SPRING 2015 ALL ABOUT HONORS Periodical Postage PAID Philadelphia, PA and Additional Mailing Offices p26 MIGHTY MICHIGANDER p38 PROFS AS COACHES p36 ISSUE III 500 College Ave. Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306 www.swarthmore.edu VOLUME CXII SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN ALUMNI WEEKEND 2015 JUNE 5–7 Scientific Siblings p18 SPRING 2015 Go back to class and learn from world-renowned faculty. Sun yourself with friends on Parrish Beach. Grab a bite in Sharples. Hang out in the dorms. Remember what it was like to be in college. THE POWER OF 3 View a full schedule of events and frequently asked questions, and register online at + ALUMNIWEEKEND.SWARTHMORE.EDU. ‘OUR CLIMATECHANGE CLOCK IS TICKING’ ELIZABETH UPTON ’16 p32 70021 ACoverCO1.indd 1 3/18/15 12:28 PM in this issue 38 PROFILE Great Lakes Gladiator Michigan’s just-retired senior U.S. senator, Carl Levin ’56, is not ready to hit the brakes on causes that need a champion. by Sherri Kimmel MOMENT IN TIME JAMES KEGLEY Swarthmore’s next president, Valerie Smith, a distinguished scholar and dean at Princeton, met the campus community Feb. 21. For more on the 15th president, see Page 11. 70021 ACoverCO2.indd 2 3/19/15 7:28 AM in this issue 38 PROFILE Great Lakes Gladiator Michigan’s just-retired senior U.S. senator, Carl Levin ’56, is not ready to hit the brakes on causes that need a champion. by Sherri Kimmel MOMENT IN TIME JAMES KEGLEY Swarthmore’s next president, Valerie Smith, a distinguished scholar and dean at Princeton, met the campus community Feb. 21. For more on the 15th president, see Page 11. 70021 ACoverCO2.indd 2 3/19/15 7:28 AM 18 2 72 26 9 32 43 FEATURES DIALOGUE The Science of Siblings Letters Community Voices Rewind Books Global Thinking The Lingappas stick together to target lethal viruses. by Dana Mackenzie ’79 COMMON GOOD SPOKEN WORD WEB EXCLUSIVES ALL RIDERS UP Check out a video and photo gallery of a therapeutic riding program led by Marcy and Art Laver ’64: bulletin.swarthmore.edu USE YOUR IMAGIN-ATION Diversity initiative features photos of 24 College community members: bulletin.swarthmore.edu ‘Would You Do Honors?’ Graduates of Swarthmore’s distinctive program employ skills in daily lives. by Carol Brévart-Demm Stories of Swarthmore Liberal Arts Lives Hannah Kurtz ’13 Michael Buehler ’89 CLASS NOTES by Sherri Kimmel MANUSCRIPT IMMERSION Carin Ruff ’87 teamed up with Canaan Breiss ’16 for a virtual externship: bulletin.swarthmore.edu ASK THE AUTHOR Dana Mackenzie ’79 will serve up answers on the cover story: bulletin.swarthmore.edu ON THE COVER: Photo of Vishwanath Lingappa ’75 by Ron Wurzer Aligning Aspirations College’s first sustainability charrette provides framework for future action. MARSHALL’S MARGINATION Young alum leads innovative nonprofit in Troy, N.Y., that grew from Chester Garden Project: bulletin.swarthmore.edu Alumni News, Events, and Profiles SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 1 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 1 3/19/15 9:11 AM dialogue LETTERS Barrier-breaking director recalled SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN The Feb. 3 death of Ike Schambelan ’61 brings a close—or at least an intermission—to his deep devotion to Swarthmore, especially its theater program. Ike was internationally known for Theater By The Blind, as noted in a July 2013 Bulletin article. The troupe began in New York in 1980 and was renamed in 2008 to Theater Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB) to reflect that blindness was only one barrier. Today’s TBTB includes actors using crutches and wheelchairs. In 1999 Ike wrote that he and I probably met at Little Theater Club productions of Glass Menagerie, Winter’s Tale, and Family Reunion. “I assistant-stage managed or stage managed all three,” he said. “I was a lowly freshman, so barely noticeable.” (I wrote background music for the plays. Both Ike and I were heavily indebted to the encouragement of Barbara Pearson Lange ’31.) My frequent correspondence with Ike was unusual for me. He was an enormously busy person who often began letters, “Thank you so much for your super contribution of $10 in support of our work.” But the bulk of our correspondence was about plays. Had he ever performed a play from ancient Greece? I asked. Why not Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus has solved the riddle of the sphinx?: “What creature walks in the morning on four feet, at noon upon two, and at evening upon three?” I once asked Ike if anything could be done with John Milton, who wrote poems about his blindness. Since a poem is not a play, someone would first have to write a play about Milton. Unfortunately, we never discussed that possibility and who might write it. Both Ike and I knew Yeats’ line, “In dreams begins responsibility.” Ike was a dreamer. In TBTB he took responsibility for realizing his dreams. —CHARLES A. MILLER ’59, New Market, Va. Editor Sherri Kimmel THE REDESIGN: HIGHS AND LOWS If I may add some feedback on the recent redesign of the Bulletin: I, for one, like the new format. It is attractive and very readable. I’m so glad that you haven’t succumbed to the fad that seems to be afflicting almost every other magazine, where the goal seems to be to include as many different fonts and colors as possible on a single page—so you end up with a jumble and it’s hard for the reader to know where to enter the page and how to flow from one detail to the next. And none of that “by the numbers” fad, where the reader is assaulted with a string of “factoids” devoid of context. Kudos! —BOB CUSHMAN ’71 Oak Ridge, Tenn. The new Bulletin is a delight to the eye and fodder for the mind. Thank you! —BILL AYRES ’64 New York A Photographic Surprise 2 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO1.indd 2 I don’t know what in the world possessed you to reduce the size of the print in the new design of the Bulletin. The only reason I can imagine is to get more words on the page. If that is the case, attention should be paid to the relative importance of the information presented. The design is attractive, but readability rates low. The printing under most pictures is as minuscule as directions on a pill bottle. I used to read the Bulletin cover to cover, but now I just select an article that I strongly want to read. If I were selecting a book at my local library, I would reject one with print this small. My vision is pretty good considering that I am 85, and I am not asking for so-called “large print.” But please go back at least to the type size of a normal newspaper. —EMILY DAYTON SLOWINSKI ’51 Minneapolis Associate Editor Carol Brévart-Demm Class Notes Editor Carrie Compton Designers Zehno Phillip Stern ’84 Photographer Laurence Kesterson Editorial Assistants David Fialkow ’15 Aaron Jackson ’16 Administrative Assistant Janice Merrill-Rossi Editor Emerita Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 Website: bulletin.swarthmore.edu Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu Telephone: 610-328-8568 Facebook: www.facebook.com/ SwarthmoreBulletin We welcome letters on subjects covered in the magazine. We reserve the right to edit letters for length, clarity, and style. Views expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the official views or policies of the College. Letters and story ideas may be sent to bulletin@swarthmore.edu. Address changes may be sent to alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu. The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume CXII, number 3, is published in October, January, April, and July by Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390. Periodicals postage paid at Philadelphia, PA and additional mailing offices. Permit No. 0530-620. Postmaster: Send address changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College Ave., Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390. Please recycle after reading. ©2015 Swarthmore College. Printed in USA. To my surprise, and that of my brother Eugene ’53, the picture of the conscientious objectors’ Thanksgiving dinner that was on Page 32 in the winter Bulletin includes a man who we think is our father, Saxe Commins. He is seated at the end of the table with a hand on his knee. We knew he worked in a copper mine in Arizona during the Great War under terrible conditions but never knew more. —FRANCES COMMINS BENNETT ’52, Haverford, Pa. SPRING 2015 3/18/15 12:43 PM On Civility... CLIMATE CHANGE CONTENT NOTED I was happy to see a photograph in the winter issue of students and alumni at the Climate Change March in New York City. I was also interested in the article introducing Greg Brown, the new vice president for finance and administration at Swarthmore: “Sustainability, Access on Tap.” Although I applaud Mr. Brown’s practical approach to improving the carbon footprint of the Swarthmore campus itself, I am more sure than he is that divestment can be an effective tool in slowing the juggernaut of accelerating climate change. The students’ movement, Swarthmore Mountain Justice, inspired me to clean up my own personal portfolio some more. The result was that I felt good, and the portfolio itself became even more successful with some new diverse investments. All people, especially people in technologically advanced countries, need to make changes in beliefs, attitudes, behavior and expectations. For me, this means that I must conduct my personal life in a way that reduces my “carbon footprint” drastically (I no longer drive or use airplanes, eat meat, buy “stuff” or “busy myself” for example), that I change my financial base, that I am convincingly truthful with myself and others about climate change when I get an opportunity, that I am responsible in my community, and that I understand the spiritual significance of charity of heart. As a Quaker-founded institution, Swarthmore itself has an opportunity to stand up for life-sustaining principles. In the long run, the survival of the institution, even in a practical sense, cannot withstand the consequences of climate change. Thank you for increasing consciousness of this most important issue. —ANN ERICKSON ’65 Monte Rio, Calif. I was heartened by what Laura Rigell ’16 had to say about civility and justice (not to say civility versus justice) in the civility article in the winter issue of the Bulletin. My Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “civility” as polite, reasonable, and respectful behavior. This seems fair at first glance, but these characteristics of behavior are, in some telling cases, inimical. Although that which is reasonable and respectful deserves politeness in return, it is sometimes reasonable to be impolite and disrespectful in response to blatant injustice, particularly in a community that values equity above courtliness. In my experience, a certain amount of civility is important in keeping violence out of the struggle for justice, but too much civility acts as an unguent, greasing the skids on the road to complaisance and thereby postponing the kinds of uncomfortable change necessary to ensure personal dignity and genuine respect for diversity. Civility can in fact work against civil rights, especially when it crosses the line and becomes mincing nuance. Not every action, statement, or position deserves a civil response. In fact, it is sometimes our civic obligation to be actively impolite in making a point, e.g., in calling out persistent bigotry. Speech must sometimes be blunt to be effective. As Gandhi said, “There is nothing passive about nonviolence.” In that spirit, to the suggestion that it is uncivil to call out injustice plainly and clearly, my response is, “Oh yeah? Says who? You and how many Straussians?” —BOB DIPRETE ’70, Amity, Ore. I write in regard to the interesting piece on incivility appearing in the recent issue of the Bulletin. Incivility, I believe, is just the tip of the iceberg, just one indication of the absence of culture, a shortfall that is today responsible for an unstable society and for the civil unrest which feeds the political appetite for a totalitarian state. Community can only exist where people trust one another. A random mix of self-interested careerists will almost certainly fail to achieve community, although they may learn good manners and come to respect one another. Conflict arises out of mistrust, and although you may engineer a resolution to conflict, you have only dealt with the symptom, not the disease. An individualist’s freedom is achieved by casting off the common bonds—a shared experience, empathy, human understanding—the ties that bind a community. An ideological commitment to justice, truth, and equality can’t return the isolated and alienated individual to the protection and place offered by the community. Unfortunately the highly prized individual possesses nothing in the way of personal security, only the illusory safety offered by the laws, the handgun, and by police-state mechanisms such as the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security. The communard can count on the loyalty and protection of fellow human beings. The enemy is the tribe across the river or over the border. Alas, for the individual, the enemy is everywhere. —NED BRIGHT ’56, County Cork, Ireland I didn’t attend Swarthmore because of any perceived civility, and I hope current students aren’t either. Barry Schwartz is right (for once)—maybe Swarthmore and other campuses used to have an edge that has disappeared. Now we hear about “triggers” and “microagressions” and the like. Calls for civility are too often calls for (self ) censorship. Comedy, satire, parody, and, yes, ridicule are entirely appropriate and useful tools in political and other debate. Sometimes, the other side is, well, full of it, and there is no reason not to point that out “uncivilly.” —DAN GARFIELD ’89, Denver I’d like to praise the Bulletin for printing the hatefully negative letter about Arthur Chu (Jeopardy!? Is this a joke?) in the fall issue. In fact, you could have printed it again in the winter issue, as an example of incivility! Lauren Gilman ’88’s letter in response was excellent. Lastly, I’m always glad to hear about what a wonderful career and life Maurice Eldridge ’61 has made at Swarthmore. I was two classes ahead of him and remember him as a freshman very well. Again, with the idea of civility, as I remember him, he was an example of it. He was his own man in what was an uncomfortable situation. —SUSAN BARKER GUTTERMAN ’59 New York + SEE MORE LETTERS ONLINE AT bulletin.swarthmore.edu. 70021 BTextCO2.indd 3 SPRING 2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 3 3/19/15 7:38 AM dialogue COMMUNITY VOICES PETER ARKLE A DEEP LOOK College makes progress on sexual misconduct prevention E Domitrz, an award-winning author and IGHTEEN MONTHS speaker, who presented an engaging proago, Swarthmore gram about consent. In February, our made a committeam hosted a series of events on healthy ment to do things in relationships including a panel about a new way and to be a men, masculinity, and relationships. leader in higher eduThe team has several events planned for cation in responding to and preventspring, including programs on bystander ing sexual misconduct. Since 2013, the intervention, survivor support, sexualSwarthmore community has taken a ity, and faith, among othdeep look at itself: It conby ers. All of these events help ducted internal and external to increase campuswide reviews, created new posiunderstanding of issues tions, began new initiatives, related to sexual violence and adopted a new sexwith the goal of educating ual harassment and assault about consent, healthy relapolicy. (For a complete list tionships, bystander interof actions the College has vention, and survivor support. taken since spring 2013, see bit.ly/ • *New* New Student Orientation. The TitleIXSteps.) Dean’s Office created a new orientation Much work has been done—and we program, including intentional sexual have a lot of work still to do. In my eight violence and relationship abuse prevenmonths here, I’ve focused on learning tion programs. Every new student was about this campus and meeting as many required to take an online course from people as I can. I’ve been inspired by the Campus Clarity called Think About many students I have met who are absoIt and attend a presentation by Nina lutely committed to healing this comHarris, Swarthmore’s violence prevenmunity, supporting one another, and tion educator and advocate. helping this campus they call home. I’ve • Title IX House & Fellow. Abigail worked with students, faculty, and staff Henderson ’15, the newly hired Title IX to create the structures that will take us fellow, joined the office of the Title IX to the next level. What follows are some coordinator in January. The office is in of the new initiatives already underway, a newly renovated house on Fieldhouse with more to follow. Lane and includes office space and a • Student Title IX Advisory Team. A comfortable meeting room. group of 10 dedicated Swarthmore stu• Expanded support for survivors. The dents meet with me weekly to give guidaforementioned Nina Harris continance, offer suggestions, and work in one ues to provide advocacy services to stuof four subteams—website developdents—cultivating new resources for ment, athletics, events, and policy. support and working across campus to • Expanded Prevention Education. improve accessibility to support. In addiThe new Title IX Education Team is tion, she routinely sponsors survivor busy planning regular events on gender dinners and has created regular drop-in equity, healthy relationships, consent, hours at the Women’s Resource Center. and sexual violence prevention. Events • Continued improvements to have included a visit in the fall by Mike KAAREN WILLIAMSEN Title IX Coordinator 4 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO1.indd 4 adjudication and reporting. This winter, a small team of staff reviewed the new sexual harassment and assault policy, an annual exercise that ensures that our policies are current with changing federal requirements and match the values and needs of our campus. • Sexual Misconduct Task Force. The task force completed its work, distributed its report on campus, and presented it to multiple groups. The report will continue to inform policy, procedures, and programming improvements. Sexual misconduct is a community issue, and it will take a community to prevent it. I focus on this issue in four ways: through campus policies that reflect federal guidelines and campus values; a response/adjudication process that is clear and supportive; ongoing sexual violence prevention and healthy relationships education; and creating a survivor-supportive community. We have made progress in all four areas, and I look forward to working with the Swarthmore community to continue this vital work. “Sexual misconduct is a community issue, and it will take a community to prevent it.” SPRING 2015 3/18/15 12:43 PM BILLY SMITH II REWIND: ‘TO WHOM MUCH IS GIVEN … ’ Aid provided in student days inspired a passion to volunteer in general. And so it’s to Swarthmore AS A BLACK, HISPANIC female that I owe my commitment to giving the from Linwood, Pa., I was not the three T’s—time, talent, and treasure. typical Swarthmore engineering I volunteered as an admissions interstudent. In fact I was only able to attend viewer, then joined the Swarthmore thanks to Swarthmore’s generous finanAlumni Council, serving eight years, cial aid package. While a student, my including two years as president and mother frequently reminded me of the an ex officio member of the Board of biblical quote from Luke 12:48: “From Managers. Through my every one to whom much by Alumni Council service I is given, much shall be learned about the College required.” from a new perspective For me, that meant studywhile meeting Swatties ing hard, completing my ranging from the ’50s and assignments, and never ’92 ’60s to the Class of 2014. missing class. Following My council tenure ended in graduation, I decided to pay 2011, but my passion for service didn’t. back some of the aid I’d received by conCurrently, I volunteer 30 to 40 hours a sistently donating to the College. Over week for nine nonprofits in the Houston time, I discovered that an even more community that focus on education, gratifying way to give back was through services for the blind, and the arts. volunteering—not just to benefit the Of all my volunteer activities—from College but ultimately the community SABRINA MARTINEZ fundraising for student scholarships to a broadcast program I’ve developed to spotlight volunteers—one in particular combines my two great loves, theater and assisting visually impaired individuals. I volunteer for Sight Into Sound, transferring written material like textbooks and magazines to audio. Every week I read People magazine on Sight and Sound radio, a Houston station that is also a dot.com and a smartphone app, so anyone, anywhere can access the station. As a theater lover, I’m a member of a group that “audio-describes” live theater performances for blind audience members, who listen in on headphones as I sit in a sound booth and describe on-stage visuals not able to be detected through the dialogue. My mission is for blind patrons to “see” the show as well if not better than their sighted counterparts. I describe at five Houston theaters and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Sometimes, as a volunteer, I also experience what I describe as small miracles. Once, while ushering at a performance of The Lion King for autistic children, one young but big boy was acting out—lying on the floor blocking the aisle, refusing to cooperate with his caregivers. When the show ended and I was ushering people out, the boy came up to me and held my hand. His father freaked out, thinking I would be upset, but I said, “It’s cool.” The boy held my hand until the theater emptied. I hear from people who work with children on the autistic spectrum that things like that don’t happen. I will always be driven to give back, not because it is required, but because I have something to contribute. As Gene Lang ’39 told me during a conversation on Parrish Porch when we were both on the Board of Managers, “If you can do something that takes little effort from you but provides so much to others, why would you not do it?” Sabrina Martinez ’92, an employee at a Houston-based multinational energy corporation, co-authored three books last year: Change Your World So You Can Change the World, Pebbles in the Pond: Transforming The World One Person at a Time, and The Art of Activation: 24 Laws to Win, to Thrive, to Prosper, to Rise. SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 5 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 5 3/19/15 7:40 AM dialogue BOOKS A REVOLUTIONARY DUET Cultural confines, classifications, and corsets are shed by Jamie Stiehm ’82 THE MATCH GIRL AND THE HEIRESS is an unconventional love story at the heart of a great social-justice crusade that began roughly a century ago. While this new scholarly work presents as a post-Dickensian novel, the power of its authenticity makes it resonate more than fiction. Two women crossed over class privilege and wealth, the widest gulf in England, to express deep feelings and take care of each other, in sickness and health—till death did them part. Was it what we now call “same-sex desire?” This window to the past could hardly be more timely. Seth Koven ’78, a historian who teaches at Rutgers University, invites the reader to early 20th-century London as it shed the cultural confines, classifications, and corsets of Victorian England even as global capitalism bore down hard. The book’s focus is Bromley-on-Bow, the teeming Cockney district of East London where a massive match factory, Bryant and May, was located. This is where the sprightly Nellie Dowell, born into next to nothing, worked filling boxes of matches as part of a mostly young female army. In any case, the factory workers were “girls.” Nellie emerged vividly for Koven in his research travels, and he deftly handles specifics of her working-class experience, illuminating a life that would otherwise be lost to history. As a young woman, she was hospitalized and then treated as just another “pauper lunatic” at the Whitechapel Asylum. Like millions, she lived at the mercy—or lack thereof—of the Poor Law. Who was Muriel Lester? Famous in her day, way ahead of her time, she was a global pacifist humanitarian Christian revolutionary with a lovely upper-class aura, voice, and “white clean hands,” which Nellie spoke of admiringly in her letters. Those hands seemed to symbolize the distance between them that could not be bridged: Nellie’s hands were hurt by factory work. Committed to improving poverty, Muriel eventually “gave back” part of her family fortune to support Nellie and to enrich and organize the Bromley-on-Bow community. She became a central part of it by building Kingsley Hall, similar to Jane Addams’ Hull House. As Koven tells us, she came to see residents less as charity cases and more as “rights-bearing citizens.” Muriel and Nellie were at the forefront of the era’s union and suffrage struggles. And as the guns of the Great War resounded, denizens of the movement they built stood with conscientious objectors. After the war, the avant-garde Kingsley Hall gained wider renown. In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi came to call at the hall. Koven quotes often from Nellie’s inventive, compelling 6 SETH KOVEN ’78, The Match Girl and the Heiress, Princeton University Press, 2014, 445 pp. correspondence, for example, “You have been my best friend on this earth, and I always feel I belong to you somehow. …” Nothing, however, is saved from Muriel’s end. His hope of capturing the “loving mates” in epistolary conversation is lost. What remains in the archives is Muriel’s biographical account of Nellie. From her voluminous annals, we can almost hear her bright voice saying of her partner, “She cherished it [the hall], helped it to grow, made it seem real.” The heiress, who died in 1968, outlived the match girl by 45 years. Koven expresses the painful reality that, in the end, Nellie left this earth with much less of everything than her beloved Muriel. Absent a clear proclamation, it’s hard to precisely chart the coordinates of desire. That is not the end game, however, when their intimacy is the true story. By investigating the revolutionary duet in class, politics, social change, love, and friendship, he has given each their just due. In Koven’s elegant narrative, he also enlightens all of us. —JAMIE STIEHM ’82, a history major, is a Washington, D.C., columnist on politics and history. She writes for Creators Syndicate and has contributed to Disunion, the Civil War series in The New York Times. Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO4.indd 6 3/20/15 11:45 AM HOT TYPE New books published by Swarthmore graduates Betsy Polk and Maggie Ellis Chotas ’89 Power Through Partnership: How Women Lead Better Together, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014; 154 pp. This book encourages women to form workplace relationships based on mutual encouragement, flexibility, and accountability. dearest friend Silvana Mauri, translated by Maria Ottieri, is an epistolary memoir and tribute to the miracle of enduring friendship. Louis Jargow ’10 and Suzahn Ebrahimian E//O: A Remythologized Epic Poem Based on a Memory of a Memory of a Memory, Publication Studio Hudson, 2014; 95 pp. A contemporary retelling of the classic story of love, death, and a trip to the underworld to rescue love seeks reasons for Eurydice’s decision to remain in Hades. Lou Ann Matossian ’77 (translator) Special Mission: Nemesis, Editions Sigest, 2014; 63 pp. This graphic novel by Paolo Cossi, J.B. Dijan, and Jan Varoujan tells the true story of a young Armenian on trial for shooting the man who killed his family and planned to annihilate his people. Carol Gaiser ’57 Promettimi di non morire, nottetempo, 2013; 255 pp. Gaiser’s collection of her published articles, poems, and letters to her Linda Barrett-Osborne ’71 and Paolo Battaglia Explorers Emigrants Citizens: A Visual History of the Italian American Experience from the Collections of the Library of Congress, The Library of Congress, 2013; 318 pp. In his foreword, film icon Martin Scorsese commends this book as commemorating “a way of life that is now almost gone.” John Ridland ’53 and Peter Czipott (translators) Paul Frischkoff ’60 Dr. Chuckle and Missed Her Ride: Puns and Malapropisms, Wild Ginger Press, 2014. With 250 original puns and hundreds of malapropisms, the author keeps readers laughing out loud. Doodling on the Titanic: The Making of Art in a World on the Brink, Sudden Sun Press, 2014; 183 pp. Meditating on the creative process, Neumann questions issues such as art’s relevance in an era of cultural and socioeconomic crisis. Osha Neumann ’61 (formerly Thomas Neumann) All That Still Matters At All: Selected Poems of Miklós Radnóti, NewAmericanPress, 2013; 205 pp. These harrowing poems, recently translated, were recovered from a notebook found on the poet’s body, exhumed from a mass grave in 1946. Philip Rutter, Susan Wiegrefe, and Brandon Rutter-Daywater ’00 Growing Hybrid Hazelnuts: The New Resilient Crop for a Changing Climate, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015; 260 pp. This book is the first comprehensive guide to growing a crop designed to address a host of problems with conventional modern agriculture. Maya Schenwar ’05 Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014; 240 pp. While showing how the institution that locks up 2.3 million Americans is tearing families and communities apart, the author looks toward a world beyond imprisonment. Benjamin Schwartz ’06 Right of Boom: The Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism, The Overlook Press, 2015; 276 pp. Drawing on historical research and service in the departments of defense, state, and energy, Schwartz constructs the scenario of a nuclear attack on the United States. John Oliver Simon ’64 Grandpa’s Syllables, White Violet Press, 2015; 92 pp. This legendary poet of the Berkeley Sixties, working in 11-syllable lines, writes fancifully, among other things, of aphids, “the color of lemon lollipops longlicked by luscious tongues.” Abigail Swingen ’97 Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire, Yale University Press, 2015; 271 pp. Swingen offers a new framework for understanding the origins of the British empire and explores the influence of England’s imperial ambitions on politics, labor, economy, and foreign trade. Peter Unger ’62 Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2014; 258 pp. In this provocative book, Unger challenges contemporary analytic philosophy, positing that it focuses predominantly on “empty ideas.” Susan Erlandson Washburn ’60 My Horse, My Self: Life Lessons From Taos Horsewomen, Casa de Snapdragon, 2014; 146 pp. The author’s heartwarming compilation of stories by 18 horsewomen from New Mexico is enriched with delightful photos by Jett Ulaner Sarachek, wife of Norm ’60. SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 7 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 7 3/19/15 7:48 AM dialogue GLOBAL THINKING SEEKING ASYLUM Bruce Leimsidor ’63 works globally to better refugees’ lives by Heidi Hormel BRUCE LEIMSIDOR ’63 isn’t a one-issue crusader. Although the focus of his work since the 1970s has been refugees and asylum law, that doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in other aspects of human rights, including, most recently, the recriminalization of homosexuality in India. Currently, he teaches European asylum law at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy, and he also has been counselor for asylum in the Venice municipality’s program for asylum seekers. While he’s spent decades working with refugees, his undergraduate and doctoral work would be a surprise to many. He didn’t go to law school (he said most of those working in asylum law haven’t), was a Spanish major at Swarthmore, and earned a master’s and doctorate in Spanish literature from Princeton University. “The segue from academic life to refugee activism is not as bizarre as one would think—one developed out of the other,” says Leimsidor, whose family considered social action extremely important. His area of scholarly interest included the Spanish Inquisition, which may have grown out of the discrimination he faced as a Jew. When Leimsidor applied to colleges in 1959, only Swarthmore offered him a place. By 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the religion-based quotas that had limited his choices unconstitutional, so when he applied to graduate schools, he had 11 offers. After graduating from Princeton, he taught Spanish literature at Indiana University and Occidental and Oberlin colleges, until the funding for humanistic studies dried up, and his students couldn’t get jobs. He changed directions and took a job with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an international refugee organization. 8 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO1.indd 8 While there, he helped draft the 1980 Refugee Act; aided in the Mariel Cuban refugee boatlift; played a major role in arranging the exodus of Jews, evangelical Christians, and other dissidents from the Soviet Union; and established the U.S. refugee program for Iranian religious minorities. In 2002, he moved for a year to the U.N. High Commission on Refugees as the senior resettlement specialist in Nairobi, Kenya, before teaching asylum law in Venice. “The urgency is still there,” he says, explaining why he has stayed in the field, even as the work has become “more and more frustrating because the existing legal structure is being taxed to the breaking point.” With increased mobility, more people are fleeing economic stress and inappropriately getting into the refugee system, making “it more difficult for those fleeing persecution or war to be able to get heard properly,” he adds. A part of the problem, he says, is that the current system was set up under the Geneva Convention in the early 1950s, when large numbers of people could not easily move around the globe. “It is more difficult for those fleeing persecution or war to be able to get heard properly.” BRUCE LEIMSIDOR ’63 Law professor, human rights activist Last fall, with a grant from his university, he visited India to study humanrights issues, including the effect of the December 2013 recriminalization of homosexuality. This legal change also created issues under international asylum law because, as Leimsidor explains, persecuted gay individuals have the right to claim asylum under the Geneva Convention. According to Human Rights First, about 600 people have been prosecuted under India’s recriminalization, which is a small number in such a large country, Leimsidor concedes. “The prosecutions are not the issue,” he adds emphatically. “The issue is that recriminalization makes the gay community totally vulnerable.” He continues to work with the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association in Geneva and with the Society for People’s Awareness, Care, and Empowerment in India on this issue. In 1959 when Leimsidor applied to Swarthmore, he says, “A Jewish boy from New York had limited options.” That experience now informs his work to make the lives and options for refugees better around the world. SPRING 2015 3/18/15 12:43 PM common good SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE ON THE WEB PASSING IT ON More than 200 student externs gathered invaluable experiences and insights from alums in a wide array of fields. + LEARN MORE bit.ly/SwatExterns SPREADING THE LOVE Student “ninjas” deliver homemade truffles and Valentine’s cards to a not-really-unsuspecting campus—all for a good cause. + WATCH bit.ly/NinjaLove ADAM MASTOON PERILS OF IMAGINATION Historian Timothy Burke discusses why he finds it useful to teach a course on counterfactual history. + LISTEN bit.ly/BurkeTalk WEB EXCLUSIVE ImagINe All the People … Project enriches campus community through photos and personal narratives IF A PICTURE IS WORTH a thousand words, ImagINe, a campus initiative showcasing the diversity of the Swarthmore community, exponentially raises the stakes. Photographic portraits of 24 faculty, staff, and students feature the subjects’ handwritten narratives about meaningful aspects of their lives—from growing up poor to struggling with identity. This celebration of individualism is meant to promote conversations about diversity on campus. + READ THE FULL STORY ABOUT THE PROJECT: bulletin.swarthmore.edu. by Carrie Compton SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 9 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 9 3/18/15 12:43 PM common good NEW STUDENT JOURNAL FOSTERS SCIENCE LITERACY 10 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO2.indd 10 LAURENCE KESTERSON T hree enterprising seniors are exploring the way natural sciences intersect with the College’s other academic offerings. Claudia Luján ’15, Ariel Parker ’15, and Randy Burson ’15 launched The Swarthmore Journal of Science (SJOS), an online publication, in January. Their mission is to explain science in a manner easily understood by a broad, general audience. The biology majors originally conceived the journal in 2011 as a way to communicate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) concepts in an interdisciplinary manner. SJOS packages science content in a visually exciting way to stimulate dialogue between science and nonscience readers. Submissions, which come from students, include research articles, opinion pieces, photography, and even science-themed poetry. Amy Vollmer, department chair of microbiology, is one of many faculty supporters. “From time to time, students think about doing some sort of journal,” says Vollmer. “In my experience, few of those ideas have been initiated by a group of students who are as thoughtful and thorough in their ‘background’ work.” Vollmer believes SJOS enhances science education at Swarthmore through its articles, which are “thoughtful and deliberate and can uncover gaps in understanding or logic,” she says. “When those gaps are filled, the student’s knowledge of the subject is stronger.” Whether a journal topic explains the science behind the Ebola epidemic or solar physics, its relevance to a broad readership is paramount, according to Seniors, from left, Claudia Lujan, Randy Burson, and Ariel Parker , shown here in a science lab in Martin Hall, launched the College’s first student science-journalism publication. Luján. Burson expects the magazine will be a valuable resource, especially for underrepresented students pursuing STEM interests. By combining relevant content with intuitive design, the journal founders hope to make SJOS a strong, compelling, and campus-driven publication. “A scientist, at the most basic level, is an investigator. At Swarthmore, we are all broadly trained to investigate and ask questions,” says Parker. “At SJOS, we ask that readers investigate our articles and join the dialogue.” — AARON JACKSON ’16 + READ THE DEBUT ISSUE OF SJOS at bit.ly/SwatJournalOfSci. “A scientist, at the most basic level, is an investigator. At Swarthmore, we are all broadly trained to investigate and ask questions.” SPRING 2015 3/19/15 7:50 AM COLLEGE WARMLY WELCOMES ITS 15TH PRESIDENT + SEE VALERIE SMITH meet the campus community: bit.ly/15thPresident. 1 LAURENCE KESTERSON WARMLY WELCOMED on a snowy February day, Valerie Smith met hundreds of the students, staff, faculty, and Board members she will soon serve as Swarthmore’s 15th president. An intensive six-month search for a successor to Rebecca Chopp, who became chancellor of the University of Denver in August, resulted in the Board’s unanimous approval Feb. 21 of Smith, Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature, Professor of English and African-American Studies, and dean of the college at Princeton University. A search committee of faculty, students, staff, and alumni Board members, led by Salem Shuchman ’84, selected Smith following extensive communitywide consultation. In sharing the news with the Swarthmore community, Giles Kemp ’72, chair of the Board of Managers said, “Valerie Smith is a respected scholar and a wise, effective leader with impressive accomplishments that closely align with Swarthmore’s values. Her colleagues consistently praise her judgment, integrity, and commitment to making a liberal arts education accessible to all students.” Smith’s appointment was warmly and enthusiastically received. In addition to the energetic buzz at Eldridge Commons on that snowy Saturday, the news ignited Swarthmore’s social media platform and continued for days. Smith, who has authored more than 40 articles and three books on African-American literature, culture, film, and photography, has spent most of her career at Princeton, where she founded the Center for African American Studies. She became dean in 2011. Smith received a B.A. cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Bates College and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. Before Smith’s appointment officially begins July 1, Constance Cain Hungerford will continue as interim president. During the transitional period, Smith plans to visit campus quietly to learn as much as she can about the College. She intends to spend her first year “listening to and learning from different members of the community, both on and off campus,” she says. “I’m eager to begin those conversations. I’m excited to be working for a college with such an inspired sense of mission.” In seeking the position, Smith says, “I was interested not so much in being a president but in being the president of Swarthmore. I found your defining features to be irresistible—the way you put such a premium on the value of collaboration, that you are committed to academic rigor, yet inspired by the importance of making a difference and having an impact on the common good.” 2 1. Valerie Smith will become Swarthmore’s new president July 1. 2. Hundreds of College community members crowded into Eldridge Commons to meet future President Valerie Smith Feb. 21. SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 11 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 11 3/18/15 12:43 PM common good HONORARY DEGREES ANNOUNCED FOUNDER OF the Chester Children’s Chorus and former Swarthmore music professor John Alston; longtime Delaware Supreme Court Justice Randy Holland ’69; and educator and world-renowned authority on plant genetics Molly Miller Jahn ’80 will receive honorary degrees at the 143rd Commencement May 31. Alston, former associate professor of music at the College, founded the Chester Children’s Chorus in 1994, using music to offer children from the Chester-Upland School District the chance to expand their intellectual and cultural horizons. To further academic achievement and artistic excellence in the Chester community, Alston founded the Chester Upland School of the Arts in 2008, a precursor to the Chester Charter School for the Arts, which opened in 2012 to 325 students. In 2013, Alston left Swarthmore to focus on his work in Chester. Appointed in 1986, Holland was the youngest person on Delaware’s Supreme Court and is that court’s longest-serving justice. His written opinions, including many landmark decisions, number more than 700. He is one of three Americans named honorary Masters of the Bench at Lincoln’s Inn in London, along with Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens and is considered one of the top 100 influencers of corporate governance and business ethics in the nation. Jahn is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with appointments in the department of agronomy, the laboratory of genetics, and the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. She researches genomics and plant breeding of vegetable crops, with emphasis on the molecular genetics of disease resistance and quality traits. Her research programs at the University of Wisconsin and earlier at Cornell University have produced vegetable varieties grown commercially and for subsistence on six continents. Jahn also has been deputy and acting under-secretary of research, education, and economics at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. Happiness Is … To cartoonist Charles Schultz, it was a warm puppy. But what does happiness mean to you? Tell us in 350 words or fewer. We’ll run a selection in the print or online magazine to accompany a future article on the topic of happiness. + SEND US YOUR HAPPY THOUGHTS before May 1: bulletin@swarthmore.edu 12 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO4.indd 12 A month or so from now, the campus will hum with excitement, as parents, faculty and staff, and members of the graduating class of 2015 stream into the idyllic Scott Amphitheater for this year’s Commencement exercises. Awestruck spectators will be treated to words of wisdom and inspiration from three of Swarthmore’s finest in the areas of education, law, and science: honorary-degree recipients, from top, John Alston, Randy Holland ’69, and Molly Miller-Jahn ’80. SPRING 2015 3/20/15 12:01 PM LAURENCE KESTERSON HISTORY BUFFS A Revolutionary Revelation I T’S NOV. 16, 1776: Do you know where your ancestors are? Two Swarthmore staffers do, and, inexplicably, they were together. After a conversation about genealogy, Michael Patterson, media services manager and Eric Behrens ’92, associate chief information technology officer, realized that their great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers fought in the same Revolutionary War battle. Upon learning about Behrens’ Hessian ancestor, Patterson—an ancestry.com buff who can trace his lineage to King Edward I—asked to see the 3-inch-thick book compiled by Behrens’ relatives that traces the bloodlines of that soldier. Patterson would discover that a Hessian regiment, which included Johannes Nicholas Bahner, Behrens’ ancestor, captured a garrison of Continental soldiers during the Nov. 16 Battle of Fort Washington in northern Manhattan. George McCreary, Patterson’s ancestor, was in that captured group. “There were only about 9,000 people involved [in the battle] and these two were there. That just blew my mind,” says Patterson. McCreary was imprisoned for two months on a British ship before being paroled and returning home to York, Pa. Of the 2,800 troops captured in that battle, he was one of only 800 to survive the wretched conditions. Meanwhile, Bahner’s regiment crossed into New Jersey, fatefully garrisoning at Trenton just before the bellwether Battle of Trenton in the wee hours of Dec. 26, 1776. After the Hessian defeat, Bahner was captured and marched to Lancaster, Pa., likely as an indentured laborer, before returning to battle after a prisoner swap 18 months later. In April 1779, Bahner deserted his post near Savannah, Ga. He does not officially resurface until 1782 when he paid taxes on a cow in Lebanon County, Pa. He would eventually settle on 700-plus acres of farmland in nearby Northumberland County where many descendants remain. “Even though we work together every day,” says Behrens, smiling, “I swear Mike has never made any derogatory remarks about ‘mercenaries’ who fought on the wrong side of The Revolution.” —CARRIE COMPTON + WHERE WERE YOUR ANCESTORS during the Revolution? Comment on this story at bulletin.swarthmore.edu. Eric Behrens ’92 and Mike Patterson brave the winter temps in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO4.indd 13 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 13 3/20/15 12:05 PM LAURENCE KESTERSON common good LAURENCE KESTERSON Karl Barkley ’15, a guard from Davidson, N.C., spends time on sports and sustainability. A STAR ON THE COURT AND IN THE COMMUNITY Supriya Davis ’15 (left) and Kate Wiseman ’15, in the Ware pool, look toward the end of their highly successful College swimming career. Swimmers to Swammers “EVERY YEAR, I have that moment where I ask myself, ‘We’re swimming back and forth for five months to try to swim fast in one weekend? That’s absurd. But when I see my team, I know I’m doing it for a good reason, and I love it,” says Kate Wiseman ’15. Embracing this absurdity has guided Wiseman and Supriya Davis ’15 to being two of the most decorated swimmers in Swarthmore history. While both have broken many school and conference records, perhaps none were more satisfying than their performances at the Centennial Conference championships in late February. In one weekend, the duo broke eight school records and four conference and championship meet records. 14 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO1.indd 14 They attribute their success to their team—their family away from home at Swarthmore. “There’s so much energy, and I want to swim fast for my teammates,” says Davis. “The energy from [relay] events especially makes me realize that if I didn’t have this team, I wouldn’t be swimming,” adds Wiseman. Wiseman, who will be in Chicago as a Teach For America corps member postgraduation, and Davis, a Fulbright finalist who intends to enter medical school, have begun to reflect on what the transition from “swimmer” to “swammer” will look like. —DAVID FIALKOW ’15 Karl Barkley ’15 was recently named to the 2015 Allstate NABC Good Works Team, which honors college basketball players nationwide who have given back to their communities. Barkley has been involved in many sustainability projects on and off campus, including weatherization and retrofitting efforts in Chester, Pa.,–area homes to increase energy efficiency. Barkley, who has helped sponsor Zero Waste Games at campus athletic events, traveled to the NCAA Men’s Final Four in Indianapolis to work with other winners on a community-outreach project. + READ MORE ABOUT KARL BARKLEY at bit.lyBarkley15. SPRING 2015 3/18/15 12:43 PM LEARNING CURVE STILL KEEPING THE BEAT EARLY DAYS ROB LEWINE ’67 has played with some of the best classic rockers since transferring from Swarthmore to UCLA’s film school his junior year.. At UCLA, Lewine wrote and directed a film featuring then–good buddy Harrison Ford. “It was a colossal disaster,” he recalls, but Ford went on to work with Lewine on a documentary of The Doors’ 1968 tour, Feast of Friends. by Sherri Kimmel NEW DIRECTIONS JOE DOHERTY While hanging out at the home of The Monkees’ Peter Tork, Lewine “would find myself playing with people like Stephen Stills and David Crosby.” He played bass with the Illinois Speed Press, “brother band to Chicago,” and other groups, including early versions of The Grass Roots and Little Feat. 1 PIVOT POINT Abandoning music in 1972, Lewine used film-school connections to begin producing classroom filmstrips for Encyclopedia Britannica. That gig evolved into a freelance photography career. “ I’ve been a photographer ever since,” he says, shooting for magazines such as Life, Time, Esquire, and Smithsonian as well as ad agencies, design firms, and entertainment and corporate clients. In 1993, he began producing stock photography for photo agencies, including Corbis and Image Source. NOW 2 1 . Rob Lewine ’67 strums bass with his current band the Enzymes with the Active Ingredients. 2 . Lewine (center) from a 1969 album cover “In 1969 I jammed with Jimi Hendrix at a club in Hollywood. We played one tune for a full hour. It was like being transported to another galaxy.” This spring, Lewine is launching a new endeavor, Fotoliterate. He’s encouraging corporate marketers to abandon stock photography and instead have him shoot lifestyle imagery to promote their brands. He’s also making music again. In 2006, with former Blues Brothers keyboardist Murphy Dunne, he formed the Enzymes with the Active Ingredients—a rock band that meets weekly to rehearse and record original material. They perform around LA in small theaters, public libraries, art centers, and for special occasions. Lewine lights up when a recent listener compares the Enzymes to the veteran roots-rock band NRBQ. Says Lewine, “NRBQ looms large for us—they’re a great, quirky band. But the Enzymes are quirky too. Maybe even more so.” SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO4.indd 15 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 15 3/20/15 12:08 PM common good LIBERAL ARTS LIVES MAP QUEST MICHAEL BUEHLER ’89 Rare-map dealer 16 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO1.indd 16 Michael Buehler makes his living telling stories though rare maps. by Carrie Compton “WHAT I DID WAS kind of crazy,” says Michael Buehler ’89. Twelve years ago, Buehler and wife Anne Vaillant ’89 were expecting their second child when he decided to leave his management-consulting career to become a dealer in rare maps. “I jumped into this capital-intensive field where I had little expertise, no particular connections, and little savings,” says the owner of Boston Rare Maps. “I got very lucky when another dealer took me under his wing and gave me a lot of mentoring.” Buehler’s decision to morph from antique-map enthusiast to boutique rare-map dealer—one of only about 20 in the country—brought with it a steep professional learning curve. “You have to be a historian and a connoisseur. You have to understand marketing and the Internet. You have to know how to manage clients, colleagues, and conflicts of interest,” Buehler says of his work. “I’m very grateful for Swarthmore, because all I really had [in the beginning] was the ability to write, to assimilate and synthesize information, and tell a story,” says Buehler, an honors philosophy major. This winter, Buehler—whose interest in maps began in 1992 after spontaneously stopping in an old print shop—was savoring the most important acquisition of his career: a map of the 1782 Battle of Yorktown, Va., drawn by a major in the Continental artillery who was present at the event. “This map has it all if you’re a collector of printed Americana. It’s beautiful, it’s important, it’s by someone who was there, and it’s very rare,” he says enthusiastically. “I love maps because they reveal wonderful stories about ourselves and our history.” He adds, “For me, that’s what it’s all about.” SPRING 2015 3/18/15 12:43 PM SHERRI KIMMEL LIBERAL ARTS LIVES 1 2 1 . Hannah Kurtz ’13 ventures into the Phnom Penh bustle on her moto. 2 . Cambodia’s capital city is festively lit to ring in the new year. TAKING IT TO THE STREETS IN PHNOM PENH In Cambodia, Hannah Kurtz ’13 motors on as an international service worker by Sherri Kimmel Maneuvering through the blitzkrieg streets of Phnom Penh is not for the faint of heart. Motorbikes (“motos” in local parlance) swarm the streets like flies at a backyard barbecue. No traffic lights diminish the disarray. In late December Hannah Kurtz ’13 ventures out after dark for the first time on her red Vespa, a loaner from the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), in this city of 1.5 million people. Kurtz, a Mennonite from Somerset County, population 28,000, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, has been an MCC volunteer with a small stipend for living expenses since graduation. She spent a year in Jordan as a teaching assistant at a school for the blind. Recently, she began a three-year stint in Phnom Penh working with the Returnee Integration Support Center, which serves individuals who came to the United States as Cambodian refugees but were deported after being convicted of felonies. Many of her clients grew up as Americans, sport tattoos, and speak perfect English. Kurtz helps them readjust to life in Cambodia by helping them find jobs and housing. Earlier this day, she visited some who’d run afoul of Cambodian law and were in prison, providing them with toiletries and money for food and water, which the prison doesn’t supply. Kurtz also works with Women PeaceMakers on women’s rights and antiviolence issues. “I love this work,” Kurtz proclaims. “I’ve always wanted to work abroad.” Armed with the knowledge gained in her peace and conflict studies major, she feels well equipped to understand “how structures work.” After her MCC service, Kurtz anticipates graduate school, then a return to international humanitarian work. For now, she is stretching herself in many ways—not just by riding a moto but with her home-cooked curries and pad thai. “All I ever ate at Swarthmore was hamburgers,” she says with a laugh. “Donnie [in dining services] was my best friend.” HANNAH KURTZ ’13 International service worker SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 17 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 17 3/18/15 12:43 PM VISHU ’75 SWARTHMORE OLDEST BROTHER LIVES IN SAN FRANCISCO CEO, PROSETTA BIOSCIENCES INC. THE SCIENCE 18 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 18 3/18/15 12:43 PM SOLE SISTER YOUNGEST CHILD LIVES IN SEATTLE RESEARCHERS, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON OF SIBLINGS RON WURZER JAISRI ’79 SWARTHMORE 70021 BTextCO1.indd 19 Scientific siblings stick together to target lethal viruses by Dana Mackenzie ’79 JAIRAM ’80 SWARTHMORE SPRING 2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 19 3/18/15 12:43 PM W hen you meet Vishwanath “Vishu” Lingappa ’75, one of the first things you notice is his voice. In a blog for National Geographic, Carl Zimmer calls it a “radio-talk-show-host” voice. Other descriptions could equally well apply. It is a CEO’s voice and an orator’s voice. A simple interview with Lingappa has more dramatic pianissimos and booming crescendos than a Beethoven symphony. Most of all, though, it is a big brother’s voice, loud and encouraging and demanding at the same time. “I have a favorite story about Vishu,” says his brother, Jairam ’80. “As kids, when we were watching TV and got to a commercial break, he would say ‘Jai! I’ll bet you can’t make me a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and milk and bring it back upstairs in less than a minute!’ ” As the youngest sibling, Jai always looked up to his big brother. He would race downstairs to make the sandwich. He didn’t realize that as soon as he left the room, Vishu would stop counting and then start again when he heard Jairam approaching. “Sixty-one! Sixty-two!” Vishu would say as Jairam burst into the room. “You almost made it! Next time you’ll do it!” In a literal way, Vishu has always been there for Jairam and his sister Jaisri ’79. When Jaisri and Jairam were undergraduates at Swarthmore, he arranged for them to work 20 in his Ph.D. mentor’s laboratory at Rockefeller University during the summer. When Jairam decided to go to medical school after getting a doctorate in biophysics, he chose the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF), where Vishu was an attending physician, and Jaisri was a resident. The three Lingappa siblings lived in the same house, and their weekly discussions of cases from the New England Journal of Medicine were the stuff of local legend. In the competitive and individualistic world of academia, it is a rare thing for three siblings to stick together the way that the Lingappas have. Not only have they stayed close physically (Jairam and Jaisri now live in Seattle and teach at the University of Washington), they work in similar fields: Vishu and Jaisri focus on understanding how a host cell’s proteins get co-opted by viruses after infection, while Jairam uses human genetics to understand how viruses might enter the host in the first place. All have been involved with Vishu’s company, Prosetta Biosciences, either as founders or scientific advisers. Now 12 years old, the company is closing in on a new class of drugs that would be effective against multiple viral diseases. “If we are right that we have found the next generation of drug targets, it will change the face of the pharmaceutical industry,” Vishu says. He’s using his full-on CEO voice now— the one he used this winter to clinch the latest round of capital funding for his company. Viruses, beware! In the power of three Lingappas, you have found a worthy adversary. FROM GENEVA TO SRI LANKA … TO SWARTHMORE Vishu was born in 1954 to parents who had a remarkable story of their own. B.T. and Yamuna Lingappa had met in India, after she wrote and published a story about two star-crossed lovers searching for knowledge. B.T., a great believer in the power of education, admired the story and became her pen pal. Before long, Yamuna was traveling hundreds of miles to meet him, and eventually they married. In the India of the late 1940s, it was absolutely unheard-of—a marriage for love, between people from two different Brahmin subcastes. “There was a big hullaballoo in the extended families,” Jairam says. The Lingappas moved to the United States to pursue doctoral degrees. After graduate school at Purdue (where Vishu was born) and postdoc positions at the University of Michigan and Michigan State (where Jaisri and Jairam were born, respectively), they settled down in Worcester, Mass., to teach and do research at Holy Cross College. But their days of wandering were not quite over. In 1969 and 1970, their sabbatical year, B.T. and Yamuna spent 13 months traveling the globe with Vishu, Jaisri, and Jairam. It was a formative experience for the younger Lingappas. The first stop was Geneva, for five months. “My parents, in their brilliant and maverick way, decided not to send us to an Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 20 3/18/15 12:43 PM international school but to place us in a French-speaking local school,” Jaisri says—even though she and Jairam spoke not a word of French. “We had to learn very quickly.” The next stop was Turkey—and another eye-opening lesson outside the classroom. “Right next door to the hotel was a Turkish sweet shop,” Jairam says. “The owner lavished us with sweets, until the very last night, when he found out we were Americans, and he abruptly wouldn’t let us back into the store. It taught us how much politics impacts our lives, how the U.S. is regarded both positively and negatively abroad.” India came next. “We wandered all over the subcontinent, from Kashmir to Sri Lanka,” Vishu says. For the first time, the Lingappa children were confronted with the enormous economic disparity between their homeland and the homeland of their relatives. “I remember taking a rickshaw one time,” Jaisri says. “Back then, it was the equivalent of a taxi. But it showed you how human life was devalued, with people treated as almost beasts of burden. The person pulling our rickshaw did not look well. Mother asked him some questions and found out that he had a fever, and she helped him get medical care.” “It just didn’t seem right,” she says. “We had so many experiences like that, where it was clear that a small intervention could make a big difference. How powerless we felt … That experience made all three of us activists.” Of course, the ’60s were a time of social upheaval in America. In 1967, Vishu’s parents appointed him the family’s “WE WANDERED ALL OVER THE SUBCONTINENT, FROM KASHMIR TO SRI LANKA.” –VISHU LINGAPPA ’75 From left, Jairam, Jaisri, and Vishu enjoy a rare moment together 10 years ago at Mount Baker National Recreation Area in Washington state. representative to the historic march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. “That was when I first saw the name of Swarthmore,” Vishu says. “There was a small contingent from Harvard and a small contingent from Stanford, and then there was a very large contingent from Swarthmore.” Curious about this small college with an outsized antiwar movement, Vishu read up on Swarthmore’s Quaker heritage, and Swarthmore moved to the top of the list when he applied to colleges. Swarthmore was the second transformative experience of Vishu’s life. “Never again in my life did I have to work half as hard as I did at Swarthmore—and I’m a guy who still works 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” Vishu says. “I was miserable for the first two years, until I figured the place out,” he says. SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 21 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 21 3/19/15 7:53 AM FROM [PROFESSOR RICHARD] SCHULDENFREI, VISHU LEARNED TO CHALLENGE THE “NAÏVE REDUCTIONISM” THAT PERVADES MODERN SCIENCE— THE VIEW THAT THE WHOLE IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE SUM OF THE PARTS. “Then it became enormously fun and one of the most intellectually pleasant experiences I’ve ever had.” Three professors had a lifelong impact on him: philosophy professor Richie Schuldenfrei, Russian professor Thompson Bradley, and biology professor Bob Savage. From Schuldenfrei, Vishu learned to challenge the “naïve reductionism” that pervades modern science—the view that the whole is nothing more than the sum of the parts. Without the ability to see the bigger picture, he believes that he would not have discovered the new drug targets that Prosetta is working on. FOLLOWING A MORAL COMPASS From Bradley, Vishu says he learned a “moral compass,” and he learned to take a historical approach. In biology, this means 22 paying attention to evolution. “Anything that we discover in biology today, evolution has already figured out, and 100 times more,” he says. “It also means recognizing, as scientists rarely do, that history doesn’t end with us,” Vishu adds. In the early 2000s, scientists were proclaiming the human genome as the be all and end all of medical knowledge. In fact, as they soon discovered, the genome is only the beginning. You can’t understand anything in a cell without proteomics—the study of how proteins change their shapes to perform various tasks. And Lingappa has gone a step beyond that. While most biologists focus on individual proteins, he studies groups of proteins. Where most scientists try to simplify, Vishu complicates, not for the sake of complication but to follow the golden thread laid down by evolution. After Swarthmore, Vishu joined the laboratory of a future Nobel Prize-winner, Günter Blobel, at Rockefeller University. There he learned Blobel’s technique of “functional reconstitution of protein biogenesis in cell-free systems.” That mouthful of words means simply recreating in a test tube the hard-to-decipher events that occur in the crowded interior of a cell. In a living cell, many processes happen too fast for scientists to see, as if powered by jet fuel. The same reactions happen more slowly and inefficiently in a test tube, as if they are powered by a sputtering kerosene lamp. This inefficiency is actually a boon for the researcher. The ability to slow reactions down and observe the intermediate steps helped Vishu discover the multiprotein complexes that lie at the heart of his current research. LISTENING TO LITTLE SISTER Until the 1990s, the main influences on Vishu’s career were older people: his parents, Schuldenfrei, Bradley, Savage, Blobel. But there was one more piece that still had yet to fall into place, and it came from his younger sister. Jaisri had followed in Vishu’s footsteps to a great degree— going to Swarthmore, taking classes with Schuldenfrei, Bradley, and Savage, working in Blobel’s lab next to Vishu, and learning the power of cell-free systems. But she didn’t plan to follow him into cell biology. She intended to go into neurology instead. Then, in 1987, she had a life-changing experience of her own. She moved to San Francisco and found herself at the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. “I spent the first half of my internship giving out death sentences,” she says. That’s what AIDS was back then: a 100 percent fatal disease for which no treatment was known. But halfway through her internship, a new drug came out—AZT— and changed the whole equation. “Suddenly people were surviving,” she says. “There was hope and a sense of what science can do.” Her plans went out the window. Now Jaisri wanted to understand how HIV worked. She zeroed in on one particular part of HIV’s life cycle. Like Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 22 3/18/15 12:43 PM RON WURZER any virus, HIV consists of RNA (its genetic code) enclosed within a protective shell, called a capsid. The capsid is assembled from a single type of protein—2,000 or so bricks assembled into a sphere. But what does the assembling? According to conventional wisdom, backed up by experiments, the process is spontaneous: Get enough copies of the protein and the RNA together, and the virus will self-assemble with no additional input of energy. To Jaisri, this idea of spontaneous generation didn’t sound right. Maybe it could happen in the artificial setting of a recombinant DNA lab but not in a real cell. The inside of a cell is a fantastically busy place—think of Grand Central Station or the streets of Mumbai. How can 2,000 copies of a protein find one another within this chaotic environment? Surely, she thought, they needed help from the cell itself. To prove it, she showed that a reduction in the cell’s fuel supply (called ATP) would slow the process down. The experiments used cell-free systems, where the reactions were already slow in the first place. Her apprenticeship in Vishu’s lab was already paying dividends. Vishu Lingappa’s research on protein complexes is based on the idea of recreating (and slowing down) cellular reactions inside a test tube. These “cell-free systems” have enabled him to understand what viruses do inside a cell—and how to stop them. At first no one believed her idea that capsid assembly in the cell was not spontaneous, except Vishu. Even Jaisri wasn’t entirely sure. The first few experiments gave negative or everso-slightly positive results, the kind that leave a researcher wondering if she is chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. But Vishu was always 10 steps ahead of her. “I could bring him data, and he would make me see it in a completely different way,” she says. She learned that negative data doesn’t necessarily mean the effect isn’t there: You just have to ask the question a different way. It was the same lesson she had learned at Swarthmore, from Savage’s biology courses. Even after she had established to her satisfaction that the virus tapped into the cell’s fuel supply, “she had a really hard time publishing it,” says Mike McCune, a professor at UCSF who is on Prosetta’s board of directors. “Now it’s accepted, but at the time, some of the giants of the field didn’t accept it.” One reason Vishu welcomed her idea was that it fit right into his own hypotheses, which are still controversial. He introduced a concept known as “protein bioconformatics,” which says that the same protein can do different things, depending on what shape it assumes. An important corollary of this idea is that what are currently called “misfolded” proteins may actually represent (or have represented in the evolutionary past) alternatively folded forms with different functions. In the Lingappa model as applied to virology, the virus pulls together what Vishu calls “assembly machines” and what the rest of the profession calls “RNA granules.” These are complex sets of proteins that the cell temporarily uses to build its own structures. Think of auto parts lying around a garage, which the cell puts together to make an engine. Now think of the process gone horribly awry. The virus enters the cell and combines these parts in a way they were never intended to go. It turns the cell’s assembly machine into a misshapen creature— call it a Transformer—that is, nevertheless, very good at doing what the virus wants it to (finding viral proteins and chaperoning them into a capsid). When the job is finished, the virus releases the pieces of the Transformer back into the cell, and nobody can tell the Transformer was ever there. In the slowed-down world of the test tube, the Lingappas have seen this process. They have seen the partially assembled capsids and the Transformers and shown that they consume the cell’s fuel. FINDING THE LATCHKEY Why does it matter that capsid assembly is energy-dependent and chaperone-dependent? It means that if you can create a drug that latches on to the Transformer during the brief period when it is active, you can stop the viral assembly in its tracks. The drug won’t have side effects on healthy cells, because when the assembly machines are in their normal SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 23 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 23 3/18/15 12:43 PM Central Hypotheses of Prosetta’s Work Virus Viral Proteins 1. Viral proteins recruit host proteins. 1 Viral capsid assembly is facilitated by critical viral-host interactions. 2. Host protein complex is converted to “Transformer.” CELL ENERGY INPUT 5. Capsid complete and host proteins discarded, the virus is ready to escape. 4. “Transformer” assembles viral proteins into capsid. The virus enters the cell and combines these parts in a way never intended. It turns the cell’s assembly machine into a misshapen creature— call it a Transformer—that is, nevertheless, very good at doing what the virus wants it to do (finding viral proteins and chaperoning them into a capsid). When the job is finished, the virus releases pieces of the Transformer back into the cell, and nobody can tell the Transformer was ever there. CELL MEMBRANE 3. “Transformer” moves to cell membrane. 2 Targeting these viral-host interactions will yield inhibitors of virus assembly. Why does it matter that capsid assembly is energy-dependent and chaperone-dependent? It means that if you can create a drug that latches on to the Transformer during the brief period when it is active, you can stop the viral assembly in its tracks. The drug won’t have side effects on healthy cells, because when the assembly machines are in their normal (non-Transformer) shape the drug won’t bind to them. 24 1. Anti-viral does not bind to host proteins in normal configuration. 2. Anti-viral binds to and disables “Transformer.” 3. Viral proteins fail to assemble into a capsid. Anti-viral Molecule Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 24 3/19/15 7:56 AM (non-Transformer) shape the drug won’t bind to them. And the virus won’t develop resistance because, unlike every other antiviral drug ever developed, it doesn’t attack the virus. It only latches onto the cell’s own proteins and prevents their misuse by the virus. The virus simply can’t use the cell’s machinery for its own nefarious ends—like a bank robber who can’t find a teller. Prosetta is now in hot pursuit of drugs that will bind to the aberrant assembly machines. It’s not easy, because they are so fragile, but “Vishu has figured out how to isolate them in a test tube so that they’re stable and druggable,” McCune says. Last year Vishu and several colleagues (including Vishu’s daughter Usha and Jaisri) published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about a drug active against the rabies virus that he hopes to have ready for clinical trials in about a year. This wasn’t headline news, because rabies vaccines already exist and are very effective. But maybe it should have been headline news. Rabies is the most lethal virus known, with essentially a 100 percent fatality rate. ONE DRUG CAN TARGET ALL FLAVIVIRUSES—A FAMILY THAT INCLUDES DENGUE, YELLOW FEVER, WEST NILE VIRUS, AND HEPATITIS C. “It makes Ebola look like a walk in the park,” Vishu says. Though it may seem like a thing of the past, rabies kills more than 50,000 people a year—and probably a lot more, because most of the victims live in poor societies with inadequate disease-reporting systems. Prosetta’s drug could be the first one to treat rabies after symptoms start. But the rabies drug is only the beginning. Perhaps the most exciting feature of the new drugs is their versatility. For example, one drug can target all flaviviruses—a family that includes dengue, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and hepatitis C. Contrast this with the limited repertoire of conventional antivirals such as Tamiflu, and you begin to understand why Vishu expects to reshape the pharmaceuticals business. It’s the lesson of evolution again. Viruses can easily make small changes to develop resistance to a drug. But mutating into a whole new viral family is highly implausible. “I’m not expecting them to develop resistance in my lifetime or my kids’ lifetimes,” he says. SCIENCE AND SERVICE When Vishu told his colleagues in 2002 that he was resigning his academic position at UCSF to start a company, they were incredulous. But it was important for him not to have a fallback position. “I was prepared to put it all at risk,” he says. And it turned out to be a smart move. “Savvy investors realize they’re investing in a person,” he explains. “If that person is willing to put it all on the line, they’re either crazy, or they’re a good bet. The big question for the investor is whether they’re crazy or not.” So far Vishu has done a pretty good job of convincing people that he’s sane. Prosetta’s seed money has come from wealthy donors, and this year for the first time he took his case to institutional investors. That’s a sign that the financial community is starting to see the company as a less speculative venture. Yet the money is only the means, not the end. Deep in his heart, the idealist endures. In the early 1980s, Vishu wrote, “Science in a capitalist society is a reflection of capitalism itself—shackled by the same fetters on creativity and justice that burden society as a whole.” He still stands by those words. He dreams of equality and justice, especially for those who don’t have access to health care. He hasn’t forgotten the rickshaw driver in India or the 50,000 victims of rabies. But his methods have changed. He has started a nonprofit foundation and funded it with Prosetta stock. Someday, if Prosetta has been successful, he plans to dedicate those resources to combat the inequities in our society, starting with health care. “The whole Lingappa family has always been committed to two passions, science and service,” says McCune. “That’s why I wanted to join Prosetta. It’s so different from the other biotechnology companies. Vishu isn’t interested in making money. He is interested in making people healthy.” SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 25 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 25 3/18/15 12:43 PM “BEING IN HONORS WAS LIKE HAVING TO LEARN ANOTHER FOREIGN LANGUAGE” “The need to write and present to peers on a weekly basis and tackle complicated issues in a finite period of time is very relevant for life in public health. —Anne Schuchat ’80, H’95 —PATRICIA PARK ’03 “You had to be engaged, whether you were presenting or not.” “There’s no anonymity in a seminar, no hiding in the back row. You’re required to be up. And you want to be.” —Alberto Mora ’74 —Antoinette Sayeh ’79 “The ability to work in groups, present my own ideas and listen to the ideas of others, then compile those ideas into a useful whole, was definitely enhanced by being in the Honors Program.” —Robert Scher ’89 “It was really satisfying to go through the process of understanding new ideas and then presenting them in my own words.” LAURENCE KESTERSON —Walter Luh ’99 26 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO2.indd 26 SPRING 2015 3/19/15 7:58 AM WOULD YOU DO THE HONORS? Absolutely Graduates of Swarthmore’s distinctive program employ skills in their daily lives by Carol Brévart-Demm 70021 BTextCO1.indd 27 3/18/15 12:43 PM most honors candidates, once engaged in discussion with their examiners, find the oral exams uplifting. Testing their knowledge with experts and receiving positive feedback, they leave the exam room jubilant at having conversed on equal footing with a distinguished scholar. Scholarship displayed by Swarthmore honors students is often compared to that of graduate students at other schools. By graduation, many have authored academic publications and/or presented at conferences. Craig Williamson, Alfred H. and Peggi Bloom Professor of English Literature and Honors Program Coordinator, says, “When I talk to honors alumni, they say that doing honors is the most important thing they ever did in terms of their work. And honors graduates are not just academics. They represent all walks of life.” HONORS STUDENTS are oblivious to time when they’re in the classroom. Three-hour evening seminars extend into discussions lasting until after midnight. When a professor stands to announce the end of class, students cluster like bees around a honey pot, protesting and pleading: “But we’re not done yet!” “Just one more question?” Professors leave only when each student is satisfied. Two members of the College faculty have experienced honors as both students and teachers. Richard Valelly ’75, Claude C. Smith ’14 Professor of Political Science, says, “The idea that intellectual life is not only intense but also pleasurable was the principle I took away from honors. The Honors Program is the efficient secret that underlies the commitment to academic excellence at Swarthmore. Even for those not in honors, it regulates the entire life of the College in a way that’s not heavy-handed but supports a serious commitment to thinking, talking, and writing about ideas.” For Professor of Educational Studies Lisa Smulyan ’79, “Honors was a really appropriate, supportive way of ‘doing Swarthmore’ for me. I encourage students to take a seminar, if possible, for the powerful learning experience it provides, engaging deeply with a group of people on a particular topic, then doing an oral exam and feeling like they’re part of a larger intellectual community.” 28 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO1.indd 28 Patricia Park ’03, an English literature major with a psychology minor, noting her “immigrant, blue-collar background,” says, “Being in honors was like having to learn another foreign language. That posed a problem for me. I Walter Luh ’99 is the founder of Corona Labs, which enables everyone to build apps for smartphones and other devices 10 times faster. It was recently acquired by Fuse Powered. Luh says that reading James Michener ’29’s autobiography influenced his decision to pursue an honors physics major with a minor in Asian studies. He especially enjoyed the seminars. “It was really satisfying to go through the process of understanding new ideas and then presenting them in my own words.” Ironically, Luh, says, it was the Asian studies component—“so different from the hard sciences”—that was difficult. LAURENCE KESTERSON The Honors Program, based on the Oxford tutorial system, was initiated in 1922 by President Frank Aydelotte. One of the oldest in the country, about 25 percent of juniors enroll in the program. In seminars, all must participate in erudite discussions based on papers they’ve written and shared with the group. In some disciplines, students can choose to write a thesis instead of one seminar. In others, seminars are replaced by pairs of related courses or a performance or artistic presentation. Part of the final examining procedure for all candidates includes a 45-minute oral exam on their learning with outside experts, often alumni. The program is rigorous, the time preceding orals nerve-wracking. Yet Here is a sampling of some of Swarthmore’s diverse honors graduates: had to step up my game and fast. “Swarthmore and the honors seminars threw me into the rarified world of academia. I learned how to engage academically. It was great primer for grad school and good preparation for teaching college students.” Now a writer whose work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Korea Times, Park has taught writing at Queens College in New York City, Boston College, and Ewha Woman’s University. Her debut novel Re Jane, a Korean-American take on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, will be published by Penguin this spring. Previous page: Stefan Tuomanen Masure ’15 presents for the honors seminar of Amy Graves, professor of physics. Sophie Diamond ’15 (above) listens as Assistant Professor of English Literature Rachel Sagner Buurma ’99 makes a point in her seminar. SPRING 2015 3/18/15 12:43 PM “My seminar on Greater China was in the political science department. The sheer amount of reading was probably the most stressful part.” Drawing parallels between his career and doing honors, Luh says that the same passion for excellence that inspired the Swarthmore slogan “anywhere else it would have been an A” is equally prevalent among those seeking success in the startup business. “The Honors Program really gave me the ability—skills, discipline, and confidence—to make it happen.” Anne Schuchat ’80, H’95, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Center for Disease Control, was an honors philosophy major and honors biology minor. Deciding to participate in the Honors Program was easy, she says. “The size of seminars and the opportunity to focus intensively on issues together with classmates and professors seemed to be the essence of the Swarthmore experience,” Schuchat says. “My cohort of students majoring or minoring in philosophy was stimulating, and our professors were inspiring.” Philosophy professor Hugh Lacey’s seminar on The History and Philosophy of Science in particular “provided insights that I return to frequently,” Schuchat says. “The need to write and present to peers on a weekly basis and tackle complicated issues in a finite period of time is very relevant for life in public health. Whether I’m considering the values that enter into parents’ considerations on having their children vaccinated or managing the emergency response to pandemic influenza or the Ebola epidemic in the context of resource constraints, the experience of tackling life’s big questions in the honors philosophy program is helpful.” Robert Scher ’89, first assistant secretary of defense for strategies, plans, and capabilities, says that the Honors Program is one of the things that lured him to Swarthmore. The history major got an early chance to see the seminar format in a special first-year course and found it a useful and worthwhile approach to education. “I was hooked from the beginning,” he says. “When I talk to honors alumni, they say that doing honors is the most important thing they ever did in terms of their work. And honors graduates are not just academics. They represent all walks of life.” —Craig Williamson “Honors was a really appropriate, supportive way of ‘doing Swarthmore’ for me. —Lisa Smulyan ’79 “The cooperative learning environment was tremendously helpful,” Scher says. “Thanks to the connections with my professors, I learned how to learn, take tests, interpret and incorporate information, and articulate what I’d learned in a way that made sense.” Scher believes that doing honors contributed to his career success. The professors serving as discussion facilitators rather than information distributors were especially influential. “Most of my work involves some kind of collective search for an answer or a process, and the ability to work in groups, present my own ideas and listen to the ideas of others, then compile those ideas into a useful whole, was definitely enhanced by being in the Honors Program.” Katherine “KC” Cushman ’12, an honors biology major, honors engineering minor, and course math minor chose honors when she switched majors from engineering to biology early in her junior year. “When I changed my major, I was very interested in using tools from engineering and math to explore biological questions,” Cushman says. “When it was time to review for honors exams, it was neat to see how the same principles of fluids were used in biomechanics, water quality, and my senior thesis investigating plasticity and mechanics of barnacle feeding behavior.” Cushman says that the Honors Program helped define her career path. “Although my interest in math and science began before Swarthmore, the first time I seriously considered pursuing a Ph.D. was during my senior thesis research, working with Professor of Biology Rachel Merz and participating in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates Program.” Cushman followed graduation from Swarthmore with a two-year internship at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama before embarking on a doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University. Leonard Isamu Nakamura ’69, a vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, majored SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 29 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 29 3/19/15 8:01 AM in honors economics, math, and political science at a time when eight honors exams were required. He even took two honors seminars in psychology for course credit. “I really liked seminars,” he says, “and learned as much from fellow students as from the faculty, who were, for the most part, quite amazing.” Nakamura has fond memories of the late Professor of Economics Bernard “Bernie” Saffran and his seminar on economic theory—“for me an enduring model of great teaching,” he says. “And the econometrics paper I wrote for a seminar on linear programing and econometrics, taught by Bernie and mathematics professor Eugene Klotz, helped me get my job as a research assistant and upped my ability to connect economic theory to the real world.” Being in college at a time of student protest, Nakamura says, created an intellectual ferment that “deepened our considerations of the issues we studied, adding further value to the honors courses I took.” “I mentally reference honors a lot in my daily life. ... I learned skills after college that I use daily, thanks to the honors approach to learning.” —Dan Hammer ’07 Antoinette Sayeh ’79, former minister of finance to Liberia, is director of the International Monetary Fund’s African Department in Washington, D.C. An economics major and history minor, Sayeh chose honors “because it promised to allow me to delve deeply into issues, in small groups, with lots of individual attention from professors,” she says. “It was the in-depth research, then presenting it to my classmates and getting feedback from them that I enjoyed most,” she adds. “You had to be very engaged, whether you were presenting or not,” she says. “I was shy and found it difficult sometimes to express my thoughts, but the small group offered the level of comfort I needed to speak up. In honors, I gained a degree of confidence that still helps me today.” Dan Hammer ’07 is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley and a 2014 Presidential Innovation Fellow who is helping NASA design its open-data policy. Though expecting honors economics to be stressful, he found his experience to be “consistent with the values I care most about: thoughtfulness, caring, and empathy with both the subjects and people you engage with intellectually.” The program helped Hammer after college: “I mentally reference honors a lot in my daily life. I’m a programmer now, and I didn’t study computer science ever. I learned skills after college that I use daily, thanks to the honors approach to learning.” Mara Hvistendahl ’02 is a journalist and the author of Unnatural Selection, a 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Before Swarthmore, she studied Chinese and Spanish. “An honors major in comparative literature in English and Spanish, with a Chinese minor, offered me the opportunity to go beyond the basic language classes I would have taken otherwise,” she says. Hvistendahl, who opted to write a thesis, says, “The experience of spending long hours reading and compiling a thesis prepared me for writing books. Regular meetings with professors readied me for interviewing experts.” Thanks to her honors experience, Hvistendahl says, she enjoys lasting relationships with her Chinese professors, even though Chinese was a chore because of “all the rote memorization involved in learning the language.” Now, she lives in Shanghai and speaks Chinese daily. Dan Perelstein ’09, a composer and award-winning sound designer in the Philadelphia theater arena, was an “The Honors Program is the efficient secret that underlies the commitment to academic excellence at Swarthmore ... It regulates the entire life of the College in a way that’s not heavy-handed but supports a serious commitment to thinking, talking, and writing about ideas.” —Richard Vallely ’75 30 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 BTextCO4.indd 30 SPRING 2015 3/20/15 7:39 AM LAURENCE KESTERSON Centennial Professor of Economics Philip Jefferson (left) leads his honors students though a seminar in mid-February. honors major in music and honors minor/course major in engineering at a time when neither department had many honors candidates. “My honors exams became an avenue for the College to find world-class experts in my very specific fields to come and work with me, examine my knowledge base, and push me further down the road,” he says. Since he was seeking a job in a field without a clear career ladder to climb, Perelstein says, “I had to be able to paint a picture of myself as an expert in my line of work. The Honors Program taught me to feel secure in viewing myself that way.” terms of history, it teaches you to think less like a consumer of history and more like somebody who might produce history at some point.” Distributing papers to all seminar participants and responding to their comments during scholarly discussions was challenging, “but I loved it,” she says. Zahra was inspired not only to continue to pursue history research but to emulate the honors teaching format. “Now I have this vision of what a really great undergraduate or even graduate course should be like,” she says. “I haven’t quite been able to live up to it, but it’s an ideal.” comprehensive study of the subjects, often held in professors’ homes. “The intensity of inquiry and discussion, the academic rigor, and frequent writing assignments taught me lessons that were qualitatively different from the traditional classroom experience,” Mora adds. “There’s no anonymity in a seminar, no hiding in the back row. You’re required to be up. And you want to be. I went through three years of law school thinking that the whole lecture-hall format had nothing to do with education. The Swarthmore honors seminars ruined me for any other kind of educational format.” Tara Zahra ’98, a professor of East European history at the University of Chicago, award-winning author, and 2014 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, double majored in history honors and economics course. “Honors students get a graduateschool experience as an undergrad,” she says. “You have to take responsibility and advance your own learning. In Alberto Mora ’74, H’08, senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, is an attorney and former general counsel to the Navy who in the early 1990s led an effort to oppose coercive interrogation methods used on detainees at Guantánamo Bay. An English literature major who also enjoyed political science courses, Mora says he was “delighted by the small seminars demanding Although the preceding array of alumni found honors stressful—especially before orals—when asked if they’d do it again, the answer was a nearly unanimous “Absolutely!” Park, the lone standout, says, chuckling, that she still mourns the Paces parties she missed due to honors preparations. + LISTEN TO TALKS by Sayeh, Hvistendahl, and Mora: bulletin.swarthmore.edu. SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO4.indd 31 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 31 3/20/15 7:40 AM 32 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021_pp32-35CO4.indd 32 3/20/15 12:18 PM IF YOU’VE READ ZOLA, you may have seen the term charrette in his 1885 novel L’Oeuvre/The Masterpiece. To the French author, a charrette was a handcart that 60 frantic architecture students collaboratively commandeered in a mad rush to transport design projects to an evaluation site. To the 100 Swarthmoreans who collaboratively attended a two-day sustainability charrette, the term meant “a thoughtful and deliberate opportunity to evaluate proposals, compare priorities, and eventually coordinate aspirations with budgetary realities,” as Interim President Constance Cain Hungerford noted in her introduction to the February event. Hungerford, who has chosen sustainability as her presidential priority, stressed the urgency of the issue. Unlike Zola’s students, “Our deadline is not overnight or in a week, but our climate-change clock is ticking inexorably; time is most certainly running out on our foolish and unsustainable misuse of resources, such as our willful reliance on fossil fuels and our squandering of precious water.” The plan to host a think tank on sustainability began to emerge this fall after Hungerford invited members of the College community to send her big, but concrete ideas about how the College could be a better steward of the Earth. As she noted in her call to action, Swarthmore had made commendable progress toward creating a more sustainable campus, with energy-saving steps taken in recent years to meet the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2035 and the February 2014 hiring of the first sustainability director, Laura Cacho (for more on Cacho, see Page 76). By the Oct. 10 submission deadline 160 ideas had arrived. Cacho grouped them into nine categories: curriculum, building energy and infrastructure, transportation, waste, the natural environment, water, food, advocacy for local College’s first sustainability charrette provides framework for future action community efforts, and finance. by Sherri Kimmel The idea for a charrette came from Vice President for Facilities and Capital Projects Stu Hain, who was familiar with building-design brainstorming sessions. He proposed that the College host a charrette— bringing together diverse voices to evaluate the 160 ideas and consider new ones. Board funding ensured that a world-class slate of experts on green building practices, town/gown sustainability partnerships, and green investing could convene in the Scheuer room of Kohlberg Hall to offer provocative ideas and spark spirited LAURENCE KESTERSON ALIGNING ASPIRATIONS 70021_pp32-35.indd 33 SPRING 2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 33 3/18/15 3:02 PM particular proposals and attach pricing to them, then bring some of the more representative proposals back to the community for wider discussion.” She expects proposals will proceed to the Board for consideration in May and hopes that some projects will begin this summer. “There are lots of things we’ve done already that are really impressive— including migrating from a central boiler to localized boilers and getting away from burning oil, changing from incandescent lighting, and installing several green roofs,” she said. “The charrette was positive and exciting, a Swarthmore seminarlike kind of thing, in the context of which we could talk about what we’ve been doing for the past 10 years, really because of the leadership of the facilities staff,” Hungerford added. “Now there is an appreciation of the urgency and the need to move ahead.” + FOR MORE ON THE COLLEGE’S RECENT SUSTAINABILITY EFFORTS, go to LAURENCE KESTERSON www.swarthmore.edu/sustainability. To learn about prior initiatives, see bit.ly/Greater Green. From top, clockwise: “We should integrate sustainability in all we do,” said charrette speaker David Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and special assistant to the president of Oberlin College. “If not divestment, then be an activist-owner,” advised charrette speaker Hunter Lovins, who was named a “green business icon” by Newsweek. John Fullerton, founder and president of Capital Institute, is a proponent of “impact investment.” conversation about the College’s aspirational goals for sustainability. In organizing the event, Cacho ensured that a wide range of faculty, staff, and students—plus several alumni, Swarthmore borough officials, and Philadelphia community partners —were invited. Board Chair Gil Kemp ’72, Manager David Singleton ’68, and Hungerford attended throughout. “The charrette aligned emotions and the interests of a wide section of the Swarthmore community,” confirmed Massey Burke ’00, a natural architecture practitioner from California and a charrette small-group facilitator. Another discussion concerned divestment. John Fullerton, a former 34 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021_pp32-35CO4.indd 34 JPMorgan managing director who now focuses on green investment, encouraged the College to think creatively about its investments, lest the divestment debate deflect attention from its sustainability efforts. An idea that appealed to faculty and students was creation of a Center for Just Sustainability that could be a nexus for interdisciplinary programs related to social justice and environmental studies. Proposals that addressed renewable energy and energy efficiency found traction amid the 160 ideas and at the charrette, according to Cacho. The first step this spring, said Hungerford, will be “to research “The charrette aligned emotions and the interests of a wide section of the Swarthmore community,” —MASSEY BURKE ’00 SPRING 2015 3/20/15 12:20 PM Q+A Q+A Supporting the College’s Mission make 40 percent in one year and then give twothirds back in a bad year. We are always looking, but we are steadfast and have been with a number of firms 20 years or more. PETER ARKLE How does the College generate revenue? Tuition is one answer. Support from grants and donations contribute approximately 5 percent to each year’s operating budget, but the other main source of income—and the most variable, given its source— comes from revenue generated by the endowment. Swarthmore’s Finance Office works with 80 investment managers to manage its $1.9 billion endowment. Their work is overseen by the Board of Managers’ Investment Committee (IC). To better understand the endowment and the Board’s decision two years ago not to divest from fossil fuel companies, Alisa Giardinelli, director of web and media communications, spoke with Chris Niemczewski ’74, who joined the IC in 1998 and has chaired it since 2009. Explain the significance of the endowment. If you go back 20 years, it contributed about $20 million a year, or a third of the College’s annual operating expenses. This year, the endowment’s contribution is about $66 million. Next year, when we increase spending on financial aid, it will be $76 million, just over 50 percent. So it’s pretty important. Why is it successful? We had good performance relative to our peers from the 1950s until the 1980s, principally because Tom McCabe [Class of 1915] got us to put a lot of money in common stocks when other people had most of their money in bonds. He was ahead of his time. From the 1980s until about 15 years ago, we performed less well. It took us a while to understand new entities such as hedge funds and private equity funds, so we underperformed. Then in about 2002 Parker Hall [’55] devised a new plan that involved investing in those new categories. We followed his advice, which drives how the endowment is invested to this day. Mark Amstutz was also hired as chief investment officer and during the last 10 years has brought us up to par with our Ivy League peers and equal to the best of the Ivy League for the last five. I think the College should throw him a parade. Who are our investment managers? We’ve been able to hire some of the smartest people in the business. We obviously care about their performance over time. We don’t want people who will Tell me about the Board’s divestment decision. Two years ago, the Board had two concerns that made it hold back from divestment. Many of us, including me, believed there would be a cost to the endowment if we did. Second, there were some questions about the efficacy of divestment as a strategy. The general sense was that divestment would convince those who are already convinced about the dangers of climate change and fail to impress those who are in the fossil fuel business. How much would it cost? Our best guess is that it would be in the millions, perhaps between $10 to 20 million per year. That’s based on the past performance of our current managers. Why would there be a cost? A few of our investment firms manage separate (not commingled) accounts for the College, which is what my firm does. In those cases, it is easy for a client to come to the investment manager with specific needs or requests, such as for a fossil-free portfolio (although my firm does not have any investments in fossil fuels). Most of the College’s endowment is in commingled accounts— our funds are mixed with the funds of our investment managers’ clients. For those managers to divest, they’d have to divest for all their clients. Or we would have to sever ties with them. We assume that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace our current investment managers with ones of similar quality—if we insist their funds be fossil fuel free. Now, one could assume that one would find very talented managers with fossil fuel alternatives. I don’t believe that option exists today, though I expect that over the next several years, more of those alternatives will become available. The endowment is large, but it’s finite. If returns are lower now and you spend the same amount of money, you are reducing the amount of money available in the future to people working here or students coming here. When Swarthmore divested from companies doing business in South Africa (and I agree with that decision), the College tried to replace managers with ones of similar quality, but there was a performance cost. Among other things, students and families were offered less financial aid because of that decision. If we did this again, it would likely have the same effect. It’s not as simple as, “if we did this, it would be right,” because you have competing goals. don’t know how you convince people who care about other issues that this is the only issue that matters. Should the endowment reflect College values? I’m totally on board with those who say, “Climate change is a very important issue, and I’m not going to invest my money in fossil fuel stocks.” But it gets more complicated when you say, “I believe climate change is an issue, and the implication of what I believe is for Swarthmore to give less financial aid.” I also What do you hope happens next? I wish we could all get on the same page so we could move ahead. This is a really important issue, and we’re walking into a corner on whether we should own stock in Exxon, which will not affect Exxon at all. But there are things to do. The complexity here is just not whether you make the gesture. It’s, “Who pays for your gesture?” A lot of ideas came out of the Sustainability Charette (see adjacent story). What else is the IC exploring? New energy technologies are a difficult area in which to make money, but we look at everything that comes down the pike. I continue to believe that the simplest way is to shift the College’s carbon neutral goal from 2035 to 2025. It would take a lot of money, but that’s something we can control. I’m also in favor of the College setting up a separate investment vehicle for people who want to contribute but who don’t want to invest in fossil fuels. We are researching that as part of our preparation for the May Board meeting. Why do you do this work for the College? I had a full scholarship at Swarthmore. It changed my life. It taught me to think, challenged me, and showed me it was OK to work hard at being smart. I started as an economics major but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so I became an art history major. SPRING 2015 70021_pp32-35.indd 35 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 35 3/18/15 3:02 PM “How delightful and fascinating to sit in someone else’s classroom and see how people do things similarly and differently,” says Betsy Bolton (left), who is paired with Tomoko Sakomura, associate professor of art history and department chair. 70021 BTextCO4.indd 36 3/20/15 12:22 PM ‘ HEY, COACH, WHAT DID YOU THINK OF MY CLASS?’ Professors keep working on their game through a peer-coaching program LAURENCE KESTERSON by Carol Brévart-Demm COACHING IS typically associated with activities such as sports, singing, or SAT prep. Yet, two years ago, after reading physician Atul Gawande’s 2011 essay “Personal Best” in The New Yorker, about the lack of mentors for doctors, Kenneth Sharpe, working on a Templeton Foundation project on Institutional Design for Wisdom, had a question: “Why shouldn’t faculty members be coached—even coach one another?” The seed for the Faculty Teaching Seminar was sown. Sharpe, the William R. Keenan Jr. Professor of Political Science, pitched the idea to Professor of History Timothy Burke, then recruited Professor of English Literature Betsy Bolton. “Swarthmore’s a liberal arts institution. Teaching is one of our trademark strengths. Shouldn’t we pay more reflective attention to pedagogy?” says Sharpe. “The only way to improve at a practice like teaching is by having people practicing with you or watching you practice. ” Supported by the Aydelotte Foundation for the Liberal Arts, 12 faculty members from disparate disciplines and with 70021 BTextCO2.indd 37 varying levels of experience, including softball coach Renee Clarke, paired up. They visit one another’s classes through the year: observing, being observed, coaching, and being coached. Every three weeks, they gather for three-hour sessions to share experiences. Bolton and her partner, Tomoko Sakomura, associate professor of art history, noted a mutual tendency to self-critique. “Tomoko is trying to stop me from apologizing in my classes,” Bolton says. “Some of the conversations that resulted from watching her seminar have informed my thinking on how to handle my seminars this spring.” Bolton in turn role-played with Sakomura on the usefulness of reminding students of the steps of visual description and analysis. Although Clark and Visiting Associate Professor of Educational Studies Elaine Allard have different aims, Clark says, “Faculty share the same kinds of issues as coaches.” During the softball season, she sought feedback from Allard on her student-coach interactions—individually and with the team: whether she favors certain athletes, whether her practice is well organized, and whether she coached it well. “What’s admirable about Renee’s teaching is the atmosphere of overall mutual respect and support she fosters,” Allard says. “I’m working on creating a similar kind of classroom space, where students feel comfortable taking intellectual risks, supported by their professor and classmates.” “Elaine has a phenomenal lesson plan that keeps the students involved for long periods,” Clark says. “We also talked about her wrapping up the class and not leaving it open-ended.” Professor of Spanish Maria Luisa Guardiola, who is teaching Introduction to Spanish Literature, teamed with Burke, who is teaching A Cultural History of Digital Media. “It’s interesting and incredibly beautiful to me how Maria structures different kinds of pedagogical exercises, different ways of connecting to and addressing different students, moving in and out of engaging, for example, a student whose Spanish is a little weak and students who are fluent,” Burke says. “It’s good to reflect on your own teaching and compare yourself to someone going through the same experience,” Guardiola says. “Our topics and fields are different, but the struggles are similar.” Sharpe hopes to make the seminar permanent, with all faculty members eventually participating. “Teaching each other to reflect on our teaching should be part of what we do,” says Sharpe, “and the three-hour meetings allow us to discuss very concrete exercises aimed at improving our practice. Even when we’re done talking, people don’t want to leave. It’s like there’s a buzz.” SPRING 2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 37 3/19/15 8:15 AM GREAT LAKES GLADIATOR Carl Levin ’56, H’80, retires from the U.S. Senate but plans to continue his activist role—from Detroit 38 Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO1.indd 38 JAMES KEGLEY by Sherri Kimmel 3/18/15 12:43 PM 70021 BTextCO1.indd 39 3/18/15 12:43 PM T AX EVADERS, BEWARE. They may have smiled two years ago when they heard the good news. Their nemesis, relentless Carl Levin ’56, the senior senator from that old rustbelt state, had announced his retirement. For only two more years would they turn on the network news and see his blue eyes peering over those glasses slung low on his nose, hear that voice with its flat Michigander vowels drilling, drilling for the truth as he led a Senate hearing investigating offshore subsidiaries devised by corporations to evade the taxman. In December, the six-term senator said goodbye to his staff. By February, he and wife Barbara were preparing to leave their Washington, D.C., residence near Capitol Hill for his hometown, Detroit, once and for all. Tax cheats thought they’d outlasted him. But hold the cork on that Dom Perignon. He’s not done yet. In early February, Levin was still wearing his senator’s uniform, a roomy navy blue suit, white shirt with collar unbuttoned and askew, and blue tie that nicely picked up the azure in his eyes but hung far below his waist in typical rumpled Levin fashion. He was in makeshift digs in the James Madison building of the Library of Congress, where retired members of Congress are afforded a postage–sized office, much as emeriti professors still occupy small offices in Parrish Hall. Levin, awaiting the arrival of a young historian from the U.S. Senate Historical Office who is preparing an oral history for the archives, talked candidly and warmly about his Senate career, his Swarthmore days, and his next act in public life. While Levin is “common as an old shoe,” a saying often applied to a person who is unpretentious, he is also, to invoke another cliché, “tough as shoe leather.” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt ’56 found that out in fall 1952, 40 when they both roomed in Mary Lyon 3. Lehmann-Haupt, compulsive about getting to bed by midnight, was interrupted by a clattering and banging in the dormitory living room one night. Enraged, he ran into the room and swore at the guy making the commotion. “Next word’s a punch,” the man shot back. That was Carl Levin. “I didn’t know what to make of him,” recalls Lehmann-Haupt. “He was a new kind of kid for me, comparatively a street kid. He was tough, he was stocky, and a surprisingly good athlete with fast hands. I was not about to tangle with him.” Later, the two became friends, playing games of hearts before bedtime in Levin’s room. “At some point, I discovered there was an interior to him that was totally trustworthy in a way I hadn’t experienced before,” Lehmann-Haupt says. “I was perceived as being kind of cold and hard to reach. He wrote me a letter: ‘You’re not what you appear to be.’ He got me.” Though Lehmann-Haupt isn’t surprised that his friend became a senator, he says the College political scene in the mid-’50s was dominated by two other men, Michael Dukakis ’55 and Frank Sieverts ’55. But he got a glimpse of the future pol at a New Year’s Eve party at the Levin home in Detroit in 1959. “Levin’s family was political, extremely well-established and connected in Detroit,” Lehmann-Haupt recounts. By then, Levin—who had been an honors political science major, served on the Student Senate, and dabbled in Philadelphia politics—was at Harvard Law School. He had followed his older brother there. U.S. Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) has been Carl’s beacon of brotherly love since birth. Sandy, who was elected to the house four years after Carl, still serves, but their streak as the longest-serving siblings in Congress, 68 years combined, even surpassing the three Kennedy brothers, is now broken. “My best lifelong buddy is my amazing three-years-older brother, and my best current buddy of 53 years is my wife, Barbara,” Levin says. “I try to distinguish between the two in that little semantic trick. “Sandy and I roomed together at law school, and even as kids,” he adds. “My parents tore down the wall between [the boys’ bedrooms] because they knew we wanted to live in the same room. He’s been a mentor in a lot of ways. Sandy was already in politics for many years by the time I got involved.” That was in 1968, a year after the five-day riot that rocked Detroit, leaving 43 people dead and the downtown in flames before the Michigan National Guard and the U.S. Army put an end to it. After the riot, Levin, who’d been general counsel to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, began mulling a political career. He won the race for Detroit city council in 1968 and served until 1977. A year later, he won his first run for national office—the U.S. Senate. While the riot may have been a catalyst for his shift to a Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 40 3/19/15 8:24 AM career in politics and public service, Levin says the seeds were planted at Swarthmore. He recalls helping to lead a book drive to provide a library in war-torn Vietnam and proclaimed his support for the freedom fighters who were defying the Russians in the 1956 Hungarian revolution. “Swarthmore contributed very much to my yearning to be a public servant,” he says. “It was a very idealistic school. My heart will always be with Swarthmore.” In good Swarthmore activist tradition, Levin also took a trip “with five of my buddies to Washington to support the censuring of Joe McCarthy.” (McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican, led the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations hearings in 1954, browbeating witnesses in his quest to expose suspected Communists.) Ironically, 60 years later, Levin chaired that same Senate subcommittee, but with a much different aim. “I’ve been very conscious of making sure this committee would not be used for partisan purposes, including my own partisan purposes as a Democrat,” he explains. “We’ve had people who have pled the Fifth Amendment in front of us, and I respect their right to do that. My mind goes back to the abuses of Joe McCarthy and how he used to pillory witnesses who were exercising their constitutional rights.” Among the gratifying moments Levin experienced as a recent member of McCarthy’s old subcommittee was helping former subcommittee chair Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) release McCarthy’s papers, which revealed how uncouthly he operated. Chairing the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations honestly and fairly was one of Levin’s proudest achievements as a senator. Chairing another powerful Senate committee, the Armed Services Committee, in a bipartisan manner, was another point of pride. Levin says, “The troops deserve our support even if there are policy differences as to whether they ought to be in a particular place. I voted against the Iraq War. The differences ought to be taken out on the policymakers not the troops.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was a stalwart comrade on both committees. “We have some very, very strong differences, but we get along tremendously well and work together tremendously well,” says Levin. “We have total trust in each other, and I consider him a very close friend. He’s an extraordinary human being. “I have a lot of friends on both sides of the aisle,” Levin continues. Former Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is another friend. “We don’t see eye to eye on probably more than 20 percent; at least with McCain, it’s probably 50 to 60 percent,” Levin says. While his solid steering of two Senate committees and his embodiment of bipartisanship have been triumphs in Levin’s Senate career, his keen advocacy for his state has been another. “I’ve had a lot of involvement in the way in which Obama helped the auto industry survive but also in the very complex issues involving so-called CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards [designed to improve fuel economy],” he says. Another effort that benefited Michigan, he points out, was “bringing together the government vehicle effort, which is mainly military, and the private or commercial vehicle effort. THEN + NOW Photos on left, from top, clockwise: Carl Levin gained his political grounding in his native Detroit (with Sandy on his left as little boys) and at Swarthmore (with classmates, Christopher “Kit” Lukas, left, and Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, center). Photo right: Levin with longtime friend Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). + LISTEN TO LEVIN reflect on his time in the Senate: bit.ly/LevinTalks. AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE 1956 HALCYON FROM DETROIT TO D.C. SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 41 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 41 3/19/15 8:25 AM “HE HAD THE RESPECT OF PEOPLE WHO DISAGREED WITH HIM BECAUSE THEY UNDERSTOOD THAT HIS POSITIONS CAME THROUGH ANALYSIS AND HARD WORK.” –U.S. REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN ’83, H’14 “I’ve also been much involved in environmental issues involving the Great Lakes particularly, leading the way for the designation of all the wilderness in Michigan and [creating] a number of new national parks,” he adds. He’s also helped ensure cleanup of the Great Lakes, which Levin calls “a unique resource in the world.” A longtime advocate for Detroit, he notes, “I’ve been proclaiming its comeback for 30 years now, but I didn’t have a lot of evidence to support that feeling until maybe three to four years ago. There are some big things happening now in Detroit—a lot of entrepreneurial energy, a lot of young people moving back in. There’s a momentum toward the city from the suburbs.” Carl and Barbara Levin have kept an apartment in Detroit during his 36 years in the Senate and are now looking for a larger, permanent home base there. From the Motor City rather than the U.S. Capitol Levin will continue to wage his battle against corporate interests that disadvantage the average American. “When I came to the Senate I was interested in oversight, in wrongdoing, but recently my focus has been on income inequality,” he explains. “What really triggered this was the 42 high increase in executive pay compared to the average worker’s pay. It was one of the issues we took up at the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “I also introduced a lot of bills that address the issue of closing unjustified tax loopholes that don’t serve any purpose except to avoid paying taxes,” he continues. “A lot of so-called loopholes or tax deductions have solid economic purposes, for instance, the tax deductions for charitable contributions that give people an incentive to donate to places like Swarthmore College. Income inequality relates to the tax code that has allowed a leakage of tax revenue through tax-avoidance schemes using offshore tax havens or hiding money in Swiss bank accounts.” Once he fully relocates to Detroit this spring, he’ll teach at the newly formed Levin Center at the Wayne State University Law School, “focusing on congressional legislative oversight and its ability, responsibility, and authority to impact public policy based on the work I’ve been doing in the Permanent Subcommittee,” he says. He’ll also be senior counsel at Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP, advising on areas of accountability, both corporate and legal. Levin aims to continue to “bring some real pressure to bear on some of the powerful interests in this country, both business and individual, who have done things which have not been proper and gotten away with it, including tax avoidance.” While some people speculated that Levin sought retirement due to frustration or congressional gridlock, he says that wasn’t the case. Instead, as he approached his 80th birthday, he wanted to devote his energies to real progress on the two committees he chaired rather than spend time running a seventh Senate campaign, including raising money, which he admittedly hated doing. U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen ’83, H’14 (D-Md.), who regarded Levin as “one of the workhorses of the Senate” remarks that his fellow Swarthmorean “left a very big footprint in the U.S. Senate in two ways. “He was a model public servant who focused on what was 100 percent right for his constituents and his country, someone who took seriously his responsibility by doing hard work and listening to all sides of issues and who exercised independent judgment,” explains Van Hollen. “He had the respect of people who disagreed with him because they understood that his positions came through analysis and hard work rather than knee-jerk reactions.” Though a senator no more, Levin remains a cheerleader for the nation. When asked if he is hopeful for the country, he quickly responds, “Very,” then adds, “We’re a bunch of optimists, and we’ve managed diversity better than any other country, partly because of our ability to change. That ability has been a saving feature for us. “I also believe in the creative spirit that has been with us from the beginning,” he adds. “Back in the 1830s the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about America. He said Americans innovate. If they see something that’s a challenge they figure out a way around it. That innovative spirit is another reason I’m so optimistic.” Swarthmore College Bulletin / SPRING 2015 70021 BTextCO2.indd 42 3/19/15 8:27 AM LAURENCE KESTERSON ALUMNI PROFILE The Lavers have parlayed their love of horses into helping others. HORSE POWER Marcy and Art Laver ’64 saddle up to help people with disabilities by Amy Stone ’64 CREATING A therapeutic riding program on 12 acres of pastureland near Swarthmore might seem like an overly ambitious retirement plan. But to Art Laver ’64 and his wife, Marcy, it was a perfect prospect. After all, the couple had spent 25 years breeding, training, and showing Arabian horses while Art maintained his career as a hospital OB-GYN doctor and Marcy as a nurse in labor and delivery. Marcy, who had long been interested in how riding benefits disabled persons, earned instructor certification from PATH International (Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship). The Lavers incorporated All Riders Up as a nonprofit, with Marcy as executive director and Art as director of operations. They welcomed their first student in January 2009. Now they have 15 students, 11 horses, two donkeys, 40 volunteers, and four instructors. Two of the instructors are volunteers, including Art’s daughter Rebecca Laver Farrell, whose mother is Dede Gresham’65. Marcy trains the volunteers and is on PATH’s national certification subcommittee for Equine Specialists in Mental Health and Learning. According to Art, “her greatest interest is equine-facilitated psychotherapy for abused kids, veterans, and others with PTSD. “It is heartwarming to see the progress in our students through their interaction with the horses,” he says. “After a while, a nonverbal autistic child starts to speak to the horse, then to people. A student who came to us on a walker, barely ambulatory following surgery for a malignant brain tumor, after a year was walking and riding independently, to the amazement of his physical therapists.” Not all of the Lavers’ sensitive steeds are Arabians, but after years of raising the breed, which is known for its agility and intelligence, they knew Arabs would be the perfect partners for riders ages 4 to 74 with a wide range of physical, cognitive and psychological conditions— from spinal injuries to autism. The horses seem to have an instinctive gentleness with young children, sensing their emotions. Even the most unreachable child responds when a horse affectionately encircles her with its neck and inclines its head toward her. Catie Miller, 9, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a developmental delay, and bipolar disorder is one of the regular riders. Catie rarely expresses her feelings, but after bonding with Potter, the Lavers’ Tennessee walker pony, she wrote, “When I ride him I feel like the deep calm lake. When I ride him I feel like a bird singing in the bright morning air. My heart feels free and light when I ride him.” Riding lessons stretching muscle and mind occur in the couple’s covered arena, with sides open to a view of trees and a pond. “Our small size and peaceful environment are especially suited to riders who may have experienced trauma or mental health issues or who may have difficulty concentrating or being in a public setting,” Art says. All Riders Up has inspired donations of time and money, including a hydraulic lift that transfers students from wheelchair to horse, and a sensory trail, particularly helpful to students with autism spectrum disorders. Swarthmore’s Delta Upsilon brothers and their friends are among the volunteers. A new certification enables the Lavers to work with wounded warriors seeking physical or psychological healing. One longtime regular is Vietnam veteran Jim Kendrick. With a hydraulic lift to move him from wheelchair to horseback, he improves his balance and mobility atop Daisy, a 2,000-pound Belgian mare. Kendrick can attest to the power of horses. So can Art, who likes to quote Winston Churchill: “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of man,” and—“woman and child,” he adds. S + CHECK OUT A VIDEO AND A PHOTO GALLERY: bulletin.swarthmore.edu SPRING 2015 70021 CTextCO4.indd 57 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 57 3/20/15 12:28 PM REBECCA COOK ALUMNI PROFILE The Moneyball-like work Sam Menzin ’12 does creates “a good kind of pressure—one that makes winning that much more rewarding,” he says. BY THE NUMBERS Sam Menzin ’12 takes the pitch to the big leagues by Mark Anskis SINCE HIS DAYS on the Little League diamond, Sam Menzin ’12 has dreamed of a career in professional baseball but understood that, realistically, his chances of making it to the majors as a baseball player were slim to none. At age 13, a gift from his father opened his eyes to a different path to the big leagues. “My dad gave me a copy of Moneyball,” says Menzin. The groundbreaking 2003 book details how front-office executives for the small-budget Oakland Athletics baseball team created an unorthodox analytical approach to field a championship-caliber team. “The book awakened me. It showed me that there was a way to make it to the majors that wasn’t on the field.” Now 24, just three years after graduation, Menzin is the statistical analysis coordinator for the Detroit Tigers, one of Major League Baseball’s most successful teams in recent years. In his job, Menzin uses advanced statistics and analytics to help the Tigers maintain an edge on opponents. Whereas the average baseball fan is familiar with statistics such as ERA and RBI, Menzin views the game from a different perspective. “The ultimate question for us is ‘who will perform better in the future?’ ” he says. “Any metric we use is trying to answer a valuable question and predict future performance. I think our decision makers are tremendous at consuming large amounts of data, whether that is scouting information, statistical breakdowns, medical records, etc. Their ability to merge those data streams and make personnel decisions is why they have been so successful over the years.” Menzin provides statistical analysis on Tigers players and their opponents, which the team’s general manager, scouting department, and coaching staff use. His favorite part of the job is using analytics to help the Tigers with player evaluations used for trades, free-agent signings, player procurement and contract negotiations. “I enjoy the science of roster construction,” he says. “It’s interesting to see how a roster comes together and what makes a winning team.” There has been no shortage of winning in Menzin’s time in Detroit; since he arrived in 2012, the Tigers have enjoyed postseason play every season, including the 2012 World Series. Menzin’s basepath to the world of Major League Baseball began when he was a student at Swarthmore. A fouryear member of the Garnet baseball team, Menzin was introduced his junior year to local sports agent Rex Gary (son of Sam Gary ’48) through the Garnet coaching staff. The two became friends, and Menzin began interning in Gary’s office in Media, Pa. “Rex taught me everything about the baseball business,” says Menzin, who was working with Gary at the 2011 baseball winter meetings when he first interviewed with the Tigers. “I’m where I am today because of Rex.” Menzin still gets curious looks and an all-too-familiar question when he explains his job to family and friends. “So, you’re like Brad Pitt from Moneyball?” they ask, referring to the 2011 Academy Award–nominated film based on the book that changed his life 11 years earlier. “I tell them I’m not the Brad Pitt character—I’m more like the Jonah Hill character,” he adds, referring to Pitt’s chubbier, less-glamorous sidekick in the movie. Movie marquee recognition aside, Menzin is grateful for his good fortune: “I’m doing exactly what I’ve always wanted to do.” S SPRING 2015 70021 CTextCO2.indd 73 / Swarthmore College Bulletin 73 3/19/15 8:53 AM spoken word Catch me up on some of the things you’ve been doing since you arrived? We launched Zipcar [a car-sharing program] in the late summer, which people had wanted for a long time. There’s a lot of interest in expanding our composting program. We have partnered with a local company, Kitchen Harvest, which now takes our compost to nearby Linvilla Orchards. We’ll eventually be able to expand composting on campus. A lot of work has focused on creating a sustainability framework—new building standards that will affect major renovations and new construction. My priorities always fall into four categories: improve our infrastructure, institutionalize sustainability as much as I can, promote or nudge behavior change, and engage with the curriculum. ENGAGING CHANGE SWARTHMORE HAS MADE strong strides in the last few years toward its goal of carbon neutrality by 2035. It’s done so through efficient use of energy and other measures. But one critical component was missing—a professional to direct student, faculty, and staff efforts. Laura Cacho arrived from Melbourne, Australia, in February 2014 as Swarthmore’s first director of sustainability. She’d spent the previous six years helping several cities with sustainability-related planning, policy, and education initiatives. A graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Cali- 76 Swarthmore College Bulletin / 70021 CTextCO4.indd 76 SPRING 2015 fornia–Berkeley, Cacho is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)–accredited professional. One recent achievement was the planning and implementation of a two-day sustainability charrette (see Page 32 for more on the event). Just after her first anniversary at Swarthmore, Cacho spoke with Bulletin editor Sherri Kimmel. How would you say that your work in Australia has informed the work you’re doing here? Australia is a place of extremes, and climate change there felt real and now. It was quite striking, coming from the East Coast where, if we have a bad summer or a major storm, people talk about it a lot, but they’re not living it the way a place like Australia is. Australians have been dealing with water scarcity and other issues for a long time. You’ve mentioned embedding sustainability into the DNA of the College. It needs to be part of every aspect of the College—all policy, decision making, practices need to align with a commitment to sustainability. It means changes to our physical infrastructure and behavioral practices, but it’ll also require recognition that sustainability is one of the foundations of the modern liberal arts education. Many topics, from injustice and poverty to innovative technology, interlink and integrate with sustainability. Do you think there’s an opportunity for Swarthmore to be a leader among liberal arts colleges in this effort? I do. There are other colleges that have a head start on us, but it could be something that we take on in a different way, a really Swarthmore way, particularly because of the College’s Quaker roots and its focus on social justice. If we embrace sustainability fully, it could really transform us. LAURENCE KESTERSON LAURENCE KESTERSON I’m interested in the ways you have partnered with students. I work most closely with our green advisers. They’re trying to model a way to live in a sustainable way within our dorms. They help plan the programming in dorms that make students more aware of how to be sustainable in their everyday lives. I also work with the two Student Council environmental impact chairs on a number of initiatives from bike sharing to waste-bin signage to campus events. 3/20/15 12:33 PM SPRING 2015 ALL ABOUT HONORS Periodical Postage PAID Philadelphia, PA and Additional Mailing Offices p26 MIGHTY MICHIGANDER p38 PROFS AS COACHES p36 ISSUE III 500 College Ave. Swarthmore, PA 19081–1306 www.swarthmore.edu VOLUME CXII SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN ALUMNI WEEKEND 2015 JUNE 5–7 Scientific Siblings p18 SPRING 2015 Go back to class and learn from world-renowned faculty. Sun yourself with friends on Parrish Beach. Grab a bite in Sharples. Hang out in the dorms. Remember what it was like to be in college. THE POWER OF 3 View a full schedule of events and frequently asked questions, and register online at + ALUMNIWEEKEND.SWARTHMORE.EDU. ‘OUR CLIMATECHANGE CLOCK IS TICKING’ ELIZABETH UPTON ’16 p32 70021 ACoverCO1.indd 1 3/18/15 12:28 PM