Finding Common Ground Features Special Report 9 A financial report from the College’s vice president for finance and treasurer. By Suzan n e We l s h Visitors We l c o m e 12 De p a r t m e n t s Letters 3 Collection 4 Readers talk back Latest news from campus Profiles Connections 40 Small Virus, Big Idea Class Notes 42 By Elizabeth Redden ’05 Deaths By Elizab e th R e d d e n ’ 0 5 Swarthmore remembers 45 Finding 22 Common Ground B o o ks & A r t s 50 Examine the roots of The Scott Arboretum as it turns 75 years old. Alumni events and more By Ben Ya g o d a Sowing Seeds of Success 18 Eric Adler ’86 co-founds an innercity public charter boarding school. Through foreign study, Swarthmore educates for the global world. By Tom K r a t t e n m a ke r Think Global, Te a c h L o c a l 30 Five faculty members talk about bringing the world into their classrooms. By Alisa G i a r d in e l l i Foreign Study in Reverse 36 For more than one in 10 Swarthmore students, the United States is the foreign country. By Andre a J a r re l l ON THE COVER: TWO SWARTHMORE STUDENTS WERE AMONG 32 PARTICIPANTS IN THE SPRING 2003 INTERNATIONAL HONORS PROGRAM. ALL 32 POSED IN A CIRCLE AT THE CLOSING CEREMONY IN CURITIBA, BRAZIL. PHOTO PROVIDED BY RICARDO OCAMPO ’05 AND ESTHER ZELEDON ’04. CONTENTS: PHOTO BY JIM GRAHAM. Classmates staying connected Professor of Philosophy Rich Schuldenfrei reviews Real Jews by Noah Efron ’82. In My Life You Can Go Home Again: A Year in Seoul Rachel Henighan '97 and Charlie Mayer ’98 are on the run. B y J e f f r e y Lott Harriet Latham Robinson ’59 is a leader in the search for a vaccine. Exciting yet Humbling 66 Oncologist David Fisher ’79 confronts clinical and scientific challenges to help young cancer victims. By Carol Brévart-Demm 70 By Kunya Scarborough Des Jardins ’89 A Day in the Life 59 80 Signs of Violence Amy Retsinas ’01 educates teens about healthy relationships and conflict resolution. By Andrea Hammer 75 PA R L O R TA L K I keep a scrap of history on my desk, a ragged chunk of concrete not much bigger than my thumb. Its surface sports a tiny abstract painting, green with a splash of blue and a spot of red, a fragment of something larger—not a work of art but of history. It’s my personal piece of the Berlin Wall, a gift from my late brother-in-law who visited Berlin in 1990, just after the Iron Curtain crumbled. It is more than a souvenir to me. In August 1961, I was 14, traveling with my family on a monthlong tour of Europe. We’d started in Rome, making our way through Italy, Switzerland, and West Germany. We went on to Paris and London before returning to the United States. Yet on Aug. 15, two days after East Germany and its Soviet masters cut Berlin in half, plunging the world into yet another crisis over the divided city, we flew into Berlin. My father, who loved history, had scheduled this side trip months before as something intentionally different from the pleasant sightseeing that occupied most of our days. But I’m sure he hadn’t counted on this. Early on Aug. 16, we set off with a German driver and guide, passing the bombed-out Kaiser Wilhelm Church, a war memorial, and viewing the ruined Reichstag, torched by Hitler in 1933. Our itinerary called for a visit to the eastern sector, but we assumed this would not be possible. Yet, as my breathless diary entry reads: “This is the most exciting day yet! Our driver finagled a bit in German, and [they] let us into East Berlin.” We spent a tense half-hour in East Berlin, where, except for the Volkspolizei, we saw almost no one. “There is one street that has been rebuilt—Stalinallee,” I wrote. “The rest is mostly ruins and rubble.” Back in the West, thousands were streaming from every corner of the city to a unity rally at the city hall. With our guide as translator, we joined the crowd on foot. We stood among 250,000 Berliners who heard Mayor Willy Brandt implore the world to defend his isolated city. Nearly two years later, President John F. Kennedy famously declared, “Ich bin ein Berliner”; in 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate and challenged Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” But I was there when it went up. I didn’t study abroad as a college student. In those days, just a few students—usually those studying foreign languages—took that opportunity. I am glad to see this has changed at Swarthmore and elsewhere. I hope they have experiences as rich as mine when I was 14. That memorable day in Berlin opened my eyes to the world in a way that the cultural riches of Italy, the spectacle of the Alps, the luxuries of Paris, and the pomp of England could not match. By itself, travel is mind expanding, but a little brush with history doesn’t hurt. —Jeffrey Lott S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N My father, who loved history, had scheduled this side trip months before. But I’m sure he hadn’t counted on this. My breathless diary reads, “This was the most exciting day yet!” 2 Swarthmore COLLEGE BULLETIN Editor: Jeffrey Lott Managing Editor: Andrea Hammer Class Notes Editor: Carol Brévart-Demm Staff Writer: Alisa Giardinelli Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner Art Director: Suzanne DeMott Gaadt, Gaadt Perspectives LLC Administrative Assistant: Janice Merrill-Rossi Intern: Elizabeth Redden ’05 Editor Emerita: Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 Contacting Swarthmore College College Operator: (610) 328-8000 www.swarthmore.edu Admissions: (610) 328-8300 admissions@swarthmore.edu Alumni Relations: (610) 328-8402 alumni@swarthmore.edu Publications: (610) 328-8568 bulletin@swarthmore.edu Registrar: (610) 328-8297 registrar@swarthmore.edu World Wide Web www.swarthmore.edu Changes of Address Send address label along with new address to: Alumni Records Office Swarthmore College 500 College Avenue Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail: alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu. The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume CI, number 3, is published in August, September, December, March, and June by Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. Periodicals postage paid at Swarthmore PA and additional mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620. Postmaster: Send address changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. © 2003 Swarthmore College Printed in U.S.A. LETTERS This note is to express my pleasure in reading the recent Bulletin. I send my appreciation for the “charge” delivered to the graduating class by Justice Jed Rakoff ’64. What a pleasure to see his description of A. Mitchell Palmer unsullied by euphemism! My forebear Benjamin Franklin’s observation “that he who would give up liberty for a little security will end with neither liberty nor security” fits Jed Rakoff’s rather well, and in these days of “Patriot” and “Homeland Security” is sadly appropriate. You may be happy to learn that the City Council of Reading, Pa., has joined those cities and states that went on record as refusing to support the Patriot Act’s voiding of the Bill of Rights in our Constitution. The Berks County Commissioners have also been approached to withdraw any support for this act. As you know, Philadelphia has also joined in opposition. In converting Germany to a police state, I understand one of Hitler’s early acts was getting the Reichstag to pass a law similar to our Patriot Act so as to free the police from undue hindrance. Those who acclaim an American empire might well read Mark Twain’s views of a century ago. I remember being in Vietnam and Cambodia some 40 years ago and quoting Yogi Berra, “It’s deja vu all over again.” When will we learn that violence and war are not the solution? FRED RICHARDS ’45 Reading, Pa. CHALLENGE TO ISRAEL I’m writing to challenge one sentence in James Kurth’s review of Clyde Prestowitz’s [’63] Rogue Nation (September Bulletin): “Middle Eastern elites … pro-American on many issues … are appalled by the biased and massive U.S. support for Israel.” Except for the sale of Hawk defensive missiles in 1961, President Truman’s embargo of weapons was maintained for the first 19 to 20 years of Israel’s existence. During these 19 to 20 years, Israel’s Arab neighbors sent guerrillas across Israel’s borders to kill unarmed civilians, including women and children. Any Christian or Jew with an Israeli passport or visa was not allowed to pray at a Christian or Jewish holy place. It was only after 1967 that the Arabs expanded their terrorism beyond Israel’s borders plus hijacking and destroying civilian airlines (e.g., Olympics at Munich, Athens airport, etc.). The terrorists included Puerto Rican pilgrims among their victims. After 1967, Christian and Jewish pilgrims were allowed to worship at their holy places. After 1967, U.S. manufacturers of airplanes persuaded our government to permit the sale of Phantoms, Skyhawks, and so on, which benefited our balance of payments, which usually runs in the red. If Prestowitz’s “Middle Eastern elites” dared to criticize the dictators that run their countries, they would find themselves imprisoned like dual Egyptian-U.S. citizen Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who had the temerity to “defame” Egypt by criticizing its treatment of Christians. I assume that Prestowitz is unaware that there are more than 30 million U.S. evangelical Christians who are more proIsrael than the U.S. State Department and biased against dictatorships and suicide bombers. JEROME ABRAMS ’47 Edison, N.J. IMPERIAL EXPANSION It is pleasing and reassuring to find Clyde Prestowitz ’63, a classmate and former political adversary, describing the United States as a “rogue nation.” We should recall that the entire history of the United States is characterized by aggression and the forceful seizure of land and resources. The Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, gunboat diplomacy, recurrent interventions, bombings, assassinations, and destabilizations were and continue to be manifestations of our country’s quest to dominate as much of the world as possible. Perhaps what was previously more veiled is now more overt but only for those who did not want to see. As the sole superpower, the United States feels more confident in trumpeting its aims, now under the trans- America and the World parent guise of fighting “terrorism”—the current version of the “communist menace.” This is not a “policy,” nor is it discretionary. Tactics may change, and there may be variations on the general theme of imperial expansion; however, the behavior of this “rogue nation” is inherent in the requirement of any capitalist economy to expand and grow to maximize profits. JEREMIAH GELLES ’63 Brooklyn, N.Y. UNCRITICAL PRAISE FOR CRITICAL THINKING John Koppel ’78, in his September Bulletin letter to the editor, seems to miss the irony of his praise for the “critical thinkers” of Swarthmore—at least those in agreement with him—while in the same breath making the gigantic and wholly uncritical leap from President Bush’s Iraq prevarications to “naked imperialism.” Koppel makes no attempt whatsoever to justify this accusation. In the ultimate irony, he expects us critical thinkers to accept uncritically this old-left chestnut from the ’60s. Koppel goes on to make the rather strange case that because many of Saddam Hussein’s most public atrocities occurred several years ago, he should no longer be held accountable for them, despite incontrovertible evidence of continued brutal repression and murder. Critical thinkers might find this argument for a statute of limitations on evil difficult to justify. DAVID HARRIS ’78 Houston Please turn to page 79 for additional letters. DECEMBER 2003 DEJA VU 3 COLLECTION S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N 4 IN HIS ANNUAL STATE-OF-THECOLLEGE REPORT to the faculty on Oct. 3, President Alfred H. Bloom cited both the need for continued budgetary restraint and the critical importance of the College’s current capital campaign, The Meaning of Swarthmore, to funding the College’s future priorities. Bloom noted that “Swarthmore’s overall economic condition has improved importantly” in the past year. He announced that the value of the College’s endowment has rebounded in recent months to about $930 million. Since October, the endowment has grown to about $960 million. Stating, however, that if one subtracts recent gifts, the value of the endowment would equal its valuation five years ago, he commented, “If we are to exercise our responsibilities as shepherds of this institution, balancing the interests of this generation against those of future generations, we must continue to hold annual increases in endowment spending for the budget to no more than inflation plus 1.5 percent.” This would require restraint and ongoing identification of possible expense reductions, said Bloom. The president told the faculty that members of his staff, in concert with the Expenditure Review Committee appointed last year by the Board of Man- agers, had “identified and achieved” more than $1.2 million in budget savings during the past two years “in ways that we believe have had a minimum impact on the quality of programs and operations and on individuals currently employed.” This collaborative initiative will continue through upcoming budget cycles. Among the measures taken to trim the College’s $97.8 million annual budget for fiscal 2003–2004 are the elimination of several vacant positions and a freeze on most departmental operating budgets. Unlike some of its peer schools, Swarthmore has not been forced in the recent economic downturn to lay off faculty or staff. Bloom stressed the importance of The Meaning of Swarthmore in assuring that the College’s future needs are met, while noting that the campaign has already had a significant impact on Swarthmore’s fiscal strength and educational program. He stated that campaign gifts have enabled the College to hire six new tenure-track faculty members in critical fields of study, provide five additional endowed faculty sabbaticals, recruit a new dean of multicultural affairs, enhance the Athletics Program and physical education facilities, and undertake long-awaited initiatives in career services. Dividing the remaining $91 JIM GRAHAM Reaching campaign goal “a m a j o r t a s k ,” says Bloom PRESIDENT ALFRED H. BLOOM SAYS THAT THE COLLEGE WILL “INVEST EVERY EFFORT” TO REACH THE $230 MILLION GOAL OF THE MEANING OF SWARTHMORE BY DECEMBER 2006. million needed to complete the $230 million campaign into two parts, he said that $28 million must first be raised to “cover fully the remaining cost of the commitments we have made to date.” Among these top funding priorities were the completion and operational endowment of the new science center, the completion of a new 75-bed residence hall now under construction near the train station, and extensive renovations of Parrish Hall set to begin in summer 2004. The remaining $63 million will be designated for financial aid endowment, support for undergraduate research and internship opportunities, technology replacement, and a variety of other objectives estab- lished by the Board, faculty, and administration before the campaign began. In December, the campaign total reached $141 million. In an interview this month, Bloom said that the true total now remaining to reach The Meaning of Swarthmore’s $230 million goal is $84 million, thanks to a “generous challenge pledge” from Eugene Lang ’38, who will provide the final $5 million of the campaign if the total reaches $225 million by December 2006. Bloom said, “Given that the campaign’s success so far has depended heavily on those who know us well, reaching our goal will be a major task.” He pledged that the College would “invest every effort over the next three years to do so.” BARBARA WEBER MATHER ’65 TO CHAIR BOARD OF MANAGERS At its Dec. 6 meeting, the Board of Managers selected Barbara Weber Mather ’65 as its new chair. She succeeds J. Lawrence Shane ’56, who has chaired the Board since 1997. Although women have been prominent members of the Board of Managers since the College’s founding, Mather is the first woman to lead the Board. Mather was first elected a Manager in 1983. She has served as a member of the Finance Committee, chairing it since 1997. Levinson, Jane Lang Professor of Music, to write Avatar, a 12 1/2-minute composition that Levinson calls “very blunt and forthright.” Levinson, who has taught at Swarthmore since 1977, studied with Messiaen in the early 1970s and later immersed himself firsthand in South Asian music as a Henry Luce Scholar from 1979 to 1980 and as a Guggenheim Fellow from 1982 to 1983. Gamelan Semara Santi, directed by Assistant Professor of Music Thomas Whitman ’82, consists of 22 musicians who play xylophones, gongs, and drums in complicated rhythms and textures. Eschenbach asked members of the Gamelan to perform in October at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and New York’s Carnegie Hall to illustrate the powerful influence on Messiaen of traditional Balinese music. Later in the same concerts, Eschenbach conducted Messiaen’s 75-minute Turangalila Symphony, a modern piece that drew admiring reviews from Philadelphia and New York newspapers. —Jeffrey Lott She has also served on the Academic Affairs Committee and was vice chair of the search committee that nominated Alfred H. Bloom as president in 1991. Mather graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1968. She is an attorney with Pepper Hamilton LLP in Philadelphia, a former managing partner of the firm, and head of its litigation department. She has served as city solicitor of Philadelphia, taught antitrust law at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. Mather is also a founding member of the Pennsylvania Women’s Forum. Mather lives in Philadelphia with husband Michael Mather ’65. They have four children—Sarah ’90, Emily ’92, Benjamin, and William ’00. —Jeffrey Lott DECEMBER 2003 SWARTHMORE MUSICIANS PLAYED A ROLE this fall in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s first season under Music Director Christoph Eschenbach. The orchestra commissioned a work by the College’s resident composer Gerald Levinson and welcomed to its stage Swarthmore’s traditional Balinese percussion ensemble, Gamelan Semara Santi. Eschenbach had planned a season of events around the music of 20th-century French composer Olivier Messiaen. For its opening concert series, the orchestra asked CHRISTOPHER AMOS/THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA ESCHENBACH’S OPENING GONG 5 JEROME KOHLBERG ’46 (CENTER) TALKS WITH RICK BELL ’98 (LEFT) AND JAMES MADDEN ’06 (RIGHT) AT A BRUNCH FOR PHILIP EVANS SCHOLARS IN SEPTEMBER. HE JOKED, “IT LOOKS AS IF MY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS The promise of Leadership SWARTHMORE HAS MORE THAN 300 NAMED ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIPS, many honoring family members of alumni, former professors, and friends of the College. Most are designed to support one or two students, but a few have grown into significant endowments that provide need-based financial aid for numerous young people. With 43 recipients currently enrolled, the Philip Evans Scholarship, established in 1986 by Jerome Kohlberg ’46 in honor of his late friend and classmate, has become one of the College’s most rewarding scholarship programs. Envisioned by Kohlberg as a way of making it possible for students showing unusual promise to attend Swarthmore without incurring any student loans, the need-based Evans Scholarships are EVANS SCHOLAR TICHIANAA TIMMONS ’99 (LEFT) TALKS S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS ABOUT MEDICAL SCHOOL 6 APPLICATIONS WITH TRINI TRUONG ’04. TIMMONS WILL ENTER THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER SCHOOL OF MEDICINE IN FALL 2004. evolving to become a broader program of support and encouragement for recipients. “Today’s students and alumni who have benefited from their Evans Scholarships are in the process of forming a powerful community in which the opportunities offered by Swarthmore are sowing the seeds of future leadership,” says Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jim Bock ’90. “Many have already faced significant challenges in their young lives, and Swarthmore is opening doors that some of them didn’t even know were there. We expect that they will go on in their lives to open additional doors for others.” Even before they began their college experience this fall, the eight new Evans Scholars met each other during an Outward Bound sailing experience on the Chesapeake Bay. After six days aboard a 30-foot boat, Katie Chamblee ’07 said, “My ambitions for college changed. I realized that my goal was to be a certain kind of person rather than just a certain kind of student.” Last summer, Evans Scholar Tyler Lyson ’06 organized a different kind of challenge for 13 students, Professor of Biology Scott Gilbert, and several College administrators. Lyson hails from Marmarth, N.D., where, as a high school student, he amassed one of the country’s most important collections of dinosaur and turtle fossils. The PRIMARY ROLE HERE IS TO BE A SHILL FOR RICK BELL,” WHO IS RUNNING FOR CONGRESS IN LOS ANGELES. Swarthmore contingent joined him in the heat of summer for a dinosaur dig, learning not only about Lyson’s passion for paleontology, but experiencing firsthand the rigors of field work in the badlands of his home state. “Everybody pushed their limits,” said Lyson. “We all knew what we could do after going on that trip.” In September, current Evans Scholars and 10 recent alumni gathered at the Pendle Hill Conference Center for a weekend retreat to build relationships that will continue to enrich the students’ educational experiences. Several reported on what they had accomplished during the summer with their Evans Opportunity Grants, which allow scholarship recipients to take summer jobs and internships that enhance their education, provide opportunities for social service, or give them valuable experience toward possible careers. The students and alumni also participated in a leadership exercise led by Dean of the College Bob Gross ’62. James Madden ’06 spoke of his summer in Boston, where he worked for FairTest, an advocacy organization that works to eliminate the racial, class, gender, and cultural barriers to equal opportu- AVIAN PERFUME Julie Hagelin, assistant professor of biology, says that at least one species of bird has a striking scent that is associated with courtship. The crested auklet (Aethia cristatella), a seabird from Alaska, produces a tangerine-like aroma. The region of the body where the odor is most concentrated to human noses—the auklet’s head and neck—features prominently in courtship displays. “You can smell a group of crested auklets before you can see them,” she reports. Although the origin and current social function of the avian perfume is unknown (one theory is that healthier birds may excrete more of the oils that give rise to the smell), it is known that the birds wear their fetching scent during breeding season only. “This is a mode of communication in birds that we’ve overlooked completely until now,” says Hagelin, who teaches a course in animal behavior that includes 4 to 6 hours of fieldwork per week. © D. ROBY & K. BRINK/VIREO —Alisa Giardinelli nity posed by standardized tests. He also had an internship with the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, where he helped organize a citywide program of community discussions on racial and ethnic diversity. “I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without the Evans,” he said. “I would have been working for minimum wage somewhere.” At a Sunday brunch attended by Kohlberg, students and alumni were eager to talk about the impact of their scholarships. “Receiving an Evans said that they saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself. It was very affirming,” said Imo Akpan ’02, a research technician at Boston’s Children’s Hospital who is currently applying to medical schools. “Swarthmore is an incredible place. I feel like I was sort of born here.” Later, Akpan, Tichianaa Timmons ’99 and Mitzie-Ann Davis ’02, first-year medical students at the University of Rochester and Temple University respectively, spent time talking with several premed Evans Scholars. Also enjoying the networking opportunities was Rick Bell ’98, a self-described “half-black, half-Korean kid” who recently announced his candidacy for Congress. A passionate liberal, he’s challenging the incumbent Democrat in his working-class district in Los Angeles. Pressed by the students to make a few remarks, Kohlberg said, “This country is in a crisis; we’ve lost our way. Too many people are sitting on the sidelines, complaining but not doing anything about it. There’s a crying need for involvement, passion, criticism, and leadership. This is a role that we hope you will fill in the future.” —Jeffrey Lott Learn more anout the Evans Scholarships at www.philipevansscholars.org. In Memoriam DAVID ROSEN, MATHEMATICIAN AND MUSICIAN THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY WAS SADDENED by the Aug. 24 death of Professor Emeritus of Mathematics David Rosen, age 82. Receiving a B.A. from New York University in 1942 followed, after a stint in the U.S. Air Force, by a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1952, Rosen then joined the College faculty. He remained at Swarthmore until his retirement in 1987. During his tenure at Swarthmore, Rosen served as department chair from 1969 to 1977 and president for three terms of Swarthmore’s chapter of Sigma Xi. He was an expert in number theory—a branch of mathematics that deals with the properties of the integers—publishing on the topic into his retirement. Rosen’s colleague, Buffington Professor of Mathematics Gene Klotz, said: “David had a lifelong love affair with number theory, and his legacy lives on in a continued fraction that bears his name, the Rosen Continued Fraction (an infinite collection of closely related algorithms, each of which expresses real numbers in terms of certain algebraic integers).” He was the co-author of three textbooks on calculus and probability. An accomplished musician, Rosen played violin as well as double bass, performing for 50 years with the College Orchestra. He also performed with local symphonies and chamber music groups and served on the board of Orchestra 2001. —Carol Brévart-Demm and Conflict Studies Program as well as the Pendle Hill Study Center. Arias emphasized the need for increased aid from developed to developing nations— although not by military means. In a world in which nuclear proliferation, war, and terrorism are on the rise, he voiced the need in the new century for a new system of morality and values based on compassion, solidarity, social justice, and courage instead of materialism, warmongering, and fear. “War is always a defeat for humanity,” he said, “Conflicts can be better resolved at the negotiating table than on the OSCAR ARIAS SANCHEZ, FORMER PRESIDENT OF COST RICA AND WINNER OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE IN 1987, SPOKE AT THE COLLEGE IN OCTOBER. battlefield.” Arias sees the real threats to humanity not primarily in terrorism but in the conditions that spawn it, such as poverty, disease, illiteracy, and inequality. The solutions to these problems lie in control of the arms trade, decreased defense spending, free trade between the First and Third Worlds, and health servic- es worldwide, he said. “Military spending represents the world’s greatest perversion,” said Arias. “Every dollar spent on weapons represents a missed opportunity to provide education, health care, or food for the poor. Security is not a precondition for peace—peace is a precondition for security.” —Carol Brévart-Demm DECEMBER 2003 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER Oscar Arias Sanchez ended his speech with a challenge: “Let us do something at least for our sons and daughters. They deserve to live in a more just and ethical world in the new century.” Arias, who won the prize in 1987 for successfully uniting Central American leaders around the regional peace plan, spoke on Oct. 30. His talk “Doing Justice: The Path of Peace” was the second in this year’s Thursday night forum series called “Walking the Way of Peace: Peace Building in a Violent World,” sponsored by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, the Peace ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS “WAR IS ALWAYS A DEFEAT FOR HUMANITY” 7 Swarthmore student activists won a major victory for free speech on the Internet this fall with their efforts to make available documents from Diebold Election Systems Inc. that call attention to problems with the company’s electronic voting machines. The controversy, which made headlines here and abroad, also became part of the larger debate about e-voting as a reliable and worthwhile practice. Sophomores Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith and the Online Policy Group, a nonprofit Internet service provider, filed suit in a California federal court against the company in November seeking to enjoin Diebold from claiming copyright infringement over the documents’ release. The company had for months threatened legal action against dozens of individuals who refused to remove links to the data. But at a Dec. 1 meeting with the judge, a Diebold spokesman said the company would not sue the students after all, a marked reversal in strategy. Still, Pavlosky and Smith are continuing with their case against Diebold, arguing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act INTERNET FREE SPEECH ADVOCATES NELSON PAVLOSKY (LEFT) AND LUKE SMITH POSTED INTERNAL MEMOS OF THE DIEBOLD CORP., A MAKER OF ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES, THEN SUCCESSFULLY CHALLENGED THE COMPANY’S EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS THE DOCUMENTS. add character to the freshly painted space. A porch also provides a view of the crossroads that links campus and community. Joining Keith in the Lang Center, Associate Director for Student Programs and NEW HEADQUARTERS Training Pat James works THE EUGENE M. LANG CENTER FOR CIVIC AND closely with many student volunteer groups, SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY has moved to renoprovides support for projects developed vated quarters in the Swarthmore train stathrough Swarthmore Foundation Fellowtion—a location that, according to its direc- ships, offers students training and orientator, former Provost Jennie Keith, symbolizes tion for work in the community, and directs the link between the College and the larger the Lang Opportunity Scholarship Program. community. The center, which was endowed Associate Director for Community Partnerin 2001 by an $8.5 million gift from Eugene ships and Planning Cynthia Jetter ’74 (see Lang ’38, is intended to provide vision, lead- sidebar) has helped launch several partnerership, and support for a central commitships both locally and internationally. ment of Swarthmore. The Lang Center will provide administra“The College’s mission from the begintive support for the following: ning has been to combine academic excellence and social responsibility,” says Keith, • Paid summer internships for students Centennial Professor of Anthropology. • Fellowships for faculty members to design “We’re hoping the center will support that curricula that will link their academic work mission by making preparation for leaderto civic and social responsibility issues ship in creating a more just and humane • Partnerships with community organizasociety more central to the educational tions that will maximize the quality of eduexperience at Swarthmore.” cational experiences for students as well as In the renovated building, a spiral stairthe quality of their contributions to the case, angled ceilings, and patterned molding community JIM GRAHAM S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N 8 The Lang Center: All Aboard! TIM SHAFFER Students Win Net Fight • Opportunities for orientation and training to prepare students for participation in communities • Reflection and assessment to help students and community partners identify successful strategies for social change • The Lang Visiting Professorship for Issues of Social Change, which brings to Swarthmore individuals distinguished by their identification and engagement with social justice, civil liberties, human rights, and democracy • Swarthmore Foundation, which supports service efforts of students, staff, and faculty members and summer internships • The Lang Opportunity Scholars Program, which provides financial support, guidance, and mentoring for selected Swarthmore students to design and implement effective solutions to significant social problems “Courses that link the campus to the community are an important way to prepare students to use their intellectual skills in the world,” Keith says. “Swarthmore students are strongly motivated to work toward positive social change. We hope to offer them more opportunities—both in the classroom and in the community—to strengthen their ability to do this effectively.” —Alisa Giardinelli Catalyst for Change the public that the memos are available at sites not associated with Swarthmore. The College also challenged Diebold in writing to back up its claim of copyright infringement. “The College administration applauds our students for their idealism and initiative, for acting on their consciences in the interest of fair elections and healthy democracy,” Gross said in a statement. However, some students think the College should have been more supportive. Pavlosky, who put the documents on-line through the campus organization Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, told The New York Times that the cease-and-desist letters were “a perfect example of how copyright law can be and is abused” to stifle freedom of speech. He added that he and other advocates wished the College had decided to fight instead of asking them to take down the files. The files, now reposted to the College’s site, never stopped circulating on-line. They include discussions of bugs in Diebold’s software and warnings that its computer network is poorly protected against hackers. The students say that by trying to spread the word about problems with the company’s software, they are performing a valuable form of electronic civil disobedience that has broad implications for American society. —Alisa Giardinelli JIM GRAHAM taxis stopped. It was a very eerie feeling,” Jetter said. “Groups of young men wouldn’t WHEN C YNTHIA JETTER visited Bytom, Poland, let me pass. It was a tough time, and it shut this summer, she stopped traffic. me down for a while.” “I was the only black person there, but I But recognizing that change takes time, thought, ‘OK. No one is going to bother me.’ Jetter forged ahead with her mission in But buses stopped, police came out, and Poland. The programs she hopes to set up in Bytom will add to Swarthmore’s Study Abroad Program there. With her Lang Center colleagues and the Swarthmore College faculty members who lead the program, Jetter hopes to take Swarthmore’s international work to a new level by creating community based and service learning opportunities for students in Poland. Months after leaving Poland, Jetter is still processing her experiences there. She THE STAFF OF THE COLLEGE’S LANG CENTER FOR CIVIC AND plans to be honest with interSOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY RECENTLY MOVED TO QUARTERS IN THE ested students—especially those of color. SWARTHMORE TRAIN STATION: (LEFT TO RIGHT) EXECUTIVE DIREC“I talked to the mayor and TOR JENNIE KEITH, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR COMMUNITY PARTheads of organizations about NERSHIPS AND PLANNING CYNTHIA JETTER ’74, ASSOCIATE DIREChow to help students of color TOR FOR STUDENT PROGRAMS AND TRAINING PAT JAMES, ADMINfeel safe,” she said. “What I ISTRATIVE ASSISTANT DELORES ROBINSON, AND ASSISTANT TO THE enjoyed most were the discusDIRECTOR AND PROGRAMS COORDINATOR DEBRA KARDON-BROWN. sions with the various women’s groups and organizations, which reminded me again that what we all want is the ability to provide for our children. I feel very strongly that the contributions that our students can make to this community will go far in improving the quality of life for many of the residents of Bytom, not to mention how much they will come away with from there.” Jetter is also working to create deeper and more stable partnerships between Swarthmore and community agencies in Chester. Students will be engaged in housing rehabilitation, tutoring, mentoring, sports clinics, financial literacy instruction, computer literacy, Web page designs, literacy, English as a second language, cultural enrichment, grassroots organizing, nonprofit management, and teen leadership. The center is also considering developing a semester in Chester program, which would require students to live in the city. Back in the local community, Jetter helped professors such as Associate Professor of Sociology Sarah Willie and Assistant Professor of Music Tom Whitman to extend their work with students in Chester, Pa. “Sarah was very excited by the opportunity to add another dimension to her class,” said Jetter. —Andrea Hammer DECEMBER 2003 (DMCA) that Diebold must pay damages for intimidating Internet service providers. The hearing is scheduled for Feb. 9. Although the documents—several thousand company memos and e-mail messages—had been available on-line for months, they did not become media fodder until the end of October, when Diebold issued cease-and-desist orders to programmers and others, including several Swarthmore students, who posted them on the Internet. Diebold had maintained that the posting was a case of copyright infringement and had demanded that the documents be removed from each Web site. In response to the orders and to bring the College into compliance with the DMCA, the administration asked any user who provided a link to the documents to remove it. Dean Robert Gross ’62 says this was done on the advice of legal counsel, despite the College’s support of the students’ cause. Although not confronting the company directly, the College encouraged students to file a "counternotification" under the copyright law against Diebold's take-down demand. In addition, the administration alerted students that it is defensible on fair-use and free-speech grounds to use their Web sites to describe the content of the memos they have seen and their implications for American democracy and to use their sites to inform interested members of 9 A R o of D o g s ’ Ta l e PROFESSOR AND CHAIR OF THE ART DEPARTMENT BRIAN MEUNIER IS WORKING ON A SERIES OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS WITH HIS WIFE, ANDY SHELTER PAINTER PERKY EDGERTON. THE NEW CHILDREN’S BOOK Pipiolo and the Roof Dogs gestated in San Pablo, Mexico, during a sabbatical leave. As Professor of the Art Department Brian Meunier walked through the mountains with his wife, painter Perky Edgerton, he was intrigued by the rooftop guard dogs, which become angry because they are without human contact. Meunier said that their barking in the middle of the night, starting in one village at the end of the valley and mov- ing along like a wave, gave him a “sense of the world being round”—and the launching point for his first children’s story, which has also moved adults. “The dogs could be free, but they need to be convinced. Like the talk of freedom today, it needs to sink in,” Meunier says, using the dogs as a metaphor. Lupe, the young female narrator, is “full of heart … she wants everyone to experience freedom.” As a sculptor and professor at Swarthmore for 24 years, Meunier has often spent his leave time in villages outside of the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico with his wife and two daughters. In addition, “summers as academics have allowed us to keep the creative juices going,” he says. “Travel opens one’s eyes. You go in naïve—with WORMS INFEST COLLEGE NETWORK S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N © MARK COHEN The timing was exceptionally bad. Just as students returned to campus at summer’s end, three virulent worms were released into Windows computer systems worldwide: Blaster on Aug. 15, Nachi on Aug. 18, and Sobig on Aug. 25—leaving the College’s Information Technology Services (ITS) professionals and student dorm consultants scrambling to secure Swarthmore’s network before classes began. “It was just tiring,” says Robin Jacobsen, manager of client services for ITS. “Everyone was pitching in, working around the clock. 10 your eyes wide open.” Generally packing up his van with 1,200 pounds of material for sculpting wood and metal works up to 7 feet tall, Meunier, 50, recently experienced some muscular problems that interfered with his studio work. “I would have gone crazy if I had not done something else. So I started writing, which is so much more portable than sculpture,” he says. “I always wanted to shrink my studio into a suitcase,” referring to the “practical portability of storytelling.” Edgerton was actually the first one to draft Pipiolo, which turned out too long for the format of many children’s books. So Meunier, who has enjoyed writing since his college days at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, where he received a bachelor of fine arts in 1976, took a stab at subsequent revisions. In August, Dutton Children’s Books released Pipiolo, the first in a projected trilogy for 3 to 6 year olds. Meunier characterizes his None of us on the client services team had a day off for a month.” Jacobsen says the three worms differ from more traditional viruses in that they infected computers without any actions being performed by the user. Traditionally, Jacobsen explains, viruses come in the form of e-mail attachments, and users must open the attachment in order to infect their system. These worms, however, traveled rapidly through network ports to infect other computers within seconds—often without the user even knowing his computer was vulnerable to infection. To remedy the problem, ITS staff and student consultants took the drastic step of isolating every Windows computer from the network. They then went room to room to install anti-virus patches and security updates on all computers before letting wife’s “whimsical” oil paintings, which add to the story without just duplicating what’s already been said, as “magical realism.” Using the earthen tones of Mexico, they convey a strong sense of place. The Two Gustavos, the second work in the trilogy that is now in production, focuses on a father and son, basketball, and water usage in the village of Zachilla. A Man With Quiet Hands, the third book, is about a 15-year-old girl’s idealized memory of her deceased father and the boy she hopes to marry in the mountain village of Jose Pacifico. From Nov. 14 to Dec. 14, the College’s List Gallery hosted an exhibition titled Children, featuring Edgerton’s paintings, along with a selection of portraits and large-scale narrative paintings of children. Meunier also joined his wife to sign copies of Pipiolo and The Roof Dogs. “I’ve been training for this work all my life,” Meunier says. —Andrea Hammer them regain network access. Matt Wallaert ’04, who worked about 120 hours for ITS in the two weeks before classes began, says students generally understood the inconvenience: “I think they realized this was a problem we needed to respond to as a community.” Jacobsen says worms like Blaster, Sobig, and Nachi represent new, more malicious trends in viral activity. In hopes of finding more efficient remedies for any future outbreaks, Jacobsen says ITS has taken such steps as purchasing a high-end CD burner to make possible rapid mass distributions of CDs containing anti-virus updates and patches possible, increasing the frequency of automatic updates at public computers, and finding ways to pinpoint more quickly infected computers before viruses spread. —Elizabeth Redden ’05 Reynolds Caps Fall Season With CC Championship CROSS-COUNTRY MARK DUZENSKI Junior Lang Reynolds was named Centennial Conference (CC) Runner of the Year after finishing first in the conference championship in Center Valley, Pa. Reynolds covered the men’s 8K course in 26:45.27, becoming the first male in Swarthmore history to capture the championship. The Garnet placed third in the team standings as James Golden ’05 and Garrett Ash ’05 ran 15th and 16th, respectively. The third-place finish—Swarthmore’s best—equals the performance of the 1993 and 1999 squads. In women’s cross-country, Elizabeth Gardner ’05 and Debbie Farrelly ’06 led the Garnet to a fourth-place finish at the CC Championships. The duo ran the 6K course together—Gardner finished 10th in 25:00.90, and Farrelly ran 11th in 25:02.22, earning second-team All-CC honors. Njideka Akunyili ’04 finished 27th, and Caroline Ritter ’06 was 33rd. FIELD HOCKEY (7–11, 3–7) Despite the record, the young Garnet squad closed out the season on a high note with victories over Haverford (2–1) and conference foe Franklin & Marshall (3–2) to set the tone for next season. Senior co-captain Helen Leitner and sophomore forward Heidi Fieselmann led the Garnet in scoring, with 16 points apiece. First-year players Neema Patel and Karen Lorang made an immediate impact, earning second-team all-CC honors. Patel led the defense with 5 points, and Lorang posted a 2.85 goals-against average and a .809 save percentage in goal. EMMA BENN ’04 CLOSED OUT HER SWARTHMORE VOLLEYBALL CAREER BY SETTING FIVE COLLEGE RECORDS IN HER FINAL SEASON. shutouts, recording a 1.38 goals-against average. Natalie Negrey ’07 provided a spark to the offense, providing two game-winning goals. She was one of six CC players to record a hat trick when she tallied three goals in a 6–1 victory over Washington. In the most exciting game of the season, Becky Strauss ’06 scored in overtime to give the Garnet a 2–1 come-from-behind victory over Johns Hopkins. 17-match CC losing streak, winning three conference games for the first time since the 1994 season. The losing streak ended with a 1–0 victory over Washington College, when Colton Bangs ’07 scored a man-down goal with 2:44 remaining. The Garnet also recorded a 1–0 victory over 12th-ranked Johns Hopkins. Senior captain Brendan Moriarty tallied the goal to give the Garnet its first victory over the Blue Jays since 1993. Junior goalkeeper Nate Shupe was instrumental in those two victories. He posted a 1.68 goalsagainst average and a .780 save percentage, earning all-CC honorable mention. Shupe, an honors astrophysics major, was also named to the CoSIDA Academic All-America District II second team. WOMEN’S SOCCER (9–9, 4–6) Led by senior captains Katey McCaffrey and Catherine Salussolia, the Garnet recorded first-time victories over Johns Hopkins and Franklin & Marshall. McCaffrey led the squad in scoring with a career-high eight goals and four assists for 20 points. The midfielder ranked sixth in the CC in points per game (1.18) and seventh in goals per game (0.47). Goalkeeper Salussolia finished fifth in the CC with 96 saves and three VOLLEYBALL (14–18, 5–5) Led by senior co-captain Emma Benn, the Garnet set a host of school records and posted its most CC victories since 1995, including a season-ending 3–2 victory over Haverford that snapped a 14-match losing streak to the Fords. Benn closed out her career as the all-time Garnet leader in career matches played (110), career games played (376), career attempts (2,465), career kills (748), and career digs (913). The outside hitter earned second-team all-CC honors. Sophomore setter Emily Conlon and junior co-captain Natalie Dunphy ranked first and second in the CC in service aces with 82 and 77, respectively. Conlon set Garnet records for assists in a season (949), assists in a career (1,484), and aces (82) in a season, earning all-CC honorable mention. Dunphy finished fourth in the CC in blocks per game (0.90) and set a school mark for total blocks in a season with 105. She also holds the Garnet mark with 136 career aces. Senior blocker Katrina Morrison finished third in the CC in blocks per game (0.94) and closed out her career with a school record 126 solo blocks and 208 total blocks. First-year outside hitter Erica George set school season records for attempts (1,044), kills (312), and digs (405). —Mark Duzenski DECEMBER 2003 MEN’S SOCCER (5–12–2, 3–6) The young Garnet squad snapped its 11 Visitors THE SCOTT ARBORETUM Welcome HAS BEEN GROWING A L O N G S I D E S WA R T H M O R E FOR 75 YEARS. By Ben Ya g o d a I n 1929, a noted landscape architect and horticulturist spent a few days examining the grounds of Swarthmore College. He was unimpressed with what he found. “The variety of trees is not very great,” he commented in his report, “covering only about seventy species in about thirty genera, and two quite inferior trees, the Norway Maple and the Norway Spruce, are used in much larger quantities than is desirable. The planting of smaller trees, of flowering shrubs, and of herbaceous plants has been haphazard.” As for Crum Creek and the Crum Woods, the same man recalled at a later date: “They were utterly neglected and were as a result in a most dilapidated condition…. There were hundreds of dead trees both standing and fallen. The undergrowth was dense and mostly of shrubs that were not particularly desirable. Poison ivy, catbriar, and honeysuckle particularly were to be found in large masses, smothering other growth. The entire area constituted a most serious fire menace … and the property was inaccessible except for a few trails and one or two rather hastily constructed paths.” John Wister, who wrote those words, was responsible, more than anyone else, for the OPPOSITE PAGE: © HARRY KALISH; LEFT: JOHN WISTER: COURTESY OF THE SCOTT ARBORETUM; ABOVE: GOTTLIEB HAMPFLER transformation of Swarthmore’s campus from an uninspiring series of horticultural accidents to the remarkable arboretum it is today. But another man’s vision and his widow’s philanthropy made Wister’s accomplishment possible. The visionary was Arthur Hoyt Scott, Class of 1895, the son of the founder of the Scott Paper Co.—and a horticultural enthusiast of high magnitude. In the early 1920s, Scott, a resident of nearby Rose Valley, conceived the idea of an installation on the Swarthmore campus where homeowners would be able to observe an attractive display of plants that could thrive in their own gardens. Scott found an enthusiastic audience in Samuel Palmer, head of the Botany Department at Swarthmore, who, in 1926, presented the Board of Managers with a plan to make the entire College property an arboretum. The document did not tend toward moderation, stating at one point, “Should such a development take place a beautiful park-like area would arise centrally located, easy of access, surrounded by a densely populated country, of great value educationally, self-supporting, and always to the advantage and prestige of Swarthmore College.” In his copy of the prospectus, Swarth- President Aydelotte tried to discuss a mere beautification of the grounds. But Mrs. Scott said, “It must be an arboretum, or I cannot … allow Arthur’s name to be used in any way.” more College President Frank Aydelotte scribbled a question in the margin: “How self-supporting[?]” The plan’s grandeur seemed to doom it. Early in 1927, Scott wrote Palmer a pessimistic letter, doubting that the Board of Managers would donate even the land needed for an arboretum and concluding, “I’m inclined to think that the best you could DECEMBER 2003 JOHN WISTER H’42 13 TREE PEONIES (LEFT) CONSTITUTED ONE OF THE EARLY COLLECTIONS OF THE SCOTT FOUNDATION—WHICH WAS RENAMED THE SCOTT ARBORETUM IN THE MID-1980S. THEY ARE NOW FOUND ON THE SLOPE BELOW CLOTHIER MEMORIAL HALL. THE CRUM CREEK (BELOW) RUNS THROUGH ABOUT 200 ACRES OF WOODLAND OWNED BY THE COLLEGE—ONE OF THE LAST SIGNIFICANT GREEN SPACES IN DELAWARE COUNTY. PARRISH HALL (RIGHT) WAS BUILT ON A BARREN HILL BUT IS NOW SURROUNDED BY LUSH GARDENS AND VERDANT TREES. THE DEAN BOND ROSE GARDEN DISPLAYS MORE THAN 600 TYPES OF ROSES. S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N CLAIRE SAWYERS 14 get would be permission to beautify the grounds.” Scott was also preoccupied with his failing health. In the same letter, he told Palmer that his doctors had forbidden him to return to work for another three months, and, although he was willing to offer the arboretum project what support he could, “I am a poor reed to lean on.” Just weeks later, Scott suffered a stroke and died suddenly. He was 52. However, his widow, Edith Wilder Scott, Class of 1896; his sister, Margaret Moon; and her husband, Owen Moon—from the Class of 1894—did not forget his idea. In 1929, they approached President Aydelotte and offered to fund an endowment in Arthur Scott’s honor, with the proceeds to be used for the kind of campus plantings Scott had envisioned. Initially, the president tried to steer the discussion in the direction Scott had predicted—a mere beautification of the grounds. But Mrs. Scott would have none of it. “I regret very much that my gift has been announced, for there are so many things to be discussed and decided upon,” she wrote to Aydelotte in May. “It must be an arboretum, or I cannot … allow Arthur’s name to be used in any way.” Aydelotte ultimately accepted the offer on these terms: If THE TERRY WILD STUDIO COURTESY OF THE SCOTT ARBORETUM the endowment would pay the salary of a director and the cost of plants, the College would supply labor for the planting and subsequent care of the specimens. Mrs. Scott and the Moons agreed and put forth as director the name of John Caspar Wister. Wister, 42 years old in 1929, was a direct descendant of Caspar Wistar (subsequent generations changed the a in the surname to an e), who emigrated from Heidelberg to Philadelphia in 1717. One of his descendants, and his namesake, was a Philadelphia physician and anatomist, after whom two notable things were named: the Wistar Institute, a still-operating center of medical and scientific research, and the flower wisteria. Another was Owen Wister, author of The Virginian. John Wister grew up on an estate in the then-rural Germantown section of Philadelphia, where he liked to follow around the gardener and haunt the greenhouse. At the age of 14, he grew his first study collection of flowers—some 40 different chrysanthemums. He took a degree in landscape architecture at Harvard and, after graduation, worked in the offices of practitioners in Philadelphia and New York. In 1917, after enlisting in the Army, he was sent to France, where he spent all his leave time visiting the great gardens of France, often sending notable specimens back to the United States. After the war, Wister developed a national reputation as a landscape designer and a John Wister was responsible for the transformation of Swarthmore’s campus. But Arthur Hoyt Scott’s vision made Wister’s accomplishment possible. DECEMBER 2003 FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY botanical expert and was in every way the impressive shopping. Wister’s secret was logical person to direct the new Scott Foun- buying small. Thus, the cost of the American dation. Not the least of his qualifications hemlock varied between $30 to $100 per was that he didn’t need the money: His 1,000 plants, and the plants were between 3 salary was $1,000 a year, to be paid directly and 9 inches high. to him by Mrs. Scott. Beyond that guarantee, the finances of the Scott Foundation were dubious at best. The endowment was reported in the press to be about $100,000, but that was a fanciful figure. The amount of real assets collected totaled a little less than He acquired some taller specimens as $16,000, which the College’s comptroller well. On a wet March morning, the foundareckoned would provide a total of $1,059 in tion was formally dedicated with the plantannual income. On the other hand, at least ing of a long row of lilacs near the eastern for the time being, the foundation didn’t entrance of the campus, proceeding from really need money. There was no land or the Friends Meetinghouse down the lawn. equipment to buy, no staff to pay, no offices The same year, Allen White, Class of to furnish. (Incidentally, Wister’s annual 1894, and his wife donated $1,000 for the salary remained $1,000 a year until 1959. planting of Japanese cherry trees in honor Then, it dropped. By the end of his time at of their late daughter, Carolien White PowScott, he was paying himself $1 a year.) ers, Class of 1922. Wister bought 68 cherry In a “Preliminary Report” submitted to trees (two each of 34 varieties), about 2 feet Aydelotte in 1930, Wister advocated concen- high on average, for a grand total of $231— trating on the College’s “greatest asset”— “leaving ample allowance for the best soil the Crum Woods. The portion adjoining preparation I have ever seen.” The trees were campus, he said, “could be developed A NEW ARBORETUM ANNIVERSARY BOOK into a wild garden of great and unusual At its 75th anniversary, the Scott Arboretum is known throughbeauty unlike anyout the world as a leading horticultural institution. Thousands of thing in this section people visit the Swarthmore campus each year to enjoy its garof the country at a dens, paths, and programs. To comparatively small commemorate its rich past and cost.” He recomcurrent vitality, the Scott Arboremended planting on tum and The Donning Co. have a scale that “would published a 176-page book that make a sight that includes a lively history by noted would make Swarthauthor Ben Yagoda; a foreword more famous.” The reflecting on the relationship of president gave his the College to its campus by T. approval, and Wister Kaori Kitao, William R. Kenan Jr., used his $1,000 Professor Emerita of Art History; budget to buy some and pages of historic and con14,000 hemlocks, temporary photographs—includ5,000 dogwoods, ing many color pictures showing the beauty of the Swarthmore 4,000 mountain campus today. The book is available from the Scott Arboretum laurel, and 400 holfor $34.95 plus shipping costs. Call (610) 328-8025 to order. lies. Even in 1930, this was some pretty 15 THE SCOTT OUTDOOR AMPHITHEATER (LEFT) IS A MASTERFUL EXAMPLE OF DESIGNING IN HARMONY WITH NATURE. SINCE 1942, IT HAS BEEN THE SITE OF EVERY COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT, INCLUDING A RAINY DAY IN 1983, WHEN MEMBERS OF THE GRADUATING CLASS MARCHED THERE FROM THE RAIN LOCATION LAMB-MILLER FIELD HOUSE TO HAVE THEIR DEGREES CONFERRED EN MASSE BY PRESIDENT DAVID FRASER. SPECIMEN TREES (RIGHT, WITH CLOTHIER MEMORIAL HALL IN THE BACKGROUND) ARE ONE OF THE TRADEMARKS OF THE ARBORETUMCAMPUS. S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N THE TERRY WILD STUDIO 16 planted along the edge of the lawn near Cedar Lane. Improving the state of the Crum Woods, envisioned by Wister as the centerpiece of the arboretum, was not so easily addressed. In his words: “There were quantities of dead, diseased, or broken trees. There was dreadful erosion. There were sickening piles of rubbish, old furniture, old stoves, mountains of tin cans and bottles.” Clearly, many hundreds of man-hours were needed to attend to the situation. But the Swarthmore grounds crew of a dozen or so men had already added numerous Scott-related tasks to its previous duties and could not be called on any further. Help came from an outside force—the Depression. Just a year after the stock-market crash, many people were losing their jobs, including workers at the Victoria Plush Mills, adjacent to the College’s land on Crum Creek, which closed in 1930. The Borough of Swarthmore raised $500 for unemployment relief, the College matched the figure, and two dozen men were put to work in the woods. As Wister wrote, “They were pretty clumsy compared to our own men but in the two and a half winters they literally transformed the dilapi- dated areas into a pleasant woodland park with attractive paths.” The 1930s at the Scott Foundation were marked by a sense of possibility and excitement, as Wister—who maintained his residence in Germantown, coming down to Swarthmore a couple of times a week during growing season, less often during the rest of the year—began to turn his vision into reality. The collection and the endowment grew, slowly but steadily, and the horticultural world at large began to take notice. Then, Pearl Harbor was attacked, the United States entered World War II, and the grand plans of the Scott Foundation were put on hold for a very long time. Wister had frequently lamented the lack of labor available to him, and war conditions meant even fewer man-hours for the arboretum. As a result, he began making the difficult decision to eliminate collections that needed the most human attention. The first to go was the display bed of chrysanthemums between College Avenue and Worth Hall. It was followed by the herbaceous plants in the president’s garden and in the rock wall at the library. When the war was over, Wister—by now living in a rented apartment in Swarthmore—drafted a 13-page memorandum for President John Nason and the Board of Managers, titled “Future Plans.” It outlined how, after a long period of stasis, the foundation could and should still “accomplish its original purpose.” The report exuded confidence, almost a sense of manifest destiny; even the verbs and the repetitive sentence structure had a martial feel to them. Referring to the foundation, Wister wrote: “Its collections must increase in size and in importance. It must show the plants to the public in the most effective way. It should conduct demonstrations of gardening practices and publish complete reports of the various plants being grown and tested. It should conduct research in all matters pertaining to the plants in its collections, their botanical relationships, their cultivation, and their improvement by selection or plant breeding.” Carrying out the plans would require new staff, new facilities, new equipment, and large infusions of money. And there, as always, was the rub. No one could have been more horticulturally knowledgeable and discerning or more dedicated to the Scott Foundation and to plants than was John Wister. But he was a shy man, more comfortable at the typewriter and in the garden than with people—especially large groups of people. The kind of growth he foresaw would have required, essentially, a gregarious fund-raiser and salesman. Wister was not that person. Yet despite Wister’s shortcomings as a public personality, the Swarthmore campus, under his and his colleagues’ care, was increasingly recognized as one of the loveliest in the country, if not the world. Some of the individual collections had developed national and international reputations. These included daffodils, irises, azaleas, magnolias, lilacs, rhododendrons, and tree peonies—always a special interest of Wister’s. In 1948, The New York Times termed the tree peony collection the “largest and best” in the country. A highlight of the postwar period was installation in 1958 of the Dean Bond Rose Garden, named after Elizabeth Powell Bond, dean of women at Swarthmore from 1890 to 1906. It was designed by Gertrude Smith, the assistant director of the foundation. Two years later, she became the first wife of John Wister, whom she had known for 26 years and who was then 73. Mrs. Wister later remarked, “It took him all that time to decide he could take the plunge.” They moved into the cottage the College had built for Wister in 1949, at the southern end of campus, bordering on the Crum Woods. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, in his annual reports and memoranda to Swarthmore presidents, Wister gave vent to his frustrations, most of which had to do with insufficient manpower. Finally, in 1964, the 35th anniversary of the foundation, Courtney Smith, president of Swarth- Ben Yagoda is the author of The Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College: The First 75 Years, from which this article is adapted. DECEMBER 2003 THE TERRY WILD STUDIO more since 1953, appointed a committee to assess its future. Its report reaffirmed Arthur Scott’s original conception of the foundation as a force for horticultural education; recommended that Wister’s successor be hired on a full-time basis; and, most important, put its money where its mouth was, allocating funds that nearly doubled the foundation’s endowment to $600,000. Wister would stay for another four years, making his tenure a round four decades. Under his successors—Joseph Oppe; Judith Zuk; and, since 1991, Claire Sawyers—the Scott Foundation became the Scott Arboretum, the new name more accurately describing the campuswide horticultural showcase it had become. The endowment grew to some $20 million, providing post–Wister directors with the labor they needed to maintain it. Wister was able to witness some of these developments before his death in 1982, at age 95. The headline of his obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as “the dean of horticulture in the U.S.” The current arboretum is a tribute to his vision and dedication. But there is a more specific legacy. Soon after moving to his Swarthmore cottage, he subsequently recalled, he began to plant “particularly rare or precious or small plants that I was afraid to plant on the main campus where they are subject to theft, vandalism, power lawn mowers in careless hands, and ignorant laborers who might pull them up thinking they were weeds.” On joining the household, Gertrude Wister added to the garden, with special attention to daffodils (eventually obtaining more than 400 varieties), ferns, wild flowers, rock gardens, and rock wall plants. “We regard it not as a private garden but as the herbaceous section of the Scott Foundation,” Wister wrote. “Visitors are always welcome.” Gertrude Wister remained in the house and cultivated the garden until her death in 1998, at the age of 93. The house is now used as faculty quarters for the College, but, as far as the gardens are concerned, visitors who can find them—either by wandering in back of the athletics field or entering through the driveway on Harvard Avenue— are still welcome. T 17 S Sowing Seeds of Success ERIC ADLER ’86 CO-FOUNDS AN INNER-CITY PUBLIC CHARTER BOARDING SCHOOL. By Elizabeth Redden ’05 P h otographs by Claire Weiss ’03 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N T 18 he eighth-grade girls of “Swarthmore House” are restless. It’s time to go home for the weekend, they say. Tatianna Green is singing Lumidee: “If you want me to stay, I’ll never leave.” Chelia James picks up the beat, accompanying Tatianna with claps. The room is exploding with chatter. “Do you really think so-and-so is cute?” Ashley Muskelly asks. “Well, he’s better than the rest of ’em!” Two desks down, the topic of conversation is drastically different: “I got all As and Bs,” someone says. That, of course, stirs up a volley of responses. Progress reports came out today. It’s the weekend, grades are out, and these girls haven’t been home in two weeks. It’s a recipe for unrest. Poor Lori Beth Hutchison is happy it’s the weekend too, but she has to round up 18 the girls’ energy and harness it for one final activity before they can all go home. Hutchison, the boarding instructor for Swarthmore House, asks the girls to fill out a “Positive Affirmations” worksheet. “Twenty-five more minutes, then pizza, and you can go home,” she tells them, cheerful yet visibly exhausted. “I like the way I feel when I do good in school,” Tatianna reads out loud from her worksheet, her voice confident, strong, and indicative of the singer she dreams of becoming. “I know I will be successful in life because I will never put myself down.” “I think that’s what I’m most proud of,” says Eric Adler ’86, co-founder of the Schools for Educational Evolution and Development (SEED) School of Washington, D.C., the inner-city public charter boarding school that Tatianna and her friends attend. “When you look at our kids, they’re loud and boisterous and sometimes unrefined in their behavior, but they’re just kids, you know?” He pauses, takes a bite of his fish filet sandwich. “And that’s how it should be.” The SEED School is the first of its kind. Based on the premise that many students from inner-city neighborhoods need a secure, stable, and academically oriented residential environment to help them succeed, the school provides a tuition-free public boarding program for DC schoolchildren who would otherwise be in more traditional inner-city public schools. Each year, rising seventh-grade students are selected for the school via a lottery, for which there are usually three applicants for every student ran- THE SEED SCHOOL IS BASED ON THE PREMISE THAT MANY STUDENTS FROM INNER-CITY NEIGHBORHOODS NEED A SECURE, STABLE, AND ACADEMICALLY ORIENTED RESIDENTIAL ENVIRONMENT IN ORDER TO SUCCEED. domly chosen. Those who attend commit to what Adler terms a six-year college preparatory “mission.” “We talk about the college process really from the moment they arrive,” Adler says. College pennants adorn the walls of many of the classrooms; the halls are named after colleges attended by faculty members— “Yale House”; “West Point House”; and, of course, “Swarthmore House” are among them. Adler explains the SEED School attempts to form a residential community where college preparation and academic success are accepted goals. F ewer than 10 years ago, Adler was on a completely different career path. A double major in economics and engineering at Swarthmore, Adler taught high school physics in Baltimore for eight years before receiving an M.B.A. at Wharton. He then went on to a high-profile, high-paying job as a management consultant. In the back of his mind, though, Adler was playing with the idea of a public boarding school that would service those students most truly in need. While talking about it at work one day, someone visiting from a spinoff firm said he knew someone else who was thinking along the same lines: Rajiv Vinnakota, another management consultant. Vinnakota had actually taken a two-month leave of absence from his job to investigate possibilities for such a school. Adler called him, and they arranged to meet for a fastfood dinner. “We ended up staying for three hours.” A month later, in February 1997, Adler DECEMBER 2003 “I know I will be successful in life because I will never put myself down,” Green says. 19 and Vinnakota held a summit meeting in Washington. On just one Saturday, Adler, Vinnakota, and several others who had expressed interest in the school met and planned it all out. Then on Sunday, they came back and developed a business plan. The goal was to open the school in September 1998. “Raj and I were looking through this board full of stuff that needed to get done in the next year and a half, and I said, ‘Can we do it?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, we can do it, but it’ll take two full-time people.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Are you in?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ The next day, we both went in and quit our jobs.” Adler and Vinnakota spent the next 16 months working without pay to develop the school. The SEED School of Washington, D.C., opened on schedule, inviting its first class of 40 seventh-graders to live and learn in the rented attic space of the Capital Children’s Museum in September 1998. With no buildings yet complete, it was the school’s temporary campus. “These are the kids who won’t get this kind of opportunity unless we give it to them,” says Adler. N S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N T 20 oday, with the first class of seventhgraders completing its senior year—and the school at full capacity with 310 students in all six grades—the SEED School has been transformed. Two dormitories, an academic building, and a student center now stand on the campus in southeastern Washington. The student center, the last building completed, was just finished and contains a gymnasium, weight room, recreation room, multipurpose room, and cafeteria. Academically and residentially, the school boasts a collection of resources that would be unimaginable for most inner-city educators. A half-million dollars’ worth of donated art adorns the walls. High-performance Gateway computers line the brightly lit labs and classrooms, the public living areas, and are even in many of the older students’ dorm rooms. Most of the computers are gifts from the Oprah Angel Network, which recognized Adler and Vinnakota with Oprah Winfrey’s “Use Your Life” Award in May 2002. The Oprah Angel Network donated 300 computers—about one per student— plus beds, desks, and dressers for all 150 students living in the school’s second dormitory (opened in 2002). In addition, Gateway donated 150 printers, and Linens-NThings donated new sheets, comforters, pil- successful even though construction is now completed. Adler stresses that private funds are crucial to providing SEED students the type of “extras” many students in different communities take for granted. Each summer, students from the SEED School can earn trips to Greece or Wyoming. About 30 students go hiking and camping in Wyoming each summer; eight go to Greece. Pizza parties and trips to Six Flags are rewards for good grades and behavior. The School has a Wish List on amazon.com to encourage donors to fill its library shelves, and money will continue to be required for things like trips to the theater and museums. “It’s the stuff that gives kids great opportunities, like everyone else has,” Adler says. ERIC ADLER LEFT A CAREER IN MANAGEMENT CONSULTING TO CO-FOUND THE SEED SCHOOL WITH RAJIV VINNAKOTA. THE SCHOOL NOW HAS 310 STUDENTS IN GRADES 7 TO 12. lows, towels, and accessories. Public operating money for the school, according to Adler, runs somewhere in the ballpark of $7.5 million per year. Through regular public school charter funding (see sidebar) and additional public money added on top of that to support residential expenses, the school can sustain itself at capacity. However, Adler says they have raised about $23 million through private donations, and he hopes fund-raising efforts continue to be ate Myers ’99, an eighth-grade reading teacher and cross-country coach for SEED, says the school is, in many ways, an ideal place for a teacher with a social vision. “I continue to feel amazed about the resources and the idealism that has been marshaled here in the school.” “If this is urban education, it has a completely different feel.” Myers cites the SEED teachers as being particularly dedicated. Many faculty members, he says, work 13- or 14-hour days and come in on Saturdays or Sundays to catch up. SEED has gotten about 1,000 resumes each of the past two years, and the school chooses from a national pool to find the most dedicated and idealistic. “There are very few students who fall into the cracks here. If anything, they get caught in the cracks and have a hard time adjusting to the high expectations of the school,” Myers says. “Everyone wants these kids to succeed so much.” I t’s been quite a change for Katia Fauntroy, an aspiring eighth-grade singer from Swarthmore House, who remembers feeling as though academics were completely unimportant at her previous school. “You could be the dumbest person in the world and still pass at my old school,” she says. “Here, you’re challenged.” It’s a difficult transition for many students, and not everyone meets the challenge. Of the 40 students constituting the original class, only 21 are still at SEED for WHY CHARTER SCHOOLS? THE SCHOOL IS CHALLENGING. OF THE 40 STUDENTS CONSTITUTING THE ORIGINAL CLASS, ONLY 21 HAVE MADE IT TO THEIR SENIOR YEAR. BUT ADLER SAYS ALMOST ALL OF THEM WILL ATTEND COLLEGE. their senior year, according to Boarding Program Coordinator Shantelle Hughes. “This is difficult for these kids,” Adler admits. “It really is. Being motivated at such a young age to undertake a mission that in the context of their lives and neighborhoods might not make a whole lot of sense is, I think, a pretty unique character trait.” When looking at the kids who are thriving, who sit in front of their very own Gateway computers in their dorm rooms, who have their artwork plastered on the wall in the front hallway, who spend part of their summer in Greece and read and write and study within a network of similarly focused close friends, it’s difficult to imagine where they might be without a place like SEED. “If you walk into the public schools that most of these kids come from and would otherwise be in, it’s not a pretty sight,” Adler says. Of the 21 that are left of the original class, Adler believes just about every one of them will attend college next year. S tanding in line for his lunch, Adler picks up a tray with the SEED logo on it. He smiles broadly. “I love that. I love that. I have one at home. Founder’s privileges.” Looking at him, it’s impossible not to see just how much he loves his job. The salad bar is, apparently, not at its best today; Director of Admissions Lesley Poole says it usually includes raisins and other fixings that just aren’t there on Fridays. Adler is not concerned. He fills his tray and talks about his hopes of operating SEED schools in cities throughout the country. Sitting down, shaking his chocolate milk, he repeats a story he has told many times. About two years ago, he was giving a tour when a student representative was asked about his summer plans. “I’m trying to get myself a job in Paris,” the student responded. “I just about fell over,” Adler says. Having spent three hours in Paris during a layover on his flight back from Greece the previous summer, this student had decided it would be a nice place to return to the next year. “Whether or not he actually got a summer job in Paris, the point is that he saw it was out there, and that there would be ways for him to work there, and he decided to go about it,” Adler says, his voice rising with excitement from a story that, for him, still hasn’t grown old. Looking around him at the cafeteria, with students from each grade level sitting with their teachers, being loud and noisy and, well, kids at school on a Friday, Adler is in his element. Sitting amid the kind of magical madness he helped make possible, quietly drinking his chocolate milk in the corner, Adler can’t imagine his life having taken any other course. “I really am lucky.” T This is Elizabeth Redden’s fifth feature article for the Bulletin. She will be studying in Ecuador during the spring semester. he charter school movement has boomed in the past decade, enjoying bipartisan support and flexible legislation. Professor of Education Eva Travers says about 40 states have approved charter school legislation since the mid-1990s, and each state has differing requirements for start-up charters. The basic premise behind charter schools, Travers explains, is to allow motivated individuals to open schools that create innovative curriculums and allow for greater teacher autonomy outside of a bureaucratic system. “The potential of charter schools is to let people who are so inclined bring together their progressive ideas about education.” Charter schools therefore get public funding, with less public oversight, in exchange for accountability: Under the “No Child Left Behind Law,” Travers says, charter school students must score well on state tests for schools to maintain their charters. Schools are required to accept everyone who applies or hold a lottery for available spots if surplus numbers apply, although Travers says a common complaint about charter schools is that they lack special education services and therefore restrict without actively denying access to students with special needs. Other complaints about charter schools are that they potentially create more segregated communities, increase costs in terms of administration requirements, and do not always offer the types of innovative curricula they are expected to provide in exchange for their greater autonomy. Travers describes the SEED School as a “unique charter school” and says the school has been thoughtful in its innovative boarding curriculum. “The SEED School is the best possible use of the charter school idea—it takes advantage of having less regulation and allows its teachers to have more autonomy,” she says. —E.R. DECEMBER 2003 T 21 FINDING GROUND AT S WA R T H M O R E , I N T E R N AT I O N A L E D U C AT I O N I S S O D I F F U S E — Y E T S O D E E P LY A PA R T O F T H E C U R R I C U L U M AND LIFE OF THE COLLEGE—IT’S AS IF IT S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N W E R E I N T H E C A M P U S A I R A N D WAT E R . 22 By Tom Krattenmaker ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS: AT THE REQUEST OF THE BULLETIN, INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AND STUDENTS WHO HAD COMPLETED A FOREIGN STUDY EXPERIENCE SUBMITTED NEARLY 100 PHOTOGRAPHS FOR THIS ARTICLE. THEY SHOW SWARTHMORE STUDENTS ENCOUNTERING PEOPLE AND CULTURES ON EVERY CONTINENT. EACH PHOTOGRAPH THAT WAS CHOSEN BY THE EDITORS FOR PUBLICATION IS LABELED WITH THE NAME OF THE STUDENT WHO SUBMITTED IT AND THE PLACE WHERE IT WAS TAKEN. ANNA STRATTON ʼ04, INDIA CATHERINE CLARK ʼ04, FRANCE P ondering the latest international news in this strife-torn decade, Americans often struggle to divine something in common between their lives and those of the people living in distant, troubled places such as Iraq, North Korea, or the West Bank. With religion, economic circumstances, political systems, and worldviews so drastically different, to what could we possibly relate? Why, outside of threats to Americans’ safety, and why, given the seeming intractability of global problems, should we even care? As the president of Swarthmore, Alfred H. Bloom asks the College community to see past the obvious divisions to all the small and large things that unite people around the globe—their common concern for family and friends, their hope for justice and a better future, their valuing of compassion and respect, their humor, their humanity. He is intent on ensuring that graduates of the College take their places in the world with the intellect, perspective, and commitment to see and act beyond the walls of division that are not as high or thick as they seem. “Our students must respect and learn from diverse cultural tradi- tions,” Bloom says. “But they must also recognize the fundamental commonalities we share—to become agents, through whatever careers they choose, of a more inclusive, united, and humane world.” Early in the second decade of Bloom’s presidency, Swarthmore is arguably more international than at any time in its history—international in the composition and outlook of its faculty and student body, international in the scope and sophistication of a Semester Abroad Program in which more than 40 percent of the students take part, and, most important, international in the way it nourishes students’ intellectual and ethical growth inside and outside the classroom. Swarthmore is reaching the point where an “international education” is so diffuse—yet so deeply a part of the curriculum and life of the College—it’s as if it were in the campus air and water. “The global perspective infuses so much of what happens on campus,” says William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science Kenneth Sharpe, who teaches and writes about Latin America. “The faculty brings a distinct global perspective to the curriculum—even in courses on American politics, for example. And on top of that, DECEMBER 2003 LAURA CLARK ʼ04, VATICAN CITY KATE PENROSE ʼ04, MOROCCO 23 “It’s easy to say that we cannot bridge the differences between cultures, that we have nothing in common,” says President Al Bloom. “What we are really trying to teach at Swarthmore is that we have almost everything in common.” AY JY PHOUN ʼ04, KENYA (PHOTO BY LIZ BALDWIN) 24 students are bringing this perspective back with them after going off to study abroad.” T o some extent, Swarthmore has long been “international.” Even decades ago, before the College had a Foreign Study Office, Asian Studies Program, and the like, an international orientation pervaded the campus thanks to the many professors who had grown up abroad or had at least spent considerable time studying in other countries, primarily in Europe. “These faculty members had a very cosmopolitan view of the world, and they brought it with them to the classroom,” says Steven Piker, a member of the sociology/anthropology faculty since 1966 and director of the Foreign Study Office. Coupled with that has been a long-standing quality in teaching foreign languages and literatures. From those historical roots have grown the following: • Formal programs in such areas as Asian Studies, Francophone Studies, and the Chinese and Japanese languages as well as an emerging program in Islamic Studies. The latter was in the works before Sept. 11, 2001, but the terrorist attacks made the program’s beginning in 2002 especially timely. One tangible result of that initiative was the hiring of Scott Kugle ’91, an assistant pro- fessor of religion who speaks Arabic and teaches courses on Islam and Islamic culture. “My first objective is to portray the Islamic world as a humane world,” Kugle says, “to introduce it as a place that is populated by human beings because, in a way, our news media and political leaders have dehumanized the whole region.” Recently, Assistant Professor Farha Ghannam, who teaches Middle Eastern culture, was appointed to a tenure-track position in anthropology. • A Semester Abroad Program that continues to sprout new offshoots in countries such as Poland and Ghana and in curricular areas from dance to theater to environmental studies. The program is marked by an emphasis on a study abroad experience that feeds and enriches the students’ coursework and research on their return for their senior year. At a time when many U.S. colleges are promoting foreign study programs with an emphasis on amenities and cultural and extracurricular experiences, as reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, Swarthmore is deepening the academic rigor of its program and exploring the addition of an international community service element. • The less formal but consistent commitment to bringing the world to the Swarthmore classroom, whether the course is in lit- MARC BOUCAI ʼ04 AND ANDY MEADE ʼ03, CZECH REPUBLIC (PHOTO BY HOFAN CHAU ʼ03; SUBMITTED BY MELINDA LEE ʼ04) This progress at Swarthmore comes at a time of national concern over the adequacy of international education in American higher education. In October, the American Council on Education issued a report finding that most institutions are falling short. “While some bright spots exist, U.S. higher education institutions have a long way to go before all students graduate with international skills and knowledge,” the report’s authors concluded. Don Swearer, for one, believes Swarthmore is one of those bright spots. “America needs leaders and visionaries to enable it to play the role I believe it should play in the world,” says Swearer, the Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Religion, whose writing and teaching focus on Buddhism. “What we’re trying to do at Swarthmore is prepare students to be the people who put in the effort to develop a more inclusive worldview, who appreciate pluralism without adopting a kind of ‘anything goes’ relativism, and who ultimately learn to stand for something.” “Leaders of the 21st century,” Bloom says, “must gain understanding of the traditions, economic and political conditions, cultures and languages of other peoples, if they are to be successful in predicting the international effects of policies and actions, and in shaping those policies and actions toward the realization of a more secure, productive, and just world. And as part of that learning they must come, as well, to understand the risks inherent in America not using its power and influence in ways that motivate trust, inclusion, and common purpose. “I hope and believe,” Bloom adds, “that our students leave here with the ability and resolve to become those very leaders.” B right sunlight streams through the windows of Trotter 301 on the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, as Associate Professor of History Tim Burke stokes the discussion. Burke has dubbed this course—which examines attempts to write world histories—The Whole Enchilada: Debates in World History. His two dozen students have plenty to say about the historian they’ve been studying the past week, Ibn Khaldun, a Muslim scholar who wrote in the 13th century. Although he’s not often included in accounts of the develop- KATE PENROSE ʼ04, MOROCCO ment of world history, Burke notes, many who know of his work think that Khaldun had amazingly advanced ideas and that his relatively cosmopolitan and secular view of world history is not what many Westerners today would expect of a medieval Muslim scholar. Having read Khaldun’s world history, The Muqadimmah, the class—primarily sophomores, juniors, and seniors—is probing his theories to see which parts hold up and which don’t. Khaldun asserts that the evolution of a people leads them inevitably from barbarism to civilization—civilization expressed in the development of “royal authority”—but Cara Angelotta ’05 spots a flaw. How does his theory explain places that didn’t develop dynasties, such as subSaharan Africa? Good question, Burke says. Why would Khaldun not account for these Africans? Gabriel Rogers ’05 blurts out the obvious with a mock naïveté that makes everyone chuckle: “They’re black!” So there you have it, Burke says. Khaldun, however enlightened he seems to us, operates with some clearly racist assumptions. One student takes the line of thought a step farther. Not only are the Africans black, but they’re non-Islamic. To what extent, she wonders aloud, is Khaldun’s whole theory DECEMBER 2003 erature, the arts, economics, political science, or virtually any other discipline. Faculty members make it a routine practice to challenge students not to settle for a simplistic understanding of issues but to do the difficult work of wrestling with the realities and implications of living in a global world. 25 SPENCER PAINE ʼ04. GREECE BRIAN NOLAN ʼ05, TURKEY Many Chances to Study Abroad S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N M 26 ore and more Swarthmore students are taking advantage of the opportunity to spend a semester studying abroad, often during the junior year. Forty-three percent of the Class of 2003 undertook foreign study, in contrast with the roughly 15 to 20 percent figure for 1980s-era classes. Whereas most foreign study experiences were once in Western Europe, the sweep of locations is far wider today. European locations remain the most popular, but during the past five years, Swarthmore students have earned credit in more than 60 countries, covering Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, South America, and the Middle East as well as Europe. Foreign study is nothing new at Swarthmore. The College has operated its own program in Grenoble, France, since 1972 [see “Grenoble Programs Turns 30,” December 2002 Bulletin] and has for many years participated in consortia that sponsor foreign study programs with other colleges. (Among the foreign study consortia in which Swarthmore takes part today are International Sri Lanka Education Associated China Colleges, and Macalester/Pomona/Swarthmore in Cape Town.) Through the 1980s, Swarthmore students had a short list of recognized programs from which they could choose. For those wishing to go beyond the confines of the list, faculty and staff members guided students toward foreign study opportunities on an ad hoc basis. As noted in a brief history of foreign study written in 1998, “Support was fragmentary, credit for study abroad was problematical, and many or most students who studied aboard effectively operated on their own while on leave from the College.” No longer. A concerted effort to organize and increase foreign study opportunities began in 1992 with the creation of the Foreign Study Office and the appointment of Professor of Anthropology Steven Piker as its director and Rosa Bernard, now foreign study coordinator, as his assistant. In close coordination with others on the faculty, Piker leads an ongoing process of codifying and refining the rules and procedures by which Swarthmore students can gain credit for studying abroad and, more important, of improving the quality of their foreign study experiences. Two key tenets have come to distinguish Swarthmore’s Semester Abroad Program. One, the program enjoys the energetic involvement and commitment of the faculty; tales abound of professors using their legwork and international contacts to help pave the way for new study abroad opportunities, even if only one student is likely to benefit immediately. Second, the program emphasizes foreign study experiences that feed directly into students’ major courses of study and, in many cases, their senior thesis. “What really characterizes the program,” Piker says, “is the degree to which it is meshed with the overall operation and life of the College.” The Semester Abroad Program is in one sense flexible and in another exacting, Piker says. Students can choose from more than 100 recommended programs identified by the Foreign Study Office, but every one of them has been reviewed by Piker or another faculty member who is in the best position to judge its worthiness. Helping fuel the growth and health of the program has been a policy in place since the early-1990s, allowing financial aid to follow students abroad, which makes foreign study possible for roughly half of the student body receiving need-based aid. As foreign study has developed and improved, the percentage of the student body studying abroad has more than doubled. Piker and Bernard, do not really promote the program; they don’t need to. The word of mouth of returning seniors is all the advertising the program needs. “Almost all of them speak positively of their study abroad experiences,” Piker says, “and encourage others to avail themselves of the opportunity.” —T.K. histories,” Burke explains later. “They don’t need to always see Western histories as a case of dead white men acting badly.” ESTHER ZELEDON ʼ04, BRAZIL (PHOTO BY RICARDO OCAMPO ʼ05) informed by an Islam-centric worldview? Burke follows her lead. “You could make the point,” he says, “that his entire theory explains only the history of Islam and nothing else.… He’s trying to figure out a theory that explains the spread and sustainability of Islam. But he abstracts that and says it’s the way everything works.” But for all their apparent weaknesses, Khaldun’s theories about the way people organize themselves do seem to apply beyond his own time and place. Burke asks his students to think of other histories that mesh with Khaldun. The Mongols in China, a student offers. The Mings as well, adds her classmate. Burke agrees, as he does with another suggestion that the theory also applies to ancient Egypt. But Sonya Hoo ’05 is more interested in other histories that Khaldun’s work does not explain. Why doesn’t Khaldun’s work discuss the Greeks and Romans, given that he knows so much about them? The omission is telling, Burke agrees, given Khaldun’s obvious knowledge of classical texts, and difficult to explain if one looks to only Khaldun’s own writing for the answer. But he points out that Khaldun was only one of several Muslim thinkers—and Christian thinkers, for that matter—to have trouble discussing the ethical and theological sophistication of Greece and Rome, given the importance that monotheists assigned to religion in shaping moral societies. The discussion moves on to the civilizations that came after Khaldun’s time. His theories fare more poorly, Andrew Abdalian ’06 notes, when the main story line is no longer about barbarians conquering and developing civilizations but rather about civilizations in conflict with other civilized people. And whereas Khaldun saw people organizing themselves around blood ties, how could he account for a place like the United States that comes together around shared ideas? Pluralism, Burke notes, just could not occur to Khaldun. Time is up, and the students stream into the hallway. No one has expressed surprise that some of the most advanced 13th-century theories of history would originate from the Islamic world. Burke would have been slightly shocked if anyone had. By the time they’ve progressed past their first year, most Swarthmore students have shed the somewhat American- and Western-centric notions they developed from the media and their high school courses; if anything, Burke says, they swing too far to the opposite pole. By helping them recognize the limits of Khaldun’s theories, Burke demonstrates that Westerners aren’t the only ones to write world histories with cultural blinders on. “I’m trying to get them to ask whether there is a universal problem writing universal DECEMBER 2003 H istory is just one piece of the puzzle. Analysis and action on the global stage can require multiple dimensions of a liberal education—cultural, scientific, political, linguistic, social, and ethical. Noah Novogrodsky ’92, according to a former professor and mentor, is a Swarthmore graduate who’s “putting the pieces together.” For Novogrodsky, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Law School, the pieces included courses in European and Latin American politics at Swarthmore, augmented by a semester abroad in France. The current “whole” is his leadership in a drive to apply international human rights law and principles to the fight against the HIV-AIDS pandemic. As reported in the Canadian press last summer, Novogrodsky is mobilizing the legal community, including his University of Toronto law students, to use the law and moral persuasion to help AIDS patients in Africa receive affordable drugs. The obstacle faced by Novogrodsky is no less formidable than international trade rules aimed at protecting pharmaceutical corporations. “I view the HIV-AIDS epidemic through human rights terms and not simply as a failure of medical science to contain the epidemic,” says Novogrodsky, who after Swarthmore pursued graduate studies at Cambridge University and received a law degree from Yale. “To me, it’s really quite obvious that tens of thousands of people shouldn’t be dying every month in Africa who could otherwise be treated with drugs that are affordable and could be produced in greater quantities—but that don’t reach the patients who need them.” He is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, but Novogrodsky’s mission transcends his nationalities. “Along with my students, what I’m trying to do as an international human rights lawyer is identify the areas of real indignity in the world and use the law creatively to address those problems,” he says. Kenneth Sharpe, his former professor, remembers Novogrodsky well. “Noah took a lot of Latin American politics courses. He traveled a lot. Since he left here, he has put all the pieces together,” Sharpe says. “I 27 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N Whether they’re in Germany, Ecuador, or Botswana, Swarthmore students are building bridges when they spend a semester studying abroad. And traffic flows both ways across bridges. 28 think that’s just what a lot of our students do after Swarthmore. They put together the pieces they began to collect here.” Another Swarthmore graduate who is working the puzzle—although from a decidedly different political perspective from Novogrodsky—is U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick ’75. The Bush administration official is known for both his multilateralist approach and his sophisticated grasp of international trade issues. As one colleague told Institutional Investor magazine, “Zoellick is usually the smartest, best-read, and best-prepared person in the room.” In his writing and public comments, Zoellick has advanced trade as fuel for a healthy international economy and thus as a hedge against terrorism. “Open markets are vital for developing nations, many of them fragile democracies that rely on the international economy to overcome poverty and create opportunity,” he says. “Societies that fragment, that are poor, that have no sense of hope become fertile grounds in which terrorists can burrow. So all of us have a stake in development, in democracy, in openness, hope, and opportunity.” In a partial victory for HIV patients around the globe, the Zoellick-headed U.S. Trade Office in August negotiated a World Trade Organization agreement that provided some protection for the patent rights of LAURA CLARK ʼ04, VATICAN CITY pharmaceutical companies while making it easier for poor countries to access affordable drugs for AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses. In a statement to the Bulletin, Zoellick hailed the agreement for achieving “a constructive balance that ensures access to medicines by those most in need while not undermining intellectual property rights that foster research and development.” For his part, Novogrodsky was not completely satisfied but conceded, “It’s a start.” Whatever the issue or the politics involved, it’s never a surprise to Novogrodsky when his career path crosses that of a fellow Swarthmorean working on the international stage. “The liberal arts ideal as defined and implemented by Swarthmore transcends boundaries and borders. I think it equips people for living in—and being effective citizens in—a multicultural, globalized world,” he says. “In a host of ways, a Swarthmore education is an international education.” T here is unmistakable passion in Sharon Friedler’s voice as the dance professor tells a visitor about Swarthmore’s growing programs in Ghana. Friedler is seated in her office in the Lang Performing Arts Center, surrounded by a small orchestra’s worth of Ghanaian musical instruments. It’s fitting that these pieces of Ghana are found at Swarthmore, because more and more of Swarthmore is turning up in Ghana. Since serving as a visiting professor in 1997 at Ghana’s International Center for African Music and Dance, Friedler has been creating new study abroad opportunities for Swarthmore students in the subSaharan African nation. In the past two school years, four students have studied dance and music with leading artists and practitioners in Ghana. In so doing, according to Friedler, they have experienced nothing short of a new way of seeing the world. Friedler believes that to learn the music and dance of a people is to learn something bigger about their history, values, and character. “That’s particularly true in Africa,” she says, “because the dance and music are so central to the culture. The dominant ethnic languages in Ghana are tonal, and the linguistic patterns are rhythmic. So we can actually say something by drumming it out. If you’re using different pitches on the drums and the listener is linguistically sophisticated, [he or she] can begin to decipher what you’re trying to communicate.” Although playing the atumpan does not steer a college student onto the fast track for mainstream careers in America, in Friedler’s view it’s preparation for something less tangible but far more profound: leadership in the enterprise of bringing cultures together. “We’re trying to create bridges,” she says. “We are trying to create communities of understanding—dancing communities, music communities, writing communities, education communities.” Traffic flows both ways across bridges, which is why Swarthmore’s Semester Abroad Program increasingly emphasizes students’ giving as well as taking. In a new wrinkle in the Ghana program, Swarthmore students will teach computer skills to Ghanaian children. Also under way is an effort to use the College’s audio-video equipment to help preserve the African country’s cultural heritage. Students under Friedler’s direction are transferring hundreds of hours of performance footage—now on videocassettes at Ghana’s music and dance center— to DVD, a more stable digital format. Applied learning is also a theme of Swarthmore’s new environmental studies initiative in Ghana. Launching next year under the direction of Associate Professor of Engineering Carr Everbach, the program is aiming to place its first students in Ghana to study environmental issues facing the country and develop practical solutions. Everbach describes the students’ experience as a “mini-honors seminar.” Each participant will begin with classroom study before moving onto a field project under a Ghanaian mentor and, in the end, writing a 35- to GRACE APPIAH ʼ04, SPAIN 50-page thesis to defend both in Ghana and back at Swarthmore. “Our program places equal emphasis on the learning obtained by the student and on the good that the student does abroad,” Everbach says. “The notion here is that the thesis is well written, well argued, and well defended, and that it winds up on the desk of the minister of environment of Ghana.” Another program is following much the same model in Poland. Since 1999, Swarthmore’s Theater and Dance programs have been forging a strong relationship with the vanguard of the performing arts there. Students attend classes at two leading Polish universities and undertake residencies with the Silesian Dance Theater, a professional company that has, in turn, given performances and workshops on the Swarthmore campus (see “Steps of Change,” December 1999 Bulletin). Engineering students may also study in Poland, focusing largely on environmental issues. Twenty students have spent a semester or more in Poland since the inception of the programs, and a new initiative may add a service component to the College’s presence in Poland. President Bloom sees that living and studying in another country—and learning other languages—are experiences that sharpen young Americans’ understanding not only of their own country’s power and potential but of its limitations, its dependence on other countries, and its ability to benefit from the wisdom of others. “Foreign study,” he says, “helps importantly to develop the foundation for informed global citizenship and responsibility.” To Sharon Friedler, being more and more international is an enterprise that resonates with the College’s history, mission, and Quaker ideals. Whether they’re doing the work in Germany, Ecuador, or Botswana, Friedler believes Swarthmore students are “building bridges” when they spend the semester studying abroad. “I think that it is very deeply the work of peace. Like many others, I have been appalled and saddened by much of what has happened in the world during the past few years. And there’s not a lot that I can do about it. However, I can go to another country and teach dance, or facilitate students going to Ghana, or facilitate the creation of DVDs so that traditional African cultural material are archived. All those are acts of peacemaking. And that we can do.” T Tom Krattenmaker is the College’s director of news and information. His freelance writing has appeared in Salon, the Minneapolis Star Tribune Sunday Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. DECEMBER 2003 RICARDO OCAMPO ʼ05, BRAZIL 29 30 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N Think Global, Te a c h Local IN THEIR OWN WORDS,FIVE FAC U LT Y M E M B E R S R E V E A L H O W S WA R T H M O R E P R E PA R E S S T U D E N T S TO PA R T I C I PAT E IN A GLOBAL SOCIETY— AND HOW THEY EMBODY T H AT I D E A L T H E M S E LV E S . Aurora Camacho de Schmidt often teaches poetry in her Spanish classes as a way of getting to the heart of another culture. N o one consciously prepares students to be global citizens, and no course or department can bear that burden. I hope the College as a whole does that. Part of the vocation of the College is to prepare students to be in the world and to do so with a sense of social responsibility. The United States has an amazing capacity to absorb foreignness, and American culture is exposed to foreign cultures and peoples constantly. The country’s very inception has its roots in foreignness, including people forcefully brought to this land. Yet U.S. culture has a way of erasing difference. We all feel and see in a variety of arenas how difference is ignored or eradicated. Literature and language by their very nature introduce a foreign culture. Poetry, which I always include in my classes, allows us to reach for meanings wider than the ones closer to us. When students are immersed in literature from another land, they are exposed to a double otherness. It is a wider reality by definition. Some students will try to reduce that reality to terms that are familiar to them. Other students will begin to integrate what they discover in literature and what they find in other classes. When that happens, it’s just a wonderful thing. In the Modern Languages Department, we insist that our students go abroad. Spending a semester in another country lets the reality of that culture sink in. When students come back, they think in a very different way. They have more internal resources. When students go abroad, they have a lot to learn, and they also have a lot to unlearn. A good part of our education is unlearning. Poetry itself can be a foreign country. It scares students sometimes, and they may say they don’t like it or understand it. Once they try, they love it. In my Introduction to Latin American Literature, they respond by writing it. They discover they can write poetry! Interviews by Alisa Giardinelli Photographs by Eleftherios Kostans DECEMBER 2003 “We must ask ourselves this question: What does it mean for a young person to be a student in one of the best colleges in the most powerful country in the world?” 31 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N It is difficult to explain the kind of effect poetry can have. It’s comparable to music. It takes us out of the environment where the rhythm of life is dictated by everyday needs, like homework and going to the library. In poetry, all those things cease to matter, and we are free. Students find new meanings and are often delighted and challenged by where the poem takes them. Literary production in Latin America— poems, essays, novels, chronicles—is often political because the region has a long history of struggle against internal and external forces of oppression and because its very existence is based on the cataclysmic conquests of the 16th century. Some of that literature may be very critical of the United States or simply display values that are different from the values of a liberal democracy. It is healthy for our students to learn that. We must ask ourselves this question: What does it mean for a young person to be a student in one of the best colleges in the most powerful country in the world? Globalization means an unprecedented level of 32 hegemony—military, economic, political, even cultural—for the United States. Because of that power, preparing North Americans to be global citizens is not the same as preparing students from any other country. It would be tragic to let our students graduate without the capacity to exercise not only critical thinking but self-critical thinking. They must understand their own position and social responsibility as citizens of the United States, where decisions are made every day that affect the quality of life in every corner of the earth. I hope our graduates learn to recognize the other side of globalization, the invisible forces of hope in the organization of immigrant workers the world over, or the struggles for human rights at home and abroad, the movements to abolish torture and the death penalty, the efforts to stamp out segregation, the antiwar movement. I want to think that teaching language and literature is part of that tall order. That is my hope and my wager. Aurora Camacho de Schmidt is associate professor of Spanish. Stephen Golub, fresh from a sabbatical in France, encourages students to see the positive aspects of globalization. G lobalization is certainly a controversial subject. It tends to elicit extreme positions on both sides. And it does have an underside to it. There are losers from globalization. There are people in the United States, for example, who can lose their jobs or have to take reductions in pay. That applies to all sorts of countries. In my opinion, though, a lot of people misunderstand the implications of globalization and tend to blame globalization for anything that goes wrong. There are a lot of changes taking place in our society, but globalization is by no means responsible for all of the ills. One of the biggest misunderstandings, for example, is Third World poverty. Anybody who’s been to a Third World country realizes just how terrible the poverty is there. If they have a very unsophisticated understanding of it, they think that somehow this is something new, and the world “There are a lot of changes taking place in our society, but globalization is by no means responsible for all of the ills.” “Plants coexist in a shared environment. If we behave more like plants, maybe we will be more successful at coexistence.” José-Luis Machado, a fo r e s t e c ologist,teaches students a b o u t t h e j ewel in their backyard— t h e C r u m Woods. B efore coming to Swarthmore, I was an associate professor of biology in Bogotá. I wanted to stay in Colombia, but it didn’t work out. I realized it was too dangerous and constraining to do fieldwork or go out on fieldtrips with my students. So I left my country and taught my first class at Swarthmore in fall 2001. The value of individual species and the role they play in the community of the forest is what my teaching is about. Students can take that knowledge anywhere in the world and apply it. In my classes, I emphasize the intercon- nectivity of air, land, and water. I always try to make clear to my students that an action here will have an effect elsewhere. The Sahara Desert affects climate here. That just blows their minds. My real passion is to understand how plants grow and interact with each other. I tend to be obnoxious about what they can teach us. Plants coexist in a shared environment. If we behave like plants, we will be more successful at coexisting. It’s simplistic (and maybe even arrogant to suggest), but plants have developed a strategy to limit themselves instead of trying to limit their neighbors. That way—unlike humans—they get the most out of the environment’s shared resources. The other big thing is sustainability. What limits population growth? One thing DECEMBER 2003 economy is to blame for it. In fact, poverty is a very long-standing problem in these countries, a very deeply entrenched problem. Globalization is more part of the solution than part of the problem. There’s a certain amount of naïveté about globalization. Students really don’t know that much about it before studying it, and sometimes they have knee-jerk negative reactions. For example, one thing that creates a lot of controversy is whether Nike exploits workers. A lot of students are quite outraged when I try to explain that it’s not so simple. Nike creates jobs in these countries that may be better than what they could have been otherwise. Some students are sympathetic to that view. It always elicits a very lively class discussion. Our students are sponges for knowledge. They may not know a lot about the world at first, but by the time students come out of my international economics seminar, I like to think they really understand what’s happening in the global economy. They leave with methods of analysis and can really conceptualize some of these issues. For example, do we want McDonald’s supplanting all the restaurants in France? I just spent a year there, and there’s not too much danger of that. There are plenty of McDonald’s in France, but there are still plenty of good French restaurants, too. So they can live side by side. Sometimes, people exaggerate this cultural imperialism. It is a real phenomenon, and countries do have to make an effort to preserve their indigenous cultures, but I think globalization can thrive off diversity, too. If you don’t have your local culture, local foods, and so on, you’re not going to be a very interesting tourist destination. So there are incentives for countries to maintain their cultural diversity. I’ve always been interested in issues of economic development and what the economic relationships are between the United States and other countries. It’s a bit of a cliché, but economics is supposed to help alleviate problems of poverty, and certainly problems in other countries are very severe. To me, economics isn’t about pure theory, although there is a lot of theory in economics. It’s what economics can say about the real world, and nowhere is that more important than at the international level. Stephen Golub, who grew up in France, is professor of economics. 33 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N 34 is resources—we can run out of food. Traditional economic principles operate with supply always driven by demand. But nature is not endless. Our class moves around this issue. My research work can’t be done without students. For example, as part of my ecology class, we collect leaf fall in the woods. I’m going through my third year of data, trying to understand how much each species produces. A doctor can weigh a person every year. It’s such a simple idea, but weighing a tree is a little more challenging. Students can hardly tell the Crum Woods were man-made now because the trees are not ordered. But back in the 1930s, [John] Wister [the first director of The Scott Arboretum—see page 12] planted over 100,000 trees—almost 60 native species! It’s cool to show the students that the woods are a 75-year-old experiment and still going. The Crum is a jewel. Some students, even seniors, have never been there. People think forests around urban areas are ugly and not pristine. In 2001, we went out there in the fall before it got cold. After some rain, the water evaporated, and it was humid. Someone asked, “How different is this from a rainforest?” Great question. I told them that with the water dripping from the trees and that earthy smell, there is no difference. “Give us a break,” they said. But this is how it would feel. Of course, there are different animals, but for a moment, they can have a similar appreciation for the place. Another project is the study of invasive species. Where do these plants come from? Abroad! I’m looking at a species of Japanese knotweed and also the Norway maple. Both were brought here as ornamental plantings. Now, one is taking over the banks of the Crum, and one is taking over the forest. I want to make these woods visible and get them the respect they deserve. The forests are the planet’s lungs. I’m not making it up. It’s a little romantic, but nothing else produces oxygen. Maybe the students are reassured because they know I’ve seen and been to other places. I try to show them, and I truly believe, the woods are an important piece of land. Ultimately, I’m a forester. I do see the forest for the trees. José-Luis Machado is assistant professor of biology. “Students are sometimes uncomfortable when they realize they are a part of a certain historical narrative.” Bakirathi Mani b l e n d s literature written in English w i t h history and contemporary p o l i t i cs to teach a broader p e r s p ective. I ’m Indian and was born in Bombay, but I grew up and was educated at an international school in Tokyo. After studying international relations at Georgetown and colonial history in India, I wrote a dissertation at Stanford on issues of immigration and social and cultural identity, especially among South Asian immigrants in the United States. So my own research is reflective of my personal background. For me, globalization means being a part of a larger global community. It’s important to provide a larger sense of the world to students, regardless of where they come from. I want them to be aware of the history of their place in the world and what they can do to make it more just. At graduation, President Al Bloom urged Swarthmore students to be responsible citizens in the world after college. I hope my courses play their part in that project. In all kinds of ways, I try to generate interaction and conversations in my courses. I teach through literature and film but in an interdisciplinary way, using history, anthropology, and sociology. We weave a lot between current events and past history. For me, it’s a way of engaging the written word to make it alive, not dead or past. Some of my freshmen students have never read non-American authors. Now, as a result of imperialism, English literature is a global literature, and English is being redefined by non-Western writers. It’s exciting. The students see how much you can play with language and use it to reflect the present and the past. You can’t think of colonialism as being over because it continues to have an effect on the present. In my Nations and Migration class, we examine colonialism, postcolonial society, and its impact on writers in English from places such as the Caribbean, Middle East, South Africa, Ireland, and Sri Lanka. In each conversation, students invariably link issues to current affairs and news articles. In my upper-level Asian American literature seminar, I try to situate the literary texts, novels, and films in conversation with U.S. foreign policy in Asia. When we read Korean American writers, we look at the Korean War. When we read Vietnamese American writers, we look not just at the war but also at Vietnam’s colonization by the French. And South Asian Americans, for example, bring to life the history of British colonialism on the subcontinent. Looking at the present circumstances pulls out the historical narrative behind these texts. Sometimes I have students who ask, “What are my stories? I don’t have anything to say.” I do think everyone has a story about [his or her] life that’s fascinating. Even if you live in one place, your personal history is defined by your parents and is part of a larger global history. Students are sometimes uncomfortable when they realize they are a part of a certain historical narrative. But history matters. It’s all about who you are right now. History is not just in the past, but it also shapes the future and how you’re going to be. It’s also about making decisions in a responsible manner from now on. Students can’t help but notice how the world is changing even while they’re in the classroom. Through literature and history and current events—the past and the future—we try to make sense of it. Bakirathi Mani is assistant professor of English literature. Still, I make sure I teach a course every year outside my normal fields of expertise— usually something on Latin America. In that course, I focus on issues dealt with in philosophy, literature, theology, and history— in other words, it’s broader than just sociology and anthropology. Next semester, for example, the class will be Latin American society and culture. For it, I’m bringing a historian and administrator from Peru who will address current issues in Peruvian politics. In introductory courses, many students have never been exposed to such perspectives. When you are able to incorporate elements of different cultures into your worldview, your worldview changes, the way you teach changes, how you address people changes. It makes your culture richer. Many of my colleagues, American as apple pie, convey an appreciation of different cultures to their students. There’s still a long way to go, but a large segment of the faculty does this. Our students are taught to learn. They are always encountering cultures that are quite strange and unfamiliar to them, and they are not put off and intimidated by that. They are taught to confront and work through these differences and be prepared to engage unknown positions, no matter where they might be. Braulio Muñoz is Eugene M. Lang Research Professor of Sociology. T Braulio Muñoz, born in Pe r u a n d a s c h o l a r of European a n d A m e r i c a n s o c ia l theory, em b o d ie s t h e c o m p l ex i t y of the mo d e r n w o r l d . A “When you are able to incorporate elements of different cultures into your worldview, your worldview changes.” DECEMBER 2003 s a senior Hispanic member of the faculty, most students see me as a representative of a culture different from middleclass America. Yet my training is as a theorist, and my work centers on European and American social theory. Hispanic students see me doing something mainstream—not something pegged to a specific position because of my ethnic origin. Maybe equally important, there’s a lot of benefit for non-Hispanic students to find faculty members competent in multiple traditions. The more universal you are, the better you are for students. It breaks down stereotypes because they could see themselves like that. When I came to this country in 1968 from Peru, I came to study physics. I then turned to philosophy, and I ended up in sociology. But I didn’t first read Marx in German, I read it in Spanish. In Peru, I was a student leader, a labor leader, and a journalist. Those experiences, although not consciously, influence me, as much as I’m influenced by being at Swarthmore for 26 years. I am not active in politics anymore. But I can’t help but be a political person. None of us can. So I write fiction in which I address issues of politics and identity. If I think there’s an area I need to express outside my professional work, it comes out in fiction. 35 Foreign Study in Reverse F O R M O R E T H A N O N E I N 1 0 S WA R T H M O R E S T U D E N T S , T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S I S T H E F O R E I G N C O U N T R Y. By A n d r e a J a r r e l l Ph o t o g r a p h s b y G e o r g e W i d m a n S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N I 36 ’m going to study in Germany next semester,” says Yijun Li ’05 of Shanghai. “It’s just going to make me more globalized.” Emmanuelle Gounot ’04, who was born and raised in Paris, agrees that “a cosmopolitan worldview on campus is as much a part of a Swarthmore education as books and classes.” She says this international perspective comes as much from American students as from those who are foreign born. “By nature, students here are not U.S.-centric. They are curious about alternative ways of thinking through a critical and analytical reading of the world. It’s not only international. It’s very Swarthmorean.” That’s just how President Alfred H. Bloom hopes it will be. He says students must develop international perspective if they are to take leadership in a global world. And he believes having international diversity on campus is essential to gaining that perspective. “Unless you have the experience of developing relationships with peo36 Amid a national climate of more stringent restrictions on students from abroad, Swarthmore is doing something very Swarthmorean— intentionally globalizing. ple from different cultures, you cannot internalize the facility to see past superficial differences.” Bringing international students to Swarthmore is not new—the College has deliberately sought foreign students for decades. And the number of alumni—both Americans and internationals—holding key positions throughout the world is testament to the fact that Swarthmore has always educated its students for world leadership. But increasing the presence of international students is all the more critical today. “We have made substantial progress in ensuring the representation of American diversity within our student body, our faculty, and curriculum—an effort that it is imperative to continue, but we must also broaden the scope of that effort so that we experience and understand American diversity in the context of the global diversity of which we are all part,” Bloom says. So, amid a national climate of more stringent requirements on visa applications by students from abroad and the recent U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging affirma- INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS MAKE UP ABOUT 7 PERCENT OF THE STUDENT BODY. INTERVIEWED FOR THIS ARTICLE WERE (CLOCKWISE FROM LOWER RIGHT) MILOS ILAK ’04 (YUGOSLAVIA), YIJUN LI ’05 (CHINA), TAFADZWA MUGUWE ’05 (ZIMBABWE), DORU GAVRIL ’05 (ROMANIA), AND GERALD TAN ’04 (MALAYSIA). tive action, Swarthmore is doing something very Swarthmorean—intentionally “globalizing.” “This is about appreciating both the differences that separate us and the commonalities of intellect, emotion, concern, and purpose that must bind us,” says Bloom. S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N Staggering Selectivity International students, including U.S. citizens and permanent residents living abroad, make up 11 percent of Swarthmore’s total student body. “They are among our strongest students,” says Bloom, “because we have the whole world from which to recruit.” With worldwide recruitment, however, come challenges in what is an already intense admissions landscape. Last year, 670 international students applied, approximately 580 of whom were seeking financial aid. Ultimately, the College enrolled 22 non-U.S. citizen first-year students, 14 of whom received need-based aid. Additionally, 16 overseas U.S. citizens and permanent residents were aided. With those kinds of numbers, says Director of International Recruit- 38 ment Jessica Bell, the selectivity is staggering. Adding to the problem is the current cap on financial aid for foreign students at 10 percent of the College’s financial aid budget. Bloom would love to extend need-blind admissions to foreign students, but he notes that it is a question of trade-offs. The funds to accomplish that goal would have to come at the cost of other priorities. During the 2003–2004 admissions cycle, Bell will travel to 12 countries on three continents. Bell and Associate Dean of Admissions Amin Abdul-Malik work with Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid James Bock ’90 and the rest of the admissions team to determine to which countries they will travel each year. Contributing to their decision is the goal of international diversity within each class as well as the presence of alumni volunteers in certain areas. The Admissions Office annually surveys alumni worldwide to ask for assistance in order to reach out to the College’s potential applicants across the globe through alumni interviews and college fair programs. Alumni admissions volunteers will be representing Swarthmore at college fairs this fall in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Istanbul, London, and Paris. This year, the Admissions Office will focus on Latin America and Western Europe, which are relatively underrepresented at Swarthmore compared with many Far and Near Eastern countries and Eastern European countries. Although the Middle East is not currently on the travel schedule, Abdul-Malik, the College’s first Muslim admissions officer, may travel to Gulf “Swarthmore gives you an international education. I don’t really think my identity as a person is with any particular country. You might say, I have become a ‘global citizen.’” —Gerald Tan ’04, Malaysia countries sometime in the future. No matter where in the world Bell travels, it is likely that U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” has been there before her. Indeed, Milos Ilak ’04, a Yugoslav native who attended high school in Bulgaria, says that he and his friends had memorized the top rankings by the time they were in 10th grade. Although it seems difficult to imagine, he believes that the U.S. News guide may be more popular abroad than it is in the United States. Romanian Doru Gavril ’05 says the rankings were “more of a confidence-building thing,” reassuring him that he had made the right decision in selecting Swarthmore. “I had no institutional help in the form of a counselor or adviser guiding me. I found Swarthmore through the rankings but then did my own Web research to find out what Swarthmore was really about.” The research paid off. “What attracted me is something that has remained quite important to the way I have been spending my time ever since I arrived—public service,” he says. Despite Swarthmore’s international reputation and top U.S. News ranking, Bell says the first step in her international admis- JESSICA BELL IS THE COLLEGE’S DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT. THIS YEAR, SHE WILL TRAVEL TO 12 COUNTRIES ON THREE CONTINENTS TO SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE LIBERAL ARTS AT SWARTHMORE. ASSOCIATE DEAN OF ADMISSIONS AMIN ABDUL-MALIK IS THE FIRST MUSLIM TO sions presentations is often to explain the American liberal arts college system, one that is unique in the world and sometimes misunderstood. She tells the story of a Moroccan student who was offered a spot at Swarthmore and for whom Swarthmore was her first choice. But her parents insisted she attend a university. “They worried for her future career prospects once she returned to Morocco, where many high schools are called ‘colleges,’ and it is universities that are for higher learning,” explains Bell. For some international students, one of the most convincing arguments for choosing a liberal arts college rather than their home university system is the opportunity for breadth and exploration rather than early specialization. In his Zimbabwean high school, Tafadzwa Muguwe ’05 was on a trajectory to medical school when he heard about a program through the U.S. Embassy that would sponsor, he says modestly, “two so-called gifted students to study as undergraduates in the United States.” It was the program officer at the embassy, who, while helping Muguwe with his applications, told him about Swarthmore. Muguwe still plans to go to medical school, but he credits his Swarthmore experience with opening him up to interests beyond science that he never suspected he had and, more important, with helping him discover that being a doctor really is what he wants to do. “In addition to my classes, Swarthmore has prepared and encouraged me to participate in two undergraduate summer programs in U.S. medical schools, both of which have broadened my knowledge of the field and enabled me to really think about what I want to get into,” he says. “These programs have also given me the opportunity to meet people who are going to be very instrumental in my future.” “Fantastic” Risk Although Muguwe says Swarthmore has helped him to be a very good candidate for medical school, he acknowledges that it was a risk to give up the guarantee of his Zimbabwean trajectory. “The United States is very accommodating in taking international students into medical programs,” he says, but medical school slots are not assured. “So it’s a risk to say, ‘OK. I’m going to go to Swarthmore for four years and will not be guaranteed a place in medical school.’ Whereas if I had gone to school at home, I would have gone straight into medical school.” Gavril agrees that, at a certain level, every international student who comes to Swarthmore takes a risk. “Swarthmore tells you it’s a risk, but they also tell you if you think you can do it, you should give it a shot.” Gavril says he arrived with “the mind-set of Eastern Europe—let’s do economics because economics has to do with building the economy and, essentially, with money. That’s a mind-set one loses within about the first 14 hours of being at Swarthmore.” Gavril quickly found his interest in economics shifting to a “passion for American politics.” In Kohlberg Coffee Bar, hunched over the Washington wires, he says: “When I go to my classes in politics, I lean forward. It’s just a thrill.” “I think it’s very important to emphasize the kind of opportunities that one gets when one comes to Swarthmore,” says Gavril. “This isn’t just an ordinary foreign study experience. This is a system that permits a foreign student like me with zero background in politics except a couple of semesters in theory to have hands-on immersion at the top levels of government. That’s a fantastic thing.” During Gavril’s time at Swarthmore, he has worked with Rep. Robert Brady (D–Pa.) during two sessions of Congress, working on a position paper on the North Korean nuclear crisis and the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act of 2003 as well as assisting the staff on preparing to hear the Iraq War testimony of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. “That’s a fantastic thing,” he says. “But it’s also a risk to embark on a career of service in American politics when you don’t even have citizenship. I’m literally starting from scratch.” Each fall, when President Bloom meets with Swarthmore’s new international students to welcome them, he acknowledges the risk Muguwe and Gavril mention—the courage it takes to move out of one’s own educational background into a different educational world and to take on that world’s challenges. He also enlists them in “the burden of helping the College to internationalize.” But Gerald Tan ’04 of Malaysia, who also studied at Oxford during a Swarthmore semester abroad, sees that effort as reciprocal. “Swarthmore really gives you an international education. I don’t really think my identity as a person is with any particular country. You might say, I have become a ‘global citizen.’” T Andrea Jarrell is a freelance writer based in Bethesda, Md. DECEMBER 2003 WORK IN THE ADMISSIONS OFFICE AS A STUDENT RECRUITER. 39 New York: Barry Schwartz, Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, will speak to the New York Connection on Thursday, Feb. 5, at the Goddard Riverside Community Center on the topic “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.” If you are interested in attending, contact New York Connection Chair Lisa Ginsburg ’97 at lisaginsburg@juno.com by Feb. 2, 2004. Watch your mail in January for further details. Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Connection will attend a performance titled “I Gotta Sing to Write the Blues” by Peter Schickele ’57 at the Lang Concert Hall on campus on April 26, 2004, beginning at 4:30 p.m. If you are interested in attending, please contact Jim Moskowitz ’88 at jim@jimmosk.- S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N ALUMNI CONNECTIONS: CHANGING OF THE GUARD 40 WE ARE FORTUNATE to have had the guidance of National Connection Chair Don Fujihira ’69 for more than a decade. Don began his Connection involvement as New York Connection chair and created hundreds of events for alumni while serving in that position. As National Connection Chair, Don was responsible for overseeing all of the Swarthmore Connections and for fostering their growth. Don has shepherded the Connections organizations from their infancy, and we are grateful for his efforts. Don has decided to step down, and Barbara Sieck Taylor ’75 has agreed to become National Connection Chair. She served as Pittsburgh Connection co-chair for two years. Barbara will work closely with the Alumni Support Working Group of the Alumni Council to continue to expand the growth of Connections. com or (610) 604-0669. Shickele’s performance is the annual Peter Gram Swing Lecture, and admission is free. San Francisco: This revitalized Connection is off to a terrific start. Close to 200 alumni, family, and friends from the classes of ’44 to ’03 attended the launch picnic in September. Special thanks to Stacey Bearden ’99, Seth Brenzel ’94, and Misha Neverov ’97 for organizing the picnic. An event with the Pig Iron Theatre Company and a faculty member followed soon after the picnic. Tucson, Ariz.: Jeff Lott, editor of the Swarthmore College Bulletin, will visit Tucson on Jan. 21 to discuss the evolution of the magazine and how its content reflects Swarthmore’s changes. The event will be hosted by Laura Markowitz ’85. If you are interested in attending, contact Laura at LMarkowitz@aol.com or (520) 990-9582. All alumni, family, and friends are welcome to attend; please watch your mail for an invitation. BOSTON NEW YORK Fa c u lt y Ta k e t o t h e Ro a d FACULTY SPEAKERS make for very popular Connections events. This fall saw a true test of Boston-area alumni loyalty when Associate Professor of Physics Michael Brown’s lecture came into competition BROWN with Game 7 of the American League play-offs. “We were delighted that 65 people came out for the talk. Some hurried home after the question-andanswer session; others stayed at the reception for WANG another hour,” said Lisa Lee ’81, director of alumni relations. In fall 2003, six faculty members visited six cities to bring a bit of Swarthmore to alumni. Assistant Professor of Statistics Steve Wang visited Chicago; Associate Professor of Physics Michael Brown spoke to alumni in Boston; Associate Professor of Computer Science Lisa Meeden crossed the country to touch base with alumni in San Francisco; William R. Kenan Jr., Professor Emerita of Art History T. Kaori Kitao spoke at the Santa Monica MEEDEN Museum of Art; Assistant Professor of Astronomy Eric Jensen stayed closer to home and lectured in Washington, D.C.; and Scheuer Family Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Hugh Lacey went south to JENSEN Austin, Texas. “I enjoyed meeting with alums both recent and not so recent at my talk,” said Brown. “There was a lot of discussion about my talk, including some excellent questions about the sun and our experiments. I found that there is tremendous interest in the status of the new science center on campus.” TED MILLS CONNECTIONS 1934 Ned and Louise Stubbs Williams 1939 Robert Peelle (acting) 1944 Dorrie Morrell Leader 1949 Chris Pederson Maralyn Orbison Gillespie Sara-Page Merritt White 1954 Bruce Gould 1959 John Gillmor 1964 Jed Rakoff 1969 Paul Peelle 1974 George Roache 1979 Brenda Perkins Andy Schultz 1984 Colette Mull Michael Dreyer 1989 Lee Fineman Kelley Meagher 1994 Sarah Adams 1999 Andrew Caffrey Ashwin Rao 2002 Lisa Jenkins DO YOU KNOW AN UNSUNG HERO? MANY SWARTHMORE ALUMNI dedicate themselves to volunteer activities of all kinds throughout their lives. In 1997, the Alumni Council decided to recognize such an “everyday hero” at reunion, and the Arabella Carter Award was created. The award is intended to honor alumni who have made significant contributions as volunteers in their own communities or on a regional or national level. Arabella Carter, who lived in the early 1900s, was one of the great unsung workers for peace and social justice in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. If you know such a person, please contact the Alumni Office at (610) 328-8402 and request an award nomination, or visit http://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/arabella_form.htm to nominate on-line . I reland The Hidden A SEARCH FOR TREASURES OF HISTORY AND ART FROM THE STONE AGE TO THE THIRD MILLENNIUM SEPT. 12–26, 2004 THE HIDDEN IRELAND will explore parts of the country—West and North—that Swarthmore travelers have not hitherto visited together. It will also return to some favorite sites like Dingle Peninsula, the Burren, and Dublin City, which are inexhaustible in their charms. Our route will take us through the remote, unspoiled landscape of Connemara, Mayo, and Donegal and will include extensive forays into the Six Counties from Fermanagh in the West to Down in the East. Although a major focus will be the superb stone culture, which began in Neolithic times and developed into the artistry of the early Christian oratories, the high crosses, Romanesque figure carving, medieval folk art, and contemporary sculpture, we will also explore out-of-the-way places to find examples of the modern Irish genius expressed in the stained glass of Harry Clarke, the painting of Jack Yeats, and the flourishing traditions of weavers and potters from Donegal to Kerry. Near Belfast and in Dublin, we will visit museums that bring together past and present and help us to understand the dynamic achievements of the Hidden Ireland. Professor Emerita Helen North, a noted classicist, will lead our foray into Ireland. Teacher, scholar, and author, Professor North has received numerous awards and grants for research HELEN NORTH and travel in the Mediterranean world. For many years, she has also made annual visits to Ireland, living in small villages and exploring the back of beyond. She has lectured at the Yeats Summer School in Sligo; has been awarded an honorary degree by Trinity College, Dublin; and with Mary North has written two guidebooks to Irish prehistoric sites, some of which we will visit. The Hidden Ireland will be her 14th Alumni College Abroad. For a complete itinerary and registration information, please visit our Web site at www.swarthmore.edu/alumni_abroad.html. You may also request this information from Edda Ehrke at (800) 451-4321. This year, we will mail brochures only to those who request them rather than sending brochures to all alumni. DECEMBER 2003 Plans are well under way for Alumni Weekend, June 4 to 6, 2004. Reunion classes that graduated in years ending with a 4 or 9 (and the Class of 2002) are special guests this year. This year’s reunion chairs, who are working to make reunion happen for their classmates, are the following: ALUMNI COLLEGE ABROAD ANDREA PALMIERI REUNION 2004 41 CLASS NOTES ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS Inspiration the meaning of S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N s w a r t h mor e 42 When I think back on the best educational experiences in Swarthmore classrooms, the subjects are inseparable from the teachers: Aesthetics with Beardsley, American Literature with Hoffman, English Literature with Hynes, Invertebrate Zoology with Meinkoth, Greek Literature in Translation with North, Neurophysiology with Rawson, Design in Drawing and Painting with Rhys, Medieval Art with Williams. My Swarthmore professors have been the models I’ve drawn on to develop my own pedagogic methods and style. To this day, they provide inspiration and guidance. —Bennett Lorber, M.D. ’64 Temple University School of Medicine BOOKS & ARTS The Nature and Limits of Tolerance THE CONFLICT BETWEEN S E C U L A R A N D U LT R AO R T H O D OX JEWS RAISES PERPLEXING ISSUES ABOUT LIBERALISM. Noah Efron ’82, Real Jews, Basic Books, 2003 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N Y 50 ou don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s Rye Bread,” said the subway ad featuring a picture of an African American biting into a slice when I was a kid. And you don’t have to be Jewish or Israeli to love this beautifully accessible and extremely interesting discussion of the conflict between secular and ultraorthodox Jews in Israel. Although Noah Efron’s subject is the form and intensity of this particular conflict and its relation to Zionism, the issues raised are of considerable generality and of concern to anyone interested in the nature and limits of tolerance—or the conflict between tradition and modernity. The ultraorthodox are a relatively small minority that has disproportionate (to their numbers) political and social leverage in Israel. This power takes numerous forms: Their young men typically are not drafted and do not fight in the army, buses in most cities do not run on Saturday, most eating establishments find it an economic necessity to be kosher and therefore to pay considerable amounts to have inspectors guarantee that they are, and ultraorthodox religious institutions such as schools are heavily subsidized. These practices raise issues that are simultaneously similar to and different from the American context: similar because, as a democracy, Israel is quite similar to America but different because, as a self-proclaimed “Jewish” state, it is unlike America. After all, American liberals can claim to be “value neutral” in at least one sense that supporters of a Jewish state certainly cannot. For me, the most interesting aspects of Real Jews are those that illuminate America and modernity in general as well as Israel The challenge is to deal with those you most disagree with— and for those to whom toleration is a fundamental value, that means the intolerant. and Judaism in particular. And for me, the most striking of these are the problems that arise from the “illiberal” character of the ultraorthodox. Ideologically, the ultraorthodox have no interest in the state of Israel. Practically, they have a great interest. The result is that there is at least the suspicion that their use of the liberal and democratic institutions is completely instrumental and manipulative. This is characteristic of “intolerant” movements, such as the communist movement in the middle of the previous century and contemporary Nazi movements, and it raises the most difficult issues for a liberal democracy. The challenge for toleration is to deal with those you most disagree with—and for those to whom toleration is a fundamental value, that means the intolerant. Tolerance, broadly speaking, is what keeps majority rule from becoming majority tyranny. It may be said to consist of both formal rights, such as in the Bill of Rights, and equally important, a more amorphous attitude of respect for or decency toward minorities. However, when the disagreement is as deep as that between the tolerant and the intolerant, that disagreement is likely to spill over into what constitutes respect and decency. Are we respectful of the ultraorthodox if we visit their neighborhoods in miniskirts or drive through their neighborhoods on the Sabbath? And how about if we encourage ultraorthodox women to seek equality? The problem here reminds one of the issue of female circumcision or the scarf many Arab women cover their faces with: Is the tolerant stance to eliminate or defend these traditional practices? Whether or not we tolerate the intolerant, we seem to be intolerant ourselves. This, of course, is an issue wherever traditional cultures find themselves in conflict with modern “liberal” ones, and that is all over the Third World. One thing that is especially intriguing in the Israeli case is that the ultraorthodox Jews, who are the “traditional” culture here, inherit with their tradition 2,000 years of experience in fighting cultural imperialism without sovereignty or arms. If anyone can resist liberal assimilation, it is likely to be them. It is not uncommon for American liberals (e.g., the eminent political philosopher John Rawls), after expounding the nature, virtue, and limits of toleration, to talk about the sad fact that even when taken to its limits, it cannot sustain all “legitimate” minority cultures. The implication seems to be that if some of these cultures disappear, that is simply too bad but should not be of undue concern to us. Could liberals take that attitude if their own culture was at stake? Certainly, Israeli liberals do not. Fearful (justifiably or not) of becoming such an endangered minority, they are prepared, informally at least, to consider shockingly drastic responses reminiscent of the excess- Peter Cohan ’79, Value Leadership: The 7 es of traditional anti-Semitism. How Principles That Drive Corporate Value in much consolation can minority culAny Economy, Jossey-Bass, 2003. tures take from “toleration,” given the Renowned management and investpower of the liberals and this discrepment expert Peter Cohan—whose 2002 ancy between their attitude toward stock selections gained 81 percent when their own culture and that of others? the S&P 500 plunged 24 percent— Aside from Israel, this issue is being offers executives seven management played out in the conflict between the principles that were tested in periods of ultraorthodox Muslims and the more economic expansion and contraction. liberal in Iran. And as American influence around Allan Gibbard ’63, Thinking How to Live, the world becomes even stronger, this Harvard University Press, 2003. problem takes another form: If a peoFocusing on judgments that express ple is not inclined to our version of decisions, the author argues for recontolerance, as in, say, Iraq, can and sidering—and reconfiguring—quesshould we bring about majority rule? tions of “ought” and “is.” In addition to the perplexing issues raised, Efron gives an interesting perPaul Berg and Maxine (Frank) Singer spective on Israeli life generally. Most THIS “PSYCHEDELIC” FABRIC DESIGN FROM 1968 IS ONE ’52, George Beadle: An Uncommon of us have learned about Israel in the OF MORE THAN 1,000 COUNTERCULTURAL RELICS CATAFarmer—The Emergence of Genetics in the context of certain standard stories: war 20th Century, Cold Spring Harbor LOGED BY COLLECTIBLES EXPERT GARY MOSS ’70 IN HIPPIE with the Arabs, making the desert Laboratory Press, 2003. In this first ARTIFACTS (SCHIFFER PUBLISHING, 2003). THE BOOK IS A bloom, accepting the homeless Jews of biography of George Beadle, a Nobel TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE FOR BABY BOOMERS—AND A Europe, oppressing (or not) the Prize–winning scientist, the authors Palestineans. This conflict between the GUIDE TO RARITY AND PRICING FOR COLLECTORS. explore his life and accomplishments in secular and ultraorthodox is a new the context of classical and the new window on Israel for most of us. It is a genetics. Austin, professor of technology and operawindow that opens on a landscape, which, for Efron, is defined by the question, “What tions management at Harvard Business Mary Solberg ’68 et al., Healing by Heart: School, and Lee Devin, professor emeritus is a Jewish state?” But for the wider comClinical and Ethical Case Stories of Hmong munity, it raises the question, “What values of theater at Swarthmore, introduce a colFamilies and Western Providers, Vanderbilt other than the purely pragmatic can a mod- laborative model for strategy formation, University Press, 2003. This book describes product development, and other business ern liberal institution such as the state (or the health-related beliefs, practices, and valactivities. college) sustain?” Ultimately, this question ues of the Hmong and includes photois more important than the question of graphs of traditional healing methods. Rebecca Bushnell ’74, Green Desire: Arab-Israeli relations—not just for Israel, Imagining Early Modern English Gardens, Elizabeth Varon ’85, Southern Lady, Yankee but for the whole world. Cornell University Press, 2003. This book Spy, Oxford University Press, 2003. This —Rich Schuldenfrei describes the innovative design of the early story is about Elizabeth Van Lew, who Professor of Philosophy gardening manuals, examining how writers defied the conventions of the 19th-century and printers marketed them as fiction and South by running a spy ring that helped practical advice for aspiring gardeners. scores of Union soldiers to escape from Margery Post Abbott ’67, Mary Ellen (Grafflin) Chijioke ’67, Pink Dandelion, and John William Oliver Jr., Historical Dictionary of the Friends (Quakers), Scarecrow Press, Maryland, 2003. This book, covering terms such as abolition and peace and offering biographies of William Penn and Francisco Tintaya, provides a glimpse into the changing nature of Friends. Rob Austin ’84 and Lee Devin, Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work, Prentice Hall, 2003. Rob John Byers ’70, Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn, Harvard University Press, 2003. In this book about North America’s fastest mammal, Byers observes the pronghorn’s life from birth to death. Jacqueline Carey ’76, The Crossley Baby, Ballantine Books, New York, 2003. The author of Good Gossip and The Other Family as well as articles for magazines including The New Yorker, Jacqueline Carey has written a novel about the rivalry, grudges, and abiding love of three sisters living in New York City during the 1980s. prison. Duncan Ferguson and William Weston ’82, eds., Called to Teach: The Vocation of the Presbyterian Educator, Geneva Press, 2003. These essays explore how the calling to teach in higher education—a primary mission of the Presbyterian church—is lived out today. William Weston , Leading From the Center: Strengthening the Pillars of the Church, Geneva Press, 2003. Sociologist William Weston examines the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the tensions that exist between key groups in the denomination. DECEMBER 2003 OTHER BOOKS 51 PROFILE Small Virus, Big Idea H A R R I E T L AT H A M R O B I N S O N ’ 5 9 IS A LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR WALT HULTGREN, YERKES PHOTOGRAPHER A N A I D S VAC C I N E . A ROBINSON AND HER COLLEAGUES AT EMORY UNIVERSITY’S YERKES NATIONAL PRIMATE RESEARCH CENTER DEVELOPED A PROMISING HIV/AIDS VACCINE, CURRENTLY IN THE FIRST STAGE OF CLINICAL TESTING. vaccine has demonstrated its effectiveness over a longer period than other vaccines currently in testing. Additionally, the Yerkes vaccine, unlike others in development, has been shown to “protect animals of all tissue types.” Other leading vaccines include those currently being tested by Merck & Co. Inc. and Aventis Pasteur. As reported by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Merck and Aventis have recently combined their individual vaccines to determine if the combination of the two may be more effective. The Merck and Aventis vaccines are, Robinson says, “the only products that I consider truly ahead of us.” The Yerkes AIDS vaccine uses the DNA vaccination technology Robinson helped pioneer in the early ’90s. In this technology, the desired immunogens, or the substances that produce immunity, are inserted directly into small pieces of DNA. These pieces are then amplified in bacteria, purified, and injected into an animal model. The DNA vaccine is followed with an attenuated smallpox vaccine that further boosts the immune response. Hovering above this microworld is Robinson, today one of the more recognizable figures in immunology. Robinson received a Ph.D. in microbiology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965 and has served on boards for the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, and the Food and Drug Administration. She has authored or co-authored about 200 articles and is chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of GeoVax Inc., a company founded for the application of DNA vaccine technology to humans. She spends most of her free time with her family—her father, now 95, her three sons, and her two grandchildren. She enjoys traveling and has been all over the world, including Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia. For now, though, Robinson is intent on staying right where she is. “Right now, I need to be in the lab,” she says. “You have to be at the helm to miss the reefs.” So Robinson remains at work, keeping her eye on a microscopic technology that could potentially alter the world on a scale millions of times magnified. HIV, she explains, is an extremely small virus, containing nine genes compared with the 200 in smallpox—“Yet, it’s managing to cause such devastation to humans.” The smallness of the virus—but the intensity of its destructive power—is a paradox that Robinson deals with daily, as she continues to work on a solution to a problem that reaches levels of global significance far greater than HIV’s scant nine genes would ever suggest. —Elizabeth Redden ’05 DECEMBER 2003 pioneer in the field of DNA vaccinology, Harriet Robinson has emerged as one of the leading figures in the search for an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine. As chief of microbiology and immunology at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Robinson has led research efforts on one of the more promising vaccines to date. Robinson explains that the vaccine, now in the first stage of clinical testing, has “been remarkably effective in monkey models.” Yet, Robinson knows scientists are still a while away from achieving a licensed human vaccine. But she joins the rest of the world in hoping the Yerkes vaccine proves itself effective in human trials—which, she estimates optimistically, will not be complete for at least another five years. “Everyone’s climbing Mt. Everest now, but we’re only at base camp two at creating a vaccine,” Robinson says. In a trial begun in 1999, two dozen rhesus macaque monkeys were injected with the experimental vaccine at three different times. After a seven-month period—far longer than the period used in many competing HIV vaccine studies—the monkeys were challenged with an infection. Of the 24 test monkeys, 23 survive today and are entirely healthy with intact immune systems. These monkeys, Robinson says, have no symptoms of AIDS and contain only extremely low levels of the virus—levels that are hypothesized to be below that necessary for transmission. Of the six control monkeys, on the other hand, five have died. The remaining one has lost its CD4 helper cells, a characteristic symptom of AIDS. The article reporting the results of the study, published in 2001 in Science, has since become “a most cited paper in immunology,” says Robinson. “Our vaccine has the best preclinical data,” she explains, citing that the Yerkes 59 PROFILE Exciting yet Humbling O N C O L O G I S T DAV I D F I S H E R ’ 7 9 CONFRONTS CLINICAL AND S C I E N T I F I C C H A L L E N G E S TO H E L P YO U N G C A N C E R V I C T I M S . S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N 66 n David Fisher’s office desk stands a photograph of a jubilant young man crossing the finish line of the New York Marathon. The picture was taken on the 10th anniversary of the man’s bone marrow transplant, and he was a patient of Fisher, currently associate professor of pediatric oncology at Harvard University and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). A Harvard faculty member for 10 years, Fisher “plopped” into pediatrics, when, after being trained and board certified in adult oncology, he did a six-month stint at Boston Children’s Hospital and “loved it.” Now, he divides his time between laboratory research on molecular oncology at the DFCI and clinical work, seeing some adult patients but serving mainly as an attending physician at Children’s Hospital and the prestigious Jimmy Fund Clinic, where children with cancer are brought from all over the world for treatment. He also teaches courses at both Harvard University and the Harvard Medical School—including a class of 100 graduate students—and is adviser to undergraduate biochemistry majors and pediatric oncology clinical fellows at Children’s Hospital and DFCI. In 1979, when Fisher graduated from Swarthmore with a major in biology and chemistry, he simultaneously received a diploma in cello from the Curtis Institute of Music and went on to become a cellist of international reputation, performing under maestros such as Eugene Ormandy, Zubin Mehta, and Ricardo Muti in locations such as Carnegie Hall, Washington Kennedy Center, and the Philadelphia Academy of Music. He has received numerous awards and honors—both musical and medical—including first prize in the 1983 Artists International Music Competition; a Harvard faculty award for teaching in 1999; and, in 2000, when he COURTESY OF DAVID FISHER O FISHER (CENTER) TREASURES HIS LASTING COLLEGE FRIENDSHIPS WITH FACULTY MEMBERS SUCH AS ISAAC H. CLOTHIER JR. PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF BIOLOGY ROBERT SAVAGE AND PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY SCOTT GILBERT, HIS FIRST GRADUATE STUDENT GAËL MCGILL ’95 (LEFT) AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDENT ANDREW WAGNER ’89 (RIGHT), AND HIS CLASSMATE ANDREW SCHWARTZ. was offered the chairmanship of pediatric oncology at another major university, a $2 million endowed investigatorship at DFCI as a motivation for him to stay. These days, because of the demands of work and family, Fisher’s musical activities have been curtailed, although he still manages to squeeze into his packed schedule five or six concerts a year and musical moments with his family—Yale alumna, radiation oncologist, and pianist wife Claire Fung and their four children, ages 2 to 13, the oldest three of whom play musical instruments. Fisher’s medical research focuses on mechanisms that regulate gene expression in a variety of cells, including pigment cells of the skin (melanocytes) and their tumors (melanoma). One recent project in his lab was carried out largely by Gaël McGill ’95, who graduated with highest honors in biology from Swarthmore, then obtained a Ph.D. as a graduate student in Fisher’s lab. His work revealed that melanocytes are hardwired to resist normal triggers of cell death, and this wiring appears to link cell survival to the pigmentation pathway. The fact that melanocytes are more resistant to cell death makes evolutionary sense because they need to produce pigments that protect the skin from ultraviolet rays, says Fisher. However, this anti-death mechanism also appears to render melanoma cells particularly difficult to kill with chemotherapy. Mechanistic discoveries such as this have helped tp explain clinical behavior of melanoma and, more important, suggest new therapeutic strategies to combat the disease. Fisher’s lab has also made discoveries of fundamental importance in a variety of pediatric cancers, including a form of kidney tumor whose molecular basis his lab recently elucidated. Working with cancer victims is not always easy, yet Fisher says he would never want to give up clinical medicine. “Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a doctor. I enjoy being in a position to help. Oncologists, even in the most difficult situations, can provide an unbelievable amount of both emotional and physical comfort as well as information. I wouldn’t give it up for the world.” Furthermore, not only does seeing patients stimulate ideas for research directions but also, he says, overall, pediatric cancers are much more successfully treated and cured than most adult cancers. “The children are leading the way to the cure,” Fisher says. Of his career, Fisher says: “You’re like an explorer out there. You’re almost like a kid playing games—taking incomplete clues and trying to piece together answers. That’s what research is like, and, to a certain extent, it’s even what clinical medicine is like. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t need doctors. It’s very exciting yet tremendously humbling.” He says that moving between the two worlds of clinical and laboratory medicine provides a marvelous synergy: “In clinical medicine, you can have rewards that are immediate. You give a pill, and a pain goes away, and that’s a thrill. But then, you have the impediments that can be insurmountable, the disease that no drugs can cure. In a lab, it’s relatively uncommon to get a short-term major boost—experiments are slow and complicated—but it has the potential for having a tremendous impact in the long run. It’s very rewarding to be in the fortunate position of being able to do both.” —Carol Brévart-Demm IN MY LIFE You Can Go Home Again: A Year in Seoul AN ADOPTEE RETURNS TO HER ORIGINS IN KOREA. By Ku n y a S c a r b o r o u g h D e s J a r d i n s ’ 8 9 S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N T 70 he first time I remember eating a persimmon, I had just started graduate school in Boston. My friend, Vostina, had taken me to Haymarket where cheap produce, probably a few days old, is sold. Milling about the stalls, I picked up something I didn't recognize. I wasn't sure whether it was a fruit or a vegetable—it looked like an orange tomato, but a little less squat, pointier at the bottom, and flatter on top where a pale green cap shaped like a dried dogwood flower sat. When I got home, I wasn't sure how to approach it—whether to slice, quarter, core, or peel it. When I tasted it though, I experienced a strange moment of intense visceral familiarity—a humble version of Proust's madeleine dipped in tea. I knew this fruit tasted like “home." Memory is a strange thing. My remembered life began at Kennedy airport in September 1971 at age 5, when I was adopted by an American family. I don't actually remember my arrival—instead, I have photos and stories that have been told and retold to me, and they add up to something like a memory. But I didn't have any photos or anyone to recount my life in Korea before coming to the United States. And I soon lost the language that encoded the memories I might have had. There were a few things, though, that I passed on to my mother once I learned to speak English. I told her that I had many brothers, that my birth father coughed a lot, and that one brother had also come on the plane with me. Growing up in suburban Pennsylvania, however, I would forget that I was Asian and was never really sure whether I had given my mother “facts" or some kind of confabulated logic produced to make sense of my earlier years. Maybe the “brothers" were really children in the orphanage; maybe I had mistaken another child for my brother on the plane. The persimmon is ubiquitous in Asia; in Korea, it is called kam. In fall 1999, when I returned to Korea to teach English for a year, I noticed the persimmon trees that lined the hurried streets of Seoul. The small trees, with their deep green, waxy leaves and smooth, firm orange fruit were perfect and beautiful—in dramatic contrast to the concrete high rises in Korea's most densely populated city. My first few weeks in Seoul, I discovered a growing community of returning adoptees from cities around the world. It is estimated that more than 200,000 Korean infants and children were adopted outside Korea from the time of the Korean War to the early 1990s. Many of us came to America, but now there is a slow backward migration. I did not return to Korea to search for my birth family; I didn't think it was possible to find them. Perhaps more important, I was at a point in my life where I needed to look for myself more than for them. I had been to Korea 10 years before, for a “motherland" tour with my adopted sisters and a group of adoptees. The trip was not well thought out, and there was no mention of anyone's thoughts or feelings about returning to our country of birth. We went to the usual tourist traps—the Korean Folk Village and the ancient capital of “The Land of the Morning Calm." This time, I was returning to live in the country, not to visit. I was hoping to integrate the cut-off foreign past with the known present, one that had become too busy and unconscious. My first weeks in Seoul, I was tearful, lonely, and isolated. People would start speaking to me without realizing I couldn't understand them, until—in the only Korean phrase I knew perfectly—I let them know I couldn't speak their language. After my first semester teaching at Hong Ik University, my mother came to visit me in Korea. My mother had never been to this country where her three adopted daughters had been born. She wanted to go to Korean Social Services, the agency that had processed our adoptions, and where we had all lived for a short time (TOP) IN 1971, KUNYA (LOWER MIDDLE) WAS PHOTOGRAPHED WITH HER FIVE BROTHERS AND BIRTH MOTHER. RIEN VAN DER MEULEN, HER BIRTH BROTHER WHO WAS ADOPTED IN THE NETHERLANDS, IS NEXT TO KUNYA (RIGHT). KUNYA WITH HER HUSBAND, ANDREW, AND THEIR BABY, KEATON As the car pulled up to a house, a little woman came running out, her face like a dried apple, tears flowing. AMY RADER PHOTOGRAPHER © 2003 “presumed to be found in Kunsan," and “birth date estimated Oct. 3, 1966." So, I had believed that there was no information. We were not permitted to copy anything from the file but were assured that the agency would look into the matter. A couple of months later, while still teaching at Hong Ik, I received an e-mail stating, “Ms. Des Jardins, we have found your birth family." I met my birth brothers at a coffee shop near the university. I was not convinced when I met these slightly worn men that they were relatives. I couldn't see a resemblance, but, during the three-hour drive down to Kunsan, my translator explained what they were saying. I was the seventh child of eight; there were three girls and five boys. Our father had been ill for many years before he died and knew our birth mother could not care for us all. It sounded from their description that our birth father was not a kind man, and, like many Korean men of the time, a heavy drinker and smoker. They explained to me that my name, which is not a typical Korean name, came, in part, because it sounded like kun-nae, which means “the end." They had hoped, in vain, that I would be the last one, but I was not. The agency had told my birth mother that my younger brother and I would both go to America to be educated, and then, presumably, return. When we arrived in Kunsan, my brothers kept asking if I recognized anything. Nothing looked familiar to me. As the car pulled up to a house, a little woman came running out, her face like a dried apple, tears flowing. She pulled me into the house with an intense grip; as we sat on the floor together, she brought out some photos. Until I saw them, I wasn't sure that this was my birth family. One was taken on the day my brother and I were sent to Korean Social Services. Other photos showed my adoptive parents in the United States; I was caught off guard. “What were my parents doing here?" I wondered. I'd had no idea that the sister agency in Pennsylvania had sent photos of them back to Korea. That dissolved my skepticism, and I joined the assembled in tears. During that year in Korea, I also met my husband—a native of Cape Cod who had been teaching at the same university. Although the story of meeting my birth family is dramatic, it has much less daily significance than meeting my husband. When people ask me what it was like to meet my birth family, I am never sure how to respond. I say that I have been extremely fortunate. And that there was a surreal quality to the reunion like a made-for-TV movie. Some part of me felt disembodied and numb, viewing the scene from a distance and thinking, this is a great story but not mine. Another part of me felt like this experience was the most ordinary and natural one in the world. When I left my birth mother the last time before returning to Boston, I didn't cry with her. I was sad, mostly thinking of her those many years ago and sad for the 5-year-old child I was. I didn't cry until we were a few miles down the road, and my sister-in-law—whom I'd just met—cried with me. T Kunya Des Jardins is assistant dean of counseling and support services at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her mother, Barbara Des Jardins, wrote about adopting Kunya and her sisters in Waiting: A Story of Love and Hope, which was published last year. DECEMBER 2003 before our emigrations were finalized. In the sweltering August heat, we were amazed to see the same swing set and jungle gym found in the first pictures of me sent to my parents 28 years before. The social worker laid down a file. We'd seen before what had been written in English, but I looked at the Korean side of the folder for the first time. Despite the fact that I could not read or write Korean, I had picked up enough to sound out some words and to recognize what looked liked names and birth dates. I pointed this out to the social worker who agreed, “Yes, those are the names and birth dates of your birth parents." I had been to this agency 10 years earlier, and they had never mentioned anything. The English side of my record stated “birth mother unknown," “birth father unknown," 71 Signs of Violence A M Y R E T S I N A S ’ 0 1 E D U C AT E S T E E N S A B O U T H E A LT H Y R E L AT I O N S H I P S A N D CONFLICT RESOLUTION. ack home in Rhode Island, Amy Retsinas continues to challenge the status quo. “As a Lang Opportunity Scholar at Swarthmore, I was afforded the opportunity and resources to create, design, and implement a community service project,” says Retsinas, who spent summer 1999 volunteering at a domestic violence agency, which was close to her home in Providence. “One day, I accompanied a staff member on a home visit to meet with a former client and her two children. She had only lawn furniture in her apartment, and the three of them shared a single twin mattress.” The shelter frequently received calls from community members with offers to donate furniture. Yet because of a lack of storage space and transportation, all furniture donations were turned away here—and at the five other Rhode Island domestic violence agencies. So, in summer 2000, Retsinas founded the Furniture Donation Exchange Program, creating a program to ensure that women and families leaving domestic violence shelters receive furniture free of charge. “Seeing both the demonstrated need for furniture and the available supply of donations, I decided my Lang Project would be to connect these two pieces—coordinating a policy so that donated furniture can go into the new homes of domestic violence survivors,” says Retsinas, who worked with organizations such as Goodwill and the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Through the Lang Opportunity Scholars Program—which recently shifted selection out of the admissions cycle to a rigorous application process during sophomore year—Eugene Lang ’38 supports innovative, student-designed,community service projects. “In a way, this initial involvement in the domestic violence movement opened my eyes to the pervasiveness of domestic vio- MEGHAN KRIEGEL ʼ97 B AT THE END OF OCTOBER, AMY RETSINAS WAS IN BOSTON FOR A WOMEN’S POLITICAL SUMMIT AT JOHN F. KENNEDY LIBRARY AND MUSEUM. AS THE EDUCATION OUTREACH ADVOCATE AT THE WOMEN’S RESOURCE CENTER OF SOUTH COUNTY IN RHODE ISLAND, SHE OFFERS WORKSHOPS ON BULLYING, SEXUAL HARASSMENT, AND DATING VIOLENCE FOR 5TH- TO 12TH-GRADE STUDENTS. lence and discomfort of communities and individuals in addressing these issues,” says Retsinas. “Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women; every day, four women in the United States are murdered by a male intimate partner. Many people who are close to me in my life have been affected by relationship violence, yet the problem remains hidden. I decided to write my senior sociology/anthropology thesis on teenage dating violence, only to find that little research existed,” says Retsinas, who interviewed teens and held focus groups in Philadelphia and Rhode Island in order to write her thesis. Her commitment to effect change, which began to take shape during her Swarthmore days, has grown out of a body of volunteer work. During summer 1998, she taught non- violent conflict resolution, self-esteem, and leadership skills at the Bridges Summer Program in Chester, Pa. From 1998 to 2001, Retsinas was coordinator for the ChesterSwarthmore Coalition Afterschool Program, recruiting and training literacy tutors from the College to assist disadvantaged elementary students. After graduation, she extended her volunteer activities in Philadelphia, helping with the tasks of daily living as an Action AIDS buddy and educator for Planned Parenthood. After graduation, Retsinas worked in Philadelphia as a legal advocate at Women Against Abuse. For a year, she provided legal options, advocacy, safety planning, and crisis intervention for domestic violence victims trying to navigate through the complex legal system. Now, Retsinas teaches youth about the warning signs and dynamics of potentially abusive relationships. As the education outreach advocate at the Women’s Resource Center of South County in Rhode Island, Retsinas develops curricula and conducts workshops in high schools on teen dating violence and healthy relationships. In the middle and elementary schools, she leads workshops on bullying, teasing, and sexual harassment. She has established violence prevention programs in schools across seven school districts, facilitating two teen female support groups, counseling and referring teen victims and peers, and designing evaluations to gauge effectiveness. “In addition to working with youth, I present workshops and trainings for parents and faculty to teach them how to recognize the warning signs among teens and how to intervene effectively,” she says. “By educating young people about warning signs, nonviolence conflict resolution, and the power of bystanders, I hope to stop the cycle of violence and create a safer community—free of violence.” Retsinas adds: “Today, we are living in a society where all violence, especially violence against women, has become normalized and—to an extent—glorified. Swarthmore taught me how to challenge the status quo and think critically. The Lang Program was especially invaluable in that it afforded me the opportunity, resources, guidance, and encouragement to solve community problems.” —Andrea Hammer DECEMBER 2003 PROFILE 75 LETTERS Continued from page 3 CHARLES ROOS ’48 WRITES THAT HE IS IN THIS PICTURE (SECOND ROW, THIRD FROM THE RIGHT), WHICH APPEARED IN THE JUNE 2002 BULLETIN. IN A LOPSIDED GAME AGAINST HAVERFORD, THE COACHES DECLARED A 1-POINT SWARTHMORE VICTORY, THEN EXCHANGED PLAYERS TO EVEN THE SIDES. CALLING “DEAN” PEABODY HEH, POPS! Regarding the article “What Shall We Call the Professor?” I had a funny experience at Swarthmore. In a psychology seminar, I had a professor named Dean Peabody, which is what it said on his office door. I incorrectly leapt to the assumption that he was a dean in title rather than a “Dean” in name. So when our Social Psychology seminar began, I promptly called him by his title and received a slightly startled look but thought nothing about it. A couple of us in the seminar took to calling him Dean. It was only halfway through the semester that I discovered that I was inadvertently calling Professor Peabody by his first name. At that point, Dean he had been, and so, after a few seconds of initial discomfort, Dean he remained. DAVID LANDES ’85 Herndon, Va. In 30 years of teaching at Beloit College, I can recall only one occasion on which I gave much thought to how students addressed me. It was when a senior student and advisee I’d known since his freshman year, passing me in the hall, greeted me with an exuberant, “Heh, Pops!” Only some hours later did I recall that the student had telephoned me the previous evening, and my teenage daughter had summoned me to the phone with her usual hail. NELSON VAN VALEN ’48 Alamosa, Colo. THE EXALTED ONES In the 1950s, professors in the classroom were called “Mr.” or “Miss” (“Mrs.” wasn’t common in that era)—unless they taught math or science. Those exalted ones were called “Dr.” Annoyed by this flouting of the STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Publication: Swarthmore College Bulletin Publications number: 0888-2126 Filing date: Sept. 30, 2003 Issue frequency: August, September, December, March, and June Number of issues published annually: 5 Annual subscription price: none Office of publication: 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 General business office: same Publisher: Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 Editor: Jeffrey Lott, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 Managing editor: Andrea Hammer, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 Owner: Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 11. Known bondholders, mortgages, or other security holders holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: none 12. The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization has not changed during the preceding 12 months. 14. Issue date for circulation data: Sept. 2003 15. a. Total number of copies (net press run): 23,769 b. Paid or requested circulation through dealers: 0 c. 1-Paid or requested mail subscriptions: 20,886 4-Other classes mailed: 1,125 (ISAL) d. Free distribution by mail: 28 e. Free distribution outside the mail: 1,562 f. Total free distribution: 1,590 g. Total distribution: 23,601 h. Copies not distributed: 168 i. Total: 23,769 Quaker commitment to equality, I once referred to a favorite history professor as “Dr.,” and my friends laughed at me. BARBARA HADDAD RYAN ’59 Alexandria, Va. A NARROW VICTORY The picture of the 1943 junior varsity football team in the Bulletin (“In My Life,” June 2002, shown above) brought back 60-yearold memories. I played for Swarthmore in the game with Haverford described by Dick Burrowes ’45. In one play, the left tackle and I both broke through the Haverford line, and we trapped their quarterback. He ran backward, and we followed him. He slowed to a walk, and we walked back with him. When he got close to the Haverford goal line, he raised his arm to pass the ball, and I tackled him some 60 yards behind the line of scrimmage! After this play, the two coaches got together in Quaker spirit and decided that Swarthmore had won by one point, and then the two teams exchanged players to make the game even. CHARLES ROOS ’48 Nashville, Tenn. FOR THE RECORD The Bulletin staff regrets misidentifying Susannah Volpe ’05, John Halbert ’89, and J.P. Partland ’90 in the September issue. Write to us at 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390, or e-mail your letters to bulletin@swarthmore.edu. T DECEMBER 2003 As a linguist schooled in and teacher of six languages both modern and classical, I am both impressed and amused by President Alfred H. Bloom’s oratorical style (Commencement Speeches, September Bulletin). It is positively Ciceronean, clauses within clauses within more clauses! I had to read some of his sentences over again to match up verbs with their subjects. More than one complete sentence took more than 3 inches of space in one column from initial capital letter to its final period. What oratory! AUDREY KEMP BOWYER ’45 Oakland, Calif. 1945 HALCYON POSITIVELY CICERONIAN 79 A DAY I N THE LIFE Get On and Go T H E S W I F T, B U SY L I V E S O F R AC H E L H E N I G H A N ’ 9 7 A N D C H A R L I E M AY E R ’ 9 8 By J e f f r e y L o t t P h o t o g r a p h s b y C l a i r e Weiss ’03 O . 3, 2003: CT It’s pitch dark on a quiet residential street in northwestern Washington, D.C. At 5:45 a.m., Rachel Henighan and Charlie Mayer have already had their coffee and oatmeal. They’re in the starting blocks for another day. Saying a quick good-bye, Rachel steers their old Volvo toward the Stoddert Elementary School in Georgetown. She’ll arrive more than 2 hours before her fourth-grade students. Charlie says she’s a natural morning person. Usually, they exercise together before work, but Rachel was away from her classroom yesterday, so she has a lot of catching up to do. And today’s the day for the worms. Charlie rides with me to the gym, where he jogs a mile on a treadmill (“you just get on and go,” he says), then sweats while lifting free weights, does some push-ups, and jogs again. He’s down to 158 pounds on his wiry 5’11” frame. He credits trainer The radio news producer’s job is multifaceted—from conceiving stories to setting up interviews, then gathering audio resources CHARLIE MAYER (LEFT) AND STUDIO ENGINEER VINCE MUSE CREATE A FINAL such as music or archival sound, writ- MIX OF A STORY FOR NPR’S WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY. IN JANUARY, MAYER ing the copy, and WILL BECOME SENIOR PRODUCER OF NPR’S 2004 ELECTION COVERAGE. editing the finished audio for the air. On this Friday morning, Charlie is putting the he’s also a shop steward for AFTRA, the finishing touches on Scott Simon’s 12union that represents on-air, production, minute interview with singer Joan Baez, and editorial staff members at NPR. which, although it was recorded earlier, will Charlie compares NPR to Swarthmore: sound “live” on the air tomorrow. Editing “There are a lot of incredibly talented people digitally on a computer, Charlie skillfully who love what they do—and also some hotblends music from Baez’s latest album with headed, obnoxious young people.” Like you, carefully chosen excerpts from Simon’s half- I ask? He smiles, “I’m trying to be less so.” hour conversation with Baez. He says that many mentors have “helped me Around 9 a.m., Charlie goes up to the focus my energy and aggression on the work. I’m a journeyman now—able to operate independently but still with a lot to learn.” At the elevator, he runs into one of his mentors, Noah Adams, former host of All Things Considered. “Are you coming to the party?” asks Charlie. AFTRA negotiations have just been successfully completed, and top-floor canteen for more coffee. Nearly he has helped organize an after-work cele500 people work at NPR’s Massachusetts bration where NPR Executive Vice President Avenue headquarters, and many of them Ken Stern and chief union negotiator Ken seem to know him. Although he was hired Greene (“the Kens,” says Charlie) will give full time after graduating from Swarthmore, toasts to the future. Adams says, “I rememCharlie has actually spent much of the last ber the meeting when Charlie first said, ‘I decade at the network—beginning with an don’t get coffee anymore.’” internship during his junior year of high “I figured, after I graduated from college, school. He’s worked on All Things Considered, I should do other things,” quips Charlie. Weekend Edition, and many other NPR proAdams, like a proud father, addresses me grams, doing everything from getting coffee again: “In radio, there are a bunch of things to editing tape to pitching story ideas to that you can teach and learn—and then directing and now producing. These days, there’s instinct. Charlie’s got it.” S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N “I’m a journeyman now—able to operate independently but still with a lot to learn,” Charlie says. 80 DeWayne Hudson, who, standing nearby, spouts admiring jock clichés: “His motivation was there. He was determined. He was consistent.” After a quick shower, we head for National Public Radio (NPR) in downtown Washington, where Charlie’s a producer for Weekend Edition Saturday, a 2-hour news program hosted by Scott Simon. Charlie’s windowless office is decorated with souvenirs of Iraq, where he spent three weeks in July producing news stories with reporter Eric Westervelt. RACHEL HENIGHAN TEACHES FOURTH GRADE IN A WASHINGTON, D.C., PUBLIC SCHOOL (TOP). SHE AND CHARLIE (BOTTOM) MARRIED IN AUGUST. In January, Charlie will take charge as senior producer of NPR’s election coverage for 2004. On election night, he will produce a program with a staff of more than 100 reporters, editors, producers, writers, and technicians. He’s just 27. OVER AT STODDERT ELEMENTARY, the school day is in full swing as “Ms. Henighan” presides over her classroom in a firm, friendly manner. There’s a sense of purpose in the bright, busy room. All of these 24 children need attention, and Rachel gives some to each child in turn. A few blocks from the heart of upscale Georgetown, Stoddert is an aging building that echoes with children’s voices and is brightly decorated with their artwork. The carpet in Rachel’s room is held together in places by duct tape, but there are new windows admitting copious light. In a sunny corner, two students read silently—one of many daily tasks that Rachel has listed on a flip chart in the corner of the room. The students are going about the business of learning independently as Rachel and a student teacher answer questions and move them from task to task. Math is done for the day, but there’s still silent reading and story writing and science—the worms in the large black tub. Rachel spreads a plastic drop cloth on the floor, reminding the children of the project’s history. A year ago, a container of worms and an armload of ripped-up newspaper were placed in the closed tub. Water and vegetable scraps were added weekly as the worms devoured the newspapers and made— what? “Ew!” cry the children as she tips the tub on the drop cloth. A moist brown mound appears. “It’s just dirt,” says Rachel. “It’s compost, and there are lots of worms in it. Your job is to pick out as many worms as possible so we can start the box for this year.” Most of the children roll up their sleeves and dig in, but some recoil from the earthy mound. “You can name your worms as you find them,” she suggests brightly. They run with this idea. “I named this one after Shawn,” says one girl. “Daniel, Daniel—this one looks like you!” cries another. One child tells Rachel how afraid she is of worms. “I’m really going to face my fear,” she says as she gamely picks one from the pile. The classroom starts to smell like a barn as the other children eagerly pick through the compost. In her school, Rachel says, teachers are given quite a bit of autonomy in reaching the goals set by the curriculum. “Teachers can really accomplish something” in this environment, she says. Success in any classroom “really comes down to teacher training and how competent your teachers are.” The school day ends with time on the playground, but first there’s an impromptu violin concert. Five novice players bow a few notes as restless classmates put their chairs up and ready themselves for the bell. On the way out, each of them gets a good-bye handshake (or hug) and a cookie. The cookies are courtesy of Charlie, who dropped them off on his way to buy supplies for the party, catching an unusual moment with Rachel on the fly. Her students are fond of her—and motivated. One boy says to me, “She doesn’t yell at the bad kids. She just tells them not to do it.” A girl says, “She reads us books that we choose, like Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.” Another says, “Sometimes, when we’re really working hard, she’ll let us go out early for recess.” Rachel’s really working hard too—but she doesn’t get recess. The compost needs to be distributed to an outside garden. She has dozens of papers to grade, and there’s a used-book fair being organized by the PTA. She checks in with Charlie by phone. They agree to meet at home about 8 p.m., after her Friday night yoga class. As the sun sets over Washington, Charlie’s tapping a keg of Sierra Nevada while a co-worker sets up a huge spread of barbecue and hors d’oeuvres in NPR’s rooftop snack bar. Dozens of staffers drift in—top managers and union members chatting amiably. The two Kens make short, lighthearted speeches, and everyone raises a cup to the future. Charlie, pouring beer for all of his friends and mentors, beams; it is just what he wanted to happen—getting everyone together. Maybe it is a little like Swarthmore. T DECEMBER 2003 Rachel has thought of going into school administration but says that “to do this, I thought I needed to be a teacher first.” F W o o d l a n d “ W o o d y ” ’4 7 a n d H a n n a M a c h l u p H a s t i n g s ’5 1 “A lthough we did not meet at Swarthmore, it was really Swarthmore that brought us together, brokered by Hanna’s brother Stefan [’47]. Swarthmore was and is important to both of us, and an annuity and bequest in our estate plans are our way to give something back to this great school. Planned giving allowed us to make a larger contribution to the College than we thought possible. “We commend this opportunity to you.” Woody is a professor of biology at Harvard University, and Hanna is retired from her position as director of student affairs at the Harvard School of Public Health. Together, they served 20 years as masters of Pforzheimer House, an undergraduate house at Harvard. Woody and Hanna live in Cambridge. To learn how gift planning at Swarthmore could work for you, please contact Ted Mills, director of planned giving, at (610) 328-8323, or e-mail plannedgiving@swarthmore.edu for a confidential consultation. Visit the Swarthmore planned giving Web site at pg.swarthmore.edu.