EVENING MAS EVENING MASTER’S PROGRAM Earn your MA in public Earn your MA in public policy fr policy from UChicago in four quart in four quarters. Winter, Spring, and F Winter, Spring, and Fall starts. GRE not required. GRE not required. Apply now at: Applyharris.uchicago.edu/e now at: harris.uchicago.edu/eveningprogram SUMMER 2020, VOLUME 112, NUMBER 4 UCH_Spring2020 cover and spine_v3.indd 1 8/12/20 11:37 AM UCH_ADS_v2.indd 2 8/12/20 1:20 PM EDITORˆS NOTES VOLUME 112, NUMBER 4, SUMMER 2020 EDITOR Laura Demanski, AM’94 SENIOR EDITOR Mary Ruth Yoe ASSOCIATE EDITOR Susie Allen, AB’09 MANAGING EDITOR Rhonda L. Smith ART DIRECTOR Guido Mendez ALUMNI NEWS EDITOR Andrew Peart, AM’16, PHD’18 GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Laura Lorenz; Chloe Reibold OPEN TO CHANGE CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jeanie Chung; John Easton, AM’77; Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93; Lucas McGranahan; Brooke E. O’Neill, AM’04 BY SUSIE ALLEN, AB’09, AND Editorial Office The University of Chicago LAURA DEMANSKI, AM’94 Magazine, 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615 TELEPHONE 773.702.2163 EMAIL [email protected] University of Chicago Alumni Relations and Development has its offices at 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615 TELEPHONE 773.702.2150 ADDRESS CHANGES 800.955.0065 or ike much of the country, we at the Magazine watched the [email protected] news with attention and emotion this spring and summer. WEB mag.uchicago.edu The killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in May and The University of Chicago Magazine the fatal shootings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor (ISSN-0041-9508) is published quarterly (Fall, earlier this year were disturbingly familiar episodes. What Winter, Spring, Summer) by the University followed—a genuinely national protest movement for equal of Chicago in cooperation with Alumni Relations and Development, 5235 South justice under the law that encompassed large cities, small Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615, and sent to towns, and suburbs—felt like nothing we could remember, all University of Chicago alumni. Published unprecedented in scope and shared feeling. Could this be an opening continuously since 1907. Periodicals postage Lfor meaningful change? paid at Chicago and additional mailing offi s. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Wanting insight and perspective on what was happening, we turned The University of Chicago Magazine, Alumni to three UChicago Law School scholars who have spent years working Records, 5235 South Harper Court, Chicago, IL 60615. © 2020 University of Chicago on police misconduct and two historians who are experts on racism in the United States. Read our conversations with Craig Futterman; Advertising Contact uchicago-magazine Sharon Fairley, JD’06; William Baude, SB’04; Kathleen Belew; and @uchicago.edu or visit mag.uchicago.edu/ Adam Green, AB’85, in “Racism, Policing, and Protest” on page 40. advertising. The Magazine is a member of the Ivy League Magazine Network, whose clients We aimed to better understand two big questions: How did we get include other colleges and universities. These here? And what’s next? advertisements help the Magazine continue to In their interviews the faculty members express guarded hope for deliver news of the University of Chicago and its alumni to readers. Please contact the editor change and offer knowledge gained from their long work on these with any questions. issues. Futterman, Fairley, and Baude give a deep dive into some of IVY LEAGUE MAGAZINE NETWORK the reforms to policing that are being discussed broadly now: stronger Heather Wedlake, Director of Operations TELEPHONE 617.319.0995 WEB ivymags.com civilian oversight, limitation or elimination of qualified immunity, police EMAIL [email protected] defunding, and other interventions. The historians offer context: Belew examines the long history of The University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual White supremacy in the United States, and the White power move- orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic ment—more organized than it appears and gaining traction. Green origin, age, status as an individual with a discusses the civil rights movement of the 1960s as a precedent or disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under analogue for the summer of 2020. the law. For additional information, please see We think these conversations shed important light on the moment. equalopportunity.uchicago.edu. And we see them as a beginning. In future issues we’ll draw in more UChicagoans—faculty, alumni, students—with their own perspec- tives. We hope you’ll join the conversation too. Send your letters to ©istock.com/blindspot Christopher Dilts/Sipa USA/Newscom Dilts/Sipa Christopher [email protected]. ◆ THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2020 1 UCM_Ednotes_Summer20_v1.indd 1 8/13/20 4:07 PM Vol. 112 / No. 4 SUMMER 2020 mag.uchicago.edu Twilight zone The Cobb Hall grotesques—the only members of the campus community exempt from social distancing guidelines—bask under a summer sky. On the cover: an ivy-adorned Mandel Hall. Cover and this page: Photography by Jason Smith. Grab your popcorn Early cinemas attracted customers by depicting the moviegoing experience as a festival of entertainments. This circa 1910 French ad promised “illuminated moving pictures” of battleships, zeppelins, and more. It’s one of many treasures from the collection of Dwight M. Cleveland, MBA’87. For more, see “Poster Perfect,” page 44. On the cover: Doc Films attracted customers with these striking student-made posters. (Documentary Film Group, Records, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Photography by Nathan Keay.) TOC_v2.indd 2 8/13/20 2:15 PM 1 Editor’s Notes 4 Letters 9 On the Agenda Features Trials by fire By Jason Kelly While the mysterious new disease spread, UChicago Medicine 24 researchers brought long-held expertise to a new common cause: helping COVID-19 patients. Precedent setting By Jeanie Chung Joseph Sax, JD’59 (1936–2014), helped establish the courts as a front line 30 for environmental activism. The new rites of spring By Laura Demanski, AM’94 32 Scenes from a convocation like no other. Situational ethics By John Paul Rollert, AM’09, PhD’17 36 The business of capitalism during COVID-19. Racism, policing, and protest By Susie Allen, AB’09, and Laura Demanski, AM’94 40 Five faculty members on a critical moment in US history. 11 51 UChicago Journal Peer Review Research and What alumni are news in brief thinking and doing TOC_v3.indd 3 8/13/20 2:50 PM The University of Chicago Magazine welcomes letters about its contents or about the life of the University. Letters for publication must be signed and may be edited for space, clar- ity, and civility. To provide a range of views and voices, we encourage letter writers to limit LETTERS themselves to 300 words or fewer. While the Magazine staff works remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, please send letters via email: [email protected]. Words to read by We are still in touch with a few of our phia buries the lede (UChicago Journal, Great quote on the Spring/20 cover: “The U of C friends and try to visit the cam- “Skateboard Sociology”). Not until the question before us is how to become pus whenever we are back in Chicago second paragraph from the last does it one in spirit, not necessarily in opinion.” seeing friends and family. Hope all of raise Cianciotto’s key questions: “Who I looked for attribution but couldn’t you are doing well and staying healthy! do we include and exclude from the cat- find any. Could you advise of the ap- Anna Lam Pilloton, AB’75 egory of ‘the public’? What makes one propriate citation? The quote should NOVATO, CALIFORNIA type of use more valid than another?” be used much more often. LOVE Park sits immediately north- Robert Nord, JD’72 west of Philadelphia City Hall, across GLENCOE, ILLINOIS the street from Suburban Station, at the eastern edge of the Center City office The cover quote is from the inaugural district and at the foot of the Benjamin address of William Rainey Harper, first Franklin Parkway. From the mixture of president of the University of Chicago. food trucks, cafés, and outdoor restau- For information about each issue’s cov- rants the city authorities are proposing, er, see the left-hand page opposite the it is clear that the “public” they envis- table of contents.—Ed. age is the middle-class, predominantly White office workers who emerge from Suburban Station and the underground Bridge ’n’ bibs parking garage. For such people, a pub- More than ever, I appreciate your good lic space must be one in which they work in producing the Magazine and not only are safe but feel safe, and that providing such well-written articles means excluding the people who make that inform and challenge readers. As Back to school LOVE Park what Cianciotto called “a we shelter in place and work from home I really liked Sean Carr’s (AB’90) “Crash beacon of deviance.” here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Course” in the Spring/20 Magazine. It The communal may be tolerated in Magazine is a special treat during our provided everything you want from a holes and corners, but it is compelled to “lunch breaks” in our backyard. class: an exciting reading list, a slice of give way to the public, which is defined It doesn’t seem that long ago that my discussion, thoughtful questions posed by the dominant economic forces. The husband, George Pilloton, MBA’76, and I by the professor ... without the home- skateboarders may ultimately remain met in business school and would “study” work.