basically the ability for the car to see. There’s been this magical pivot. Even though people have been hyping driverless Tech companies and car companies are taking very differ- cars for decades, this is diff erent. This time it’s real. ent approaches to this driverless world. You describe the divide as “software versus automotive.” Why is deep learning so pivotal? Tech companies are looking at this as a software or AI play. The The challenge in making a fully autonomous driverless car is that platform is a commodity, like a cell-phone body. You can get the we have to think about three levels of control. car body from anywhere. The motors, the engine — they’re off - On one level, the car has to stay in a straight line and take a the-shelf. But the real smarts is in the software. This is how the turn at exactly the right angle. That’s hard, but it’s been solved by software companies are approaching the driverless car. They see mechanical engineers. On another level, it has to get from New it as software on wheels. York to DC. That’s also been solved. We use navigation systems The automotive companies, on the other hand, think of it as on our phones all the time. a car with extra software. The technical term is “driver assist.” What hasn’t been solved, and what has always been a chal- Cruise control was a very primitive driver assist; then we devel-

TOP: BROOKS KRAFT / GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: COURTESY OF GM COURTESY BOTTOM: IMAGES; / GETTY KRAFT BROOKS TOP: lenge, is what we call “midlevel” controls. It’s not just about going oped automatic brake systems and automatic lane keeping.

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3.16_BigIdea_FINAL.indd 41 8/5/16 10:15 AM Car companies see this as an evolution Can we assume that driverless cars will of driver assist, where the driver remains improve the environment? behind the wheel, ready to take over in an When Melba and I began researching the emergency. Only in the fi nal stage of the book, we naively thought that autonomous technology’s evolution will the car become vehicles would be a win for the environment. fully autonomous. But it’s not clear. Driverless cars are more The software camp imagines having convenient, so miles driven will go up. That’s no human driver right from the get-go. not a good thing. They’re coming at the problem with a com- But then you have to look at other factors, pletely diff erent attitude. like the fact that driving will be more effi cient. There will be more consistent speeds, less start You argue that the driver-assist and stop, less parking and idling and traffi c approach is not just worse but actually jams. These things will amount to substantial dangerous. Why is that? improvements in performance. Also, the This idea that an intelligent machine should vehicles can be smaller and lighter, so even hand off to a human driver in an emer- “A system that though we may see that increase in miles, gency is very problematic. There are the vehicles will be more effi cient. examples of recent plane crashes where is ‘almost fully the machine handed the controls to The economic impact of driverless the pilots, but the pilots weren’t ready. autonomous’ cars is going to be huge, for better and There’s another case where pilots tried to is dangerously for worse. land a plane themselves, but they were Yes, a lot of people will lose their jobs, out of practice and they crashed. deceptive.” and not just truck drivers and taxi drivers. The recent fatal Tesla crash demon- Dozens more professions will be trans- strates the risk of the driver-assist formed. The body shop, where people fi x approach. A system that is “almost fully autonomous” is dan- cars after collisions — that’s going away. And how many health- gerously deceptive. And the more you’re automated, the more care hours are devoted to car accidents? A huge number. How severe the problem is. If you drive for an hour, it’s hard enough much income do parking tickets generate for cities? It’s not to remain focused. If you’re not driving, how can you stay negligible. There’s this cascade eff ect. focused enough to take over? It’s dangerous and unreliable. But then we’ll see some opportunities. There will be a huge ripple eff ect on new e-commerce models and business models, You say the technology for driverless cars is here, but creating new jobs. More miles driven means more cars sold, elements like regulation and insurance liability are not regardless of the ownership model, and more cars mean more even on the radar. car maintenance. These things need to be sorted out. But they’re not technologi- cal problems. These are quantifi able safety and liability issues. You end the book by comparing the rise of driverless The government needs to determine the minimum level of technology to a new stage of human evolution. Will it safety that an autonomous car needs to exhibit before it can really be that signifi cant? drive freely. We think that level is four hundred thousand Some evolutionary biologists believe that vision was an acceler- miles between collisions. That’s twice as good as a human, on ating force of evolution and natural selection. The “light-switch average. But I really don’t understand why this is taking so theory” suggests that once changes in the atmosphere allowed long. I think this is a fairly simple proposition, and meanwhile more light to reach the earth, and we developed light-sensi- people are dying. tive eyes in response, the ability to see enabled a lot of other new technologies, including camoufl age, running quickly, and Just how big are the safety benefi ts of driverless cars? predation. Once you can see, you have to create a model of your Do you know how many people in the world die every week world, and you need a bigger brain. It all unfolds from there. because of cars? Twenty-eight thousand. That’s a Hiroshima- That’s exactly the case with deep learning. The ability to see scale disaster every month. For people between the ages of and perceive is not just another item on the laundry list of things fi fteen and twenty-nine, automobile accidents are the num- you need to make a robot. It is the pivotal piece that sparks ber-one killer. And yet we don’t talk about it. We accept it. We everything. This is why it was an infl ection point in biology, can have silly debates about the ethical dilemmas of driverless and I believe it’s going to be the infl ection point in autonomous cars, which discuss who the car should save in the event that it vehicles and robotics. can’t avoid a fatal crash. But for every week we delay, another We’ve been dreaming about this moment for decades, centu- twenty-eight thousand people die. ries, millennia perhaps. Finally it has arrived.

42 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

3.16_BigIdea_FINAL.indd 42 8/5/16 10:16 AM By investing in Columbia students, I feel like I’m giving to the world.”

—MILAGRO RUIZ ’84GS

MOREPLAN NOW TO MAKE POSSIBLE

Milagro Ruiz started taking classes at Columbia while working as a secretary at Low Library. She eventually earned a Newcombe Scholarship, allowing her to attend full time. Now she’s paying that generosity forward with a gift to the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation Scholarship Fund at the School of General Studies, helping returning and nontraditional students earn their own Columbia education.

What opportunities will you create? Call the Office of Gift Planning at 800-338-3294 or email us at [email protected] to learn about custom giving solutions that let you invest in the future while honoring those who have meant the most to you.

giving.columbia.edu/PlanNow2016 • 800-338-3294 • [email protected]

CU_3.16_Page43.indd 43 8/8/16 11:22 AM EXPLORATIONS

FRONTIERS OF RESEARCH AND A shark in the dark DISCOVERY

or the past two years, a team of “The catsharks can see other colors, too, but marine biologists co-led by Columbia not as vividly,” says Sparks, who is a curator of adjunct professor John Sparks has ichthyology at the museum and who is affi li- been searching the world’s oceans ated with Columbia’s Department of Ecology, Ffor creatures that glow in the dark. Evolution, and Environmental Biology. Their work has revealed that biofl uorescence Conversely, he suspects that other fi sh can is much more common than previously rec- see the catsharks’ neon-green glow, but not as ognized. To date, Sparks and his colleagues well as fellow catsharks can see it. have identifi ed nearly two hundred species of Over the years, biologists have off ered eels, sharks, stingrays, scorpionfi sh, and other many hypotheses to explain why some fi sh deep-sea organisms whose skin can absorb may have evolved an ability to see their own faint amounts of light, transform it, and then colors; they say it could help them identify emit it in brighter colors — typically neon mates, follow each other when traveling reds, yellows, oranges, greens, or pinks. in schools, or avoid accidentally attacking Now Sparks and his team members, several one another. Sparks and his colleagues, by of whom are affi liated with the American observing the social behaviors of catsharks Museum of Natural History, have found the through the lens of their special camera, are strongest evidence yet in support of a popular now exploring these and other possibilities. theory among marine biologists: that fi sh use “A major challenge in studying biofl uo- biofl uorescence to communicate with mem- rescent fi sh is that they tend to live in deep bers of their own species. In a series of exper- waters that are quite dark, and to glow in iments using a special camera modeled on colors that are outside the spectrum of light COURTESY OF JOHN SPARKS the eye of a catshark — a small shark whose that is visible to the human eye,” says Sparks. optical anatomy they investigated in pains- “That’s made it very diffi cult to observe them taking detail — the scientists have shown in the wild. But now, for the fi rst time, we that the fi sh are uniquely adept at seeing the can go down there and experience the world neon-green light that other catsharks radiate. through their eyes.”

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3.16_Explorations_FINAL.indd 44 8/11/16 3:03 PM Education: the great unifi er? Beneath mericans today are more ideologically divid- Bangladesh, ed than at any point in the past sixty years. Indeed, numerous studies have shown that a tectonic the attitudes of Democrats and Republicans Atoward environmental protection, gun con- time bomb trol, abortion, gay rights, capital punishment, immigration, the treatment of minorities, and many other issues are only growing further apart. A forthcoming paper by Columbia political scientist Robert Y. Shapiro, however, suggests that there is at least one signifi cant exception to this trend: Americans’ views on primary and secondary education. Over the past decade or so, Shapiro fi nds, Democrats’ and Republicans’ opinions on a wide range of education- policy issues have actually been converging. In surveys, large majorities of Americans in both parties now con- he earthquake buildup of pressure, and if sistently say that public schools deserve more money, will come. No one that pressure is released all that standardized testing should determine student can say when. But at once, the scientists warn, promotion and graduation, and that teachers should be scientists warn that it will cause an earthquake of easier to fi re if they don’t perform. Furthermore, debates it could be huge. incredible intensity. on contentious aspects of education policy do not T And in Bangladesh, a coun- “It’s hard to say exactly necessarily break down along party lines. Roughly equal try so densely populated and how bad it could be, because numbers of Democrats and Republicans, for example, ill-prepared, the death toll we don’t know how long the support government voucher programs that let families could be unprecedented. tension has been building,” send their children to private schools. The scientists, led by says Steckler, a research pro- “Our public dialogue about education policy stands Columbia geophysicist fessor at Columbia’s Lamont- out as perhaps the most glaring exception to the Michael Steckler ’81GSAS, Doherty Earth Observatory. stunning ideological divisiveness that Americans have been monitoring the “But we know there hasn’t display on almost all other major policy issues,” ground in Bangladesh for been a signifi cant earthquake says Shapiro, who examined several decades’ more than a decade. Their in Bangladesh for at least worth of public-opinion surveys with the help work began in 2003, when four hundred years, which is as far back as historical of PhD students Anja Kilibarda and Oliver they set up several GPS instruments around the records go in this area. So it’s McClellan and undergraduate researcher Sofi country. By analyzing tiny been building up for at least Sinozich ’16CC. changes in the distances that long.” There are some aspects of education between these fi xed instru- In a recent issue of Nature policy that still divide Americans in predict- ments and others installed Geoscience, Steckler and his able ways. Most Republicans say that public in neighboring countries, colleagues predict that if schools ought to teach creationism — a Steckler and his colleagues the tectonic plates that are position that few Democrats hold. Demo- have determined that the colliding beneath Bangla- crats, meanwhile, are more likely to support ground upon which Bangla- desh were to dislodge and education initiatives that are designed desh rests is moving north- slip past each other in one explicitly to benefi t poor or minority children. eastward at a rate of about momentous disturbance, the Still, survey after survey indicates that two inches per year, ram- resulting earthquake would Americans from across the political spec- ming into another section likely register between 8.2 trum believe that improving schools should of the earth’s crust beneath and 9.0 on the Richter scale.

BRIAN STAUFFER C/O THEISPOT.COM C/O BRIAN STAUFFER be a national priority. Myanmar. This is causing a If the earthquake were on the

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3.16_Explorations_FINAL.indd 45 8/11/16 3:03 PM EXPLORATIONS

higher end of this range, it would be among the largest ever measured. A mystery of the infant Steckler and his coauthors are not predicting that an event of such brain, revealed magnitude is imminent in Bangla- desh; they say it could be hundreds team of researchers led by Columbia biomedical engineer Elizabeth Hillman of years before a large earthquake has discovered that the infant brain has a surprising ability to endure occurs. Nor can they predict what fl uctuations in its oxygen supply — a fi nding that could enable physicians to point along the approximately 150- more fully interpret fMRI brain scans of children as young as one or two and mile tectonic boundary is likely to be the epicenter. But the potential Again insights into autism and ADHD. for calamity is immense, they say, as Since the 1990s, fMRI scans, which identify spikes in brain activity by revealing the fault appears to extend beneath patterns of blood fl ow, have been used routinely by clinicians to assess the effects of an area that is home to some 140 strokes and traumatic brain injuries. In recent years, the technology has even shown million people. The danger zone promise in diagnosing conditions such as depression and Alzheimer’s. Researchers who includes the country’s fast-growing have performed fMRI scans on capital of Dhaka, where no building very young children, however, codes existed before 1993 and have tended to get odd results. where shoddy new construction Often, the tests will indicate projects continue to fl out regu- that only small amounts of lations. To make matters worse, blood are fl owing to sections some of the ground surface in and of a child’s brain that, based around Dhaka is unstable, consist- on his or her mental activity at ing of several centuries’ worth of the time, should require lots of soil deposited by the Ganges and oxygen-rich blood to fuel their Brahmaputra Rivers. During an operation. earthquake, Steckler warns, the Hillman’s latest research loose sediment could exacerbate the provides an explanation for shaking. that phenomenon. In a recent “Dhaka is basically a city built on study, her team demonstrated a bowl of Jell-O,” he says. that neurons in the brains of In hopes of mitigating that infant mice do not trigger an danger, Steckler and his colleagues, increase in the fl ow of blood who include Lamont-Doherty’s when fi ring. Hillman, who is Leonardo Seeber ’64SEAS, Jona- also a principal investigator than Gale ’14GSAS, and Michael in the Zuckerman Mind Brain Howe ’16GSAS, as well as research- Blood vessels in Behavior Institute, hypothesizes that this may be an adaptive trait that helps babies ers from Singapore’s Nanyang Tech- the brain, survive the extraordinary transition they make out of the womb. nological University and the City captured by “All sorts of things can interrupt a baby’s oxygen fl ow during birth, including the University of New York, are work- Elizabeth Hillman. violent squeezing of its body as it comes through the birth canal,” she says. “It makes ing with Bangladeshi colleagues to educate policymakers and mem- sense that the brain would be prepared to go without oxygen for a little while.” bers of the public about the need Researchers in Hillman’s lab are now preparing to investigate whether the human for more stringent enforcement of infant brain behaves similarly to the mouse brain. They are also studying how the brain’s building codes and other prepared- blood vessels grow in response to the oxygen demands of various parts of the organ. ness measures. The results of this work, they hope, will enable scientists to develop reliable guidelines

“If the big one comes, there’s going for interpreting fMRI scans of young children. COURTESYHILLMAN OF ELIZABETH to be massive death and destruc- “To date, most research on the developing brain has focused on how neuronal circuits tion,” says Steckler. “But if buildings take shape,” says Hillman, whose latest paper, written with former PhD student Mariel are designed to withstand earth- Kozberg ’15GSAS, ’16PS, appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience. “But we believe that quakes and emergency-response it’s crucial to understand how the brain’s vascular system assembles in tandem with plans are developed for this type of neuronal networks. Recognizing when the brain’s vascular system isn’t developing prop- disaster, many lives could be saved.” erly could give us insights into conditions which today truly mystify us.”

46 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

3.16_Explorations_FINAL.indd 46 8/11/16 3:04 PM Carbon-injection site, Hengill, Iceland.

New method for storing CO2 is rock-solid

any scientists the fi zzy solution deep under- certain rocks that are rich in a visible layer of carbonate believe that ground, into holes bored in a metals like iron, calcium, and to form. But Stute and his in order to common rock called basalt. magnesium. Evidence of this colleagues hypothesized that

limit global “When the CO2 solution natural process can be seen they could accelerate the warming, we came in contact with the rock, in some parts of the world process by mixing the CO M 2 must fi nd a way to capture a chemical reaction took place where freshwater springs with just the right amount the carbon dioxide generated that turned the carbon in the containing trace amounts of water and then exposing

by power plants before it CO2 into a white, crumbly of CO2 fl ow over metal-rich it to exceptionally metallic enters the atmosphere. To substance,” says Martin Stute, rocks such as basalt or peri- rock. The ideal rock to use, date, however, any attempts a Columbia hydrologist who dotite: the rocks, after years they decided, was basalt,

to store waste CO2 have met is among the leaders of the of chemically reacting with which begins as magma deep with limited success. Propos- within the earth’s mantle als that call for pumping it Scientists and is periodically pushed inspect into abandoned wells or deep a freshly up to the surface by earth- underground caverns, for retrieved core quakes or volcanic eruptions. example, have stalled, since of solidifi ed Iceland, which rests almost carbon. no one is sure that the gas entirely on volcanic rock, is won’t eventually leak back 90 percent basalt. into the air. In 2012, after fi ne-tuning To address this concern, their technique in a labo- a team of scientists from ratory, the scientists joined Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty forces with engineers at Ice- Earth Observatory and sev- land’s Hellisheiði geother- eral other institutions have mal power plant to begin

developed what they say is the pumping the facility’s CO2 safest, most reliable method emissions into the basalt for storing large quantities of beneath its property on

CO2: turning it into stone. In the outskirts of Reykjavík.

a paper in the June 10 issue research team. “It’s got a the CO2, will accumulate (Geothermal facilities, while of Science, they describe how consistency like salt. And it’s seashell-smooth, creamy- relatively clean sources of engineers at a major power chemically stable — the only white carbonate crusts. electricity, do emit some car- plant in Iceland recently way it would convert back Until recently, however, bon dioxide, because in the employed their technique to into a gas is if you poured acid geologists assumed that this process of capturing steam

convert large quantities of CO2 on it.” process occurred too slowly from underground volcanic into a mineral that resem- Scientists have long to be of any use in sequester- chambers, they also suck

bles limestone. All that was known that CO2 will turn ing waste CO2. They thought up CO2 and other gases.)

required was mixing the CO2 into a solid mineral called it would take hundreds or The speed with which the

TOP: MARTIN STUTE; BOTTOM: KEVIN KRAJICK KEVIN BOTTOM: STUTE; MARTIN TOP: with water and then injecting carbonate when it touches even thousands of years for chemical reaction occurred

COLUMBIA FALL 2016 47

3.16_Explorations_FINAL.indd 47 8/11/16 3:04 PM EXPLORATIONS

surprised everybody involved. “We’d originally IISS ANYBODYANYBODY Cambodia’s anticipated that turning a sizeable amount of CO into 2 OOUTUT THERE?THERE? orphanages carbonate might take ten or twelve years,” says Stute, LLet’set’s dodo thethe mathmath are packed who is a professor of earth and environmental sciences. — but not “But we converted 250 tons in just two years.” with orphans Based on this initial suc- cess, in 2014 the Hellisheiði

facility started injecting CO2 he developing world at the rate of fi ve thousand has no shortage of tons per year. The min- orphanages. Many eralization has since kept of the children who pace, prompting the plant’s Tlive in them, how- operators to announce that ever, have been placed there they will soon double the by parents who cannot aff ord injection rate. to feed, clothe, or educate hat are the chances of life existing on While converting CO2 into them. Child-welfare experts stone appears to be a safe another planet? say that this trend has been way of sequestering carbon Complete the equation below and exacerbated by some govern- emissions, it is not cheap. you may have your answer. Created by ments and international aid It currently costs the plant WColumbia astronomer Caleb Scharf agencies, which have built about thirty dollars to solid- and University of Glasgow chemist Lee Cronin, the more orphanages rather than equation basically states that the odds of life emerging ify a single ton of CO2, and implementing social-welfare fossil fuel–burning plants (abiogenesis) on any given planet are directly tied to the programs that could enable

would likely face a much variety of its chemical elements (Nb) and the total quan- poor people to provide for

higher cost, since separating tity of its atoms and molecules at any given time (fc). In their own children. other words, the richer a planet’s chemical soup and the out the CO2 from their sooty One country that has exhaust is more diffi cult than larger the pot, the better the chances of living organisms. declared its intention to drawing it out of the steam break this cycle, Cambodia, that propels the turbines at 1 recently invited researchers geothermal plants. Neverthe- ➳Nabiogenesis (t)➴=Nb • • fc • Pa from Columbia’s Mailman less, Stute and his colleagues School of Public Health to say that if cap-and-trade • t investigate the scope of the agreements and other poli- The idea that a chemically diverse environment is problem within its borders. cies that aim to attach a cost most likely to spawn life is not a new one, but Scharf and The researchers, led by Cronin hope that by expressing this premise in an elegant to CO2 emissions become Lindsay Stark ’10PH, an more common in the future, equation, they will inspire debate among scientists associate professor of pop- and perhaps new research into the potential fertility of turning CO2 into stone could ulation and family health, become fi nancially attractive distant planets. spent several weeks in Cam- to increasing numbers of “Within a few years, we should have telescopes power- bodia last year overseeing power plants. ful enough to help us infer the chemical compositions of dozens of local social scien- “We believe that our planets orbiting distant stars,” says Scharf, who describes tists who fanned out across approach could be used at the equation in more detail in the July 19 issue of the the country to conduct the BRIAN STAUFFER C/O THEISPOT.COM any plant located near a large Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “If we fi rst-ever comprehensive amount of basalt,” says Stute. put our minds to it, we may even be able to detect the census of children in its or- “It opens up a world of pos- presence of large amounts of oxygen or carbon dioxide phanages. They discovered in their atmospheres, which could be signs of meta- sibilities for a CO2 sequestra- that nearly 1 percent of the tion strategy that until now bolic processes occurring on their surfaces. We want to nation’s youths, or approxi- wasn’t taken seriously.” encourage these types of investigations.” mately 49,000 Cambodians

48 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

33.16_Explorations_FINAL.indd.16_Explorations_FINAL.indd 4488 88/11/16/11/16 33:05:05 PPMM aged seventeen or younger, lies the hidden cost of this STUDY HALL Beyond the currently live in orphanages trend: even teenagers who RESEARCH BRIEFS headlines Viral news — although just one in fi ve emerge from orphanag- stories may be widely shared, but they’re not neces- of these children appears to es appearing healthy and sarily widely read. When researchers from Columbia’s be parentless. well-educated are likely to Data Science Institute and the French computer- “This confi rmed a lot of suff er emotional and eco- science institute Inria monitored news headlines anecdotal evidence that we’ve nomic consequences their shared on Twitter, crosschecking them with click data gathered in the past,” says entire lives. from link-management service Bitly, they found that Stark. “The sheer scope of the “Children in orphanages 59 percent of the time, users who shared news links problem, though, stunned us.” aren’t assigned individual never actually clicked on the link to read the story. The Cambodian ministry caregivers, and they see a of planning, in a report it lot of turnover among the Bail backlash Columbia economics doctoral student released with Stark and Mail- staff and volunteers, so they Christopher Hansman, Columbia alumnus Arpit Gupta man doctoral student Beth grow up without the secure ’16BUS, and Maryland public defender Ethan French- Rubenstein this spring, an- and stable relationships that man have published a study on the effects of cash bail nounced that it is committed most kids enjoy,” says Stark. and pretrial detention. They found that when a court imposes bail, it increases a defendant’s likelihood of to reducing the numbers of She points out that adults conviction by 12 percent and raises the likelihood that children living in orphanages who did not have secure he or she will commit another crime by 6 to 9 percent. over the next three years by Among the probable contributing factors, say the expanding social-welfare ser- study’s authors, is that defendants who cannot afford vices for its poorest families. bail may feel additional pressure to take a plea deal. The ministry expects that the Columbia research, which Note to Beijing A study on the health effects of was funded by the US Agency London’s Great Smog of 1952, a toxic fog that choked for International Develop- the city for fi ve days, sheds new light on the long- ment (USAID), will help term impact of severe air pollution. Researchers from generate the political will to Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, UC San tackle the problem, while also Diego, and UMass Amherst found that babies who were providing a benchmark to attachments in childhood A researcher exposed to the smog in their fi rst year of life were interviews measure future progress. tend to have higher rates of 20 percent more likely to develop childhood asthma a child who and 9.5 percent more likely to suffer asthma as an adult. According to Stark, previ- mental-health problems such lives in an ous research has shown that as depression and anxiety. orphanage outside More classes, less debt According to an analysis of desperately poor parents in Over the next few years, Phnom Tennessee data by the Community College Research developing countries are less Stark and her colleagues Penh, Center at Columbia’s Teachers College, college Cambodia. likely to place their children will help monitor the eff ec- students who are encouraged to take a fuller course in orphanages if they have tiveness of new government load in their fi rst semester are not only more likely to access to emergency benefi ts initiatives in Cambodia that graduate, but they complete their degrees faster and such as food assistance or aim to keep families intact. pay 9 to 19 percent less for their college education. cash stipends. Parents who Meanwhile, the Columbia lack access to such benefi ts, researchers are planning The conscious commute Hate your morning she says, may be forced to to conduct similar studies commute? Use that time wisely, and it could be good put their children to work at in nations throughout Asia for your career. According to research led by Columbia a young age — a predicament and Africa. Business School doctoral student Jon Jachimowicz, that makes placing them “For too long, building people who focus on their long- and short-term pro- in an orphanage, with its orphanages in developing fessional goals while commuting feel less emotionally exhausted and more satisfi ed at work. promise of regular meals and countries has been seen as an a full education, a tempting, alternative to providing cit- Epilepsy, suicide link Using data from the US if painful, option. izens an adequate social safe- National Violent Death Reporting System, researchers However, Stark says that ty net,” she says. “The fi rst at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and no orphanage can give step in reversing this trend is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discov- children the emotional measuring it statistically, so ered that suicide rates are 22 percent higher for people security that a loving family we know the magnitude of with epilepsy.

LINDSAY STARK LINDSAY does. And therein, she says, the problem in each country.” — Lauren Savage

COLUMBIA FALL 2016 49

33.16_Explorations_FINAL.indd.16_Explorations_FINAL.indd 4499 88/11/16/11/16 33:05:05 PPMM NETWORK

YOUR ALUMNI CONNECTION

Leave Th em Laughing

“I’m not hey say a spoonful in every show when people Farsad is intimately familiar “ of sugar makes realize that I’m diff erent. with being treated diff erently. interested in the medicine That’s what I’m after.” Growing up, she felt like the preaching go down,” says Farsad is what she likes to only Muslim kid in Palm to the choir. Tcomedian Negin call a “social-justice come- Springs, California (“one of Farsad ’02GSAS, ’04SIPA. dian,” which means that she the top fi ve gay cities and I’m interested “For me, the medicine is wants to start a larger conver- one of the top fi ve retirement in changing challenging stereotypes. And sation about social issues, but communities — so it’s basi- the sugar is a really sophisti- in a way that “doesn’t feel like cally people listening to Lady minds.” cated poop joke.” an afterschool special.” This Gaga while adjusting their Farsad admits that scat- dialogue takes many forms: in catheters”). After studying ological humor is the last addition to performing stand- theater at Cornell, she wanted thing that people expect up, she is a fi lmmaker, a TED to explore the sense of oth- from her — a relentlessly fellow, and, most recently, the erness that she experienced cheerful, Iranian-American, author of a memoir, How to as an ethnic minority, so she Muslim comedian with Make White People Laugh. enrolled at Columbia for a two master’s degrees. But “If you’re trying to take on master’s in African-American she thinks that means she’s the dominant culture about studies. “I knew that the Black doing something right. how they treat outsiders, you struggle wasn’t my struggle, “There’s always an assump- have to speak to that culture but I wanted to fi ght it any- tion that I’m going to be directly,” Farsad says. “I’m way. It felt Iranian-adjacent,”

clean or safe, because I’m an not interested in preaching she says. RYAN LASH ethnic woman,” she says. “So to the choir. I’m interested in But in the post-9/11 world, there’s a particular moment changing minds.” the rhetoric around Muslims

50 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

3.16_Network_FINAL.indd 50 8/11/16 3:06 PM STARTUP SPOTLIGHT in America was changing, dangerously. “I thought, how 5 Alumni TED Talks could people associate this Signs of kind of violence with a whole You Might Have Missed religion and an entire region Life — that’s just crazy. That’s MARY BASSETT ’79PS like stereotyping 1.6 billion “Why your doctor should care about social hen Sona people. Who does that? justice” February 2016, TEDMED Shah Americans.” ’16SEAS New York City health commissioner, Columbia Farsad was particularly and Teresa epidemiology professor, and health activist frustrated with the lack of Cauvel Mary Bassett thinks there’s one thing to blame for W Muslims in pop culture. The ’16SEAS entered Colum- the lack of equitable health care in the US: institutional less visible Muslims were, bia’s master’s program in racism. Here she explains why health-care professionals she felt, the more feared and biomedical engineering, in have a moral obligation to change the system. misunderstood they became. 2014, the infant mortality After leaving a public-policy rate in Uganda was approx- job in 2008, she organized JOEL PUTNAM ’15SIPA imately thirty-nine per one a group of fellow Muslim “How to crowdsource your laws” thousand births. (The US comics to tour the country. July 2014, TEDx rate, by contrast, is about (Film from the tour became As this election season shows, the Internet has six per thousand.) It was Farsad’s 2013 documentary changed politics. But what if it could change not surprising, then, that of The Muslims Are Coming!) policies? With the help of the Internet, communica- the pressing global-health Now, Farsad also hosts tion consultant Joel Putnam suggests that it’s possible to challenges identifi ed in a podcast called Fake the bypass elected offi cials altogether and allow citizens to their biodesign class, new- Nation, a political roundta- vote on specifi c policy proposals. born mortality was near ble with a rotating cast of co- the top. medians. And she stars in the Within two years, Shah CANDY CHANG ’07GSAPP new movie 3rd Street Black- and Cauvel would respond “Before I die I want to . . .” out, a romantic comedy that to that particular challenge July 2012, TEDGlobal takes place in the aftermath with Neopenda, a startup of Hurricane Sandy. “That Artist and urban planner Candy Chang turned an that has created a wearable one isn’t so political,” Farsad abandoned house in her New Orleans neighbor- monitor that can measure says. “Though when you’re hood into a giant chalkboard and asked her neigh- a newborn’s vital signs and Iranian, people seem to think bors to answer a fi ll-in-the-blank question: “Before I die, help more of those at-risk everything is political.” I want to . . .” The answers became a beautiful testament babies survive. Some of the reactions to to the vitality of the community. “What we found is that Farsad’s work have been hospitals in developing heartbreaking: “I’ve heard CAMERON RUSSELL ’12GS countries are so under- every racist, sexist, hate- “Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, I’m a staff ed and ill-equipped that fi lled slur you can imagine.” model” October 2012, TEDx a single nurse can take care She’s also had pushback of twenty, thirty, even fi fty “I’m on this stage because I’m a pretty, white from some fellow Muslims, babies at the same time,” woman,” model Cameron Russell admits in this who have objected to her says Shah. candid talk about privilege and the complicated unorthodox methods. But The low-powered device, ways that society rewards beauty. she says that there are which is integrated into a certainly enough positive hat, sends vital signs wire- reactions to keep propelling MIKE MASSIMINO ’84SEAS lessly to a tablet computer her forward. “Spacefl ight” November 2012, TEDx in a newborn unit, allowing “I always think about the All kids want to go to space when they grow up. nurses and doctors to moni- ex-Marine who had been Mike Massimino actually did it. Here the former tor up to twenty-four babies stationed in Afghanistan,” NASA astronaut, Columbia engineering professor, at once and to quickly fi gure she says. “He came in angry and author of the forthcoming memoir Spaceman out which ones need help.

MIKE MASSIMINO: JANE NISSELSON / COLUMBIA ENGINEERING / COLUMBIA NISSELSON JANE MIKE MASSIMINO: and left laughing.” explains how “rethinking normal” made it happen.

COLUMBIA FALL 2016 51

33.16_Network_FINAL.indd.16_Network_FINAL.indd 5511 88/11/16/11/16 33:06:06 PPMM Teresa Cauvel and Sona NETWORK Shah

“What excites me the most is studies on newborns: one at that it’s a pretty simple solu- Columbia University Medical tion to a huge problem,” says Center’s Morgan Stanley Chil- Cauvel. “The basic technology dren’s Hospital in New York, has been around for a long and one at a private hospital time, but we reengineered it in Uganda. for this application.” Next on the to-do list: Neopenda took off when perfecting the industrial de- Shah and Cauvel won third sign by making the monitor place in the global technolo- smaller, and fi nding a manu- gy category at the Columbia facturing partner. Shah and Venture Competition, a Cauvel hope to start selling university-wide entrepre- write a business plan and the devices to hospitals in neurship contest. They spent develop their technology (it Uganda, at a projected cost their $10,000 prize on a also comes with $50,000 in of fi fty dollars each, by early fact-fi nding trip to Uganda, seed money). 2018. And the tech entre- where they are focusing their Earlier this year, Shah and net of Everything Innovation preneurs are determined to pilot studies. Then, in the Cauvel launched a Kickstarter Challenge and the $300,000 expand Neopenda’s reach fall of 2015, Shah and Cauvel campaign for Neopenda, rais- top prize in the Vodafone to other countries where participated in a fi ve-month ing an additional $41,000. Wireless Innovation Project. infants are at risk. “We feel startup accelerator program, They also won $100,000 and They will use some of that like babies’ lives are in our which helps entrepreneurs fi rst place in the Cisco Inter- money to fund their fi rst hands,” says Shah. Televisionaries

Several Columbians in the television industry received Emmy nominations this year. The Netfl ix series Making a Murderer, which was created, written, and directed by Laura Ricciardi ’07SOA and Moira Demos ’96CC, ’08SOA, was nominat- ed in six categories, including outstand- ing documentary or nonfi ction program. Ricciardi and Demos have just announced that they will release a second season of the popular show. The Netfl ix political drama House

of Cards, created by Beau Willimon ® ’99CC, ’03SOA was nominated for outstanding drama series, as well as several acting and Happpy Hoouur daiilyy untn il 7pm. technical awards. 1100% ddiscoouunt for allll Colummbia sttuddenntts, Roots, the History Channel re- make of the 1977 miniseries based sttaffff, annd allummnni. on Alex Haley’s novel, was nominated for outstanding limit- ed series. It was codirected by Mario van Peebles ’78CC. SSoouutth HaHarllemem (SoS HaH ) Greenwich Village Kate McKinnon ’06CC is up for outstanding 111353 Amsmsterdama Avenun e 26 West 8th Street supporting actress in a comedy for her work on NBC’s © ATAS / NATAZ coc rnner of 116t6 h Sttrereete 646.678.5263 Saturday Night Live. McKinnon, who is known for her 919177..675.5 6883535 impressions of Hillary Clinton, also starred in this summer’s all-female remake of the 1984 fi lm Ghostbusters.

52 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

33.16_Network_FINAL.indd.16_Network_FINAL.indd 5522 88/11/16/11/16 33:07:07 PPMM NEWSMAKERS ● The Carnegie Corporation honored Deogratias Niyizonkiza ’01GS as a part of an initiative called Great Immigrants: The Pride of America. Niyizonkiza came to the United States as refugee from war-torn Burundi and later Hungry founded a medical clinic and public-health cen- ter in his native village. (For more on Niyizonki- za’s work, see Columbia Magazine’s Summer for more? 2014 cover story, “The Road to Kigutu.”)

● Two Columbia baseball players signed with teams in the 2016 MLB draft. Pitcher George Thanopoulos ’16CC, who turned down an off er from the New York Mets a year ago to fi nish his Columbia degree, joined the Colorado Rockies organization. Second baseman Will Savage, who just fi nished his junior year at Columbia College, was selected by the Detroit Tigers in the sixteenth round.

● Brandon Victor Dixon ’07CC has been cast in the Broadway musical Hamilton, taking over the role of Aaron Burr from Leslie Odom Jr. Dixon has been nominated for two Tony Awards in acting. He also produced the 2014 Broadway debut of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which won the Tony for best musical revival.

● The short-term apartment-rental site Airbnb hired former US attorney general Eric Holder ’73CC, ’76LAW to create its new anti-discrim- ination policy. The company has recently been under fi re after a Harvard University study and other reports found bias against Black and LGBTQ guests.

● Clara Roquet ’16SOA won the 2016 BAFTA US Student Film Award for her short fi lm El Adiós. Roquet wrote and directed the fi lm as Download the a part of her Columbia coursework; it beat out 244 other submissions for the award. Columbia Magazine app. ● New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ’87SIPA named Sree Sreenivasan ’93JRN as the city’s chief digital offi cer. In his new role, Sreenivasan will focus on reaching out to the city’s tech community and promoting civic engagement through technology. He previously held the same title at the Metropolitan Museum of Art /ColumbiaMag @columbiamag and, before that, at Columbia University. magazine.columbia.edu Find and connect with all your classmates at alumni.columbia.edu

33.16_Network_FINAL.indd.16_Network_FINAL.indd 5533 88/11/16/11/16 33:07:07 PPMM BULLETIN

UNIVERSITY Jameel Jaffer NEWS AND VIEWS

FIRST AMENDMENT INSTITUTE ESTABLISHED AT COLUMBIA

“The First his spring, the John S. creation of the Knight Insti- Security Agency, the denial Tand James L. Knight tute. “In the past, news orga- of visas to foreign scholars Amendment Foundation and Columbia nizations pursued and won based on their political is not self- University announced a $60 key court cases defi ning free views, and the sealing of million initiative to promote expression. But such cases judicial opinions issued by executing; only freedom of speech and of can be enormously expensive, the Foreign Intelligence people can the press in the digital age. and many media — both Surveillance Court. make it what The Knight First Amend- established and new — are The institute will also ment Institute at Columbia increasingly hard-pressed fund research, fellowships, it has become, University, an independent in the current economic publications, and lectures through our nonprofi t funded equally by environment to support First aimed at educating the legal the foundation and Colum- Amendment legal action.” community about how First attitudes, bia, seeks to preserve and The Knight Institute will Amendment principles ought actions, and advance First Amendment be directed by Jameel Jaff er, to apply to new technologies. rights through research and previously the deputy legal “I am excited about this the courts.” education and by supporting director of the American opportunity to build an litigation that news organi- Civil Liberties Union. Jaff er, organization dedicated to a zations may fi nd too costly to who was at the ACLU for mission that’s so essential pursue alone. fi fteen years, has litigated in a free society,” says Jaff er. “The First Amendment some of the most signifi cant “Columbia and the Knight is not self-executing; only post-9/11 cases relating to Foundation have made an people can make it what national security and civil extraordinary commitment it has become, through liberties. These include con- to protecting and expand-

our attitudes, actions, and, stitutional challenges to gag ing freedom of expres- SHAUL SCHWARTZ more pointedly, through the orders imposed under the sion and of the press in a courts,” said President Lee C. USA Patriot Act, surveillance constantly changing digital Bollinger in announcing the conducted by the National environment.”

54 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

3.16_Bulletin_FINAL.indd 54 8/9/16 8:37 AM CUMC TO HELP LEAD NATIONAL PRECISION MEDICINE INITIATIVE

he National Institutes of Health recently Tchose Columbia as one of four universities to lead the enrollment of patients in its ambitious new Precision Medicine Initiative. Over the next fi ve years, physicians at Columbia University Medical Center, working with colleagues at New York–Presbyterian, Weill Cornell Medical, and the Harlem Hospital Center, will seek to enroll 150,000 volunteers who are willing to have their genomes analyzed and their health monitored for years to come. These patients will be among some one million Am ericans who are expected to participate in the nationwide Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program, which aims to discover new links between DNA and disease. People who enroll as subjects will be asked to contribute detailed information about their lifestyles and medical histories and share their genomic and other biological information through blood and urine tests. Some participants will be asked to carry The enormous mobile health devices and amount of data to download apps that will be gathered will provide researchers real- time information about enable scientists their levels of physical to identify risk activity and environmental exposure. Researchers say factors for disease. that the enormous amount of data they hope to gather will enable them to identify risk factors for disease and determine which patients may respond best to existing medicines or new targeted therapies. According to a press release issued by the AIMING HIGH IN National Institutes of Health, the Precision Med- MEDICAL EDUCATION icine Initiative, which was announced by Presi- dent Barack Obama ’83CC last year, “is one of the Lauded by Architect Magazine as “one of the most most ambitious research projects in history and will set the foundation for new ways of engaging intelligent, original, and unexpected buildings of the people in research.” decade,” the Roy and Dia na Vagelos Education Center Biomedical informatics experts at CUMC will at Columbia University Medical Center was dedicated also be helping to ensure the quality of data col- lected in other US cities as part of the Precision on June 10. The new medical and graduate education Medicine Initiative Cohort Program. building, a 100,000-square-foot tower designed by The other academic institutions coordinating Diller Scofi dio + Renfro in partnership with Gensler, the fi rst phase of patient recruitment are North- western University, the University of Arizona, and incorporates technologically advanced classrooms,

BRIAN HATTON the University of Pittsburgh. collaboration spaces, and a modern simulation center.

COLUMBIA FALL 2016 55

3.16_Bulletin_FINAL.indd 55 8/9/16 8:44 AM BULLETIN DOUBLE DISCOVERY CENTER RENAMED IN HONOR OF ROGER LEHECKA

olumbia College’s Double CDiscovery Center, which brings low-income high Hands-on schoolers to campus for activities tutoring by Columbia stu- were the dents, was recently renamed focus of the learning fair. in honor of Roger Lehecka ’67CC, ’74GSAS. Lehecka, a former Colum- bia College dean of students and professor, was one of a small group of Columbia and Barnard undergraduates who helped establish the Double Discovery Center, in 1965. Since then, the center has served more than fi fteen CAA HOSTS INAUGURAL ‘STEM DAY’ Roger Lehecka he fi rst-ever Columbia Alumni Association STEM Day, held on June 12 in TLerner Hall, showcased Columbia innovations in science, technology, engi- neering, and math (the STEM fi elds) to more than 350 alumni and their families. Alumni attendees spanned fi fteen schools and seven decades. For many, it was their fi rst time attending a Columbia event since graduation. Participants had the chance to conduct hands-on science experiments and enjoy food, crafts, and a scavenger hunt. Interactive booths about sea levels, hovercraft, neuroscience, and robots were run by faculty, alumni, and current students. For information about upcoming CAA events, visit alumni.columbia.edu.

thousand young people; today 90 percent of partici- pating high-school seniors go COLUMBIA’S DIVERSITY INITIATIVES APPLAUDED on to college. BY INSIGHT MAGAZINE On the occasion of the cen-

ter’s renaming as the Roger LEFT: COURTESY OF CAA; RIGHT: COURTESY OF DOUBLE DISCOVERY CENTER nsight into Diversity, a magazine that Columbia has invested $85 million Lehecka Double Discovery Icovers enrollment and employment in recruiting and retaining underrep- Center — which coincided trends in higher education, has recog- resented faculty across the University with its fi ftieth anniversary nized Columbia for its eff orts to build a in recent years; it has also expanded — an anonymous donor diverse faculty and student body. college access to low-income, fi rst- also pledged $2 million to The magazine named Columbia generation, and historically underrep- support its mission. The gift a 2016 Diversity Champion, noting resented students through its need- will fund renovations to the that the University has for more than blind admissions policies and invest- center’s offi ces and endow a decade sustained “a proactive eff ort ments in fi nancial aid. its Freedom and Citizenship focused on attracting and retaining Insight also named President Lee C. Program, which provides the best and brightest scholars” while Bollinger a recipient of its 2016 Giving local high schoolers an increasing diversity by race, ethnicity, Back Award for fostering an environ- abridged version of Colum- gender, and sexual orientation. ment of inclusion at Columbia. bia’s Core Curriculum.

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3.16_Bulletin_FINAL.indd 56 8/9/16 8:44 AM $10 MILLION GIFT CREATES TWOTIME OLYMPIAN SCOTT DONIE NEW CENTER, PROFESSORSHIP NAMED DIVING COACH FOR TURKISH STUDIES his arrival at Morningside olumbia recently established the Sakıp Heights represents a home- CSabancı Chair and Center for Turkish coming of sorts, since he Studies with a $10 million gift from the fam- practiced here regularly as an ily of the late Turkish businessman. adolescent. The goal of the center is to increase knowl- “From the age of eleven, edge and awareness about Turkey, including I traveled to Columbia to its historical signifi cance and importance in train under the legendary modern global aff airs. The center will support Jim Stillson as a member academic collaboration between scholars from Scott Donie of the nationally acclaimed Columbia and Istanbul’s Sabancı University, Morningside Muggers, one of which was founded by Sakıp Sabancı in 1994. cott Donie, a former Olym- the top club programs in the “Our University community feels a very Spic diver and longtime New country,” he says. “There is a deep connection with Turkey, with its history, York University coach, has long tradition of world-class and with its importance in the modern been hired to lead the Colum- swimmers and divers who world,” says President Lee C. Bollinger. “The bia Lions diving program. have trained on the campus Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies Donie, who won a silver medal of Columbia. I’m deeply hum- will be a leading center of teaching, scholar- for the US at the 1992 games in bled to have been selected to ship, research, and service in this fi eld, one Barcelona and competed again lead the diving program here.” that will investigate contemporary issues in 1996 in Atlanta, comes to Donie succeeds former Lions in a global context. We are honored by the Columbia after sixteen years head diving coach Gordon partnership of the Sabancı family in this coaching at NYU. He was Spencer, who retired last endeavor and deeply appreciative of their named coach of the year of the spring after thirty-two years exceptional gift.” University Athletic Association at Columbia. Under Spencer, Sabancı, who died in 2004, was the presi- conference seventeen times the Lions won nine Ivy League dent of the board of Sabancı Holding, one of while leading both the NYU diving titles, fi ve Eastern Inter- the largest family-owned companies in Turkey. men’s and women’s squads. collegiate championship titles, The son of a cotton trader and textile-factory A native of Somerset, and three Ivy League diver-of- owner, he took over the family business in 1967 New Jersey, Donie says that the-year honors. and with his fi ve brothers built it into a conglomerate with “Our University more than thirty thousand employees. “As his family, we community share his enthusiasm for our feels a deep COLUMBIA JOINS WHITE HOUSE IN country and strive to do good ‘FAIR CHANCE’ INITIATIVE things for Turkish society,” says connection his daughter, Dilek Sabancı. with Turkey.” his summer, Columbia joined with the Obama administration More than 140 students Tand twenty-four other colleges and universities from across the from Turkey currently attend Columbia, repre- country in launching the White House’s Fair Chance Higher Edu- senting one of the highest populations of Turk- cation Pledge — a call to action for all institutions of higher learn- ish college students in the US. In 2011, Istanbul ing to give people with criminal records, i ncluding the formerly joined the eight-city network of Columbia incarcerated, a fair chance to seek education and employment. Global Centers. Columbia has long provided educational and employment op- “For historic and geographic reasons, Turkey portunities to people with criminal records. Last year it extended plays a pivotal role in many global issues,” says this commitment by launching its Justice-in-Education Initiative, David Madigan, executive vice president for which off ers courses in local prisons and helps former inmates Arts and Sciences. “I am therefore very grateful continue their education at Columbia and elsewhere. that we can build on Columbia’s long-standing An estimated seventy million Americans — nearly one in three links with Turkey to propel Columbia to a lead- adults — have a criminal record. Research shows that removing bar-

COURTESY OF GREENWICH POST COURTESY ing position in Turkish studies.” riers to their education reduces recidivism and benefi ts the economy.

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33.16_Bulletin_FINAL.indd.16_Bulletin_FINAL.indd 5577 88/9/16/9/16 88:44:44 AAMM Love for Sale: Pop Music in America BOOKS by David Hajdu (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 320 pages, $27)

hat do we sequential rise of tapes, CDs, were the fi rst to really master talk about and MP3s, Hadju chronicles both singing and composing. when we talk how the creation and con- In 1966, the Kinks and the about pop sumption of music expanded Beach Boys elevated the pop Wmusic? outward from a core of profes- scene yet again with Face to It’s an amorphous cate- sional gatekeepers to become Face and Pet Sounds, which gory that likely vexes more a more democratic, open “demonstrated striking levels than illuminates. As David avenue for creative expression. of intellectual ambition and Hajdu writes in his Ultimately, Hadju proves that musical adventurism.” new book, Love for “what tends to matter . . . is The author saves two of Sale: Pop Music in that pop artists say something the best chapters for last. AAmerica, the term legitimately their own, in their “Punk vs. Disco” — “disco “provides no infor- own manner. There’s some- fed on homosocial optimism mation about the thing beautifully egalitarian and hope; punk, nihilistic music itself: no sug- and almost utopian in this, cynicism and despair” — gestions of how it even when the music is less crackles with the on-the- sounds or what sort than exhilarating.” verge-of-violence energy of of mood it might Embedded within the 1970s New York, and Hadju’s conjure, no indica- roughly chronological history take on hip-hop — which “set tion of the tradition are countless delightful and met aesthetic values of it grows from or nuggets: a vest-pocket history its own choosing — groove defi es, and no hint of the Victrola; a cultural and fl ow, layering, rupture . . . of whether it could and social examination of hip-hop was interested not in be good for dancing, Harlem’s Cotton Club, which assimilation but in sover- solitary listening, or was “elemental to the story of eignty” — is simultaneously for anything else.” American popular music as a astute and passionate. Still, as “a phe- nexus of blackness expressed, Hadju’s scholarly chops are nomenon of vast imagined, demeaned, and on full display in the book, scalescale andand intimate eff ect, a exalted”; and an insightful dis- but lay readers should not be What tends to product of mass culture that cussion of the development of put off . Hadju is a master of matter is that reaches millions of people the blues as an art form: “the distillation and often cleverly (or more) at one time and blues was intricately coded, weaves in personal anecdotes pop artists say works for each person in a with multiple, sometimes to lighten the scholarly tone. something personal way,” it is worth contradictory meanings and In one charming passage, examining. Hajdu is perfectly allusions decipherable only to he off ers his opinions on the legitimately positioned to do so — in the informed.” current music scene, and their own. addition to teaching journal- Hajdu even dispels some particularly, his son’s favor- ism at Columbia, he is the misconceptions about the ites. After all, claims Hajdu, music critic for the Nation mythic Elvis Presley. While “one generation’s rock and and the author of four other “thought of as an alpha roll is, more than anything, related books. In this history source in rock history,” Hajdu a music that veterans of the of popular music, he displays writes, “he was an interpre- preceding generation do not an encyclopedic knowledge of tive artist, a singer of material like, approve of, or grasp.” In a deeply elusive genre. created by a professional class other words, perhaps one way From the fi rst published of composers and lyricists, to defi ne the undefi nable pop song sheets to the develop- rather than a songwriter.” music is this: if your parents ment of blues and jazz, to the In fact, Hajdu argues that hate it, it’s the real thing. songwriters of the 1960s to the Bob Dylan and Joan Baez — Eric Liebetrau

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3.16_Books_FINAL_Revise.indd 58 8/10/16 11:45 AM decades in Egypt, is divided EXCERPT into three sections, set in 1984, 1998, and 2014. In the fi rst Black Hole Blues and Other section, the unnamed narrator Songs from Outer Space is six years old. Her father has recently disappeared, and her By Janna Levin ’88BC A professor of astrophysics at Barnard mother is struggling to keep College and Columbia’s Center for Theoretical Physics, Levin tells the control of her emotions and epic story behind the scientifi c quest to detect gravitational waves. her household. On TV, reruns We see evidence of black holes destroying neighboring stars. We see of Dallas are interspersed

with hagiographic documen- evidence of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, their taries about the late president location, dark and unspectacular, marked by orbiting stars. We see Anwar el-Sadat — at least evidence of black holes powering jets millions of light-years across, visible until the power cuts out each night. All the narrator knows in the farthest galaxies in the observable universe. But we have never is that she misses her father

really seen a black hole, which only adds to the thrill of the prospect of and doesn’t understand why he’s gone, but she won’t get hearing them. answers from her mother, who There must be black holes out there that we can never see. They are spends her days lying on the alone. Or they orbit another black hole. Nothing falls into them. Nothing sofa, talking on the phone in ‘‘ a mixture of Arabic, English, ‘‘shines bright enough, close enough. We cannot make out the shadow, at and French. least not yet. But if the black holes collide we might hear them ring space Fourteen years later, the and time, sending waves in the curves of spacetime through the universe narrator has more empathy for her mother’s apathy; traveling at the speed of light. If the gravitational observatories succeed she feels her own confusion and we just marginally make out the reverberations against the noise, paralyzing her: “It seems that politics is at the foreground we can record the sounds of stars exploding in their fi nal seconds before and background of everything collapse. We can record the sound of imperfections scraping spacetime yet not something that can as neutron stars spin. We can record the sounds of neutron stars colliding, be impacted in any way.” Her cousin Dido, an anarchist, is possibly forming black holes. And we can record the sounds of black the “only person I know who holes colliding to form heavier silent black holes, emitting a billion trillion speaks of changing the coun- trillion trillion watts of power in gravitational waves. try.” She is thinking of making fi lms. She misses her father viscerally — “the sound of his breath as he wound up his wristwatch. How he gestured Chronicle of a Last Summer with his hands as he spoke” — by Yasmine El Rashidi (Crown, 192 pages, $22) but is resigned to never seeing him again. In the fi nal section, the nar- n the summer of 2014, fi ve. If nobody bothered me fi lmmaker in Yasmine El rator is considering switching a young fi lmmaker sets I would have let the camera Rashidi’s novel Chronicle of from fi lm to writing, despite up her camera across the roll all day.” In the United a Last Summer learns, when Dido’s belief that “writing in a street from a vegetable States, the scene would be you live in a country ruled by country like ours [is] an exer- Istand, hoping to capture innocuous. But she is in suppression and misinforma- cise in passivity, a luxurious scenes of everyday life: “The Cairo, still reeling from the tion, even the groceries can musing.” She spends her time better tomatoes on top, the Arab Spring, which escalated be incendiary. in cafes with Dido, debating bad ones hidden underneath. after a Tunisian fruit vendor El Rashidi’s novel, which whether literature can shape One minute, three minutes, set himself on fi re. As the details three tumultuous history. She wanders the city,

COLUMBIA FALL 2016 59

3.16_Books_FINAL_Revise.indd 59 8/10/16 11:45 AM BOOKS

talking about Egyptian music with shop owners. And she Behold the Dreamers drinks coff ee with her father, by Imbolo Mbue (Random House, 400 pages, $28) whose return is marked with little fanfare and no explana- tion. squire magazine recently we could have enough money for a El Rashidi ’99JRN, a jour- asked four American men down payment for a two-bedroom in nalist who grew up in Cairo, with diff erent incomes ($1 Mount Vernon or Yonkers.’” has said that while her novel is million per year, $250,000 But the Jonga family’s story is also not strictly autobiographical, Eper year, $53,000 per year, very much a modern one: they are she wanted to capture “how and $7 per hour) how much money here illegally, and deportation is a we came to be muted in the they would need to have the life they constant threat. Jende tries to navigate way we were, and perhaps wanted. The results were fascinating: the immigration system with the help still are.” We see an example each of the two men of his cousin Winston, whose presence of this lassitude in a long in the lower income in the book underscores how utterly passage describing an after- brackets, without arbitrary the process can be. Jende noon waiting for a doctor’s knowing what the and Winston grew up in identical cir- appointment, while indiff er- others made, said that cumstances in Cameroon, but Winston ent receptionists lazily discuss he would need exactly won the green-card lottery. He came to recipes and eat sandwiches, the income of the America legally, joined the Army, went instead of expediting the man above him. The to college and law school on the GI process. It perfectly captures implication was that Bill, and got a job at a corporate law the ennui, lethargy, and sense their pursuit of the fi rm. With one stroke of luck, Win- of powerlessness that many of American dream had ston became as much a peer of Clark the narrator’s generation expe- left them wanting — Edwards as he was of Jende. Similarly, rience in the face of crushing not for everything, but a baby born in New York to Jende and bureaucracy. Yet we never for just enough to reach the next step. Neni will have rights denied her older learn why, exactly, the narrator This survey is an apt parable for brother, who was born in Cameroon. Is Behold the Dreamers, the stunning she more deserving? Is Winston? debut novel from Imbolo Mbue ’07TC, Mbue — a Cameroonian immigrant which tells, with enormous empathy, whose manuscript caused a sensa- the story of two families in New York tion at the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair, City at the dawn of the 2008 recession. catching the attention of Random Jende Jonga is an immigrant from the House editor and Columbia School of poverty-stricken West African nation the Arts professor David Ebershoff — of Cameroon. A lucky connection gets also beautifully interrogates the idea him a job as the personal chauff eur of America as the promised land. At a to Clark Edwards, an executive at the certain point, Jende and Neni have to soon-to-be-doomed Lehman Brothers. decide if they are willing to fi ght to stay The families become further entwined in America. On the one hand, America when Clark’s wife, Cindy, hires Jende’s represents possibility, whereas in Cam- wife, Neni, as a housekeeper and part- eroon “visions of a better life were the time nanny to their nine-year-old son, birthright of a blessed few.” But daily the ambitiously named Mighty. life in America is a struggle, and Jende has gone to the doctor, which In many ways, the immigrant nar- is homesick for his beloved seaside creates a distancing eff ect. It’s rative is familiar. The Jongas came town, Limbe. In one particularly poi- just one of the myriad omis- to America with nothing and work gnant exchange, Clark tells Jende about sions and elisions that keep tirelessly. Jende regularly puts in four- his own childhood, in a tony Chicago us from really getting to know teen-hour days, and Neni juggles two suburb: “I can’t tell you Evanston’s any- the narrator, undermining jobs and classes at a community col- thing as wonderful as your Limbe.” the power of this otherwise lege. Their ambitions are modest, but It would have been easy for Mbue to vibrant and vital book. clear: “‘We try really hard, we can save draw Clark as what Tom Wolfe would — Jennie Yabroff ’06SOA fi ve thousand dollars a year. Ten years, call a “Master of the Universe,” and his

60 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

3.16_Books_FINAL_Revise.indd 60 8/10/16 11:45 AM READING LIST family as vapid and uncar- New and ing. But she is kind to the noteworthy Edwards family — in her telling, they are fl awed but releases also sympathetic and, as Lehman Brothers falls, even THE DOLLHOUSE vulnerable. Watching them, by Fiona Davis ’00JRN Jende begins to understand For the better part of that the American dream is a the twentieth century, complex ideal, even without the Barbizon Hotel for the obstacles of immigration. Women was a haven for Cindy Edwards didn’t come aspiring Manhattan career from money: she married girls, including Lauren into it, and all the social Bacall, Joan Didion, pressures that came with it. and Sylvia Plath. It’s an Her two sons seem to reject ideal setting for Davis’s the great privilege that was juicy debut novel, which their birthright: Mighty rel- toggles between a myste- ishes the rare evening when rious death at the hotel in he can escape Park Avenue the 1950s and the eff orts of natives, while also suggest- cantata by Johann Sebastian and spend time at Jende a present-day journalist to ing that public schools look Bach. Over two centuries and Neni’s one-bedroom uncover the truth. to the business world for later, that manuscript comes Harlem apartment; his some key strategies: off ering to haunt another woman: older brother, Vince, drops BUSH by Jean Edward competitive salaries, giving Susanna Kessler, the niece out of Columbia Law School Smith ’64GSAS There’s a teachers more autonomy, of an American soldier who to backpack around India. perception that George W. and employing sampling took the score from a Ger- And even Clark Edwards, Bush was a puppet presi- techniques rather than man mansion after World with his corner offi ce, dent, who left his important universal testing to gauge War II. Sara and Susanna summer home, and personal foreign-policy decisions to progress. form the backbone of this chauff eur, was not simply fi gures like Dick Cheney and epic novel, the third from given these things. Born into Donald Rumsfeld. Not so, CRACKING THE CUBE New York Times best-selling the upper middle class, he says presidential biographer by Ian Scheffl er ’12CC author Lauren Belfer. had to earn his position in Jean Edward Smith (he’s Journalist Ian Scheffl er gets the American elite. On the also written about FDR and sucked into the frenetic FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY evening of Lehman Brothers’ Grant). In his controversial world of the Rubik’s Cube by Sam Polk ’01CC In 2014, collapse, Clark tells Jende, new tome, Smith paints and its “speedcubing” circuit. Sam Polk wrote an op-ed for “When I went to Stanford I Bush as faith-driven and As he attempts to break into the New York Times about was going to study physics, hasty and says that he gener- the elite circle of “sub-20” his decision, several years become a professor like my ally acted alone, particularly solvers (that’s under twenty earlier, to walk away from his dad. Then I saw what was in his decision to invade Iraq. seconds!), Scheffl er also tries job as a Wall Street trader possible on a professor’s to fi gure out what makes the after a $3.6 million bonus salary and what was possible EDUCATION AND THE puzzle so appealing, talking made him angry “because on an investment banker’s COMMERCIAL MINDSET to everyone from children to it wasn’t big enough.” His salary and I chose this path.” by Samuel E. Abrams ’89CC, engineering professors to the deeply personal new memoir It’s an insensitive thing to say ’06TC The idea of privatiz- notoriously reclusive Ernő continues the story, delving to Jende, who will never have ing K–12 education has been Rubik himself. into his “wealth addiction” those luxurious options. But gaining traction for the past and how it plunged him it also shows how much the several decades. In his new AND AFTER THE FIRE into depression and anxiety. two men have in common. book, veteran teacher and by Lauren Belfer ’91SOA Since leaving fi nance, Polk Like the men interviewed in school administrator Samuel In 1783, a young musician has founded a nonprofi t Esquire, both are desperately Abrams off ers a thorough named Sara Itzig Levy gets addressing poverty and reaching for what’s next. critique of for-profi t and an unsettling gift from her obesity, and has married and

JEFFREY SAKS — Rebecca Shapiro nonprofi t educational alter- teacher: an anti-Semitic become a father.

COLUMBIA FALL 2016 61

3.16_Books_FINAL_Revise.indd 61 8/10/16 11:46 AM BOOKTALK Th e Klan’s Last Stand Laurence Leamer ’69JRN, ’69SIPA discusses his new book about how Morris Dees, cofounder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, shut down the largest Ku Klux Klan organization in the US after the 1981 lynching of a Black man in Mobile, Alabama

helped incite the lynching of a random broadcasting across the nation. It was Black man, Michael Donald, over the just to a classroom at Columbia! mistrial of a Black defendant accused of killing a white police offi cer. I had CM: Is what you learned about Wallace to do a lot of research to weave those relevant to the 2016 election? three stories together to show how the LL: Yes. Donald Trump and Wallace South was changed and what it took to have many similarities. Wallace was make that happen. a brilliant politician, certainly in his understanding of the white working CM: You’ve written fi fteen books, class, particularly in the South. He including biographies of very disparate knew segregation inevitably would end. people: Johnny Carson, the Kennedys, But he fi gured he could rise to power as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Have you its most militant defender. In the same found any common threads? way, Trump knows he’s not going to Columbia Magazine: Many people LL: Yes, there’s a moral complexity to throw eleven million people out of this have heard of the Southern Poverty all of them. And Morris Dees is the ulti- country and stop Muslims from coming Law Center, but who is Morris Dees? mate example of that. He’d like to think here. But it was a great issue when he Laurence Leamer: Dees is an of himself as Atticus Finch, that saintly was starting out and he didn’t have any Alabama-born white man who made fi ctional character in To Kill a Mocking- traction. They’re similar, too, in liking a fortune in the direct-mail business. bird. But he’s more like Oskar Schindler, to bring crowds to the edge of violence. He grew up in a culture of white the real-life hero of the Spielberg fi lm supremacy and got his start in public who’s a womanizer and greedy guy who CM: You interviewed former Klansmen, life working on a campaign for George ends up saving more than a thousand including some who went to prison for Wallace, the notorious segregationist Jews. People tend to see important the lynching. How did that go? who became Alabama’s governor and fi gures as either saints or devils. Almost LL: It was scary, frankly. I’d go out in ran for president. Dees, who was also no one is one or the other. the countryside and knock on doors, a lawyer, successfully defended a Klans- and most of the time it was the wrong man charged with beating Freedom CM: Your professors at the journalism person. I thought, “Why the hell am I Riders in Montgomery. But step by step school sent you to cover Wallace on the doing this at this age?” but I had to fi nd his views evolved, and he became one night of the 1968 presidential election. these people. To the Klansmen, those of the country’s leading civil-rights liti- How did that come about? were the most exciting days in their gators and a founder of an organization LL: In November of 1967, while I was lives, so they were willing to talk about that has about forty lawyers working on bored to death studying international it after all these years. They knew they human-rights issues in the South. aff airs at the University of Oregon, I weren’t going to get in any more trouble. talked my way onto Wallace’s plane and CM: “The Epic Courtroom Battle” is spent a few days with him. The New CM: How did you get started on Dees? a catchy subtitle, but the lawsuit that Republic published an article I submit- LL: He called me and said, “I’ve got a shut down the United Klans of America ted cold, and then Student magazine project that’s been sitting here all these is just a section of your book. sent me to Alabama. When I came to years. Would you like to do it?” He LL: True — the book is an intricate Columbia the next fall, the professors promised total access to the fi les and story of the history of the civil-rights asked me to do their election-night total control of the writing, and he kept movement through the lives of Dees, radio coverage in Montgomery. I put his word. There are many things in the MEL MARCELO Wallace, and Robert Shelton, the Klan’s my Columbia banner up there with book that would upset a lot of guys. clever and manipulative leader. Shelton ABC and CBS. They thought I was Morris didn’t fl inch. — Fred Strasser

62 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

3.16_Books_FINAL_Revise.indd 62 8/10/16 11:46 AM CLASSIFIEDS

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3.16_Classifieds_FINAL.indd 63 8/9/16 4:24 PM What’s Your Line? FINALS Who hasn’t dreamed of winning the New Yorker caption contest? For eleven years, the weekly feature has captivated legions of armchair wags and cost companies thousands of hours of productivity. Wanting in on the action, we asked New Yorker cartoonist Ben Schwartz ’03CC, ’08PS to draw a cartoon for a Columbia Magazine contest. He did, but could offer no insider tips. “I’ve never entered the New Yorker contest,” Schwartz confi des. “It’s too hard!”

“ ” Send your entry to [email protected] by October 15.

64 COLUMBIA FALL 2016

3.16_FinalPage_Revise.indd 64 8/8/16 2:09 PM LET’S COME TOGETHER TO CHANGE LIVES THAT CHANGE THE WORLD OCTOBER 26

Discover all the new ways you can give through Columbia. Join us on Columbia Giving Day.

GIVINGDAY.COLUMBIA.EDU

Photos clockwise from top left by Joel Jares, Charles Manley, not listed, Lindsey R. Dean & Colleen Deng, Chris Taggart, Joaquim Goes, Eileen Barroso, Lindsey R. Dean & Colleen Deng.

33.16_InsideBackCover_FINAL.indd.16_InsideBackCover_FINAL.indd 1 88/4/16/4/16 33:08:08 PPMM Columbia Alumni Center Non-Profi t Org. 622 W. 113th Street, MC 4521 U.S. Postage COLUMBIA Paid MAGAZINE New York, NY 10025 Columbia Magazine

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a thinking future alum ALUMbrella cap

OUR STORY The CAA Shop was founded and made possible entirely by our alumni. Two alumnae first conceived of the idea for an alumni store, another helped launch the website, and over 3,000 Columbia alumni from across the University hand-picked designs that are now available for purchase in the Shop. Looking forward, the CAA Shop will continue to be a reflection of our 330,000 alumni worldwide, a showcase for alumni passions and ideas, and a celebration of our shared connection to Columbia. Do you have an idea for a design or product? E-mail us at [email protected].

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