9370/Crosscurrents F01 8/21/02 2:22 PM Page a FALL 2001 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2 WEINBERG COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES cross currents UNCOVERING TEXTUAL TREASURES OF TIMBUKTU HIGHS AND LOWS OF ACADEME’S HIGHEST OFFICE A COMMUNITY LENDER WHOSE RISKS PAY OFF LIMITING THE DANGERS OF A PERSISTENT POISON 9370/Crosscurrents F01 8/21/02 2:22 PM Page c 6 Leading the Fight against Lead Poisoning JOEL PHOTO BY DAVID By Megan Fellman 10 Higher Ed’s Highest: College Presidents Who Hail from Northwestern By Nancy Deneen NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 14 WEINBERG COLLEGE OF ARTS A Discovery AND SCIENCES That May Rewrite History By Nancy Deneen DEPARTMENTS SMOOTH P 1 From the Dean 20 Loan Ranger 2 By Lisa Stein Letters 23 3 In Memory Campaign Northwestern 24 Cover photos, A Message from the 4 from top: Wilson Society Chairs Awards a filmic image of Professor William 25 McGovern; CROSSCURRENTS IS Wilson Society detail of an Islamic PUBLISHED TWICE Membership Listing manuscript A YEAR FOR ALUMNI, PARENTS, AND from Timbuktu; FRIENDS OF THE 29 John Hunwick, Roads More JUDD A. AND MARJORIE professor of or Less Traveled, WEINBERG COLLEGE Then and Now history and OF ARTS religion; AND SCIENCES, an Illinois NORTHWESTERN playground UNIVERSITY. WE’D LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU. SEND LETTERS AND STORY IDEAS TO NANCY DENEEN, CROSSCURRENTS, WEINBERG COLLEGE, AT ADDRESS ON BACK COVER, BY FAX TO (847) 491-4289, OR BY E-MAIL TO CROSSCURRENTS@ NORTHWESTERN.EDU 9370/Crosscurrents F01 8/21/02 2:22 PM Page 1 PHOTO BY DAVID JOEL PHOTO BY DAVID FROM THE DEAN seminars on line. Our incoming students were directed to a specially designed Web site in June, giving them PASSAGE plenty of time to review the seminar topics and submit their choices over the Web. In July, when almost every- one had replied, a one-minute miracle of sorting and Northwestern’s community of scholars is rooted in a matching took place. The freshmen then were able to steady core of faculty and renewed by an annual influx log into Northwestern’s Blackboard Course Information of freshmen who arrive almost entirely unknown to us System to learn which seminar they would be taking or to one other. Each year we work to accelerate new and to exchange e-mail with the adviser and the other students’ sense of belonging and mutual respect. To the students in the section. The results were outstanding: extent that they develop a common frame of reference, Students and faculty seized the opportunity to be a communal sense of place and time, and a shared in touch with one another. They sent a flurry of e-mail, passion for challenge and growth, we feel successful. and some students posted personal Web pages. Pro- fessors even distributed summer reading assignments! In the past few years we have sought to improve our advising system so that it might better provide each Each small step like this can help overcome the anxieties student with encouragement, direction within the Uni- that new students inevitably feel and smooth the transi- versity’s vast resources, and an immediate familiarity tion to college. In the process of yearly renewal, we with some of the College’s best teachers. By making are glad to find opportunities to reinvent and thereby a student’s fall freshman seminar instructor also his or improve what we do for the newest members of our her adviser, we have overcome complaints that “my Northwestern community. adviser doesn’t know me.” The seminar allows students in small groups of 15 or so to connect with each other and the instructor/adviser as they share the experience of studying and debating a common topic. This year we took that successful experiment a step Eric J. Sundquist, Dean further, thanks to the Internet. Assistant dean for freshmen Lane Fenrich observed that matching students with their seminar choices took his office at least a week and a half, and that it was hard to make the best choices by sorting through over 1,000 registration forms. So Lane and director of computing technologies Ruth Reingold developed a means of matching students and 1 9370/Crosscurrents F01 8/21/02 2:22 PM Page 2 RIGHT: FILM FOOTAGE OF WILLIAM MCGOVERN AS SHOWN ON A POSTCARD PRESERVED IN UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES BELOW: A HAROLD THAYER DAVIS MATH CLASS, DECEMBER 1946 LETTERS UNFORGETTABLE FACULTY, PART II Enrolled in DR. MCGOVERN’S ’56 or ’57 summer session of Far Eastern Studies, I was asked the first day where I had gotten the name O’Connor: “I’m Irish, sir.” “You have an Irish name but a German face.” “As far as I know, sir, 100 percent Irish.” (Then, to the class’s delight:) “Somebody took in boarders.” Home between summer and fall quarters, I learned from Mother that I was probably 1/16th German. I never went back to Professor McGovern to give him that bit of information, for We received many letters in response to those published in there was no need; he already knew. spring 2001 that recalled “unforgettable faculty.” Especially — Phil O’Connor ’58 spirited were those setting the record straight on Paul Schilpp’s political affiliation. It has been many years since I earned my degrees A 1948 graduate rightly pays tribute to WILLIAM McGOVERN, at Northwestern, but some professor of political science, and PAUL SCHILPP, professor of of the most enjoyable philosophy, among others. memories I have are of I was fortunate enough to have studied under both of them. faculty and the contribu- William McGovern was my mentor, director of my PhD disser- tions they made to my life. tation, and parent substitute, with Mrs. McGovern, at my wed- Chief among those that ding in 1955. I was his assistant and reader for a number of years. I could never forget is While paying tribute to Paul Schilpp, the letter also claims HARRISON HAYFORD. that “He was a communist.” This is unfortunate, because it An outstanding Melville is untrue. Dr. Schilpp, whom I also knew fairly well, was an scholar and an insightful idealist, a pacifist, a neosocialist, and a democrat, but NO teacher, he skillfully led us communist! No communist would have preached nonviolence into the requirements of during World War II, as he did at some risk to himself, while good research. His scholar- the Soviet Union was under attack by Nazi Germany! ship was most impressive, but he never lost the human touch. That I had two great teachers at opposite extremes of the A kinder person I have never known. He made me a better political spectrum says something of Northwestern’s breadth teacher and a better person. and acceptance of conflicting ideas. — Olive Fite MA ’43, PhD (English) ’56 — Minoo Adenwalla MSJ ’54, PhD ’56 (political science), professor of government and the Mary Mortimer Professor of I would like to add memories of HAROLD THAYER DAVIS, Liberal Studies, Lawrence University mathematics professor extraordinaire, whose writings would fill a bookshelf with titles from The Fine Art of Punning to PAUL SCHILPP was an iconoclast who loved to challenge Political Statistics, and with subjects from mathematical tables conventional patterns of thinking. He was one of the handful to partial differential equations. He claimed the statistics book of persons (two others being Baker Brownell and William proved that Truman was going to win the 1948 election. McGovern) whose stimulus meant the most in my own college — Raymond A. Spong ’49, MA ’51 experience. He won an international reputation with his Library of Living Philosophers. Controversial and provocative, yes, but he hated totali- tarianism of all kinds. — Robert H. Estabrook ’39 2 9370/Crosscurrents F01 8/21/02 2:22 PM Page 3 THE MATERIALS AND LIFE SCIENCES BUILDING (FAR LEFT) HAS BEEN RENAMED FOR BENEFACTORS WILLIAM A. AND GAYLE K. COOK. ALUMNI ARE SPEARHEADING EFFORTS TO RAISE $1 MILLION TO ENDOW A CHAIR HONORING THE LATE PROFESSOR LEON FORREST. CAMPAIGN NORTHWESTERN GIFTS TO HAVE SIGNIFICANT IMPACT As Dean Eric Sundquist notes, light of current events, enabling • The committee to endow • In his former position as “Every gift to Weinberg College, our center and Northwestern to a chair in honor of the late Leon president of the Latin American regardless of size, can play a strengthen their outreach to the Forrest, the award-winning unit of the Kellogg Company dé significant role in the education greater Chicago community.” novelist and scholar who taught Mexico, William Camstra put of our students and the scholar- The first Sams lecture, which at Weinberg College for more his College of Arts and Sciences ship of our faculty.” Among had been planned before the than two decades, got a boost studies in Spanish to good use. recent gifts are three that will events of September 11, was pre- with a gift of $100,000 from a To show his appreciation, significantly affect individual sented in November by L. Carl an anonymous Northwestern Camstra, now vice chairman of Weinberg College programs: Brown, an expert on the Middle alumna. William P. Davis Kellogg, has donated more than • A $100,000 gift from East and professor emeritus at (Speech ’77), chair of the $16,000 to the Department of the James and Betty Sams Princeton University, whose Northwestern University Black Spanish and Portuguese (for- Charitable Lead Trust will research has focused on the Alumni Association, says the merly Hispanic Studies). The support the interdisciplinary impact of Westernization on gift is “an excellent start” toward William A. S. Camstra Fund programs of the Center for the Islamic Middle East. NUBAA’s goal of raising for Hispanic Studies will be International and Comparative James Sams ’54 is president $1 million toward the chair.