Wallace Shawn • Muscular Dystrophy • Afghan Newsman march-april 2011 • $4.95 Quotable Harvard Re ond al E m st m a a t e H YEARS 00 33 1 9 1 81 - 201 Lexington...Desirable Potter Pond stunning Cambridge...Mid-Cambridge residence. Expansive Cambridge...Harvard Square 1-bedroom 7-room townhouse. Updates: gas heating and main level with open plan. An urban oasis. penthouse. Elevator brick building. Fireplace, AC, modern kitchen, master bath, finished lower Visit 3Greenough.com. $850,000 open living/dining, central AC, garage. level, deck, beautiful floors. $595,000 $365,000 Cambridge...Elegant townhouse on tree-lined Belmont Hill...Custom-built brick ranch. Cambridge...A private estate on Professor’s Row street. Open plan first floor, 3 bedrooms, 4.5 Three bedrooms. Three and one-half baths. near Harvard. Visit www.63FrancisAvenue.com. baths, treetop deck, patio & garage. $1,295,000 Two-car garage. $969,000 Newly renovated by Copley Design & Development. $4,250,000 Cambridge...Grand, spacious condominium Belmont...Delightful Antique Colonial. Near Cambridge...Harvard Square single. Large in Mansard mansion. High ceilings, period Belmont Day, town centre, and Week’s Pond. 4 entertaining spaces. 4 bedrooms, study, 4.5 details. 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, garden, bedrooms, 2 bathrooms. Solarium. $835,000 baths. Fireplaces. Garden. Garage. $1,495,000 parking. $1,575,000 www.hammondre.com Cambridge, Belmont, Watertown & Somerville Residential, Commercial, Rentals & Property Management Cambridge Office 617-497-4400 • Belmont Office 617-484-1900 MARCH-APRIL 2011 VOLUME 113, NUMBER 4 FEATURES TU ROSNER S The Gene Hunter page 51 22 Louis Kunkel’s 30-year pursuit of a cure for muscular dystrophy illuminates the DEPARTMENTS promise—and limits—of genomic medical research by Victor K. McElheny 2 Cambridge 02138 Communications from our readers Vita: Bao Luong 9 Right Now 28 Rethinking the annual financial report, Brief life of a Vietnamese revolutionary: 1909-1976 enhancing African agriculture, polygny by Hue-tam Ho Tai problems 12A New England Regional Section 30 Quotable Harvard Seasonal events, “green” lawnscaping, and a high-end French restaurant Sayings and people prominent (and not)—and an invitation to nominate your own candidates 13 Montage by Fred Shapiro Charismatic conductor, behavioral ethics, Elizabeth Bishop’s oeuvre extended, kosher caterer, the advent of the Civil Famous Comedian, JIM HARRISON War, a queen’s regal rhetoric, and musical 34 page 22 broadsides “Dangerous” Playwright Wallace Shawn is well known as a comedic character actor, 52 The Alumni Afghan media entrepreneur, Overseer and but his important dramatic works play to tiny audiences Harvard Alumni Association candidates, by Craig Lambert Crimson in Congress part two, and more 56 The College Pump 39 John Harvard’s Journal A spirit house at Adams House, and how The provost prepares to conclude his service, athletes tied one on Harvard’s first library director, renewed focus 68 Treasure on teaching and learning, an international Why Harvard owns a century-old tortilla and other collectibles antismoking leader, prototyping House renewal, a burlesque queen on the evils of 57 Crimson Classifieds Communism, a University Professorship for On the cover (clockwise from top right): John a public-health pioneer, the Undergraduate Adams, Robert Frost, Susan Sontag, Norman faces an intellectual challenge, and a women’s Mailer, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Illustration by Tom Mosser. Photograph by Stu Rosner. RODRIGUEZ JARED tennis tandem page 34 www.harvardmagazine.com LETTERS Editor: John S. Rosenberg Senior Editor: Jean Martin ManaGinG Editor: Jonathan S. Shaw Cambridge Deputy Editor: Craig Lambert Associate Editor: Elizabeth Gudrais Coup in Iran, Obama’s democracy, squash Production and New Media ManaGer: Mark Felton Assistant Editor: Nell Porter Brown Associate Web Developer: Blaise Freeman SUICIDE Elizabeth Gudrais’s otherwise excel- Art Director: Jennifer Carling lent article on Matthew Nock’s research on suicide and self-injury (“A Tragedy and Berta Greenwald Ledecky Mystery,” January-February, page 32) con- UnderGraduate Fellows Madeleine Schwartz, Sarah Zhang tains a significant omission: the central- Editorial Intern: ity of the therapist-patient relationship in Maya E. Shwayder treating the suicidal patient. Competent, experienced psychodynam- ContributinG Editors ically oriented therapists explore the John T. Bethell, John de Cuevas, Adam suicidal patient’s inner world with dis- Goodheart, Jim Harrison, Courtney Humphries, Christopher S. Johnson, passionate, nonjudgmental interest that Adam Kirsch, Colleen Lannon, conveys several therapeutic meta-commu- Christopher Reed, Stu Rosner, nications: what you are feeling is not un- Deborah Smullyan, Mark Steele speakably bad, it is human; I’m interested in whatever you are thinking or feeling; I Editorial and Business Office appreciate the distinction between self- 7 Ware Street, destructive thoughts, feelings, and fanta- the “achieve- Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037 sies and action; your anguish is not as dev- ments” of Kermit Roosevelt (Vita, Tel. 617-495-5746; fax: 617-495-0324 Website: www.harvardmagazine.com astating to me as it is to you; my strength by Gwen Kinkead, January-February, page Reader services: will be here for you to borrow if you need 30). Charming as he may have been, he 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499 to; your therapy is a place where your de- helped engineer a coup in Iran designed to structive urges can be understood rather punish a newly formed socialist democracy Harvard MaGazine Inc. than judged; I will try not to leave you for its nationalization of Iran’s oil industry. President: Henry Rosovsky, JF ’57, alone with your despair. And therapists Prior to Kermit’s coup, Iran’s oil had Ph.D. ’59, LL.D. ’98. Directors: Suzanne Blier, Robert Giles, NF ’66, also use the feelings their patients evoke in been controlled (since the 1920s) by Brit- Leslie E. Greis ’80, Alex S. Jones, NF ’82, them for therapeutic purposes. ish, French, and American oil interests Thomas F. Kelly, Ph.D. ’73, Nock advocates cognitive behavioral who took from Iran more than they re- Randolph C. Lindel ’66, Tamara Elliott therapy and dialectical behavioral thera- turned. In setting up the violent destruc- Rogers ’74, A. Clayton Spencer, A.M. ’82 py (DBT) for the treatment of the suicidal tion of Iran’s nascent democracy, Roosevelt Harvard Magazine (ISSN 0095-2427) is published bimonthly patient. While DBT does address the and the CIA recouped economic and po- by Harvard Magazine Inc., a nonprofit corporation, 7 Ware emotions of the (suicidal) patient, it does litical domination of Middle Eastern oil, Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, phone 617-495-5746; fax 617-495-0324. The magazine is supported by reader contribu- so by providing strategies the patient may violated basic rules of national sovereign- tions and subscriptions, advertising revenue, and a subven- tion from Harvard University. Its editorial content is the re- use to control and contain painful and ty, and provided a model for CIA-driven sponsibility of the editors. Periodicals postage paid at Boston, destructive feelings. Psychotherapies in overthrows of democratically elected gov- Mass., and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send ad- dress changes to Circulation Department, Harvard Magazine, which the therapist-patient relationship ernments in Guatemala (1954) and Chile 7 Ware Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037. Subscription rate $30 a year in U.S. and possessions, $55 Canada and Mexico, $75 is seen as the primary therapeutic agent (1973), leading to dictatorships headed by other foreign. (Allow up to 10 weeks for first delivery.) Sub- should be added to Nock’s list of treat- people like Augusto Pinochet and Iran’s scription orders and customer service inquiries should be sent to the Circulation Department, Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware ments for the suicidal patient. own Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138-4037, or call 617-495-5746 or 800-648-4499, or e-mail [email protected]. Single Jerome S. Gans, M.D. ’62 As a piece of journalism, Kinkead sets copies $4.95, plus $2.50 for postage and handling. Manuscript Wellesley, Mass. her brief profile against a complex and submissions are welcome, but we cannot assume responsibility for safekeeping. Include stamped, self-addressed envelope for violent U.S. foreign-policy precedent. Her manuscript return. Persons wishing to reprint any portion of KERMIT ROOSEVelt once-over seems unprofessional, particu- Harvard Magazine’s contents are required to write in advance for permission. Address inquiries to Irina I was amazed that Harvard Magazine larly given her stature as journalist and a Kuksin, acting publisher, at the address given above. would publish such an unbalanced look at historian. Whether Iran’s new prime min- Copyright © 2011 Harvard Magazine Inc. 2 March - April 2011 The iMaGe of The Black in wesTeRn aRT / ediTed By daVid BindMan & henRy louis GaTes, JR. 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