Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2003-12-01

Finding
Common
Ground

Features
Special Report

9

A financial report from the College’s
vice president for finance and treasurer.
By Suzan n e We l s h

Visitors
We l c o m e

12

De p a r t m e n t s
Letters

3

Collection

4

Readers talk back
Latest news from campus

Profiles

Connections

40

Small Virus,
Big Idea

Class Notes

42

By Elizabeth Redden ’05

Deaths

By Elizab e th R e d d e n ’ 0 5

Swarthmore remembers

45

Finding
22
Common Ground

B o o ks & A r t s

50

Examine the roots of The Scott
Arboretum as it turns 75 years old.

Alumni events and more

By Ben Ya g o d a

Sowing Seeds
of Success

18

Eric Adler ’86 co-founds an innercity public charter boarding school.

Through foreign study, Swarthmore
educates for the global world.
By Tom K r a t t e n m a ke r

Think Global,
Te a c h L o c a l

30

Five faculty members talk about
bringing the world into their classrooms.
By Alisa G i a r d in e l l i

Foreign Study
in Reverse

36

For more than one in 10 Swarthmore
students, the United States is the
foreign country.
By Andre a J a r re l l

ON THE COVER: TWO SWARTHMORE STUDENTS WERE
AMONG 32 PARTICIPANTS IN THE SPRING 2003
INTERNATIONAL HONORS PROGRAM. ALL 32 POSED
IN A CIRCLE AT THE CLOSING CEREMONY IN
CURITIBA, BRAZIL. PHOTO PROVIDED BY RICARDO
OCAMPO ’05 AND ESTHER ZELEDON ’04.
CONTENTS: PHOTO BY JIM GRAHAM.

Classmates staying connected

Professor of Philosophy
Rich Schuldenfrei reviews
Real Jews by Noah Efron ’82.

In My Life

You Can Go Home Again:
A Year in Seoul

Rachel Henighan '97 and Charlie
Mayer ’98 are on the run.
B y J e f f r e y Lott

Harriet Latham Robinson ’59 is a
leader in the search for a vaccine.

Exciting yet
Humbling

66

Oncologist David Fisher ’79 confronts
clinical and scientific challenges to help
young cancer victims.
By Carol Brévart-Demm

70

By Kunya Scarborough Des Jardins ’89

A Day in the Life

59

80

Signs of
Violence
Amy Retsinas ’01 educates teens
about healthy relationships and
conflict resolution.
By Andrea Hammer

75

PA R L O R TA L K

I

keep a scrap of history on my desk, a ragged chunk of concrete not much bigger than
my thumb. Its surface sports a tiny abstract painting, green with a splash of blue and
a spot of red, a fragment of something larger—not a work of art but of history. It’s
my personal piece of the Berlin Wall, a gift from my late brother-in-law who visited Berlin
in 1990, just after the Iron Curtain crumbled. It is more than a souvenir to me.
In August 1961, I was 14, traveling with my family on a monthlong tour of Europe. We’d
started in Rome, making our way through Italy, Switzerland, and West Germany. We went
on to Paris and London before returning to the United States. Yet on Aug. 15, two days
after East Germany and its Soviet masters cut Berlin in half, plunging the world into yet
another crisis over the divided city, we
flew into Berlin. My father, who loved
history, had scheduled this side trip
months before as something intentionally different from the pleasant sightseeing that occupied most of our days.
But I’m sure he hadn’t counted on this.
Early on Aug. 16, we set off with a
German driver and guide, passing the
bombed-out Kaiser Wilhelm Church, a
war memorial, and viewing the ruined
Reichstag, torched by Hitler in 1933. Our
itinerary called for a visit to the eastern
sector, but we assumed this would not be
possible. Yet, as my breathless diary entry
reads: “This is the most exciting day yet!
Our driver finagled a bit in German, and [they] let us into East Berlin.” We spent a tense
half-hour in East Berlin, where, except for the Volkspolizei, we saw almost no one. “There is
one street that has been rebuilt—Stalinallee,” I wrote. “The rest is mostly ruins and rubble.”
Back in the West, thousands were streaming from every corner of the city to a unity
rally at the city hall. With our guide as translator, we joined the crowd on foot. We stood
among 250,000 Berliners who heard Mayor Willy Brandt implore the world to defend his
isolated city. Nearly two years later, President John F. Kennedy famously declared, “Ich bin
ein Berliner”; in 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood before the Brandenburg Gate and
challenged Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” But I was there
when it went up.
I didn’t study abroad as a college student. In those days, just a few students—usually
those studying foreign languages—took that opportunity. I am glad to see this has
changed at Swarthmore and elsewhere. I hope they have experiences as rich as mine when
I was 14. That memorable day in Berlin opened my eyes to the world in a way that the cultural riches of Italy, the spectacle of the Alps, the luxuries of Paris, and the pomp of England could not match. By itself, travel is mind expanding, but a little brush with history
doesn’t hurt.
—Jeffrey Lott

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

My father, who loved
history, had scheduled
this side trip months
before. But I’m sure he
hadn’t counted on this.
My breathless diary
reads, “This was the
most exciting day yet!”

2

Swarthmore
COLLEGE BULLETIN

Editor: Jeffrey Lott
Managing Editor: Andrea Hammer
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Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
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The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
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LETTERS
This note is to express my pleasure in reading the recent Bulletin.
I send my appreciation for the “charge”
delivered to the graduating class by Justice
Jed Rakoff ’64. What a pleasure to see his
description of A. Mitchell Palmer unsullied
by euphemism! My forebear Benjamin
Franklin’s observation “that he who would
give up liberty for a little security will end
with neither liberty nor security” fits Jed
Rakoff’s rather well, and in these days of
“Patriot” and “Homeland Security” is
sadly appropriate.
You may be happy to learn that the City
Council of Reading, Pa., has joined those
cities and states that went on record as
refusing to support the Patriot Act’s voiding of the Bill of Rights in our Constitution. The Berks County Commissioners
have also been approached to withdraw
any support for this act. As you know,
Philadelphia has also joined in opposition.
In converting Germany to a police state, I
understand one of Hitler’s early acts was
getting the Reichstag to pass a law similar
to our Patriot Act so as to free the police
from undue hindrance.
Those who acclaim an American empire
might well read Mark Twain’s views of a
century ago. I remember being in Vietnam
and Cambodia some 40 years ago and
quoting Yogi Berra, “It’s deja vu all over
again.” When will we learn that violence
and war are not the solution?
FRED RICHARDS ’45
Reading, Pa.
CHALLENGE TO ISRAEL

I’m writing to challenge one sentence in
James Kurth’s review of Clyde Prestowitz’s
[’63] Rogue Nation (September Bulletin):
“Middle Eastern elites … pro-American on
many issues … are appalled by the biased
and massive U.S. support for Israel.”
Except for the sale of Hawk defensive
missiles in 1961, President Truman’s
embargo of weapons was maintained for
the first 19 to 20 years of Israel’s existence.
During these 19 to 20 years, Israel’s Arab
neighbors sent guerrillas across Israel’s
borders to kill unarmed civilians, including

women and children. Any Christian or Jew
with an Israeli passport or visa was not
allowed to pray at a Christian or Jewish
holy place.
It was only after 1967 that the Arabs
expanded their terrorism beyond Israel’s
borders plus hijacking and destroying civilian airlines (e.g., Olympics at Munich,
Athens airport, etc.). The terrorists included Puerto Rican pilgrims among their victims. After 1967, Christian and Jewish pilgrims were allowed to worship at their holy
places. After 1967, U.S. manufacturers of
airplanes persuaded our government to
permit the sale of Phantoms, Skyhawks,
and so on, which benefited our balance of
payments, which usually runs in the red.
If Prestowitz’s “Middle Eastern elites”
dared to criticize the dictators that run
their countries, they would find themselves
imprisoned like dual Egyptian-U.S. citizen
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who had the temerity
to “defame” Egypt by criticizing its treatment of Christians.
I assume that Prestowitz is unaware
that there are more than 30 million U.S.
evangelical Christians who are more proIsrael than the U.S. State Department and
biased against dictatorships and suicide
bombers.
JEROME ABRAMS ’47
Edison, N.J.
IMPERIAL EXPANSION

It is pleasing and reassuring to find Clyde
Prestowitz ’63, a classmate and former
political adversary, describing the United
States as a “rogue nation.” We should
recall that the entire history of the United
States is characterized by aggression and
the forceful seizure of land and resources.
The Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny,
gunboat diplomacy, recurrent interventions, bombings, assassinations, and
destabilizations were and continue to be
manifestations of our country’s quest to
dominate as much of the world as possible.
Perhaps what was previously more veiled is
now more overt but only for those who did
not want to see. As the sole superpower,
the United States feels more confident in
trumpeting its aims, now under the trans-

America
and the
World

parent guise of fighting “terrorism”—the
current version of the “communist menace.” This is not a “policy,” nor is it discretionary. Tactics may change, and there may
be variations on the general theme of
imperial expansion; however, the behavior
of this “rogue nation” is inherent in the
requirement of any capitalist economy to
expand and grow to maximize profits.
JEREMIAH GELLES ’63
Brooklyn, N.Y.
UNCRITICAL PRAISE FOR
CRITICAL THINKING

John Koppel ’78, in his September Bulletin
letter to the editor, seems to miss the irony
of his praise for the “critical thinkers” of
Swarthmore—at least those in agreement
with him—while in the same breath making the gigantic and wholly uncritical leap
from President Bush’s Iraq prevarications
to “naked imperialism.” Koppel makes no
attempt whatsoever to justify this accusation. In the ultimate irony, he expects us
critical thinkers to accept uncritically this
old-left chestnut from the ’60s. Koppel
goes on to make the rather strange case
that because many of Saddam Hussein’s
most public atrocities occurred several
years ago, he should no longer be held
accountable for them, despite incontrovertible evidence of continued brutal repression and murder. Critical thinkers might
find this argument for a statute of limitations on evil difficult to justify.
DAVID HARRIS ’78
Houston
Please turn to page 79 for additional letters.

DECEMBER 2003

DEJA VU

3

COLLECTION

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

4

IN HIS ANNUAL STATE-OF-THECOLLEGE REPORT to the faculty
on Oct. 3, President Alfred H.
Bloom cited both the need for
continued budgetary restraint
and the critical importance of
the College’s current capital
campaign, The Meaning of
Swarthmore, to funding the
College’s future priorities.
Bloom noted that “Swarthmore’s overall economic condition has improved importantly”
in the past year. He announced
that the value of the College’s
endowment has rebounded in
recent months to about $930
million. Since October, the
endowment has grown to about
$960 million.
Stating, however, that if one
subtracts recent gifts, the value
of the endowment would equal
its valuation five years ago, he
commented, “If we are to exercise our responsibilities as shepherds of this institution, balancing the interests of this generation against those of future generations, we must continue to
hold annual increases in
endowment spending for the
budget to no more than inflation plus 1.5 percent.” This
would require restraint and
ongoing identification of possible expense reductions, said
Bloom.
The president told the faculty that members of his staff, in
concert with the Expenditure
Review Committee appointed
last year by the Board of Man-

agers, had “identified and
achieved” more than $1.2 million in budget savings during
the past two years “in ways that
we believe have had a minimum
impact on the quality of programs and operations and
on individuals currently employed.” This collaborative initiative will continue through
upcoming budget cycles.
Among the measures taken
to trim the College’s $97.8 million annual budget for fiscal
2003–2004 are the elimination
of several vacant positions and
a freeze on most departmental
operating budgets. Unlike some
of its peer schools, Swarthmore
has not been forced in the
recent economic downturn to
lay off faculty or staff.
Bloom stressed the importance of The Meaning of
Swarthmore in assuring that the
College’s future needs are met,
while noting that the campaign
has already had a significant
impact on Swarthmore’s fiscal
strength and educational program. He stated that campaign
gifts have enabled the College to
hire six new tenure-track faculty
members in critical fields of
study, provide five additional
endowed faculty sabbaticals,
recruit a new dean of multicultural affairs, enhance the Athletics Program and physical education facilities, and undertake
long-awaited initiatives in
career services.
Dividing the remaining $91

JIM GRAHAM

Reaching
campaign goal
“a m a j o r t a s k ,”
says Bloom

PRESIDENT ALFRED H. BLOOM SAYS THAT THE COLLEGE WILL
“INVEST EVERY EFFORT” TO REACH THE $230 MILLION GOAL
OF THE MEANING OF SWARTHMORE BY DECEMBER 2006.

million needed to complete the
$230 million campaign into two
parts, he said that $28 million
must first be raised to “cover
fully the remaining cost of the
commitments we have made to
date.” Among these top funding
priorities were the completion
and operational endowment of
the new science center, the completion of a new 75-bed residence hall now under construction near the train station, and
extensive renovations of Parrish
Hall set to begin in summer
2004.
The remaining $63 million
will be designated for financial
aid endowment, support for
undergraduate research and
internship opportunities, technology replacement, and a variety of other objectives estab-

lished by the Board, faculty, and
administration before the campaign began.
In December, the campaign
total reached $141 million. In an
interview this month, Bloom
said that the true total now
remaining to reach The Meaning of Swarthmore’s $230 million goal is $84 million, thanks
to a “generous challenge pledge”
from Eugene Lang ’38, who will
provide the final $5 million of
the campaign if the total reaches $225 million by December
2006. Bloom said, “Given that
the campaign’s success so far
has depended heavily on those
who know us well, reaching our
goal will be a major task.” He
pledged that the College would
“invest every effort over the next
three years to do so.”

BARBARA WEBER MATHER ’65
TO CHAIR BOARD OF MANAGERS
At its Dec. 6 meeting, the Board of Managers selected Barbara Weber Mather ’65
as its new chair. She succeeds J. Lawrence
Shane ’56, who has chaired the Board
since 1997. Although women have been
prominent members of the Board of Managers since the College’s founding, Mather
is the first woman to lead the Board.
Mather was first elected a Manager in
1983. She has served as a member of the
Finance Committee, chairing it since 1997.

Levinson, Jane Lang Professor of Music, to
write Avatar, a 12 1/2-minute composition
that Levinson calls “very blunt and forthright.” Levinson, who has taught at Swarthmore since 1977, studied with Messiaen in
the early 1970s and later immersed himself
firsthand in South Asian music as a Henry
Luce Scholar from 1979 to 1980 and as a
Guggenheim Fellow from 1982 to 1983.
Gamelan Semara Santi, directed by
Assistant Professor of Music Thomas Whitman ’82, consists of 22 musicians who play

xylophones, gongs, and drums in complicated rhythms and textures. Eschenbach asked
members of the Gamelan to perform in
October at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center
and New York’s Carnegie Hall to illustrate
the powerful influence on Messiaen of traditional Balinese music. Later in the same
concerts, Eschenbach conducted Messiaen’s
75-minute Turangalila Symphony, a modern
piece that drew admiring reviews from
Philadelphia and New York newspapers.
—Jeffrey Lott

She has also
served on the
Academic Affairs
Committee and
was vice chair of
the search committee that nominated Alfred H.
Bloom as president in 1991.
Mather graduated from the University
of Chicago Law School in 1968. She is an
attorney with Pepper Hamilton LLP in

Philadelphia, a former managing partner of
the firm, and head of its litigation department. She has served as city solicitor of
Philadelphia, taught antitrust law at the
University of Pennsylvania, and is a fellow
of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
Mather is also a founding member of the
Pennsylvania Women’s Forum.
Mather lives in Philadelphia with husband Michael Mather ’65. They have four
children—Sarah ’90, Emily ’92, Benjamin,
and William ’00.
—Jeffrey Lott

DECEMBER 2003

SWARTHMORE MUSICIANS PLAYED A ROLE this
fall in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s first season under Music Director Christoph
Eschenbach. The orchestra commissioned a
work by the College’s resident composer
Gerald Levinson and welcomed to its stage
Swarthmore’s traditional Balinese percussion ensemble, Gamelan Semara Santi.
Eschenbach had planned a season of
events around the music of 20th-century
French composer Olivier Messiaen. For its
opening concert series, the orchestra asked

CHRISTOPHER AMOS/THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA

ESCHENBACH’S OPENING GONG

5

JEROME KOHLBERG ’46
(CENTER) TALKS WITH RICK
BELL ’98 (LEFT) AND JAMES
MADDEN ’06 (RIGHT) AT A
BRUNCH FOR PHILIP EVANS
SCHOLARS IN SEPTEMBER. HE
JOKED, “IT LOOKS AS IF MY

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

The
promise of
Leadership

SWARTHMORE HAS MORE THAN 300 NAMED
ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIPS, many honoring family members of alumni, former professors, and
friends of the College. Most are designed to
support one or two students, but a few have
grown into significant endowments that provide need-based financial aid for numerous young people. With 43 recipients currently
enrolled, the Philip Evans Scholarship, established in 1986 by
Jerome Kohlberg ’46 in honor of his late friend and classmate, has
become one of the College’s most rewarding scholarship programs.
Envisioned by Kohlberg as a way of making it possible for students showing unusual promise to attend Swarthmore without
incurring any student loans, the need-based Evans Scholarships are
EVANS SCHOLAR TICHIANAA
TIMMONS ’99 (LEFT) TALKS

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

ABOUT MEDICAL SCHOOL

6

APPLICATIONS WITH TRINI
TRUONG ’04. TIMMONS WILL
ENTER THE UNIVERSITY OF
ROCHESTER SCHOOL OF
MEDICINE IN FALL 2004.

evolving to become a broader program of support and
encouragement for recipients.
“Today’s students and alumni who have benefited
from their Evans Scholarships are in the process of forming a powerful community in which the opportunities
offered by Swarthmore are sowing the seeds of future
leadership,” says Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid
Jim Bock ’90. “Many have already faced significant challenges in their young lives, and Swarthmore is opening
doors that some of them didn’t even know were there. We
expect that they will go on in their lives to open additional doors for others.”
Even before they began their college experience this
fall, the eight new Evans Scholars met each other during
an Outward Bound sailing experience on the Chesapeake
Bay. After six days aboard a 30-foot boat, Katie Chamblee
’07 said, “My ambitions for college changed. I realized
that my goal was to be a certain kind of person rather
than just a certain kind of student.”
Last summer, Evans Scholar Tyler Lyson ’06 organized
a different kind of challenge for 13 students, Professor of
Biology Scott Gilbert, and several College administrators.
Lyson hails from Marmarth, N.D., where, as a high
school student, he amassed one of the country’s most
important collections of dinosaur and turtle fossils. The

PRIMARY ROLE HERE IS TO BE
A SHILL FOR RICK BELL,” WHO
IS RUNNING FOR CONGRESS IN
LOS ANGELES.

Swarthmore contingent joined him in the heat of summer for a
dinosaur dig, learning not only about Lyson’s passion for paleontology, but experiencing firsthand the rigors of field work in the badlands of his home state. “Everybody pushed their limits,” said
Lyson. “We all knew what we could do after going on that trip.”
In September, current Evans Scholars and 10 recent alumni
gathered at the Pendle Hill Conference Center for a weekend retreat
to build relationships that will continue to enrich the students’ educational experiences. Several reported on what they had accomplished during the summer with their Evans Opportunity Grants,
which allow scholarship recipients to take summer jobs and internships that enhance their education, provide opportunities for social
service, or give them valuable experience toward possible careers.
The students and alumni also participated in a leadership exercise
led by Dean of the College Bob Gross ’62.
James Madden ’06 spoke of his summer in Boston, where he
worked for FairTest, an advocacy organization that works to eliminate the racial, class, gender, and cultural barriers to equal opportu-

AVIAN PERFUME
Julie Hagelin, assistant professor of biology, says that at least one species of
bird has a striking scent that is associated with courtship. The crested auklet
(Aethia cristatella), a seabird from
Alaska, produces a tangerine-like
aroma. The region of the body
where the odor is most concentrated to human noses—the auklet’s
head and neck—features prominently in
courtship displays. “You can smell a group
of crested auklets before you can see
them,” she reports. Although the origin
and current social function of the avian
perfume is unknown (one theory is that
healthier birds may excrete more of the
oils that give rise to the smell), it is
known that the birds wear their fetching
scent during breeding season only. “This is a
mode of communication in birds that we’ve
overlooked completely until now,” says Hagelin,
who teaches a course in animal behavior
that includes 4 to 6 hours of fieldwork
per week.
© D. ROBY & K. BRINK/VIREO
—Alisa Giardinelli

nity posed by standardized tests. He also had an internship with
the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, where he helped
organize a citywide program of community discussions on racial
and ethnic diversity. “I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this
without the Evans,” he said. “I would have been working for minimum wage somewhere.”
At a Sunday brunch attended by Kohlberg, students and alumni
were eager to talk about the impact of their scholarships. “Receiving
an Evans said that they saw something in me that I didn’t even see
in myself. It was very affirming,” said Imo Akpan ’02, a research
technician at Boston’s Children’s Hospital who is currently applying
to medical schools. “Swarthmore is an incredible place. I feel like I
was sort of born here.” Later, Akpan, Tichianaa Timmons ’99 and
Mitzie-Ann Davis ’02, first-year medical students at the University
of Rochester and Temple University respectively, spent time talking
with several premed Evans Scholars.
Also enjoying the networking opportunities was Rick Bell ’98, a
self-described “half-black, half-Korean kid” who recently
announced his candidacy for Congress. A passionate liberal, he’s
challenging the incumbent Democrat in his working-class district
in Los Angeles.
Pressed by the students to make a few remarks, Kohlberg said,
“This country is in a crisis; we’ve lost our way. Too many people are
sitting on the sidelines, complaining but not doing anything about
it. There’s a crying need for involvement, passion, criticism, and
leadership. This is a role that we hope you will fill in the future.”
—Jeffrey Lott
Learn more anout the Evans Scholarships at www.philipevansscholars.org.

In Memoriam
DAVID ROSEN, MATHEMATICIAN
AND MUSICIAN
THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY WAS SADDENED by
the Aug. 24 death of Professor Emeritus of
Mathematics David Rosen, age 82.
Receiving a B.A. from New York University in 1942 followed, after a stint in the U.S.
Air Force, by a Ph.D. in mathematics from
the University of Pennsylvania in 1952,
Rosen then joined the College faculty. He remained at Swarthmore
until his retirement in 1987.
During his tenure at Swarthmore, Rosen served as department
chair from 1969 to 1977 and president for three terms of Swarthmore’s chapter of Sigma Xi.
He was an expert in number theory—a branch of mathematics
that deals with the properties of the integers—publishing on the
topic into his retirement. Rosen’s colleague, Buffington Professor of
Mathematics Gene Klotz, said: “David had a lifelong love affair with
number theory, and his legacy lives on in a continued fraction that
bears his name, the Rosen Continued Fraction (an infinite collection of closely related algorithms, each of which expresses real numbers in terms of certain algebraic integers).” He was the co-author
of three textbooks on calculus and probability.
An accomplished musician, Rosen played violin as well as double
bass, performing for 50 years with the College Orchestra. He also
performed with local symphonies and chamber music groups and
served on the board of Orchestra 2001.
—Carol Brévart-Demm

and Conflict Studies Program
as well as the Pendle Hill Study
Center.
Arias emphasized the need
for increased aid from developed to developing nations—
although not by military
means. In a world in which
nuclear proliferation, war, and
terrorism are on the rise, he
voiced the need in the new century for a new system of morality and values based on compassion, solidarity, social justice,
and courage instead of materialism, warmongering, and fear.
“War is always a defeat for
humanity,” he said, “Conflicts
can be better resolved at the
negotiating table than on the

OSCAR ARIAS SANCHEZ, FORMER PRESIDENT OF COST RICA AND WINNER OF
THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE IN 1987, SPOKE AT THE COLLEGE IN OCTOBER.

battlefield.”
Arias sees the real threats to
humanity not primarily in terrorism but in the conditions
that spawn it, such as poverty,
disease, illiteracy, and inequality.
The solutions to these problems
lie in control of the arms trade,
decreased defense spending,
free trade between the First and
Third Worlds, and health servic-

es worldwide, he said.
“Military spending represents the world’s greatest perversion,” said Arias. “Every dollar spent on weapons represents
a missed opportunity to provide
education, health care, or food
for the poor. Security is not a
precondition for peace—peace
is a precondition for security.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm

DECEMBER 2003

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER
Oscar Arias Sanchez ended his
speech with a challenge: “Let us
do something at least for our
sons and daughters. They
deserve to live in a more just
and ethical world in the new
century.” Arias, who won the
prize in 1987 for successfully
uniting Central American leaders around the regional peace
plan, spoke on Oct. 30.
His talk “Doing Justice: The
Path of Peace” was the second
in this year’s Thursday night
forum series called “Walking the
Way of Peace: Peace Building in
a Violent World,” sponsored by
the Lang Center for Civic and
Social Responsibility, the Peace

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

“WAR IS ALWAYS A DEFEAT FOR HUMANITY”

7

Swarthmore student activists won a major victory for free speech on
the Internet this fall with their efforts to make available documents
from Diebold Election Systems Inc. that call attention to problems
with the company’s electronic voting machines. The controversy,
which made headlines here and abroad, also became part of the
larger debate about e-voting as a reliable and worthwhile practice.
Sophomores Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith and the Online
Policy Group, a nonprofit Internet service provider, filed suit in a
California federal court against the company in November seeking
to enjoin Diebold from claiming copyright infringement over the
documents’ release. The company had for months threatened legal
action against dozens of individuals who refused to remove links to
the data. But at a Dec. 1 meeting with the judge, a Diebold
spokesman said the company would not sue the students after all, a
marked reversal in strategy.
Still, Pavlosky and Smith are continuing with their case against
Diebold, arguing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

INTERNET FREE SPEECH ADVOCATES NELSON PAVLOSKY (LEFT) AND LUKE
SMITH POSTED INTERNAL MEMOS OF THE DIEBOLD CORP., A MAKER OF
ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES, THEN SUCCESSFULLY CHALLENGED THE
COMPANY’S EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS THE DOCUMENTS.

add character to the freshly
painted space. A porch also
provides a view of the
crossroads that links campus and community.
Joining Keith in the Lang
Center, Associate Director
for Student Programs and
NEW HEADQUARTERS
Training Pat James works
THE EUGENE M. LANG CENTER FOR CIVIC AND closely with many student volunteer groups,
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY has moved to renoprovides support for projects developed
vated quarters in the Swarthmore train stathrough Swarthmore Foundation Fellowtion—a location that, according to its direc- ships, offers students training and orientator, former Provost Jennie Keith, symbolizes tion for work in the community, and directs
the link between the College and the larger
the Lang Opportunity Scholarship Program.
community. The center, which was endowed Associate Director for Community Partnerin 2001 by an $8.5 million gift from Eugene ships and Planning Cynthia Jetter ’74 (see
Lang ’38, is intended to provide vision, lead- sidebar) has helped launch several partnerership, and support for a central commitships both locally and internationally.
ment of Swarthmore.
The Lang Center will provide administra“The College’s mission from the begintive support for the following:
ning has been to combine academic excellence and social responsibility,” says Keith,
• Paid summer internships for students
Centennial Professor of Anthropology.
• Fellowships for faculty members to design
“We’re hoping the center will support that
curricula that will link their academic work
mission by making preparation for leaderto civic and social responsibility issues
ship in creating a more just and humane
• Partnerships with community organizasociety more central to the educational
tions that will maximize the quality of eduexperience at Swarthmore.”
cational experiences for students as well as
In the renovated building, a spiral stairthe quality of their contributions to the
case, angled ceilings, and patterned molding community
JIM GRAHAM

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

8

The Lang
Center:
All Aboard!

TIM SHAFFER

Students Win
Net Fight

• Opportunities for orientation and training to prepare students for participation in
communities
• Reflection and assessment to help students and community partners identify successful strategies for social change
• The Lang Visiting Professorship for Issues
of Social Change, which brings to Swarthmore individuals distinguished by their
identification and engagement with social
justice, civil liberties, human rights, and
democracy
• Swarthmore Foundation, which supports
service efforts of students, staff, and faculty
members and summer internships
• The Lang Opportunity Scholars Program,
which provides financial support, guidance,
and mentoring for selected Swarthmore students to design and implement effective
solutions to significant social problems
“Courses that link the campus to the
community are an important way to prepare
students to use their intellectual skills in the
world,” Keith says. “Swarthmore students
are strongly motivated to work toward positive social change. We hope to offer them
more opportunities—both in the classroom
and in the community—to strengthen their
ability to do this effectively.”
—Alisa Giardinelli

Catalyst for Change

the public that the memos are available at sites not associated with
Swarthmore. The College also challenged Diebold in writing to back
up its claim of copyright infringement.
“The College administration applauds our students for their idealism and initiative, for acting on their consciences in the interest of
fair elections and healthy democracy,” Gross said in a statement.
However, some students think the College should have been
more supportive. Pavlosky, who put the documents on-line through
the campus organization Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital
Commons, told The New York Times that the cease-and-desist letters
were “a perfect example of how copyright law can be and is abused”
to stifle freedom of speech. He added that he and other advocates
wished the College had decided to fight instead of asking them to
take down the files.
The files, now reposted to the College’s site, never stopped circulating on-line. They include discussions of bugs in Diebold’s software and warnings that its computer network is poorly protected
against hackers. The students say that by trying to spread the word
about problems with the company’s software, they are performing a
valuable form of electronic civil disobedience that has broad implications for American society.
—Alisa Giardinelli

JIM GRAHAM

taxis stopped. It was a very eerie feeling,”
Jetter said. “Groups of young men wouldn’t
WHEN C YNTHIA JETTER visited Bytom, Poland, let me pass. It was a tough time, and it shut
this summer, she stopped traffic.
me down for a while.”
“I was the only black person there, but I
But recognizing that change takes time,
thought, ‘OK. No one is going to bother me.’ Jetter forged ahead with her mission in
But buses stopped, police came out, and
Poland. The programs she hopes to set up in
Bytom will add to Swarthmore’s Study Abroad Program
there. With her Lang Center
colleagues and the Swarthmore College faculty members
who lead the program, Jetter
hopes to take Swarthmore’s
international work to a new
level by creating community
based and service learning
opportunities for students in
Poland.
Months after leaving
Poland, Jetter is still processing her experiences there. She
THE STAFF OF THE COLLEGE’S LANG CENTER FOR CIVIC AND
plans to be honest with interSOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY RECENTLY MOVED TO QUARTERS IN THE
ested students—especially
those of color.
SWARTHMORE TRAIN STATION: (LEFT TO RIGHT) EXECUTIVE DIREC“I talked to the mayor and
TOR JENNIE KEITH, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR COMMUNITY PARTheads
of organizations about
NERSHIPS AND PLANNING CYNTHIA JETTER ’74, ASSOCIATE DIREChow to help students of color
TOR FOR STUDENT PROGRAMS AND TRAINING PAT JAMES, ADMINfeel safe,” she said. “What I
ISTRATIVE ASSISTANT DELORES ROBINSON, AND ASSISTANT TO THE
enjoyed most were the discusDIRECTOR AND PROGRAMS COORDINATOR DEBRA KARDON-BROWN.
sions with the various

women’s groups and organizations, which
reminded me again that what we all want is
the ability to provide for our children. I feel
very strongly that the contributions that our
students can make to this community will go
far in improving the quality of life for many
of the residents of Bytom, not to mention
how much they will come away with from
there.”
Jetter is also working to create deeper and
more stable partnerships between Swarthmore and community agencies in Chester.
Students will be engaged in housing rehabilitation, tutoring, mentoring, sports clinics,
financial literacy instruction, computer literacy, Web page designs, literacy, English as a
second language, cultural enrichment, grassroots organizing, nonprofit management,
and teen leadership. The center is also considering developing a semester in Chester
program, which would require students to
live in the city.
Back in the local community, Jetter
helped professors such as Associate Professor of Sociology Sarah Willie and Assistant
Professor of Music Tom Whitman to extend
their work with students in Chester, Pa.
“Sarah was very excited by the opportunity
to add another dimension to her class,” said
Jetter.
—Andrea Hammer

DECEMBER 2003

(DMCA) that Diebold must pay damages for intimidating Internet
service providers. The hearing is scheduled for Feb. 9.
Although the documents—several thousand company memos
and e-mail messages—had been available on-line for months, they
did not become media fodder until the end of October, when
Diebold issued cease-and-desist orders to programmers and others,
including several Swarthmore students, who posted them on the
Internet. Diebold had maintained that the posting was a case of
copyright infringement and had demanded that the documents be
removed from each Web site.
In response to the orders and to bring the College into compliance with the DMCA, the administration asked any user who provided a link to the documents to remove it. Dean Robert Gross ’62
says this was done on the advice of legal counsel, despite the College’s support of the students’ cause.
Although not confronting the company directly, the College
encouraged students to file a "counternotification" under the copyright law against Diebold's take-down demand. In addition, the
administration alerted students that it is defensible on fair-use and
free-speech grounds to use their Web sites to describe the content of
the memos they have seen and their implications for American
democracy and to use their sites to inform interested members of

9

A R o of D o g s ’ Ta l e
PROFESSOR AND CHAIR OF THE
ART DEPARTMENT BRIAN MEUNIER
IS WORKING ON A SERIES OF
CHILDREN'S BOOKS WITH HIS WIFE,

ANDY SHELTER

PAINTER PERKY EDGERTON.

THE NEW CHILDREN’S BOOK
Pipiolo and the Roof Dogs gestated in San Pablo, Mexico, during
a sabbatical leave. As Professor
of the Art Department Brian
Meunier walked through the
mountains with his wife, painter Perky Edgerton, he was intrigued by the rooftop guard
dogs, which become angry because they are without human
contact. Meunier said that their
barking in the middle of the
night, starting in one village at
the end of the valley and mov-

ing along like a wave, gave him a
“sense of the world being
round”—and the launching
point for his first children’s
story, which has also moved
adults.
“The dogs could be free, but
they need to be convinced. Like
the talk of freedom today, it
needs to sink in,” Meunier says,
using the dogs as a metaphor.
Lupe, the young female narrator,
is “full of heart … she wants
everyone to experience freedom.”
As a sculptor and professor
at Swarthmore for 24 years,
Meunier has often spent his
leave time in villages outside of
the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico
with his wife and two daughters. In addition, “summers as
academics have allowed us to
keep the creative juices going,”
he says. “Travel opens one’s
eyes. You go in naïve—with

WORMS
INFEST
COLLEGE
NETWORK

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

© MARK COHEN

The timing was
exceptionally
bad. Just as students returned to
campus at summer’s end, three virulent worms were released
into Windows computer systems worldwide:
Blaster on Aug. 15, Nachi on Aug. 18, and
Sobig on Aug. 25—leaving the College’s
Information Technology Services (ITS) professionals and student dorm consultants scrambling to secure Swarthmore’s network before
classes began.
“It was just tiring,” says Robin Jacobsen,
manager of client services for ITS. “Everyone
was pitching in, working around the clock.

10

your eyes wide open.”
Generally packing up his van
with 1,200 pounds of material
for sculpting wood and metal
works up to 7 feet tall, Meunier,
50, recently experienced some
muscular problems that interfered with his studio work. “I
would have gone crazy if I had
not done something else. So I
started writing, which is so
much more portable than sculpture,” he says. “I always wanted
to shrink my studio into a suitcase,” referring to the “practical
portability of storytelling.”
Edgerton was actually the
first one to draft Pipiolo, which
turned out too long for the format of many children’s books.
So Meunier, who has enjoyed
writing since his college days at
the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, where he
received a bachelor of fine arts
in 1976, took a stab at subsequent revisions. In August, Dutton Children’s Books released
Pipiolo, the first in a projected
trilogy for 3 to 6 year olds.
Meunier characterizes his

None of us on the client services team had a
day off for a month.”
Jacobsen says the three worms differ from
more traditional viruses in that they infected
computers without any actions being performed by the user. Traditionally, Jacobsen
explains, viruses come in the form of e-mail
attachments, and users must open the
attachment in order to infect their system.
These worms, however, traveled rapidly
through network ports to infect other computers within seconds—often without the
user even knowing his computer was vulnerable to infection.
To remedy the problem, ITS staff and
student consultants took the drastic step of
isolating every Windows computer from the
network. They then went room to room to
install anti-virus patches and security
updates on all computers before letting

wife’s “whimsical” oil paintings,
which add to the story without
just duplicating what’s already
been said, as “magical realism.”
Using the earthen tones of Mexico, they convey a strong sense
of place.
The Two Gustavos, the second
work in the trilogy that is now
in production, focuses on a
father and son, basketball, and
water usage in the village of
Zachilla. A Man With Quiet
Hands, the third book, is about a
15-year-old girl’s idealized memory of her deceased father and
the boy she hopes to marry in
the mountain village of Jose
Pacifico.
From Nov. 14 to Dec. 14, the
College’s List Gallery hosted an
exhibition titled Children, featuring Edgerton’s paintings, along
with a selection of portraits and
large-scale narrative paintings
of children. Meunier also joined
his wife to sign copies of Pipiolo
and The Roof Dogs.
“I’ve been training for this
work all my life,” Meunier says.
—Andrea Hammer

them regain network access.
Matt Wallaert ’04, who worked about 120
hours for ITS in the two weeks before classes
began, says students generally understood
the inconvenience: “I think they realized this
was a problem we needed to respond to as a
community.”
Jacobsen says worms like Blaster, Sobig,
and Nachi represent new, more malicious
trends in viral activity. In hopes of finding
more efficient remedies for any future outbreaks, Jacobsen says ITS has taken such
steps as purchasing a high-end CD burner to
make possible rapid mass distributions of CDs
containing anti-virus updates and patches
possible, increasing the frequency of automatic updates at public computers, and finding ways to pinpoint more quickly infected
computers before viruses spread.
—Elizabeth Redden ’05

Reynolds Caps
Fall Season
With CC
Championship
CROSS-COUNTRY

MARK DUZENSKI

Junior Lang Reynolds was named Centennial
Conference (CC) Runner of the Year after finishing first in the conference championship in Center Valley, Pa. Reynolds covered the
men’s 8K course in 26:45.27, becoming the first male in Swarthmore history to capture the championship. The Garnet placed third
in the team standings as James Golden ’05 and Garrett Ash ’05 ran
15th and 16th, respectively. The third-place finish—Swarthmore’s
best—equals the performance of the 1993 and 1999 squads.
In women’s cross-country, Elizabeth Gardner ’05 and Debbie
Farrelly ’06 led the Garnet to a fourth-place finish at the CC Championships. The duo ran the 6K course together—Gardner finished
10th in 25:00.90, and Farrelly ran 11th in 25:02.22, earning second-team All-CC honors. Njideka Akunyili ’04 finished 27th, and
Caroline Ritter ’06 was 33rd.

FIELD HOCKEY (7–11, 3–7) Despite the record, the young Garnet

squad closed out the season on a high note with victories over
Haverford (2–1) and conference foe Franklin & Marshall (3–2) to
set the tone for next season. Senior co-captain Helen Leitner and
sophomore forward Heidi Fieselmann led the Garnet in scoring,
with 16 points apiece. First-year players Neema Patel and Karen
Lorang made an immediate impact, earning second-team all-CC
honors. Patel led the defense with 5 points, and Lorang posted a
2.85 goals-against average and a .809 save percentage in goal.

EMMA BENN ’04 CLOSED OUT HER SWARTHMORE VOLLEYBALL CAREER
BY SETTING FIVE COLLEGE RECORDS IN HER FINAL SEASON.

shutouts, recording a 1.38 goals-against average. Natalie Negrey ’07
provided a spark to the offense, providing two game-winning goals.
She was one of six CC players to record a hat trick when she tallied
three goals in a 6–1 victory over Washington. In the most exciting
game of the season, Becky Strauss ’06 scored in overtime to give
the Garnet a 2–1 come-from-behind victory over Johns Hopkins.

17-match CC losing streak, winning three conference games for the
first time since the 1994 season. The losing streak ended with a
1–0 victory over Washington College, when Colton Bangs ’07
scored a man-down goal with 2:44 remaining. The Garnet also
recorded a 1–0 victory over 12th-ranked Johns Hopkins. Senior
captain Brendan Moriarty tallied the goal to give the Garnet its first
victory over the Blue Jays since 1993. Junior goalkeeper Nate Shupe
was instrumental in those two victories. He posted a 1.68 goalsagainst average and a .780 save percentage, earning all-CC honorable mention. Shupe, an honors astrophysics major, was also
named to the CoSIDA Academic All-America District II second
team.
WOMEN’S SOCCER (9–9, 4–6) Led by senior captains Katey McCaffrey and Catherine Salussolia, the Garnet recorded first-time victories over Johns Hopkins and Franklin & Marshall. McCaffrey led
the squad in scoring with a career-high eight goals and four assists
for 20 points. The midfielder ranked sixth in the CC in points per
game (1.18) and seventh in goals per game (0.47). Goalkeeper
Salussolia finished fifth in the CC with 96 saves and three

VOLLEYBALL (14–18, 5–5) Led by senior co-captain Emma Benn,
the Garnet set a host of school records and posted its most CC victories since 1995, including a season-ending 3–2 victory over
Haverford that snapped a 14-match losing streak to the Fords.
Benn closed out her career as the all-time Garnet leader in career
matches played (110), career games played (376), career attempts
(2,465), career kills (748), and career digs (913). The outside hitter
earned second-team all-CC honors. Sophomore setter Emily Conlon and junior co-captain Natalie Dunphy ranked first and second
in the CC in service aces with 82 and 77, respectively. Conlon set
Garnet records for assists in a season (949), assists in a career
(1,484), and aces (82) in a season, earning all-CC honorable mention. Dunphy finished fourth in the CC in blocks per game (0.90)
and set a school mark for total blocks in a season with 105. She also
holds the Garnet mark with 136 career aces. Senior blocker Katrina
Morrison finished third in the CC in blocks per game (0.94) and
closed out her career with a school record 126 solo blocks and 208
total blocks. First-year outside hitter Erica George set school season
records for attempts (1,044), kills (312), and digs (405).
—Mark Duzenski

DECEMBER 2003

MEN’S SOCCER (5–12–2, 3–6) The young Garnet squad snapped its

11

Visitors
THE SCOTT ARBORETUM

Welcome

HAS BEEN GROWING

A L O N G S I D E S WA R T H M O R E
FOR 75 YEARS.

By Ben Ya g o d a

I

n 1929, a noted landscape architect and
horticulturist spent a few days examining the grounds of Swarthmore College. He was unimpressed with what he
found. “The variety of trees is not very
great,” he commented in his report, “covering only about seventy species in about thirty genera, and two quite inferior trees, the
Norway Maple and the Norway Spruce, are
used in much larger quantities than is desirable. The planting of smaller trees, of flowering shrubs, and of herbaceous plants has
been haphazard.”
As for Crum Creek and the Crum
Woods, the same man recalled at a later
date: “They were utterly neglected and were
as a result in a most dilapidated condition…. There were hundreds of dead trees
both standing and fallen. The undergrowth
was dense and mostly of shrubs that were
not particularly desirable. Poison ivy, catbriar, and honeysuckle particularly were to be
found in large masses, smothering other
growth. The entire area constituted a most
serious fire menace … and the property was
inaccessible except for a few trails and one
or two rather hastily constructed paths.”
John Wister, who wrote those words, was
responsible, more than anyone else, for the

OPPOSITE PAGE: © HARRY KALISH; LEFT: JOHN WISTER: COURTESY OF THE SCOTT ARBORETUM; ABOVE: GOTTLIEB HAMPFLER

transformation of Swarthmore’s campus
from an uninspiring series of horticultural
accidents to the remarkable arboretum it is
today. But another man’s vision and his
widow’s philanthropy made Wister’s accomplishment possible. The visionary was
Arthur Hoyt Scott, Class of
1895, the son of the
founder of the Scott Paper
Co.—and a horticultural
enthusiast of high magnitude. In the early 1920s,
Scott, a resident of nearby
Rose Valley, conceived the
idea of an installation on
the Swarthmore campus
where homeowners would
be able to observe an
attractive display of plants
that could thrive in their
own gardens.
Scott found an enthusiastic audience in
Samuel Palmer, head of the Botany Department at Swarthmore, who, in 1926, presented the Board of Managers with a plan to
make the entire College property an arboretum. The document did not tend toward
moderation, stating at one point, “Should
such a development take place a beautiful

park-like area would arise centrally located,
easy of access, surrounded by a densely populated country, of great value educationally,
self-supporting, and always to the advantage and prestige of Swarthmore College.”
In his copy of the prospectus, Swarth-

President Aydelotte tried to
discuss a mere beautification
of the grounds. But Mrs. Scott
said, “It must be an arboretum,
or I cannot … allow Arthur’s
name to be used in any way.”
more College President Frank Aydelotte
scribbled a question in the margin: “How
self-supporting[?]”
The plan’s grandeur seemed to doom it.
Early in 1927, Scott wrote Palmer a pessimistic letter, doubting that the Board of
Managers would donate even the land needed for an arboretum and concluding, “I’m
inclined to think that the best you could

DECEMBER 2003

JOHN WISTER H’42

13

TREE PEONIES (LEFT) CONSTITUTED
ONE OF THE EARLY COLLECTIONS OF
THE SCOTT FOUNDATION—WHICH
WAS RENAMED THE SCOTT ARBORETUM
IN THE MID-1980S. THEY ARE NOW
FOUND ON THE SLOPE BELOW
CLOTHIER MEMORIAL HALL.

THE CRUM CREEK (BELOW) RUNS
THROUGH ABOUT 200 ACRES OF
WOODLAND OWNED BY THE COLLEGE—ONE OF THE LAST
SIGNIFICANT GREEN SPACES IN
DELAWARE COUNTY.

PARRISH HALL (RIGHT) WAS BUILT
ON A BARREN HILL BUT IS NOW
SURROUNDED BY LUSH GARDENS
AND VERDANT TREES. THE DEAN
BOND ROSE GARDEN DISPLAYS MORE
THAN 600 TYPES OF ROSES.

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

CLAIRE SAWYERS

14

get would be permission to beautify the
grounds.” Scott was also preoccupied with
his failing health. In the same letter, he told
Palmer that his doctors had forbidden him
to return to work for another three months,
and, although he was willing to offer the
arboretum project what support he could, “I
am a poor reed to lean on.” Just weeks later,
Scott suffered a stroke and died suddenly.
He was 52.
However, his widow, Edith Wilder Scott,
Class of 1896; his sister, Margaret Moon;
and her husband, Owen Moon—from the
Class of 1894—did not forget his idea. In
1929, they approached President Aydelotte
and offered to fund an endowment in
Arthur Scott’s honor, with the proceeds to
be used for the kind of campus plantings
Scott had envisioned. Initially, the president
tried to steer the discussion in the direction
Scott had predicted—a mere beautification
of the grounds. But Mrs. Scott would have
none of it. “I regret very much that my gift
has been announced, for there are so many
things to be discussed and decided upon,”
she wrote to Aydelotte in May. “It must be
an arboretum, or I cannot … allow Arthur’s
name to be used in any way.” Aydelotte ultimately accepted the offer on these terms: If
THE TERRY WILD STUDIO

COURTESY OF THE SCOTT ARBORETUM

the endowment would pay the salary of a
director and the cost of plants, the College
would supply labor for the planting and
subsequent care of the specimens. Mrs.
Scott and the Moons agreed and put forth
as director the name of John Caspar Wister.
Wister, 42 years old in 1929, was a direct
descendant of Caspar Wistar (subsequent
generations changed the a in the surname
to an e), who emigrated from Heidelberg to
Philadelphia in 1717. One of his descendants, and his namesake, was a Philadelphia
physician and anatomist, after whom two
notable things were named: the Wistar
Institute, a still-operating center of medical
and scientific research, and the flower wisteria. Another was Owen Wister, author of
The Virginian. John Wister grew up on an
estate in the then-rural Germantown section of Philadelphia, where he liked to follow around the gardener and haunt the
greenhouse. At the age of 14, he grew his
first study collection of flowers—some 40
different chrysanthemums. He took a degree
in landscape architecture at Harvard and,
after graduation, worked in the offices of
practitioners in Philadelphia and New York.
In 1917, after enlisting in the Army, he was
sent to France, where he spent all his leave
time visiting the great gardens of France,
often sending notable specimens back to the
United States.
After the war, Wister developed a national reputation as a landscape designer and a

John Wister was responsible
for the transformation of
Swarthmore’s campus. But Arthur
Hoyt Scott’s vision made Wister’s
accomplishment possible.

DECEMBER 2003

FRIENDS HISTORICAL LIBRARY

botanical expert and was in every way the
impressive shopping. Wister’s secret was
logical person to direct the new Scott Foun- buying small. Thus, the cost of the American
dation. Not the least of his qualifications
hemlock varied between $30 to $100 per
was that he didn’t need the money: His
1,000 plants, and the plants were between 3
salary was $1,000 a year, to be paid directly
and 9 inches high.
to him by Mrs.
Scott. Beyond that
guarantee, the
finances of the Scott
Foundation were
dubious at best. The
endowment was
reported in the
press to be about
$100,000, but that
was a fanciful figure.
The amount of real
assets collected totaled a little less than
He acquired some taller specimens as
$16,000, which the College’s comptroller
well. On a wet March morning, the foundareckoned would provide a total of $1,059 in
tion was formally dedicated with the plantannual income. On the other hand, at least
ing of a long row of lilacs near the eastern
for the time being, the foundation didn’t
entrance of the campus, proceeding from
really need money. There was no land or
the Friends Meetinghouse down the lawn.
equipment to buy, no staff to pay, no offices
The same year, Allen White, Class of
to furnish. (Incidentally, Wister’s annual
1894, and his wife donated $1,000 for the
salary remained $1,000 a year until 1959.
planting of Japanese cherry trees in honor
Then, it dropped. By the end of his time at
of their late daughter, Carolien White PowScott, he was paying himself $1 a year.)
ers, Class of 1922. Wister bought 68 cherry
In a “Preliminary Report” submitted to
trees (two each of 34 varieties), about 2 feet
Aydelotte in 1930, Wister advocated concen- high on average, for a grand total of $231—
trating on the College’s “greatest asset”—
“leaving ample allowance for the best soil
the Crum Woods. The portion adjoining
preparation I have ever seen.” The trees were
campus, he said,
“could be developed
A NEW ARBORETUM ANNIVERSARY BOOK
into a wild garden of
great and unusual
At its 75th anniversary, the Scott Arboretum is known throughbeauty unlike anyout the world as a leading horticultural institution. Thousands of
thing in this section
people visit the Swarthmore campus each year to enjoy its garof the country at a
dens, paths, and programs. To
comparatively small
commemorate its rich past and
cost.” He recomcurrent vitality, the Scott Arboremended planting on
tum and The Donning Co. have
a scale that “would
published a 176-page book that
make a sight that
includes a lively history by noted
would make Swarthauthor Ben Yagoda; a foreword
more famous.” The
reflecting on the relationship of
president gave his
the College to its campus by T.
approval, and Wister
Kaori Kitao, William R. Kenan Jr.,
used his $1,000
Professor Emerita of Art History;
budget to buy some
and pages of historic and con14,000 hemlocks,
temporary photographs—includ5,000 dogwoods,
ing many color pictures showing the beauty of the Swarthmore
4,000 mountain
campus today. The book is available from the Scott Arboretum
laurel, and 400 holfor $34.95 plus shipping costs. Call (610) 328-8025 to order.
lies. Even in 1930,
this was some pretty

15

THE SCOTT OUTDOOR AMPHITHEATER
(LEFT) IS A MASTERFUL EXAMPLE OF
DESIGNING IN HARMONY WITH
NATURE. SINCE 1942, IT HAS BEEN
THE SITE OF EVERY COLLEGE
COMMENCEMENT, INCLUDING A
RAINY DAY IN 1983, WHEN MEMBERS
OF THE GRADUATING CLASS MARCHED
THERE FROM THE RAIN LOCATION
LAMB-MILLER FIELD HOUSE TO HAVE
THEIR DEGREES CONFERRED EN MASSE
BY PRESIDENT DAVID FRASER.

SPECIMEN TREES (RIGHT, WITH
CLOTHIER MEMORIAL HALL IN THE
BACKGROUND) ARE ONE OF THE
TRADEMARKS OF THE ARBORETUMCAMPUS.

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

THE TERRY WILD STUDIO

16

planted along the edge of the lawn near
Cedar Lane.
Improving the state of the Crum Woods,
envisioned by Wister as the centerpiece of
the arboretum, was not so easily addressed.
In his words: “There were quantities of
dead, diseased, or broken trees. There was
dreadful erosion. There were sickening piles
of rubbish, old furniture, old stoves, mountains of tin cans and bottles.” Clearly, many
hundreds of man-hours were needed to
attend to the situation. But the Swarthmore
grounds crew of a dozen or so men had
already added numerous Scott-related tasks
to its previous duties and could not be
called on any further. Help came from an
outside force—the Depression. Just a year
after the stock-market crash, many people
were losing their jobs, including workers at
the Victoria Plush Mills, adjacent to the College’s land on Crum Creek, which closed in
1930. The Borough of Swarthmore raised
$500 for unemployment relief, the College
matched the figure, and two dozen men
were put to work in the woods. As Wister
wrote, “They were pretty clumsy compared
to our own men but in the two and a half
winters they literally transformed the dilapi-

dated areas into a pleasant woodland park
with attractive paths.”
The 1930s at the Scott Foundation were
marked by a sense of possibility and excitement, as Wister—who maintained his residence in Germantown, coming down to
Swarthmore a couple of times a week during
growing season, less often during the rest of
the year—began to turn his vision into reality. The collection and the endowment grew,
slowly but steadily, and the horticultural
world at large began to take notice. Then,
Pearl Harbor was attacked, the United
States entered World War II, and the grand
plans of the Scott Foundation were put on
hold for a very long time. Wister had frequently lamented the lack of labor available
to him, and war conditions meant even
fewer man-hours for the arboretum. As a
result, he began making the difficult decision to eliminate collections that needed the
most human attention. The first to go was
the display bed of chrysanthemums between
College Avenue and Worth Hall. It was followed by the herbaceous plants in the president’s garden and in the rock wall at the
library.
When the war was over, Wister—by now

living in a rented apartment in Swarthmore—drafted a 13-page memorandum for
President John Nason and the Board of
Managers, titled “Future Plans.” It outlined
how, after a long period of stasis, the foundation could and should still “accomplish
its original purpose.” The report exuded
confidence, almost a sense of manifest destiny; even the verbs and the repetitive sentence structure had a martial feel to them.
Referring to the foundation, Wister wrote:
“Its collections must increase in size and
in importance. It must show the plants to
the public in the most effective way. It
should conduct demonstrations of gardening practices and publish complete reports
of the various plants being grown and tested. It should conduct research in all matters
pertaining to the plants in its collections,
their botanical relationships, their cultivation, and their improvement by selection or
plant breeding.”
Carrying out the plans would require
new staff, new facilities, new equipment,
and large infusions of money. And there, as
always, was the rub. No one could have been
more horticulturally knowledgeable and discerning or more dedicated to the Scott

Foundation and to plants than was John
Wister. But he was a shy man, more comfortable at the typewriter and in the garden
than with people—especially large groups of
people. The kind of growth he foresaw
would have required, essentially, a gregarious fund-raiser and salesman. Wister was
not that person.
Yet despite Wister’s shortcomings as a
public personality, the Swarthmore campus,
under his and his colleagues’ care, was
increasingly recognized as one of the loveliest in the country, if not the world. Some of
the individual collections had developed
national and international reputations.
These included daffodils, irises, azaleas,
magnolias, lilacs, rhododendrons, and tree
peonies—always a special interest of Wister’s. In 1948, The New York Times termed the
tree peony collection the “largest and best”
in the country.

A highlight of the postwar period was
installation in 1958 of the Dean Bond Rose
Garden, named after Elizabeth Powell Bond,
dean of women at Swarthmore from 1890
to 1906. It was designed by Gertrude Smith,
the assistant director of the foundation.
Two years later, she became the first wife of
John Wister, whom she had known for 26
years and who was then 73. Mrs. Wister later
remarked, “It took him all that time to
decide he could take the plunge.” They
moved into the cottage the College had built
for Wister in 1949, at the southern end of
campus, bordering on the Crum Woods.
Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s,
in his annual reports and memoranda to
Swarthmore presidents, Wister gave vent to
his frustrations, most of which had to do
with insufficient manpower. Finally, in
1964, the 35th anniversary of the foundation, Courtney Smith, president of Swarth-

Ben Yagoda is the author of The Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College: The First 75
Years, from which this article is adapted.

DECEMBER 2003

THE TERRY WILD STUDIO

more since 1953, appointed a committee to
assess its future. Its report reaffirmed
Arthur Scott’s original conception of the
foundation as a force for horticultural education; recommended that Wister’s successor be hired on a full-time basis; and, most
important, put its money where its mouth
was, allocating funds that nearly doubled
the foundation’s endowment to $600,000.
Wister would stay for another four years,
making his tenure a round four decades.
Under his successors—Joseph Oppe; Judith
Zuk; and, since 1991, Claire Sawyers—the
Scott Foundation became the Scott Arboretum, the new name more accurately describing the campuswide horticultural showcase
it had become. The endowment grew to
some $20 million, providing post–Wister
directors with the labor they needed to
maintain it. Wister was able to witness
some of these developments before his
death in 1982, at age 95. The headline of his
obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer
described him as “the dean of horticulture
in the U.S.”
The current arboretum is a tribute to his
vision and dedication. But there is a more
specific legacy. Soon after moving to his
Swarthmore cottage, he subsequently
recalled, he began to plant “particularly rare
or precious or small plants that I was afraid
to plant on the main campus where they are
subject to theft, vandalism, power lawn
mowers in careless hands, and ignorant
laborers who might pull them up thinking
they were weeds.” On joining the household, Gertrude Wister added to the garden,
with special attention to daffodils (eventually obtaining more than 400 varieties), ferns,
wild flowers, rock gardens, and rock wall
plants. “We regard it not as a private garden
but as the herbaceous section of the Scott
Foundation,” Wister wrote. “Visitors are
always welcome.”
Gertrude Wister remained in the house
and cultivated the garden until her death in
1998, at the age of 93. The house is now
used as faculty quarters for the College, but,
as far as the gardens are concerned, visitors
who can find them—either by wandering
in back of the athletics field or entering
through the driveway on Harvard Avenue—
are still welcome. T

17

S

Sowing
Seeds
of
Success
ERIC ADLER ’86 CO-FOUNDS
AN INNER-CITY PUBLIC

CHARTER BOARDING SCHOOL.
By Elizabeth Redden ’05
P h otographs by Claire Weiss ’03

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

T

18

he eighth-grade girls of “Swarthmore
House” are restless. It’s time to go
home for the weekend, they say.
Tatianna Green is singing Lumidee: “If you
want me to stay, I’ll never leave.” Chelia
James picks up the beat, accompanying
Tatianna with claps. The room is exploding
with chatter. “Do you really think so-and-so
is cute?” Ashley Muskelly asks. “Well, he’s
better than the rest of ’em!”
Two desks down, the topic of conversation is drastically different: “I got all As and
Bs,” someone says. That, of course, stirs up
a volley of responses. Progress reports came
out today. It’s the weekend, grades are out,
and these girls haven’t been home in two
weeks. It’s a recipe for unrest.
Poor Lori Beth Hutchison is happy it’s
the weekend too, but she has to round up
18

the girls’ energy and harness it for one final
activity before they can all go home. Hutchison, the boarding instructor for Swarthmore House, asks the girls to fill out a “Positive Affirmations” worksheet. “Twenty-five
more minutes, then pizza, and you can go
home,” she tells them, cheerful yet visibly
exhausted.
“I like the way I feel when I do good in
school,” Tatianna reads out loud from her
worksheet, her voice confident, strong, and
indicative of the singer she dreams of
becoming. “I know I will be successful in
life because I will never put myself down.”
“I think that’s what I’m most proud of,”
says Eric Adler ’86, co-founder of the
Schools for Educational Evolution and
Development (SEED) School of Washington, D.C., the inner-city public charter

boarding school that Tatianna and her
friends attend. “When you look at our kids,
they’re loud and boisterous and sometimes
unrefined in their behavior, but they’re just
kids, you know?” He pauses, takes a bite of
his fish filet sandwich. “And that’s how it
should be.”
The SEED School is the first of its kind.
Based on the premise that many students
from inner-city neighborhoods need a
secure, stable, and academically oriented
residential environment to help them succeed, the school provides a tuition-free public boarding program for DC schoolchildren
who would otherwise be in more traditional
inner-city public schools. Each year, rising
seventh-grade students are selected for the
school via a lottery, for which there are usually three applicants for every student ran-

THE SEED SCHOOL IS BASED ON THE PREMISE
THAT MANY STUDENTS FROM INNER-CITY
NEIGHBORHOODS NEED A SECURE, STABLE, AND
ACADEMICALLY ORIENTED RESIDENTIAL
ENVIRONMENT IN ORDER TO SUCCEED.

domly chosen. Those who attend commit to
what Adler terms a six-year college preparatory “mission.”
“We talk about the college process really
from the moment they arrive,” Adler says.
College pennants adorn the walls of many
of the classrooms; the halls are named after
colleges attended by faculty members—
“Yale House”; “West Point House”; and, of
course, “Swarthmore House” are among
them. Adler explains the SEED School
attempts to form a residential community
where college preparation and academic
success are accepted goals.

F

ewer than 10 years ago, Adler was on a
completely different career path. A double major in economics and engineering at
Swarthmore, Adler taught high school

physics in Baltimore for eight years before
receiving an M.B.A. at Wharton. He then
went on to a high-profile, high-paying job
as a management consultant.
In the back of his mind, though, Adler
was playing with the idea of a public boarding school that would service those students
most truly in need. While talking about it at
work one day, someone visiting from a spinoff firm said he knew someone else who was
thinking along the same lines: Rajiv Vinnakota, another management consultant.
Vinnakota had actually taken a two-month
leave of absence from his job to investigate
possibilities for such a school. Adler called
him, and they arranged to meet for a fastfood dinner. “We ended up staying for three
hours.”
A month later, in February 1997, Adler

DECEMBER 2003

“I know I will be
successful in life
because I will never
put myself down,”
Green says.

19

and Vinnakota held a summit meeting in
Washington. On just one Saturday, Adler,
Vinnakota, and several others who had
expressed interest in the school met and
planned it all out. Then on Sunday, they
came back and developed a business plan.
The goal was to open the school in September 1998.
“Raj and I were looking through this
board full of stuff that needed to get done
in the next year and a half, and I said, ‘Can
we do it?’ ‘Yeah, yeah, we can do it, but it’ll
take two full-time people.’ I looked at him
and said, ‘Are you in?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’
The next day, we both went in and quit our
jobs.”
Adler and Vinnakota spent the next 16
months working without pay to develop the
school. The SEED School of Washington,
D.C., opened on schedule, inviting its first
class of 40 seventh-graders to live and learn
in the rented attic space of the Capital Children’s Museum in September 1998. With no
buildings yet complete, it was the school’s
temporary campus.

“These are the kids
who won’t get this
kind of opportunity
unless we give it to
them,” says Adler.

N

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

T

20

oday, with the first class of seventhgraders completing its senior year—and
the school at full capacity with 310 students
in all six grades—the SEED School has
been transformed. Two dormitories, an academic building, and a student center now
stand on the campus in southeastern Washington. The student center, the last building
completed, was just finished and contains a
gymnasium, weight room, recreation room,
multipurpose room, and cafeteria. Academically and residentially, the school boasts a
collection of resources that would be
unimaginable for most inner-city educators.
A half-million dollars’ worth of donated
art adorns the walls. High-performance
Gateway computers line the brightly lit labs
and classrooms, the public living areas, and
are even in many of the older students’
dorm rooms. Most of the computers are
gifts from the Oprah Angel Network, which
recognized Adler and Vinnakota with Oprah
Winfrey’s “Use Your Life” Award in May
2002. The Oprah Angel Network donated
300 computers—about one per student—
plus beds, desks, and dressers for all 150
students living in the school’s second dormitory (opened in 2002). In addition, Gateway donated 150 printers, and Linens-NThings donated new sheets, comforters, pil-

successful even though construction is now
completed. Adler stresses that private funds
are crucial to providing SEED students the
type of “extras” many students in different
communities take for granted.
Each summer, students from the SEED
School can earn trips to Greece or Wyoming. About 30 students go hiking and
camping in Wyoming each summer; eight go
to Greece. Pizza parties and trips to Six
Flags are rewards for good grades and
behavior. The School has a Wish List on
amazon.com to encourage donors to fill its
library shelves, and money will continue to
be required for things like trips to the theater and museums. “It’s the stuff that gives
kids great opportunities, like everyone else
has,” Adler says.

ERIC ADLER LEFT A CAREER IN MANAGEMENT
CONSULTING TO CO-FOUND THE SEED SCHOOL
WITH RAJIV VINNAKOTA. THE SCHOOL NOW HAS
310 STUDENTS IN GRADES 7 TO 12.

lows, towels, and accessories.
Public operating money for the school,
according to Adler, runs somewhere in the
ballpark of $7.5 million per year. Through
regular public school charter funding (see
sidebar) and additional public money added
on top of that to support residential expenses, the school can sustain itself at capacity.
However, Adler says they have raised about
$23 million through private donations, and
he hopes fund-raising efforts continue to be

ate Myers ’99, an eighth-grade reading
teacher and cross-country coach for
SEED, says the school is, in many ways, an
ideal place for a teacher with a social vision.
“I continue to feel amazed about the
resources and the idealism that has been
marshaled here in the school.”
“If this is urban education, it has a completely different feel.”
Myers cites the SEED teachers as being
particularly dedicated. Many faculty members, he says, work 13- or 14-hour days and
come in on Saturdays or Sundays to catch
up. SEED has gotten about 1,000 resumes
each of the past two years, and the school
chooses from a national pool to find the
most dedicated and idealistic.
“There are very few students who fall
into the cracks here. If anything, they get
caught in the cracks and have a hard time
adjusting to the high expectations of the
school,” Myers says.
“Everyone wants these kids to succeed so
much.”

I

t’s been quite a change for Katia Fauntroy, an aspiring eighth-grade singer from
Swarthmore House, who remembers feeling
as though academics were completely unimportant at her previous school. “You could
be the dumbest person in the world and still
pass at my old school,” she says. “Here,
you’re challenged.”
It’s a difficult transition for many students, and not everyone meets the challenge. Of the 40 students constituting the
original class, only 21 are still at SEED for

WHY CHARTER SCHOOLS?

THE SCHOOL IS CHALLENGING. OF THE 40 STUDENTS CONSTITUTING THE ORIGINAL CLASS, ONLY 21 HAVE
MADE IT TO THEIR SENIOR YEAR. BUT ADLER SAYS ALMOST ALL OF THEM WILL ATTEND COLLEGE.

their senior year, according to Boarding Program Coordinator Shantelle Hughes.
“This is difficult for these kids,” Adler
admits. “It really is. Being motivated at such
a young age to undertake a mission that in
the context of their lives and neighborhoods
might not make a whole lot of sense is, I
think, a pretty unique character trait.”
When looking at the kids who are thriving, who sit in front of their very own Gateway computers in their dorm rooms, who
have their artwork plastered on the wall in
the front hallway, who spend part of their
summer in Greece and read and write and
study within a network of similarly focused
close friends, it’s difficult to imagine where
they might be without a place like SEED.
“If you walk into the public schools that
most of these kids come from and would
otherwise be in, it’s not a pretty sight,”
Adler says.
Of the 21 that are left of the original
class, Adler believes just about every one of
them will attend college next year.

S

tanding in line for his lunch, Adler picks
up a tray with the SEED logo on it. He
smiles broadly. “I love that. I love that. I
have one at home. Founder’s privileges.”
Looking at him, it’s impossible not to see
just how much he loves his job. The salad
bar is, apparently, not at its best today;
Director of Admissions Lesley Poole says it
usually includes raisins and other fixings
that just aren’t there on Fridays. Adler is not
concerned. He fills his tray and talks about

his hopes of operating SEED schools in
cities throughout the country. Sitting down,
shaking his chocolate milk, he repeats a
story he has told many times. About two
years ago, he was giving a tour when a student representative was asked about his
summer plans. “I’m trying to get myself a
job in Paris,” the student responded.
“I just about fell over,” Adler says. Having spent three hours in Paris during a layover on his flight back from Greece the previous summer, this student had decided it
would be a nice place to return to the next
year.
“Whether or not he actually got a summer job in Paris, the point is that he saw it
was out there, and that there would be ways
for him to work there, and he decided to go
about it,” Adler says, his voice rising with
excitement from a story that, for him, still
hasn’t grown old.
Looking around him at the cafeteria,
with students from each grade level sitting
with their teachers, being loud and noisy
and, well, kids at school on a Friday, Adler is
in his element. Sitting amid the kind of
magical madness he helped make possible,
quietly drinking his chocolate milk in the
corner, Adler can’t imagine his life having
taken any other course. “I really am lucky.” T
This is Elizabeth Redden’s fifth feature article for
the Bulletin. She will be studying in Ecuador
during the spring semester.

he charter school movement has
boomed in the past decade, enjoying bipartisan support and flexible legislation. Professor of Education Eva Travers says about 40 states have
approved charter school legislation
since the mid-1990s, and each state
has differing requirements for start-up
charters.
The basic premise behind charter
schools, Travers explains, is to allow
motivated individuals to open schools
that create innovative curriculums and
allow for greater teacher autonomy outside of a bureaucratic system. “The
potential of charter schools is to let
people who are so inclined bring
together their progressive ideas about
education.”
Charter schools therefore get public
funding, with less public oversight, in
exchange for accountability: Under the
“No Child Left Behind Law,” Travers
says, charter school students must score
well on state tests for schools to maintain their charters. Schools are required
to accept everyone who applies or hold
a lottery for available spots if surplus
numbers apply, although Travers says a
common complaint about charter
schools is that they lack special education services and therefore restrict without actively denying access to students
with special needs.
Other complaints about charter
schools are that they potentially create
more segregated communities, increase
costs in terms of administration requirements, and do not always offer the
types of innovative curricula they are
expected to provide in exchange for
their greater autonomy.
Travers describes the SEED School as
a “unique charter school” and says the
school has been thoughtful in its innovative boarding curriculum. “The SEED
School is the best possible use of the
charter school idea—it takes advantage
of having less regulation and allows its
teachers to have more autonomy,” she
says.
—E.R.

DECEMBER 2003

T

21

FINDING

GROUND
AT S WA R T H M O R E , I N T E R N AT I O N A L
E D U C AT I O N I S S O D I F F U S E — Y E T S O
D E E P LY A PA R T O F T H E C U R R I C U L U M
AND LIFE OF THE COLLEGE—IT’S AS IF IT

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

W E R E I N T H E C A M P U S A I R A N D WAT E R .

22

By Tom Krattenmaker

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHS: AT THE REQUEST OF THE BULLETIN, INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AND STUDENTS WHO HAD COMPLETED A FOREIGN STUDY
EXPERIENCE SUBMITTED NEARLY 100 PHOTOGRAPHS FOR THIS ARTICLE.
THEY SHOW SWARTHMORE STUDENTS ENCOUNTERING PEOPLE AND CULTURES
ON EVERY CONTINENT. EACH PHOTOGRAPH THAT WAS CHOSEN BY THE
EDITORS FOR PUBLICATION IS LABELED WITH THE NAME OF THE STUDENT
WHO SUBMITTED IT AND THE PLACE WHERE IT WAS TAKEN.

ANNA STRATTON ʼ04, INDIA

CATHERINE CLARK ʼ04, FRANCE

P

ondering the latest international news in this strife-torn
decade, Americans often struggle to divine something in common between their lives and those of the people living in distant, troubled places such as Iraq, North Korea, or the West Bank.
With religion, economic circumstances, political systems, and worldviews so drastically different, to what could we possibly relate? Why,
outside of threats to Americans’ safety, and why, given the seeming
intractability of global problems, should we even care?
As the president of Swarthmore, Alfred H. Bloom asks the College community to see past the obvious divisions to all the small and
large things that unite people around the globe—their common
concern for family and friends, their hope for justice and a better
future, their valuing of compassion and respect, their humor, their
humanity. He is intent on ensuring that graduates of the College
take their places in the world with the intellect, perspective, and
commitment to see and act beyond the walls of division that are not
as high or thick as they seem.
“Our students must respect and learn from diverse cultural tradi-

tions,” Bloom says. “But they must also recognize the fundamental
commonalities we share—to become agents, through whatever
careers they choose, of a more inclusive, united, and humane world.”
Early in the second decade of Bloom’s presidency, Swarthmore is
arguably more international than at any time in its history—international in the composition and outlook of its faculty and student
body, international in the scope and sophistication of a Semester
Abroad Program in which more than 40 percent of the students take
part, and, most important, international in the way it nourishes students’ intellectual and ethical growth inside and outside the classroom. Swarthmore is reaching the point where an “international
education” is so diffuse—yet so deeply a part of the curriculum and
life of the College—it’s as if it were in the campus air and water.
“The global perspective infuses so much of what happens on
campus,” says William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science
Kenneth Sharpe, who teaches and writes about Latin America. “The
faculty brings a distinct global perspective to the curriculum—even
in courses on American politics, for example. And on top of that,

DECEMBER 2003

LAURA CLARK ʼ04, VATICAN CITY

KATE PENROSE ʼ04, MOROCCO

23

“It’s easy to say
that we cannot
bridge the
differences between
cultures, that we
have nothing in
common,” says
President Al Bloom.
“What we are really
trying to teach at
Swarthmore is
that we have
almost everything
in common.”

AY JY PHOUN ʼ04, KENYA (PHOTO BY LIZ BALDWIN)

24

students are bringing this perspective back
with them after going off to study abroad.”

T

o some extent, Swarthmore has long
been “international.” Even decades
ago, before the College had a Foreign
Study Office, Asian Studies Program, and
the like, an international orientation pervaded the campus thanks to the many professors who had grown up abroad or had at
least spent considerable time studying in
other countries, primarily in Europe. “These
faculty members had a very cosmopolitan
view of the world, and they brought it with
them to the classroom,” says Steven Piker, a
member of the sociology/anthropology faculty since 1966 and director of the Foreign
Study Office. Coupled with that has been a
long-standing quality in teaching foreign
languages and literatures.
From those historical roots have grown
the following:
• Formal programs in such areas as
Asian Studies, Francophone Studies, and
the Chinese and Japanese languages as well
as an emerging program in Islamic Studies.
The latter was in the works before Sept. 11,
2001, but the terrorist attacks made the program’s beginning in 2002 especially timely.
One tangible result of that initiative was the
hiring of Scott Kugle ’91, an assistant pro-

fessor of religion who speaks Arabic and
teaches courses on Islam and Islamic culture. “My first objective is to portray the
Islamic world as a humane world,” Kugle
says, “to introduce it as a place that is populated by human beings because, in a way,
our news media and political leaders have
dehumanized the whole region.” Recently,
Assistant Professor Farha Ghannam, who
teaches Middle Eastern culture, was
appointed to a tenure-track position in
anthropology.
• A Semester Abroad Program that continues to sprout new offshoots in countries
such as Poland and Ghana and in curricular
areas from dance to theater to environmental studies. The program is marked by an
emphasis on a study abroad experience that
feeds and enriches the students’ coursework
and research on their return for their senior
year. At a time when many U.S. colleges are
promoting foreign study programs with an
emphasis on amenities and cultural and
extracurricular experiences, as reported by
the Wall Street Journal earlier this year,
Swarthmore is deepening the academic
rigor of its program and exploring the
addition of an international community
service element.
• The less formal but consistent commitment to bringing the world to the Swarthmore classroom, whether the course is in lit-

MARC BOUCAI ʼ04 AND ANDY MEADE ʼ03, CZECH REPUBLIC
(PHOTO BY HOFAN CHAU ʼ03; SUBMITTED BY MELINDA LEE ʼ04)

This progress at Swarthmore comes at a
time of national concern over the adequacy
of international education in American
higher education. In October, the American
Council on Education issued a report finding that most institutions are falling short.
“While some bright spots exist, U.S. higher
education institutions have a long way to go
before all students graduate with international skills and knowledge,” the report’s
authors concluded.
Don Swearer, for one, believes Swarthmore is one of those bright spots. “America
needs leaders and visionaries to enable it to
play the role I believe it should play in the
world,” says Swearer, the Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Religion,
whose writing and teaching focus on Buddhism. “What we’re trying to do at Swarthmore is prepare students to be the people
who put in the effort to develop a more
inclusive worldview, who appreciate pluralism without adopting a kind of ‘anything
goes’ relativism, and who ultimately learn to

stand for something.”
“Leaders of the 21st century,” Bloom
says, “must gain understanding of the traditions, economic and political conditions,
cultures and languages of other peoples, if
they are to be successful in predicting the
international effects of policies and actions,
and in shaping those policies and actions
toward the realization of a more secure, productive, and just world. And as part of that
learning they must come, as well, to understand the risks inherent in America not
using its power and influence in ways that
motivate trust, inclusion, and common purpose.
“I hope and believe,” Bloom adds, “that
our students leave here with the ability and
resolve to become those very leaders.”

B

right sunlight streams through the
windows of Trotter 301 on the second
anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, as
Associate Professor of History Tim Burke
stokes the discussion. Burke has dubbed
this course—which examines attempts to
write world histories—The Whole Enchilada: Debates in World History. His two
dozen students have plenty to say about the
historian they’ve been studying the past
week, Ibn Khaldun, a Muslim scholar who
wrote in the 13th century. Although he’s not
often included in accounts of the develop-

KATE PENROSE ʼ04, MOROCCO

ment of world history, Burke notes, many
who know of his work think that Khaldun
had amazingly advanced ideas and that his
relatively cosmopolitan and secular view of
world history is not what many Westerners
today would expect of a medieval Muslim
scholar.
Having read Khaldun’s world history, The
Muqadimmah, the class—primarily sophomores, juniors, and seniors—is probing his
theories to see which parts hold up and
which don’t. Khaldun asserts that the evolution of a people leads them inevitably from
barbarism to civilization—civilization
expressed in the development of “royal
authority”—but Cara Angelotta ’05 spots a
flaw. How does his theory explain places
that didn’t develop dynasties, such as subSaharan Africa?
Good question, Burke says. Why would
Khaldun not account for these Africans?
Gabriel Rogers ’05 blurts out the obvious
with a mock naïveté that makes everyone
chuckle: “They’re black!”
So there you have it, Burke says. Khaldun, however enlightened he seems to us,
operates with some clearly racist assumptions.
One student takes the line of thought a
step farther. Not only are the Africans black,
but they’re non-Islamic. To what extent, she
wonders aloud, is Khaldun’s whole theory

DECEMBER 2003

erature, the arts, economics, political science, or virtually any other discipline. Faculty members make it a routine practice to
challenge students not to settle for a simplistic understanding of issues but to do the
difficult work of wrestling with the realities
and implications of living in a global world.

25

SPENCER PAINE ʼ04. GREECE

BRIAN NOLAN ʼ05, TURKEY

Many Chances to Study Abroad

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

M

26

ore and more Swarthmore students are taking advantage of the
opportunity to spend a semester studying abroad, often during
the junior year. Forty-three percent of the Class of 2003 undertook
foreign study, in contrast with the roughly 15 to 20 percent figure
for 1980s-era classes. Whereas most foreign study experiences were
once in Western Europe, the sweep of locations is far wider today.
European locations remain the most popular, but during the past five
years, Swarthmore students have earned credit in more than 60
countries, covering Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, South
America, and the Middle East as well as Europe.
Foreign study is nothing new at Swarthmore. The College has
operated its own program in Grenoble, France, since 1972 [see
“Grenoble Programs Turns 30,” December 2002 Bulletin] and has for
many years participated in consortia that sponsor foreign study programs with other colleges. (Among the foreign study consortia in
which Swarthmore takes part today are International Sri Lanka Education Associated China Colleges, and Macalester/Pomona/Swarthmore in Cape Town.) Through the 1980s, Swarthmore students had a
short list of recognized programs from which they could choose. For
those wishing to go beyond the confines of the list, faculty and
staff members guided students toward foreign study opportunities on
an ad hoc basis. As noted in a brief history of foreign study written
in 1998, “Support was fragmentary, credit for study abroad was
problematical, and many or most students who studied aboard effectively operated on their own while on leave from the College.”
No longer. A concerted effort to organize and increase foreign
study opportunities began in 1992 with the creation of the Foreign
Study Office and the appointment of Professor of Anthropology
Steven Piker as its director and Rosa Bernard, now foreign study
coordinator, as his assistant. In close coordination with others on
the faculty, Piker leads an ongoing process of codifying and refining

the rules and procedures by which Swarthmore students can gain
credit for studying abroad and, more important, of improving the
quality of their foreign study experiences.
Two key tenets have come to distinguish Swarthmore’s Semester
Abroad Program. One, the program enjoys the energetic involvement
and commitment of the faculty; tales abound of professors using
their legwork and international contacts to help pave the way for
new study abroad opportunities, even if only one student is likely to
benefit immediately. Second, the program emphasizes foreign study
experiences that feed directly into students’ major courses of study
and, in many cases, their senior thesis.
“What really characterizes the program,” Piker says, “is the
degree to which it is meshed with the overall operation and life of
the College.”
The Semester Abroad Program is in one sense flexible and in
another exacting, Piker says. Students can choose from more than
100 recommended programs identified by the Foreign Study Office,
but every one of them has been reviewed by Piker or another faculty
member who is in the best position to judge its worthiness.
Helping fuel the growth and health of the program has been a
policy in place since the early-1990s, allowing financial aid to follow
students abroad, which makes foreign study possible for roughly half
of the student body receiving need-based aid.
As foreign study has developed and improved, the percentage of
the student body studying abroad has more than doubled. Piker and
Bernard, do not really promote the program; they don’t need to. The
word of mouth of returning seniors is all the advertising the program
needs. “Almost all of them speak positively of their study abroad
experiences,” Piker says, “and encourage others to avail themselves
of the opportunity.”
—T.K.

histories,” Burke explains later. “They don’t
need to always see Western histories as a
case of dead white men acting badly.”

ESTHER ZELEDON ʼ04, BRAZIL (PHOTO BY RICARDO OCAMPO ʼ05)

informed by an Islam-centric worldview?
Burke follows her lead. “You could make the
point,” he says, “that his entire theory
explains only the history of Islam and nothing else.… He’s trying to figure out a theory
that explains the spread and sustainability
of Islam. But he abstracts that and says it’s
the way everything works.”
But for all their apparent weaknesses,
Khaldun’s theories about the way people
organize themselves do seem to apply
beyond his own time and place. Burke asks
his students to think of other histories that
mesh with Khaldun. The Mongols in China,
a student offers. The Mings as well, adds her
classmate. Burke agrees, as he does with
another suggestion that the theory also
applies to ancient Egypt.
But Sonya Hoo ’05 is more interested in
other histories that Khaldun’s work does not
explain. Why doesn’t Khaldun’s work discuss the Greeks and Romans, given that he
knows so much about them? The omission
is telling, Burke agrees, given Khaldun’s
obvious knowledge of classical texts, and
difficult to explain if one looks to only Khaldun’s own writing for the answer. But he
points out that Khaldun was only one of
several Muslim thinkers—and Christian
thinkers, for that matter—to have trouble
discussing the ethical and theological
sophistication of Greece and Rome, given
the importance that monotheists assigned

to religion in shaping moral societies.
The discussion moves on to the civilizations that came after Khaldun’s time. His
theories fare more poorly, Andrew Abdalian
’06 notes, when the main story line is no
longer about barbarians conquering and
developing civilizations but rather about civilizations in conflict with other civilized
people. And whereas Khaldun saw people
organizing themselves around blood ties,
how could he account for a place like the
United States that comes together around
shared ideas? Pluralism, Burke notes, just
could not occur to Khaldun.
Time is up, and the students stream into
the hallway.
No one has expressed surprise that some
of the most advanced 13th-century theories
of history would originate from the Islamic
world. Burke would have been slightly
shocked if anyone had. By the time they’ve
progressed past their first year, most
Swarthmore students have shed the somewhat American- and Western-centric
notions they developed from the media and
their high school courses; if anything, Burke
says, they swing too far to the opposite pole.
By helping them recognize the limits of
Khaldun’s theories, Burke demonstrates that
Westerners aren’t the only ones to write
world histories with cultural blinders on.
“I’m trying to get them to ask whether
there is a universal problem writing universal

DECEMBER 2003

H

istory is just one piece of the puzzle.
Analysis and action on the global
stage can require multiple dimensions of a liberal education—cultural, scientific, political, linguistic, social, and ethical.
Noah Novogrodsky ’92, according to a former professor and mentor, is a Swarthmore
graduate who’s “putting the pieces together.”
For Novogrodsky, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Law School, the pieces
included courses in European and Latin
American politics at Swarthmore, augmented by a semester abroad in France. The current “whole” is his leadership in a drive to
apply international human rights law and
principles to the fight against the HIV-AIDS
pandemic. As reported in the Canadian
press last summer, Novogrodsky is mobilizing the legal community, including his University of Toronto law students, to use the
law and moral persuasion to help AIDS
patients in Africa receive affordable drugs.
The obstacle faced by Novogrodsky is no
less formidable than international trade
rules aimed at protecting pharmaceutical
corporations.
“I view the HIV-AIDS epidemic through
human rights terms and not simply as a failure of medical science to contain the epidemic,” says Novogrodsky, who after
Swarthmore pursued graduate studies at
Cambridge University and received a law
degree from Yale. “To me, it’s really quite
obvious that tens of thousands of people
shouldn’t be dying every month in Africa
who could otherwise be treated with drugs
that are affordable and could be produced in
greater quantities—but that don’t reach the
patients who need them.”
He is a dual citizen of Canada and the
United States, but Novogrodsky’s mission
transcends his nationalities. “Along with my
students, what I’m trying to do as an international human rights lawyer is identify the
areas of real indignity in the world and use
the law creatively to address those problems,” he says.
Kenneth Sharpe, his former professor,
remembers Novogrodsky well. “Noah took a
lot of Latin American politics courses. He
traveled a lot. Since he left here, he has put
all the pieces together,” Sharpe says. “I

27

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

Whether they’re in
Germany, Ecuador,
or Botswana,
Swarthmore
students are
building bridges
when they spend
a semester studying
abroad. And traffic
flows both ways
across bridges.

28

think that’s just what a lot of our students
do after Swarthmore. They put together the
pieces they began to collect here.”
Another Swarthmore graduate who is
working the puzzle—although from a decidedly different political perspective from
Novogrodsky—is U.S. Trade Representative
Robert Zoellick ’75. The Bush administration official is known for both his multilateralist approach and his sophisticated grasp
of international trade issues. As one colleague told Institutional Investor magazine,
“Zoellick is usually the smartest, best-read,
and best-prepared person in the room.”
In his writing and public comments,
Zoellick has advanced trade as fuel for a
healthy international economy and thus as a
hedge against terrorism. “Open markets are
vital for developing nations, many of them
fragile democracies that rely on the international economy to overcome poverty and
create opportunity,” he says. “Societies that
fragment, that are poor, that have no sense
of hope become fertile grounds in which terrorists can burrow. So all of us have a stake
in development, in democracy, in openness,
hope, and opportunity.”
In a partial victory for HIV patients
around the globe, the Zoellick-headed U.S.
Trade Office in August negotiated a World
Trade Organization agreement that provided some protection for the patent rights of

LAURA CLARK ʼ04, VATICAN CITY

pharmaceutical companies while making it
easier for poor countries to access affordable
drugs for AIDS and other life-threatening
illnesses. In a statement to the Bulletin,
Zoellick hailed the agreement for achieving
“a constructive balance that ensures access
to medicines by those most in need while
not undermining intellectual property rights
that foster research and development.” For
his part, Novogrodsky was not completely
satisfied but conceded, “It’s a start.”
Whatever the issue or the politics
involved, it’s never a surprise to Novogrodsky when his career path crosses that of a
fellow Swarthmorean working on the international stage.
“The liberal arts ideal as defined and
implemented by Swarthmore transcends
boundaries and borders. I think it equips
people for living in—and being effective citizens in—a multicultural, globalized world,”
he says. “In a host of ways, a Swarthmore
education is an international education.”

T

here is unmistakable passion in
Sharon Friedler’s voice as the dance
professor tells a visitor about Swarthmore’s growing programs in Ghana. Friedler
is seated in her office in the Lang Performing Arts Center, surrounded by a small
orchestra’s worth of Ghanaian musical
instruments. It’s fitting that these pieces of

Ghana are found at Swarthmore, because
more and more of Swarthmore is turning up
in Ghana. Since serving as a visiting professor in 1997 at Ghana’s International Center
for African Music and Dance, Friedler has
been creating new study abroad opportunities for Swarthmore students in the subSaharan African nation. In the past two
school years, four students have studied
dance and music with leading artists and
practitioners in Ghana. In so doing, according to Friedler, they have experienced nothing short of a new way of seeing the world.
Friedler believes that to learn the music
and dance of a people is to learn something
bigger about their history, values, and character. “That’s particularly true in Africa,” she
says, “because the dance and music are so
central to the culture. The dominant ethnic
languages in Ghana are tonal, and the linguistic patterns are rhythmic. So we can
actually say something by drumming it out.
If you’re using different pitches on the
drums and the listener is linguistically
sophisticated, [he or she] can begin to decipher what you’re trying to communicate.”
Although playing the atumpan does not
steer a college student onto the fast track for
mainstream careers in America, in Friedler’s
view it’s preparation for something less tangible but far more profound: leadership in
the enterprise of bringing cultures together.

“We’re trying to create bridges,” she says.
“We are trying to create communities of
understanding—dancing communities,
music communities, writing communities,
education communities.”
Traffic flows both ways across bridges,
which is why Swarthmore’s Semester
Abroad Program increasingly emphasizes
students’ giving as well as taking. In a new
wrinkle in the Ghana program, Swarthmore
students will teach computer skills to
Ghanaian children. Also under way is an
effort to use the College’s audio-video equipment to help preserve the African country’s
cultural heritage. Students under Friedler’s
direction are transferring hundreds of hours
of performance footage—now on videocassettes at Ghana’s music and dance center—
to DVD, a more stable digital format.
Applied learning is also a theme of
Swarthmore’s new environmental studies
initiative in Ghana. Launching next year
under the direction of Associate Professor of
Engineering Carr Everbach, the program is
aiming to place its first students in Ghana
to study environmental issues facing the
country and develop practical solutions.
Everbach describes the students’ experience
as a “mini-honors seminar.” Each participant will begin with classroom study before
moving onto a field project under a Ghanaian mentor and, in the end, writing a 35- to

GRACE APPIAH ʼ04, SPAIN

50-page thesis to defend both in Ghana and
back at Swarthmore.
“Our program places equal emphasis on
the learning obtained by the student and on
the good that the student does abroad,”
Everbach says. “The notion here is that the
thesis is well written, well argued, and well
defended, and that it winds up on the desk
of the minister of environment of Ghana.”
Another program is following much the
same model in Poland. Since 1999, Swarthmore’s Theater and Dance programs have
been forging a strong relationship with the
vanguard of the performing arts there. Students attend classes at two leading Polish
universities and undertake residencies with
the Silesian Dance Theater, a professional
company that has, in turn, given performances and workshops on the Swarthmore
campus (see “Steps of Change,” December
1999 Bulletin).
Engineering students may also study in
Poland, focusing largely on environmental
issues. Twenty students have spent a semester or more in Poland since the inception of
the programs, and a new initiative may add
a service component to the College’s presence in Poland.
President Bloom sees that living and
studying in another country—and learning
other languages—are experiences that
sharpen young Americans’ understanding

not only of their own country’s power and
potential but of its limitations, its dependence on other countries, and its ability to
benefit from the wisdom of others.
“Foreign study,” he says, “helps importantly to develop the foundation for informed global citizenship and responsibility.”
To Sharon Friedler, being more and
more international is an enterprise that resonates with the College’s history, mission,
and Quaker ideals. Whether they’re doing
the work in Germany, Ecuador, or Botswana, Friedler believes Swarthmore students are “building bridges” when they
spend the semester studying abroad.
“I think that it is very deeply the work of
peace. Like many others, I have been appalled and saddened by much of what has
happened in the world during the past few
years. And there’s not a lot that I can do
about it. However, I can go to another country and teach dance, or facilitate students
going to Ghana, or facilitate the creation of
DVDs so that traditional African cultural
material are archived. All those are acts of
peacemaking. And that we can do.” T
Tom Krattenmaker is the College’s director of
news and information. His freelance writing has
appeared in Salon, the Minneapolis Star Tribune Sunday Magazine, and The Philadelphia
Inquirer.

DECEMBER 2003

RICARDO OCAMPO ʼ05, BRAZIL

29

30

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

Think
Global,
Te a c h
Local
IN THEIR OWN WORDS,FIVE
FAC U LT Y M E M B E R S R E V E A L
H O W S WA R T H M O R E P R E PA R E S
S T U D E N T S TO PA R T I C I PAT E
IN A GLOBAL SOCIETY—
AND HOW THEY EMBODY
T H AT I D E A L T H E M S E LV E S .

Aurora Camacho de Schmidt

often teaches poetry in her Spanish classes
as a way of getting to the heart of another culture.

N

o one consciously prepares students to be global citizens, and
no course or department can bear that burden. I hope the
College as a whole does that. Part of the vocation of the College is
to prepare students to be in the world and to do so with a sense of
social responsibility.
The United States has an amazing capacity to absorb foreignness, and American culture is exposed to foreign cultures and peoples constantly. The country’s very inception has its roots in foreignness, including people forcefully brought to this land. Yet U.S.
culture has a way of erasing difference. We all feel and see in a variety of arenas how difference is ignored or eradicated.
Literature and language by their very nature introduce a foreign
culture. Poetry, which I always include in my classes, allows us to
reach for meanings wider than the ones closer to us. When students are immersed in literature from another land, they are
exposed to a double otherness. It is a wider reality by definition.
Some students will try to reduce that reality to terms that are familiar to them. Other students will begin to integrate what they discover in literature and what they find in other classes. When that
happens, it’s just a wonderful thing.
In the Modern Languages Department, we insist that our students go abroad. Spending a semester in another country lets the
reality of that culture sink in. When students come back, they think
in a very different way. They have more internal resources. When
students go abroad, they have a lot to learn, and they also have a lot
to unlearn. A good part of our education is unlearning.
Poetry itself can be a foreign country. It scares students sometimes, and they may say they don’t like it or understand it. Once
they try, they love it. In my Introduction to Latin American Literature, they respond by writing it. They discover they can write poetry!

Interviews by Alisa Giardinelli
Photographs by Eleftherios Kostans

DECEMBER 2003

“We must ask ourselves this question: What does it mean for a young
person to be a student in one of the best colleges in the most powerful
country in the world?”

31

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

It is difficult to explain the kind of effect
poetry can have. It’s comparable to music. It
takes us out of the environment where the
rhythm of life is dictated by everyday needs,
like homework and going to the library. In
poetry, all those things cease to matter, and
we are free. Students find new meanings
and are often delighted and challenged by
where the poem takes them.
Literary production in Latin America—
poems, essays, novels, chronicles—is often
political because the region has a long history of struggle against internal and external
forces of oppression and because its very
existence is based on the cataclysmic conquests of the 16th century. Some of that literature may be very critical of the United
States or simply display values that are different from the values of a liberal democracy. It is healthy for our students to learn
that.
We must ask ourselves this question:
What does it mean for a young person to be
a student in one of the best colleges in the
most powerful country in the world? Globalization means an unprecedented level of

32

hegemony—military, economic, political,
even cultural—for the United States.
Because of that power, preparing North
Americans to be global citizens is not the
same as preparing students from any other
country. It would be tragic to let our students graduate without the capacity to exercise not only critical thinking but self-critical thinking. They must understand their
own position and social responsibility as
citizens of the United States, where decisions are made every day that affect the
quality of life in every corner of the earth.
I hope our graduates learn to recognize
the other side of globalization, the invisible
forces of hope in the organization of immigrant workers the world over, or the struggles for human rights at home and abroad,
the movements to abolish torture and the
death penalty, the efforts to stamp out segregation, the antiwar movement. I want to
think that teaching language and literature
is part of that tall order. That is my hope
and my wager.
Aurora Camacho de Schmidt is associate
professor of Spanish.

Stephen Golub,
fresh from a sabbatical in France,
encourages students to see the
positive aspects of globalization.

G

lobalization is certainly a controversial
subject. It tends to elicit extreme positions on both sides. And it does have an
underside to it. There are losers from globalization. There are people in the United
States, for example, who can lose their jobs
or have to take reductions in pay. That
applies to all sorts of countries. In my opinion, though, a lot of people misunderstand
the implications of globalization and tend
to blame globalization for anything that
goes wrong. There are a lot of changes taking place in our society, but globalization is
by no means responsible for all of the ills.
One of the biggest misunderstandings,
for example, is Third World poverty. Anybody who’s been to a Third World country
realizes just how terrible the poverty is
there. If they have a very unsophisticated
understanding of it, they think that somehow this is something new, and the world

“There are a lot of changes taking place in our society, but globalization
is by no means responsible for all of the ills.”

“Plants coexist in a shared environment.
If we behave more like plants, maybe we will
be more successful at coexistence.”

José-Luis Machado,

a fo r e s t e c ologist,teaches students
a b o u t t h e j ewel in their backyard—
t h e C r u m Woods.

B

efore coming to Swarthmore, I was an
associate professor of biology in
Bogotá. I wanted to stay in Colombia, but it
didn’t work out. I realized it was too dangerous and constraining to do fieldwork or go
out on fieldtrips with my students. So I left
my country and taught my first class at
Swarthmore in fall 2001.
The value of individual species and the
role they play in the community of the forest
is what my teaching is about. Students can
take that knowledge anywhere in the world
and apply it.
In my classes, I emphasize the intercon-

nectivity of air, land, and water. I always try
to make clear to my students that an action
here will have an effect elsewhere. The
Sahara Desert affects climate here. That just
blows their minds.
My real passion is to understand how
plants grow and interact with each other. I
tend to be obnoxious about what they can
teach us. Plants coexist in a shared environment. If we behave like plants, we will be
more successful at coexisting. It’s simplistic
(and maybe even arrogant to suggest), but
plants have developed a strategy to limit
themselves instead of trying to limit their
neighbors. That way—unlike humans—they
get the most out of the environment’s
shared resources.
The other big thing is sustainability.
What limits population growth? One thing

DECEMBER 2003

economy is to blame for it. In fact, poverty is
a very long-standing problem in these countries, a very deeply entrenched problem.
Globalization is more part of the solution
than part of the problem.
There’s a certain amount of naïveté about
globalization. Students really don’t know
that much about it before studying it, and
sometimes they have knee-jerk negative
reactions. For example, one thing that creates a lot of controversy is whether Nike
exploits workers. A lot of students are quite
outraged when I try to explain that it’s not
so simple. Nike creates jobs in these countries that may be better than what they
could have been otherwise. Some students
are sympathetic to that view. It always elicits
a very lively class discussion.
Our students are sponges for knowledge.
They may not know a lot about the world at
first, but by the time students come out of
my international economics seminar, I like
to think they really understand what’s happening in the global economy. They leave
with methods of analysis and can really conceptualize some of these issues.
For example, do we want McDonald’s
supplanting all the restaurants in France? I
just spent a year there, and there’s not too
much danger of that. There are plenty of
McDonald’s in France, but there are still
plenty of good French restaurants, too. So
they can live side by side. Sometimes, people
exaggerate this cultural imperialism. It is a
real phenomenon, and countries do have to
make an effort to preserve their indigenous
cultures, but I think globalization can thrive
off diversity, too. If you don’t have your local
culture, local foods, and so on, you’re not
going to be a very interesting tourist destination. So there are incentives for countries
to maintain their cultural diversity.
I’ve always been interested in issues of
economic development and what the economic relationships are between the United
States and other countries. It’s a bit of a
cliché, but economics is supposed to help
alleviate problems of poverty, and certainly
problems in other countries are very severe.
To me, economics isn’t about pure theory,
although there is a lot of theory in economics. It’s what economics can say about the
real world, and nowhere is that more important than at the international level.
Stephen Golub, who grew up in France, is
professor of economics.

33

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

34

is resources—we can run out of food. Traditional economic principles operate with
supply always driven by demand. But nature
is not endless. Our class moves around this
issue.
My research work can’t be done without
students. For example, as part of my ecology
class, we collect leaf fall in the woods. I’m
going through my third year of data, trying
to understand how much each species produces. A doctor can weigh a person every
year. It’s such a simple idea, but weighing a
tree is a little more challenging.
Students can hardly tell the Crum
Woods were man-made now because the
trees are not ordered. But back in the 1930s,
[John] Wister [the first director of The Scott
Arboretum—see page 12] planted over
100,000 trees—almost 60 native species!
It’s cool to show the students that the
woods are a 75-year-old experiment and still
going.
The Crum is a jewel. Some students,
even seniors, have never been there. People
think forests around urban areas are ugly
and not pristine. In 2001, we went out there
in the fall before it got cold. After some rain,
the water evaporated, and it was humid.
Someone asked, “How different is this from
a rainforest?” Great question. I told them
that with the water dripping from the trees
and that earthy smell, there is no difference.
“Give us a break,” they said. But this is how
it would feel. Of course, there are different
animals, but for a moment, they can have a
similar appreciation for the place.
Another project is the study of invasive
species. Where do these plants come from?
Abroad! I’m looking at a species of Japanese
knotweed and also the Norway maple. Both
were brought here as ornamental plantings.
Now, one is taking over the banks of the
Crum, and one is taking over the forest.
I want to make these woods visible and
get them the respect they deserve. The
forests are the planet’s lungs. I’m not making it up. It’s a little romantic, but nothing
else produces oxygen. Maybe the students
are reassured because they know I’ve seen
and been to other places. I try to show
them, and I truly believe, the woods are an
important piece of land. Ultimately, I’m a
forester. I do see the forest for the trees.
José-Luis Machado is assistant professor of
biology.

“Students are sometimes

uncomfortable when
they realize they are
a part of a certain
historical narrative.”

Bakirathi Mani

b l e n d s literature written in English
w i t h history and contemporary
p o l i t i cs to teach a broader
p e r s p ective.

I

’m Indian and was born in Bombay, but I
grew up and was educated at an international school in Tokyo. After studying international relations at Georgetown and colonial history in India, I wrote a dissertation
at Stanford on issues of immigration and
social and cultural identity, especially among
South Asian immigrants in the United
States. So my own research is reflective of

my personal background.
For me, globalization means being a part
of a larger global community. It’s important
to provide a larger sense of the world to students, regardless of where they come from. I
want them to be aware of the history of
their place in the world and what they can
do to make it more just. At graduation, President Al Bloom urged Swarthmore students
to be responsible citizens in the world after
college. I hope my courses play their part in
that project.
In all kinds of ways, I try to generate interaction and conversations in my courses.
I teach through literature and film but in an
interdisciplinary way, using history, anthropology, and sociology. We weave a lot
between current events and past history. For
me, it’s a way of engaging the written word
to make it alive, not dead or past.
Some of my freshmen students have
never read non-American authors. Now, as a
result of imperialism, English literature is a
global literature, and English is being redefined by non-Western writers. It’s exciting.
The students see how much you can play
with language and use it to reflect the present and the past.
You can’t think of colonialism as being
over because it continues to have an effect
on the present. In my Nations and Migration class, we examine colonialism, postcolonial society, and its impact on writers in
English from places such as the Caribbean,
Middle East, South Africa, Ireland, and Sri
Lanka. In each conversation, students
invariably link issues to current affairs and
news articles.
In my upper-level Asian American literature seminar, I try to situate the literary
texts, novels, and films in conversation with
U.S. foreign policy in Asia. When we read
Korean American writers, we look at the
Korean War. When we read Vietnamese
American writers, we look not just at the
war but also at Vietnam’s colonization by
the French. And South Asian Americans, for
example, bring to life the history of British
colonialism on the subcontinent. Looking at
the present circumstances pulls out the historical narrative behind these texts.
Sometimes I have students who ask,
“What are my stories? I don’t have anything
to say.” I do think everyone has a story
about [his or her] life that’s fascinating.
Even if you live in one place, your personal

history is defined by your parents and is
part of a larger global history.
Students are sometimes uncomfortable
when they realize they are a part of a certain
historical narrative. But history matters. It’s
all about who you are right now. History is
not just in the past, but it also shapes the
future and how you’re going to be. It’s also
about making decisions in a responsible
manner from now on. Students can’t help
but notice how the world is changing even
while they’re in the classroom. Through literature and history and current events—the
past and the future—we try to make sense
of it.
Bakirathi Mani is assistant professor of English literature.

Still, I make sure I teach a course every
year outside my normal fields of expertise—
usually something on Latin America. In that
course, I focus on issues dealt with in philosophy, literature, theology, and history—
in other words, it’s broader than just sociology and anthropology. Next semester, for
example, the class will be Latin American
society and culture. For it, I’m bringing a
historian and administrator from Peru who
will address current issues in Peruvian politics. In introductory courses, many students
have never been exposed to such perspectives.
When you are able to incorporate elements of different cultures into your worldview, your worldview changes, the way you

teach changes, how you address people
changes. It makes your culture richer. Many
of my colleagues, American as apple pie,
convey an appreciation of different cultures
to their students. There’s still a long way to
go, but a large segment of the faculty does
this.
Our students are taught to learn. They
are always encountering cultures that are
quite strange and unfamiliar to them, and
they are not put off and intimidated by that.
They are taught to confront and work
through these differences and be prepared
to engage unknown positions, no matter
where they might be.
Braulio Muñoz is Eugene M. Lang Research
Professor of Sociology. T

Braulio Muñoz,

born in Pe r u a n d a s c h o l a r of
European a n d A m e r i c a n s o c ia l
theory, em b o d ie s t h e c o m p l ex i t y
of the mo d e r n w o r l d .

A

“When you are able to incorporate elements
of different cultures into
your worldview, your worldview changes.”
DECEMBER 2003

s a senior Hispanic member of the faculty, most students see me as a representative of a culture different from middleclass America. Yet my training is as a theorist, and my work centers on European and
American social theory.
Hispanic students see me doing something mainstream—not something pegged
to a specific position because of my ethnic
origin. Maybe equally important, there’s a
lot of benefit for non-Hispanic students to
find faculty members competent in multiple
traditions. The more universal you are, the
better you are for students. It breaks down
stereotypes because they could see themselves like that.
When I came to this country in 1968
from Peru, I came to study physics. I then
turned to philosophy, and I ended up in
sociology. But I didn’t first read Marx in
German, I read it in Spanish.
In Peru, I was a student leader, a labor
leader, and a journalist. Those experiences,
although not consciously, influence me, as
much as I’m influenced by being at Swarthmore for 26 years. I am not active in politics
anymore. But I can’t help but be a political
person. None of us can. So I write fiction in
which I address issues of politics and identity. If I think there’s an area I need to
express outside my professional work, it
comes out in fiction.

35

Foreign
Study
in Reverse
F O R M O R E T H A N O N E I N 1 0 S WA R T H M O R E S T U D E N T S ,
T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S I S T H E F O R E I G N C O U N T R Y.
By A n d r e a J a r r e l l
Ph o t o g r a p h s b y G e o r g e W i d m a n

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

I

36

’m going to study in Germany
next semester,” says Yijun Li ’05
of Shanghai. “It’s just going to
make me more globalized.”
Emmanuelle Gounot ’04, who
was born and raised in Paris,
agrees that “a cosmopolitan
worldview on campus is as
much a part of a Swarthmore education as
books and classes.” She says this international perspective comes as much from
American students as from those who are
foreign born. “By nature, students here are
not U.S.-centric. They are curious about
alternative ways of thinking through a
critical and analytical reading of the world.
It’s not only international. It’s very Swarthmorean.”
That’s just how President Alfred H.
Bloom hopes it will be. He says students
must develop international perspective if
they are to take leadership in a global world.
And he believes having international diversity on campus is essential to gaining that
perspective. “Unless you have the experience of developing relationships with peo36

Amid a national
climate of more
stringent restrictions
on students from
abroad, Swarthmore
is doing something
very Swarthmorean—
intentionally
globalizing.

ple from different cultures, you cannot
internalize the facility to see past superficial
differences.”
Bringing international students to
Swarthmore is not new—the College has
deliberately sought foreign students for
decades. And the number of alumni—both
Americans and internationals—holding key
positions throughout the world is testament
to the fact that Swarthmore has always educated its students for world leadership. But
increasing the presence of international students is all the more critical today.
“We have made substantial progress in
ensuring the representation of American
diversity within our student body, our faculty, and curriculum—an effort that it is
imperative to continue, but we must also
broaden the scope of that effort so that we
experience and understand American diversity in the context of the global diversity of
which we are all part,” Bloom says.
So, amid a national climate of more
stringent requirements on visa applications
by students from abroad and the recent U.S.
Supreme Court cases challenging affirma-

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS MAKE
UP ABOUT 7 PERCENT OF THE
STUDENT BODY. INTERVIEWED FOR
THIS ARTICLE WERE (CLOCKWISE FROM
LOWER RIGHT) MILOS ILAK ’04
(YUGOSLAVIA), YIJUN LI ’05
(CHINA), TAFADZWA MUGUWE ’05
(ZIMBABWE), DORU GAVRIL ’05
(ROMANIA), AND GERALD TAN ’04
(MALAYSIA).

tive action, Swarthmore is doing something
very Swarthmorean—intentionally “globalizing.”
“This is about appreciating both the differences that separate us and the commonalities of intellect, emotion, concern, and
purpose that must bind us,” says Bloom.

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

Staggering Selectivity
International students, including U.S. citizens and permanent residents living abroad,
make up 11 percent of Swarthmore’s total
student body. “They are among our strongest students,” says Bloom, “because we have
the whole world from which to recruit.”
With worldwide recruitment, however, come
challenges in what is an already intense
admissions landscape. Last year, 670 international students applied, approximately
580 of whom were seeking financial aid.
Ultimately, the College enrolled 22 non-U.S.
citizen first-year students, 14 of whom
received need-based aid. Additionally, 16
overseas U.S. citizens and permanent residents were aided. With those kinds of numbers, says Director of International Recruit-

38

ment Jessica Bell, the selectivity is staggering.
Adding to the problem is the current cap
on financial aid for foreign students at 10
percent of the College’s financial aid budget.
Bloom would love to extend need-blind
admissions to foreign students, but he notes
that it is a question of trade-offs. The funds
to accomplish that goal would have to come
at the cost of other priorities.
During the 2003–2004 admissions
cycle, Bell will travel to 12 countries on three
continents. Bell and Associate Dean of Admissions Amin Abdul-Malik work with
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid
James Bock ’90 and the rest of the admissions team to determine to which countries
they will travel each year. Contributing to
their decision is the goal of international
diversity within each class as well as the
presence of alumni volunteers in certain
areas. The Admissions Office annually surveys alumni worldwide to ask for assistance
in order to reach out to the College’s potential applicants across the globe through
alumni interviews and college fair programs.
Alumni admissions
volunteers will be
representing Swarthmore at college fairs
this fall in Tokyo,
Hong Kong, Istanbul,
London, and Paris.
This year, the
Admissions Office
will focus on Latin
America and Western
Europe, which are
relatively underrepresented at Swarthmore compared with
many Far and Near
Eastern countries
and Eastern European countries.
Although the Middle
East is not currently
on the travel schedule, Abdul-Malik, the
College’s first Muslim
admissions officer,
may travel to Gulf

“Swarthmore gives you
an international
education. I don’t
really think my identity
as a person is with
any particular country.
You might say,
I have become
a ‘global citizen.’”
—Gerald Tan ’04, Malaysia
countries sometime in the future.
No matter where in the world Bell travels, it is likely that U.S. News & World Report’s
“America’s Best Colleges” has been there
before her. Indeed, Milos Ilak ’04, a
Yugoslav native who attended high school
in Bulgaria, says that he and his friends had
memorized the top rankings by the time
they were in 10th grade. Although it seems
difficult to imagine, he believes that the U.S.
News guide may be more popular abroad
than it is in the United States. Romanian
Doru Gavril ’05 says the rankings were
“more of a confidence-building thing,” reassuring him that he had made the right decision in selecting Swarthmore. “I had no
institutional help in the form of a counselor
or adviser guiding me. I found Swarthmore
through the rankings but then did my own
Web research to find out what Swarthmore
was really about.” The research paid off.
“What attracted me is something that has
remained quite important to the way I
have been spending my time ever since I
arrived—public service,” he says.
Despite Swarthmore’s international reputation and top U.S. News ranking, Bell says
the first step in her international admis-

JESSICA BELL IS THE COLLEGE’S DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL RECRUITMENT.
THIS YEAR, SHE WILL TRAVEL TO 12 COUNTRIES ON THREE CONTINENTS TO
SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE LIBERAL ARTS AT SWARTHMORE.

ASSOCIATE DEAN OF ADMISSIONS AMIN ABDUL-MALIK IS THE FIRST MUSLIM TO

sions presentations is often to explain the
American liberal arts college system, one
that is unique in the world and sometimes
misunderstood. She tells the story of a
Moroccan student who was offered a spot at
Swarthmore and for whom Swarthmore was
her first choice. But her parents insisted she
attend a university. “They worried for her
future career prospects once she returned to
Morocco, where many high schools are
called ‘colleges,’ and it is universities that
are for higher learning,” explains Bell.
For some international students, one of
the most convincing arguments for choosing a liberal arts college rather than their
home university system is the opportunity
for breadth and exploration rather than
early specialization. In his Zimbabwean
high school, Tafadzwa Muguwe ’05 was on a
trajectory to medical school when he heard
about a program through the U.S. Embassy
that would sponsor, he says modestly, “two
so-called gifted students to study as undergraduates in the United States.” It was the
program officer at the embassy, who, while
helping Muguwe with his applications, told
him about Swarthmore.
Muguwe still plans to go to medical
school, but he credits his Swarthmore experience with opening him up to interests
beyond science that he never suspected he
had and, more important, with helping him
discover that being a doctor really is what he
wants to do. “In addition to my classes,
Swarthmore has prepared and encouraged
me to participate in two undergraduate
summer programs in U.S. medical schools,
both of which have broadened my knowledge of the field and enabled me to really
think about what I want to get into,” he
says. “These programs have also given me
the opportunity to meet people who are
going to be very instrumental in my future.”
“Fantastic” Risk
Although Muguwe says Swarthmore has
helped him to be a very good candidate for
medical school, he acknowledges that it was
a risk to give up the guarantee of his Zimbabwean trajectory. “The United States is
very accommodating in taking international
students into medical programs,” he says,
but medical school slots are not assured.

“So it’s a risk to say,
‘OK. I’m going to go
to Swarthmore for
four years and will
not be guaranteed a
place in medical
school.’ Whereas if I
had gone to school at
home, I would have
gone straight into
medical school.”
Gavril agrees that,
at a certain level, every
international student
who comes to Swarthmore takes a risk.
“Swarthmore tells you
it’s a risk, but they
also tell you if you
think you can do it,
you should give it a
shot.” Gavril says he
arrived with “the
mind-set of Eastern
Europe—let’s do economics because economics has to do with
building the economy and, essentially, with
money. That’s a mind-set one loses within
about the first 14 hours of being at Swarthmore.” Gavril quickly found his interest in
economics shifting to a “passion for American politics.” In Kohlberg Coffee Bar,
hunched over the Washington wires, he
says: “When I go to my classes in politics, I
lean forward. It’s just a thrill.”
“I think it’s very important to emphasize
the kind of opportunities that one gets
when one comes to Swarthmore,” says
Gavril. “This isn’t just an ordinary foreign
study experience. This is a system that permits a foreign student like me with zero
background in politics except a couple of
semesters in theory to have hands-on
immersion at the top levels of government.
That’s a fantastic thing.” During Gavril’s
time at Swarthmore, he has worked with
Rep. Robert Brady (D–Pa.) during two sessions of Congress, working on a position
paper on the North Korean nuclear crisis
and the Medicare Prescription Drug and
Modernization Act of 2003 as well as assisting the staff on preparing to hear the Iraq

War testimony of Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz. “That’s a fantastic
thing,” he says. “But it’s also a risk to
embark on a career of service in American
politics when you don’t even have citizenship. I’m literally starting from scratch.”
Each fall, when President Bloom meets
with Swarthmore’s new international students to welcome them, he acknowledges
the risk Muguwe and Gavril mention—the
courage it takes to move out of one’s own
educational background into a different
educational world and to take on that
world’s challenges. He also enlists them in
“the burden of helping the College to internationalize.” But Gerald Tan ’04 of
Malaysia, who also studied at Oxford during
a Swarthmore semester abroad, sees that
effort as reciprocal. “Swarthmore really gives
you an international education. I don’t really
think my identity as a person is with any
particular country. You might say, I have
become a ‘global citizen.’” T
Andrea Jarrell is a freelance writer based in
Bethesda, Md.

DECEMBER 2003

WORK IN THE ADMISSIONS OFFICE AS A STUDENT RECRUITER.

39

New York:

Barry Schwartz, Dorwin P.
Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and
Social Action, will speak to the New York
Connection on Thursday, Feb. 5, at the Goddard Riverside Community Center on the
topic “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is
Less.” If you are interested in attending,
contact New York Connection Chair Lisa
Ginsburg ’97 at lisaginsburg@juno.com by
Feb. 2, 2004. Watch your mail in January for
further details.
Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Connection
will attend a performance titled “I Gotta
Sing to Write the Blues” by Peter Schickele
’57 at the Lang Concert Hall on campus on
April 26, 2004, beginning at 4:30 p.m. If
you are interested in attending, please contact Jim Moskowitz ’88 at jim@jimmosk.-

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

ALUMNI CONNECTIONS:
CHANGING OF THE GUARD

40

WE ARE FORTUNATE to have had the
guidance of National Connection
Chair Don Fujihira ’69 for more than
a decade. Don began his Connection
involvement as New York Connection
chair and created hundreds of events
for alumni while serving in that position. As National Connection Chair,
Don was responsible for overseeing all
of the Swarthmore Connections and
for fostering their growth. Don has
shepherded the Connections organizations from their infancy, and we are
grateful for his efforts.
Don has decided to step down, and
Barbara Sieck Taylor ’75 has agreed to
become National Connection Chair.
She served as Pittsburgh Connection
co-chair for two years. Barbara will
work closely with the Alumni Support
Working Group of the Alumni Council
to continue to expand the growth of
Connections.

com or (610) 604-0669. Shickele’s performance is the annual Peter Gram Swing Lecture, and admission is free.
San Francisco: This revitalized Connection
is off to a terrific start. Close to 200 alumni,
family, and friends from the classes of ’44 to
’03 attended the launch picnic in September. Special thanks to Stacey Bearden ’99,
Seth Brenzel ’94, and Misha Neverov ’97 for
organizing the picnic. An event with the Pig
Iron Theatre Company and a faculty member followed soon after the picnic.
Tucson, Ariz.: Jeff Lott, editor of the Swarthmore College Bulletin, will visit Tucson on
Jan. 21 to discuss the evolution of the magazine and how its content reflects Swarthmore’s changes. The event will be hosted by
Laura Markowitz ’85. If you are interested in
attending, contact Laura at LMarkowitz@aol.com or (520) 990-9582. All alumni,
family, and friends are welcome to attend;
please watch your mail for an invitation.

BOSTON

NEW YORK

Fa c u lt y Ta k e t o t h e Ro a d
FACULTY SPEAKERS make for
very popular Connections
events. This fall saw a true
test of Boston-area alumni
loyalty when Associate
Professor of Physics
Michael Brown’s lecture
came into competition
BROWN
with Game 7 of the American League play-offs. “We
were delighted that 65
people came out for the
talk. Some hurried home
after the question-andanswer session; others
stayed at the reception for
WANG
another hour,” said Lisa
Lee ’81, director of alumni relations.
In fall 2003, six faculty members visited
six cities to bring a bit of Swarthmore to
alumni. Assistant Professor of Statistics
Steve Wang visited Chicago; Associate Professor of Physics Michael Brown spoke to
alumni in Boston; Associate Professor of

Computer Science Lisa
Meeden crossed the country to touch base with
alumni in San Francisco;
William R. Kenan Jr., Professor Emerita of Art History T. Kaori Kitao spoke
at the Santa Monica
MEEDEN
Museum of Art; Assistant
Professor of Astronomy
Eric Jensen stayed closer
to home and lectured in
Washington, D.C.; and
Scheuer Family Professor
Emeritus of Philosophy
Hugh Lacey went south to
JENSEN
Austin, Texas.
“I enjoyed meeting with alums both
recent and not so recent at my talk,” said
Brown. “There was a lot of discussion about
my talk, including some excellent questions
about the sun and our experiments. I found
that there is tremendous interest in the status of the new science center on campus.”

TED MILLS

CONNECTIONS

1934

Ned and Louise
Stubbs Williams

1939

Robert Peelle (acting)

1944

Dorrie Morrell Leader

1949

Chris Pederson
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie
Sara-Page Merritt White

1954

Bruce Gould

1959

John Gillmor

1964

Jed Rakoff

1969

Paul Peelle

1974

George Roache

1979

Brenda Perkins
Andy Schultz

1984

Colette Mull
Michael Dreyer

1989

Lee Fineman
Kelley Meagher

1994

Sarah Adams

1999

Andrew Caffrey
Ashwin Rao

2002

Lisa Jenkins

DO YOU KNOW
AN UNSUNG HERO?
MANY SWARTHMORE ALUMNI dedicate themselves to volunteer activities of all kinds
throughout their lives. In 1997, the Alumni
Council decided to recognize such an
“everyday hero” at reunion, and the Arabella
Carter Award was created. The award is
intended to honor alumni who have made
significant contributions as volunteers in
their own communities or on a regional or
national level. Arabella Carter, who lived in
the early 1900s, was one of the great
unsung workers for peace and social justice
in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
If you know such a person, please contact the Alumni Office at (610) 328-8402
and request an award nomination, or visit
http://www.swarthmore.edu/alumni/arabella_form.htm to nominate on-line .

I reland

The Hidden

A SEARCH FOR
TREASURES OF
HISTORY AND ART
FROM THE STONE
AGE TO THE
THIRD MILLENNIUM
SEPT. 12–26, 2004

THE HIDDEN IRELAND will explore parts of the country—West and North—that
Swarthmore travelers have not hitherto visited together. It will also return to some
favorite sites like Dingle Peninsula, the Burren, and Dublin City, which are inexhaustible in their charms. Our route will take us through the remote, unspoiled landscape of Connemara, Mayo, and Donegal and will include extensive forays into the Six
Counties from Fermanagh in the West to Down in the East.
Although a major focus will be the superb stone culture,
which began in Neolithic times and developed into the
artistry of the early Christian oratories, the high crosses,
Romanesque figure carving, medieval folk art, and contemporary sculpture, we will also explore out-of-the-way places to
find examples of the modern Irish genius expressed in the
stained glass of Harry Clarke, the painting of Jack Yeats, and
the flourishing traditions of weavers and potters from Donegal to Kerry. Near Belfast and in Dublin, we will visit museums that bring together past and present and help us to
understand the dynamic achievements of the Hidden Ireland.
Professor Emerita Helen North, a noted classicist, will lead
our foray into Ireland. Teacher, scholar, and author, Professor
North has received numerous awards and grants for research
HELEN NORTH
and travel in the Mediterranean world. For many years, she
has also made annual visits to Ireland, living in small villages and exploring the back of
beyond. She has lectured at the Yeats Summer School in Sligo; has been awarded an
honorary degree by Trinity College, Dublin; and with Mary North has written two
guidebooks to Irish prehistoric sites, some of which we will visit. The Hidden Ireland
will be her 14th Alumni College Abroad.
For a complete itinerary and registration information, please visit our Web site at
www.swarthmore.edu/alumni_abroad.html. You may also request this information from
Edda Ehrke at (800) 451-4321. This year, we will mail brochures only to those who request
them rather than sending brochures to all alumni.

DECEMBER 2003

Plans are well under way for Alumni Weekend, June 4 to 6, 2004. Reunion classes that
graduated in years ending with a 4 or 9 (and
the Class of 2002) are special guests this
year. This year’s reunion chairs, who are
working to make reunion happen for their
classmates, are the following:

ALUMNI COLLEGE ABROAD

ANDREA PALMIERI

REUNION
2004

41

CLASS NOTES

ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS

Inspiration

the meaning of

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

s w a r t h mor e

42

When I think back on the best educational
experiences in Swarthmore classrooms,
the subjects are inseparable from the teachers:
Aesthetics with Beardsley, American Literature
with Hoffman, English Literature with Hynes,
Invertebrate Zoology with Meinkoth, Greek
Literature in Translation with North, Neurophysiology with Rawson, Design in Drawing
and Painting with Rhys, Medieval Art with
Williams. My Swarthmore professors have
been the models I’ve drawn on to develop my
own pedagogic methods and style. To this day,
they provide inspiration and guidance.
—Bennett Lorber, M.D. ’64
Temple University School of Medicine

BOOKS & ARTS
The Nature and
Limits of Tolerance
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN
S E C U L A R A N D U LT R AO R T H O D OX
JEWS RAISES PERPLEXING
ISSUES ABOUT LIBERALISM.

Noah Efron ’82, Real Jews, Basic Books,
2003

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

Y

50

ou don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s
Rye Bread,” said the subway ad featuring
a picture of an African American biting into
a slice when I was a kid. And you don’t have
to be Jewish or Israeli to love this beautifully
accessible and extremely interesting discussion of the conflict between secular and
ultraorthodox Jews in Israel. Although Noah
Efron’s subject is the form and intensity of
this particular conflict and its relation to
Zionism, the issues raised are of considerable generality and of concern to anyone
interested in the nature and limits of tolerance—or the conflict between tradition and
modernity.
The ultraorthodox are a relatively small
minority that has disproportionate (to their
numbers) political and social leverage in
Israel. This power takes numerous forms:
Their young men typically are not drafted
and do not fight in the army, buses in most
cities do not run on Saturday, most eating
establishments find it an economic necessity
to be kosher and therefore to pay considerable amounts to have inspectors guarantee
that they are, and ultraorthodox religious
institutions such as schools are heavily subsidized. These practices raise issues that are
simultaneously similar to and different from
the American context: similar because, as a
democracy, Israel is quite similar to America
but different because, as a self-proclaimed
“Jewish” state, it is unlike America. After all,
American liberals can claim to be “value
neutral” in at least one sense that supporters of a Jewish state certainly cannot.
For me, the most interesting aspects of
Real Jews are those that illuminate America
and modernity in general as well as Israel

The challenge is to
deal with those you
most disagree with—
and for those to
whom toleration is a
fundamental value,
that means the
intolerant.
and Judaism in particular. And for me, the
most striking of these are the problems that
arise from the “illiberal” character of the
ultraorthodox. Ideologically, the ultraorthodox have no interest in the state of Israel.
Practically, they have a great interest. The
result is that there is at least the suspicion
that their use of the liberal and democratic
institutions is completely instrumental and
manipulative. This is characteristic of “intolerant” movements, such as the communist
movement in the middle of the previous
century and contemporary Nazi movements,
and it raises the most difficult issues for a
liberal democracy. The challenge for toleration is to deal with those you most disagree

with—and for those to whom toleration
is a fundamental value, that means the
intolerant.
Tolerance, broadly speaking, is what
keeps majority rule from becoming majority
tyranny. It may be said to consist of both
formal rights, such as in the Bill of Rights,
and equally important, a more amorphous
attitude of respect for or decency toward
minorities. However, when the disagreement
is as deep as that between the tolerant and
the intolerant, that disagreement is likely to
spill over into what constitutes respect and
decency. Are we respectful of the ultraorthodox if we visit their neighborhoods in miniskirts or drive through their neighborhoods
on the Sabbath? And how about if we
encourage ultraorthodox women to seek
equality? The problem here reminds one of
the issue of female circumcision or the scarf
many Arab women cover their faces with: Is
the tolerant stance to eliminate or defend
these traditional practices? Whether or not
we tolerate the intolerant, we seem to be
intolerant ourselves.
This, of course, is an issue wherever traditional cultures find themselves in conflict
with modern “liberal” ones, and that is all
over the Third World. One thing that is
especially intriguing in the Israeli case is
that the ultraorthodox Jews, who are the
“traditional” culture here, inherit with their
tradition 2,000 years of experience in fighting cultural imperialism without sovereignty
or arms. If anyone can resist liberal assimilation, it is likely to be them.
It is not uncommon for American liberals
(e.g., the eminent political philosopher John
Rawls), after expounding the nature, virtue,
and limits of toleration, to talk about the
sad fact that even when taken to its limits, it
cannot sustain all “legitimate” minority cultures. The implication seems to be that if
some of these cultures disappear, that is
simply too bad but should not be of undue
concern to us. Could liberals take that attitude if their own culture was at stake?
Certainly, Israeli liberals do not. Fearful
(justifiably or not) of becoming such an
endangered minority, they are prepared,
informally at least, to consider shockingly
drastic responses reminiscent of the excess-

Peter Cohan ’79, Value Leadership: The 7
es of traditional anti-Semitism. How
Principles That Drive Corporate Value in
much consolation can minority culAny Economy, Jossey-Bass, 2003.
tures take from “toleration,” given the
Renowned management and investpower of the liberals and this discrepment expert Peter Cohan—whose 2002
ancy between their attitude toward
stock selections gained 81 percent when
their own culture and that of others?
the S&P 500 plunged 24 percent—
Aside from Israel, this issue is being
offers executives seven management
played out in the conflict between the
principles that were tested in periods of
ultraorthodox Muslims and the more
economic expansion and contraction.
liberal in Iran.
And as American influence around
Allan Gibbard ’63, Thinking How to Live,
the world becomes even stronger, this
Harvard University Press, 2003.
problem takes another form: If a peoFocusing on judgments that express
ple is not inclined to our version of
decisions, the author argues for recontolerance, as in, say, Iraq, can and
sidering—and reconfiguring—quesshould we bring about majority rule?
tions of “ought” and “is.”
In addition to the perplexing issues
raised, Efron gives an interesting perPaul Berg and Maxine (Frank) Singer
spective on Israeli life generally. Most
THIS “PSYCHEDELIC” FABRIC DESIGN FROM 1968 IS ONE
’52, George Beadle: An Uncommon
of us have learned about Israel in the
OF MORE THAN 1,000 COUNTERCULTURAL RELICS CATAFarmer—The Emergence of Genetics in the
context of certain standard stories: war
20th Century, Cold Spring Harbor
LOGED BY COLLECTIBLES EXPERT GARY MOSS ’70 IN HIPPIE
with the Arabs, making the desert
Laboratory Press, 2003. In this first
ARTIFACTS (SCHIFFER PUBLISHING, 2003). THE BOOK IS A
bloom, accepting the homeless Jews of
biography of George Beadle, a Nobel
TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE FOR BABY BOOMERS—AND A
Europe, oppressing (or not) the
Prize–winning scientist, the authors
Palestineans. This conflict between the GUIDE TO RARITY AND PRICING FOR COLLECTORS.
explore his life and accomplishments in
secular and ultraorthodox is a new
the context of classical and the new
window on Israel for most of us. It is a
genetics.
Austin, professor of technology and operawindow that opens on a landscape, which,
for Efron, is defined by the question, “What tions management at Harvard Business
Mary Solberg ’68 et al., Healing by Heart:
School, and Lee Devin, professor emeritus
is a Jewish state?” But for the wider comClinical and Ethical Case Stories of Hmong
munity, it raises the question, “What values of theater at Swarthmore, introduce a colFamilies and Western Providers, Vanderbilt
other than the purely pragmatic can a mod- laborative model for strategy formation,
University Press, 2003. This book describes
product development, and other business
ern liberal institution such as the state (or
the health-related beliefs, practices, and valactivities.
college) sustain?” Ultimately, this question
ues of the Hmong and includes photois more important than the question of
graphs of traditional healing methods.
Rebecca Bushnell ’74, Green Desire:
Arab-Israeli relations—not just for Israel,
Imagining Early Modern English Gardens,
Elizabeth Varon ’85, Southern Lady, Yankee
but for the whole world.
Cornell University Press, 2003. This book
Spy, Oxford University Press, 2003. This
—Rich Schuldenfrei
describes the innovative design of the early
story is about Elizabeth Van Lew, who
Professor of Philosophy
gardening manuals, examining how writers defied the conventions of the 19th-century
and printers marketed them as fiction and
South by running a spy ring that helped
practical advice for aspiring gardeners.
scores of Union soldiers to escape from
Margery Post Abbott ’67, Mary Ellen
(Grafflin) Chijioke ’67, Pink Dandelion,
and John William Oliver Jr., Historical
Dictionary of the Friends (Quakers),
Scarecrow Press, Maryland, 2003. This
book, covering terms such as abolition and
peace and offering biographies of William
Penn and Francisco Tintaya, provides a
glimpse into the changing nature of
Friends.
Rob Austin ’84 and Lee Devin, Artful
Making: What Managers Need to Know About
How Artists Work, Prentice Hall, 2003. Rob

John Byers ’70, Built for Speed: A Year in the
Life of Pronghorn, Harvard University Press,
2003. In this book about North America’s
fastest mammal, Byers observes the pronghorn’s life from birth to death.
Jacqueline Carey ’76, The Crossley Baby,
Ballantine Books, New York, 2003. The
author of Good Gossip and The Other Family
as well as articles for magazines including
The New Yorker, Jacqueline Carey has written
a novel about the rivalry, grudges, and abiding love of three sisters living in New York
City during the 1980s.

prison.
Duncan Ferguson and William Weston ’82,
eds., Called to Teach: The Vocation of the
Presbyterian Educator, Geneva Press, 2003.
These essays explore how the calling to
teach in higher education—a primary mission of the Presbyterian church—is lived
out today. William Weston , Leading From
the Center: Strengthening the Pillars of the
Church, Geneva Press, 2003. Sociologist
William Weston examines the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) and the tensions that exist
between key groups in the denomination.

DECEMBER 2003

OTHER BOOKS

51

PROFILE
Small Virus,
Big Idea
H A R R I E T L AT H A M R O B I N S O N ’ 5 9
IS A LEADER IN THE SEARCH FOR
WALT HULTGREN, YERKES PHOTOGRAPHER

A N A I D S VAC C I N E .

A

ROBINSON AND HER COLLEAGUES AT EMORY UNIVERSITY’S YERKES NATIONAL PRIMATE RESEARCH CENTER
DEVELOPED A PROMISING HIV/AIDS VACCINE, CURRENTLY IN THE FIRST STAGE OF CLINICAL TESTING.

vaccine has demonstrated its effectiveness
over a longer period than other vaccines currently in testing. Additionally, the Yerkes
vaccine, unlike others in development, has
been shown to “protect animals of all tissue
types.”
Other leading vaccines include those currently being tested by Merck & Co. Inc. and
Aventis Pasteur. As reported by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Merck and
Aventis have recently combined their individual vaccines to determine if the combination of the two may be more effective. The
Merck and Aventis vaccines are, Robinson
says, “the only products that I consider truly
ahead of us.”
The Yerkes AIDS vaccine uses the DNA
vaccination technology Robinson helped
pioneer in the early ’90s. In this technology,
the desired immunogens, or the substances
that produce immunity, are inserted directly
into small pieces of DNA. These pieces are
then amplified in bacteria, purified, and
injected into an animal model. The DNA
vaccine is followed with an attenuated
smallpox vaccine that further boosts the
immune response.
Hovering above this microworld is
Robinson, today one of the more recognizable figures in immunology. Robinson
received a Ph.D. in microbiology from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in

1965 and has served on boards for the
National Institutes of Health, the World
Health Organization, and the Food and
Drug Administration. She has authored or
co-authored about 200 articles and is chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of
GeoVax Inc., a company founded for the
application of DNA vaccine technology to
humans. She spends most of her free time
with her family—her father, now 95, her
three sons, and her two grandchildren. She
enjoys traveling and has been all over the
world, including Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia. For now, though, Robinson is intent on staying right where she is.
“Right now, I need to be in the lab,” she says.
“You have to be at the helm to miss the reefs.”
So Robinson remains at work, keeping
her eye on a microscopic technology that
could potentially alter the world on a scale
millions of times magnified. HIV, she
explains, is an extremely small virus, containing nine genes compared with the 200
in smallpox—“Yet, it’s managing to cause
such devastation to humans.” The smallness
of the virus—but the intensity of its
destructive power—is a paradox that Robinson deals with daily, as she continues to
work on a solution to a problem that reaches
levels of global significance far greater than
HIV’s scant nine genes would ever suggest.
—Elizabeth Redden ’05

DECEMBER 2003

pioneer in the field of DNA vaccinology,
Harriet Robinson has emerged as one of
the leading figures in the search for an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine. As chief of microbiology and immunology at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Robinson has led research efforts on one
of the more promising vaccines to date.
Robinson explains that the vaccine, now
in the first stage of clinical testing, has
“been remarkably effective in monkey models.” Yet, Robinson knows scientists are still
a while away from achieving a licensed
human vaccine. But she joins the rest of the
world in hoping the Yerkes vaccine proves
itself effective in human trials—which, she
estimates optimistically, will not be complete
for at least another five years.
“Everyone’s climbing Mt. Everest now,
but we’re only at base camp two at creating a
vaccine,” Robinson says.
In a trial begun in 1999, two dozen rhesus macaque monkeys were injected with the
experimental vaccine at three different
times. After a seven-month period—far
longer than the period used in many competing HIV vaccine studies—the monkeys
were challenged with an infection. Of the 24
test monkeys, 23 survive today and are
entirely healthy with intact immune systems. These monkeys, Robinson says, have
no symptoms of AIDS and contain only
extremely low levels of the virus—levels that
are hypothesized to be below that necessary
for transmission. Of the six control monkeys, on the other hand, five have died. The
remaining one has lost its CD4 helper cells,
a characteristic symptom of AIDS. The article reporting the results of the study, published in 2001 in Science, has since become “a most cited paper in immunology,”
says Robinson.
“Our vaccine has the best preclinical
data,” she explains, citing that the Yerkes

59

PROFILE
Exciting yet
Humbling
O N C O L O G I S T DAV I D F I S H E R ’ 7 9
CONFRONTS CLINICAL AND
S C I E N T I F I C C H A L L E N G E S TO
H E L P YO U N G C A N C E R V I C T I M S .

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

66

n David Fisher’s office desk stands a
photograph of a jubilant young man
crossing the finish line of the New York
Marathon. The picture was taken on the
10th anniversary of the man’s bone marrow
transplant, and he was a patient of Fisher,
currently associate professor of pediatric
oncology at Harvard University and the
Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI).
A Harvard faculty member for 10 years,
Fisher “plopped” into pediatrics, when,
after being trained and board certified in
adult oncology, he did a six-month stint at
Boston Children’s Hospital and “loved it.”
Now, he divides his time between laboratory
research on molecular oncology at the DFCI
and clinical work, seeing some adult
patients but serving mainly as an attending
physician at Children’s Hospital and the
prestigious Jimmy Fund Clinic, where children with cancer are brought from all over
the world for treatment. He also teaches
courses at both Harvard University and the
Harvard Medical School—including a class
of 100 graduate students—and is adviser to
undergraduate biochemistry majors and
pediatric oncology clinical fellows at Children’s Hospital and DFCI.
In 1979, when Fisher graduated from
Swarthmore with a major in biology and
chemistry, he simultaneously received a
diploma in cello from the Curtis Institute of
Music and went on to become a cellist of
international reputation, performing under
maestros such as Eugene Ormandy, Zubin
Mehta, and Ricardo Muti in locations such
as Carnegie Hall, Washington Kennedy Center, and the Philadelphia Academy of Music.
He has received numerous awards and honors—both musical and medical—including
first prize in the 1983 Artists International
Music Competition; a Harvard faculty award
for teaching in 1999; and, in 2000, when he

COURTESY OF DAVID FISHER

O

FISHER (CENTER) TREASURES HIS LASTING COLLEGE FRIENDSHIPS WITH FACULTY MEMBERS SUCH
AS ISAAC H. CLOTHIER JR. PROFESSOR EMERITUS
OF BIOLOGY ROBERT SAVAGE AND PROFESSOR OF
BIOLOGY SCOTT GILBERT, HIS FIRST GRADUATE
STUDENT GAËL MCGILL ’95 (LEFT) AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDENT ANDREW WAGNER ’89 (RIGHT),
AND HIS CLASSMATE ANDREW SCHWARTZ.

was offered the chairmanship of pediatric
oncology at another major university, a $2
million endowed investigatorship at DFCI
as a motivation for him to stay.
These days, because of the demands of
work and family, Fisher’s musical activities
have been curtailed, although he still manages to squeeze into his packed schedule five
or six concerts a year and musical moments
with his family—Yale alumna, radiation
oncologist, and pianist wife Claire Fung and
their four children, ages 2 to 13, the oldest
three of whom play musical instruments.
Fisher’s medical research focuses on
mechanisms that regulate gene expression
in a variety of cells, including pigment cells
of the skin (melanocytes) and their tumors
(melanoma). One recent project in his lab
was carried out largely by Gaël McGill ’95,
who graduated with highest honors in biology from Swarthmore, then obtained a Ph.D.
as a graduate student in Fisher’s lab. His

work revealed that melanocytes are hardwired to resist normal triggers of cell death,
and this wiring appears to link cell survival
to the pigmentation pathway. The fact that
melanocytes are more resistant to cell death
makes evolutionary sense because they need
to produce pigments that protect the skin
from ultraviolet rays, says Fisher. However,
this anti-death mechanism also appears to
render melanoma cells particularly difficult
to kill with chemotherapy. Mechanistic discoveries such as this have helped tp explain
clinical behavior of melanoma and, more
important, suggest new therapeutic strategies to combat the disease. Fisher’s lab has
also made discoveries of fundamental
importance in a variety of pediatric cancers,
including a form of kidney tumor whose
molecular basis his lab recently elucidated.
Working with cancer victims is not
always easy, yet Fisher says he would never
want to give up clinical medicine. “Since I
was a little kid, I wanted to be a doctor. I
enjoy being in a position to help. Oncologists, even in the most difficult situations,
can provide an unbelievable amount of both
emotional and physical comfort as well as
information. I wouldn’t give it up for the
world.” Furthermore, not only does seeing
patients stimulate ideas for research directions but also, he says, overall, pediatric cancers are much more successfully treated and
cured than most adult cancers. “The children
are leading the way to the cure,” Fisher says.
Of his career, Fisher says: “You’re like an
explorer out there. You’re almost like a kid
playing games—taking incomplete clues and
trying to piece together answers. That’s what
research is like, and, to a certain extent, it’s
even what clinical medicine is like. If it
weren’t, we wouldn’t need doctors. It’s very
exciting yet tremendously humbling.” He
says that moving between the two worlds of
clinical and laboratory medicine provides a
marvelous synergy: “In clinical medicine,
you can have rewards that are immediate.
You give a pill, and a pain goes away, and
that’s a thrill. But then, you have the impediments that can be insurmountable, the disease that no drugs can cure. In a lab, it’s relatively uncommon to get a short-term major
boost—experiments are slow and complicated—but it has the potential for having a
tremendous impact in the long run. It’s very
rewarding to be in the fortunate position of
being able to do both.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm

IN

MY LIFE

You Can Go
Home Again:
A Year in
Seoul
AN ADOPTEE RETURNS TO HER ORIGINS
IN KOREA.
By Ku n y a S c a r b o r o u g h D e s J a r d i n s ’ 8 9

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

T

70

he first time I remember eating a persimmon, I had just started graduate school in Boston. My friend, Vostina, had taken
me to Haymarket where cheap produce, probably a few days
old, is sold. Milling about the stalls, I picked up something I didn't
recognize. I wasn't sure whether it was a fruit or a vegetable—it
looked like an orange tomato, but a little less squat, pointier at the
bottom, and flatter on top where a pale green cap shaped like a dried
dogwood flower sat. When I got home, I wasn't sure how to
approach it—whether to slice, quarter, core, or peel it. When I tasted
it though, I experienced a strange moment of intense visceral familiarity—a humble version of Proust's madeleine dipped in tea. I knew
this fruit tasted like “home."
Memory is a strange thing. My remembered life began at
Kennedy airport in September 1971 at age 5, when I was adopted by
an American family. I don't actually remember my arrival—instead, I
have photos and stories that have been told and retold to me, and
they add up to something like a memory. But I didn't have any photos or anyone to recount my life in Korea before coming to the
United States. And I soon lost the language that encoded the memories I might have had. There were a few things, though, that I
passed on to my mother once I learned to speak English. I told her
that I had many brothers, that my birth father coughed a lot, and
that one brother had also come on the plane with me. Growing up
in suburban Pennsylvania, however, I would forget that I was Asian
and was never really sure whether I had given my mother “facts" or
some kind of confabulated logic produced to make sense of my earlier years. Maybe the “brothers" were really children in the orphanage; maybe I had mistaken another child for my brother on the
plane.
The persimmon is ubiquitous in Asia; in Korea, it is called kam.
In fall 1999, when I returned to Korea to teach English for a year, I
noticed the persimmon trees that lined the hurried streets of Seoul.
The small trees, with their deep green, waxy leaves and smooth, firm
orange fruit were perfect and beautiful—in dramatic contrast to the

concrete high rises in Korea's most densely populated city. My first
few weeks in Seoul, I discovered a growing community of returning
adoptees from cities around the world. It is estimated that more
than 200,000 Korean infants and children were adopted outside
Korea from the time of the Korean War to the early 1990s. Many of
us came to America, but now there is a slow backward migration.
I did not return to Korea to search for my birth family; I didn't
think it was possible to find them. Perhaps more important, I was at
a point in my life where I needed to look for myself more than for
them. I had been to Korea 10 years before, for a “motherland" tour
with my adopted sisters and a group of adoptees. The trip was not
well thought out, and there was no mention of anyone's thoughts or
feelings about returning to our country of birth. We went to the
usual tourist traps—the Korean Folk Village and the ancient capital
of “The Land of the Morning Calm." This time, I was returning to
live in the country, not to visit. I was hoping to integrate the cut-off
foreign past with the known present, one that had become too busy
and unconscious.
My first weeks in Seoul, I was tearful, lonely, and isolated. People
would start speaking to me without realizing I couldn't understand
them, until—in the only Korean phrase I knew perfectly—I let them
know I couldn't speak their language.
After my first semester teaching at Hong Ik University, my mother came to visit me in Korea. My mother had never been to this
country where her three adopted daughters had been born. She
wanted to go to Korean Social Services, the agency that had
processed our adoptions, and where we had all lived for a short time
(TOP) IN 1971, KUNYA (LOWER MIDDLE) WAS PHOTOGRAPHED WITH HER FIVE
BROTHERS AND BIRTH MOTHER. RIEN VAN DER MEULEN, HER BIRTH BROTHER
WHO WAS ADOPTED IN THE NETHERLANDS, IS NEXT TO KUNYA (RIGHT).

KUNYA WITH HER HUSBAND, ANDREW, AND THEIR BABY, KEATON

As the car pulled up to a
house, a little woman
came running out, her
face like a dried apple,
tears flowing.

AMY RADER PHOTOGRAPHER © 2003

“presumed to be found in Kunsan," and “birth date estimated Oct.
3, 1966." So, I had believed that there was no information. We were
not permitted to copy anything from the file but were assured that
the agency would look into the matter. A couple of months later,
while still teaching at Hong Ik, I received an e-mail stating, “Ms.
Des Jardins, we have found your birth family."

I met my birth brothers at a coffee shop near the university. I was
not convinced when I met these slightly worn men that they were
relatives. I couldn't see a resemblance, but, during the three-hour
drive down to Kunsan, my translator explained what they were saying. I was the seventh child of eight; there were three girls and five
boys. Our father had been ill for many years before he died and
knew our birth mother could not care for us all. It sounded from
their description that our birth father was not a kind man, and, like
many Korean men of the time, a heavy drinker and smoker. They
explained to me that my name, which is not a typical Korean name,
came, in part, because it sounded like kun-nae, which means “the
end." They had hoped, in vain, that I would be the last one, but I
was not. The agency had told my birth mother that my younger
brother and I would both go to America to be educated, and then,
presumably, return.
When we arrived in Kunsan, my brothers kept asking if I recognized anything. Nothing looked familiar to me. As the car pulled up
to a house, a little woman came running out, her face like a dried
apple, tears flowing. She pulled me into the house with an intense
grip; as we sat on the floor together, she brought out some photos.
Until I saw them, I wasn't sure that this was my birth family. One
was taken on the day my brother and I were sent to Korean Social
Services. Other photos showed my adoptive parents in the United
States; I was caught off guard. “What were my parents doing here?"
I wondered. I'd had no idea that the sister agency in Pennsylvania
had sent photos of them back to Korea. That dissolved my skepticism, and I joined the assembled in tears.
During that year in Korea, I also met my husband—a native of
Cape Cod who had been teaching at the same university. Although
the story of meeting my birth family is dramatic, it has much less
daily significance than meeting my husband. When people ask me
what it was like to meet my birth family, I am never sure how to
respond. I say that I have been extremely
fortunate. And that there was a surreal
quality to the reunion like a made-for-TV
movie. Some part of me felt disembodied
and numb, viewing the scene from a distance and thinking, this is a great story but
not mine. Another part of me felt like this
experience was the most ordinary and natural one in the world. When I left my birth
mother the last time before returning to
Boston, I didn't cry with her. I was sad,
mostly thinking of her those many years
ago and sad for the 5-year-old child I was.
I didn't cry until we were a few miles down
the road, and my sister-in-law—whom I'd
just met—cried with me. T
Kunya Des Jardins is assistant dean of
counseling and support services at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Her mother, Barbara Des Jardins, wrote
about adopting Kunya and her sisters in
Waiting: A Story of Love and Hope,
which was published last year.

DECEMBER 2003

before our emigrations were finalized. In the sweltering August
heat, we were amazed to see the same swing set and jungle gym
found in the first pictures of me sent to my parents 28 years before.
The social worker laid down a file. We'd seen before what had
been written in English, but I looked at the Korean side of the folder
for the first time. Despite the fact that I could not read or write
Korean, I had picked up enough to sound out some words and to
recognize what looked liked names and birth dates. I pointed this
out to the social worker who agreed, “Yes, those are the names and
birth dates of your birth parents." I had been to this agency 10 years
earlier, and they had never mentioned anything. The English side of
my record stated “birth mother unknown," “birth father unknown,"

71

Signs of
Violence
A M Y R E T S I N A S ’ 0 1 E D U C AT E S
T E E N S A B O U T H E A LT H Y
R E L AT I O N S H I P S A N D
CONFLICT RESOLUTION.

ack home in Rhode Island, Amy Retsinas continues to challenge the status quo.
“As a Lang Opportunity Scholar at
Swarthmore, I was afforded the opportunity
and resources to create, design, and implement a community service project,” says
Retsinas, who spent summer 1999 volunteering at a domestic violence agency, which
was close to her home in Providence. “One
day, I accompanied a staff member on a
home visit to meet with a former client and
her two children. She had only lawn furniture in her apartment, and the three of them
shared a single twin mattress.”
The shelter frequently received calls from
community members with offers to donate
furniture. Yet because of a lack of storage
space and transportation, all furniture donations were turned away here—and at the five
other Rhode Island domestic violence agencies. So, in summer 2000, Retsinas founded
the Furniture Donation Exchange Program,
creating a program to ensure that women
and families leaving domestic violence shelters receive furniture free of charge.
“Seeing both the demonstrated need for
furniture and the available supply of donations, I decided my Lang Project would be to
connect these two pieces—coordinating a
policy so that donated furniture can go into
the new homes of domestic violence survivors,” says Retsinas, who worked with
organizations such as Goodwill and the
Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic
Violence. Through the Lang Opportunity
Scholars Program—which recently shifted
selection out of the admissions cycle to a rigorous application process during sophomore
year—Eugene Lang ’38 supports innovative,
student-designed,community service projects.
“In a way, this initial involvement in the
domestic violence movement opened my
eyes to the pervasiveness of domestic vio-

MEGHAN KRIEGEL ʼ97

B

AT THE END OF OCTOBER, AMY RETSINAS WAS IN
BOSTON FOR A WOMEN’S POLITICAL SUMMIT AT
JOHN F. KENNEDY LIBRARY AND MUSEUM. AS THE
EDUCATION OUTREACH ADVOCATE AT THE WOMEN’S
RESOURCE CENTER OF SOUTH COUNTY IN RHODE
ISLAND, SHE OFFERS WORKSHOPS ON BULLYING,
SEXUAL HARASSMENT, AND DATING VIOLENCE FOR
5TH- TO 12TH-GRADE STUDENTS.

lence and discomfort of communities and
individuals in addressing these issues,” says
Retsinas.
“Domestic violence is the leading cause
of injury to women; every day, four women
in the United States are murdered by a male
intimate partner. Many people who are close
to me in my life have been affected by relationship violence, yet the problem remains
hidden. I decided to write my senior sociology/anthropology thesis on teenage dating
violence, only to find that little research
existed,” says Retsinas, who interviewed
teens and held focus groups in Philadelphia
and Rhode Island in order to write her thesis.
Her commitment to effect change, which
began to take shape during her Swarthmore
days, has grown out of a body of volunteer
work. During summer 1998, she taught non-

violent conflict resolution, self-esteem, and
leadership skills at the Bridges Summer Program in Chester, Pa. From 1998 to 2001,
Retsinas was coordinator for the ChesterSwarthmore Coalition Afterschool Program,
recruiting and training literacy tutors from
the College to assist disadvantaged elementary students. After graduation, she extended her volunteer activities in Philadelphia,
helping with the tasks of daily living as an
Action AIDS buddy and educator for
Planned Parenthood.
After graduation, Retsinas worked in
Philadelphia as a legal advocate at Women
Against Abuse. For a year, she provided legal
options, advocacy, safety planning, and crisis
intervention for domestic violence victims
trying to navigate through the complex legal
system.
Now, Retsinas teaches youth about the
warning signs and dynamics of potentially
abusive relationships. As the education outreach advocate at the Women’s Resource
Center of South County in Rhode Island,
Retsinas develops curricula and conducts
workshops in high schools on teen dating
violence and healthy relationships. In the
middle and elementary schools, she leads
workshops on bullying, teasing, and sexual
harassment. She has established violence
prevention programs in schools across
seven school districts, facilitating two teen
female support groups, counseling and
referring teen victims and peers, and
designing evaluations to gauge effectiveness.
“In addition to working with youth, I
present workshops and trainings for parents and faculty to teach them how to recognize the warning signs among teens and
how to intervene effectively,” she says. “By
educating young people about warning
signs, nonviolence conflict resolution, and
the power of bystanders, I hope to stop the
cycle of violence and create a safer community—free of violence.”
Retsinas adds: “Today, we are living in a
society where all violence, especially violence
against women, has become normalized
and—to an extent—glorified. Swarthmore
taught me how to challenge the status quo
and think critically. The Lang Program was
especially invaluable in that it afforded me
the opportunity, resources, guidance, and
encouragement to solve community problems.”
—Andrea Hammer

DECEMBER 2003

PROFILE

75

LETTERS

Continued from page 3

CHARLES ROOS ’48 WRITES THAT HE IS IN THIS PICTURE (SECOND ROW, THIRD FROM THE RIGHT), WHICH
APPEARED IN THE JUNE 2002 BULLETIN. IN A LOPSIDED GAME AGAINST HAVERFORD, THE COACHES
DECLARED A 1-POINT SWARTHMORE VICTORY, THEN EXCHANGED PLAYERS TO EVEN THE SIDES.

CALLING “DEAN” PEABODY

HEH, POPS!

Regarding the article “What Shall We Call
the Professor?” I had a funny experience at
Swarthmore. In a psychology seminar, I had
a professor named Dean Peabody, which is
what it said on his office door. I incorrectly
leapt to the assumption that he was a dean
in title rather than a “Dean” in name. So
when our Social Psychology seminar began,
I promptly called him by his title and
received a slightly startled look but thought
nothing about it. A couple of us in the seminar took to calling him Dean. It was only
halfway through the semester that I discovered that I was inadvertently calling Professor Peabody by his first name. At that point,
Dean he had been, and so, after a few seconds of initial discomfort, Dean he remained.
DAVID LANDES ’85
Herndon, Va.

In 30 years of teaching at Beloit College, I
can recall only one occasion on which I gave
much thought to how students addressed
me. It was when a senior student and
advisee I’d known since his freshman year,
passing me in the hall, greeted me with an
exuberant, “Heh, Pops!”
Only some hours later did I recall that
the student had telephoned me the previous
evening, and my teenage daughter had summoned me to the phone with her usual hail.
NELSON VAN VALEN ’48
Alamosa, Colo.
THE EXALTED ONES

In the 1950s, professors in the classroom
were called “Mr.” or “Miss” (“Mrs.” wasn’t
common in that era)—unless they taught
math or science. Those exalted ones were
called “Dr.” Annoyed by this flouting of the

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

10.

Publication: Swarthmore College Bulletin
Publications number: 0888-2126
Filing date: Sept. 30, 2003
Issue frequency: August, September, December,
March, and June
Number of issues published annually: 5
Annual subscription price: none
Office of publication: 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
General business office: same
Publisher: Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
Editor: Jeffrey Lott, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
Managing editor: Andrea Hammer, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
Owner: Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave.,
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390

11. Known bondholders, mortgages, or other security
holders holding 1 percent or more of total amount
of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: none
12. The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of
this organization has not changed during
the preceding 12 months.
14. Issue date for circulation data: Sept. 2003
15. a. Total number of copies (net press run): 23,769
b. Paid or requested circulation through dealers: 0
c. 1-Paid or requested mail subscriptions: 20,886
4-Other classes mailed: 1,125 (ISAL)
d. Free distribution by mail: 28
e. Free distribution outside the mail: 1,562
f. Total free distribution: 1,590
g. Total distribution: 23,601
h. Copies not distributed: 168
i. Total: 23,769

Quaker commitment to equality, I once
referred to a favorite history professor as
“Dr.,” and my friends laughed at me.
BARBARA HADDAD RYAN ’59
Alexandria, Va.
A NARROW VICTORY

The picture of the 1943 junior varsity football team in the Bulletin (“In My Life,” June
2002, shown above) brought back 60-yearold memories. I played for Swarthmore in
the game with Haverford described by Dick
Burrowes ’45. In one play, the left tackle and
I both broke through the Haverford line,
and we trapped their quarterback. He ran
backward, and we followed him. He slowed
to a walk, and we walked back with him.
When he got close to the Haverford goal
line, he raised his arm to pass the ball, and I
tackled him some 60 yards behind the line
of scrimmage! After this play, the two coaches got together in Quaker spirit and decided
that Swarthmore had won by one point, and
then the two teams exchanged players to
make the game even.
CHARLES ROOS ’48
Nashville, Tenn.
FOR THE RECORD

The Bulletin staff regrets misidentifying
Susannah Volpe ’05, John Halbert ’89, and
J.P. Partland ’90 in the September issue.
Write to us at 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390, or e-mail your letters
to bulletin@swarthmore.edu. T

DECEMBER 2003

As a linguist schooled in and teacher of six
languages both modern and classical, I
am both impressed and amused by President Alfred H. Bloom’s oratorical style
(Commencement Speeches, September Bulletin). It is positively Ciceronean, clauses
within clauses within more clauses! I had
to read some of his sentences over again to
match up verbs with their subjects. More
than one complete sentence took more
than 3 inches of space in one column from
initial capital letter to its final period. What
oratory!
AUDREY KEMP BOWYER ’45
Oakland, Calif.

1945 HALCYON

POSITIVELY CICERONIAN

79

A DAY I N

THE LIFE

Get On and Go
T H E S W I F T, B U SY L I V E S O F R AC H E L
H E N I G H A N ’ 9 7 A N D C H A R L I E M AY E R ’ 9 8
By J e f f r e y L o t t

P h o t o g r a p h s b y C l a i r e Weiss ’03

O . 3, 2003:

CT
It’s pitch dark on a
quiet residential street in northwestern
Washington, D.C. At 5:45 a.m., Rachel
Henighan and Charlie Mayer have already
had their coffee and oatmeal. They’re in the
starting blocks for another day.
Saying a quick good-bye, Rachel steers
their old Volvo toward the Stoddert Elementary School in Georgetown. She’ll arrive
more than 2 hours before her fourth-grade
students. Charlie says she’s a natural morning person. Usually, they exercise together
before work, but Rachel was away from her
classroom yesterday, so she has a lot of
catching up to do. And today’s the day for
the worms.
Charlie rides with me to the gym, where
he jogs a mile on a treadmill (“you just get
on and go,” he says), then sweats while lifting free weights, does some push-ups, and
jogs again. He’s down to 158 pounds on his
wiry 5’11” frame. He credits trainer

The radio news
producer’s job is
multifaceted—from
conceiving stories to
setting up interviews, then gathering audio resources
CHARLIE MAYER (LEFT) AND STUDIO ENGINEER VINCE MUSE CREATE A FINAL
such as music or
archival sound, writ- MIX OF A STORY FOR NPR’S WEEKEND EDITION SATURDAY. IN JANUARY, MAYER
ing the copy, and
WILL BECOME SENIOR PRODUCER OF NPR’S 2004 ELECTION COVERAGE.
editing the finished
audio for the air. On
this Friday morning, Charlie is putting the
he’s also a shop steward for AFTRA, the
finishing touches on Scott Simon’s 12union that represents on-air, production,
minute interview with singer Joan Baez,
and editorial staff members at NPR.
which, although it was recorded earlier, will
Charlie compares NPR to Swarthmore:
sound “live” on the air tomorrow. Editing
“There are a lot of incredibly talented people
digitally on a computer, Charlie skillfully
who love what they do—and also some hotblends music from Baez’s latest album with
headed, obnoxious young people.” Like you,
carefully chosen excerpts from Simon’s half- I ask? He smiles, “I’m trying to be less so.”
hour conversation with Baez.
He says that many mentors have “helped me
Around 9 a.m., Charlie goes up to the
focus my energy and aggression on the
work. I’m a journeyman now—able to operate independently but still with a lot to
learn.”
At the elevator, he runs into one of his
mentors, Noah Adams, former host of All
Things Considered. “Are you coming to the
party?” asks Charlie. AFTRA negotiations
have just been successfully completed, and
top-floor canteen for more coffee. Nearly
he has helped organize an after-work cele500 people work at NPR’s Massachusetts
bration where NPR Executive Vice President
Avenue headquarters, and many of them
Ken Stern and chief union negotiator Ken
seem to know him. Although he was hired
Greene (“the Kens,” says Charlie) will give
full time after graduating from Swarthmore, toasts to the future. Adams says, “I rememCharlie has actually spent much of the last
ber the meeting when Charlie first said, ‘I
decade at the network—beginning with an
don’t get coffee anymore.’”
internship during his junior year of high
“I figured, after I graduated from college,
school. He’s worked on All Things Considered, I should do other things,” quips Charlie.
Weekend Edition, and many other NPR proAdams, like a proud father, addresses me
grams, doing everything from getting coffee again: “In radio, there are a bunch of things
to editing tape to pitching story ideas to
that you can teach and learn—and then
directing and now producing. These days,
there’s instinct. Charlie’s got it.”

S WA R T H MO R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I N

“I’m a journeyman now—able to
operate independently but still with
a lot to learn,” Charlie says.

80

DeWayne Hudson, who, standing nearby,
spouts admiring jock clichés: “His motivation was there. He was determined. He was
consistent.”
After a quick shower, we head for
National Public Radio (NPR) in downtown
Washington, where Charlie’s a producer for
Weekend Edition Saturday, a 2-hour news
program hosted by Scott Simon. Charlie’s
windowless office is decorated with souvenirs of Iraq, where he spent three weeks in
July producing news stories with reporter
Eric Westervelt.

RACHEL HENIGHAN TEACHES FOURTH GRADE IN A
WASHINGTON, D.C., PUBLIC SCHOOL (TOP). SHE
AND CHARLIE (BOTTOM) MARRIED IN AUGUST.

In January, Charlie will take charge as
senior producer of NPR’s election coverage
for 2004. On election night, he will produce
a program with a staff of more than 100
reporters, editors, producers, writers, and
technicians. He’s just 27.
OVER AT STODDERT ELEMENTARY, the school
day is in full swing as “Ms. Henighan” presides over her classroom in a firm, friendly
manner. There’s a sense of purpose in the
bright, busy room. All of these 24 children
need attention, and Rachel gives some to
each child in turn.
A few blocks from the heart of upscale

Georgetown, Stoddert is an aging building
that echoes with children’s voices and is
brightly decorated with their artwork. The
carpet in Rachel’s room is held together in
places by duct tape, but there are new windows admitting copious light. In a sunny
corner, two students read silently—one of
many daily tasks that Rachel has listed on a
flip chart in the corner of the room. The students are going about the business of learning independently as Rachel and a student
teacher answer questions and move them
from task to task. Math is done for the day,
but there’s still silent
reading and story writing
and science—the worms
in the large black tub.
Rachel spreads a plastic drop cloth on the
floor, reminding the children of the project’s history. A year ago, a container of worms and an
armload of ripped-up
newspaper were placed
in the closed tub. Water
and vegetable scraps
were added weekly as the
worms devoured the
newspapers and made—
what?
“Ew!” cry the children as she tips the tub
on the drop cloth. A moist brown mound
appears.
“It’s just dirt,” says Rachel. “It’s compost,
and there are lots of worms in it. Your job is
to pick out as many worms as possible so we
can start the box for this year.” Most of the
children roll up their sleeves and dig in, but
some recoil from the earthy mound. “You
can name your worms as you find them,”
she suggests brightly. They run with this
idea.
“I named this one after Shawn,” says one
girl.
“Daniel, Daniel—this one looks like
you!” cries another.
One child tells Rachel how afraid she is
of worms. “I’m really going to face my fear,”
she says as she gamely picks one from the

pile. The classroom starts to smell like a
barn as the other children eagerly pick
through the compost.
In her school, Rachel says, teachers are
given quite a bit of autonomy in reaching
the goals set by the curriculum. “Teachers
can really accomplish something” in this
environment, she says. Success in any classroom “really comes down to teacher training
and how competent your teachers are.”
The school day ends with time on the
playground, but first there’s an impromptu
violin concert. Five novice players bow a few
notes as restless classmates put their chairs
up and ready themselves for the bell. On the
way out, each of them gets a good-bye handshake (or hug) and a cookie. The cookies are
courtesy of Charlie, who dropped them off
on his way to buy supplies for the party,
catching an unusual moment with Rachel
on the fly.
Her students are fond of her—and motivated. One boy says to me, “She doesn’t yell
at the bad kids. She just tells them not to do
it.” A girl says, “She reads us books that we
choose, like Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”
Another says, “Sometimes, when we’re really
working hard, she’ll let us go out early for
recess.”
Rachel’s really working hard too—but
she doesn’t get recess. The compost needs to
be distributed to an outside garden. She has
dozens of papers to grade, and there’s a
used-book fair being organized by the PTA.
She checks in with Charlie by phone. They
agree to meet at home about 8 p.m., after
her Friday night yoga class.
As the sun sets over Washington, Charlie’s tapping a keg of Sierra Nevada while a
co-worker sets up a huge spread of barbecue
and hors d’oeuvres in NPR’s rooftop snack
bar. Dozens of staffers drift in—top managers and union members chatting amiably.
The two Kens make short, lighthearted
speeches, and everyone raises a cup to the
future. Charlie, pouring beer for all of his
friends and mentors, beams; it is just what
he wanted to happen—getting everyone
together. Maybe it is a little like Swarthmore. T

DECEMBER 2003

Rachel has thought of going into school
administration but says that “to do this,
I thought I needed to be a teacher first.”

F

W o o d l a n d “ W o o d y ” ’4 7 a n d
H a n n a M a c h l u p H a s t i n g s ’5 1

“A

lthough we did not meet at Swarthmore, it was really
Swarthmore that brought us together, brokered by

Hanna’s brother Stefan [’47]. Swarthmore was and is important
to both of us, and an annuity and bequest in our estate plans are
our way to give something back to this great school. Planned
giving allowed us to make a larger contribution to the College
than we thought possible.
“We commend this opportunity to you.”
Woody is a professor of biology at
Harvard University, and Hanna
is retired from her position as
director of student affairs at the
Harvard School of Public Health.
Together, they served 20 years as
masters of Pforzheimer House, an
undergraduate house at Harvard.
Woody and Hanna live in
Cambridge.

To learn how gift planning at Swarthmore
could work for you, please contact Ted Mills,
director of planned giving, at (610) 328-8323,
or e-mail plannedgiving@swarthmore.edu
for a confidential consultation.

Visit the Swarthmore planned giving Web site
at pg.swarthmore.edu.