Bigger, Higher, Faster
China charges into
the 21st century.

fea t u re s

de part m e n ts

p rof ile s

16: Bigger, Higher, Faster

3: Letters
Readers share their thoughts.

50: Hidden Child of the
Holocaust

4: Collection

For a place in heaven and ration cards,
Tom Stein’s [’53] life was saved.

China charges into the 21st century.
By Jeff r e y Lo tt

20: Swarthmore at the
Fringe
A guide to September’s Philadelphia Live
Arts Festival and Philly Fringe—and their
connections to the College

Campus highlights from service to stem
cells to soccer

14: Faculty Expert
The Politics of Language

By E lizab e th Red d e n ’ 05

B y P iete r Juds on ’7 8

26: Bye the Numbers

36: Connections

Do college rankings and U.S. News and
World Report “mislead the public?
By S oni a Sche rr ’ 0 1

A new series of Welcome to the City!
events makes young alumni feel at home
in new locations.

30: Miracle on the
Mountain

38: Class Notes

Scott Timm ’99 leads a very special school
in Costa Rica.

43: In Memoriam

By Car o l Bré va r t- Dem m

Alumni news and views
Remembering departed friends and
classmates

60: Books + Arts
Jimmy—Swimmer, Coach, and Dad
By James McAdoo
R evie w ed b y W.D. Eh rha rt ’73

ON THE COVER
Chinese men atop an observation platform
point at the Three Gorges Dam on the
Yangtze River—and at China’s powerful
future. Photograph by Jeffrey Lott. Story on
page 16.
OPPOSITE
Kohlberg Hall in autumn. Photograph by
Eleftherios Kostans.

66: In My Life
Just Trying to Survive
B y S ar ah Wi ls on ’87

80: Q + A
Farha Ghannam: The Global Body
B y J effrey Lo tt

By Aud ree Penn er

57: The First Reaction
is “Ahh”
Marya Ursin ’71 and her husband enchant
with fairy tales, whimsy, and mystic masks.
By Susan Cousin s B reen

76: At Home With Wolves
Yellowstone National Park feels like home
to expert Emily Almberg ’03
By Tom Arrandale

parlor talk

L

isting my occupation on the China visa application gave me pause.
The Swarthmore Alumni College Abroad tour operator advised us against
“writer” or “journalist,” so I went with “college administrator”—true
enough, I suppose, but troubling. I was planning to write a blog about the trip,
as I had from Vietnam and Cambodia in 2006, and the article that appears in this
issue (page 14).
Before departing, I set up a site at WordPress.com, a popular blogging service.
Our modern Chinese hotels offered high-speed Internet access, so I anticipated few
problems. But on arrival in Beijing, I found that although I could connect to the
Web, I could not write to—or even see—my blog. E-mail to family members confirmed there was nothing wrong with WordPress, so I had to blame China.
It felt creepy. At first, I wondered, “Was this censorship? Was it aimed at me?”
Of course, it wasn’t about me; the entire WordPress site was blocked. I continued to
write but had to e-mail my essays and pictures to my son in New York, who posted
them to the site. From him, I learned
that China regularly blocks blog sites
Was this censorship?
such as WordPress; it’s known as the
Great Firewall of China.
Was it aimed at me?
Blogs are inherently democratic.
You set one up, usually for free, and
No, it was merely the
write whatever you please. Most
blogs also allow reader comments—
Great Firewall of China. conversations
in the public square.
But it’s obviously more free speech
than the Chinese government can tolerate, so in China, blog sites are unpredictably
unavailable. And, even on days when I could access WordPress in China, all reader
comments were blocked.
China’s vibrant market economy can seduce visitors into thinking that other
aspects of Western capitalism, such as free speech and political democracy, are also
embraced. Yet, since ancient times and especially during the People’s Republic, topdown social and political control has been the norm in China—and Chinese views
of history have been adapted to accommodate current political realities.
Our Beijing guide criticized the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution—admissions that were previously unthinkable—but, asked about the 1988
democracy movement, he clammed up. Standing in Tiananmen Square, the site of a
terrible massacre, he stated that the violence had been “regrettable,” but it was a
“necessary step in getting to where we are today.”
Despite centuries of poverty, conflict, and misery, new optimism and confidence
abound in 21st-century China. Yet suppressing free expression and democracy in
the name of prosperity shouldn’t be a “necessary step.” The great temptation—not
just in China—is to trade freedom for wealth and security. My travel blog is of little
consequence, but the future of China is. In the decades to come, as China becomes
a leader of the world’s economy and culture, let’s hope it also becomes a leader in
freedom and democracy.
—Jeffrey Lott
Lott’s China blog is at http://jeffreylott.wordpress.com.

2 : swarthmore college bulletin

Swarthmore
COLLEGE BULLETIN

Editor: Jeffrey Lott
Associate Editor: Carol Brévart-Demm
Class Notes Editor: Susan Cousins Breen
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Gaadt Perspectives LLC
Staff Photographer: Eleftherios Kostans
Desktop Publishing: Audree Penner
Administrative Assistant:
Janice Merrill-Rossi
Intern: Lena Wong ’10
Editor Emerita:
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Contacting Swarthmore College
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www.swarthmore.edu
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admissions@swarthmore.edu
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Phone: (610) 328-8435. Or e-mail:
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The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
0888-2126), of which this is volume CV,
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
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changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin,
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letters
2005: “GOODWILL”

1969: “GOOD LUCK”

I can’t explain the delight I felt while reading the September Bulletin article on class
stones decorating the walls of Parrish
(“Carved in Stone”). It struck a note in me
because I was actually the person given the
honor of coming up with the 2005 class
motto to be carved into our stone.
I remember being told by the administration that I needed to come up with
something that would convey the spirit of
the school and our class in no more than
12 words. My first thought was to inscribe
something in Greek or Latin, but I only
knew Spanish. So I chose English, which
put even more pressure on me because
everyone would immediately know what it
says. I thought over the course of a week to
come up with something that everyone
would find agreeable and inspiring.
“How about ‘Goodwill’?” I proposed to
the administration. “It’s in the spirit of
Quaker simplicity, and the word itself
leaves people with a sweet feeling that
beckons them to engage the world and promote social responsibility.”
“We’re afraid it’ll make people think of
the second-hand clothing store,” was the
reply. “Would you consider ‘charity’ or
‘benevolence’?”
But, on behalf of my class, I persisted,
and I am delighted to hear praise for our
class stone. The fact that the tradition had
been suspended for almost 70 years makes
it even more of an honor.
JORGE AGUILAR ’05
New York

I enjoyed “Carved in Stone” and wish to
respond to its implicit invitation to hear
what wisdom the Class of 1969 might have
passed along if we had placed a motto on
Parrish Hall. I’m not sure why our class was
singled out by author Jeffrey Lott, except
that 1969 was a big Boomer year—most of
us were born in 1947, and most of us turn
60 this year—and ours was a class that
lived through incredible social upheaval, on
campus as well as throughout the country.
Friends of mine were gassed during the
Democratic convention in Chicago, and
others staged a sit-in in the College Admissions Office, precipitating a campus crisis
that ended only after President Courtney
Smith suffered an untimely death due to a
heart attack.
No one, perhaps, could have foreseen
how things would turn out for us. And
although all young graduates can merely
guess at what’s ahead, it seems to me that
our class was ever a little dodgy on the
future. The Vietnam War—not to mention
the assassinations of John and Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King—made
everything seem unstable. And our general
distrust of the older generation, its support
of the war or just the status quo, made any
sort of definitiveness seem suspect.
There were, of course, a number of us
who were comfortable setting a solid
course for themselves and following it—
going to law school or receiving grad
school fellowships. But the people I always
gravitated toward made life up as they went
along. I admired the way they rode the
thermals of the times.
That’s another thing about us, I think:
The Swarthmoreans I remember most
fondly were profoundly ironic. We enjoyed
an affluence our Depression-era parents
never had as kids, and it gave us the freedom to question everything. We were
many, and that gave us power. I remember
us challenging ideas and making jokes.
Things were absurd, and subversion was
funny.
I am struck by the earnestness of the
stony maxims that earlier generations
wanted to pass along—the belief of those
aphorists that they could get it right and
that someone would be listening. They
emphasize effort and community, character
and truth, ideas that feel more in tune with

“USE WELL THY FREEDOM”

Jeffrey Lott’s article on the class mottos
was a delight. I have enjoyed reading them
ever since I came to Swarthmore, and his
favorite—”Use Well Thy Freedom”—is
also mine. May I add one historical note?
The location of “Use Well Thy Freedom,”
close to the window through which one
could scramble into Parrish Hall after
hours, gave it a special meaning for the
girls who made use of that window after
the Parrish Hall doors were locked. I was
head resident there during my first year at
Swarthmore (1948–1949), and I became
very familiar with that window.
HELEN NORTH
Centennial Professor Emerita of Classics
Swarthmore, Pa.

my thoughts now, at 60, than they ever
would have with those of the younger me.
If our class had committed its thoughts
to stone, we might have said “Be Skeptical”
or “Good Luck.” And maybe that’s where
our selves then and our selves now meet,
because those mottos are good for any age.
AVERY ROME ’69
Philadelphia
STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP,
MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION
1. Publication title: Swarthmore College Bulletin
2. Publication number: 0888-2126
3. Filing date: Nov. 1, 2007
4. Issue frequency: Aug., Sept., Dec., Mar., June
5. Number of issues published annually: 5
6. Annual subscription price: none
7. Office of publication: 500 College Avenue,
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
8. General business office: same
9. Publisher: Swarthmore College, 500 College
Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390. Editor:
Jeffrey Lott, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore
PA 19081-1390. Managing editor: none
10. Owner: Swarthmore College, 500 College
Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
11. Known bondholders, mortgagees, or other
security holders holding one 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. 2007
15. a. Total number of copies (net press run):
24,784. b. (1) Paid or requested mail subscriptions: 21,964. b. (4) Other classes
mailed: 1,247 (ISAL). c. Total paid and/or
requested circulation: 23,211. d. (3) Free
distribution by mail: 40. e. Free distribution
outside the mail: 1,487. f. Total free distribution: 1,527. g. Total distribution: 24,738.
h. Copies not distributed: 46. i. Total:
24,784. j. Percent paid and/or requested
circulation: 93.8%

december 2007 : 3

collection

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

“All I wanted to do was get
some books for some kids,”
says Marissa Davis ’08 (left).
With help from her sister,
Marsha ’10 (right), and the
College community, Davis has
outfitted an entire children’s
library in New Orleans.

ACT NOW—NOT IN 30 YEARS—FOR NEW ORLEANS
While most students use their breaks as
opportunities to get away from the library,
Marissa Davis ’08 has spent hers building
one. A history major and religion minor,
Davis directed a campaign to promote learning and education in a disadvantaged part
of New Orleans, La., by turning part of a
community center into a children’s library.
Although the horrifying footage from
Hurricane Katrina made an impact on
almost anyone who saw it, the news triggered a sense of immediacy in Davis that
spurred her to action. “I couldn’t understand how people could be treated so unfairly and unjustly because of their socioeconomic background and color,” she said.
Davis started the Direct Relief Committee and received a Summer of Social Action
Award from the Lang Center for Civic and
Social Responsibility that enabled her to
spend 10 weeks in New Orleans as a dean at
4 : swarthmore college bulletin

the Gulfsouth Youth Summer Camp. It was
then that she became familiar with the CutOff Community Center and the people of
New Orleans.
“I was not thinking about the greater
issue at hand as much as those people,”
Davis said of the library campaign she started. “All I wanted to do was get some books
for some kids who’d otherwise be playing
basketball, so they’d have the opportunity to
be something besides an athlete or rap star.”
Through a book drive at Swarthmore,
Davis collected more than 900 books,
which she shipped to New Orleans. With
the help of her sister, Marsha Davis ’10, and
Carlette Washington, manager of Cut-off
Community Center, Davis set to work to fulfill her plan. The three women put together
bookshelves, handwrote labels for all 900
books, and created a child-friendly, numbered book organization system. As well as

the funding from the Lang Center, Davis
contributed much of her own money
toward the cause. During the grand opening ceremony of the Cut-Off Youth Library,
Davis and her sister were both honored by
Councilman James Carter.
Despite the publicity and commendations Davis has received, she still remains
humble. “It’s not about me, it’s about so
much more than that,” Davis said. “It’s
about empowerment—empowering the
youth of our age and letting them know
that they can address issues now and not
only 30 years from now.”
Her example has reaped rewards. After
reading about the Jena 6 controversy, Marsha co-organized an on-campus protest
that drew large crowds and received local
television coverage. Both sisters attribute
their proactive natures to their mother and
grandmother.
“My grandmother is the foundation of
the family and how I perceive the world to
be,” Davis said. “She didn’t grow up with
the greatest of resources but, even when she
was stretching [to make ends meet], she
would always stop to help another person.
It made me realize that if she was able to do
so much with so little, then I can certainly
do something.”
Davis’ project, now called NOLArize!,
continues to collect donations for the CutOff Youth Library. Davis and her team are
currently seeking to replace the library’s
computers with newer models. Monetary
donations can be sent to the Lang Center,
with checks made out to Swarthmore College and the “Katrina Relief Fund.” For further information on how to donate supplies, books, or computers, contact Carlette
Washington at the Cut-off Community
Center, 3200 Blair Street, New Orleans LA
70131.
—Lena Wong ’10

FIND OUT WHAT’S WHAT,
WHERE, AND WHEN AT
CALENDAR.SWARTHMORE.EDU
In September, the College unveiled an online Swarthmore Campus Calendar, developed by the Office of Communications and
Information and Technology Services.
Choosing either list or calendar grid format,

Last June, three Swarthmore sophomores—Levi Mahan, Alvin
Melathe, and Gina Grubb—were chosen to participate in a Roadtrip
Nation (RTN) adventure that took them to Australia for two weeks.
The concept for the PBS program emerged from the frustrations of
four friends who were “fresh out of college and unsure about the
career paths in front of them. They hopped in an old green RV and
hit the road, talking with inspiring people from all walks of life to
find out how they came to do what they love for a living.” Today,
Roadtrip Nation has evolved into a PBS series, three books, an online community, and a student movement.
The large green Roadtrip Nation RV visited campus last spring to
promote its programs, but it was an e-mail link on the College
Career Services Web page that first sparked Grubb, Mahan, and
Melathe’s interest in the program.
“When I saw the message,” Melathe explains, “I thought ‘this is
perfect. This is what I want to do.’” The three friends—hallmates
during their freshman year—decided to begin the two-round application process and learned last April that they had been chosen.
In preparation for the Australian road trip, the trio were responsible for choosing the people they would interview—they used the
Internet to find people in the fields in which they were interested,
calling ahead to set up the interviews, planning the trip route, and
developing a list of hostels. “We began with a list of 80 potential
subjects, talked to 40 before we left, and ended up doing 11 interviews,” Grubb says.
Their travels through northern and central Australia weren’t
always easy, Grubb says. “The big van was hard to park, and we
spent a lot of time finding our way from one interview site to the
next. The most difficult part for me was learning how to drive a stick
shift on the wrong side of the road.”
Among others, Grubb, Mahan, and Melathe interviewed Bob
Ansett who founded Budget Rental; Stuart Rees, director of the Sydney Peace Foundation at the University of Sydney; and Graeme
Wood, co-founder of Wotif.com, the original “last-minute,” on-line
hotel and flight booking service.
En route to their appointments with three entrepreneurs, a government official, two musicians, an animator, a stage actor and
director, and a photojournalist, they toured the cities of Sydney,
Brisbane, and Canberra. Later—during the five days they added to
the trip for personal travel—they also visited the city of Adelaide
and flew to Alice Springs to see Uluru Rock (formerly Ayers Rock),

visitors to http://calendar.swarthmore.edu
are able to search events such as lectures,
productions, athletic contests, and student
activities—both on campus and in local
communities, all sorted by area of interest,
date, or location. The site also features the
academic calendar including dates for registration, final exams, and breaks.
According to a report by Web Projects

BLAKE HODGES FOR ROADTRIP NATION

ROADTRIP NATION:
LIFE LESSONS FROM DOWN UNDER

Besides interviewing three entrepreneurs, a government official, two musicians, an animator, a stage actor and director,
and a photo journalist for Roadtrip Nation, Grubb, Mehan, and
Melathe also visited Uluru Rock. A documentary based on
their experiences can be seen at www.roadtripnation.com.

the world’s biggest red rock. While refueling their van in one remote
area, Melathe recalls, “We had an unexpected chat with James
Greening, one of Australia’s leading jazz trombonists, who exuded
such happiness because he makes the conscious decision each day
to be happy.”
Two RTN cameramen traveled with Grubb, Mahan, and Melathe
as they explored a world outside their comfort zone and talked with
individuals who chose to define their own roads in life.
The lessons learned from the adventure? Grubb, whose interests
lie in psychology and sociology, drew the conclusion that “everyone
makes mistakes, so there’s no reason to be afraid of messing up.”
Mehan, an engineering major with an interest in studio art, is
undecided about his future. “On this trip, I learned that not having
a definitive plan for the future shouldn’t scare me,” he says. “Roadtrip Nation didn’t change my goals—to find something I love and
throw myself into it—as much as give me the confidence to pursue
them.”
—Susan Cousins Breen

Manager Kelly Mueller, the site logged more
than 100,000 hits during the month of
November—in fourth place of 15 sites, after
the College home page and the student and
faculty/staff dashboards.
The Campus Calendar replaces both The
Weekly News (which has become Weekly Classifieds) and On Campus, the monthly events
calendar sent to area residents.
december 2007 : 5

collection

One important focus of Swarthmore’s Linguistics Department in
the past decade has been research into and efforts to ensure the
survival of endangered languages. Assistant Professor of Linguistics
K. David Harrison recently made news when his research on five
“global hotspots” for dying languages was released by the National
Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices Project.
Associate Professor of Linguistics Ted Fernald has concentrated
his efforts on the Navajo language. Despite its being the largest
indigenous language in the United States—it is spoken fluently by
almost all Navajo adults over the age of 45—Fernald is nonetheless
concerned about the survival of the language because of the lack of
fluency among preschoolers. “They are the best indicator of the
future of a language,” he says. “If kids don’t use the language, it will
be gone when all the older people die.”
In an effort to deepen the understanding and collaboration
between the linguists who research and the educators who teach
Navajo, Fernald has been an integral part of the Navajo Language
Academy (NLA)—a nonprofit educational organization devoted to
the scientific study and promotion of the Navajo language—since
its formation in 1997. In June, he directed the NLA’s annual workshop at Diné College in Tsaile, Ariz. Diné is a college for Navajos;
Tsaile is just beyond the rim of the Canyon de Chelly, which has a
lengthy and spiritual presence among the Navajos.
The workshop included courses for teachers and linguists on the
complexities of the Navajo language, discussions of research in
progress, and presentations by scholars including Fernald and Paul
Platero, the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social
Change at Swarthmore in Spring 1996 and currently director of the
Navajo Language Program at the University of New Mexico.
“The linguists can use their skills for the benefit of the community whose language they study; the language teachers gain a deeper
understanding of how their language works—something they need
to be more effective teachers,” Fernald says.
—Buzz Bissinger and Jeffrey Lott
6 : swarthmore college bulletin

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BUZZ BISSINGER

KNOWING NAVAJO

The Navajo Language Academy (top left)—which was
held last summer at Diné College in Arizona, near the
Canyon de Chelly (top)—is devoted to the study and
promotion of the largest indigenous language in the
United States. Ted Fernald (center), associate professor of linguistics, directed the annual workshop, which
featured Paul Platero (bottom, left), director of the
Navajo Language Program at the University of New
Mexico. Also participating was Fernald’s former student Lindsey Newbold ’02 (bottom, right), who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in linguistics at Berkeley.

WITH A $1.4 BILLION ENDOWMENT, WHY NOT SPEND MORE FREELY?
first at the long-term return on an endowment, adjusting for inflation and endowment growth from donations. Using historical
returns, most endowment managers in higher education expect an
average annual return of 5 to 6 percent plus inflation; at Swarthmore, we use 5.75 percent as our estimated real return.
The next step is to divide that return to balance it between, first,
what can be spent in the present on students’ educations, and second, what needs to be reinvested in the endowment to keep it
growing with inflation and thus to enable stable spending in future
years. In calculating the latter, people often mistakenly use the consumer price index (CPI). For colleges and universities, I believe a
As the financial vice president and treasurer of a well-endowed primore appropriate gauge of real inflation is CPI plus 1 to 2 percent.
vate college, I am often called on to explain to alumni, parents,
(Because of the nature of our “product,” our costs are heavily
media, and other interested parties why we cannot spend more
salary-driven, which in the high-productivity U.S. economy means
freely from our endowment. Why, they invariably ask, can’t we stop
they tend to increase faster than overall inflation.)
sitting on that burgeoning pot of money and use it to ease the burSubtracting 1.5 percent from that
den on tuition-paying parents and
expected real return of 5.75 percent
donation-making alumni? The answer
leaves 4.25 percent for spending. Such
has everything to do with being pruis our endowment spending rate, give
dent and disciplined—and with not
or take a few tenths of a point each
making any unduly rosy assumptions
year due to the vagaries of the market
about the future.
and the College’s needs.
For many of the nation’s most pres- What is the cost of a year at Swarthmore?
Educating one student, excluding financial aid ....$78,427
But aren’t new gifts also padding
tigious colleges and universities,
those endowment totals? Certainly, and
endowment totals appear gigantic. At
How are these dollars spent?
Faculty Compensation ....................................$19,220
some institutions justify higher endowSwarthmore, the endowment stood at
Staff Compensation ........................................$23,892
ment spending rates by including
$1.4 billion at the June 30, 2007 fiscal
Departmental Expenses ..................................$18,881
expected gifts in their calculations and
year-end. On a per-student basis, ours
Interest, Taxes, Utilities, Insurance, Annuities ....$16,434
treating them like additional returns.
is one of the largest endowments in
Given the nature of fund-raising, we do
the country, and income generated by
Where does this money come from?
Student Charges ..................................................39%
not take that approach at Swarthmore.
it allows us to spend on each of our
Room ..........................................$5,280
Alumni are more excited typically about
approximately 1,500 students well
Board ..........................................$5,020
making a donation if it’s going to be
more than what tuition alone would
Tuition/Fee ..................................$33,232
Total ..........................................$43,532
used to finance a new scholarship,
cover. Above all, it means more profesActual Collected After Financial Aid $30,417
building, or professorship rather than
sors teaching smaller classes with betPhilanthropy........................................................54%
to simply balance the budget.
ter resources, and it allows us to award
Endowment ................................$33,297
As I remind Swarthmore’s friends
millions of dollars in need-based
Private Gifts/Grants
Including Annual Fund ....................$8,987
and supporters, we are always observscholarships to the one-half of our
Total ..........................................$42,284
ing actual experience and adjusting our
students in need of financial aid.
Other Sources ......................................................7%
endowment spending accordingly.
In explaining our endowment
Rents, Application Fees. Interest, etc. $5,726
During the bull market, for example,
spending rate, I often use the analogy
FIGURES ARE FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 2007
we achieved real returns much higher
of a person’s retirement fund. If you
than 5.75 percent, and several times we
were retired and knew you had one year
gave ourselves a "step-up" in spending to make significant
to live, you could spend 100 percent of that fund. If you knew you
enhancements to our program and address some unmet needs.
had four years, you could spend 25 percent each year (ignoring
Knowing the good times would not last forever, we treated those
interest and gains); if eight years, 12.5 percent, and so on. For a typ“step-ups” as extraordinary developments and did not allow them
ical 65-year-old retiree with an average life expectancy, most finanto become absorbed into standard operation assumptions.
cial planners would recommend a spending rate in the neighborThankfully, we have not had to make any “step-downs” in the
hood of 4 to 6 percent, depending on the makeup of the investmore than two decades that I have been at Swarthmore. But in
ment profile.
truth, we don’t know what the future holds. Sustained economic
That, in fact, is quite similar to the rate at which Swarthmore
downturns? Bear markets? We hope not. But I am confident that,
and most peer schools draw from their endowments. We spend 4 to
because of our prudent spending in the present, our endowment
5 percent each year, even though an endowment, which is designed
will be aiding future generations of students regardless of what the
to last in perpetuity, should in theory be spent at a rate even slower
than that of the hypothetical retiree.
economic headlines might bring.
How do we arrive at that 4- to 5-percent rate? One should look
—Suzanne Welsh, Vice President for Finance and Treasurer
Editor’s Note: At the end of each fiscal year, Suzanne Welsh, the College’s vice president for finance and treasurer, prepares a detailed report
of Swarthmore’s financial status. To the 2006–2007 report, she added a
brief essay on endowment spending. We thought it deserved a broader
audience and are including it in this issue of the Bulletin. Readers who
would like a copy of the full financial report may request one from the
Publications Office by telephoning (610) 328-8568 or e-mailing bulletin@swarthmore.edu. It can also be found at www.swarthmore.edu/
admin/investment_office.

december 2007 : 7

collection

DAN WEST:
A CONFIDENT FUND-RAISER
Dan West, vice president for alumni and
development, will retire on Dec. 31 after
nine years as the College’s chief advancement officer. He presided over a period of
extraordinary growth in both the College’s
fund-raising and the size of its endowment.
A year ago, the largest capital campaign
in College history, The Meaning of Swarthmore, closed its books on schedule with $15
million more than the original $230 million
goal. And on June 30, 2007, Swarthmore’s
endowment was $1.4 billion, up from just
under $1 billion when West arrived in
1999—growth that is due both to new capital gifts and to increased market value.
“There were definitely some obstacles
along the way,” West says. “We announced
the campaign publicly a few weeks after
Sept. 11, 2001, in an atmosphere of great
uncertainty. We went through two hotly
contested presidential elections and the
beginning of two wars, which added to
financial jitters, and there was a serious
downturn in the stock market. And, of
course, there was the athletics decision in
December 2000. But I never doubted that
we would succeed.”
West is a confident fund-raiser, and his
approach to raising money is straightforward: “You make a case for your institution,
8 : swarthmore college bulletin

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

Sidney and Dan West
at the vice president’s
residence, which was
named in their honor.

and you ask people to
support it. The case for
Swarthmore is plain—
its alumni understand
the need for this college, and they understand how expensive it
is to provide this kind
of quality.”
One important result
of The Meaning of
Swarthmore, West says,
is that Swarthmoreans
now better understand
the need to support
even a relatively wealthy
institution, if it is to
keep pace in American
higher education.
“When I arrived here,
I was surprised to find
a lot of reticence at even
talking about fund-raising,” he says. “I hope we’ve overcome that,
because the need isn’t going to go away.”
Texas native West, 68, speaks from experience. A veteran fund-raiser and administrator, he came to Swarthmore after six and
a half years as vice president for college relations at Union College, where he directed a
capital campaign that raised more than $150
million and doubled annual giving. He had
led two campaigns before that and also
served for 20 years as president of Carroll
College in Wisconsin and Lyon College in
Arkansas. He began college work at his alma
mater, Austin College, in Texas.
A Presbyterian minister with a D.Div. in
systematic theology from Vanderbilt University and an Ed.D. in higher education
administration from Harvard, he calculates
that he has attended 175 board meetings
and more than 1,500 president’s staff meetings at the five colleges he has served—not
including another dozen years as a board
member himself at Agnes Scott College in
Atlanta. “And I dislike meetings,” he laughs.
“They keep you from doing the real work.”
In January, West and his wife, Sidney,
will move to Atlanta, where their two children and two grandchildren reside. The
vivacious Sidney West has been both partner and fund-raising teammate to her husband, often traveling with him and hosting
hundreds of parents and alumni at their
campus home, which was recently named

West House in their honor by Gil Kemp ’72
and his wife, Barbara, who endowed it.
Yet Swarthmore, he says, is “distinctive
for its commitment to academics above all
else—to the Honors Program, to supporting
faculty members’ teaching and research, and
to attracting the very best students regardless of their families’ ability to pay. We are
also deeply committed to diversity, social
responsibility, and justice.”
West believes that Swarthmore alumni
share these educational ideals, which he
credits Alfred H. Bloom with strengthening
during his 16 years as president. West sees
Bloom’s greatest contribution as his “understanding of the importance of the academic
program and his support of the faculty. They
have been key to the advancement of the
College and the success of the campaign.”
Will the current generation of students
become tomorrow’s philanthropists? West’s
answer isn’t merely optimistic. With firm
conviction, he says, “It is unacceptable to
think that a College of this quality and with
this history can’t raise the money it needs.”
—Jeffrey Lott

JUDY DOWNING:
LEAVING ON A HIGH NOTE
When Judy Downing, director of Information Technology Services (ITS), arrived at
Swarthmore in 1988, she found a Macintosh computer on her desk—a MacSE , the
first Mac with a 40mb internal hard drive.
Downing, who retires this month, would
have been able to connect her Mac to a limited Appletalk network, but without much
to send over it—or many people to send it
to. Swarthmore wasn’t yet connected to the
infant Internet (that happened in 1989);
there was no e-mail and no World Wide
Web. Downing estimates that there were
only a few dozen personal computers on
campus, mostly in some academic departments. And, in the Computing Center in
Beardsley Hall, a Prime 9550 mini-mainframe—with 12mb of RAM and 1,600mb of
data storage—served both academic and
administrative functions via terminals dotted across the campus.
By the late 1980s, it became clear that
the growing use of computers needed some
coordination—especially on the administrative side. Downing was hired from Indiana,
where the recently divorced single mother of

two sons had joined a secretarial pool and
taught herself to use computers and program databases.
According to Associate Director of Academic Computing Eric Behrens ’92: “Judy
got a few breaks from some pretty sharp
bosses, and by the time she came to Swarthmore, she’d been reporting to the governor
of Indiana, running the state government’s
computing shop.”
Larry Ehmer ’82, one of only 11 departmental staff members in 1988, recalls the
explosion of interest in computing that
marked that decade. “In the early ’80s, [Professor of Physics] John Boccio offered a
course called Computing From the User’s
End, and 300 people enrolled—including
several faculty and quite a few staff.”
Boccio pushed the College to expand
academic computing. Charles Kelemen, now
professor of computer science, was hired in
1984 to teach the first computer science
courses. Increasing numbers of students
were bringing PCs to college, and those who
didn’t needed public labs where they could
work. On the administrative side, users of
the cumbersome Prime system welcomed
user-friendly Macintoshes.
Today, there are 1,400 College-owned
personal computers in faculty and staff
offices, labs, classrooms, and libraries. More
than 2,500 people have direct log-in access

LINDA ECHOLS: A LEADER
IN COLLEGE HEALTH CARE
After 26 years at Swarthmore, Director of
Worth Health Center Linda Echols retired
this fall. She served as a clinician, oversaw
student groups, worked as a dean, did
research on pandemic responses, served on
committees, negotiated student insurance,
fought for cheaper birth control, and guided
student nurses.
Echols oversaw a dramatic growth in
Swarthmore’s health-care services. “Health
centers took a dive in the 1960s,” she says.
Now, there are few infirmary-style health
centers remaining in the country—“less
than 10 percent”—mostly at large schools
that can also offer hospital-level care.
“Swarthmore’s services are much more
expansive and diverse than other small
schools,” she said.
Under Echols, the Health Center walked
a fine line between social care and clinical
care. “We let students admit themselves,”
said Echols, a policy that surprises many of
her colleagues at other schools—and a
major change from when she first came to
Swarthmore. She also removed the gate that
separated the nurses’ area and waiting area,
which broke down another barrier between
staff and students.
Echols believes she is leaving the Health

Center at the cusp of big changes. “We need
more space,” she says. She also believes her
successor will have to look at the center’s
flat organizational structure. “I was the
director and also a clinician for 50 percent
of my day,” she explained. “You just can’t
delegate everything.” Echols says that the
health center will also face the decision of
whether or not it “wants to retain its own
doctors—or, if contracting is best, will we
want two part-timers or five different
doctors?”
Echols is not retiring from the workforce
however. “I’m too young to retire. I just
need a change,” she said. “I’m a person who
needs stimulation. I need to grow. I need
new responsibilities. I plan to work for
another 10 or 12 years!” And if Swarthmore
needs her, she says, “I live a mile away!”
On Oct. 1, Beth Kotarski was named to
head the Worth Health Center. Kotarski
served as a women’s health specialist at the
College more than 10 years ago. A graduate
of the University of Pennsylvania’s nurse
practitioner program, she also served for 11
years at Haverford College’s health center,
the last six as its associate director.
—Adapted from a 5/2/2007 Daily Gazette
article by Miles Skorpen ’09

JIM GRAHAM

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

Judy Downing managed the College’s
computing for nearly 20 years—a period
of unprecedented growth in technology.

to the campus network. In Beardsley, a powerful VMware cluster hums 24/7, and the
Computing Center has turned into ITS.
“In retrospect, Judy was probably one of
the most successful hires in the College’s
history. As new needs arose, it took someone who could create a structure that could
handle them, and she managed all this dramatic growth with the heart of a people person,” says Ehmer.
Longtime ITS network manager Mark
Dumic echoes Ehmer: “Judy is not a technical person, but she is an excellent judge of
character. She hires good people and doesn’t
get in their way.”
“Technology itself is ephemeral,” Downing says. “Five years from now, I know I’ll
feel best about the people whose careers I’ve
had some impact on.”
In November, Gayle Barton, director of
instructional technology at Williams College, was hired as Downing’s successor.
—Jeffrey Lott

Linda Echols broke down barriers
between students and staff at the Worth
Health Center. She retired this fall.
december 2007 : 9

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

collection

BIOLOGY CLASS CLONES STEM CELLS
This fall, students in a course
taught by Assistant Visiting Professor of Biology William
Anderson are performing experiments that most undergraduates only read about. Laboratory
exercises include splitting flatworms to observe regrowth of
entire body parts and instructing mouse embryonic stem (ES)
cells to develop into specialized
tissue. The course’s name: Stem
Cells and Cloning.
“It’s important for students
to have both an understanding
of what is known in the field,
separating the science from the
hype, and an understanding of
the potential for this type of
work,” Anderson says.
Anderson helped create a
class on stem cells and cloning
at Harvard in 2004—to his
knowledge, one of the first
undergraduate courses on stem
cell research. But it did not
include a laboratory component.
Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology Scott Gilbert
said that other schools have
offered courses involving laboratory work with other types of
stem cells such as from the
bone, but none with ES cells.
“There isn’t a textbook for
this subject yet because the
10 : swarthmore college bulletin

research is so new; all
we read is primary literature,”
says Macy Kozar ’10, a student
in the course. Anderson is currently writing a textbook on
stem cells and cloning for use in
undergraduate and graduate
courses.
“The topic is of great scientific and ethical interest, and it’s
important to educate ourselves
and our students about the biology behind what’s going on,”
says Associate Professor of Biology and Department Chair Sara
Hiebert Burch ’79.
Reverend Joyce Tompkins,
Swarthmore’s Protestant religious adviser supports the goals
of the course. “Stem cell
research and cloning offer great
promise for future healing and
should definitely be taught to
Swarthmore students preparing
for careers in the biological sciences,” she says. “But students
should also be taught to think
deeply about the ethical implications of this work. Ethical or
moral intelligence is just as
important to a Swarthmore education as factual knowledge.
This is not an either/or proposition but a balancing act, searching for the greatest good.”
Many within the scientific

The lab component of William
Anderson’s (above) course
has students working with
embryonic stem cells—and
considering the ethical
debates that have surrounded
similar work with human cells.

community have expressed their
objection to reproductive
cloning. However, therapeutic
cloning, involving generating
cloned cells and not entire
organisms, is another matter.
ES cells, Anderson says, are
obtained from embryos at the
blastocyst stage, roughly three
and a half days after fertilization
in mice and five and a half days
after fertilization in humans.
This is a critical time when cells
in the embryo can form into any
type of tissue in the body. Therapeutic cloning provides the
potential for growing cells
genetically identical to the
patient’s original cells that are
affected by disease or injury.
Adult stem (AS) cells, otherwise known as tissue-specific
stem cells, are found throughout
the adult body, such as in the
skin and blood. Although lacking the ability to form all of the
different cell types present in

the body, these cells do play
important roles in maintaining
tissues in the adult. The course
will evaluate, among other topics, the advantages and disadvantages of ES versus AS cells.
In the lab, students worked
hands-on with mouse ES cells
that were isolated from early
stage mouse embryos. They saw
how the mouse ES cells grow
and differentiate on their own
and observed how they generate
special cell types. Later, they
allowed the ES cells to differentiate into specialized tissue in
the presence of certain signals.
The course included an
ethics and public policy lecture.
Burch says: “We never ask a student to do anything he or she is
uncomfortable with. They are
free to say, ‘this is not something that I feel I can participate
in,’ and we’re happy to provide
an alternative activity.”
In a meeting with students,
staff, and faculty members,
Anderson described the nature
and origin of embryonic stem
cells and the concept of somatic
cell nuclear transfer (cloning)
and how it might be used to
generate customized human
embryonic stem cell lines. “Students asked thoughtful questions about both the science
and the ethics of this research. I
think it was enlightening for
everyone,” he says.
Catholic Adviser Father Ed
Windhaus says: “All who offered
questions or comments were
respectful and, in the spirit of
John Henry Newman, seeking
the truth together. One question
particularly allowed that attitude to prevail: From where in
scripture or church teaching
does the church attain its position on the rights of embryos or
human life in general? The
answer: from science itself.”
—A version of this article by Rosa
Kim ’09 appeared in The Phoenix
on Sept. 27, 2007

The Eugene M. Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility has moved
into spiffy new digs at 3 and 5 Whittier Place, bringing the center back onto the
campus after three years at the Swarthmore train station. With the goal of providing leadership opportunities in civic engagement, public service, advocacy, and
social action, the center is benefiting from its new location, which includes more
public meeting spaces and more common spaces for individuals and groups of
students, faculty, staff, and community members. Joy Charlton, director of the
Lang Center and a professor of sociology, says: “With the beautifully renovated
building closer to the center of campus, the center has become an even more
lively place. Its flexible spaces and furniture are welcoming to many kinds of uses
and people—from classes, seminars, and conferences during the day to dinners
and meetings of student service and activist groups during the evening—all the
while providing working spaces for staff and students.”
Two years ago, when Earthlust’s
Campus Greening Committee
proposed the introduction of
compostable plates, cups, and
food containers into the College
snack and coffee bars, the administration rejected the idea, citing
budgetary issues. The proposal
was resurrected in January 2007
by members of the Good Food
Project in the course of discussions with the administration and Dining Services, with the result that visitors to
the snack and coffee bars now eat from plates and containers produced from
sugar cane and drink from cold cups made from corn. Although more expensive
than the former tableware, the new products have not caused snack and coffee
bar prices to rise.
Currently, the Good Food group is seeking funding from the Lang Center for
Civic and Social Responsibility, the Budget Committee, and the Scott Arboretum
to initiate a food-composting project, which will contribute to the College community’s effort to maintain a greener campus and provide compost for use by the
Arboretum.

COURTESY OF NICK FORREST

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

Last summer, Honors English literature
major and studio art minor Nick Forrest ’08,
along with other volunteers from the College
and the City of Chester, worked at a Young
Explorers Camp sponsored by the Freeman
Cultural Arts/ Nia Center. The camp’s aims
were to prepare children for school and provide them with a safe place to be.
Supported by a Chester Fellows Grant,
Forrest spent time reading, story-telling,
gardening, and playing with the children.
One of his main focuses was art activities,
especially puppet-making—using recycled
materials to teach the children to both preserve resources and turn ordinary objects
into extraordinary creations—with the aim
of staging a parade through Chester.
“A parade is a great synthesis of the goals
I had in mind for the camp—to build pride
in the children for their community,” Forrest says. “To see a parade go through your
neighborhood is an incredible experience
and one not many people have.” In August,
with the theme “Save the Arts for the Kids,”
a parade of children, parents, volunteers,
and puppets brightened the streets of
downtown Chester. “I have seen how the
arts can inspire and empower children and a
community,“ Forrest says.
—Carol Brévart-Demm

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

EVERYONE LOVES A PARADE

“To see a parade go through your neighborhood is an incredible experience,”
says Nick Forrest, who helped Chester
children build giant puppets out of recycled materials.

december 2007 : 11

collection
A PAIR OF CHAMPIONSHIPS
FOR GARNET SOCCER TEAMS

12 : swarthmore college bulletin

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KYLE LEACH
ERIC BEHRENS ’92

ond consecutive Centennial Conference playoff appearance, broke
the Centennial record for shutouts in a season (13), and won their
first-ever Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championship when sophomore Julia Luongo scored the winning goal in
the fifth shootout round against Catholic University.
Team captain Caitlin Mullarkey ’09 was named Most Outstanding Player of the ECAC tournament after the championship game.
Under the leadership of Mullarkey, a defender, the Swarthmore unit
was the last team in all of Division III to allow a goal in 2007—a
stretch of more than six hours of soccer before being scored upon
this season. They ranked 11th in Division III in goals-against average (0.388) and completed the regular season with 60 percent of
their wins ending in shutouts—tops in the Centennial.
Five Swarthmore women were selected All-Centennial:
Mullarkey, junior Lauren Walker, and freshman Megan Colombo
were named to the first team; sophomore Maggie DeLorme to the
second-team; and senior Danielle Tocchet received honorable mention. Tocchet was also named Philadelphia Inquirer Academic Performer of the Year for women’s soccer, selected to the ESPN the Magazine Academic All-District II third-team, and is the first Swarthmore soccer player to make First Team on three occasions. Walker, a
goaltender, joins Mullarkey along the stingy Swarthmore backline,
ranking in the top 10 in goals-against average (a Centennial-record
mark of 0.27) and save percentage (.915) in all of Division III. The
team spent five weeks with a national ranking, the first in program
history, peaking at 18th in the National Soccer Coaches Association
of America (NSCAA)/Adidas poll.
Men’s Soccer (14-3-3, 5-3-1) Posting its best record since 1966, the
Garnet men came from behind in overtime on Nov. 11 to defeat
Frostburg State 3–2 and win the ECAC Southern Region championship. Senior captain Brendan Grady was named Most Outstanding Player after tying the match with his first career goal.
Four Garnet men were named All-Centennial: Seniors Ryan Sutcliffe and Pat Christmas and juniors Jeff Kushner and Ladulé Lako
LoSarah were selected for the All-CC second team. Goaltender Sutcliffe received five weekly honors during the 2007 season, twice
named Centennial Conference and Division III ECAC South
Region Defensive Player of the Week; he was also selected to the
D3kicks.com Team of the Week. Lako LoSarah, the team leader with
eight goals in 2007, scored in overtime to send the Garnet to a 1-0
upset of ninth-ranked Franklin & Marshall on Oct. 13. Christmas, a
three-time captain, started all but one match (77 of 78) of his career
and is the first Swarthmore male to make All-CC three times.
Volleyball (9-18, 3-7 CC) Selected All-Centennial were captain Erin
Heaney ’09 (second team) and middle blocker Karen Berk ’08
(honorable mention). Heaney, the libero, tallied 19 digs in the
Franklin & Marshall match, bringing her season total to 492 to set
a new school record, breaking the one previously held by current
assistant coach Patrice Berry ’06. Heaney was also selected ESPN the
Magazine Academic All-District II third-team. Junior outside hitter
Jen Wang tied the school record for kills in a season (319). Berk
etched her place in Swarthmore and Conference history, by finish-

RAY SCOTT

Women’s Soccer (14-2-3, 7-2-1 CC) The Garnet women earned a sec-

Women’s soccer won the ECAC championship (top) and set a
Centennial Conference record for shutouts. Five players were
named to All-Conference teams, including captain Caitlin
Mullarkey ’09 (center, left). All-Conference honors also went to
men’s soccer captain Pat Christmas ’08 (center, middle) and
hockey defender Anna Baeth ’09 (center, right). Men’s soccer
posted its best record since 1966 and won the ECAC Southern
Regional championship (bottom), reason enough to douse
Coach Eric Wagner after the winning game.

AURORA IMAGING

KYLE LEACH

Women’s Cross Country

Nyika Corbett ’10 led women’s
cross-country to sixth in the All
Mid-East regionals and fourth in
the Centennial meet.

(fourth at CC Championships) All Mid-East
Region runner Nyika Corbett
’10 led the Swarthmore
women to a sixth-place finish at the Mid-East meet on
Nov. 11. Caitlin Russell ’11
was selected for the Mid-East
Region All-Freshman first
team. Ashley Davies ’10
earned second-team All-Centennial after finishing 14th
with a time of 23.48 and
leading the Garnet to a
fourth-place finish at the
Centennial Championships
hosted by Franklin &
Marshall.
Field Hockey (6-11, 3-7 CC)
Defender Anna Baeth ’09
and forward Abbie Fischer
’08 were selected to the AllCentennial Second Team.
Baeth led the team in defensive saves, continually clearing the ball up the field. Fischer aided the Garnet
offense with seven goals and
three assists for 17 points.
Swarthmore bade farewell to
head coach Kelly Wilcox ’97,
who after six seasons at the
helm has moved into the
Dean’s Office as assistant
director of student life and
academic adviser.
—Kyle Leach

MARC JEULAND ’01 RACES AT
OLYMPIC MARATHON TRIALS
Former cross-country and track captain Marc Jeuland competed
in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in New York City on
Nov. 3. On the 26.2 mile course, concentrated in Central Park
to simulate the 2008 Olympic track in Beijing, he finished 93rd,
in 2:31:31, of the 104 runners who finished.
Jeuland qualified for the trials last October with a time of
2:20:33 at the 2006 Chicago Marathon.
“Marc was running great until the 17th mile,” Swarthmore
cross-country and track-and-field head coach, Peter Carroll,
recalled after the race. At one point, Jeuland was in 24th place,
on pace for a 2:17 finish, but
lost his spot at mile 19 due to a
cramp in his quads, triggered
by the hilly course.
Jeuland later said he was
still pleased with his race,
remarking that he would not
have raced any differently. Carroll, “proud of Jeuland’s progression,” agreed that Jeuland
had started a smart race, with a
controlled pace and steady
breathing.
While a student, Jeuland
was a two-time All-America as
well as a two-time Centennial
Conference champion and the
College record-holder in the
indoor 5,000 and the outdoor
10,000 meter events. Jeuland,
who graduated with honors in
engineering and a minor in
Leg cramps slowed Jeuland
chemistry, was selected to the
at the Olympic trials, and he
Verizon Academic All-America
finished
well back in the
Second Team.
field.
Several
Swarthmore
Jeuland is in his fourth year
runners
and
Coach
Peter
as a doctoral student in the
Carroll
were
on
hand
for the
Department of Environmental
race
in
New
York.
Sciences and Engineering at the
University of North Carolina–
Chapel Hill. Following graduation from Swarthmore, he served with the Peace Corps in
Bamako, Mali, where he started his work on water and sanitation issues in developing nations and also on international
water resources planning and managing, the topics of his current Ph.D. research. Carroll highlights Jeuland’s success in continuing to excel despite the challenges of maintaining rigorous
running schedules and workouts while working abroad.
Members of Jeuland’s cheering section at the trial included
alumni Jeff Doyon ’00, Karen Lloyd ’00, Ambrose Dieringer ’01,
two-time All-America runner Joko Agunloye ’01, James Golden
’05, Jones Nauseef ’06, and founder of the women’s crosscountry team Larry Ehmer ’82.
—Kyle Leach

MICKY KATZ ’08

ing her career third all-time in the Centennial for blocks and holding school records for blocks in a season (133) and all of the career
totals—solo (163), assisted (285), and total (448).
Men’s Cross Country (fifth at CC Championships) The top two
runners for the men this season, Ross Weller ’08 and Eric Saka ’09,
started the year together at the Main Line Invitational as Weller
crossed the line first for the Garnet at 21:20 and Saka placed 43rd
with a time of 21:26. The pair coupled their efforts at the Dickinson
Long/Short Invitational, with Weller placing 15th overall and Saka
completing his race in 13:02. At the Centennial Championships,
Saka was first to finish for Swarthmore, 16th overall, with a time of
26:51, with Weller close behind in 22nd place, with a time of 27:15.
Swarthmore placed 8th at
the NCAA Mid-East Regional meet on Nov. 11. Patrick
Hartnett ’11 was named to
the Mid-East All-Freshman
second team.

december 2007 : 13

faculty expert

The Politics of Language
IN THE OLD AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE,
NO AMOUNT OF CAJOLING COULD PERSUADE
PEOPLE OF THE “LANGUAGE FRONTIERS” TO
COMMIT TO A SINGLE NATIONAL IDENTITY.
By P ieter Ju dson ’7 8, P rof essor of Hi stor y

MAP: ÖSTERREICHISCHE NATIONALBIBLIOTHEK/COURTESY OF PIETER JUDSON

i

n 1991, when Slovenia, Croatia, and
then Bosnia Herzegovina declared
independence from Yugoslavia, Serbcontrolled units of the old Yugoslav military
attacked Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina.
Several regions became mired in a bloody
civil war, and this war in turn became an
opportunity for militant nationalists to pursue brutal policies of “ethnic cleansing.”
Thousands of refugees not only fled their
homes but later found it impossible to
return.
Although outraged by the premeditated
atrocities perpetrated on civilians—
designed to prevent them from ever returning home—most observers understood
these events in terms that nevertheless
appreciated the tragic necessity of “un-mixing” peoples who clearly could no longer
live together.
Journalists explained the intensity of the
violence in terms of ancient ethnic enmities
that had periodically erupted among Eastern Europeans for centuries, underlining the
complexity of the ethnic mosaic that apparently differentiated this region from the
more ethnically homogeneous nation states
of the West.
14 : swarthmore college bulletin

A larger-than-life
figure like Tito, they
wrote, had allegedly
managed to hold these
various enmities at bay
for 40 years by carefully
balancing different interests.
But without a controlling
supra-national force such as Tito,
the Soviet Union, or, in earlier centuries, the Habsburg Empire, the region
was destined periodically to fall into violent
bloody civil war.
When I began my book Guardians of the
Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of
Imperial Austria, I hoped to explain how and
why peoples who spoke different languages
or practiced different religions came to treat
their membership in different nations as
more important than their ties to their
neighbors in village communities. I wanted
to understand the sources of the nationalist
violence within rural communities that
divided members of different linguistic, religious, or ethnic communities.
As the site of my study, I chose three
multilingual regions of the old Austrian
empire—areas that today lie within the
Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Italy. In each
of these regions, increasing numbers of
violent incidents had been attributed to
nationalist conflict during the period
1880–1920. Did the transformations
brought on by rapid economic development
(railroads, tourism) and the expanding presence of the state through new institutions
(public schools, welfare offices) during this
period somehow produce social conflicts
that were experienced primarily in ethnic
terms?
My historical research, however, could
not easily convey to me an understanding of
how local peoples whose communities I

examined had identified themselves and
their loyalties. Newspapers, police reports,
and census records all used a language of
“nation” in their accounts of local events
and demographic trends, presuming the
universal importance of national identity.
But did local people believe that they
belonged to nations, and, if so, what kind
of significance did this belief play in their
lives?
To derive answers from my evidence
required considerable creativity and took
several years. I analyzed the records of local
social and cultural organizations, for example, to learn about local nationalist activism
and strategies for winning popular support.
But gradually, I noticed something else in
these records that suggested to me that
there was a different story to tell here.
Between the calls to action and the triumphal accounts of national advances, I
began to notice frequent outbursts of frustration and subtle admissions of failure.
Often, it seemed that despite the nationalists’ best efforts, people in these rural
regions stubbornly refused to commit themselves to a national identity. Activists from
the cities had presumed that it would be
easy to stoke nationalist conflict in these
regions where people spoke different languages (so-called “language frontiers”).
Instead they often encountered a puzzling
logic of behavior. Many people cultivated a
stance of belonging to both local nations
when it suited them or of complete indifference to national belonging altogether.
When nationalist activists urged people
to educate their children in their national
language, for example, villagers often chose
the opposite strategy and sent their children
to schools where they would be taught in a
different language. For reasons of social and
economic mobility, parents wanted their

children to become equally fluent in both of
the regional languages. They saw little
advantage for their children in identifying
with a single nation.
When minor incidents of violence broke
out in these regions, as they frequently did
in rural Europe, nationalist feelings were
more often the product than the cause of
the incidents. In other words, nationalist
media and organizations sought retroactively to interpret local riots, vandalism, or
hooliganism as expressions of
popular nationalist anger. On
occasion, nationalist differences did clearly produce violence, but such cases usually
pitted committed activists like
visiting Czech and German
nationalist university students against each other.
Local people may have joined
in the fray, but not necessarily
for reasons of national loyalty.
In other situations, I found that local
nationalist media on both sides often
invented nationalist incidents where none
had actually occurred, in order to keep
awareness of the national issue in the forefront of the news. From newspapers to
marches to historical reenactments to economic boycotts, activists around 1900 used
every propagandistic, organizational, and
economic instrument at their disposal to
make the idea of clear-cut national frontiers
or borderlands appear to be political realities. They clearly succeeded in conveying an
image of deep-seated and ongoing conflict
to observers from the rest of Europe or
North America. But it cannot be assumed
that local people in these regions before
World War II saw their linguistic or religious differences with their neighbors as
decisive or even significant elements.
In the particular regions I examined, it
also became clear that people attributed far
more significance to religious differences
than they did to linguistic differences.
When one German nationalist association
in Austria around 1900 tried to buy up land
and settle German-speaking farmers from
Germany in a largely Slovene-speaking
region, they encountered several unexpected
outcomes. The nationalist activists who had
financed their move were shocked to find
that the new settlers often socialized with
their Slovene-speaking neighbors at the

local pub and in church (where the local
Catholic priest often spoke Slovene) and
that they generally behaved like renegades
to their national identity. Later, when the
activists brought in Protestant settlers from
Germany to the same region, they had more
success in keeping the two linguistic communities separate.
All of this suggested to me that rural
people who spoke different languages did
not see their communities as different cul-

language use. Academics and journalists
also tended to treat linguistic difference as
an easy shorthand for explaining politics
and social development in East Central
Europe in the 20th century. Brutal Nazi
occupation policies that attempted either to
Germanize racially suitable people or to
expel and murder others, rested on the
Nazi’s alleged ability to determine individuals’ authentic national identities.
All these policies forced people to identify with one set of identities
or another, whether or not
those loyalties had any personal meaning to their lives.
After World War II, the
bloody expulsions of German speakers from Eastern
Europe by the victors again
forced hundreds of thousands of “in-between” or
nationally indifferent people to identify with one
nation or another.
Our mistake is to imagine that ethnic
cleansing is a product of deep-seated
nationalist conflict. Ethnic cleansing and
nationalist political conflict in Eastern
Europe did not grow out of real differences
between cultures. Rather, nationalists used
political strategies like ethnic cleansing to
create national societies in the first place.T

when activists urged
p e o p l e t o e d u cat e c h i l d r e n
i n t h e i r n at i o n a l l a n g u a g e ,
pa r e n t s s a w l i t t l e
a d v a n ta g e i n i d e n t i f y i n g
w i t h a s i n g l e n at i o n.
tures that successfully lived together. While
academics or journalists tend to see such
communities as examples of “multicultural”
arrangements, this term implies a sense of
coexistence among different cultural groups
—and that is not how local people saw their
world. Language use was not the significant
marker of cultural difference in these
regions that it became later in the 20th century. In fact, these people often shared in a
single rural regional culture in which bilingualism or trilingualism was the norm.
Where linguistic difference did gain
social and legal significance, however, was
in the new self-styled nation states that
replaced the Habsburg Monarchy in East
Central Europe after 1918. When Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Yugoslavia took these
territories, their nationalist politicians firmly equated language use with nationality.
Increasingly, the new regimes sought to pin
people down by determining their “authentic” identities. Where bilingualism had constituted the traditional norm—even within
families, new national censuses sought to
determine their subjects’ “real” identity. If
such subjects could not choose the right
identity, then the state would ascribe one
according to a growing array of “objective
characteristics.”
Nation states increasingly controlled
peoples’ social options by assigning them to
this or that national category according to

Pieter Judson ’78 earned an M.A. and a Ph.D.
from Columbia University. He joined the
Swarthmore faculty in 1993. He teaches classes
in modern European history that focus on
nationalist conflict, revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements, and the history of
sexuality. Guardians of the Nation (Harvard
University Press, 2006), his fourth book, was
awarded the Jelavich Prize by the American
Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and the 2005–2006 book prize from the
Czechoslovak Studies Association.
Judson credits several former students who
have helped him conduct his research in Europe
over the years, including John Kosinski ’99,
Tara Zahra ’98, and John Boonstra ’07. Zahra
and another former student, Caitlin Murdock
’94, are currently historians working in the
same field. Recently, Judson, Murdock, and
Zahra contributed chapters on the contested
borderlands in Central Europe to a volume published earlier this year titled Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place.
december 2007 : 15

Bigger, Higher, Faster
CHINA CHARGES INTO THE 21ST CENTURY.
Text a nd ph o to graphs by J eff re y Lo tt

First-time visitors to China are served a
spicy stew of expectation and reality. You
carry a lifetime of preconceptions about
Chinese people, culture, history, and present-day conditions. The task of the thoughtful tourist—as nearly 40 members of the
Swarthmore Alumni College Abroad discovered in October during two weeks in China
—is to test these notions against what you
see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. And sometimes, to test your senses against themselves, to determine the nature of the stew
by inspecting each of its ingredients.
The 20th century was pretty unkind to
China: colonization, corruption, nationalist
revolution, civil war, floods, invasion,
famines, more war, communist revolution,
industrialization, collectivization, poverty,
Maoism, cultural revolution, official repression, madness, and massacre. But the 20th
century—which some have called the
“American Century”—has ended; and from
all appearances, the 21st century will belong
to the Chinese.
Consider what we saw: the biggest dam
in the world, which may also be the world’s
biggest environmental and social disaster;
the fastest train in the world, the Maglev
from Pudong Airport to Shanghai; and the
tallest building in the world, now nearing
completion in Shanghai. During our visit,
China put a research satellite in orbit
around the moon. The 2008 Olympics were
on everyone’s mind—and, at least in Beijing, were driving massive infrastructure
construction. All are but a glimpse of the
enormous power and creativity that will
astound the world during the next 100
years.
Power and creativity, of course, are not
new to the Chinese. We saw abundant evidence of them in ancient architecture, art,
and artifacts. In several lectures and discussions along the way, Associate Professor of
16 : swarthmore college bulletin

Chinese Haili Kong showed how, under the
most difficult political and social conditions, 20th-century China continued to
produce great literature and films—modern
incarnations of a 4,000-year-old civilization that will continue to sustain China as it
takes its place on the world’s cultural scene.
We returned home sated by our Chinese
banquet, searching our minds for ways to
answer the inevitable question posed by
family, friends, and colleagues: “How was
China?” How indeed? The Bulletin asked
participants in the trip to write down their
“elevator speeches” about the trip—those
one-minute monologues that so inadequately describe an experience that lasted two
weeks and will reverberate far longer. T
To read Jeffrey Lott’s personal account of the
Alumni College Abroad, including more than
100 photographs, go to
http://jeffreylott.wordpress.com or follow a link
from the Web version of this article at
www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
The Chinese seem to think that
they will be the masters of the universe—and they may be right.
—Bernie Banet ’64
I saw a pulsating country and
emboldened people charging
ahead to their future, convinced
that their day in the limelight
is only a few short months ahead.
But it’s troubling that their long
and significant history is a little
occluded—and the immediate past
is but an uncomfortable mention.
—Sohai l Bengali ’79

r

CHAIRMAN MAO, ALTHOUGH HONORED
AS AN HISTORICAL FIGURE, HAS

A COUPLE SHOWS SOME COWBOY CHIC AS

BECOME A KITSCHY SOUVENIR IN THE

SHIPLOADS OF COAL MOVE DOWN THE YANGTZE

COMMERCIAL STREETS OF CHINA’S

THROUGH LOCKS AT THE MASSIVE THREE

CITIES, WHERE ANCIENT AND MODERN

GORGES DAM. THIS IS THE NEW, NEW CHINA.

STAND SIDE BY SIDE.

december 2007 : 17

IN STYLISH SHOP WINDOWS AND NEON-LIT
CITIES, CHINA PROCLAIMS ITS MODERNITY
AS TIMELESS BEAUTY ABOUNDS IN ART
AND NATURE. SUNRISE ON THE YANGTZE,
TERRA COTTA WARRIORS, AND THE GARDENS OF THE SUMMER PALACE REMIND US
OF OLD CHINA—BUT ECONOMIC REFORMS
AND THE OPPORTUNITIES OF THE NEW
CENTURY ARE TRANSFORMING THIS LAND.

18 : swarthmore college bulletin

The simplest word to express
my impression of China is awe.
—Christa Mayr Menz el ’57

Being Swarthmoreans, we
asked a lot of questions. Is the
growth rate sustainable? How
will they deal with unequal
income distribution? Can they
handle the environmental
problems? By the goddess, I
believe they will make it. It was
the people—hungry for a better life and working so hard to
attain it—who impressed me
the most.
—Emel Anil ’66

The trip was beyond all expectations—wonderful!
—Elizabeth Smith Kolowrat '56

Although his picture dominates
Tiananmen Square, Mao is little
mentioned these days—beyond
the many kitschy souvenirs like
Mao watches and playing
cards. Deng Xiaoping, who
implemented a policy of economic openness, is the real
father of contemporary China. I
was surprised to see only one
large poster of him.
—Carol Nackenof f,
prof essor of political science

At the Summer Palace, we saw
a man painting a message of
welcome on the sidewalk with
simply a large brush and water.
It evaporated in minutes,
reminding me of the importance of enjoying the moment.
—Anne Nichols

Our Chinese guides shared
stories of their lives, with all
of them looking hopefully to
the future after the trials of
the Mao period.
—C aroline E ubank Ly ke ’63

Beijing and Shanghai are extraordinary cities, almost too big
to comprehend. Construction
and traffic are beyond anything
we've ever experienced.

We are convinced that the
energy, optimism, intelligence,
sacrifice, and hard work of the
Chinese people will enable
them to overcome their environmental and human rights
problems, perhaps even faster
than we overcome ours.
—Peter Thompson , p rof essor
emeritus of c hemis try,
and Peggy Tho mps on

—Robert Lyke ’63

The people are wonderful—
proud of their heritage yet
determined to break free of the
constraints of the past. They
were surprisingly open and
critical of the pollution and
corruption. I also heard great
concern about moral values.
Maybe that’s why we saw so
many young worshippers in the
temples.
—Michae l Becker ’63

My favorite moments were on
the Yangtze River at dusk or
dawn. We could barely see
through the fog. There would
be a few lights from a ghost
village about to be flooded by
the rising river. Some clothes
on a line. And then, around
the bend—another giant city.
—Carola Norton ’67

To learn more about future Alumni College
Abroad trips, visit http://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni_travel.xml or telephone
(800) 789-9738.
december 2007 : 19

Swarthmore

By El iza be th R e dde n ’05

Welcome! Welcome to historic Philadelphia,
and, more importantly, to the 11th Annual
Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly
Fringe, which this year features nearly 900
performances from North Philly to West,
with artsy Old City as its hub. The curated
Live Arts Festival presents 37 different
dance, music, and theater shows carefully
chosen to ensure maximum viewing pleasure, while the unfiltered Fringe features performances from, well, anyone with the creative wherewithal and $75 to register—plus
some extra cash for insurance costs.
“We never check content; that’s the
whole point,” says Nick Stuccio, producing
director of the festival. A former dancer with
the Pennsylvania Ballet, Stuccio decided
that in his retirement he would lift Philadelphia’s once underground arts scene to new
heights.
“If there were 200,000 people who
wanted to participate then, great,” Stuccio
says. “We’d have a telephone book we’d
hand out instead of a guide.”
The following Swarthmore-specific guide
is not nearly the size of a telephone book.
But it’s not particularly short either, because
Swarthmore—especially its theater and
dance programs—is a force to be reckoned
with in the Philly art scene. Read on to see
why.

20 : swarthmore college bulletin

at the Fringe

A guide to the September 2007
Philadelphia Live Arts Festival
and Philly Fringe—and their
connections to the College.

Isabella
Pig Iron Theatre Company
Director: Dan Rothenberg ’95
Featuring: Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel ’94,
Corinna Burns ’96, and Dito
van Reigersberg ’94
Sound Design: Nick Kourtides ’98 (staff)
Dramaturg/Co-creator: Suli Holum ’97
Production Dramaturg: Rebecca Ennen ’04
Live Arts Festival

Festival favorites since the first Fringe in
1997, the Pig Iron Theatre Company plays
this year with death—literally. In Isabella, a
lonely mortician stages Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure with a crew of naked
corpses. The habitually hyperactive theater
company experiments here with negative
physicality—the use of the whole body “to
create clumsiness, stillness, numbness,” as
Rothenberg puts it—and rebels against
what the director calls “pretty” performances of Shakespeare. “It’s an ugly play …
bluish-white lights on actors in a morgue.”
Founded in 1995, Philadelphia-based Pig
Iron calls itself a “dance-clown-theatre”
ensemble, given its investment in bodily
expression, the relationship between actor
and audience, and character, respectively.
Bauriedel (Claudio) is a founder and coartistic director of Pig Iron. A graduate of
École Jacques Lecoq, he teaches acting and
movement theater at Swarthmore.
Recent credits for Burns (Juliet) include
Iron Kisses at the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival and A Prayer for Owen
Meany at the Arden Theatre Company.
In addition to her work with Pig Iron
and Anna Belc’s [’07] thesis show at
Swarthmore, Ennen is writing a guidebook
to the various American Jewish political perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Holum’s bio can be found on page 24
under the entry for Wandering Alice.
Kourtides serves as the sound designer
and acting operations manager at Swarthmore’s Lang Performing Arts Center.
Rothenberg, a founder and co-artistic
director, has directed almost every Pig Iron
original work. He is now directing a show
about Joe Hill for Stockholm’s Slava Teater.
van Reigersberg (Angelo) is a founder
and co-artistic director of Pig Iron. He studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the
Martha Graham School of Dance and has
acted in almost every Pig Iron creation.

JACQUES-JEAN TIZIOU//WWW.JJTIZIOU.NET

PIG IRON THEATRE COMPANY

december 2007 : 21

GREEN CHAIR DANCE GROUP

Stopped by a screeching siren, Green Chair
Dance Group’s young alumni have no shoulder to turn onto. Bouncing off brick walls,
the black ink on their white T-shirts
smeared with sweat, they leap and lift for 50
minutes on a wingless stage as they answer
their self-imposed challenge: “If you pulled
the cord and the chute didn’t open, how
would you dance on the way down?”
Green Chair first formed at Swarthmore
to perform at the 2004 Fringe. The company complements its acrobatics with attention to gesture, facial expression, and the
connection between dancers. “The connection between us helps build the connection
with the audience and gives it a way in,”
de Keijzer says.
Beauregard has studied with Poland’s
Silesian Dance Theater and the Institute for
Dance Art in Linz, Austria.
Camp recently completed the Lecoq
Actor-Created Theatre Training at the London International School of Performing
Arts.
de Keijzer lives and works in Boston,
where she takes as many dance classes as
she possibly can.
Gladwin has a professional diploma in
dance studies from Laban in London, where
she recently spent a year teaching creative
movement to children.
Since graduation, Holt has trained at
Austria’s Institute for Dance Art. Winner of
a Troy Prize for Choreography, he has performed in a number of cities including
Budapest, Bytom, and Bad Leonfelden, and
has been involved with dance film projects.
For Emergency Use Only was supported by
the Swarthmore Project in Theater.

22 : swarthmore college bulletin

COURTESY OF GREEN CHAIR DANCE GROUP

For Emergency Use Only
Green Chair Dance Group
Choreographers/Performers: John Beauregard ’05, Hannah de Keijzer ’06,
Sarah Gladwin ’05, and Gregory Holt ’05
Theatrical Director: Benjamin Camp ’05
Fringe Festival

Recitatif
Director: Adrienne Mackey ’04
Co-writers and Performers:
Felicia Leicht ’04 and Audrey Pernell ’04
Live Arts Festival

Named after a Toni Morrison short story
about two childhood friends of different
races who encounter one another in adulthood—and the somewhat spoken, somewhat sung prologue to an aria—Recitatif
grapples with race through song, movement, and speech. Leicht and Pernell alternate between singing gospel and talking
over and around each other in their “tandem language.” With their words overlapping, cutting one another off, each explores
how, in adulthood, issues of race can forge
differences where the friends once saw
similarities.
Mackey debuted in the Philly Fringe Festival as an actress alongside Leicht and Pernell in 2002, performing in Stolen Chair

Theatre Company’s Swarthmore-supported
Portrait of Dora as a Young Man. She directed
The Ballad of Joe Hill in the 2006 Fringe and
is also director of a second show this year—
Echo—in the Fringe portion of the festival.
Following graduation, Leicht served for
two years as an arts administration intern at
the College. She portrayed Viola in the
Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival’s 2005
production of Twelfth Night, and, with Mackey, co-created and performed an original
one-woman show, Like Ink and Paper, at
Swarthmore in 2006.
Pernell has performed in New York,
studied play writing, and made money as a
massage therapist since graduation. Especially interested in exploring issues of
identity through theater, she read Morrison’s Recitatif in her first English class at
Swarthmore.
Recitatif was supported by the Swarthmore
Project in Theater.

ACCIDENTAL NOSTALGIA COMPANY

Must Don’t Whip ’Um
Accidental Nostalgia Company
Video and Set Designer and Actor:
Jeff Sugg ’95
Live Arts Festival

The sounds of Must Don’t Whip ’Um are the
sounds of a “swan song”—the farewell concert from, as the players put it, “the greatest
obscure 1970s pop star that never was!”
Interspersed with scenes from the concert are scenes from a documentary filmed
by the singer’s daughter. “It’s a back-andforth between those two stories, and the
music serves to bring them together,” says
Sugg.
Sugg (the singer’s Moroccan lover)
designed several of Pig Iron’s early shows. A
member of the Accidental Nostalgia Company, he is a New York–based designer and
video systems engineer who has worked as a
technical artist for the Wooster Group, a celebrated experimental theater company. Sugg
has taught media technology at the College.

RECITATIF

PAVEL ANTONOV

Must Don’t Whip ’Um is supported by the
Swarthmore Project in Theater.

JACQUES-JEAN TIZIOU/WWW.JJTIZIOU.NET

december 2007 : 23

THE RIOT GROUP

24 : swarthmore college bulletin

JENNIFER GOETTNER

Nichole Canuso Dance Company’s Wandering Alice, a site-specific production, was
inspired by Alice in Wonderland. A work in
progress at this year’s festival, Wandering
Alice will premiere in 2008.
Holum is a founder of Pig Iron Theatre
Company, where she was a co-artistic director from 1995 through 2001 and a company
member until 2006. She continues to create original work and to perform in theater,
film, and television. A co-creator and dramaturg for Pig Iron’s Isabella (see page 20),
she also directs Brian Osborne’s one-man
show on evangelism, The Word, in this year’s
Live Arts Festival.
Jan, a directing and integrated media
design master of fine arts student at the
California Institute of the Arts, commuted
into Philadelphia to prepare for the festival
from Swarthmore, where he directed and
wrote the College’s freshman orientation
NICHOLE CANUSO DANCE CO.
play for the third straight year. The 2006
Fringe show he directed, Autopilot, was
performed at the Fringe to end all Fringes
in Edinburgh in August. He is also doing
video design for a second Live Arts show
this year, titled Flamingo/Winnebago.
Moffitt is production manager and
technical director for the Swarthmore
Theater Department.
Another Swarthmore staff member,
Andrew Merkel, a production assistant
for the Lang Performing Arts Center, is
directing The Milky Way Cabaret at this
fall’s Fringe. The Cardboard Box Collaborative promotes the play as “a theatrical
love letter to Philadelphia.”

GERAINT LEWIS

Wandering Alice
Nichole Canuso Dance Company
Writer and Co-director: Suli Holum ’97
Lighting Designer: Paul Moffitt (staff)
Video Designer: Lars Jan ’00
Live Arts Festival

The Swarthmore Project in Theater

project in theater

Swarthmore

Most every professor spends the first part of
fall playing a constant game of catch-up. But
it’s fair to say that Allen Kuharski runs circles ’round most everyone else.
Kuharski, the Theater Department chair
since 1997 and a member of the faculty
since 1990, spent the first two weeks of the
semester seeing 16 shows at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe, 13
of which were somehow connected to
Swarthmore. He played host to the Riot
Group, whose production Hearts of Man,
which was co-commissioned by Swarthmore, came to the Lang Performing Arts
Center after debuting at Live Arts; and he
arranged transportation to Pig Iron Theatre
Company’s Isabella for 70 students, 44 of
whom went in a yellow school bus.
Not that he much minded the festival
frenzy. To the contrary: to him, it was a sign
of the Theater Department’s success.
“The whole pedagogical thrust of our
department has been heavily about students
creating works in these small ensembles.
They become prototypes of independent
companies that they could possibly start in
the real world—which they have,” Kuharski
says.
And in many cases with significant support from their alma mater. Three shows at
this year’s festival—Accidental Nostalgia
Company’s Must Don’t Whip ’Um, Adrienne
Mackey’s Recitatif, and Green Chair Dance
Group’s For Emergency Use Only—were
supported by the Swarthmore Project in
Theater.
The project began informally in 1995 at
the behest of Pig Iron Theatre Company,
whose members approached Kuharski asking if they could use the College’s rehearsal
space. Then they asked the administration
about housing. The College does not offer
any cash support but the in-kind value of a
Swarthmore Project in Theater residency—
which includes rehearsal space and free
housing at a rambling three-bedroom College-owned ranch house (the Cratsley
House on Harvard Avenue)—estimated at
$5,100 per week. Residencies, offered during
summers and other breaks in the academic
year, are as short as a week and as long as
six to seven weeks.
Kuharski counts 22 different shows fea-

turing Swarthmore alumni or staff that have
received College support since 1995.
Thirteen of those have ultimately found a
venue at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival
and Philly Fringe. Green Chair, which
stayed for four weeks before its early September performance at the Fringe, was the
third group to receive a residency last summer. In exchange, performers are expected
to bring their expertise to campus through
pro-bono performances and workshops and
list the Swarthmore Project in Theater as a
supporter in promotional materials.
“There are these interesting ways in
which we move beyond the characterization
of Swarthmore as an undergraduate institution where the relationship ends with a B.A.
degree,” says Kuharski. “It really feels like
we have something of a master’s program.
There’s another level to the curriculum by
having these recent graduates or—even by
now—these advanced alumni, coming
through the door, being present.”
A few years ago, the College also got into
the business of commissioning or co-commissioning original theatrical work. With
support from the William J. Cooper Foundation, Swarthmore commissioned its first
original production—Pig Iron’s Shut Eye—
back in 2001–2002 to celebrate the 10th
anniversary of the College’s Lang Performing Arts Center. (Shut Eye also was presented at the Live Arts Festival.) This year’s 75minute Hearts of Man explores the defense
of an accused sexual predator, evolving
onstage into a social commentary on a complicated set of concerns. The Riot Group’s
artistic director, Adriano Shaplin, formerly
collaborated with Pig Iron on the 2004 production Hell Meets Henry Halfway—which
was created with the help of two separate
Swarthmore residencies of two and six
weeks each—and has taught play writing at
the College. In addition to the company’s
Live Arts Festival performances, The Riot
Group performed and offered student workshops at Swarthmore in September.
Elizabeth Redden ’05 spent a weekend in
Philadelphia attending Live Arts and Fringe
performances. She is a reporter for
InsideHigherEd.com in Washington, D.C.

december 2007 : 25

Bye the
Numbers
DO COLLEGE RANKINGS
SUCH AS THOSE IN U.S.
NEWS AND WORLD REPORT
“MISLEAD THE PUBLIC
INTO THINKING THAT THE
COMPLEXITIES OF HIGHER
EDUCATION CAN BE
REDUCED TO ONE
NUMBER?”
THAT’S WHAT SWARTHMORE
AND 19 OTHER LIBERAL ARTS
COLLEGES NOW SAY.
By So n ia S c he rr ’0 1
Il lu s tr a tio n b y N anc y Ha rri s on

In the summer of 1996, I had just returned
home to Vermont after visiting several colleges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I was
17. And in love.
I was attracted by several qualities that
made me sure I had found “the one”—intellectual passion, a commitment to social justice, integrity of character, and (I admit it)
good looks, which took the form of a 357acre arboretum.
Although I liked knowing that the object
of my affection was regarded highly by others—as evidenced by Swarthmore’s topthree ranking in U.S. News and World
Report—I spent far more time looking
through the College’s course catalog than
scrutinizing its standing in U.S. News, whose
analysis relies mostly on numerical data
such as SAT scores and graduation rates.
But many educators have long worried
that families—and colleges—are focusing
excessively on the rankings. Now, for the
first time, Swarthmore and other top-ranked
liberal arts colleges are working together to
do something about it.
“We have a responsibility to open students to the wealth of quality institutions of
higher education and to overcome the sense
that the U.S. News rankings are the authoritative measure of excellence,” says President

Alfred H. Bloom. To that end, Bloom worked
with several presidents to create a statement
now signed by 20 liberal arts colleges, all
but one of them ranked in the top 25 by
U.S. News.
In it, the presidents pledged to refrain
from mentioning rankings in all future publications and to make public on their Web
sites the information provided to the college
guides. (See box, opposite page.)
In general, alumni and students interviewed for this article approved of the
statement.
“I agree with the letter and understand
its intent,” says Andy Lax ’77 of San Francisco, who works in the field of asset management. “I certainly don’t look forward to
when my kids start applying to college
because it is such a frenzy.”
At the same time, Lax believes the rankings have helped boost the diversity of
Swarthmore’s student body by attracting
international students and those with career
interests outside academia. “I think it’s very
important for the College to have a broader
visibility and name beyond traditional academic circles, and, quite frankly, U.S. News
has done that. As an alum, I appreciate it. I
get fewer questions mistaking Swarthmore
for Skidmore,” he says.

Since their inception in 1983, the U.S. News
rankings have spawned an entire industry,
with publications as diverse as The Wall
Street Journal and Washington Monthly doing
their own ratings. But while continuing to
flourish as a result of a culture that loves to
rank, U.S. News’ annual lists of the “best
schools” have generated plenty of debate.
Critics contend that the rankings encourage
students to apply to colleges based on status
and reveal little about the quality of education offered at a school. Proponents—
including U.S. News in a statement to the
Bulletin—assert that they make information
easily accessible to families at a time when a
private college education can cost up to
$180,000.
Bloom cites three main reasons for taking a stand on the rankings:
• To help dispel the myth that the complex
qualities of a school can be captured by a
single number.
• To encourage students and their families
to challenge the sense that the U.S. News
formula is the authoritative measure of
quality.
• To counteract the impression held by
many college-bound students that only the
schools ranked highly by U.S. News are
worth attending—a view that greatly

PRESIDENT BLOOM AND COLLEAGUES’ STATEMENT
ABOUT COLLEGE RANKINGS
I, and the other undersigned presidents, agree that prospective students benefit from having as complete information as possible in making their college choices.
At the same time, we are concerned about the inevitable biases in any single ranking
formula, about the admissions frenzy, and the way in which rankings can contribute to that
frenzy and to a false sense that educational success or fit can be ranked in a single numerical list.
Since college and ranking agencies should maintain a degree of distance to ensure
objectivity, from now on data we make available to college guides will be made public via
our Web sites rather than be distributed exclusively to a single entity. Doing so is true to
our educational mission and will allow interested parties to use this information for their
own benefit. If, for example, class size is their focus, they will have that information. If it is
the graduation rate, that will be easy to find. We welcome suggestions for other information we might also provide publicly.
We commit not to mention U.S. News or similar rankings in any of our new publications, since such lists mislead the public into thinking that the complexities of American
higher education can be reduced to one number.
Finally, we encourage all colleges and universities to participate in an effort to determine how information about our schools might be improved. As for rankings, we recognize that no degree of protest may make them soon disappear, and hope, therefore, that
further discussion will help shape them in ways that will press us to move in ever more
socially and educationally useful directions.

—Alfred H. Bloom, President

Anthony Marx, Amherst
Stephen Emerson, Haverford
Elaine Hansen, Bates
Ronald Liebowitz, Middlebury
Barry Mills, Bowdoin
David Oxtoby, Pomona
Nancy Vickers, Bryn Mawr

James Jones, Trinity
Robert Oden, Carleton
Catharine Hill, Vassar
William Adams, Colby
Kenneth Ruscio, Washington
and Lee
Rebecca Chopp, Colgate

Kim Bottomly, Wellesley
Thomas Ross, Davidson
Michael Roth, Wesleyan
Russell Osgood, Grinnell
Morton Schapiro, Williams
Joan Hinde Stewart, Hamilton

heightens anxiety about the admissions
process and gives rise to feelings of failure
when students aren’t accepted by a topranked school.
Judy Browngoehl, a junior from Bryn
Mawr, Pa., believes the presidents’ stance on
the rankings make sense. When applying to
colleges, she used U.S. News to compare
schools she was interested in but did not
limit her search to institutions above a certain ranking. For Browngoehl, both of
whose parents graduated from Swarthmore,
the U.S. News rankings were one of many
sources she consulted during her college
search. She also read descriptions in college
guidebooks and got a firsthand perspective
by visiting campuses, taking tours, and
attending information sessions.
“Getting information directly from the
source itself was most helpful for me,” says
Browngoehl, who is majoring in English literature with a minor in theater studies.
“Can the U.S. News rankings tell me how
fabulously quirky Swarthmore students (and
professors!) are or how beautiful the campus is? My personal opinion is no.”
Dean of Admissions Jim Bock ’90 describes
Swarthmore’s new approach to the rankings
as “participation without promotion.” In
recent years, the College has made six to 12
references to external rankings in its admissions materials, but Bock says he doesn’t
think the College is taking a risk by omitting them from now on. “If prospective students found us because of a ranking, then
we don’t need to reiterate that ranking,” he
says. Instead, “we need to show what is special about Swarthmore.”
Chris Haines ‘86, who worked at U.S.
News from 2000 to 2006 and managed the
group that analyzes data for rankings, says
Swarthmore’s decision to not market its
rank is important. “That will have an impact
on U.S. News and companies like it that
depend on the entities they rank to promote
their brand,” says Haines, who now works
in the Washington, D.C., office of Fleishman-Hillard, a global communications firm.
“No matter what Swarthmore and other colleges like it do, they’re not going to affect
the fact that they’re the top liberal arts colleges. Their records speak for themselves.”
In keeping with its promise to make the
data it provides to publishers publicly available, Swarthmore has posted a link on its
admissions Web site to its Common Data
Set, a questionnaire colleges use to report
28 : swarthmore college bulletin

information about admissions, tuition,
retention, and other areas. Although
Swarthmore has included a link to the Common Data Set on its institutional research
Web site for years, the link on its admissions Web site is now more accessible.
Visitors to the admissions Web site will
also find a link to Swarthmore’s profile on
the University and College Accountability
Network (www.ucan-network.org), a new
database that provides free information
about colleges and universities. Each profile
includes facts ranging from the college’s
most popular majors to its freshmen retention rate as well as 25 links to its Web site
for details on topics such as internship
opportunities and the school’s policy on
transferring credits. Launched in September
by the National Association of Independent
Colleges and Universities (NAICU), the site
is expected to feature 650 to 700 profiles by
December, says NAICU spokesman Tony
Pals. UCAN doesn’t yet allow for easy comparison of colleges to one another and has
very limited search capabilities; however,
Pals says the site will be improved based on
surveys of site users and focus group feedback collected over the next several months.
For decades, colleges have complained about
the U.S. News rankings while at times also
touting their score. Earlier this year, however, efforts to combat the rankings’ influence
gained traction due in part to Lloyd Thacker,
who had a long career in college admissions
and college counseling before founding the
Education Conservancy in 2004. This
spring, Thacker circulated a letter among
hundreds of colleges asking them to refrain
from promoting the rank of their institution. His letter also called upon them to
refuse to participate in the reputational survey section of the rankings, in which presidents, provosts, and admissions deans are
asked to rate the quality of other institutions on a scale of one to five or to check “I
don’t know.” This reputational survey
counts for 25 percent of a school’s score.
In June, after discussion at the annual
meeting of the Annapolis Group (an organization of liberal arts colleges) the leaders of
67 colleges signed a statement in which they
pledged not to participate in the reputational survey. Many of these schools are ranked
in the top 50 by U.S. News, although none in
the top 25.
One such signer, Kenyon College President S. Georgia Nugent, says she’s never

completed the reputational survey during
her five years leading the liberal arts school
in Ohio. “Frankly, upon seeing it, I just
found it ludicrous,” says Nugent, who began
her teaching career at Swarthmore in 1979
as a sabbatical replacement for Centennial
Professor of Classics Helen North. “I believe
they are conveying the impression to the
public who buys their magazine that this is
a meaningful evaluation of colleges and universities by professionals in the field. To me
it has as much validity as a card you’d fill out
at a fast food restaurant.”
The biggest difference between the letter
she signed and Swarthmore’s statement is
that the latter does not call for a boycott of
the reputational survey. Bloom believes the
reputational survey can often offer perspectives on institutional strengths that are not
apparent from the quantitative measures
alone.
Bock says the U.S. News rankings also benefit the College by highlighting liberal arts
colleges and Swarthmore particularly.
“Being ranked number one, two, or three
has given us some free publicity, if you will,”
Bock says. “Whether you love or hate ratings, being at the top is not a bad thing.”
It can be especially helpful in attracting
international students and those outside
the intellectual elite.
Vincent Jones ’98 calls the College’s position on the rankings “a fair compromise. In
my opinion, the people most critical of
rankings systems tend to speak from a position of privilege,” he says. He believes
they’re more likely to be familiar with elite
schools than those from less advantaged
backgrounds, who may rely on the rankings
for information. “I didn’t come from a family that had a lot of experience with schools
like Swarthmore,” says Jones, executive
director of a nonprofit organization in Los
Angeles. In fact, it wasn’t until he found a
guidebook on liberal arts schools that he
discovered the College. “I think we should
keep contributing information to them (U.S.
News) and not turn off that possibility of
getting a great student.”
Bock says U.S. News has just as much
cachet abroad as in America—and that
nearly all the international students he’s
spoken with say they learned about Swarthmore through the rankings. Although Ivy
League schools are well-known overseas, liberal arts colleges are not, and the model of
education they provide may also be unfamil-

iar. Some international students told Bock
that their parents had to be persuaded to let
them apply to Swarthmore, and it helped to
show them the U.S. News rankings.
“Ranking may be a bit intimidating, but
Swarthmore wouldn’t have been number
one on my list if it hadn’t been ranked
third,” says Omari Faakye, a sophomore
engineering major from Ghana. The rankings encouraged him to learn more about
Swarthmore, and he was pleased to find out
that it offered financial aid to international
students and had a strong engineering program. “The U.S. News rankings might not
give you the full picture of a school, but they
do give you an idea and can be a help in
choosing the best fit,” he says.
When Shumpei Tse ’10 visited Swarthmore from Hong Kong, he hadn’t yet looked
at the rankings, and his first choice was “a

certain Ivy League school.” Nonetheless,
after seeing the College, “coming to Swarthmore just felt right.” Tse was impressed that
Swarthmore students of diverse economic
and racial backgrounds seemed to interact
with each other rather than self-segregate.
He ended up applying for early decision.
Tse acknowledges that Swarthmore’s
rank reinforced his desire to attend the
school. Since Swarthmore is relatively
unknown in Hong Kong, it was helpful to
realize its prominence here among liberal
arts colleges. Nonetheless, he says, “I feel
that it’s really great that our college is not
advertising itself based on the rankings.”
That decision is consistent with the culture
at Swarthmore, which differs from many
schools in not ranking its students, says
Tse, a sophomore who is a campus tour
guide and co-president of the International

Given that they’ve become something of a lightning rod,
the rankings had a relatively quiet birth.
Lucia Solorzano was education editor at U.S. News in the mid-1980s when the late Lester
Tanzer, then managing editor of the magazine, asked her to help devise a way to rank colleges
according to educational quality. “They probably really were in all sincerity trying to find a way
to measure quality—but also to sell magazines,” says Solorzano, the mother of two Swarthmore students, Alyssa Work ’08 and Brendan Work ’10.
Realizing that it would be unfair to compare such disparate schools as Swarthmore and
Stanford, Solorzano consulted the Carnegie Center for the Advancement of Teaching, which
had come up with classifications for institutions of higher education based primarily on enrollment and programs offered.
In 1983, the first year the rankings were published, U.S. News asked 1,308 four-year college presidents to choose the top five undergraduate schools from a list of institutions in the
same Carnegie category as their own. In the first rankings report, titled “Rating the Colleges—
Exclusive National Survey,” presidents were asked to judge the nation’s best colleges based
on their own understanding of their quality and to identify innovative or distinctive schools.
Slightly more than half the presidents responded, and the results would have been familiar to
current readers of the rankings.
In 1988, on the advice of college presidents, the magazine began to rank colleges using
numerical data in addition to relying on the reputational survey. U.S. News has continued to
tweak its methodology. Currently, 25 percent of the rankings formula is based on the reputational survey; the remaining 75 percent is derived from 15 indicators, which aim to assess a
school’s student selectivity, financial resources, faculty resources, and student retention.
The rankings provide a snapshot of a class entering a college, but reveal nothing about
what students may gain from their time there, says Chris Haines ’86, former managing editor
of USNews.com. “U.S. News really does try hard to come up with meaningful information,”
says Haines, who managed the group that analyzes the rankings data. “I always saw an openmindedness toward interacting with the colleges. The challenge is, how do you measure student success?”
The rankings also don’t take into account student differences, say Haines and Solorzano.
“I’m a believer—and there are many people like me—that a school that’s the best college for
one student might not be the best college for another,” Solorzano says.
—Sonia Scherr ’01

Club. And he says there’s much more to
Swarthmore than its rank. “I actually want
people to fall in love with Swarthmore,
whether or not they initially looked at the
rankings.”
Bock wants the same thing. It’s OK if
applicants find out about the College
through U.S. News, he says, but then they
need to research whether Swarthmore
would be right for them. Many students
don’t—an omission that’s apparent when
he reads application essays giving Swarthmore’s ranking as the reason for applying.
“People write that in their essays all the
time. It’s not going to get you in,” Bock says.
“Everybody wants to go to a great school,
you could argue, but what sets you apart?”
Elena Smith ’09, who hadn’t heard of
Swarthmore until she began her college
search, used U.S. News as a starting point to
research selective colleges outside her home
state of California. The rankings helped her
choose schools to visit, but when it came
time to apply, she based her decisions on
character and fit. Among other things, she
loved Swarthmore’s Quaker ethos and the
friendliness of its community. “I think it’s
super important to find out a school’s philosophy,” says Smith, who is majoring in
English.
Marjorie Barnett, a physician in Ann
Arbor, Mich., and the mother of junior Jon
Peters ’09, says she and her son visited a
“wide variety” of schools. “I wanted him to
see many choices and to also not get stuck
thinking that a school has to be in the top
10 to be worth considering. I didn’t want
him to feel that I would think more or less
of him as a person if he attended a school
ranked 30th versus third.”
And she believes that college is about
much more than a number. “The most
important aspect of college is to learn and
to grow as a person. So choosing a place
that allows for this is far more important
than rankings.”
Besides, Bloom says, “It’s unlikely any set
of quantitative measures can capture the
most fundamental aspects of a Swarthmore
education: its transformative impact on
intellectual ability, ethical intelligence, and
personal growth.” T
Award-winning former Phoenix writer Sonia
Scherr is a freelance writer based in Norwich,
Vt. Formerly, she worked as a reporter for the
Valley News in Lebanon, N.H. She serves as a
class agent for the Class of 2001.
december 2007 : 29

miracle
on the

30 : swarthmore college bulletin

mountain
SCOTT TIMM ’99 LEADS A VERY SPECIAL SCHOOL IN COSTA RICA.
By Carol Brévart-D emm
P h otog raphs b y Ern s t Dem m a nd co urtesy of t he Cent ro d e E d u cac ión Cre ativ a

Visitors to Monteverde’s Cloud Forest School, 4,600 feet above sea
level in the Tilaran Mountains of Costa Rica, may well wonder
whether they’ve stumbled into Brigadoon—that mythical community that, in order to preserve its peace and pristine beauty, appears
out of the mist only every 100 years.
On a clear morning, the school connects to the outside world
with a view across 70 miles of cloud-topped mountains that dip
gently to the coastal town of Puntarenas, then over the brilliant sunlit band of the Gulf of Nicoya to Cabo Blanco and the open Pacific.
On a typical September afternoon, in the middle of the rainy season, legions of thick, dark clouds advance over the mountaintops to
envelop the campus.
The Cloud Forest School is an otherworldly place, yet it is far
from disconnected with the world beyond its campus. In a bilingual
environment, its international teachers and staff members represent
a variety of cultures in a country that attracts tourists from around
the globe. All embody the idealism inherent in the school’s mission—to nurture a new generation of environmentally aware children. Their rewards are not financial—their hourly wage is about
$1.50. But when a little girl fearlessly picks up and relocates a baby
tarantula to a new home in the greenhouse; when a young boy

shrieks with delight at the sight of an emerald toucanette; or when a
group of muddy first-graders smile with pride after digging a new
drainage trench, the riches of this school shine golden.
GETTING TO THE REMOTE MOUNTAIN HAMLET OF MONTEVERDE—founded by the Quakers in 1949 and home to a Friends school, a biological institute, and a cheese factory—isn’t easy. Thirty miles of narrow,
unpaved road wind steeply uphill to Monteverde, daunting the nervous traveler with a sensitive stomach. From the town, it’s a 10minute hike up a rutted, stony, painfully steep track to the school.
Every now and then, school buses, motorcycles, and smelly ATVs
roar by, defying potholes and boulders and skirting the deep, wide
drainage trenches that must accommodate up to three meters of
rainfall in one month. The roar of the vehicles competes with the
songs of birds and the constant clicking, humming, and screeching
of insects. Colorful butterflies dance from flower to flower. It’s
sunny but breezy and cool on the mountain—unlike the humid climate of the lowlands.
Our hike ends at a colorfully painted sign exclaiming, “Bienvenidos—CEC—Cloud Forest School” (CEC stands for Centro de
Educación Creativa, the school’s Spanish name, usually shortened to
december 2007 : 31

“You can’t learn
about the
environment in
public schools the
way you do here.”

“La Creativa”). Francisco, the gatekeeper, is waiting, his dark, smiling face reflecting the sign’s welcoming message. He immediately
delivers an unexpected treat: “Look up there,” he says in Spanish,
pointing into one of the high trees. “Two sloths.” Sure enough,
two large grey furry balls rest motionless on a high tree branch.
Francisco explains that the cecropia tree’s leaves are a sloth staple.
Beyond the gate, the campus unfolds across a series of grassy terraces where one-story wooden buildings with large windows are surrounded by lush gardens. Brightly painted murals depicting forest
life adorn some of the exterior walls. On the lowest terrace is a children’s playground with climbing equipment. Bordering the path
leading to the school office, banks of multicolored flowers and
shrubs form a Jardin de la Paz (Peace Garden). Hummingbirds dart
among blossoms, then hover, sparkling, blurry dots of metallic blue,
green, and red. It’s early in the morning, and, except for the sounds
of nature, the campus is quiet—all the children are in class.
In the office is the school’s director, Scott Timm ’99. A biology
and education special major at Swarthmore, Timm taught for some
years at The School in Rose Valley, Pa., then spent a year in Mexico
with his wife, Emily, a ceramic artist. There, he started a small school
for a group of children wishing to attend high school, while Emily
completed a master’s in fine arts. One year later, the Timms gave
birth to Grant, now 31/2 and a CEC preschooler (1-year-old Corina
was born in Costa Rica). When the family returned to Rose Valley,
32 : swarthmore college bulletin

Ninth-graders Viviana (left) and Winfreddy (right) look at a
flatworm as they learn about animal and plant cells.

Timm, although continuing to teach, also became involved in administration. But the couple missed the Latin American way of life.
“We’d both caught the Latin American bug,” Timm says. “We’d
become really interested in bilingual education and in Spanish. I
was looking at international schools for jobs, and the director’s
position came up, so it felt like a really nice fit.”
In his third year at the school, Timm lives with his family and
two dogs in a house they built in a mountain pasture 45 minutes
from the school by four-wheel drive vehicle on unpaved roads
(Timm drives it in 15 minutes on his ATV). They also have a horse.
Timm is proud of the Cloud Forest School, which was founded
by a group of idealistic local parents who sought new educational
options—including environmental awareness—for their children.
He enjoys accompanying visitors on tours of the campus and hikes
through the school’s 106 acres of forest. A stop at a fifth-grade language arts class, taught by energetic young Jesse Greist, reveals a
light and airy room whose walls are enlivened with all kinds of art
and lists of student responsibilities.
Greist has divided the class of about 15 students into three reading groups according to ability, two of which work outside on the
building’s porches. He supervises the indoor group as they read the
novel The Indian in the Cupboard. Then, trusting them to work quietly

on their own, he leaves to attend to
the other groups. Later, they all
come together to present essays and
fictional stories written, in English,
for “publication” and use in the
class library. The school is consciously and completely bilingual.
The children interact with Greist
mostly in English but in Spanish
with each other. They are a lively
bunch, and, whenever the class
threatens to become unruly, Greist
holds up his fingers, forms an Oshape with thumb and forefinger,
and says gently but firmly, “OK, zero
noise.” They quiet quickly. After
class, Greist, who has worked all
over the world seeking a place to settle, says, “I have to confess, this place is starting to get inside me.”
In the ninth-grade science room, six students are studying the
differences between plant and animal cells. They look at a flatworm
under a donated microscope, guided by new science teacher Kirk
Wahtera. The students examine further cells taken from their inner
cheeks and from onions, observing the differences. Wahtera, fresh
from a New Hampshire high school, where he was a special education teacher, is still becoming accustomed to the lack of supplies and
equipment. He’d like to have a real chemistry lab table to replace the
old wooden kitchen tables that currently hold equipment and bottles of chemicals that were purchased with a recent generous donation to the science department. “And we really need computers,” he
says wistfully. “On the other hand,” he adds, more cheerfully,
“there’s really no better place to study biology than here.” The students, used to making do with little, enjoy the class. “It’s interesting
to learn about cells, and the teacher is fun,” says a boy named Wilfreddy. His classmate Viviana concurs. “You can’t learn about the
environment in the public schools the way you do here,” she says.
The lunchtime recess bell resounds, and the campus is suddenly
filled with children wearing the school’s blue, green, and red T-shirt
uniforms. They cluster on benches or low walls to eat and chat.
Trees shake with climbing, writhing, wriggling, laughing small bodies, letting off steam after a morning of classroom work. Some shovel-wielding first- and second-graders are just completing repair work
on a drainage ditch that needed to be re-excavated after the torrential rain of the previous night caused it to collapse.
Outside the office building, teachers, interns, and administrators
sit at long tables to eat lunch and talk. The view to the gulf is stunning. Intern coordinator Andrea Paltzer, a young Swiss woman who
grew up in England, joined the staff this summer and loves it. “It’s
amazing to put a school like this into practice, building it and making it work,” she says. A proponent of the positive discipline methods employed by the school, she praises the school’s community
activities program, where children from different grades get together
to interact—singing, reading, or working—with older children
guiding the younger ones. One teacher talks about a multigrade
biodiesel project he has helped to develop—the idea for it came
from the school’s students. The biodiesel club is currently helping to
fuel the school’s buses.

Emily Timm believes that children should be nurtured to love
and understand the importance of nature before they become
too aware of threats to it.

At one of the tables, intern Avery Harris, a junior speech pathology major from the College of Worcester and daughter of Swarthmore reference librarian Pamela Harris, works with Pedro Luis, a
special-needs student.
“I love working with the kids,” Harris says, “and I’m learning
Spanish. The CEC is very important for a place like this, to pass on
environmental consciousness to so many children. And that they all
learn English—that gives them a real step up.”
THE SCHOOL’S VOLUNTEERS AND INTERNS, mostly from the United
States, “really grease the wheels of the school,” Timm says. Volunteers range in age from middle school to college, working mainly in
the gardens and forest, building or repairing trails, and constructing
buildings or play areas. One group donated and erected the current
kindergarten play apparatus.
Interns stay at least three months and assist in the classrooms
with teachers as their mentors. In 2005, Professor of Education Lisa
Smulyan ’76 initiated a Swarthmore program that enables students
to earn a total of three credits as interns at the CEC. Five students
have taken advantage of this opportunity, including two juniors currently interning at the school.
Beth Krone, an English major, education minor, and current
third-grade classroom assistant says, “I was seeking a program
where I could learn a language, be part of a community, and have a
role in that community that would exclude my having to speak with
American students. I wanted to learn Spanish. I plan math lessons,
and the students are great. There’s so much freedom for everyone to
use as they wish.”
Intern Lauren Yoshizawa, a political science and education special major, says she was initially surprised by the degree of liberty
the students are allowed. “I’m housed with an amazing family that
has three children in the school,” she says, “I’m not homesick at all,
and I’m paired with a great teacher, Jesse Greist.”
Smulyan, who has visited the school herself, encourages interns
from Swarthmore to bring classroom supplies with them, so
december 2007 : 33

Yoshizawa and Krone both brought white-board markers. “They
have no tape here!” Yoshizawa exclaims. Anna Baeth ’10, an intern
last spring, had a shipment of used College field hockey sticks sent
down so that she could start a team.
“Teachers fight over the Swarthmore interns,” Timm says. He is
grateful to Smulyan, who has both brought and sent down in students’ duffle bags masses of educational materials. “The Swarthmore connections so far have been out of this world, and I’d like to
strengthen them,” he says.
“I think our internship program is quite good,” Timm says. “It
really shakes up teachers who come from the United States. Life
down here is very different. It’s a different culture. Even though you
can live here and speak English and feel fairly normal, it’s a very different environment. Spanish and English are floating around. It’s
hard. I think teachers here learn to be adaptable. They learn to be
resourceful, to work with what they have.”
After lunch, Timm explains that parents choose the CEC for their
children not only because bilingual classes ensure that the children
will graduate with fluency in English but also because of the environmental focus.
“We have all this amazing environmental science that actually
Each student has a “special place” in the forest for thinking,
journaling, or relaxing (below). Scott Timm and Milton Brenes
(inset, left to right) stand beneath trees less than 5 years old.

“Thanks to the work of our
students, frogs come here to
relax now and hummingbirds
build nests here.”

happens,” he says. “Being in an eco-tourism area, our families are
going to be interested in their children obtaining that knowledge.”
In fact, many of the parents work in the tourism industry as drivers
and guides, so they understand the benefits of being both environmentally aware and being fluent in English.
Passing by organic vegetable gardens, flower gardens, a composting center, vermiculture house, and germination beds for the
school’s reforestation projects, Timm explains that the children,
under the guidance of environmental program director Milton
Brenes, are largely responsible for the upkeep of the grounds, gardens, and tree plantings as well as for elaborate land stewardship
projects. With the school located between the Monteverde and
Santa Elena Cloud Forest reserves, he says that Brenes’s reforestation project aims to enlarge areas of the school’s forest that will
attract animals, creating corridors for them to pass through. The
school property is a so-called servidumbre, a legal term that ensures
the right of safe passage to any insect, animal, or bird. “We can’t cut
branches off trees; we don’t harm a single living thing,” Timm says.
“We’ve planted 12 different kinds of native trees, most of which are
excellent for attracting birds as well as monkeys and sloths.” He says
that the school’s 202 children plant from three to five thousand
trees every year. Traditionally, incoming preschoolers plant a
seedling tree and are able to watch its growth along with their own.
The climate and environment are perfect for both.
Brenes, at work in his casa verde (greenhouse), stresses that in

The Cloud Forest School: 10 facts
1. A progressive, independent K–11th grade school,
founded in 1991 by parents—some Quaker—from
the local community. Funded
by donations—of money,
supplies, and time. The U.S.based Cloud Forest School
Foundation, initiated by CEC
founders, drives fund-raising
efforts. Tuition is $100 to
$180 a month. Parents may pay off some tuition by working at the
school. Sixty percent of students receive financial aid.
Students harvest ears of corn that they planted (above).
The first- and second-grade classroom (right) is just one of
the school’s bright, airy spaces.

the process of gardening, reforesting, and building, nothing is wasted—everything is recycled. New buildings are erected from the
wood of old ones. Timm’s wife, Emily, who teaches art at the school,
has a classroom constructed from the timber planks of a dilapidated
hut. Coffee grounds and leftovers from students and teachers’
lunches are thrown into the vermiculture bins to be converted into
compost. Coffee bean husks, supplied by small mountain coffee
farms, mulch tree seedlings. Empty food containers are converted
into plant pots. “We want to demonstrate to the community and
our neighbors that what we perceive as trash, we can use—for
example, as planters for orchids and bromeliads,” says Brenes in
Spanish, with Timm translating. “And we plant them in natural soil
from the forest.”
Brenes, a native Costa Rican, member of the Monteverde Conservation League, and owner of an organic farm, is the heart of the
environmental studies program. He speaks softly, but his eyes are
alight with passion for his work. In the greenhouse, he teaches the
children how to raise seeds and propagate plants. He also shows
them how to “rescue” plants and seeds from fallen, broken, or dead
tree limbs and trunks. Carefully removing orchids, bromeliads,
ferns, and other plants clinging for their lives to their damaged
hosts, he helps the children bind the homeless plants to posts or
other tree trunks, holding them in place with moss and string until
they take root. The posts holding up the greenhouse roof are thick
with plants saved in the forest.
“It looks like a tree trunk, but it’s not. The plants are sharing it,”
he says. Others are placed into recycled containers. “Even the littlest
children do these things. We have to teach our children to recycle
while they’re still small.”
WALKING ALONG A TRAIL INTO THE WOODS, Brenes picks up a chunk of
decaying wood and crumbles it. By using natural material like this,
he shows the children the importance of microorganisms for breaking down matter. This decomposed wood is used as planting soil to
reproduce orchids. “It’s super-excellente,” he says.
Brenes takes little credit for such successes, although Timm says
Please turn to page 79

2. Located almost a mile high in the Tilarán Mountains of Costa Rica.
Built on a 106-acre tract of pristine cloud forest, straddling the Continental Divide, above the town of Monteverde. The land purchase was
financed by a loan from the Nature Conservancy. Later fund-raising
enabled the school to pay back the loan and purchase the land outright.

3. Mission: To “nurture a new generation of ecologically aware, bilingual individuals by providing them with the skills and motivation to
make environmentally and socially conscious decisions on a local,
national, and global scale.”

4. Exchange programs with middle and high schools in the United
States; collaboration with Canadian and U.S. universities. Successful
volunteer and intern program: Up to 70 volunteers and interns each
year provide essential man hours. Swarthmore College is nurturing a
growing internship program for college credit. Five students have
participated since the program started in 2005. For details, see
www.swarthmore.edu /x9200.xml.

5. First private school in Costa Rica to receive not-for-profit status; recognized by the Costa Rican Ministry of Education as a fully accredited
academic institution

6. During the past 16 years, the student population has increased from
30 to 208. This year, the school celebrated its fourth graduation.

7. Standardized nationwide tests administered in ninth and 11th grades
in math, science, social studies, civics, and English determine advancement to college or university. (Eleventh grade is highest in Costa Rica.)

8. International faculty from Costa Rica, United States, Latin America,
Europe. Certification required.

9. Annual budget: $450K, of which 50 percent supports a financial aid
program. Starting teachers’ salary: $480 a month (average monthly
Costa Rican salary).

10.

For more information, go to www.cloudforestschool.org.

december 2007 : 35

COURTESY OF ANAÏS LOIZILLON

connections

In Paris, the weather was perfect for sitting outside on a
terrace at L’Ecluse Saint Honoré. During a three-hour
get-together, the group chatted about everything from
Alumni Weekend 2007 to obtaining the best sushi in Paris.

From left to right: Irene Pedraza ’94, unknown, friend,
Michael Heurtevant ’81, friend, Kathleen MacKenzie ’78,
Anaïs Loizillon ’95, Paul Golub ’84, and Gabrielle
MonDesire ’03.

Welcome to the City!
COURTESY OF ALBERT KIM ʼ93

Every year, hundreds of young alumni from Swarthmore College move to new cities in pursuit of further degrees, research,
new jobs, or just to resettle. On Sept. 8, in 18 different cities
around the world, alumni Connection groups gathered for the
first series of annual Welcome to the City! events.
These events offered something for alumni of all eras: for
new graduates and those who had recently moved for professional or personal reasons, it provided an introduction to a

COURTESY OF AUTUMN QUINN ʼ04

One of the largest Welcome to the City! events took place
in Washington, D.C. More than 70 alumni gathered at The
Reef to mingle and catch up, including from ( left to right )
Stefanie Wong ’07, Shiva Thiagarajan ’05, and Kerstin
Gentsch ’05.

Sept. 8 was a gorgeous day in San Francisco and perfect for
the Bay area’s Welcome to the City! picnic in Dolores Park.

36 : swarthmore college bulletin

group of like-minded locals; for those who have resided in
those cities for years, it offered a chance to share their knowledge of the area with newcomers, and an opportunity to see
old and make new friends.
With more than 800 alumni attending the events this year,
Welcome to the City! is scheduled to take place annually, giving
alumni an occasion to look forward to every September. Sincere thanks to the many alumni volunteers who helped make
each event a success.

On Oct. 4, in Boston, Walter Kemp Professor of Biology Rachel
Merz engaged more than 60 attendees on the topic of “Turning
Worms and Darting Dragons: New Views of Ancient Animals.” Merz
talked about a range of lab projects from an insider’s view of how sea
worms live in their briny tubes to revealing what really happens during a dragonfly’s zigzag flight course through the summer sky.
In a fascinating talk on Oct. 25 in Arlington, Va., on the emerging topic of the “Virtual World,” Associate Professor of History Timothy Burke explored the evolution and implications of massively
multiplayed on-line computer games.
On Nov. 14 in New York City, Professor of Biology Amy Cheng
Vollmer examined why we survive although the human body is the

Arabella Carter Award
Honors Volunteer Service
Do you know of a classmate or other
Swarthmore alumnus/a who volunteers
above and beyond the call of duty? Honor a
deserving individual with a nomination for
the Arabella Carter Award.
The Arabella Carter Award, established
in 1997 by the Alumni Council and presented each year at reunion, honors alumni

SPRING SEMESTER
2008 COURSES

KAREN BERNIER

From worms and bacteria to
virtual living, topics covered
by our traveling faculty appeal
to a variety of interests....

Walter Kemp Professor of Biology Rachel Merz and John Cratsley ’63

perfect incubator for bacteria and viruses. Vollmer provided an
overview to the intertwined worlds of humans and microbes and
also explained how microbiology is an ideal vehicle for promoting
science literacy throughout the Swarthmore community.

who have made significant contributions as
volunteers in their own community or on a
regional or national level. The Council
hopes to honor alumni whose volunteer
service is relatively unknown. If you know
such a person—especially if your class is
having a reunion this year—please contact
the Alumni Office at (610) 328-8402 and
request an award nomination form, or visit
www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/arabella_-

Lifelong
Learning

www.swarthmore.edu/lifelonglearning.xml

Alumni, parents, and friends in Philadelphia and New York
are encouraged to enroll in one of Swarthmore’s Lifelong
Learning Courses. For more information, visit the Web site
above or call (610) 328-8696.

nomination.php to nominate a candidate.
Arabella Carter is one of the great
unsung heroes who worked for peace and
social justice in the Philadelphia Yearly
Meeting in the early 1900s. She never
sought publicity or recognition for her
work and is now forgotten by all but
Friends Historical Library archivists, who
see her hand in Quaker peace and social
justice work over three decades.

Pyramids, Temples, and Cathedrals: An Introduction
to Ancient and Medieval Art and Architecture

Michael Cothren, Professor of Art History
Wednesdays, 7–9:30 p.m.
Feb. 6 to April 2 (except March 12 and 19)
Beardsley Hall, Room 316
Offered in New York City
Support Center for Nonprofit Management
705 Seventh Avenue, 11th floor
Why We Get Sick—or Don’t

Offered at Swarthmore College

Amy Cheng Vollmer, Professor of Biology
Tuesdays, 6:45–9:15 p.m.
Feb. 12 to April 8 (except March 11)

The 2008 Presidential Election

Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

Richard Valelly, Professor of Political Science
Tuesdays, 7–9:30 p.m.
Feb. 12 to April 8 (except March 11)
Kohlberg Hall, Room 226

Thompson Bradley, Professor Emeritus of Russian
Thursdays, 6:45–9:15 p.m.
Feb. 14 to April 10 (except March 13)
december 2007 : 37

class notes

Postcards
For junior Carolyn Whipple, a Daily Gazette photo editor,
“Photography is my more relaxed, more appreciative lens on life—a time to
catch the little details, the special moments, the striking colors.” Here, she
captures the beauty of the campus—the dramatic overlapping planes of the
cherry wood ceiling in the Kohlberg Hall Commons; the changing hues of
the landscape; cottony, color-splashed clouds casting shadows on the
Trotter Hall bell tower. Whipple says, “The desire to take nice pictures forces
me to slow down and look around at the world that is Swarthmore.”
To have your campus photographs considered for this page, contact Susan Cousins
Breen at (610) 328-8579 or e-mail sbreen1@swarthmore.edu.

38 : swarthmore college bulletin

profile
H. Thomas Stein, reading in a pasture on the Litjens’ farm, said
false papers indicated he was an orphan from Rotterdam. Stein

UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM

believed the Litjens didn’t know he was Jewish. While visiting the

Hidden Child of
the Holocaust
FOR A PLACE IN HEAVEN AND RATION CARDS,
H. THOMAS STEIN’S [’53] LIFE WAS SAVED.

In 1943, with World War II raging across Europe and the final
roundup by the Nazis of Jews in Amsterdam about to take place,
H. Thomas Stein’s parents, who had relocated from Germany to
Holland, made the difficult decision to allow the Dutch underground movement to separate the family and hide their three sons
with other families, praying that they would all be reunited after
the war. Stein was 12 years old. His brothers were 7 1/2 and 14
years old.
The Dutch underground placed Stein with Lambertus and
Anna Litjens, a Catholic couple with five daughters. They were
subsistence farmers living in the Nazi-controlled city of Swolgen,
Holland.
“I lived for 15 months with the family. I think they took me in
because they needed a boy to work their farm, and they thought
this was a good deed that would secure them a place in heaven.
They also received ration cards once a month from the underground for taking me in,” Stein says. “At first, I worked the farm
during the daylight hours and slept in a cold attic, where I shared
a bed with the other farmhand who was 21 years old. After I was
caught once by the Nazis and managed to escape, the Litjens felt
uncomfortable having me in their home, so I worked the farm by
day and slept in the forest about 300 yards from their home in a
dugout where I found others also hiding and sleeping.”
In December 1944, after the British Army liberated southern
Holland, Stein hitchhiked with the soldiers from the frontline to
the city of Eindhoven where he was taken in by a Jewish family. In
August 1945, he was reunited with his parents and older brother,
all of whom had ultimately been captured and deported to the
50 : swarthmore college bulletin

family 26 years later, he learned they always knew the truth.

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. His younger brother also survived the war. The Steins tried contacting the Litjens to thank
them but received no response. After immigrating alone to the
United States in 1949 and finishing high school, Stein took the
college entrance exams and was accepted into Swarthmore. He
then went on to medical school and became a private practice psychiatrist. He is also an associate clinical professor at the University of
California–San Francisco.
In 1970, at the insistence of his wife, Madlyn, the couple
returned to the farm where he had been hidden and met the eldest
Litjens daughter. He also had a pleasant reunion with Anna and
Lambertus, whose speech was impaired by Parkinson’s disease,
but, Stein says, “He made it clear he was pleased to see me.”
By then, Stein had married, had two children, and achieved
much professionally but was still unable to share his war experiences. “When I arrived in the United States, I was dying to talk
about my experiences, but people didn’t want to hear about them.
They felt I should forget about it, not talk about it,” he says.
So he stuffed his memories inside his soul until 1991, when he
attended the First International Gathering of Children Hidden
During World War II in New York City.
“It was an eye-opener for me and enabled me to talk about my
past experiences. There was something about getting together
with other hidden children. I always felt I was a lucky guy to have
survived the war. My parents and older brother had much more
gruesome experiences in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I
realize it now—but didn’t at the time—that I was suffering from
survivor guilt,” he says. “But since Vietnam, we now know about
post-traumatic stress disorder. I was numbed out. I didn’t have
any capacity to feel. I was always kind of outside myself. The Hidden Children conference was a freeing experience.”
Another result of the conference was that it allowed him to
want to honor the Litjens family. He contacted Yad Vashem, the
Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Israel,
seeking to have the title of Righteous Among the Nations
bestowed upon Anna and Lambertus Litjens. The honor is given to
non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
After a thorough investigation of his case, Anna and Lambertus
were approved, and a ceremony—arranged by the Israeli consulate
in Holland—was held at the Museum of the Resistance in Amsterdam, in November 2005. Eighteen members of the Litjens family
attended including all five daughters.
“The Litjens were not warm, loving, cuddly people. They were
illiterate, simple people, but they saved my life,” he says. “I’m fond
of them and grateful. And I think their daughters, whom I refer to
as my five sisters, were very proud and grateful that I honored
their parents as righteous gentiles at Yad Vashem.”
—Audree Penner

profile
In rehearsal, the Mystic Paper Beasts come to life
on the heated, sprung floor of the Dragon’s Egg.
Ursin is Arachne, a spider, in MythSpritz—an

DAN POTTER

amazing bouquet of classical myths.

The First
Reaction is “Ahh”
MARYA URSIN ’71 AND HER HUSBAND ENCHANT WITH FAIRY
TALES, WHIMSY, AND MYSTIC MASKS.

An extraordinary collection of bright, ingenious beast masks
comes to life in a fairy tale mix of mythical tales and whimsical
performances. The masks—an impressive handmade inventory of
more than 300 characters made using a dry-cardboard method—
delight audiences of all ages. Welcome to the Mystic Paper Beasts
Theater Company—creative director Marya Ursin’s world.
A former graduate student in psychoneuroendocrinology at
Columbia, Ursin left the world of science and enrolled in the
Martha Graham School of Dance in New York City, followed by
study at L’Ecole de Mime Marcel Marceau in Paris. A lover of
dance since the age of three, she performed as a dancer, actress,
and mime in New York City into her 30s and taught at the Merce
Cunningham School in the city for eight years. An interest in
movement and healing coupled with a broken back suffered in a
car accident led her to pursue yoga and eventually become a yoga
instructor and certified massage therapist. She joined the Mystic
Paper Beasts in 1989.
The troupe was founded by Ursin’s husband, Dan Potter—a
sculptor, potter, architect, and performer—and has staged productions depicting original and re-imagined dreams and myths of
transformation expressed through humor and dance, in England,
France, Sweden, Italy, and Scotland as well as the United States.
Currently, Ursin and Potter, five actors, and their mystical beasts
present 30 shows a year from Maine to Washington, D.C.
“To perform the plays, in which there are typically 20 character
changes, all we need is some space, the scripts, improvisational
structure, costumes, and the beast masks,” Ursin says. “The whim-

sical beasts also revel in roving, interactive entertainment in
museums, festivals, libraries, schools, and parks.” For these
events, 20 actors will make as many as 50 mask changes as they
each move through the crowd, exuberantly interacting with people.
Ursin does the research for the masks that she and Potter conceive. She also writes and directs the plays. Potter designs and
sculpts the masks, and together, they paint them.
In 2000, the couple created the Dragon’s Egg, a unique
rehearsal space designed by Ursin in a dream, she says. The Mystic
Paper Beasts use the space, affectionately named the Egg, for
rehearsals; other performing arts groups hold artistic retreats
there. The structure—a hexagonal building at the end of a field in
Ledyard, Conn.—is on the same property where Potter grew up.
The first floor includes a 2,000–square-foot studio and 1,200
square feet of living space. A loft overlooking the studio serves as
communal sleeping quarters for performance companies in residence.
The studio, which Ursin calls the “sacred circus tent,” rises up
to the rafters. “When people come in, their first reaction is ‘ahh,’”
she says. “Marya and Dan have created a space that is beyond verbal description,” artist Victoria Dryden says. “It is a place where
judgment is suspended and everything is possible. Truly, it is an
artist’s paradise.” Windows fill the ceiling and three sides of the
six-sided structure; the other walls are mirrored. “It has all the
amenities of being indoors yet still feeling like you’re outdoors,”
artist Nancy Moffat says. According to Ursin, the space, which has
a heated, sprung floor, has supported the work of more than 50
performance artists and groups through workshops and residencies.
For Ursin, “each day is overflowing but different.” Dance is a
priority—she rehearses and performs with the SITU Dance Company in NYC—as is yoga and creating plays and masks for the
troupe. She teaches yoga at Connecticut College and, since 1983,
has been on the faculty at the National Theatre Institute at the
Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, Conn.
Ursin’s newest project is taking community performances—
that she has been presenting at the Egg for the last five years—off
site to showcase the creative work that the hexagonal structure in
the woods of Connecticut has inspired in artists and companies in
residence. The first off-site performances were held last summer,
in New London, Conn., and, in the fall, in New York City.
Ursin’s life revolves around The Magic of the Mystic Paper
Beasts and the inspirational Dragon’s Egg. Together, she and Potter continue to collaborate on their signature masks and playful
performances that so engage children and the young at heart.
—Susan Cousins Breen

december 2007: 57

books + arts

FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY

KNOCK
THEIR
JOCKS
OFF,
BOYS!
A BIOGRAPHY OF
COACH JAMES McADOO
R ev iewed b y W.D . E hrh art ’73

Jimmy McAdoo (right) coached the Swarthmore mens’ swim team from 1937 to 1972.

Jimmy—Swimmer, Coach, and Dad by James
McAdoo, iUniverse, 2007

a diver. The night Jimmy treated his seniors
to dinner at Bookbinder’s. The meet the
entire diving stand pulled out of the deck
and ended up in the pool. The time Jimmy
suckered the Hopkins coach into thinking
the meet would be a walkover.
All of these reflections and stories are
included in Jimmy: Swimmer, Coach, and Dad,
a new book written by Jimmy’s oldest son,
James H. McAdoo (Jimmy the coach was
James J.). Also included are Jimmy’s family
background and Irish roots, his stellar
career as a competitive swimmer in his own
right, his marriage and family life, his service with the Red Cross during World War II,
and other aspects of Jimmy’s life that few of
his swimmers ever saw or were aware of.
Although the book is a biography of
Jimmy, it is also the story of a man’s search
to understand his father. What most of
Jimmy’s Swarthmore swimmers saw was an
upbeat, jovial, happy-go-lucky man who was
always smiling, joking, encouraging. A man
who was never angry. But that is not the
man that young Jim and his two brothers
grew up with.
There was a darker side to Jimmy that we
swimmers never saw: the man who had
grown up hardscrabble in working-class
Germantown, who turned down a college
swimming scholarship to read meters for
Philadelphia Gas Works, who spent some
40 years in an unhappy marriage, who could
never make a living at the one thing he

Just about every pre-meet locker-room pep
talk Swarthmore men’s swimming coach
Jimmy McAdoo ever gave ended with some
variation of those words. Considering that
Jimmy coached the team from fall 1937 to
spring 1972, that’s a lot of knocked-off
jocks. And if you say those words to anyone
who ever swam for Jimmy, you’re guaranteed
to get a smile and a story for your trouble.
Jimmy was the kind of coach who
changed lives for the better, who taught
young men how to be men in the finest and
most inclusive sense of the word. Here’s a
brief sampling of thoughts from those who
swam for him:
Alden Bennett ’40: “God bless him, he
never gave up on me.” David Alburger ’42: “A
cheerful, enthusiastic, and supportive man.”
Stephen Sickle ’50: “Swimming for Jimmy
was a pleasure.” Joe Becker ’66: “He treated
his swimmers as though they were his
sons.” Mark Sherkow ’67: “The kind of man
you wish could live forever.” Brad Lemke
’70: “He had that special knack of making
those around him feel important.” Don Cassidy ’75: “Jimmy McAdoo was one of the
most important mentors in my life.”
And the stories: oh, goodness. The time
the team had to push their bus through
Lancaster in a snowstorm. The season
Jimmy persuaded Ken Landis ’48 to become
60 : swarthmore college bulletin

loved, who worked a succession of dead-end
jobs just so he could coach, who struggled
all his life with alcohol and sadness.
What’s most remarkable about this book,
however, is not what the son reveals about
his father, but that the son is able to do so
with profound love and affection and
respect. What one learns about Jimmy does
not diminish him but rather makes one
appreciate all the more the man that Jimmy
was able to be for so many of us. And while
I do not want to give the story away, I feel
compelled to say that for all young Jim’s
travails growing up with Jimmy, father and
son did indeed come to an accommodation
in the son’s adulthood, an understanding of
each other, and finally a deep and abiding
friendship.
Jimmy’s last season was my junior year,
1971–1972. In the middle of the season,
Jimmy suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized briefly. (Therein lies another good
story: our surprise victory over Franklin &
Marshall with Jimmy “coaching” us by telephone.) But he came back to finish the season, and I was looking forward to my senior
year as Jimmy’s team captain only to be told
by the athletic director in September 1972
that Jimmy had decided to “retire.”
Neither his son nor I nor anyone who
knew Jimmy in those years believes that his
retirement was voluntary. But that is water
over the dam. Jimmy went on to coach at La
Salle College for the last three years of his

life, assisting a man he had himself coached
four decades earlier at North Catholic High.
It was typical of Jimmy that he did not bridle at becoming an assistant. One thing this
book makes clear, the one thing his swimmers always sensed, is that when Jimmy was
coaching, Jimmy was happy.
Anyone who knew Jimmy will want this
book. Order it from www.iUniverse.com, or
call 1-800-AUTHORS.

book describes how western economics—
combining ideas and research techniques—
was introduced in to China.
Anthony Welsh ’65 (editor), The Travels and
Journal of Ambrosio Bembo, University of
California Press, 2007. This journal of a
young Italian nobleman, in its first English
version, provides the most important European travel account of 17th-century western
Asia published in the last 100 years.

Poet and writer W.D. Ehrhart teaches at the
Haverford School outside Philadelphia. He was
a member of the men’s swimming team for four
years and was co-captain in his senior year.

OTHER MEDIA

BOOKS, ETC.
Walter Adamson ’68, Embattled AvantGardes: Modernism’s Resistance to Commodity
Culture in Europe, University of California
Press, 2007. This panoramic overview and
ambitious critical reinterpretation of European modernism offers a whole new perspective on a movement that defined the
cultural landscape of the early 20th century.
Stephen Henighan ’84, A Grave in the Air,
Thistledown Press, 2007. Sweeping from
Nazi Germany in 1939 to the war in Bosnia
in the 1990s, this book presents a masterful
sequence of short stories woven around
Central and Eastern European themes.
Margaret Hogan ’92 and C. James Taylor
(editors), My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail
and John Adams, Harvard University Press,
2007. This letter exchange is an epic tale of
how American history was made and a great
love story rolled into one.
Jeffrey Scheuer ’75, The Big Picture: Why
Democracies Need Journalistic Excellence,
Routledge, of the Taylor and Francis Group,
2008. The author argues that, for a democracy to thrive, a free press alone is insufficient—the press must be exceptional.
Exploring journalistic excellence and its
democratic context, he explains why democracies are only as good as their journalism.
David S. Kris and J. Douglas Wilson ’79,
National Security Investigations and Prosecutions, Thomson West, 2007. Benefiting from
the authors’ combined 30 years of government service, this treatise explains the law
governing some of our nation’s most sensitive and important intelligence activities.

Nevin Katz ’67, Dr. Birdley Teaches Science: Properties of Matter; Elements,
Compounds, and Mixtures; Atomic
Structure and Chemical Reactions; Introducing Cells; Classifying Cells; Parts of
the Cell, Incentive Publications, 2007.
This six-book teaching series, featuring
the comic strip “Dr. Birdley Investigates,”
aims at explaining critical concepts in
middle- and high-school science.

Paul Trescott ’49, Jingji Xue: The History of
the Introduction of Western Economic Ideas into
China, 1850-1950, The Chinese University
Press, 2007. With a solid research base, the

Shelley Fisher Fishkin ’71 uncovered in
2002 Mark Twain’s one-man play Is He
Dead?, written in 1898 but never performed.
Published in 2003 by Harvard University
Press and adapted by David Ives, the play’s
world premiere occurred on Broadway in
November. Set in 1840s France, it centers
on painter Jean-François Millet and the creation of value in the art world.
Richard Wolfson ’69, Earth’s Changing Climate, The Teaching Company, 2007. This 12lecture video course covers topics such as
the science of climate and climate change at
a level appropriate for general audiences, an
introduction to the scientific principles that
establish planetary climates, and coverage of
the human impact on Earth’s climate.

J e s s e S p r i n g e r ’ 9 0 , Truth, Science Idol: The Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest, 2007. This winner of the 2007 Science Idol editorial cartoon contest will appear
in a 2008 Defending Science Calendar illustrating the effect of censorship on health,
safety, and the environment.
december 2007: 61

in my life

Just Trying to Survive
A BRAVE HAITIAN WOMAN REFUSES TO RELINQUISH HER VISION FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURE.
By S a ra h W ils o n ’87

66 : swarthmore college bulletin

they can. Nathalie’s father is a carpenter and
driver, but because of clashes between rival
gangs in their neighborhood, he is often
unable to leave the house and earn enough
to feed the family, let alone pay school fees.
The frequency of kidnapping is not as
bad as it was, but it is still a real risk for
families like Nathalie’s. Gangsters, many of
whom were deported from cities like New
York and Miami after serving jail time there,
take advantage of the drastically underfunded police and judiciary in Haiti. They can,
and do, kidnap dozens of ordinary Haitians
each year and demand ransoms of $20,000
or more. Most victims are forced to seek
help from relatives living abroad.
Nathalie lives with her parents and five
siblings in a tiny two-room house overlooking a steep ravine crowded with other cinderblock homes. At night, she climbs into a
double bed beside her parents and two of
her siblings. The youngest children sleep on
the floor.
Like so many people in the developing
world, Nathalie recognizes that the only way
to have a decent future is to leave the place
where she grew up. Although bright, enthusiastic, and hard-working, she has little
chance of further education. When asked
how she sees her future, Nathalie says: “I
don’t see any future really, but I would like
to study banking. I’m struggling, but I don’t
want to give up on my vision.”
What is her vision? “I want to keep
learning so that I can become a citizen who
can contribute something to society,” she
says. “There is no hope here. You want to
leave because elsewhere you can have a life.
Here you are just trying to survive. It is a
fight just to survive.”
Nathalie has a sister in the United States
and hopes to go there, but her chances of
getting a visa are slim if her sister cannot
support her.
She did get a visa to travel to London last
February for the launch of the sculpture
project. With an invitation from Christian
Aid and the Liverpool museum, the British

authorities agreed to give her and the other
artists permission to attend the launch
event. (When the same artists had their
work displayed in a Miami gallery, they were
refused visas to enter the United States for
the launch.)
When she arrived in the United Kingdom, Nathalie took to her role as Haitian
spokeswoman with gusto. She didn’t have
much English but was very happy to speak
in French.
As her week in England drew to a close, I
drove her to Heathrow to catch a flight to
the Dominican Republic, where she would
have to stay overnight before getting a
morning flight to Port-au-Prince. The more
direct route via Miami was unavailable to
her without a U.S. visa.
On the way, we passed through Kensington, one of the most upscale neighborhoods
in London (where Princess Diana lived
before her death). For the first time,
Nathalie mentioned the difference between
life in Haiti and life in London. “It makes
me sad that my country doesn’t have anything like this,” she said.
It is not just upscale neighborhoods that
Haiti lacks. It is the poorest country in the
western hemisphere. Ten percent of its population are permanently dependent on food
aid to survive, and malnutrition is a serious
problem.

CHRISTiAN AID, U.K. / JOSEPH CABON

Descending into Haiti’s national airport,
you can clearly see the white UN tanks
snaking along the dirt paths between the
corrugated iron shacks of Cité Soleil, the
most notorious shanty town in the capital,
Port-au-Prince. The city looks a lot more like
an African war zone than a tranquil
Caribbean island.
But when you land and step down onto
the tarmac, the bright sunshine and saunalike humidity remind you of Haiti’s potential. Inside the airport building, there is a
steel drum band playing to welcome you to
the island. Sure, Port-au-Prince is plagued
by violent gangs, and kidnapping is a daily
risk for the average Haitian. That doesn’t
mean that the city feels forbidding. In fact, it
is one of the most vibrant places I have ever
been.
It was my third visit to Port-au-Prince,
and this time, I came with a producer, director, and photographer on a project headed
by the British nonprofit humanitarian
organization Christian Aid.
We were there to meet Haitian artists
and students who had been jointly commissioned by Christian Aid and Merseyside
Maritime Museums in Liverpool to create
a sculpture commemorating the 200th
anniversary of the British parliament’s abolition of the slave trade. The sculpture is
now on permanent display in Liverpool.
The chosen artists live and work in a
Port-au-Prince slum surrounded by scrap
metal yards, known as Grand Rue. They
have little money for materials, so they make
creative use of what they find around them.
Shredded tires are used to represent hair on
standing figures built from motorcycle and
car parts, for instance.
Nathalie Fanfan is one of the young people invited to work on the sculpture. She is
23 but looks a lot younger. Despite her age,
she is still in public high school, with
another three years to go before she can get
a diploma. Only 20 per cent of schools in
Haiti are public, but even those charge fees.
If your parents can’t pay for your uniform
and school fees, you have to drop out until

Sarah Wilson

CHRISTIAN AID, U.K. / LEAH GORDON

It is no longer legal to sell people as if
they were commodities, but a more subtle
form of bondage still exists. Thousands
of Haitians are still forced by poverty
to work in unhealthy, dangerous—even
life-threatening—conditions.
That is one reason Christian Aid chose
Haiti for its sculpture project—to hear from
Haitians themselves how they viewed the
legacy of the slavery. In Haiti’s case, it was
the French who transported Africans to the
island to work as slaves in the sugar cane
plantations in unimaginably brutal conditions.
Slavery continued in the United States
until the surrender of the Confederate Army
in 1865, which ended the Civil War.
But in Haiti, slavery ended more than 60
years earlier. Because the people who were
forced to cut cane were taken from a variety
of African countries and had no common
language, they created a lingua franca that is
loosely based on French, called Creole.
They used this language to communicate
and plan a revolt that led to the overthrow
of the French colonial regime in 1804. Haiti
was the only country in the world where the

slaves themselves were responsible for their
own emancipation.
It is no longer legal to sell people as if
they were commodities, but a more subtle
form of bondage still exists. Thousands of
Haitians are still forced by poverty to work
in unhealthy, dangerous—even life-threatening—conditions.
As well as being forced to pay ‘reparations’ to France following independence in
1804—which hobbled the fledgling economy from the outset—Haiti more recently
faced a particularly drastic form of trade
liberalization.
Under pressure from international
donors, including the United States and
financial institutions such as the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund,
Haiti agreed to drop most of its import tariffs to zero percent. This left them with no

Nathalie Fanfan (left)
takes off paint from
the Freedom sculpture. “For me, the
sculpture represents
us as the Haitian people. The way they
treat us in this country is as if we were
still slaves. We need
to join forces for the
country to develop,
to make it work like
other countries that
are well organized. If
we are united, we
can share ideas. That
way, we can make all
of our dreams come
true,” she says.

way of correcting the distortions of the
international commodity markets, making it
impossible for Haitian farmers to compete
with goods imported from other countries
such as the United States.
Prospery Raymond, the Christian Aid
country representative in Haiti, said: “It’s as
if they are caught on a treadmill. Someone
keeps turning up the speed, and Haitian
farmers must run ever faster and faster, but
they’re not getting anywhere. They’re not
even managing to stand still. In fact, it
doesn’t matter how fast they run, they are
actually slipping further and further
behind.”
When we see images of Haiti, it is often
people in boats trying to escape to a better
life. But the truth is that most would probably rather stay in their own country if they
had a chance of living the kind of life there
that most of us take for granted.
Nathalie, too, would like to live in her
home country and make her mark. But she
won’t be able to, unless she can find the
money for a college education that would
put her in the running for one of the few
decent jobs that exist in Haiti. So she keeps
going to high school, and hoping for the
best. T
International journalist Sarah Wilson leads
Christian Aid’s media work on Latin America
and the Caribbean. For more information, visit
www.christianaid.org.uk.
december 2007 : 67

profile
Once extinct in the lower-48,
wolves were reintroduced to
Yellowstone 12 years ago. An elk

At Home With
Wolves
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK FEELS LIKE HOME
TO WOLF EXPERT EMILY ALMBERG ’03.

Emily Almberg ’03 had never seen wolves in the wild before
starting her job in Yellowstone National Park the November after
graduation. The first day, Almberg watched from afar as a wolf
pack chased an elk herd three miles away in the backcountry. The
next March, she got a much closer look, observing eight wolves
closing in on one of the park’s 2,000-pound bison, which they
had wounded.
A weak old bull, barely alive, with no chance of surviving the
winter, the animal lay flat on its side, yet it still mustered the
strength to kick when the pack darted in to bite at its hindquarters. “I felt bad for the bison, hoping it would die soon,” Almberg
recalls, “but the wolves were just waiting it out. Their eyes were
shocking to see.”
When the bison was dead, coyotes, ravens, and bald eagles
joined Yellowstone’s Druid Peak pack to feast on the carcass. For
Almberg, watching the bull’s demise was an unforgettable introduction to how predators live—and how their prey often die—
according to the harsh rules that govern the park’s ecosystem.
As a wildlife technician for Yellowstone’s groundbreaking wolf
research project, Almberg occupies a front-row seat for the grand
drama that the animals continue to play out in the world’s first
national park. She’s camped out in blizzard conditions on windraked ridges, tracking wolves; taken detailed field notes on how
packs collaborate to chase down elk and defend their kills against
grizzly bears; and watched the Druids fend off coyotes that crept
too close to a carcass and chase a black bear up a tree.
She has also watched adult wolves carry meat back to the den
76 : swarthmore college bulletin

COURTESY OF YELLOWSTONE WOLF PROJECT

carcass indicates their presence.

to feed newborn pups and frolic with them at the rendezvous sites
where packs gather after hunting. In below-zero temperatures,
with snow drifting from gray skies, she’s listened to adult wolves
on the hunt howling across the lonely Lamar Valley—and heard
their pups echoing their signal. “I love the snow, the cold weather,
and the way the wolves are mostly all grouped together,” she says.
After Swarthmore—where she majored in biology—and a
summer studying Alaskan seabirds, Almberg began working with
Douglas Smith, Yellowstone’s chief wolf biologist, making firsthand observations of wolf-pack dynamics.
Many a winter day, Almberg has risen at dawn in a ramshackle
trailer outside one of Yellowstone’s remote ranger stations. She’s
worked until dusk, surveying the backcountry valleys by telescope
and tracking radio-collared wolves by telemetry as they’ve roamed
through the park. In summer, she’s hiked high into Yellowstone
forests to conduct post-mortem analyses of bison and elk carcasses.
Once, Almberg and another researcher hiked into the backcountry where a wolf had been killed as the pack took down a bull
elk. As the research team rinsed their tools off in a creek, a big
grizzly popped up on the other bank, where it had buried the elk’s
carcass. The bear charged as Almberg and her colleague retreated
into fallen timber and retrieved bear deterrent spray canisters.
Then, the grizzly swerved off into the forest, Almberg recalls.
Smith says Almberg has brought “the total package” to her
work. That includes a natural curiosity as well as the patience to
explain wolf behavior to children and other visitors who line park
roads at dawn and dusk to glimpse Yellowstone’s packs.
Two summers ago, Yellowstone’s wolf population dropped 30
percent after distemper killed all but 22 of the pups born that
spring. That fall, when Almberg began working on a doctorate in
biology at the University of Minnesota, she designed a research
project to determine whether diseases caught from domestic dogs
could cause the park’s packs to vanish. The studies will take several
more years, but “Emily’s already our disease expert,” Smith says.
Almberg respects wolves for their fortitude, intelligence, and
loyalty to their packs. Yet, becoming familiar with pack members
has its drawbacks, such as when well-known wolves are fatally
wounded or simply vanish in the wild. “It’s so hard sometimes,”
she says, “but our policy is to keep hands off and let nature take its
course.”
Almberg is anxious to finish classes in Minnesota, then head
back to Wyoming. In the Yellowstone backcountry, with the wolves
she’s come to know and admire, “It feels like being home,” she
says.
—Tom Arrandale
Arrandale is a freelance writer who lives in Livingstone, Mont., where he
focuses on environmental, natural resources, and wildlife issues.

miracle on the mountain
Continued from page 21
At the Cloud Forest School,
children are largely responsible for the upkeep of the
grounds and gardens—and
for tree planting and other
forest stewardship projects

that his methods for raising and reproducing orchids and native
plants are ground-breaking. Gazing around his plant nursery,
Brenes says quietly, “Thanks to the work of our students, frogs
come here to relax now and hummingbirds build nests here.”
Reaching the reforestation area—sunny pastureland that slopes
down into a small valley and then rises through an area of secondary woodland to meet the virgin forest that stretches upward to the
top end of the property—Brenes stops to describe the project. Five
years ago, the area was just grass—leftover grazing land from former dairy farmers—but, in the meantime, volunteers have built a
path through the stands of fast-growing trees. “Species of trees
have been introduced to attract monkeys, toucans, and quetzals
(the bright green and red long-tailed national bird),” he says. We
have a lot of monkeys in the forest but not down here right now.
We’ve planted a type of guyaba tree that monkeys like, and in two
years they will be back. Five years ago, these trees were just
saplings, and now they’re huge. I had a dream that I wanted to
stand beneath a tree in the forest at this spot, and now I can,” he
jokes, recalling the student who planted it.
The forest is a place of life, death, rebirth, and rejuvenation,
Brenes says, and he tries to instill this in the children. Reaching a
painted wooden archway at the entrance to the conservation area,
he stops. High in a treetop, a large beautiful bird screeches a warning. “This bird warns against strangers,” Brenes says. “It always
bugs me that they think I’m a stranger.” Serious, he goes on: “This
is a special place. When you pass through this archway, you enter a
place that is private and demands respect. Here, we learn about the
systems that are most important for our own lives and for the natural life we have here.”
He stresses the need for all members of the school community
to “bring their minds into the forest,” where they can cast off
fatigue or frustration and reset. Each class spends time there at
least once a week. In the more open spaces, 10-by-5–meter areas
have been allotted to individual students as “quiet places” to think,
write journals, do art, or talk quietly. Sometimes, the children give
these places names, such as El Palacio de los Monos (the Palace of
the Monkeys).
Moving deeper into the forest, the path becomes narrower, the
air more moist, cooler. The forest canopy is more dense. Huge vines
curl downward. Crossing streams fed by waterfalls, the path winds
up to a huge strangler fig tree, providing a natural tubular climbing
frame, its throttled victim long since decomposed. Timm climbs up
inside the tree and peeks out like a forest spirit.
For himself, for the school’s board members, and for the original
founders, Timm says, environmental education is key. “Having the
students connected to the forest, knowing it and spending time in
it, that’s what makes this place unique.”
And he believes the children feel the same as he does. “You can
see it in all parts of the school, the way they love running through
the woods and gardening, and so on. They’re very environmentally
conscious. When the school collaborates with the community on
projects, the children focus on those involving pollution of the area
and work on how they can protect it.
“The local people have a nickname for us,” Timm adds. “They
call us the Miracle on the Mountain.” T
december 2007 : 79

Q+A

The Global Body
By Jef frey Lo tt

Born in 1963 in what is currently the Israelioccupied West Bank, Farha Ghannam and
four siblings moved with their parents to
Salt, Jordan, following the Six-Day War
of 1967.
Ghannam received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yarmouk University in
Jordan and a Ph.D. from the University of
Texas. She joined the Swarthmore faculty
in 1999.
Her ethnographic studies of a workingclass neighborhood in Cairo have led to
numerous articles and the book Remaking
the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics
of Identity in a Global Cairo (University of
California Press, 2002). Her courses include
Urban Ethnography; Cultures of the Middle
East; Islam, Culture, Power; Cities, Space,
and Power; Globalization and Culture; and
Comparative Perspectives on the Body. Her
current research—partly conducted during a
sabbatical in Cairo last year—focuses on
gender, the body, religion, and globalization
in Egypt.
At Swarthmore, she says: “My passion in
teaching is to provide students with the
tools to think in new ways about the things
around them. I want them to be critical—
not to accept what the media is telling
them.” Her courses are part of a growing
constellation of classes in an emerging
(though not yet formal) program in Islamic
studies. These consist of Ghannam’s courses
on Middle Eastern cultures and anthropology of Islam, courses on Islam taught by
Assistant Professor of Religion Tariq alJamil, classes in Arabic language, and foreign study opportunities in the Arab world.
The missing pieces, Ghannam says, are
courses that focus specifically on the history
and politics of the Middle East.

80 : swarthmore college bulletin

Early anthropologists studied the “other” in
order to shed light on their own societies.
Has anthropology changed?
Anthropologists first studied small communities that could be seen holistically—the
Margaret Mead model. Later, the same
methods were applied to larger and less
cohesive communities, such as ethnic
minorities within larger societies. But the
social boundaries of communities are no
longer fixed. They’re being reshaped by
global forces—what we call “flows.” I look
for the unexpected effects of these flows,
which can help us understand what is happening within the larger community.
Do you think that there is a “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West?
I don’t think so. To say this is merely to support a certain political and economic agenda. I think that the conflict is fundamentally
political and economic. Those who argue
that there is a clash of civilizations choose
to use the “culture talk” to legitimize certain
projects, conflicts, and specific agendas. It’s
easy to challenge the legitimacy of a war if
the goal is to control oil or pacify a population, but it’s almost impossible to challenge
a war that aims to defend values and norms
that we highly cherish.
What is meant by “globalization of the body?”
The rapid transfer of information, capital,
labor, products, and people across different
parts of the world has changed the way people view their bodies. Television is particularly good at circulating new information
and images about bodily form, mostly
through advertising. I’m of average weight
for a woman in the United States, but when
I first went to Cairo 15 years ago, people
would tell me I was too thin. Their ideal of
desirability was to be plump. That’s changing too, as young men and women embrace
new ideas about the body that were not
available to their parents.

How has being a Muslim woman helped you
with your research?
As a woman in Arab society, I can go into
private spaces in the home where a man
cannot go. And, as a Muslim, I share a religious identity with people I have worked
with in these neighborhoods. This is not to
say that a Christian male cannot do good
anthropology in such a culture, but it would
be of a different sort. A lot of doors were
opened to me.
What are some of the social norms that make us
think the way we do about our bodies?
The most important is gender: what it
means to be male or female dictates how you
dress, groom yourself, eat, exercise, and conduct your body. Ideals of beauty, socioeconomic class, and religion are also big influences. The point is that although our bodies
are physically different, how we manage
them and present ourselves to others is
socially constructed.
Your recent work has focused more on males
than females. Why the shift?
I did a lot of work on the female body in
Muslim society. Women are encouraged to
identify with their bodies, so it was a
natural place to start. But in many cultures,
men are socially distanced from their bodies. There’s great pressure on men to manage their bodies in a certain way, but there’s
also a lot of denial of the materiality of the
body. That’s the paradox of masculinity.
This can lead to privileging the man
(equating him with mind, culture etc.) over
the woman, who is equated with the body,
nature, reproduction….
It can ultimately lead to dehumanization—especially of Arab and Muslim men
as they are portrayed in the media. Their
bodies don’t seem to matter, so when 150
men are killed by a bomb, it’s treated as
almost routine. But when a few women
or children die, there is instant sympathy
and outrage. We need to re-humanize
men by bringing their bodies back into
the discussion.

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

Anthropologist Farha Ghannam’s courses are part of a growing constellation of classes in Islamic studies.

gifts

toward
the

future

Bequests to Swarthmore
are part of many
alumni estate plans
ANTHONY JOSEPH ’58

My four years at Swarthmore were
important for the friendships I
formed and because I learned how
to learn. My bequest to Swarthmore
allows me to make a larger gift in the
future than I could now. I believe
that Swarthmore—and the Honors
Program in particular—deserves
the support of all alumni.
GEORGE TELFORD III ’84
CHRISTINE MARX ’86

When we first met in Willets Hall in
1982, we would have laughed to
think that our future held marriage
and children. After our second child
was born, we drew up an estate plan
to provide for our children. We
named another “matchbox couple”
as their guardians and the College as
a contingent beneficiary. The College
shaped our lives so much—it feels
good to anticipate a gift toward
its future!

For more information about how
to include Swarthmore in your estate
plans, call the Office of Planned
Giving toll-free (866) 526-4438
or visit pg.swarthmore.edu