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sun moon new different
swarthmore
swarthmore college
bulletin | january 2009
campus view
The first snowfall of
the season brings
students to the
Scott Amphitheater
for some frozen fun.
Look out below!
parlor talk
Sun, Moon, New, Different—
A Way of Expressing Change
Associate Editor Carol Brévart-Demm
had learned about Haichao’s talent in the
Sept. 22 Daily Gazette, the student online
news source. Just a few weeks into his first
semester at Swarthmore—and his first
month in America—the gregarious student
had started a campus club to study and teach
Chinese calligraphy. He told the Gazette
reporter that he’d practiced the ancient art
from age seven and had won national awards
in youth competitions. He even wrote his
college admission essay about his love for
calligraphy. “If you learn to write calligraphy,
you can get much more insights on culture,”
he said.
Haichao’s spoken English is rapidly
improving, but he told us that that writing
college papers in English is a laborious
process. “And so many papers at Swarthmore!” he exclaimed. In China, most of his
schooling had consisted of listening, memorization, and rote, with little of the analysis,
swarthmore
college bulletin
editor
Jeffrey Lott
associate editor
Carol Brévart-Demm
class notes editor
Susan Cousins Breen
art director
Suzanne DeMott Gaadt, Gaadt Perspectives llc
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
THERE’S NO QUESTION THAT WE ARE IN THE
midst of significant political, economic, and
social changes. This issue of the Bulletin
looks at change in another era and another
country—China. Moying Li M’82 and Linnea Searle ’84 describe their experiences with
the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s and
the Beijing Spring of 1989. Li’s memoir (p.
24) and Searle’s journal (p. 30) show that
change is not just what happens around us as
events unfold, but also what happens to us.
And thus our cover, a Chinese proverb that
contains four characters—“sun, moon, new,
different”—and means “Every day, something different.”
The cover is the work of Haichao Wu ’12,
a first-year student from Ningbo, China.
Barely an hour after we first met in November, I was driving Haichao to South Philadelphia in search of art paper. There seemed no
time like that moment to get started on our
project, and Haichao didn’t seem like the sort
of person who wastes a second.
synthesis, and writing that is required here.
So Swarthmore has been something of a
shock to him—a significant change in how
he learns.
We told Haichao that we wanted our
cover to be a broad message of change—not
just “progress” or “improvement,” but fundamental change in the way people look at life:
growth, maturation, insight, transformation.
We circled around the concept, talking across
culture and language. Exploring further,
Haichao spoke with some of his fellow Chinese students (this year, the student body
includes 17 from the People’s Republic) and
consulted with his adviser, Haili Kong, professor of Chinese.
A few days later, he brought brushes and
ink to the conference room in our office. He
explained how this proverb is the sort of
thing you might say upon meeting a friend
whom you hadn’t seen in a while. You say,
“How are things going?” And she says, “Sun,
moon, new, different.” Then, as we watched*,
he drew the characters eight different times
on several sheets of paper, studying each
effort and improving their balance and symmetry. The last one became our cover.
—Jeffrey Lott
*You too can watch Haichao Wu as he creates
the Bulletin cover. Look for a short video
with this editor’s note on our Web site:
media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
staff photographer
Eleftherios Kostans
desktop publishing
Audree Penner
administrative assistant
Janice Merrill-Rossi
editor emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
contacting swarthmore college
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(610) 328-8000 www.swarthmore.edu
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(610) 328-8300 admissions@swarthmore.edu
alumni relations
(610) 328-8402 alumni@swarthmore.edu
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(610) 328-8297 registrar@swarthmore.edu
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changes of address
Send address label along with new address to:
Alumni Records Office
Swarthmore College
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore PA 19081-1390
Phone: (610) 328-8435
Or e-mail: alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin
(ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume
CVI, number 3, is published in August, October, January, April, and July by Swarthmore
College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA
19081-1390. Periodicals postage paid at
Swarthmore PA and additional mailing offices.
Permit No. 0530-620. Postmaster: Send address
changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500
College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390.
©2008 Swarthmore College. Printed in U.S.A.
ON THE COVER: Haichao Wu ’12 created this calligraphic cover art, which was photographed by Eleftherios
Kostans. The four characters read “sun” and “moon”(at top and bottom, representing the passage of time)
and “new” and “different” (at left and right, representing change—usually positive change). Taken together, they are a Chinese proverb which means “every day, something different.”
2
swarthmore college bulletin
in this issue
features
20
30
20: A Mind on the Right
In a strident sea of liberal opinion, conservative
academic Robert George ’77 found a happy
home.
By Paul Wachter ’97
24
24: A Song of Memories
A nostalgic journey through childhood during
China’s Cultural Revolution
By Moying Li M’82
36
38
36: Entomylogical “Ant”ics
For Carl Rettenmeyer ’53, a childhood interest
evolved into a fascinating career.
By Carol Brévart-Demm
38: The Neutrino Hunter
In hot pursuit of the elusive neutrino, physicist
Janet Conrad ’85 seeks clues to some of life’s
deepest mysteries.
By Dana Mackenzie ’79
34
january 2009
30: Tian’an men Diary
With a bicycle, a notebook, and a little courage,
Linnea Searle documented the Democracy
Movement in Tian’an men Square—20 years
ago.
By Linnea Searle ’84
42: Dropping Out and Dropping In
Three science and engineering strategies for
women
By Dana Mackenzie ’79
3
in this issue
departments
profiles
5: LETTERS
Readers voice their opinions.
66: Plants Make Us Better, More Civil
People
Virginia Lohr ’73 has a simple message about
the wide-ranging benefits of indoor plants.
By Susan Cousins Breen
76
7: COLLECTION
Swarthmore excels in sports, scholarship,
and service.
18: FACULTY
EXPERT
Election Odyssey
Concerns about
Kazakhstan’s elections struck close
to home for a
Swarthmore political scientist.
By Carol
Nackenoff
18
45: CONNECTIONS
The Alumni College Abroad is on the move
again—south of the Equator and east of the
Greenwich Meridian.
51: IN MEMORIAM
Farewell to cherished friends and classmates
70: City View
An open-minded perspective guides Kairos
Shen ’87 in planning Boston’s architectural
future.
By Audree Penner
58: BOOKS + ARTS
The Twisted Logic of War
By Peter Andreas ’87
Reviewed by Kenneth Sharpe
74: When Calamity Strikes ...
Engineer Nicholas Lehmann ’97 spends
much of his life at disaster scenes.
By David McKay Wilson
47: CLASS NOTES
Alumni share their doings.
76: IN MY LIFE
“Yippee!”—the reaction of Obama
supporters around the world when the
election results came in
By Benjamin Bradlow ’08
80: Q + A
It’s All About Volleyball:
Harleigh Leach Chwastyk
By Susan Cousins Breen
on the web
70
contributors
Sounds of Swarthmore:
Students in M. Jade
Zee's Animal Communications seminar share
their observations about
some of the many
sounds they heard on
campus this semester.
swarthmore.edu/news/sounds
Quasimodo in the Outback: Watch dancer and choreographer
Kim Arrow in an excerpt from a work that will be featured at a
dance film festival in Bangalore in February.
media.swarthmore.edu/video/?p=135
Talking Sustainability: Listen to Mark Alan Hughes '81 discuss
how his efforts as Philadelphia's first sustainability director can
serve as a model for developing Swarthmore's green profile.
media.swarthmore.edu/featured_events/?p=58
4
M oyi ng L i M ’ 84 is vice
president and senior analyst with a Boston-based
investment management
firm. She is the author of
Beacon Hill: The Life and
Times of a Neighborhood,
for which she received the
Julia Ward Howe Award
from the Boston Authors
Club. In August, The New
York Times Book Review
named Snow Falling in
Spring the Editor’s Choice,
and in December, The
Bloomsbury Review selected it as one of the Editor’s Favorites for 2008.
LIN SHAW
Also on the College Web site, you will find:
PAUL MARCUS
Swar thmo re Col le ge Bu lle t in on the Web: This issue and more
than 10 years of archives are at media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
L i nne a Se a r l e ’8 4 has
an M.B.A. from Berkeley.
In addition to her travels
in China, she was a Peace
Corps volunteer in
Cameroon and maintains
an interest in international
development. She has
worked in both the corporate and not-for-profit
worlds and is currently
consulting on a project involving mobile phones in
Africa. She lives in San
Diego with her husband
and two sons.
D ana M ack e nzi e ’ 79
always wanted to be a
writer when he was a
child. But he loved mathematics, too, so he took a
20-year detour: majoring
in math at Swarthmore,
getting a Ph.D. at Princeton, and teaching at Duke
University and Kenyon
College. Since 1997, he
has been a freelance
writer, specializing in
math and science. His first
book, The Big Splat, or
How Our Moon Came to Be,
was published in 2003.
swarthmore college bulletin
letters
IMPATIENT FOR OBAMA
“It was very, um, Swarthmore-like.”
She scowled at me for a moment. I
said, “No, I mean in the good way.”
SWARTHMORE IN THE GOOD WAY
Thank you for the excellent article on Ken
Guilmartin and Music Together (“Making
Music Together Again,” Oct. Bulletin). We are
now putting a second child through the program and have been delighted with it in so
many ways.
When I first took my elder son, Duncan,
to the local Music Together class a few years
ago, we were unaware that it had been cofounded by a fellow Swarthmore alumnus.
When my wife (Mika Hoffman ’86) got
home that evening, she asked me what the
program was like. I thought for a moment,
trying to find the right adjective to describe
the general aura of the experience of making
silly, wonderful, oddly sophisticated music
with other parents and 18-month-olds. I told
her, “It was very, um, Swarthmore-like.” She
scowled at me for a moment. I said, “No, I
mean in the good way, Swarthmore-like.” So
it was utterly unsurprising when we found
out that Music Together founder Guilmartin
was a fellow Swattie.
Matt Wall ’86
Seaside, Calif.
january 2009
I am not a patient person.
Therefore, when Barack Obama achieved
his historic victory, I wept with all those
other veterans of the ’60s civil rights movement; but I couldn’t agree that I didn’t think
I’d see it in my lifetime. I expected to see it
way sooner!
I spent the lethal summer of 1964 in the
Deep South, as an activist/journalist, traveling with SNCC to all the hotspots. And
everywhere we went, somebody(s) died.
SNCC stood for Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, but don’t let that
fool you. SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael
and his buddies slept with rifles under their
beds and drove everywhere at 80 miles an
hour to avoid the locals’ favorite trick—two
cars, one ahead of your car, one behind, forcing your vehicle to a stop. That’s how they
got Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner,
whose bodies were finally found underwater
in a putrid creek.
But their killings were one of the few that
made the news. We started in Mississippi,
marching with a bunch of (incredibly brave)
children, protesting their being made to go to
the back of the local chicken-shack instead of
the front. They raised their fists and sang
“We shall overcome” as they were carried off
to jail in a pickup truck, along with the three
local organizers, two young men, one
woman.
That night, having been refused bail, the
three adults were put out the door of the jail
after dark, and a truckful of goons with guns
drove past and cut them down.
Like the rest, I did what had to be done.
But you were under an unsubtle threat every
moment—the sheriff ’s deputies following
you with their shotguns, scowling at you in
the diner, even if none at your table was
black. In fact, there was a hierarchy to their
hatred. Local blacks were, in fact, the least
resented. More so were whites from the
North. And most of all were journalists with
cameras.
And how did they know where we’d be
and what we would be doing? The ever-loving FBI, who sat in their cars outside of
wherever we were meeting, taking their pictures and using their radios to report to the
Don’t think for a moment that race
was the reason I worked for nearly
two years to get the man elected.
I never saw Obama as “the black
candidate” any more than he did.
local constabulary. I was grateful to be a
movie reviewer at the time that that travesty
Mississippi Burning was released. I could at
least set the record straight for my readers.
It didn’t take me long at Swarthmore to
understand that we were being educated to
be scholars and scientists. I was even offered
two Woodrow Wilson fellowships upon
graduation. I refused both, saying I knew
they were meant for people who planned to
teach, and I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t.
Teaching demands all of a person’s energies,
and my greater priority was writing. And
activism. I got an M.F.A. and have published
two novels, poetry, and had a play performed
in Edward Albee’s workshop at the Circle in
the Square Theater in New York.
All of these things have been tools in the
pursuit of peace and justice. Body and soul,
as it were. So in some small way, I do feel I
did what I could to pave Barack’s path to the
White House. And it’s high time! But don’t
think for a moment that race was the reason
I worked for nearly two years to get the man
elected. I never saw Obama as “the black candidate” any more than he did. I think we—
and the world—are luckier than we deserve
that a man of his intellect and political acumen has come along now, at this last minute,
to rescue us from our greed. The task may be
impossible, but thank you, thank you, Barack
Obama, for trying.
Patricia Brooks ’60
Coupeville, Wash.
SUSAN COBB QUOTATIONS
I’ve heard two stories from my mom, Maxine
Singer ’52, about Dean Susan Cobb. I wonder
whether readers of the Bulletin remember
them this way?
1. When called to Dean Cobb’s office the
5
letters
I’ve heard two stories from my mom,
Maxine Singer ’52, about Dean Susan
Cobb. I wonder whether readers of
the Bulletin remember them this way?
day after cooking in the Bond kitchen and
serving an Italian dinner for friends, the
women in question were asked: “Does
spaghetti really taste better with wine?” This,
because alcohol was forbidden on campus.
As I heard it, the story was always repeated
with a soft southern drawl, apparently Dean
Cobb’s natural voice.
2. In reference to the rules about visiting
hours for men in women’s dorm rooms—I
think that they were not allowed after 9 p.m.,
or something similar—when the question
was put to Dean Cobb about what might be
done after 9 p.m. that could not be done
before 9 p.m. Her answer was, “Nothin’, but
you can do it twice.”
I’d like to confirm these stories with
members of proximate classes, since I am
only repeating what was told to me.
Amy Singer ’82
Tel Aviv, Israel
The editors of the Bulletin would also like to
know how alumni remember these—and perhaps other—of Dean Cobb’s witticisms. Write
to us at bulletin@swarthmore.edu, or post a
comment at our new interactive Web site:
media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin. Mail with a
stamp on it is welcome too.
COMMANDING THE LIGHT BRIGADE
I am appalled that anyone at Swarthmore
would consider his ideal job to be commander of the Charge of the Light Brigade (“Q+A”
with Ed Fuller, Oct. Bulletin). I do not
oppose just wars conducted by able leaders—
after all, I was at George School and Swarthmore during the debacle of Adolf Hitler. But
I was in Balaklava in mid-October for geological and historical field work, and I can
assure readers that the famous charge was
the result of an incompetent general giving
an unintelligible order that was carried out
stupidly. The result was incredible loss of life
6
and the loss of field artillery the charge was
intended to protect. The only commendable
outcome was that for the remainder of the
Crimean War, Russian cavalry refused to
attack British cavalry. Your librarian should
read something more reliable than Tennyson.
William Halliday ’46
Nashville, Tenn.
RACISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
I was consulted by a friend who was working
on an intercollegiate curriculum committee
reviewing social science requirements. The
question was, “What needs to be added?”
During my years at Swarthmore
(1961–1965), the curricular battle cry was
“Sociology Now”—today a moot issue, but
then quite radical. My outcry now is for “The
Politics of Equality,” an experiential examination of the conflicting demands of minority
and identity groups as they challenge oppression.
Racism and its variants (sexism, heterosexism, ageism, et. al.) require special treatment in a social science curriculum because
they represent the socio-political aspect of
two inescapable human paradoxes: I/Other
and Us/Them. These distinctions present
paradoxes in that they are both at the root of
a child’s developing psychological agency
and physical safety—and also, as primary
examples of the ability for differentiation,
they are at the very base of logic and abstract
thought. Yet they are set against the central
ethical tenet of philosophy and religion: Do
unto others as you would have others do
unto you.
This paradox is manifest in the term “discrimination,” which generically means the
power to discern and differentiate but which
historically has been implicated in injustice
and oppression. In the American experience,
it was prominently imbedded in the Constitution’s eloquent assertion that “all men are
created equal … with inalienable rights” at
the same time that genocide and slavery, religious persecution, women’s inferior status,
and class disenfranchisement were accepted
in the social and legal mores of the time.
Because the working of these paradoxes is
built into every individual’s personal and
social development, sociopolitical discrimi-
nation and liberation movements are not
simply historical material that can be “covered.” They must be experientially understood as an aspect of human evolution that
each one of us wrestles with. Students need
to see how it operates in themselves and each
other, how it poses difficult problems of universal principles versus ingrained beliefs, of
personal knowledge and loyalty versus
engagement with the personal reality of
others.
My outcry now is for “The Politics
of Equality,” an experiential
examination of the conflicting
demands of minority and identity
groups as they challenge oppression.
The “study” of this essential material is
challenging emotionally as well as intellectually. It demands intense engagement, opportunities for interpersonal exchange among
both class members and instructors, and
time for the development of synthesized values and perceptions that are not just to be
reiterated on exams. Understanding the
unavoidable confusions between personal
identities and the categorical imperatives of
human rights requires time, space, and focus;
and it needs to be legitimated as a core activity of a liberal education such as Swarthmore
purports to provide.
Richard Stone ’65
Fresno, Calif.
LETTERS TO THE BULLETIN
We welcome your letters regarding the contents of the magazine or issues relating to
the College. Please address them to Editor,
Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500 College
Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081-1390 or
e-mail bulletin@swarthmore.edu. All letters
must be signed. The suggested length for
letters is 300 words or less. The editors
reserve the right to edit letters for clarity
and space.
swarthmore college bulletin
collection
!
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JIM GRAHAM
Morgan Langley ’10 (above) and the surging
men’s soccer team took Swarthmore sports
excitement to the national level in 2008, winning the Centennial Conference championship and making the program’s first NCAA
Division III Tournament appearance in 17
seasons. The team, (17-3-2) advanced to the
third round of the NCAA tournament,
defeating Rutgers–Camden and Dickinson
College before falling to Amherst College by
1–0 in the quarterfinal round of 16. Swarthmore hosted the tournament at Clothier
Field, where hundreds of spectators, including many local children who have attended
Garnet-sponsored soccer clinics, turned out
in all kinds of weather to cheer the team on.
Swarthmore’s women’s soccer team also
had a strong season (10-4-6), advancing to
the Centennial playoffs for the third straight
year and winning its second consecutive Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC)
january 2009
South Region championship.
The previous men’s season had ended with
their own ECAC South Region championship, but 2008 was to be different. Eight
returning seniors, contributors to nearly 40
victories the previous three seasons, welcomed nine new players. After securing a fifth
consecutive Garnet Alumni Classic pre-season title with a win over Skidmore and a draw
against Richard Stockton, the national soccer
establishment took notice, ranking Swarthmore in the NSCAA/Adidas top-25 poll.
Swarthmore hosted the Centennial championships for the first time, welcoming large
crowds. The Garnet advanced past Dickinson
in the semifinals—4-2 in a penalty-kick
shootout—and ended Johns Hopkins’ twoyear championship run with a 1-0 victory in
the final match.
As Centennial winners, Swarthmore
received an automatic bid to the NCAA tour-
nament—the fourth in program history
(1974, 1990, 1991). In first-round action on
Nov. 15, the Garnet topped Rutgers–Camden
2–0 in a driving rainstorm and then faced
Dickinson for the third time this season.
Dylan Langley ’10 headed in a free kick from
freshman Fabian Castro in the 30th minute,
enough for a 1–0 victory and a date in the
sectional round. National powers Trinity
(TX) University, Ohio Wesleyan, and Amherst
came to Clothier Field—again selected as the
site of NCAA play. Swarthmore put its 13match unbeaten streak on the line against
Amherst, champs from the New England
Small College Athletic Conference. The Lord
Jeffs scored the lone goal of the match just
before halftime, holding on for a 1–0 win over
the Garnet.
—Kyle Leach
For more about soccer and other fall sports,
please turn to p. 16.
7
collection
Facing the Financial Crisis
PRUDENT ENDOWMENT MANAGEMENT HAS GIVEN THE COLLEGE MORE FLEXIBILITY—AND THE BENEFIT OF TIME—
BUT CONTINGENCY PLANS ARE BEING MADE FOR SIGNIFICANT CUTS IF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS DON’T IMPROVE.
On Dec. 10, President Alfred H. Bloom sent
an e-mail to alumni outlining “a sequence of
measured courses of action” that will be
undertaken by the College in the face of the
decline in financial markets. He wrote that
despite the College’s good record of investment success, Swarthmore “has not been
immune from the effects of this decline,”
having experienced an almost 30 percent
drop in the endowment from its June 30,
2008, value of $1.4 billion. Bloom said that
in order to “to conserve for the future the
resources that past generations have so carefully conserved for us,” the College would
take the following steps:
• Effective immediately, the College will
pull back from all nonessential construction work, refrain from initiating
any new programs, and stringently
evaluate any faculty or staff hiring.
• In developing the annual budget for
2009–2010, to be submitted to the
Board of Managers in February, we will
shape recommendations on enrollment,
tuition and fees, and compensation in
ways sensitive to the financial environment and set guidelines on spending
across departments that ensure tighter
management of our resources.
• Over the coming semester, we will
develop a contingency plan for more
significant reductions in the budget,
which the College will begin to implement if by this time next year the College’s financial situation has not
improved.
Bloom also stated that “the College will
adhere fully to its current financial aid policies for all students presently enrolled as well
as for those admitted to the Class of 2013.”
He concluded by expressing his confidence
that “by acting together and by maintaining
educational quality and regard for the people
who make up this remarkable community as
our priorities, we will weather this environ-
8
ment with the distinctive excellence of this
college undiminished.
(Bloom’s e-mail to alumni was printed in
the winter issue of The Garnet Letter and
may be found online at swarthmore.edu/x21728.xml. Similar messages were sent to
parents of current students and to members
of the faculty and staff.)
Following the release of President Bloom’s
message, Bulletin Editor Jeffrey Lott sat down
with Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Suzanne Welsh to further clarify the College’s financial position and the impact of
the world financial crisis on Swarthmore’s
endowment, budget, and program.
Q&A
with Suzanne Welsh,
vice president for finance
and treasurer
Bulletin: How has Swarthmore’s endowment been affected by the financial crisis?
Welsh: We’ve seen the largest downturn in
financial markets since World War II, so the
impact on Swarthmore’s investments, like
those of every one of our peers, has been significant. On June 30, 2008—the end of our
last fiscal year—our endowment had a market value of $1.4 billion. Although the value
fluctuates daily, we estimate the overall
decline from June to December will be
around 30 percent, or about $400 million.
This estimate takes into account an
allowance for write-downs of some of our
private investments. We will not know the
exact value of these write-downs until early
2009.
Has the value of Swarthmore’s endowment
followed market indices such as the S&P
500?
In downturns, we typically perform better
than the indices, and this market decline has
been no exception. Although our equity
investments have declined, our 15 percent
allocation to U.S. Treasury bonds has preserved value in the endowment.
Was Swarthmore prepared for such a
decline?
No one was prepared for the magnitude of
recent losses, but Swarthmore entered this
crisis—which really began in summer
2007—in a relatively strong, risk-controlled
position. The bond allocation provides stable
income during a downturn. We also converted our variable-rate debt to fixed-rate notes
before the credit crisis became severe. Our
equity positions were well diversified and the
majority of assets in the endowment are
readily sold, so that there is ample liquidity.
All of this has given us flexibility and the
benefit of time.
How much does Swarthmore depend on
its endowment?
In recent years, more than half of the College’s annual budget has been derived from
the endowment. Our long-term strategy is to
preserve these assets and protect them from
inflation while providing a constant, predictable stream of income to the budget,
including to financial aid. We’ve pursued a
prudent spending strategy in good times so
that we can increase our spending rate in
down markets. Based on current endowment
values, the Board anticipates for next year the
highest spending rate in the College’s history—six percent. The previous high was 5.4
percent.
Will this translate into additional dollars?
Not really, because the overall size of the
swarthmore college bulletin
Caitlin Mullarkey Wins a Rhodes
Caitlin Mullarkey ’09, an honors biology major from Wilmington,
Del., has won a Rhodes Scholarship for 2009—one of 32 United
States citizens named in November. She is the sixth Swarthmore student since 2000 to receive this honor, which provides $50,000 a year
to study at Oxford University in England. Thirty Swarthmoreans
have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships since the inception of the
program.
Mullarkey is a McCabe Scholar and captain of the women's soccer
team, which won the 2008 ECAC South Region Championship last
fall. She also holds the school 5,000-meter steeplechase record in
women’s track-and-field. Under the direction of her advisers, Professor of Biology Amy Cheng Vollmer and Professor Alex Theos of
Georgetown University Medical School (where she spent summer
2008), Mullarkey has conducted research on a novel protein implicated in pigmentary glaucoma and glioblastomas—a form of malignant
brain tumor.
At Oxford, she will be at the Dunn School of Pathology—famous
for the development of penicillin—working toward a graduate degree
in microbiology with a special emphasis on virology. She’s already
january 2009
Tell us what you can about creating the
contingency plan.
We’ve committed to the Board that by April,
we will go back to them with a set of plans
for the 2010–2011 fiscal year that will reduce
spending to levels that will be sustainable
long-term and protect the endowment for
the future. In developing this plan, we will
welcome suggestions from faculty, staff, and
students—and we always welcome ideas
from alumni. We will be looking for savings
large and small. Whether we have to put
these plans into effect will depend on the
global financial situation at the end of 2009,
but we want to be ready.
been in contact with Dr.
William James, who runs
an HIV lab there, to discuss potential projects.
“Although my independent research has
been focused in the
sphere of cell biology, I
started to become interested in virology and its
implications to public
health after taking Amy
Vollmer’s microbiology
class last spring,” Mullarky wrote in an e-mail
shortly after receiving news of the Rhodes: “One of the most pressing
issues in global medicine, as I see it, is a renewed focus on the molecular mechanism of HIV infection. Dr. James’ lab is asking some crucial questions regarding the infection of immune cells by the HIV
virus. A better understanding of how the virus invades the immune
system has outstanding implications for vaccine development.”
—Jeffrey Lott
S
Why not increase the spending rate further
to meet the College’s needs?
We can’t sustain a higher rate of spending
without eroding the underlying value of the
endowment for future generations. I call it
“intergenerational equity.” Generations of
philanthropy and historically rising equity
markets have provided today’s Swarthmore
students with significant advantages. Excluding financial aid, we spent more than
Are there other pressures on the budget?
It’s hard to predict what will happen, but on
the income side, we may experience a decline
in philanthropic support both from individuals and institutions. Many nonprofits are
seeing this, although we think that Swarthmore’s supporters will do everything they
can to keep this college strong. As President
Bloom indicated in his message, it’s especially important to keep up our Annual Fund,
because those dollars go directly to the operating budget.
On the spending side, we expect to see an
increase in financial need among our families. The Board has committed to maintain
our current financial aid policies—including
the recently instituted loan-free financial aid
awards—for current students and the next
entering class. Thus, we will likely need more
funds to meet the demonstrated need of all
our students.
IOS KOSTAN
Will the endowment continue to provide
the same level of support?
We have some flexibility for the next year,
but the magnitude of the decline is beyond
what our policies will enable us to tolerate
over the long term. With a prudent approach
to spending, including a construction moratorium and close evaluation of hiring to fill
vacant positions, we can weather the current
fiscal year. The following year, 2009–2010,
the budget will also be very lean, but because
of our stronger position going into the crisis,
we can put off more significant measures
until we see what develops a year from now.
$80,000 per student during the 2007–2008
fiscal year—an expenditure that provides for
a low student-faculty ratio, outstanding facilities and services, and first-rate academic and
laboratory resources. In addition, half of our
students currently receive loan-free financial
aid awards that meet all of their demonstrated need.
If we were to dip further into the endowment during these difficult times, we might
be able to sustain the current level of expenditures for a few years—but not for what we
must think of as the infinite life of this institution. This generation would have taken
more than its fair share of our resources,
leaving future generations with a diminished
College.
ELEFTHER
endowment has declined so much. The
spending rate is actually a little misleading
because, in actual dollars, endowment support of the budget will not change much
from this year—and may be lower.
9
collection
10
OUT OF
THE
CLASSROOM
AND
INTO THE
WOODS—
AND BACK
ELIZABETH HAEGELE
How many of us know that when you touch
the seeds of a jewelweed plant (also known as
touch-me-not), they’ll explode with a
“pouf!” under your fingers? Allison Jordan
’09 didn’t either, until she came upon the
plant and its interesting property while walking in the Crum one day, doing research for
an assignment in Professor of English Literature Elizabeth “Betsy” Bolton’s course Writing Nature.
Jordan, a four-year Garnet swimmer, says:
“I’m really passionate about swimming, and
when I saw the plant explode, it reminded
me of swimmers diving off the starting
block.” She went on to write a paper comparing the swimming strokes freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, and breaststroke with four
parts of the plant.
“It was one of my favorite papers to write,
because, in doing it, I actually got to share
something I really care about with the other
course participants,” Jordan says.
This semester, Bolton is teaching the popular course for the fourth time since 1998,
when, as a member of the Environmental
Studies (ES) Planning Committee, she first
offered it in response to a need for more
humanities-based courses in the ES program.
It also helped fill a need in the English
Department for “half-workshops,” where
coursework is divided between literary analysis and creative writing. “I’d wanted to teach
a pair of classes—an introductory course
called Reading Nature—and then the halfworkshop Writing Nature, but the reading
course just never happened,” Bolton says.
So, using The Norton Book of Nature Writing by John Elder and Robert Finch, class
members read and analyze literary samples
demonstrating journal writing, nonfiction
prose, poetry, and experimental fiction. “You
can’t write if you don’t read,” Bolton says.
“Those two things are always combined. If
you want to write about Nature, you have to
have a sense of the literary models as well as
a sense of natural history—and, of course,
you have to have some writing background,”
Bolton says.
The students also hike in the Crum. Then,
having collected impressions and observations from their field walks, they create their
own versions of various nature-writing
styles.
Bolton has appreciated the field assistance
of Scott Arboretum staff, particularly Educational Coordinator Elizabeth Haegele, who
has guided the students through the Crum
Woods to see and reflect on Nature in action.
Haegele was delighted to assist in the
course, profiting from the opportunity to
engage with the students as well as with
Bolton. “Working at the Arboretum, it’s easy
to feel disconnected from the student body
and the academic work, so when the chance
arose for me to actively participate in a
course and get to know the students and
work with Betsy , I jumped on it,” she says.
“We split the Crum into different sections
and introduced the students to new plants,
animals, and concepts within each area. We
taught them about wetlands in Skunk Cabbage Hollow and geologic history at Alligator
Rock. Being part of this class has been one of
the best things I’ve done since coming to
Swarthmore,” Haegele says.
Filling in for Haegele one session, Horticultural Coordinator Jeff Jabco revealed to
the students that the dividing line between
the Piedmont plateau and the Atlantic
Coastal Plain runs through campus, stretching in front of Parrish Hall and along past
Class participant Gage Newman ’11 says, “The
most rewarding part of Writing Nature has been
gaining a sense of place here in Pennsylvania,
understanding how this area came to be the
way it is and how we can manage it.”
Wharton Hall. “The College is situated in a
very interesting place, so there’s a lot of richness for the course,” Bolton says.
Because the course offers such diversity of
content as well as being suitable for both
English and Environmental Studies requirements, students choose it for a variety of reasons ranging from a desire to focus seriously
on writing; to a love of the Crum and wish
for “more in-depth Nature study than dissecting owl pellets in fourth grade”; to exploration of the ways people write about science
and natural phenomena; to classmates’ recommendations of Bolton’s teaching style.
Jordan says: “I’d never been in a writing
seminar before, and I’ve enjoyed that we edit
each others’ work. I had fun on the hikes and
getting to know people in my class. It’s really
connected me to the College. It’s one of the
best classes I’ve taken.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
swarthmore college bulletin
KELLY
WILCO
X
yeah!
it’s a
parlor
party!
Felicitaciónes!
In a ceremony on Aug. 20, Swarthmore
Centennial Professor of Sociology Braulio
Muñoz was named Profesor Honorario at
the Ricardo Palma University in Lima,
Peru. In acknowledgement of this honor, as
part of the ceremony Muñoz gave a lecture
titled Lo concreto y lo universal: el caso de la
communidad académica, which will be published in the university magazine. As an
honorary professor at the university, which
boasts an enrollment of 20 thousand students, he will be permitted to attend sessions of the Consejo Universitario (university council) to participate in institutional
planning and have privileged access to all
events as well as to university libraries and
laboratories. Moreover, the university press
will translate and publish many of his sociological and literary works.
—Carol Brévart-Demm
january 2009
During a time when binge drinking on college campuses nationwide is more-or-less a
given, a refreshing new program is gaining
momentum at Swarthmore, as many students reject tipsy, trashed, or toxic in favor of
fed, fun-filled, and safely friendly.
Assistant Director of Student Life Kelly
Wilcox ’97 had been seeking to accommodate the needs of a number of students who
were feeling uncomfortable at social events
where alcohol is served. Last spring, after
attending a conference on the role of alcohol
on college campuses, Wilcox formed the
Social Scene Advisory Committee, consisting
of students representing campus social, religious, and athletic groups who were interested in organizing events that did not involve
alcohol.
Supported by an anonymous gift, Wilcox
and other staff members from the Office of
Student Life initiated a program of social
events last spring that, rather than using
alcohol as a social ice-breaker, focuses on
nonalcoholic activities while furthering
relaxed interaction among students.
Students are encouraged to host themed
events—often food-related—in Parrish Parlors. The “Parlor Parties” have revolved
around chocolate (including a chocolate
fountain), sushi-making, cookie-decorating,
Mexican food, Korean ramen, and a pie-eating contest–the last of which drew a crowd of
about 150 pie lovers and spectators. Other
events have included Election Night and an
Athletic Jersey-Wearing Night. The only stipulation, Wilcox says, is that themes must
remain lighthearted—“no heavy issues.”
“Various groups can use this venue as a
way to expose what they do in a low-key
atmosphere,” she says. “It’s supposed to be
fun. I really think that people come just to
relax or even just to grab a bite to eat, so it’s
great that many of the cultural groups are
starting to serve their own food. The food is
definitely a draw.”
Wilcox stresses that the goal of the program is not to detract from any of the other
student-run social events on campus. “It’s
more a case of increasing the options,” she
says, adding that all kinds of students attend
the Parlor Parties. “Some may be finally finding here the social group they’ve always
longed for, i.e., nondrinkers; for others, this
may be a kind of balancing-out of their
social lives.”
Initially occurring on Friday evenings, the
gatherings have been taking place twice a
week—on Thursdays and Saturdays—since
the fall, in response to increasing demand
and in consideration of students’ religious or
cultural obligations. With every Thursday
and Saturday booked up through the spring
semester 2009 and an average attendance of
75 to 150, the Parlor Parties are fast becoming a fixture of campus life.
“There’s definitely more going on socially
here than just drinking,” says Wilcox.
—Carol Brévart-Demm
11
COURTESY OF ANNA BAETH
collection
receive a donated bike each, on which, guided by instructors, they learn and practice
repair, reconstruction, and maintenance.
Upon completion of 20 hours of
(7/30/20088/5/2008), in all,
classroom and cycling
120 bikes and cash
time, they are
donations totaling
allowed to
$1,000 were
keep the
“If we could get more people on bikes, the planet
collected.
bikes along
would
be
healthier,”
says
Kelly
Wilcox,
Baeth’s
former
Once catahockey
coach.
“This
program
brings
people
together
for
with a bike
logued
a common cause, and that’s what Anna does on the
lock,
a helaccording to
field, too—she brings people together.”
met,
and
a
type, wheel
water
bottle.
size, make,
“The nice part
model, and serial
about
this
project,” Baeth
number, the bikes were
says,
“is
that
it
has
many
rewards for
transported to the Chester YWCA, the headboth
volunteers
and
members
of
the Chester
quarters of CNBW.
community.
A
few
of
my
biggest
hopes
are
Among the volunteers helping Baeth were
that
it
first
empowers
students
by
giving
her parents and sister from Maryland; Assisthem the useful skill of bike repair as well as
tant Director of Student Life and former
a safe—not to mention fun—physical activiHead Women’s Field-hockey Coach Kelly
ty. I also hope that it brings people from
Wilcox ’97, who coached Baeth; Professor of
the different communities—Chester,
English Literature and cycling enthusiast
Swarthmore, cyclists, activists, and so on—
Peter Schmidt; and several fellow students.
together.”
An Earn-a-Bike program for 10- to 17—Carol Brévart-Demm
year-olds, running twice a week for six
Based
on
John
A.
Wright’s
“Conservation and
weeks, trains groups of six students at a time
Safety
Promoted
by
New
Bike Program,”
in the benefits of exercise, a healthy diet, and
Chester
Spirit,
7/30/2008–8/5/2008
bike safety and maintenance. Students
The Wheels of the Bike Go ’Round and ’Round
One Saturday last July, the parking lot of the
320 Market and Café on South Chester Road
was full—not with cars, though. People from
the Swarthmore borough and surrounding
area flocked to the lot to deposit bicycles they
no longer needed, many of which had seen
better days—some even missing parts. The
bikes were donations to Chester Neighborhood Bike Works (CNBW), an organization
founded and directed by Anna Baeth ’09 and
supported by a Swarthmore Foundation
grant from the Lang Center of Civic and
Social Responsibility. Using the bikes as
incentives, Baeth aims to foster enthusiasm
for healthy recreation among the young people of Chester by teaching CNBW participants how to rebuild, repair, and maintain
the bikes that they are then allowed to keep.
She decided to start CNBW after interning
last summer with Neighborhood Bike Works
in Philadelphia, whose goal is to encourage
cycling as a means to conserve energy as well
as offering instruction in cycling safety and
repair.
According to an article by John A. Wright
in the Chester Spirit weekly newspaper
12
swarthmore college bulletin
On Thursday, Sept. 18, Professor of English
Literature Melinda Finberg’s first-year seminar Battling Against Voldemort was filmed by
MTV as part of a segment on the phenomenon of Harry Potter books appearing in College curricula.
The class, which studies J.K. Rowling’s
Harry Potter series in addition to a number of
other related texts such as J.R. Tolkein’s Lord
of the Rings and Phillip Pullman’s His Dark
Materials Trilogy, attempts to “understand
why we are so driven to invent stories about
battling inhuman powers to learn what it
means to be human,” according to the course
description. It was filmed as an example of
the use of Harry Potter in an English literature class. At other schools, MTV filmed the
books being used in other academic disciplines such as religion and history.
Only one cameraperson stayed in the
room with the students while they discussed
the fifth book of the series, Harry Potter and
the Order of the Phoenix.
“The filming was as smooth as could be,”
Finberg said.
Although most students agreed that being
filmed during class was strange at first, they
didn’t feel that it was a complete disruption.
“It was kind of awkward to begin with, but
once we really started our discussion, it was
good—very intense,” Owen Masters ’12 said.
Battling Against Voldemort, which Finberg
taught last year as well, is very popular and is
consistently over-enrolled. Finberg says that
she has “always been fascinated by myths and
why we feel the need to tell stories over and
over again.”
She explains that the first semester she
taught the course, she had been “very ambitious” and used a wide variety of related texts
but that the course now focuses primarily on
20th- and 21st-century myths, enabling the
class to think more easily about the socio-historic context of the Potter books.
The English Department is not the only
one to profit from J.K. Rowling’s popular
series. William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science Kenneth Sharpe says he uses it regularly in his Reason, Power, and Happiness
course as well as the Practical Wisdom seminar
Bush Leaguers
During the fall election campaign, McCabe Library played
host to Bush Leaguers: Editorial Cartoons Take on the
White House, a traveling exhibit of nearly 100 original cartoons by members of the
American Association of Editorial Cartoonists. Curated by
Rob Rogers, cartoonist for the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the
show kicked off in October
with a panel discussion featuring Rogers and Pulitzer
Prize–winning cartoonists
january 2009
he teaches with Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action Barry
Schwartz.
“We use it to get at why rules are not sufficient for ethical action because what is missing
is practical wisdom; and we look at how
Harry, Ron, and Hermione learn practical wisdom through the experiences of making mistakes and the guidance of mentors like Dumbledore,” Sharpe says.
—Adapted from “MTV films and showcases
new Harry Potter seminar,” by Alexander Rolle
’12 , The Phoenix, Sept. 25, 2008
JEFF STAHLER/THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION
WHEN HARRY POTTER IS IN THE
CLASSROOM, CAMERAS ROLL
Signe Wilkinson of the
Philadelphia Daily News, and
Tony Auth of the Philadelphia
Inquirer.
Taking on everything from
the Iraq War to the role of Vice
President Dick Cheney, the
cartoons were almost uniformly negative regarding the
outgoing administration. College Librarian Peggy Seiden
reported a few complaints alleging political partisanship,
especially because the display
coincided with the presidential
campaign, but she explained
that Bush Leaguers was the latest in a long series of exhibits
and programming sponsored
by the library in an effort to
highlight the importance of
free speech.
“Cartoonists have a long
tradition of lampooning the incumbent in the White House,”
Seiden said. “We’re recognizing the role that political cartooning plays in public debate
about the choices our leaders
make.”
—Jeffrey Lott
13
collection
This fall, in response to growing interest in
interfaith text study, a new Scriptural Reasoning (SR) group became a permanent and
regular fixture on campus, meeting at least
three times each semester.
The practice of friendly dialogue about
scriptural texts among Christians, Jews, and
Muslims was first demonstrated at the College during A Week of Religion on Campus
in February 2007 (see June 2007 Bulletin),
when members of the campus community
filled Kohlberg Hall’s Scheuer Room to hear
three faculty members discuss renderings
and interpretations of creation texts from the
three traditions. The popular session led to
subsequent occasional informal gatherings
and a wish to form an official group.
In September, to help train the nascent
group in the practice of SR, Arabic Language
Instructor Yamine Mermer brought to campus Professor of Religious Studies Peter
Ochs, a University of Virginia faculty member and leader in the SR movement under
whom she had previously studied. Swarthmore faculty and staff members Mermer; the
Rev. Joyce Tompkins, campus interfaith
coordinator and Protestant adviser; Professor of Religion Mark Wallace; Part-time Visiting Instructor of Religion Rabbi Helen
Plotkin ’77; Jewish Adviser Jake Rubin; Assistant Professor of Religion Tariq al-Jamil;
Lecturer of Arabic Sawsan Abbadi; and Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion Elliot
Ratzman as well as four students from each
tradition assembled in Bond Hall for a
seven-hour discussion that focused on Eve
and the Garden of Eden.
“It was a long session because we were
also being trained in SR, not just doing it,”
Tompkins says.
Since then, the group, which plans to
meet three times each semester, has discussed the story of Noah and the Flood and
was anticipating a November session on
Jonah and the Whale.
Wallace sums up the group as “a spirited
gathering of students and scholars identified
with the three Abrahamic religions of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, who meet
to discuss stories common to their three
14
sacred texts—Bible, new testament, and
Qur’an—in an open and nonsectarian setting. Our different scriptures exhibit parallel
interests in key themes and personalities
shared by all three traditions. What’s interesting to us is how the narratives are told and
retold according to the different theological
concerns.”
Since September, the group has grown to
22 members, and enthusiasm among participants is running high.
“It’s a very intimate activity, and the intimacy transforms people who were strangers
STUART WATSON
Not Consensus
But Friendship
—and texts that seemed strange—into
friends,” Plotkin says.
Mermer agrees. “SR is about “not consensus but friendship,” she says. “Participants
respect the differences between Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam, and they don’t avoid
disagreement as long it is friendly.”
Students from the three religious traditions perceive the sessions as a way of gaining further insight into their own traditions
by learning more about the others.
“The perspectives of other faiths have led
me to new and diverse interpretations of
texts I have previously taken for granted, and
these enrich my Christian beliefs,” says
Anson Stewart ’10. Muslim student Ailya
Vajid ’09 also values what she perceives as a
unique opportunity to listen to the scriptural
interpretations of members of other faiths.
“Learning about the way someone from a
different faith interprets a text from that
faith sheds light both on that particular text
and on the overarching themes present in
each faith tradition.”
And Jewish student Jessa Deutsch ’10 is
enjoying her first exposure to the Christian
Bible and the Qur’an: “One of the really cool
things about the discussions is that we really
The Rev. Joyce Tompkins values the existence of
the SR group as a positive sign in a time when
religion is seen so widely as a force for division
and violence in the world.
aren’t bound to the texts. We interpret them
and act as if they were in conversation with
each other, keep
ing in mind especially the chronological
order of when they were ‘published.’”
Tompkins values the existence of the
group as a positive sign in a time when religion is seen so widely as a force for division
and violence in the world.
“This is such a clear example of Swarthmore at its best and religion at its best, and
those are not two things that people often
put in one sentence,” she says. “It’s a very
happy union of the two.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
swarthmore college bulletin
YOUNGIN CHUNG ’11
The observance of Ramadan, which occurs during
the ninth month of the Islamic calendar—this year
from Sept. 1 to 30—requires Muslims to spend time
in reflection, prayer, and daily fasting from sunrise
to sunset. Typically, they rise before dawn to eat
and then wait until the sun has gone down for their
next meal. On a campus where food is abundant and
academically demanding classes require concentration, Swarthmore’s Muslim students exert self-control to remain alert despite being hungry. To enable
them to eat when sunset occurs after the Dining
Hall has closed for the night, Dining Services provides bagged meals or the students dine in Essie
Mae’s snack bar. The end of the fasting period is
marked by Eid al-Fitr, the Festival of Breaking the
Fast, hosted on campus by the Muslim Student Association in Upper Tarble (see photo) . This year, for
the first time, the 2009 Swarthmore College Calendar will indicate the beginning of Ramadan.
According to a 2007 Pew Research Center
survey, the American people are almost evenly divided over the construction of a 700mile fence along the U.S.-Mexican border by
the Department of Homeland Security. Professor of Anthropology Miguel Díaz-Barriga
and fellow anthropologist Margaret Dorsey
spent last fall in South Texas, documenting
the construction of the border wall and its
impacts on the culture, the environment, and
immigration policy.
The title of their blog “A Nation Divided”
refers not only to the division within U.S.
society over the border fence but also to the
ways that Mexican-American residents of
South Texas articulate pride in Mexican culture while also fully identifying with and
belonging to the United States.
“For many residents of South Texas, the
most pertinent divide is that with national
policymakers who do not appear to understand border culture and the Lower Rio
Grande Valley itself,” they write from their
field site in Hidalgo County, where they
report that local “mayors, public officials,
and residents express strong opposition” to
the fence. They also report that the election
january 2009
GETTY IMAGES/DIANE COOK AND LEN JENSHEL
A Nation Divided
There’s a saying in the borderlands that if you build a 50-foot wall, someone will get a 51-foot ladder. This
ladder was placed by ranchers to enable the illegal crossing of Mexican workers near Nuevo Laredo.
of Barack Obama, widely hailed among Mexican Americans in South Texas, does not necessarily mean an end to the construction:
“There is much speculation in the Rio
Grande Valley about what position president-elect Obama will take on the wall and
the best means for influencing his administration,” they reported after the election.
You can read more of “A Nation Divided”
at blogs.swarthmore.edu/borderwall.
—Jeffrey Lott
15
RAY SCOTT
sports
Women’s soccer (104-6, 5-1-4 CC)
The Garnet women won a second consecutive Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference
(ECAC) South Region championship,
appeared in the CC playoffs for the third
straight season, and beat the top-ranked
team in Division III, winning 4-3 at the College of New Jersey in a nonconference game
—the Lion’s second home loss in 10 years.
Four Swarthmore women made All-Centennial: with seniors Cait Mullarkey and
Lauren Walker named to the first team, and
sophomores Megan Colombo (team-high 17
points) and Laura Bolger to second team and
honorable mention, respectively. Mullarkey
was the first back—and fifth player in CC
history—to earn first-team All-Centennial
honors four times. Mullarkey, Bolger, and
Walker anchored a defense that ranked in the
top 30 nationally in goals-against average
(0.56), goals-allowed (12), and shutouts (13).
Mullarkey became the 17th Swarthmore athlete to win a Rhodes Scholarship (see p. 9),
was named ESPN the Magazine Academic
All-America and selected to the Philadelphia
Inquirer Academic All-Area team for the second time. Walker closed out her stellar career
among the elite goalkeepers in the nation,
16
making All-CC first team for the second consecutive season and being named ECAC
South Region Tournament Most Valuable
Player. She ranked in the top 30 in goalsagainst average (0.55) and save percentage
(.883) for 2008 and concluded her career
with 28 shutouts, second-most in CC history.
Men’s soccer (17-3-2, 8-1 CC) Swarthmore
concluded one of the best seasons in program history, setting school records for wins,
CC wins (eight), and shutouts (13) and scoring the most goals (44) in 15 years.
The Garnet completed a clean sweep in
October, allowing just three goals in seven
matches on the way to securing the top-seed
and right to host the 2008 Centennial Championships. (See p. 7 for more.)
The season was peppered with outstanding performances and accolades.
Freshman goalkeeper David D’Annunzio
tied a school record with nine shutouts
(accomplished twice by Andrew Cavenagh
’92), and senior forward Evan Nesterak concluded his career ninth all-time at Swarthmore in points (46) and goals (22). Emergency goalkeeper Jason Thrope ’09, stepping
in later for the injured D’Annunzio, and
classmate Yoi Tibbetts (who had two gamewinning goals in one week) received Conference Player of the Week honors after a 3-0
win against Gettysburg.
JIM GRAHAM
Stellar Seasons
for Soccer
More Conference honors showered on the
Garnet men at the conclusion of the regular
season. Wagner was named Centennial
Coach of the Year by his fellow head coaches,
and four players were selected All-Conference: Nesterak and defender Jeff Kushner ’09
swarthmore college bulletin
AURORA IMAGING
JACOB MROZEWSKI ’11
LUCY B. FOERSTER
JACOB MROZEWSKI
Clockwise from top left:
Garnet women’s soccer players (l to r) Alexa Bensimhon ’09, Caitlin Mullarkey ’09, Lauren Walker
’09, and Melinda Petre ’09 celebrate winning the
ECAC South Region Championship.
Volleyball captain Jen Wang ’09 ranked in the top
25 in digs per set this season.
Dan Hodson led the Garnet men’s cross-country
squad to a fifth-place finish at the DeSales
Invitational.
Field-hockey captain and midfielder Ashley Gunter
’09 was selected to the All-Centennial Second
Team.
Bess Ritter ’09 and Nyika Corbett ’10 share space
with an alumna (center) at the 2008 Alumni/
Alumnae Cross-country Meet.
Men’s soccer teammates Micah Rose ’12, Ladule
Lako LoSarah ’12, and David Sterngold ’12 enjoy
one of many moments of success during one of the
Garnet’s best soccer seasons ever.
january 2009
made first-team, and brothers Dylan Langley
’10 (second team) and Morgan Langley ’11
(honorable mention) were the first male siblings to make the same All-Centennial squad.
Also excelling off the field, the Garnet men
put three players on the Conference Academic
Honor Roll. Nesterak and Thrope were also
selected to the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic
All-Area team, by the Philadelphia-Area
Sports Information Directors Association .
Volleyball (6-19, 2-8 CC) Garnet senior captains Erin Heaney and Jen Wang completed
their four-year careers in record-setting fashion. Wang, an outside hitter, was named AllCentennial for the second time, earning second-team status after ranking in the top 40 in
Division III in kills per set (3.75), setting new
school records for kills in a season (360) and
career kills (1,171). Wang played a large part
in a Garnet defense that ranked in the top 25
in the country with 19.32 digs per set, ranking
12th with 3.44 digs per set. She completed her
career with 1,362 digs in 105 career matches,
earning a spot in the top25 all-time in the CC.
Heaney, the team libero, finished her career by
breaking the school record for career digs
(1,560), ranking 14th all-time in the Centennial Conference. The two-time captain is a
three-time Centennial Conference Academic
Honor Roll selection and the Philadelphia
Inquirer Academic Performer of the Year for
2008. Freshman outside hitter Genny Pezzola
led the Centennial in service aces (0.65 per
set) and finished in the top 10 in kills (3.17
per set) and digs (team-high 4.19 per set).
Men’s cross-country (seventh at CC Championships) Erik Saka ’09 placed in the top 25
at the competitive Conference championship
meet, posting a season-best time of 26:53.85
and then hit the top 50 as Swarthmore placed
19th at the NCAA Mid-East Regional. Classmate Dan Hodson led the Garnet men to a
fifth-place finish at the DeSales Invitational
early in the season, crossing the line fifth out
of 180 competitors.
Women’s cross country (fourth at CC Championships) The Garnet women brought home
the championship trophy at the 2008 Seven
Sisters meet hosted by Smith College—for the
second time in program history. Junior Nyika
Corbett finished second out of 72 runners,
followed by freshman Melissa Frick (third)
and senior Bess Ritter (seventh); all three
women were named All-Tournament. Frick
also earned All-Centennial status with an
eighth-place finish (23:03.17) at the Conference Championship meet. Corbett led
Swarthmore to a seventh-place finish at the
Mid-East Regional in Waynesburg, Pa., earning All-Region status for the third consecutive
year. Senior Emma Stanley was named to the
Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area
cross-country team.
Field hockey (5-13, 1-9 CC)
Captain and midfielder Ashley Gunter ’09
was selected to the All-Centennial Second
Team. A key starter in the Garnet midfield
for the past three years,. the senior led
Swarthmore with eight assists this season,
tied for sixth in the conference. Gunter finished with 12 points, third-best on the Garnet. Senior forward Natalie Stone earned her
second consecutive selection to the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area field hockey
squad.
—Kyle Leach
17
faculty expert
Election
Odyssey
SOME CONCERNS ABOUT
KAZAKHSTAN’S ELECTIONS STRUCK
AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENTIST.
By Carol Nackenoff,
professor of political science
ON OCTOBER 9, I LEFT THE UNITED STATES
on a remarkable journey. Just three weeks
earlier, Natasha Franceschi ’96 had e-mailed
Swarthmore’s Political Science Department,
asking if we had a faculty member who could
speak about the upcoming United States
presidential election—in Kazakhstan.
Natasha, who had taken my American Politics class in fall 1992 (the first semester at
Swarthmore for both of us), is cultural affairs
officer in the U.S. Embassy in Astana. Associate Professor of Political Science Keith Reeves
’88 and I were co-teaching the American
Elections class, but I was the one who could
get away during fall break. The expedition
confounded any preconceived notions I may
have had about this huge Central Asian
country. I returned profoundly impressed by
the people I met and the future I believe they
have as a nation.
Kazakhstan, the ninth largest country in
the world (about the size of all Western
Europe) is a peaceful nation noted for religious tolerance. About half the population is
Muslim and half Russian Orthodox.
I visited four cities, flew over miles of flat,
agricultural land, and saw varied and rich
produce in colorful markets. Almaty, the former capital—once known as Alma-Ata or
18
AFP/GETTY IMAGES
CLOSE TO HOME FOR THIS
“father of apples”—was my first stop. Situated close to the border with Kyrgyzstan,
Almaty has a mild climate compared to more
northerly cities and is European in character.
Astana, my second stop, is the glittering
new capital city, selected for its more central
location. It has been transformed from a
sleepy mid-sized city to a rather fanciful seat
of government. (The presidential palace
might be described as the White House on
steroids, with a blue dome on top.) Astana is
expected to become the home of more than a
million people, but construction cranes are,
sadly, motionless, brought to a standstill by
the global financial crisis.
From Astana, I traveled southeast over
good roads to Karaganda, a coal mining area
that was home to gulags under Stalin. Labor
camps provided workers for the mines and
for building much of the city, but I was told
about another aspect of the region’s camps.
Dissident writers, artists, and musicians were
sent to camps in this region, and many
stayed in the area, giving Karaganda a rich
cultural life. I also flew to Costanai, a charming northern city not far from the Russian
border, where I was treated to a performance
of music and dance before my first talk.
Kazakhstan was the last breakaway repub-
lic to declare its independence after the fall of
the Soviet Union, becoming the Republic of
Kazakhstan in 1991. It was interesting to see
how deeply invested young people are in the
independent states of the former Soviet
Union, including Georgia and Ukraine, but
also in Russia itself. They asked many questions about the U.S. presidential candidates’
stances on the Russia-Georgia conflict. Their
information generally came from Russian
media and their sympathies tended in
Moscow’s direction.
Although Kazakhs may have been the last
to leave the Soviet fold, they were among the
first to stage a mass protest against Russia. In
1986, 30,000 Kazakhs took to the streets to
protest Russia’s appointment of an outsider
as the Communist Party leader. The Soviets
reacted with force and Kazakhs claim there
were a number of deaths and many injuries.
Nursultan Nazarbaev became first secretary of the party in 1989 and has ruled ever
since, now as the elected president. Nazarbaev remains a largely popular leader. I
would not be surprised if Astana—which
simply means “capital”—were renamed after
Nazarbaev at some point in the future, since
it was his project and vision.
Kazakhstan is friendly toward the United
swarthmore college bulletin
States and continues to rotate troops into
Iraq as part of the coalition force. Kazakhstan is also of great interest to both the United States and Russia because of its vast oil
reserves in the western region, near the
Caspian Sea. The country is expected to
produce 2.5 to 3.5 million barrels of oil a
day by 2015. Chevron and Mobil are among
the American oil companies that have
invested heavily in developing the country’s
energy resources.
Piping oil out of Kazakhstan—and to
uine democracy. Kazakhstan is slated to take
over the chairmanship of the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe
[OSCE] during 2010. Criticism of Kazakhstan’s elections by the OSCE Office of
Democratic Institutions and Human
Rights—and by the United States—has centered on transparency and accountability, but
a Kazakh working group to reform electoral
legislation has produced no concrete results.
One OSCE goal is to end electronic voting
because it does not provide sufficient trans-
COURTESY OF CAROL NACKENOFF
Kazakhstan was the last breakaway republic
to declare its independence after the fall
of the Soviet Union, but among the first to
stage a mass protest against Russia.
Nackenoff (center, with glasses) and some of the
students she discussed the American elections with
during her State Department–sponsored lecture
tour in Kazakhstan
whom—are major international political
issues. Kazakhstan also has large reserves of
natural gas and is beginning to become a net
exporter. Many Kazakh students studying
English aspire to “go west” as translators in
the booming oil and natural gas industries.
Before arriving, I read a recent Freedom
House “Progress Report” on Kazakhstan’s
efforts to respond to international criticisms
concerning free and fair elections. I wanted
some idea of what might be on the minds of
students, journalists, and others as we
thought about comparative perspectives on
American and Kazakh elections. Many middle-class Kazakhs appreciate their nation’s
strong economic growth but want more genjanuary 2009
parency and accountability. Foreign
observers—and many Kazakhs—believe that
recent election returns in Kazakhstan have
been manipulated. Another measure of
transparency demanded is access to voter
lists so that they can be verified. International criticism has also focused on protocols for
vote counting. The OSCE wants Kazakh electoral processes to be monitored by international observers and a new electoral commission in which all political forces can participate. The OSCE is also concerned about freedom of the media to report and criticize and
about barriers placed in the way of opposition parties seeking to organize and participate in elections.
Some of the concerns about Kazakhstan’s
elections struck close to home for this political scientist. Transparency and accountability
of new voting technologies, proprietary
rights to source codes for voting machines,
and similar issues are concerns for Americans, especially in the aftermath of the presidential election in 2000. I had placed on
reserve for both of my fall classes (American
Politics and American Elections) the documentary film Hacking Democracy, a look at
how easy it was for someone to alter the output of voting machines without the knowledge of poll workers so that a vote for one
candidate would actually be recorded as a
vote for a different candidate. Students of
American politics are also aware that registration rules, practices for voting roll purges,
and maintenance of voting lists are so decentralized in the United States that eligible citizens are often turned away from the polls.
Although some Kazakhs thought American elections were ideal, I felt obliged to
point out a few of these issues we struggle
with. One question I got from a student in
Costanai concerned what international
observers say about American elections. I did
not know at the time that, in 2004, OSCE
observers in Florida had said that they had
less access to the polls than in Kazakhstan.
I gave two or three talks a day, speaking
with graduate and undergraduate students
studying law, international relations, foreign
languages, and journalism. I was impressed
with the number of fine schools I visited and
their inquisitive, smart students. I also gave a
talk and had a lively discussion with seasoned print journalists in Almaty. (We used a
translator for all but a few audiences.)
One of the most memorable sessions was
the first, held in a basement that served as
headquarters for Sunday afternoon meetings
of a society of young professional leaders of
NGOs. These young men and women, some
of whom had staged a protest and gone to
jail for greater freedom to organize opposition political parties, knew a good deal about
American politics and wanted to hear about
the role of our political parties.
The embassy in Astana had taped the
third U.S. presidential debate and brought
some of the best English-speaking students
to watch and discuss this debate with me. On
another evening, we watched and discussed
the film The Candidate. Some Kazakh students wanted to talk about the media’s role
in American elections. Others believed that
the financial crisis was engineered for electoral effect—a position against which I
argued vigorously. I fielded many interesting
questions and explained the Electoral College system to those who were not already
familiar with it. I think some students were
intrigued that the State Department could
bring in a speaker who was willing and able
to voice disagreement with the current
administration on a variety of issues. Almost
all of them favored Barack Obama but
believed he could not be elected because of
America’s history of racism. I hope they will
think somewhat differently about us as a
result of what happened on November 4. !
19
a
Monind
the Right
IN A STRIDENT SEA OF LIBERAL OPINION,
CONSERVATIVE ACADEMIC ROBERT
GEORGE HAS FOUND A HAPPY HOME.
By Paul Wachter ’97
Photograph by Andrew Pinkham
R
obert George ’77, a leading conservative public intellectual,
remembers the precise moment
that he was set on the path to becoming
an academic: It was when he first encountered Plato’s dialogue Gorgias in Kenneth
Sharpe’s political theory seminar.
“Before reading that dialogue, never in
my wildest dreams would I have thought
of pursuing an academic career,” George
says. Like many students, he had perceived
a college education as a traditional step to
professional success and not as something
valuable in and of itself, as a means “to
understand more deeply the truth about
oneself and the world.”
In the passage of Plato’s dialogue that
struck George, Socrates questions Gorgias, a well-respected sophist, about the
nature of his craft—persuasion. “The
conclusion that Socrates takes us to … is
that you’d be better off losing an argument when you’re wrong than winning
it,” George told me during my recent visit
to Princeton University, where he is the
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence.
“Boy, that really made me look at myself
in a way I never had before … and I
began a personal journey that led me
eventually to be an academic, to become a
professor, to live my life in the realm of
ideas and arguments and intellectual
discourse.”
Today, George is best known for his
conservative views, particularly those on
hot-button moral issues. He opposes
abortion, homosexuality, embryonic stem
cell research, and human cloning, and he
20
advances these arguments in both the
academic press and popular conservative
outlets such as the National Review and
the Wall Street Journal editorial pages. In
the run-up to the presidential election, for
instance, George wrote an article for Public Discourse, an online outlet of the conservative Witherspoon Institute where he
serves on the board, making the case that
Barack Obama is “the most extreme proabortion legislator ever to serve in either
house of the United States Congress.”
George’s profile has been raised further by his positions on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (serving under Clinton but appointed by George H.W. Bush
at the end of his presidency) and on President George W. Bush’s Council of
Bioethics. George also serves as the director of a conservative-leaning Princeton
think tank, the James Madison Program
in American Ideals and Institutions,
which he founded in 2000. He was recently appointed as the U.S. member of the
World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, an 18member advisory council to UNESCO.
It goes without saying that George’s
views are largely unpopular at the elite
college and university campuses where he
has spent most of his life, either as a student or teacher. And yet at Swarthmore,
George was elected student-body president. And at Princeton, his classes are
invariably over-enrolled and students give
him rave reviews. Improbably, in a sea of
strident liberal opinion, George has made
a happy home.
George, who is known as “ROBBY” to his
friends, grew up in Morgantown, W.Va., the
oldest of five brothers. His parents, Joseph
and Catherine, were New Deal Democrats.
“We didn’t know any Republicans,” George
recalls. “We thought of the Republicans as
the owners of the mines, and the rest of us
were from families who had fathers or
grandfathers in the mines.” As a teenager,
George was active in Democratic politics,
volunteering for George McGovern’s 1972
presidential campaign and serving as twoterm governor of the West Virginia Democratic Youth Conference.
“Not many students from my high school
went away to college, and a fair number didn’t
go to college at all,” George says. “But I knew
I wanted to go away for college, so I got out
the Barron’s guide and Swarthmore just
seemed terrific—very intellectually intense
and vibrant.” He visited the campus and
came away impressed. The conversations he
overheard amongst the students “were different than the ones I had heard at other colleges and universities I visited,” he says.
“They weren’t about sports and relationships, they were about ideas.”
George’s arrival at Swarthmore in 1973
coincided with the Supreme Court’s Roe v.
Wade decision, which legalized abortion and
alienated many socially conservative Democrats. “During my time at Swarthmore, I still
considered myself a Democrat, and there was
still a question in which direction the Democratic Party would go,” George says. “It’s hard
to think ourselves back to this, but it’s
important to do so. Planned Parenthood in
the 1960s and early 1970s was not a liberal
swarthmore college bulletin
The intellectual
foundation upon which
George’s views rest is
natural law theory; its
antagonist is secular
humanism. His criticism
of secular liberal views
is “not that they are
contrary to faith; it is
that they fail the test
of reason.”
Robert George recently co-taught a course at
Princeton with Cornel West. “The students said they
learned from hearing two different perspectives,
and that’s the way it should be,” George says.
january 2009
21
22
political correctness,” George says. “It
existed then, but we didn’t have a name
for it. The fact that there were these
people who were ‘enlightened’—not
because of some compelling argument
but because of some trend in thought—
it really turned him off.”
In George, Kurth saw a febrile mind
AP PHOTO/TED S. WARREN
organization. George. H. W. Bush’s wife, Barbara, is pro-choice to this day, and she’s a
reminder of that old Republican view. On
the other side, there were plenty of pro-life
Democrats, including Jesse Jackson, Ted
Kennedy, and Richard Gephardt. It wasn’t at
all clear which was the conservative position,
and which was the liberal tradition.”
A devout Catholic, George was appalled
by the court’s decision. “In my opinion, the
abortion issue is what started him down the
path toward identifying himself as a conservative,” says John Devlin ’76, George’s friend
and former roommate.
Increasingly, George found himself on the
conservative side of issues that had been
pushed into the foreground in the 1960s:
feminism, sexual revolution, and drug use. “I
came to conclusions that were quite different
from the conclusions of most of my peers
and of most members of the faculty,” George
says, “conclusions that were in opposition to
the ethos that was prevalent at Swarthmore
and across the academic world and the elite
sector of the culture, especially the intellectual culture. So, I had to resign myself to being
a dissenter, a kind of intellectual Protestant.”
It was a lonely position, but he was
encouraged by two Swarthmore professors—
Linwood Urban and James Kurth. Urban, the
Charles and Harriet Cox MacDonnell Professor Emeritus of Religion and an Episcopal
clergyman, introduced George to the writings of medieval philosophers, which
sparked his interest in the field of natural
law—the notion that moral norms can be
grasped through reasoning and are not matters of revealed truth. (Father Thomas Halloran, who served Catholic students at Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, and Haverford, was
another major influence. During summers,
George and Devlin accompanied Father
Thomas to Boston College to attend a philosophy workshop.)
Kurth, the Claude C. Smith Professor
Emeritus of Political Science, was perhaps an
even greater influence. “Jim Kurth was really
instrumental in providing support when I
needed it,” George said. Politically, they had
their differences—Kurth was a self-described
borderline Marxist. (It was not until 1980
that he became an evangelical Protestant.)
But he encouraged his students to challenge
political orthodoxies. “Jim was deeply antithetical to the phenomenon we now call
Following Barack Obama’s
accepted even if you were a pretty strenuous
dissenter.”
landslide and rampant
After Swarthmore, George studied theology
and law at Harvard and then went to Oxford
for doctoral studies in legal philosophy,
working under John Finnis, the world’s most
prominent natural law theorist. Even before
he finished his dissertation, George landed a
teaching position in Princeton’s political science department. “I applied for the job
thinking I wouldn’t get it but figured it
would be a good learning experience,”
George recalls. “But then they offered me the
job, and to my embarrassment I had to
explain that I still had a lot of work to do on
my dissertation.” Princeton was willing to
wait, allowing George another year at Oxford
and to complete his dissertation during his
first year of teaching duties. George received
tenure in 1993.
“It was a remarkable thing for him to get
tenure when he had done nothing to disguise
his views,” Hadley Arkes, an Amherst philosopher and fellow conservative, has said of
his friend’s appointment. While George
believes academia too often penalizes conservative thinkers in hiring decisions, he
acknowledges that he personally has not suffered. “I was not a stealth candidate, and my
views were well known from the moment I
came to Princeton,” he says. “The only way I
was given tenure was because honorable liberals supported me based on what they perceived as the quality of my work, despite
their disagreements with me.”
The intellectual foundation upon which
George’s views rest is natural law theory (or,
more specifically, “new natural law theory”).
With roots in Greek philosophy but owing its
greatest debt to the medieval Catholic philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, natural law theory holds that there are intrinsic
goods—moral truths—that are ascertainable
by reason alone. Natural law’s antagonist is
infighting within
Republican ranks, the
future of conservatism is
uncertain. But George
maintains that the election
was not “ideologically
transformative.”
and fellow outsider at the College. “We were
both from the periphery—Robby is from
West Virginia, and I was raised in a small
town in Oregon,” Kurth says.
And yet George had no trouble fitting in
at Swarthmore. He was an accomplished
musician and performed in several campus
bands. “He could play anything with strings
on it,” Devlin says. It was at Swarthmore,
too, that he met his future wife, Cindy
Schrom ’77, who is currently managing
editor at Mathematica Policy Research Inc.
in Princeton.
“She was my college sweetheart,” George
says. “We met as sophomores, in Willets. I
walked into the lounge, and there was this
beautiful woman playing classical guitar; she
was it.”
In his senior year, George was elected student body president. “You didn’t run on your
views of abortion, you ran on reforms in the
cafeteria,” he says. “But it speaks well for
Swarthmore—and I hope it remains the case
today—that you could be popular and
swarthmore college bulletin
secular humanism, whose founder and namesake David Hume famously wrote: “Reason is,
and ought only to be the slave of the passions
and can never pretend to any other office
than to serve and obey them.” But for George
and other contemporary natural law theorists, reason should serve as humanity’s moral
guide and be reinforced by just laws. “Law is
nothing other than an ordinance of reason
for the common good, promulgated by him
who has the care of the community,” Aquinas
wrote in his Summa Theologiae.
It just so happens that these moral truths
are closely aligned with the long tradition of
Judeo-Christian thought. But while he is a
devout Catholic, George defends his views
without recourse to divine fiat. “I want to
show that Christians and other believers are
right to defend their positions on key moral
issues as rationally superior to the alternatives
proposed by secular liberals and those within
the religious denominations who have abandoned traditional moral principles in favor of
secularist morality,” he writes in the preface of
The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and
Morality in Crisis. “My criticism of secular
liberal views is not that they are contrary to
faith; it is that they fail the test of reason.”
The most sacrosanct of these intrinsic
goods is human life, which is why George is
so outspoken in the public debate concerning
abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell
research, and capital punishment. It’s impossible to give these issues and George’s views a
fair hearing in such limited space, but suffice
it to say that for George, the right of life
applies to humans in any stage of development, be they zygotes or, in the case of Terry
Schiavo, adults in a persistent vegetative state.
(George, it should also be said, is very comfortable navigating the scientific intricacies
that underlie these debates.)
Liberal sexual ideology is another bugaboo
of George’s. “I think that sex, when it is
humanly valuable, is intrinsically, and not
merely instrumentally, valuable,” he writes.
Like Finnis, George believes marriage is a
basic human good and that sex within marriage (even an infertile marriage) realizes ‘the
intrinsic good of marriage itself as a two-inone communion of persons,” uniting husband and wife biologically. In this view, oral
and anal intercourse, even between married
couples, is immoral since these acts do not
produce such a biological union. And sex
january 2009
between unmarried heterosexuals or between
homosexuals also is immoral. “Masturbatory,
sodomitical, or other sexual acts that are not
reproductive in type cannot unite persons
organically: that is, as a single reproductive
principle,” George writes. Sex for pleasure
outside of what George brands the “one-flesh
union of marriage” instrumentalizes the bodies of the participants, rendering the acts
“self-alienating and dis-integrating.” Thus,
George argues for preserving the traditional
legal definition of marriage, a union between
one man and one woman.
For the past decade, beginning with
Republican Congressional victories of the
Clinton era through the eight years of the
Bush administration, it appeared that such
cultural conservatism was on the ascent.
George moves easily in Republican circles, a
prominent figure in the bourgeoning
Catholic-Evangelical alliance. “When I was
growing up in Morgantown, relations
between Evangelicals and Catholics were
awful, but I liked my Evangelical friends and
neighbors a lot—even some of them who
weren’t prepared to grant that as a Catholic I
was a Christian.” He also had many Evangelical friends at Swarthmore. “In the 1990s, my
work started drawing the attention of Evangelical pastors and leaders,” he says. “I think a
lot of Evangelicals became interested in natural law, because they came to see it wasn’t
enough to cite purely religious authority for a
moral view, especially one with relevance to
public policy.”
Now, however, following Barack Obama’s
landslide and rampant infighting within the
Republican ranks, the future of conservatism
in this country is uncertain.
“Obviously, I am delighted that our country has shown that it can elect an AfricanAmerican president,” George wrote me in an
e-mail following the Nov. 4 election. Nonetheless, he had supported John McCain
“because Obama is so far to the left, especially
on social issues.”
But George maintains that the election was
not “ideologically transformative.” Citing the
success of three state ballot initiatives prohibiting same-sex marriage, George added,
“As things stand, we’re still (as far as I can see)
a center-right country.”
Kurth agrees, adding that what doomed
McCain was his neo-conservative foreign policy leanings—“he’s like George W. Bush on
steroids!”—and incoherence on economic
matters. Moving forward, he suggests, the
Republican Party would do well to maintain
its cultural conservatism, while re-embracing
a more conservative, i.e. realist, foreign policy
and adopting a less hands-off approach to the
turbulent free-market economy. “These are
positions that Robby should feel very comfortable with since they are in fact the positions promulgated in the Papal Encyclicals
and by the U.S. Council of Bishops,” Kurth
says. “In terms of rethinking the future of the
Republican Party, Robby has the perfect theological grounding to do so.”
MEANWHILE, AT PRINCETON AND OTHER
campuses, the culture war grinds on. George
is on leave this year but is looking forward to
returning to the classroom. He recently cotaught a class with Cornel West, a popular
Professor of Religion and African American
Studies, who is as liberal as George is conservative. “We went back and forth and engaged
each other, and we engaged the students,”
George says. “The students said they learned
from hearing two very different perspectives,
and that’s the way it should be.”
George hopes such efforts will make it easier for more conservative voices to find their
way into academia. “I think conservatives are
mistaken that the prejudice that is there has
to do with the nature of liberalism,” he says.
“Liberalism is not the problem, the problem
is the nature of human beings, and if the shoe
was on the other foot, conservatives would be
the same.
“We find it hard to imagine that people
who reach what we perceive to be the wrong
conclusions can be good thinkers and good
scholars,” George continues. “But if you came
into my classes without knowing anything
about me, you wouldn’t be able to tell my
views from the way I teach.
“I press my students hard, and if they’re
trying to make a liberal argument and not
doing it well, then I’ll make the strongest liberal argument,” he says. “My job is not to tell
students what to think, it’s to teach them to
think critically.” !
Paul Wachter lives in New York and writes for
The New York Times Magazine and The
Nation. He is a frequent contributor to the
Bulletin.
23
During the day, the garden b
a place where the women sewed and w
24
swarthmore college bulletin
A NOSTALGIC JOURNEY THROUGH
CHILDHOOD DURING CHINA’S
CULTURAL REVOLUTION
a song of
By Moying Li M’82
Photographs courtesy of Moyling Li
Illustrations by Suzanne Gaadt
Calligraphy by Haichao Wu ’12
memories
became the center of our family activities,
washed, while the men chatted.
In her memoir Snow Falling in Spring: Coming of Age in China During the Cultural Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008),
Moying Li, now vice president and senior analyst at a Boston-based investment management
company, offers a vivid and moving portrayal
of her life from summer 1958 up to the day she
left her homeland on the journey that brought
her to Swarthmore College. She was one of the
first students to leave China since 1949.
This is where her story began:
PROLOGUE
It took me over 20 years to return
to my grandma Lao Lao’s old courtyard in
Beijing, where I spent much of my short
childhood. I was shocked to find it gone.
Bulldozed. Wiped from the face of the earth.
It was like discovering that a dear friend had
died and realizing I had been robbed of the
last chance to say goodbye.
I sat on a pile of shattered gray bricks—
the only remnants of my grandpa Lao Ye’s
labor—watching the brisk November wind
lift the withered leaves from the dusty
ground, up and up and away from me.
Then I closed my eyes—to remember.
january 2009
25
Fascinated but scared,
I stared at the burning furnace,
hugging my favorite rabbit
for comfort.
26
swarthmore college bulletin
THE GREAT LEAP
It was a hot summer, and the words on every grownup’s lips were
great leap forward. “In fifteen years,” someone said, bubbling with
excitement, “China will overtake Britain!” Then, Baba (Father) spun
the wooden globe next to his desk and pointed out to me where
Britain was. Touching the spot with my fingertip, I murmured, “But
it’s so small.” I could not understand why Baba and his friends were
eager for China, a large splash of green on Baba’s globe, to surpass
another country that was only a gray speck—smaller than some Chinese provinces. But the glow of hope on their faces and the confidence in their voices told me that this Great Leap Forward would be
a big accomplishment—something to be truly proud of. I trusted
grownups in those days with all my heart. This was the summer of
1958, and I was 4 years old.
My family lived in Beijing with my maternal grandmother, Lao
Lao, and maternal grandfather, Lao Ye, in a traditional siheyuan—a
large square yard surrounded by one-story houses with sloping roofs
on each side. Sharing our siheyuan were my aunts and uncles and a
few tenants—the families of a tailor, an electrician, and a clerk.
Decades before I was born, it was Lao Ye who carefully lined our
roofs with smooth gray tiles and installed large windows along the
brick walls. Above the glass windows were wooden zhichuang (shutters), which could be propped up by thin sticks to let in fresh air.
When thunder and lightning raged outside, I would huddle with Lao
Lao and watch it through the windowpanes as she pampered me
with sweet tea and cookies. Inside, I felt safe and cozy.
The garden in our courtyard was my favorite place, with flowers
taking turns to blossom even into late fall. Our golden daffodils—or
water fairies, as Lao Lao called them—proudly announced the coming of spring. In the summer, pale jasmine opened up at night, filling
our siheyuan with its fragrance. Lao Lao encouraged the jasmine’s
nimble vines to climb freely up and around our bamboo fence,
forming a blooming wall that separated the garden from the rest of
the yard. Hardy chrysanthemums—in pink, yellow, and white—
flowered from season to season. It was in this garden, I was told, that
I took my first steps, surrounded by aunts and uncles, their arms
reaching out to catch me if I fell.
Next to the jasmine wall was a tall huaishu (scholar tree). During
the summer months, the sweet scent from its delicate flowers filled
our yard, while the droning songs of cicadas, sheltered among its
abundant leaves, lulled me to sleep. Under the huaishu’s cooling
shade, Lao Lao set up a permanent place for two of my favorite
things—a little red wooden table and a small red armchair—gifts
from my future uncle-in-law, who had lavished his craftsman’s talent
on me in a skillful pursuit of my doting aunt.
During the day, the garden became the center of our family activities, a place where the women sewed and washed, while the men
chatted. For my brother, Di Di, and me, the large open yard next to
the garden was both playground and battlefield. There, we shared
our new tricycle with our neighbors’ children, taking turns racing
from one end of the yard to the other. Even though Di Di was a year
younger than I, he was faster on the tricycle.
With our friend Ming, the tailor’s youngest son, hanging on to
the rear rack, Di Di would pedal past every door in our courtyard,
january 2009
waving to anyone who cared to look. Sometimes, the two of them
would charge straight at me and the other girls until we screamed
and scattered. In this big yard, grownups watched us from every
window, but we felt totally free.
After a family dinner spread on a large square table, spiced by my
uncles’ jokes and my aunties’ laughter, each family unit would retreat
to its separate rooms. For me, however, there were no boundaries as
I happily darted in and out of my parents’ and grandparents’ houses.
Family was just family, I believed, without doors or walls. And as the
first grandchild, I felt entitled to all of their hearts as well as their
space.
Our farm animals were almost as free, housed in a shed under a
giant elm in a corner of the courtyard. To me, the shed was like a
small zoo. Two white rabbits with big red eyes lived there, as well as a
rooster with glistening golden feathers, and four chickens—two
white and two brown. Lao Lao had handpicked each animal from
street vendors. The rabbits were my favorites, so warm and soft to
the touch. Sometimes I even lured them into my bedroom with a
carrot so that I could cuddle them.
Early that summer when I was 4, Baba took Di Di and me to visit
his youngest sister, who lived by the sea. When we returned in the
fall, I could hardly believe my eyes—our courtyard was strewn with
bricks, holes, and scrap metal! An ugly brick furnace, almost as tall
as Baba, stood right in the center. I was in shock.
“This is to make iron and steel for the Great Leap Forward,” Baba
said, “Our country needs strong construction materials.”
That Great Leap again, I thought, remembering Baba’s globe with
its colorful dots and splashes. I stepped gingerly around my shattered yard, dodging the busy grownups who, shovels in hand, were
too preoccupied to pay me the usual attention. Even Lao Lao joined
their efforts. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She beamed, holding me up in her
arms. “We are helping our country.”
“Yes, I know. We are going to catch up with that small dot before I
grow up,” I grumbled. Looking at what this Great Leap had done to
my playground, I found it hard to share their excitement.
Soon my freedom, together with that of our rabbits and rooster,
was restricted. Under Lao Lao’s order, we were to stay in the garden
behind the bamboo fence. Outside the fence, the world was pouring
into our yard, day and night. Excited neighbors, scores of them,
brought in firewood by the cartload and piled it up next to the furnace, ample fuel for the fire that crackled and roared. Some of the
wood had been freshly split from old benches and chairs, with peeling paint and pointy nails still sticking out. The furnace, my enemy
number one, was built with layers and layers of red bricks. On top of
them sat a shiny metal hat with spurts of smoke, sometimes even red
sparks, bursting out from under it. Fascinated but scared, I stared at
the burning furnace, hugging my favorite rabbit for comfort.
None of this seemed to bother the grownups. They filed into our
courtyard with their metal pots and pans—anything they could find
27
and everything they could spare—to be melted into steel. People did
not have much in those days, but the odds and ends soon looked like
a small mountain next to the woodpile. As I watched, the tailor’s
wife stepped out of her house with a frying pan. She hesitated, flipping the pan in her hands and wiping it again and again with her
handkerchief. She seemed to be saying goodbye to an old friend.
Slowly, she walked up to the metal pile and gently laid her frying
pan, now gleaming in the sun, on top of the little mountain. She
stared at it for a few moments, then suddenly turned and walked
away, never looking back.
Da Jiu (oldest maternal uncle), a math professor home on sick
leave, was in charge of quality control. Stooping down from his slender height, he inspected the pile, separating the usable pieces from
the junk. Picking up a wok cover, he examined it, tapped on it lightly, and then tossed it onto a smaller pile of rejects. He nodded at the
mountain of metal that was growing larger by the hour.
My favorite neighbor, Uncle Liu, the electrician, tall and broadshouldered, stood by the furnace like a warrior, shoveling logs and
broken chairs into its mouth. Gripping a long steel pole with both
hands, he used its tip to hook open the hinges of the furnace door.
He prodded the burning wood and then slapped the door shut when
the wood started to crackle. It looked to me as if he was feeding a
roaring dragon. The clerk, short and dark but equally solemn, used a
large iron ladle to channel the red burning liquid into a mold, while
our third neighbor, his face glowing from the heat of the flames,
inspected the fruit of their labors with a tailor’s precision.
Standing at a safe distance, I became transfixed by the scene in
front of me and forgot about my fear and my destroyed playground.
Then, an idea hit me. I bolted into Lao Lao’s kitchen, threw open her
large cabinet doors, and crawled on hands and knees in search of
family treasure. I spotted a big water ladle at one corner of the cabinet and some spoons in a drawer, and threw them all into a bamboo
basket next to the stove. I grabbed a large kettle and dropped it into
the basket as well. Before darting outside, I surveyed the kitchen one
last time and then threw Lao Lao’s heavy cleaver on top of my prizes.
Dragging the basket behind me, I hurried as fast as my feet and the
load would allow and dumped everything, basket and all, onto the
mound of metal carefully selected by Da Jiu. Thank goodness I had
been watching closely and knew which pile was the chosen one!
I crept back behind the bamboo fence and slumped down in my
little red chair, tired but satisfied. Throughout the day I sat there,
spellbound. I shared every sign of triumph—the electrician patting
the clerk’s shoulder, the clerk shaking the tailor’s hand, and then all
of them giving a thumbs-up to Da Jiu. As the sun slowly set, leaving
a trail of purple clouds in the crisp autumn sky, Da Jiu pushed his
black-rimmed eyeglasses up and beamed.
Suddenly I heard Lao Lao’s voice. She had just returned home,
ready to tackle dinner. “‘Where is my kettle” she asked, walking over
to where I was sitting. “Have you seen my cleaver?”
“Yes, I helped our country with it,” I replied proudly, without
removing my eyes from the furnace. “Maybe they are burning it
now.”
Lao Lao rushed over to Da Jiu and his metal pile. Together, they
found the kettle and some spoons, but not the big cleaver. The knife
28
had joined its comrades in the burning fire, doing its share for
China.
My escapade circulated around the dinner table that night. Choking from chewing and laughing at the same time, Baba turned to me
and said, “It’s good that you want to help, but next time it would be
good to check with Lao Lao first.”
Our roaring furnace popped and burned day and night for
months. Every morning at dawn, our courtyard came alive with clatter and chattering. Then one morning I woke up to silence. Something was different. I ran outside to see.
In our courtyard, Da Jiu and our neighbors sat on the woodpile,
their heads bowed like those of defeated soldiers. The fire in the furnace had died, leaving a lingering smell of burnt wood.
“What happened, Da Jiu?”
“The iron and steel we made was not good enough.” He sighed. I
stared at him in disbelief. “We simply did not know enough to make
it right,” he added.
Now I was sad, too. Climbing up the woodpile to sit next to him,
I leaned my head against his shoulder, as crestfallen as he and our
neighbors.
“But we tried so hard.”
“Yes,” he said, “We did.”
For days, we all avoided the courtyard. The abandoned red furnace stood in the center, alone and silent, along with a few scattered
metal pieces and some half-burnt wood. We all tiptoed around it as
if we were visiting a patient in the hospital. From time to time, I
would find myself resting my chin against the bamboo fence and
staring at my soundless enemy turned old friend, silently wishing
him to roar for me one more time. But he only stared back.
For weeks, Lao Lao refused to replace her cleaver and used a small
knife instead. It was not the money for a new cleaver that stopped
her, even though nobody had much to spare. It was the principle.
Our big knife had sacrificed itself for a cause and so should be honored. At least that was my interpretation. The roaring furnace, too,
had done his best, even though his best was not good enough.
Finally, the furnace disappeared, and so did the scattered wood
and metal. The men filled the holes in the yard with fresh dirt, and
Lao Lao swept the courtyard clean. I was free once again to race my
tricycle with Di Di and my friends, and spend quiet moments
smelling the flowers and petting my rabbits. In our garden, the
women resumed their sewing and washing, and the men their chatting. Life seemed to have gone back to what it was before.
But, then, why did I feel as if something had changed? !
“Prologue” and “The Great Leap” from Snow Falling in Spring by
Moying Li. Text © 2008 by Moying Li. Reprinted by permission of
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, www.fsgkidsbooks.com.
swarthmore college bulletin
The tailor’s wife hesitated,
flipping the pan in her hands
and wiping it again and again
with her handkerchief.
She seemed to be saying goodbye
to an old friend.
january 2009
29
The air simply crackled at the moment
that the students marched into the square,
holding banners high with a look of
confidence and triumph in their eyes.
30
swarthmore college bulletin
WITH A BICYCLE, A NOTEBOOK, AND
A LITTLE COURAGE, LINNEA SEARLE
DOCUMENTED THE DEMOCRACY
MOVEMENT IN TIAN`AN MEN
SQUARE—20 YEARS AGO.
By Karen Linnea Searle ’84
Illustrations by Suzanne Gaadt
Tian`an men
Diary
democracy movement that is
now known as Beijing Spring.
The names of her Chinese
friends have been changed, but
Editor’s Note: Following are
events are recorded as she expe-
edited excerpts from a journal
rienced them during that tumul-
written by Linnea Searle (known
tuous spring. The name of the
in college as Karen) while she
photographer must be withheld
was a university student and
to this day.
teacher of English in Beijing
from January to May 1989.
As a young speaker of Chinese,
she could closely observe the
BEIJING
Sat., April 22, 1989
Today was the funeral of Hu Yaobang. I made plans to go down to
Tian`an men Square this morning to watch. Getting to Tian`an men
was not easy; there were various roadblocks. But when the square was
opened, I ended up smack in the middle of things—not where I
intended to be. It was pretty scary there. People would start running.
I had visions of stampedes. There were so many people!
I asked people what was going on and had various responses. In
truth, nobody could really see. There were hundreds of policemen
outside the Great Hall of the People and many students standing outside and shouting—probably asking the government to resign. I
decided that the periphery was a far better place to be, so I wandered
toward the Memorial to the Revolutionary Martyrs.
Hu Yaobang died last Saturday. He left office two years ago, but he
was the symbol of political change for many intellectuals and students. So the students have taken advantage of the situation to criticize the government—and call for more democracy.
january 2009
©2009 by Karen Linnea Searle
Wed., April 26
The students called an indefinite boycott of classes on Monday—to
be ended when the government gives in to their demands. All along
the street there were clusters of people trying to listen to the words of
students who were relating the events that had occurred outside the
Great Hall of the People. They were explaining it because the newspapers had not. Apparently, the students have organized a citywide
council of the student leaders—all of this leading up to May 4 [a significant commemoration of the nationalist May Fourth Movement].
Thurs., May 4
Today, there were tens of thousands of students in Tian`an men. It
was extremely well organized—and, yes, very exciting. The air simply
crackled at the moment that the students marched into the square,
holding banners high with a look of confidence and triumph in their
eyes. Onlookers cheered the students on, which made them walk even
taller, shout even louder.
I was also amazed at the government’s response to the demonstra31
tion. They made a feeble attempt (according to other
students here) at blocking off some roads, but when the
students pushed through lines of policemen, the
crowds roared approval and the police simply backed
off. The government did the best conceivable thing,
which was to let the students freely enter the square.
9 p.m.
Joining the students marching back [to the university]
was by far the most interesting thing I did all day. The
side of the road was lined with people watching, clapping as the students went by. In every passing bus there
were people leaning out the windows, clapping for the
students, cheering them on, supporting them.
Mon., May 15
Yesterday, I went down to Tian`an men with Lisha and
Hong Feng to see what was going on. The students are
on to something new now—a mass hunger strike. By
the time we got there, they’d been fasting for 26 hours.
I don’t envy them; the direct sun was awfully hot. And
for Chinese to fast! In a culture that lives for its food,
it’s fairly serious.
The scene at Tian`an men was very different from
before. There were far fewer people than during either
of the previous demonstrations. The mayor of Beijing
came to the square at around 2 a.m. to try to convince
the students to leave. The students, it seems, are past
listening to anyone, so they stayed in the square surrounded by the glare of the television cameras. The students are fortunate in their timing of all of this—it
really is quite incredible. First, Hu Yaobang dies just
two weeks before May 4, so there is a reason to continue to protest that long. And now, just 11 days after May
4, here comes Mikhail Gorbachev [for the Sino-Soviet
summit]. China is in the world’s eye as never before.
I read an article in the Far Eastern Wall Street Journal. As early as
April 24, Deng Xiao Ping was ready to violently suppress the student
protests. His plans went so far as to warn local hospitals to expect
many casualties on the 27th, the day of the protests. Many students,
including my friend Xiao Mei, wrote out their wills the night before,
out of fear of what might happen. But it seems that Deng was overruled by other high-ranking cadres. Thank God for that. Beijing—no,
China—would be a very different place right now, had the uprisings
been violently suppressed.
Tues., May 16
11:45 a.m.
There are people everywhere. The students march past in long
groups, the boys dressed in light windbreakers, blue pants, black
pants, and the girls, some of them in skirts, brightly colored, carrying
bags of water, salt, sugar, fortifications for Thursday.
The square is jammed with people. The focus is the large circle
surrounding the student hunger strikers. Lines of people surround
32
the circle, trying to peer in. In the circle, very quiet, subdued students
sit in the blazing heat of the sun, water bottles next to them. Some
lean over to talk with friends, but most sit quietly—on their faces is a
mixture of boredom and defiance.
Noon
Now, I am directly in front of the Great Hall of the People. The students have formed a path for the ambulances transporting those who
have fainted. A few run back and forth ordering people to move; in
my case, though, they ask politely. An old man walks by with a long
beard, holding signs. The students applaud him as he passes.
I asked Xiao Mei yesterday, “What does the government have to do
to get the students to eat, to break the hunger strike?” They have to
say the students are right, and they have to initiate a dialogue with
the students on equal footing. “But how?” The first is a concrete task,
but the second is so subjective. The government has been holding
talks with student representatives for two days; from all accounts the
students are not convinced that it is on equal footing. How can it be?
swarthmore college bulletin
I climb on one of the carts to see the whole
scene. A sea of heads, flags, banners in
every direction. I see every kind of person.
Young, old, in suits, in jeans, in jogging outfits. And children. So many children!
Babies! Obviously, people aren’t afraid.
12:40 p.m.
All of a sudden, a banner appears. My companions look at me; excitedly tell me that it’s workers! Probably the first ones. Everyone runs
forward. Seeing workers striking adds a new element. It’s spread, it’s
not just students, it is academics, perhaps some workers, even if only
a few, but the significance far overshadows the numbers.
A worker stops to talk to me. He asks me if I support the students.
I ask him the same. He says, “It’s not just me, it’s all of us—it’s something in our hearts that we cannot say.” He was quiet, looked up at
me and said, “Forty years.”
9:15 p.m.
I climb on one of the carts to see the whole scene. It’s amazing. There
are people everywhere. A sea of heads, flags, banners in every direction as far as I can see. Every direction I look, I see every kind of person. Young, old, in suits, in jeans, in jogging outfits. And children. So
many children! Babies! Obviously, people aren’t afraid.
Fri., May 19
10:05 a.m.
I’m getting scared now. Everything is on the verge of chaos. Even the
student leaders are beginning to think that the public demonstrations
are getting out of hand. All it will take is the death of one of the
hunger strikers and that’s it. All will fall apart, and the minute that
happens no doubt the tanks will begin to roll.
There are ominous signs. I went to LiQui’s dorm last night as I
have done practically every three days for months. The entrance was
locked, so I went to the next entrance and there were two men sitting
outside who asked me to register. They wanted to know the name of
the person I was visiting so they could see if she was there. Deeply
disturbed, I left. I don’t want to cause her any trouble. I guess this
isn’t the time to be flaunting Sino-American friendships.
A fever is the only way to describe it.
12:10 p.m.
Demonstrators throw bottles out of trucks. Deng Xiao Ping—a play
on ping, which also means bottle–smashing bottles to symbolize the
smashing of Deng Xiao Ping.
I saw an old woman, perfectly white hair, creased face, raising her
hand to give the victory sign to passing protesters. Is she really sup-
Wed., May 17
Workers, middle school students, reporters, doctors, teachers, everyone is here, clapping, shouting, urging the demonstrators on. And the
signs! LiQiu would read them and exclaim “ay ya!” Still no sign of
police anywhere. Today’s marchers included Security Bureau workers—in uniform! Young Pioneers—youth Party members!
It’s as if everything that had been inside these people for 50 years
has come bursting forth in one breath! A breath that grows stronger
and bolder with every minute that passes.
7 p.m.
The sun is almost down behind a cloud on the horizon. The sky is a
dusty blue. Mao’s mausoleum is clearly outlined. So static, unmovable, almost in total contrast to the movement and color on every
side. It almost appears to be standing in defiance—watching the
scene, frowning, isolated.
A group of demonstrators on motorcycles drive past. Everyone
around me gets up and runs to the road. The spectacle over, they now
move up the square. It’s amazing how crowds form and dissipate. It
makes the whole square appear elastic. Shapes form, change, move.
11:15 p.m.
Back at the dorm. Trying to calm myself down. Late night musings
while listening to Simon & Garfunkle. My sunburn hurts, blistering
under the heat. But far too excited to sleep. Hoping that writing will
bring me back to myself, I try to make sense of what has happened in
the past few weeks.
january 2009
33
porting them? What must she have seen in the last 70 years? Does she
think it’s just the same—or is this something different?
11:45 p.m.
I’m at Moira and Michael’s house, listening to the BBC on shortwave. It’s happening, right now: 1,000 trucks full of troops are moving towards Tian`an men. According to the BBC, a million people are
at Tian `an men. The goal of the students is simply to provide so
many bodies that the government cannot come through.
Sat., May 20
12:40 a.m.
Part of me is tired and just wants to go to sleep. That’s the body part.
But my mind is on! What I really want to do is get on the bike and
ride down to Tian`an men to see what’s going on. Did I mention that
the hunger strike has been called off? At least temporarily. Earlier, the
students were unsure, but almost an hour ago the BBC reported that
there was an announcement at the square.
12:45 a.m.
Martial law has been declared. The first troops were blocked from
coming into the square by the students, who let the air out of their
tires and stopped the convoy by holding hands and standing in front
of the trucks. Earlier today another convoy turned around and left.
Soldiers shook hands with the students, left with smiles on their
faces, declaring that they are the people’s army. But, according to the
last BBC report, armed troops are massing southwest of the city. The
people—students—are still packed into the square.
It’s going from bad to worse. Armed guards have met students at
the Luili Bridge. The students are pleading with the soldiers not to
continue—to turn back, but as of yet, they haven’t. The students are
also climbing on top of the vans and reading out a petition in support of Zhao Zi Yang—who apparently has resigned. CNN has been
forced to stop its live broadcast. A general curfew will go into effect
tonight at 10.
Sun., May 21
2:20 p.m.
It’s a very different Beijing than the one I’ve been away from for two
days. The mood is now subdued, serious. The city is under the control of the students now. Every corner is manned by students stopping cars, examining drivers, convincing those with no business in
the city to return home. The leaders may have attempted to impose
martial law, but thus far those attempts have been in vain.
The question now revolves around the patriotism of the People’s
Liberation Army (PLA)—the 18- and perhaps 16-year-olds who will
be sent in to suppress the uprising of their own people. If the students and the people of Beijing can convince them to turn around,
then they have won.
3:35 p.m.
On the square itself, the mood is subdued, a combination of the
afternoon heat, the tension of previous nights, and wondering what
is to come. The flags and banners are still waving. One man, a worker,
possibly from the countryside, dark-complexioned and quiet, shyly
34
Soldiers shook hands with the students,
left with smiles on their faces, declaring
that they are the people’s army. But armed
troops are massing southwest of the city.
walks to the students and hands one young woman a bag of bread.
He turns and walks away, quietly listening to the thanks as he strolls
away.
10:30 p.m.
It’s coming; this time it’s really coming. I see the pictures on TV, and
it’s ripping me apart. I see Tian`an men—it feels as if I’m looking at
my home, a place that is so familiar to me, but that may be over soon.
The government has given the students—the people—until dawn,
and the general feeling is that tonight will be the night.
I’m scared—not for myself, but more for the loss of what was this
week. So much enthusiasm, joy in the people at being able to express
themselves. It may all go—oh! What can I do? I want to go outside to
be a part of it, but it’s not my country, not my place to be out there.
Mon., May 22
12:15 a.m.
I’m holed up in Mom’s hotel room, waiting. [The author’s mother,
Barbara Wolff Searle ’52, was visiting China during the last weeks of
her daughter’s term there.] According to CNN, one million people
have gathered in Tian`an men. One of the student leaders has said
that if the government wishes to remove the students from the
square, it should do it through a dialogue with the students, in a
democratic fashion. However, if the authorities decide to use force,
they cannot and will not resist.
The latest news report says that there are still major decisions with
the top party members about what to do about this situation. That
was good news. Perhaps there are reformers voting for more restraint.
But still . . . a million people in Chang An and Tian`an men is too
many. There’s no room to move, and nowhere to go.
6:55 a.m.
Nothing happened! Nothing!
10:30 a.m.
Down at Tian`an men again. I’m sitting next to the fence that separates the square from the Great Hall of the People. Gone is the tension that enveloped the city yesterday. Rather than students, some
intersections are now manned by PLA and city policemen—not as a
military presence, but simply as if they are doing their normal jobs
on a Monday morning.
The streets are alive with everyday vehicles. The barricades are
gone. Cars are no longer being stopped. Along the route however,
there are many students, looking tired and dirty but relaxed and
calm. Even Tian`an men, although not quiet, seems fairly relaxed.
The appearance of the square brings home the length of this
ordeal. The banners are not flying as high; signs are drooping. But the
speeches continue, the applause grows louder and more frequent. I
catch a few words such as “freedom” and “democracy.” Across from
swarthmore college bulletin
me, a student writes in a journal like mine while his companion
sleeps.
The students secured a victory with last night’s continued stalemate. With every hour—particularly every night that the government
remains incapable of moving—its credibility erodes. Troops are
massed on all sides of Tian`an men, but the government is not acting.
There must be intense struggles in the higher echelons of the Communist Party.
3:05 p.m.
There are moments when, all of a sudden, you realize that your lips
have formed themselves into a huge smile. Your heart longs to sing
out. That’s what this moment is to me right now. The march has
begun again to the heart of the square. The New World Symphony is
being played over the loudpeaker system. Students are lined up on
top of the buses filling the square, waving their banners. Everywhere
is the sound of cheering, clapping. Euphoria—downright euphoria!
I think about how I can sit in one place for hours just watching.
Not talking to anyone, just drinking in the atmosphere. Perhaps if I
stay here long enough, all this will become part of me. A real part of
me that I will never forget, that won’t fade away, that won’t vanish.
As night falls, there is uncertainty. The barriers are erected; the
streets brim with people, students in the road, onlookers gathering
around the sides. Trash cans, roadblocks, all moved into place.
january 2009
Tues., May 23
12:45 a.m.
Back home. Again it seems that the crisis is over, that the tide seems
to have turned. For another night there was nothing—some clashes
between students and troops, but nothing major. Yesterday, more
than 100 top military officers submitted a letter to Li Peng saying that
they would not order their troops to fight against the Chinese people.
The crisis, it seems, is over. But is it? Or has it—in a very fundamental
sense—just begun? !
Neither the military officers who opposed moving against
their own people nor the thousands of demonstrators were
able to prevent the Chinese government from retaking
Tian`an men Square and crushing the student movement on
June 4, 1989. Linnea Searle remained in Beijing until May
31, when she was scheduled to leave at the end of her university term. Part Two of her edited journal and a pdf of
the entire unedited manuscript can be found on the Bulletin Web site: media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin, where you
will also find a map of Beijing in 1989, showing the streets
and landmarks mentioned in this article.
35
entomological
“ant”ics
FOR CARL RETTENMEYER ’53, AN
There are about 155 species of army ants in
EARLY INTEREST IN INSECTS EVOLVED the Western Hemisphere and a possible 100
more in Asia and Africa. Rettenmeyer is parINTO A FASCINATING CAREER.
By Carol Brévart-Demm
Photographs courtesy of Carl Rettenmeyer
During his life, Carl Rettenmeyer has
made the acquaintance of various large and
dangerous beasts. He’s faced off with a ferde-lance pit viper and stared down a puma
in Panama, gone toe-to-toe with a tapir and
nose-to-nose with an ocelot in Ecuador. Yet,
although he shivers with a certain exquisite
terror mingled with delighted awe in the
presence of large animals or deadly reptiles,
these encounters were never planned. All
occurred in the rain forests of Central and
South America during his five-decade–long
pursuit of a creature actually no more than a
half-inch long—the army ant.
Despite their reputation as ferocious
killers—largely the result of science-fiction,
says Rettenmeyer—army ants are beneficial
to the environment and to human beings.
“Well, they do bite but cause no serious damage,” he adds.
36
ticularly well-informed about the species
Eciton burchellii, found in Central and
Southern America.
Rettenmeyer’s office contains thousands
of glass vials and jars filled with ant specimens. Their labels indicate that many have
been hand counted and contain hundreds of
thousands of specimens. As he looks around
his own, very real “Empire of the Ants,” a
mischievous smile breaks through his thick,
white beard, and he says: “I love army ants. I
could talk about them for days.”
Rettenmeyer explains that the army-ant
caste system consists of one queen, winged
males, and workers. The ants, which are
blind and depend on chemical trails for
direction, are migratory, moving in
columns—about 100 feet long—of up to
one million ants. He’s calculated the size of
migrating colonies by carefully timing and
filming their movement between two points,
then watching the film in slow motion and
counting the ants. As they migrate, the ants
transport larvae, cocoons, and food for the
colony. The queen remains in the middle of
the column, protected by workers swarming
on top of and around her. The colony moves
by night from one nest—or bivouac—to the
next, distances of up to 100 yards at a speed
of about 20 yards per hour.
Army ant migrations occur every night
over two-week periods, according to a schedule that is related to the queen’s reproductive
cycle. After a queen lays eggs—sometimes
more than 200,000 in 10 days—the colony
stays put until larvae emerge, followed by a
further series of migrations until the larvae
mature and spin cocoons. A typical colony
travels about nine miles annually, building its
bivouacs among tree roots or inside hollow
trunks. With the ability to support 100 times
their own weight, the ants often form living
bridges from nest to ground, linking their
bodies by means of hooks on their legs.
The workers hunt for food in swarms,
usually starting at dawn, Rettenmeyer says.
During more than five decades, entomologist Carl
Rettenmeyer (below left) made more than 20 expeditions to the rain forests of Central and South America to study the behavior of army ants.
An army ant major rears up in alarm (above). With
the ability to support 100 times their own weight,
the ants often form living bridges from nest to
ground, linking their bodies by means of hooks on
their legs (right) .
“A swarm raid can be about 50 yards wide.
It’s quite an intimidating sight. Once you see
it, you never forget it.” Ant prey includes
cockroaches, wasps, katydids, crickets, scorpions, other ant species, and, on rare occasions, a small vertebrate such as a lizard. The
ants dismember larger prey and transport it
back to the bivouac. Their mandibles are so
strong, he says, that native peoples have been
known to use them as natural sutures, pinching off the ant’s thorax and abdomen, leaving
the head and jaws to hold a wound closed.
Swarm raids are accompanied by flocks of
ant birds that hover near the swarm not to
attack the ants but rather to devour the
arthropods they flush out during their
marauding. “Forty-six species of ant birds
depend on Eciton burchellii alone for food,”
Rettenmeyer says.
“Army ants are the most important predators in a tropical forest,” he adds, “because a
single colony can consume half a million
animals a week. They’re a kind of biological
pest control.” He knows of army ant raids
that have passed through houses without
stopping, and when they leave, the building
is emptied of household pests.
Now 77 years old, Rettenmeyer says he has
had a serious interest in “bugs” since childhood, but his fascination with army ants
really began when he was at Swarthmore.
During his junior year, he found himself in a
biology course with a group of students who
swarthmore college bulletin
were all premed except for him. “I was the
weirdo from day one. The other biology
majors joked about me wanting to study
bugs,” he says.
Later that year, Rettenmeyer was contacted by the late Theodore Schneirla, an animal
psychologist in the Department of Animal
Behavior at New York’s American Museum of
Natural History, who studied the behavior of
army ants. Schneirla, an acquaintance of Rettenmeyer’s biology professor Robert Enders,
needed a field assistant to accompany him to
Barro Colorado Island in Panama. “It took
Bob Enders about half a second to think of
me,” Rettenmeyer says. “Nobody else wanted
to study insects.”
Soon, Rettenmeyer was off to Panama for
six months. “I think Schneirla picked me
because I was a member of the varsity crosscountry team and he thought if I could run
six miles, I’d be able to do the work in Panama,” Rettenmeyer jokes.
Graduating with a B.A. in biology in 1953,
Rettenmeyer embarked on a Ph.D. in entomology at the University of Kansas. However,
when he received a call from Life magazine,
inviting him to return to Panama for nine
weeks with a photographer who was shooting a feature on army ants, Rettenmeyer
couldn’t refuse. Life paid for the trip and provided a small stipend.
“That was my lucky break,” Rettenmeyer
says. “We collected thousands of specimens,”
including 147 species of mites that live on
various parts of the ants’ bodies. He explains
that hundreds of thousands of insects—
including species of microscopic flies, beejanuary 2009
tles, and silverfish—live among the army ant
colonies. Hidden in the swarm, they enjoy a
degree of protection because their natural
predators are themselves likely to fall prey to
the aggressive ants.
When Rettenmeyer returned to Kansas,
faculty members were impressed. They urged
him to apply for a grant to return to the rain
forest and continue his research.
“The problem was,” he says, “there was no
funding for graduate students back then. The
National Science Foundation (NSF) had
barely started and was only giving grant
money to faculty members, so they said,
‘Write up the proposal, and we’ll sign it.’”
Rettenmeyer received grants for three further trips to Panama—now with his new
bride of a few months, Marian Wolf Rettenmeyer, an Ohio Wesleyan graduate he’d met
while taking summer courses at the University of New Hampshire in 1951. “Marian had
liked insects as a little girl and was actually
interested in ants, so I knew she was a
woman I had to keep track of,” he laughs. She
became his lifelong partner and assistant.
“You can’t imagine how wonderful it is,”
Rettenmeyer says. “She’s been so helpful, and
she’s discovered a number of new species.”
It’s also comforting to have a partner close
by when you’re being jostled by a 200-pound
tapir that—lured by your lunch bag—is
going berserk because the ants you’re following are biting the soft skin between its toes.
With grants from the NSF and, later, the
University of Connecticut Research Foundation, he and Marian made more than 20
expeditions to Panama, Costa Rica, and
Ecuador as well as field trips to Kansas and
Texas, collecting specimens and studying the
behavior of army ants. His early research is
carefully recorded, neatly handwritten, on 3by 5-inch index cards, which he keeps in his
university laboratory along with the 600page dissertation that resulted in his receiving a Ph.D. 1962.
Rettenmeyer’s research led him to an
assistant professorship at Kansas State University, visiting associate professorships at
the Organization for Tropical Studies in
Costa Rica, and, in 1971, a professorship in
the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology at the University of Connecticut–
Storrs. He retired in 1996 and now holds
emeritus status. Founding director of the
Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, he is the author of many scholarly articles, monologues, and book chapters. His
photographs have appeared in publications
of wildlife organizations including National
Geographic, the Audubon Encyclopedia of
Wildlife, National Wildlife Federation, and
Smithsonian magazine.
In 1996, Rettenmeyer was diagnosed with
Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia, a form
of lymphoma. “I was supposed to die in 1997
or 1998,” he says, but a new drug developed
around the time of his diagnosis has kept his
disease in remission and allowed him to continue to work. “It was really a miracle.” He
often uses a wheelchair to get around these
days, yet, despite his frailty, he still visits his
office several days each week to continue
identifying the tens of thousands of insects
he has stored in bottles and jars in a temperature-controlled section of the university’s
Biology Department. Also housed there is
the Rettenmeyer Collection, which contains
hundreds of thousands of already identified
specimens, preserved in layer upon layer of
neatly ordered trays.
In 2006, Rettenmeyer published a DVD
titled Astonishing Army Ants, a spectacular
testament to the breadth of his research and
the fascinating behavior of his subjects. He is
currently working on a second film called
The World’s Largest Animal Association, highlighting the 300-plus species that are completely dependent on army ant colonies for
survival. And for those who watch them,
those corny science-fiction movies will pale
by comparison. !
37
PETER GINTER/INTERACTIONS.ORG
If particles had personalities, what a
family they would be! Quarks are so cliquish
that they travel only in groups of three and
are never seen alone. Flashy photons, all style
and no substance, travel everywhere at the
speed of light. Businesslike electrons bind
atoms to one another and power all our
electronic gadgets.
One kind of particle wanders through the
middle of the hubbub yet somehow remains
detached from it all. These particles are
everywhere, and yet they are nearly undetectable. They cannot be contained or
steered—and they pass through walls as if
they weren’t there. They’re called neutrinos,
and they may be the most important particle
in the universe. Every time a photon of light
is created, a neutrino is created as well. It’s
38
safe to say that if the universe had no neutrinos, we wouldn’t be here either. And yet they
are the least understood subatomic particle
around.
“That’s the reason I got interested in neutrinos,” says Janet Conrad ’85, a professor of
physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not only are they next to impossible
to catch, but they also have a chameleon-like
ability to change identities—an ability that
physicists were not even aware of until about
10 years ago. Conrad has recently discovered
evidence for the fourth and most exotic of
the neutrino’s multiple personalities, the
“sterile neutrino.” If it is real, it could be a
clue to some of the deepest mysteries in
physics, such as the nature of dark matter
and whether extra dimensions exist.
WONDER AND JOY
Of course, particles don’t really have personalities. But people do. And Conrad is almost
the opposite of the neutrino, the “little neutral one.” She is full of enthusiasm and loves
to tell the public about her work. In her last
few years at Columbia University, where she
was on the faculty for 13 years before moving
to MIT in 2008, she regularly taught the
proverbial “physics for poets” course and
drew upwards of 100 students to her classes.
“Physicists have made physics seem so
esoteric, because it makes them look smart,”
Conrad says. “The irony of my work is that
you can learn everything you need to understand neutrino oscillations by the end of
your sophomore year at Swarthmore.”
Appropriately, Conrad’s office looks more
swarthmore college bulletin
A SERVICES
FERMILAB VISUAL MEDI
The
neutrino
hunter
IN HOT PURSUIT OF THE ELUSIVE NEUTRINO,
PHYSICIST JANET CONRAD ’85 SEEKS CLUES
TO SOME OF SCIENCE’S DEEPEST MYSTERIES.
By Dana Mackenzie ’79
Left: Jasmine Ma, a summer student working on the MiniBooNE experiment, inspects photo tubes that detect light from neutrino interactions.
Above: The ring of light, registered by some of the more than 1,000
detectors in the experiment, indicates the collision of a muon neutrino
with an atomic nuclei.
like a toy shop than an academic office. In
various corners you can find prisms, Slinkies,
water rockets, tuning forks, and a set of mirrors that create the image of a shell floating
in the air above her desk. She has a collection
of hand-blown Crookes radiometers—a little
lightbulb-shaped device with a vane inside
that spins when light strikes it. “When I
It’s safe to say that if
the universe had no
neutrinos, we wouldn’t be
here either.
january 2009
walk in the office and turn on the light, they
immediately start turning,” she says. “It’s
amusingly welcoming.”
The toys are there partly for fun and partly because they demonstrate physical principles—the same basic principles about wave
motion and conservation of energy that
underlie her seemingly more esoteric
research on neutrinos. “To me, physics is
about really wonderful and joyful things, like
toys. And very accessible things like blue
skies and waves,” she says. “That’s why I find
it so sad when people say my field is inaccessible. It really isn’t at all.”
IN SEARCH OF THE WILD NEUTRINO
To detect a neutrino, you need two things:
a prolific neutrino source and a detector.
Sources are easy to come by. Any nuclear
reactor will do, because neutrinos are emitted in the process of radioactive decay. A particle accelerator will also work, or even the
sun—the great neutrino factory in the sky.
The hard part to arrange is the detector.
Because they are so small and have no
electric charge, neutrinos almost never interact with matter. But if you direct a few billion
neutrinos at a sufficiently massive target, a
few of them will happen to hit a proton
head-on and release a flash of light. So the
typical neutrino detector is an enormous
tank of liquid, surrounded by light detectors.
They are usually placed underground, so that
the earth’s crust can filter out other particles,
such as cosmic rays, that might be mistaken
for neutrinos. The first successful neutrino
39
FERMILAB VISUAL MEDIA SERVICES
WHAT LARRY SUMMERS SAID—AND DIDN’T SAY
On Jan. 14, 2005, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers unwittingly brought the simmering debate about women’s representation in science careers to a full boil. In a keynote speech at a conference on diversity,
Summers hypothesized that the shortage of women in certain disciplines
could be explained by innate differences in mathematical ability. “There is
relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means—which can
be debated—there is a difference in the standard deviation and variability
of a male and female population,” he said. Thus, even if the average abilities
of men and women were the same, there would be more men than women
at the elite levels of mathematical ability—and also, though Summers didn’t say this, at the lowest levels as well.
The mass media—and, surprisingly, many academics—completely
missed Summers’ point about variability. For example, in the Los Angeles
Times, David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale and occasional conservative commentator, wrote: “[Summers] suggested that, on average, maybe
women are less good than men at science….” Well, no, he didn’t. But in the
public debate, that is how his statement was interpreted.
A study published in July of this year by Janet Hyde, a psychologist at
the University of Wisconsin, partially vindicated Summer. Hyde and her
colleagues compared the scores of girls and boys in grades two through 11
on the state mathematics tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act
(NCLB). They found no meaningful differences in the average performance
of boys and girls. But the variability of boys’ scores was 11 to 21 percent
greater at all grade levels. Consequently, boys were indeed overrepresented
in the top percentile, by a 2:1 ratio over girls.
Does this mean that Summers was right after all? There are many reasons not to jump to this conclusion. First, though the difference in variability is real (on this test), it is not necessarily innate. In Minnesota, for
instance, the 2:1 ratio of boys to girls in the top percentile held only for
white students. For Asian American students, the proportion was 0.9 to 1.
That is, girls outnumbered boys in the top percentile. It is difficult to imagine an innate difference in math ability that would be present in whites but
not in Asian Americans.
Second, even this apparently positive finding fails to explain the paucity of women in some disciplines. “If a particular specialty required mathematical skills at the 99th percentile,” writes Hyde, “we would expect 67 percent men in the occupation and 33 percent women. Yet today, for example,
Ph.D. programs in engineering average only about 15 percent women.”
Third, it is doubtful that the NCLB tests measure skills that are actually required to succeed at science. Many studies have shown that standardized tests perform poorly as predictors of accomplishment in college and
graduate school, let alone later in life. Hyde’s paper sharply criticizes the
NCLB tests for concentrating on simpler “recall questions” and completely
avoiding “strategic thinking” and “extended thinking” questions. “Complex
problem-solving is crucial for advanced work in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] careers,” she writes.
Finally, do so-called differences in mathematical ability matter at all?
“The national debate on the issue … has so far missed the central point:
scientists are made, not born,” wrote economists Michael Cox and Richard
Alm in The New York Times, at the height of the Summers brouhaha. At
every level of the scientific enterprise, from grade school through grad
school and beyond, our society is failing to make as many women scientists
as it could—perhaps because we are too mesmerized by the idea that scientists have to be born.
—D.M.
40
swarthmore college bulletin
VASSILI PAPAVASSILIOU
detector, in 1956, was a 200-liter tank of
mineral water that caught a whopping three
neutrinos per hour. The largest neutrino
detector, in Japan, contains 50,000 tons of
water. At the Department of Energy’s Fermi
National Laboratory in Battavia, Ill., Conrad’s experiment MiniBooNE—short for
Booster Neutrino Experiment—uses a comparatively modest 800 tons (or 30 tankloads) of mineral oil.
Nowadays, physicists don’t just want to
detect neutrinos—they want to understand
their amazing mutability. Neutrinos come in
at least three “flavors,” called electron, muon,
and tau neutrinos. But these flavors do not
stay fixed. An experiment in 2001 at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), located
deep in a Canadian nickel mine, measured
neutrinos coming all the way from the Sun.
It found only one third as many electron
neutrinos as expected. There were two possibilities: either the Sun was not making as
many neutrinos as we thought—or the other
two thirds of the neutrinos were there, but
they had changed into muon or tau neutrinos (which the SNO was not equipped to
detect). It was as if you went out to the store
and bought a box of chocolate ice cream, and
by the time you got home it had turned into
Neapolitan.
This might seem like a crazy idea, but theorists knew already that it was a possibility,
provided that neutrinos had mass. The reason, Conrad says, is a well-known phenomenon called wave interference. You can see
wave interference any time you look at a
prism or an iridescent material, such as an oil
slick. White light consists of waves of many
colors or frequencies, which usually move at
the same velocity. But a prism causes different colors of light to travel at different rates.
The waves are no longer synchronized, and
they “interfere” with each other, so that from
one direction the refracted light looks red,
while from another it looks blue or green.
The changing flavors of the neutrino are
exactly like the changing colors of light. In
theory, each neutrino is actually a trio of
matter waves, which travel at different rates
because they have different masses. Like the
light reflected off an oil slick that looks alterAlthough fewer than 20 percent of U.S. physics doctorates go to women, Janet Conrad’s (left) research
teams have been half men and half women.
january 2009
nately red, green, and blue, the neutrino will
“look” in some places like an electron neutrino, in other places like a muon neutrino, and
so on. To return to the ice cream metaphor,
the chocolate ice cream doesn’t just change
to Neapolitan. It changes to vanilla, and
strawberry, and every possible combination
(including Neapolitan), many times every
second. The flavor you happen to measure
with your detector depends on when you
catch it.
This “neutrino oscillation” was a surprising discovery, but only because physicists had
never before found any evidence that neutrinos have mass. The SNO experiment could
be explained with only a slight modification
to existing theory (making the neutrino’s
mass nonzero); it did not require a complete
rethinking of neutrino physics.
MiniBooNE complicated this picture. It
was intended to test an anomalous result that
had been found at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory by Conrad’s collaborator, Bill
Lewis, which seemed to show that the trio
must actually be a quartet. The fourth member (the “sterile neutrino”) would have to be
the most introverted neutrino yet. It would
be an excellent candidate for what cosmologists call “dark matter,” a mysterious form of
matter that seems to make up about a quarter of our universe, but which we know
about only through its gravitational effects.
The results from MiniBooNE did not
confirm the Los Alamos experiment—
“Being a woman in physics
is like being an
expatriate,” Conrad says.
but they did detect an excess of low-energy
neutrinos (369 instead of the expected 273
over a six-year period). The excess may have
to do with sterile neutrinos or some other
physics beyond the “Standard Model.” Or it
could be an experimental artifact. A stray
photon can sometimes be mistaken for the
flash of light produced by a neutrino. “One
of them is a little fuzzier than the other, but
in the end fuzz is fuzz—it’s hard to tell the
difference,” Conrad says.
One of Conrad’s former students, Bonnie
Fleming of Yale University, is currently developing a new experiment, called MicroBooNE, which should resolve the ambiguity.
For the first time it would detect actual neutrino tracks, rather than single flashes of
light. It will also have pinpoint accuracy
compared to MiniBooNE. To tell the difference between a fuzzy flash and a sharp flash,
it helps to have a sharp pair of glasses.
MENTOR AND ROLE MODEL
Conrad was upset when the then-president
of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers,
suggested in 2005 that the low proportion of
women in some sciences might have something to do with their innate abilities (see
sidebar). In fact, a look at Conrad’s research
groups shows that neutrinos don’t care about
gender. At MiniBooNE, about a third of the
experimenters are women.
It’s easy to see why students of any gender
would gravitate toward Conrad. “She’s a really dedicated adviser,” Fleming says. “She
teaches you how to be a good scientist.”
According to Boris Kayser, a neutrino physicist at Fermilab, “Apart from [teaching] techniques and skills, she looks after the careers
of her protégés and teaches them what they
need to do to succeed.”
In part, she leads by example. It is very
unusual for a junior professor, as Conrad was
in 2001 when MiniBooNE got started, to
organize a major experiment at a national
lab. Fleming got to see firsthand how it is
done, from hiring people to managing them
and finding the right roles for them. Now
Fleming is taking on the same role for
MicroBooNE. “It’s really exciting to go
from a mentoring relationship with
Bonnie to working with her as a colleague,”
says Conrad.
Conrad believes that women in physics do
undergo more scrutiny than men. “Being a
woman in physics is like being an expatriate,”
she says. She spent a year in England after
graduating from Swarthmore, and she says
that she was “held responsible for everything
America did, such as Reagan bombing
Libya.” But, she adds, “An expatriate chooses
to be an expatriate for a reason: They love
the opportunities. I love being in physics,
and the opportunities it gives me.” !
41
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
Statistics show that the number of women
choosing careers in science and engineering
has grown steadily since 1972, when Title
IX of the Civil Rights Act was passed.
However, in some areas of science—
particularly the physical sciences and
engineering—they are a long way
from achieving parity with men.
Three alumnae have been studying why women leave science
and engineering majors and
how to make it easier for
them to stay.
1. FIXING THE “LEAKY PIPELINE”
Ruth Haas ’82
If you read very much literature about
women in science, you will soon encounter
the metaphor of the “leaky pipeline.” At
every key career transition—from high
school to college, college to grad school, grad
school to junior faculty, and junior to senior
faculty—women seem to drop out in greater
numbers than men. But the pipeline imagery
fails to reflect the possibility that students
can drop into science as well as drop out.
“If you think about your typical image of
a math nerd, you see a guy who has known
that he’s into math since he was a teenager,”
says Ruth Haas, professor of mathematics
and statistics at Smith College. “I was like
42
that. Our grad school model is based on that.
But there are plenty of people who are good
at math who aren’t like that. This seems to be
especially true of women, who don’t settle
down to doing math until it’s pretty late.”
Haas has started a unique postbaccalaureate program at Smith that is designed to
replace one of the so-called “leaks” with an
intake valve. The program accepts seven
women per year who want to attend graduate school in a mathematical science but
don’t have a strong enough background.
They are the drop-ins.
“Some of them had prior lives, or they
may have been math education majors or
math majors who weren’t very serious,” says
Haas. One student was a theater major;
another was a lawyer. Five of the first year’s
seven students are now in mathematics graduate school. “If we can get five more American women into graduate school, that’s a
huge accomplishment,” Haas says.
That claim may seem like an exaggeration,
but it’s not. On the surface, mathematics
appears to be doing better than physics or
engineering at attracting women. In 2007, 32
percent of the math Ph.D.s awarded went to
women, an all-time high. But the figure is
skewed by the presence of foreign students.
American women represented only 12.5 percent of the 145 doctorates granted that year.
As a mathematics professor at a single-sex
college, Haas has a different perspective on
the academic environment for women. “People who come and give talks here feel how
unusual it is,” she says. Even women matheswarthmore college bulletin
3.
dropping out—
and dropping in
THREE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
RETENTION STRATEGIES FOR WOMEN
By Dana Mackenzie ’79
maticians are not accustomed to talking to a
roomful of female students who are excited
and knowledgeable about math.
Some of Haas’s other initiatives are aimed
at bringing the Smith experience to more
students. The department now has a program that brings women math students from
other colleges to Smith for a semester or for
their entire junior year. “They find out that
there are plenty of women who are serious
about math and good at it,” says Haas. “Our
women go on in math at a much higher rate
than women at co-ed schools.”
This fall, Haas also organized the first
Women in Mathematics in New England
(WiMiN) conference, intended primarily for
undergraduates. “It was amazing,” she says.
“We had more than 100 people; we had not
january 2009
anticipated nearly that number. I think the
best thing that happened was the networking. Undergraduates had the chance to talk
with graduate students and faculty. That was
a very popular thing with the undergrads—
they like to see people at various levels who
look like them. The more you can hear about
how people manage their lives through their
career paths, the better.”
2. FINDING SUPPORT
Donna Crystal Llewellyn ’80
When Donna Crystal Llewellyn was an
undergraduate, she found moral support
from an unlikely source. As the only female
math major in her class, she didn’t have a
student peer group. (One fellow student—
the author of this article—gave her an espe-
cially hard time. “You were mean!” she says
today.) The faculty, though very supportive,
were all male. “What saved the environment
for me was Joyce, the department secretary,”
she says. “She watched out for me, because
she knew I was the only woman. Also, the
librarians were my support group.”
Of course, her experience in honors wasn’t
all bad. “Those seminars, even with the jibes
and the teasing, were the best preparation for
graduate school,” she says. “The main thing is
that it was fair. The message was never sent
that you shouldn’t be competing because
you’re a woman, or that you don’t belong
here.” At the first graduate school she attended, she feels that the faculty projected a very
different attitude: Women did not belong.
Llewellyn is now the director for the Cen43
3.
LEARNING HOW TO STUDY
Lynne Molter ’79
For Professor of Engineering Lynne Molter,
who got her engineering degree at Swarthmore and has now taught at the College for
21 years, one incident crystallized her interest in student retention. It happened more
than 10 years ago.
“One of my students came into my office
and said that she was going to transfer out of
engineering,” Molter says. “She told me that
she was working so hard that she wasn’t able
to get enough sleep, and yet her grades were
mediocre.”
“I asked her, ‘Tell me how you study for
an exam.’ She said, ‘I read the book.’ Then I
44
“If a man is too busy
full-time staff position held by an alumna of
the department, Ann Tran Ruether ’94, to
provide individualized help for each student for whom it could be useful, especially those in their first year. Reuther
to advise students, he is seen
as productive. But
students will give
lower ratings to a woman
who is too busy.”
just happened to ask
her, ‘How many times?’ And she said
‘Seven times.’” Molter’s jaw dropped.
“‘What about the examples?’ I asked. She
said, ‘Oh no, I skipped them.’”
After that, Molter started asking other
first-year students how they studied. And
it turned out that many others were
studying in a way that was inappropriate
for an engineering course. In engineering,
working examples and studying concepts
(rather than re-reading the textbook or
memorizing facts) is the most effective way
to learn. “They didn’t know how to approach
the material, and it was breaking my heart,”
says Molter. Juniors and seniors didn’t seem
to have the same problems—but was it
because the way they were studying was optimal, or had the system simply driven out the
students who didn’t study in that way?
Molter may soon find out some answers.
Together with K. Ann Renninger of the
Department of Educational Studies, she is
collecting information from students, at the
time they declare their majors, about their
goals and the choices they have made. They
are also surveying engineering majors retrospectively about the same questions.
Molter and Renninger are also collaborating with Robert Koff of Washington University at St. Louis, on a project in which they
are collecting and coordinating retention
data at several highly selective colleges and
universities. “We’re up to our elbows in
data—tens of thousands of student records,”
she says. Both of these projects are funded by
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Although
neither project focuses exclusively on
women, they are likely to reveal some of the
ways in which female students’ choices or
learning styles affect retention.
Meanwhile, Molter and her colleagues in
the department of engineering have worked
to improve their support system for all students. For instance, the department has a
“I asked her, ‘Tell me
how you study for an exam.’
She said, ‘I read the book.’
Then I just happened to
ask her, ‘How many times?’
And she said
‘Seven times.’”
proactively monitors students’ progress in all
of their math, science, and engineering
courses, through collaboration and cooperation with faculty in those departments, and
runs a help program five evenings a week. !
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
ter for the Enhancement of Teaching
and Learning (CETL) at Georgia Tech, a
position she took after several years as a
professor of operations research. At CETL,
she works with faculty on their teaching
skills, and she sees first-hand the problems
that women face during their junior faculty
years.
“It’s very intense for women, in that they
have a higher default advising load,”
Llewellyn says. “Students tend to seek them
out more for experience and advice—just as
I did with the women librarians at Swarthmore. If a man is too busy to advise students, he is seen as productive. But students
will give lower ratings to a woman who is
too busy.”
“Then there’s the issue of the biological
clock and the tenure clock, which overlap for
most women,” Llewellyn continues. On that
issue, there has been progress at Georgia
Tech since she arrived. “We have procedures
to stop the tenure clock, and we have leave
options. When I got here, there was only sick
leave and no maternity leave. Now there is a
better attitude on campus, and some men
even take paternity leave.”
On a national level, Llewellyn founded
(and named) an interest group called
Women in Operations Research and Management Science (WORMS), within the
national society for operations research
(INFORMS). Its membership has taken off
over the last 10 years. “Back then, there were
only a handful of women. Now we fill a ballroom at the annual meeting,” she says.
Clearly, her days of being the only woman
are over.
swarthmore college bulletin
connections
COURTESY OF TRAVEL STUDY SERVICES
OFF WE GO AGAIN!
Swarthmore’s Alumni College Abroad is
offering two exciting new adventures:
¡Hola Argentina! A Feast for All Senses
Experience Argentina—a land of astounding
beauty, open spaces, and world-class cuisine—with faculty study leader Hansjakob
Werlen, professor of German, and alumni
host Raymond Hopkins, Richter Professor
Emeritus of Political Science, from March 5
to 14. A member of Slow Food’s International Council on Biodiversity, otherwise known
as the Ark of Taste, Werlen has traveled widely in South America with a special focus on
Argentina, and his insights and recommendations have been incorporated into our
itinerary to make this a truly unique travel
experience.
¡Hola Argentina! is a delicious three-part tour.
The “main course”: eight days in Buenos Aires
and Mendoza. Travelers may also choose an “appetizer” trip to Iguazu Falls, the world’s largest
waterfall (above) or “dessert” travel to Bariloche
Lakes and Patagonia.
Turkey: Timeless Treasure
From May 5 to 17, Professor of Art History
Michael Cothren will be our faculty study
leader as we experience Turkey—a fascinating study in contrasts where extraordinary
Byzantine, Roman, and Ottoman historical
sites are scattered along sunny sparkling seacoasts and in the middle of bustling
enthralling cities. Relish the legendary cuisine, the tapestry of cultures, the breathtaking landscapes, and the overwhelming diversity of this magical land.
SASS 40TH ANNIVERSARY
Mar. 20–21: A student and alumni planning committee, chaired by Charmaine
Giles ’10, has organized a campus weekend to bring together the Swarthmore
black community—students and alumni
alike—to take part in Sankofa (Swahili
for “taking the good from the past and
continually moving forward”).
Speakers, panels, and breakout sessions will explore ways we can develop as
strong black leaders and how to use the
strength of the black community in its
ongoing effort to enhance the life of the
College. Participants will enjoy a formal
dinner and a concert by the Alumni
Gospel Choir on Saturday evening.
For more information and to RSVP,
please visit swarthmore.edu/alumni/sass.
For more information, please call (800) 789-9738, or e-mail alumni_travel@swarthmore.edu.
january 2009
45
connections
lifelong
learning
COURSES FOR SPRING
Consider taking a Lifelong
Learning course this spring.
Courses are taught seminar
style by Swarthmore faculty,
but without grades or credit—just learning for learning’s sake. Spring 2009
courses begin in February
and run for eight weeks.
Tuition is $430 for courses
taught at Swarthmore and
$560 for those taught in
New York City. Visit swarthmore.edu/lifelonglearning.xml for more information.
Offered at Swarthmore
Making Trouble: The
Modernist Revolution
Philip Weinstein
Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English
Literature
Monday evenings
The U.S. Presidency
Richard Valelly
Professor of Political Science
Tuesday evenings
AMAZING UPCOMING ALUMNI EVENTS
Feb. 8, On Campus
See Sherlock Holmes live again
as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A
Scandal in Bohemia comes alive
in a libretto by Professor of English Literature Nathalie Anderson set to music by Associate
Professor of Music Tom Whitman ’82. Preceding the performance, there will be a special
alumni reception with an overview of the opera given by Professors Anderson and Whitman.
Mar. 10, Austin, Tex.
Faculty talk by Ken Sharpe,
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of
Political Science (topic TBA)
Mar. 29, On Campus
Keynote speaker Richard Teerlink, former chairman and chief
executive officer of HarleyDavidson Inc. will highlight the
10th Lax Conference on
Entrepreneurship. Teerlink led
Harley-Davidson’s fabled turnaround, creating an open, participatory culture of trust conducive to employees giving of
their best. In these difficult
times, he challenges entrepreneurial leaders to become
engaged and reinvent their own
organizations. The conference
features alumni entrepreneurs
and business leaders and offers
alumni and students the opportunity to interact with and learn
from them and from each other.
Mar. 29, New York City
Faculty talk by Ken Sharpe,
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of
Political Science (topic TBA)
April 3–4, On Campus
As the governing body of the
Alumni Association, the Swarthmore Alumni Council participates in a range of activities that
support students, alumni, and
the College. This spring, the current council is inviting all former
members to join them for an
Alumni Council Reunion.
Special activities have been
planned for returning former
members.
April 19, Boston
Professor of Biology Amy Cheng
Vollmer will deliver a talk:
“Dancing with the Bugs: Delicate
Choreography for Humans and
their Microbial Partners.”
June 5–7, On Campus
Alumni Weekend
Three days of the most fun ever.
Will you be here with your classmates? For more information,
visit alumniweekend.swarthmore.edu.
June 21–25, On Campus
Mark your calendars now for
this summer’s Alumni College:
“Hope and Courage.” You are
invited to campus for four days
of intellectual challenge, lively
discussion, and entertaining
experiences—and no tests!
Our faculty members are putting
together an exciting program,
which will be unveiled later this
spring. Watch your mail, e-mail,
and the April Swarthmore College
Bulletin for more details.
For the latest on events near you, go to swarthmore.edu/alumni_events.xml.
Offered in New York City
Support Center for
Nonprofit Management,
305 Seventh Avenue
Living Lightly on the Earth
Carr Everbach
Professor of Engineering
Wednesday evenings
The Russian Short Story
Thompson Bradley
Prof. Emeritus of Russian
Thursday evenings
46
MATTHEW ARMISTEAD ’08
Mathematics in Nature and
Human Experience
Deborah Bergstrand
Professor of Mathematics
Thursday evenings
Members of the Alumni Council gathered on campus from Nov. 7 to 9 for their fall meeting. If you are interested in
serving on Council, or in nominating a fellow alumnus/a to serve, contact the Alumni Office at (610) 328-8402 or
alumni@swarthmore.edu and we will forward the information to the Alumni Nominating Committee.
swarthmore college bulletin
NOMINATE A SELFLESS ALUMNI VOLUNTEER
FOR THE ARABELLA CARTER AWARD
class notes
KAREN BERNIER
Alumni in Paris gathered in September for
a cooking class hosted
by Anaïs Loizillon ’95
and Graham Richmond
’95. Chef-teacher
Gabrielle Mondesire
’03 patiently led the
group through the creation of delicious profiteroles. Left to right,
top row: Loizillon,
Richmond, Mondesire,
and Jacques JoussotDubien ’49. Bottom:
Jan Jacob Willem
Boom-Wichers ’87
these services—living simply on
family money.
The annual Arabella Carter
Award, established in 1997 by the
Alumni Council, honors alumni
who have made significant contributions as volunteers in their
own community or on a regional
or national level. The Council
hopes to honor alumni whose
volunteer service is relatively
unknown.
If you know such a person—
especially if your class is having a
reunion in 2009—please contact
the Alumni Office at (610) 3288402 and request an award nomination form, or visit swarthmore.edu/alumni/arabella_form.
htm to nominate a worthy
candidate.
COURTESY OF ANAIS LOIZILLON
Do you know of a classmate or
other Swarthmore alumna/us
who goes above and beyond
through their volunteer work?
Honor them through a nomination for the College’s Arabella
Carter Award.
Arabella Carter was one of
the great unsung heroes who
worked for peace and social justice in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in the early 1900s. She never
sought publicity or recognition
for her work and is now all but
forgotten by everyone except
Friends Historical Library
archivists, who see her hand in
Quaker peace and social justice
work over three decades. Arabella appears to have received no
monetary compensation for all
On Oct. 15, alumni gathered at the Union League Club of Chicago to get an update on the College from President Al Bloom. From left: Jackie Richardson ’80,
Jeff Gordon ’81, and Christina Greulich ’78
january 2009
47
books + arts
Peter Andreas ’87, Blue Helmets
and Black Markets, The Business
of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo, Cornell University Press, 2008.
The Twisted Logic of War
RIKARD LARMA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
additional refugees, especially to
other parts of Europe. Ending the
arms embargo might have broken the siege, risking a wider war
and exacerbating the refugee sitPeter Andreas is a master at unuation. Thus, the Serbs could
covering the secrets behind the
enlist the U.N. forces as allies in
official stories. Blue Helmets and
preventing a legal re-arming of
Black Markets: The Business of
the Bosnian army in Sarajevo—
Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo
all while a black market in small
looks beyond the popular tale of
arms (that the U.N. also enabled)
the siege—local heroism, strugallowed Bosnian forces to hold on.
gles for freedom and survival,
Andreas unravels the twisted
and white knights of humanitarlogic of this war, weaving a story
ian intervention—to reveal a
that is as clear as it is fascinating.
darker side of the battle to save
Through sophisticated explanathe city from the Serb onslaught
tion and analysis, he shows how
between 1992 and 1995.
short-term interests—economic
Andreas could not have
profit, increases in political
United Nations troops unload humanitarian supplies at Sarajevo Airport in
picked a more important event.
power, day-to-day survival, and
December 1994. The airlift to the besieged city was frequently interrupted
The Bosnian fighting was the
protecting the humanitarian
by threats of Serbian missile attack. Peter Andreas’s book uncovers the complifirst outbreak of war in Europe
mission—created a systemic concated—and sometimes criminal—relationships among the Serbs, Bosnians,
international agencies, and foreign governments.
since World War II. Symbolizing
sequence that no individual actor
the bloody ethnic conflicts and
wanted: prolonging the siege.
“ethnic cleansing” that have come to dominate our news and shape
In fact, it even helped delay direct military intervention by Western
foreign policy in the last two decades, it became a test case for interforces because the Western powers could deflect popular pressure for
national humanitarian intervention under United Nations (U.N.)
intervention by promising more aid.
auspices—the “Blue Helmets.” Without massive intervention, SarajeBlue Helmets is enriched by a talent not many academics share:
vo would have fallen. The U.N. presence bought the city three years,
Andreas joins compelling, well-written stories with sophisticated
facilitating the internationally monitored settlement that still holds
insights about the hidden structures that make things work. He
today. But behind the scenes, is a story of crime and corruption in
shows how seemingly scattered pieces are connected by unintended
which all the actors participated—the Serb besiegers, the criminal
consequences. For example, to get the Serbs to stop firing on the
elements who became soldiers and mafioso on the front lines of the
Sarajevo airport, U.N. forces agree to patrol the airport grounds preBosnian defenders, the city’s political elite, the U.N. Blue Helmets,
venting the residents they are protecting from crossing the airport to
and even international aid workers and reporters.
escape the city or smuggling in goods.
Andreas probes the logic behind the corruption and the purposes
In response, the Bosnian forces dig a “secret” tunnel under the airit served. The people of Sarajevo could not have withstood the siege
port to allow safe passage. When the tunnel is finished, the U.N.
without arms, medicines, and food smuggled in through the black
forces claim that the ground beneath the airport is not part of the
market. But the corruption prolonged the siege by strengthening
airport—and the deal with the Serbs. They refuse to close it, and
both sides—the Serb besiegers and the Bosnian defenders.
their presence near the tunnel entrance helps protect travelers and
The book reveals a war system in which each of the parties had an
smugglers from Serb artillery fire.
interest in perpetuating the very conflict they wanted to win. For
Blue Helmets recognizes that humanitarian intervention has beexample, the U.N. had to bargain with the Serbs in order to move
come a major tool in conflict resolution, but that it almost inevitably
supply convoys through Serb-held territory and protect the airport
becomes enmeshed in criminal networks and black markets. Brief
from Serb attack. But allowing humanitarian assistance to flow
comparisons to other sieges and humanitarian interventions—Falluenabled Serbs to skim off 25 percent of the supplies. And because the jah in 2004 for example—underline Andreas’ point. The way these
Serbs could cut the supply lines at any time, the mere threat of a cutinterventions are carried out, their trajectories, and even their possioff became a bargaining chip. The deal the Serbs made with the U.N.
bilities for success, are shaped by symbiotic relationships that develop
and aid agencies effectively lined up these international organizations between the interveners and the underworld. If, as Andreas implies,
on the side of the Serbs in opposing efforts—in the U.S. Congress, for there is no way to avoid such problems, understanding their dynamexample—to lift the embargo on arms shipments to Sarajevo’s deics and thinking about how they might be managed will need to be a
fenders, who badly wanted heavy weapons to break the siege.
central part of any future humanitarian effort.
This impasse makes sense only if you understand that one major
—Kenneth Sharpe
purpose of humanitarian aid was to prevent the displacement of
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Political Science
58
swarthmore college bulletin
doing so, proves to be more like
a mountain lion than a rabbit.
how literary culture and our perception of history are changing
as the world grows smaller.
Jeremy Day-O’Connell ’93, Pentatonicism from the Eighteenth
Century to Debussy, University of
Rochester Press, 2007. This work
offers the first comprehensive
account of a widely recognized
aspect of music history: the
increasing use of pentatonic
(“black-key scale”) techniques in
19th-century Western art-music.
Em i l y A be l ’6 4 and Saskia Subramanian, After the Cure: The Untold Stories
of Breast Cancer Survivors, New York
University Press, 2008. Survivors tell
their stories of life after chemotherapy and the complicated, often bittersweet realities of life after the cure.
Ellen Argyros ’83, Feta in Brine,
Publish America Press, 2008.
This debut collection of poetry
by a third-generation GreekAmerican includes lyrical, often
elegiac narratives with titles such
as “Nitroglycerine Tablet, Taken
Under the Tongue,” “The Castle
of Mytilenea,” and “Bratty Little
Sister.”
Helene Smith Ferranti ’54, Sailing to Antarctica, Back Channel
Press, 2008. In 1995, the author
and one other shipmate set sail
from Maine on what became a
six-year voyage that included
two Atlantic crossings, ports of
call in Europe, and a circumnavigation of South America. Covering a five-month segment of
their journey—largely in Argentina—the author writes from the
perspective of a traveler as well
as a sailor, reflecting an interest
in the region’s flora and fauna as
well as its historical and cultural
january 2009
Jul i e D i am on d ’ 6 5 , Welcome to the
Aquarium: A Year in the Lives of Children, The New Press, 2008. Guiding
the reader through the details of
kindergarten life—such as organization, curriculum, and relationships
that define the way a group of kindergartners becomes a class with a distinct personality and culture—veteran
educator Diamond lays out the logic
behind the routines and rituals children need to thrive.
M ar c E gnal ’ 6 5 , Clash of Extremes:
The Economic Origins of the Civil War,
Hill and Wang, 2009. Challenging the
orthodoxy that the American Civil War
began for moral reasons, the author
contends that the conflict was due
primarily to the evolution of the
Northern and Southern economies.
Marc Elihu Hofstadter ’67, Luck,
Scarlet Tanager Books, 2008.
According to author and reviewer Clive Matson, this poetry collection “delivers a whole life in
snapshots taken at moments of
bell-like clarity in late afternoon
just before half-light descends….
These poems are flowers that
bloom in my soul and reflect
back utterly resonant pictures.”
Continued next page
background and thereby creating
a work that comprises much
more than simply a nautical
adventure.
Michele Ruth Gamburd ’87,
Breaking the Ashes: The Culture
of Illicit Liquor in Sri Lanka, Cornell University Press, 2008. In
this work, whose title refers to a
Sri Lankan drinker’s comparison
between the warming power of
the first shot of kasippu, the local
moonshine, and the rekindled
heat of a kitchen fire, the author
explores the changing role of
alcohol—despite Buddhist prohibitions—in areas of the world
to which globalization has
brought poverty.
John Brooks ’48 D, No Fixed
Address, John Irwin Books, 2008.
The late journalist, Washington
correspondent, and Georgetown
professor depicts the America of
his youth—from the Depression,
through World War II, to the
beginning of the nation’s postwar transformation in Chicago,
Southern California, and New
York City.
Howard Clymer ’42, Conejito:
Opening the West, Random NPC
LLC, 2008. In this novel, a young
teen loses his family in a violent
attack on their wagon on the
Oregon Trail. The young boy,
nicknamed Conejito (little rabbit) as a child, is determined to
continue along the trail, and, in
Karen (Rosenberg) Hilsberg ’85
(editor and illustrator), Be Like a
Tree: Zen Talks by Thích Phu’ó’c
Tinh, Jasmine Roots Press, 2008.
Available in English for the first
time, the teachings of the Zen
Master, rendered in direct speech
and poetry, speak to the everyday
dilemmas of being human in the
21st century.
Stephen Henighan ’84, A Report
on the Afterlife of Culture, Biblioasis, 2008. One of Canada’s
most provocative writers ranges
across continents, centuries, and
linguistic traditions to examine
L au ra L om a s ’ 8 9 , Translating Empire:
José Martí, Migrant Latino Subjects
and American Modernities, Duke University Press, 2008. The author reveals how late 19th-century Latino
migrant workers developed a prescient
critique of U.S. imperialism: a critique
that prefigures many of the concerns
—about empire, race, and postcolonial subjectivity—animating American
studies today.
59
John Krinsky ’91, Free Labor:
Workfare and the Contested Language of Neoliberalism, University of Chicago Press, 2008. The
author analyzes the politics of
workfare—the practice of making welfare recipients work as a
condition of receiving their
checks, thus compensating the
public for the support they
receive—in New York City in the
1990s under Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani.
Peter Latham ’62, Patricia
Horan Latham ’63, and Myrna
Mandlawitz, Special Education
Law, Pearson Education, Inc.,
2008. This work presents IDEA
(Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act), other pertinent
federal laws, and federal cases in
a clear, well-organized manner to
help educators understand and
apply their knowledge in concrete situations.
R obi n R idi ngton ’6 2 , The Poets Don’t
Write Sonnets Anymore, Plume of
Cockatoo Press, 2008. In this collection of sonnets and narratives, which
were compiled over the past five
decades and containing a section of
work from the author’s Swarthmore
years, prose passages contextualize
the poetry but also stand as essays in
their own right as well.
60
essays about stories—the hearing, sharing, recording of, and
sometimes becoming characters
in them—is the result of the Ridingtons’ decades of work with
the Athapaskan-speaking Danezaa people of Canada’s Peace
River area.
N e i l R ap he l ’ 7 3, Janis Raye, and
Adrienne Raphel, Business Success in
Tough Times, Raphel Publishing, 2008.
Illustrating nine characteristics of
business success, this book tells the
stories of businesspeople who faced
tough times but survived and thrived.
Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez ’46,
(editor) 500 Years of Chicana
Women’s History, Rutgers University Press, 2008. The author’s
sixth book, whose second printing occurred after only four
months, offers a vivid pictorial
account of struggle and survival,
resilience and achievement, discrimination and identity. It’s a
powerful antidote to the deficit
of Chicano and Chicana history
in most history books.
Darius Rejali ’81, Torture and
Democracy, Princeton University
Press, 2007. In recognition of its
scholarship and capacity to
influence policy or bring about
change in human rights conventions, this book received the
2007 Human Rights Book of the
Year Award from the American
Political Science Association.
Robin Ridington ’62 and Jillian
Ridington, When You Sing It
Now, Just Like New: First Nations
Poetics, Voices, and Representations, University of Nebraska
Press, 2006. This collection of
Diana Wickes Roose ’70, Teach
Us to Live: Stories from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Intentional
Productions, 2007. These stories
about the resilience of the
human spirit, told by survivors
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aim
to encourage readers to learn
from them and help shape the
world with new hope for peace
and understanding.
Robert Roper ’68, Now the Drum
of War: Walt Whitman and His
Brothers in the Civil War, Walker
Publishing Company Inc., 2008.
Drawing upon letters exchanged
between Walt Whitman and
other family members during the
Civil War as well as other documentation, this book chronicles
Robert Rozema and A l l e n W e bb ’7 9 ,
Literature and the Web: Reading and
Responding with New Technologies,
Heinemann, 2008. Authored by two
teachers, this book is a thoughtful,
nuts-and-bolts guide for any English
teacher looking for effective tools to
boost readers’ engagement and improve their responses to literature.
B re nda W e b st e r ’5 8 , Vienna Triangle,
Wings Press, 2009. Born into the
world of prominent New York Freudians in the middle of the last century,
the author weaves a story of historical detection that penetrates the
closed world of psychoanalysis.
the experience of an archetypical
American family enduring its
own crisis alongside that of the
nation.
Daren Simkin and Daniel
Simkin ’01 (illustrator), The
Traveler, Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux/Starbucks Entertainment, 2008. This fable for readers of all ages tells the story of a
little boy who packs up all his
time to go looking for something
better to spend it on, only to
realize, after traveling the world,
that what he sought was to be
found back at home.
Elizabeth Varon ’85, Disunion:
The Coming of the American Civil
War, 1789-1859, The University
of North Carolina Press, 2008. In
this reinterpretation of the origins of the Civil War, the author
blends political history with
intellectual and cultural history
to show how Americans, as far
back as the earliest days of the
republic, agonized and strategized over disunion.
—Carol Brévart-Demm
swarthmore college bulletin
in my life
“A Change
Is Gonna
Come”
AN OBAMA CAMPAIGNER
OF HIS CANDIDATE’S VICTORY.
By Benjamin Bradlow ’08
ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
SHARES THE JUBILATION
WHEN I FOUND MYSELF IN BARACK OBAMA’S
campaign field office in South Philadelphia
on Election Day—where I had worked for
the past month—I couldn’t help feeling
somewhat surprised to be there. For almost
the entirety of my awareness of politics, I had
been alienated from my government,
estranged from my country, and unsure of
my generation. That night, campaign workers cried, screamed, and high-fived their way
through the office and into the dancing multitudes on Philadelphia’s Broad Street, a
block away from our office.
I felt the empowerment of my youth. I
screamed, hugged, and danced in the streets
of this struggling, emotional city, with
friends and with strangers, black and white.
This was my country, shorn of the shackles
of our parents, of our teachers, of our former
leaders. After years of feeling that the Bush
administration was just one constant attempt
to hoodwink the country and the world, I
could begin to consider that maybe we had
pulled the ultimate trump card in what had
previously been just a high stakes game of
political frivolity.
Soon after I had started at the South
Philadelphia office, in early October, reports
emerged that John McCain would be making
his last stand in Pennsylvania, hoping to chip
76
away at Obama’s support in heavily populated Philadelphia by targeting white, workingclass neighborhoods in Northeast and South
Philadelphia. Obama visited four areas of the
city during my first weekend working for the
campaign. His last stop was at 52nd Street in
West Philadelphia, long a key shopping
avenue for the city’s historic African American community. The crowd overflowed at
least two blocks beyond the designated area
for the rally. Old ladies cried; crowds chanted, “Yes we can”; and street hawkers entertained by contorting the candidate’s name as
they shouted into bullhorns, “Obamaobamaobamaobama!” It was both moving and
fitting that his last stop in Philadelphia
would be to this area of the city, which surely
had never before been the focus of a presidential campaign. Still, this was all he would
offer as help in our fight in the biggest battleground city of the election.
We were left with our “bodies on the
doors” strategy, to use the vaguely dehumanizing, gung-ho language of the campaign
field staff. So I went to the doors in the wards
where Hillary Clinton had rung up large
margins—up to 50 percent—in her primary
challenge to Obama earlier in the year. These
wards were full of the white, working-class
voters who, we had been told, would never
swarthmore college bulletin
vote for a black man. My pleas were sometimes met by aggressive, racist ripostes. “It’s
been the White House for 200 years, and I
don’t want it to become the Black House,”
one man with a thick foreign accent told me,
somehow laying claim to an imagined legacy
that was clearly an adopted one for him.
A father playing with his children at a
playground in South Philadelphia’s Marconi
Plaza predicted, “If he gets in, he’s going to
bring Sharpton, Jackson, and Farrakhan
with him.”
But more often than not, and, it seemed,
as the economic picture became increasingly
bleak, I heard tales of lost jobs, financial insecurity, and a desire among Republicans and
Democrats alike to vote for the person “who
cares about me.” The stories fit right into the
Obama pitches I had seen in TV ads and
speeches, and I began to adopt some of his
rhetoric in selling his candidacy when I
spoke to voters: “John McCain wants to dou-
When is somebody going to talk about the
working poor?”
All I could say to this woman, as I listened
to the cries of her young children in the
background, was, “You’re right.”
A black woman was unsure of Obama
despite his being black, and white people
were doubtful because he was black. Some
were hopeful despite their fears of being let
down, while others were afraid to hope. And
I was beginning to regain my own political
inspiration — “to drink the Obama koolaid,” as my younger brother liked to joke —
as I watched this inner battle playing out
with voters across South Philadelphia.
As the last days of the campaign piled up,
I received an e-mail from my mother encouraging me to keep working hard so that we
could all celebrate on Election Day. She
signed off as “the original Obamamama.” I
shook my head in wonder at her motherly
idiosyncrasies. I thought of what this election
Old ladies cried; crowds chanted, “Yes we can”; and street hawkers entertained
by contorting the candidate’s name as they shouted into bullhorns:
!”
a
m
m
a
a
a
b
b
o
o
a
o
a
m
b
a
amaobam
“Ob
ble down on the failed Bush policies of the
last eight years.” “Obama is working for you.”
“We can’t afford John McCain.”
More and more South Philadelphians
seemed to agree as the weeks went by. But the
campaign fight in the area was going to go
down to the bitter end. One undecided old
lady, skeptical of Obama’s experience, couldn’t help but note, “The young people really
seem to like him.” “That’s why I’m here,” I
almost replied.
We had to convince the people who had
heard all about how Barack Obama was not
like them that he actually was. This occasionally became a tougher proposition than I had
bargained for. In late October, I made a call
to a woman in a predominantly African
American area of South Philadelphia. I stuck
to the script. “Can we count on your support
for Barack Obama this Election Day?”
“Yes, but I never hear him talking about
us,” she said. “It’s always ‘the middle class.’
Well I’m definitely not the middle class.
january 2009
meant to her and my father, white South
Africans who emigrated in the late 1970s and
were now planning on moving back to their
home country.
In my house, growing up, there was
always one political hero: Nelson Mandela.
By the time Mandela was actually on the ballot in South Africa, my parents had lived in
the United States for more than 25 years, had
become citizens, and had voted in many
American elections. On Nov. 4, it struck me.
They had left a country that, among its many
injustices, denied the possibility of a black
man for president in a majority black country. Today, they would cast their first vote for
a black chief executive not in South Africa,
but in the United States, a country with its
own fraught history of racism. As I made my
way through that day, I thought about when
they would vote. Maybe they would see it as
their election, just as much as I saw it as
mine.
The street celebrations of Obama’s victory
seemed to belong to the young and racially
diverse crowd that gathered that night. I felt
one with this crowd and our victory. The
next morning, I realized an even more profound truth. This election belonged to everyone. At Greater Mount Olive A.M.E. Church,
where I had coordinated volunteer canvassers in the days leading up to Election
Day, older members of the African American
church laid their claim to the victory, drawing the lineage of King and Kennedy to
Obama. White and black of all ages were
smiling at each other on the public bus I
took back to the campaign office to begin
cleaning up. This was not just my election.
This election belonged to my parents. It was
the election of the tired old lady in South
Philadelphia worried about her dwindling
retirement money and skyrocketing pharmaceutical bills. It belonged to African Americans across the country waiting on Martin
Luther King’s dream.
I took it as my own as well. I ran into a
friend in the streets near the campaign office
that day, and all we could do was hug and
talk about our hopes for the future. Barack
Obama was our next president. We had
inspired and become inspired along the way.
Such optimism was out there in broad daylight for everyone to see and feel.
I scoured the Internet throughout the day
for reactions from around the world, waiting
to see what Mandela, and my family’s number two hero, the Anglican Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, who had won the Nobel
Peace Prize for his work against apartheid,
would say. The first time I cried during the
entire election season was when I read of
their public joy at this momentous occasion.
A few days later, my parents forwarded me
a private e-mail a family friend had received
from Tutu. On Election Night, Barack
Obama recalled the soul singer Sam Cooke’s
powerful “A Change Is Gonna Come” when
he told America and the world that “change
has come.” And in his message, Tutu—that
voice I had always admired that combined
wisdom, justice, old age, and youthful exuberance all in one—articulated in his
response what every single one of us was
feeling at that moment: “Yippee!” !
Benjamin Bradlow is a writer and musician
living in South Philadelphia. He blogs at
ifilose.wordpress.com.
77
Plants Make Us Better, More
Civil People
VIRGINIA LOHR ’73 HAS A SIMPLE
MESSAGE ABOUT THE WIDE-RANGING
BENEFITS OF INDOOR PLANTS
The lush leaves in hues of gold, green, and burgundy that fill
Virginia Lohr’s [’73] office at Washington State University–
Pullman (WSU) have not been gathered for aesthetic purposes. Lohr surrounds herself with 14 potted plants because
she knows from her own research, and that of colleagues in
the fields of horticulture, landscape architecture, and psychology, that the plants will refresh the air in her space and
improve the quality of her life in intangible ways.
Lohr’s work has a simple message: from better air quality
and reduced stress to increased productivity, calmness, and
tolerance to pain, indoor plants offer people wide-ranging
benefits. A professor in the Department of Horticulture and
Landscape Architecture, she talks often about the wide-ranging benefits of plants at international professional meetings
as well as in the locally WSU-produced video The Civilizing
Nature of Plants.
Her first study—conducted in a computer lab at WSU—
looked at the physical effects plants have on air quality. The
study addressed the concerns of WSU computer technologists who feared that dust generated by the plants would
cause hard drives to crash. A productivity study was conducted simultaneously. Lohr’s research demonstrated not
only that plants improve air quality but also that people were
more productive and that their blood pressure was lower in a
room filled with plants.
Lohr’s interest in horticulture began while she was an undergraduate psychology major. By the time she had settled on
the field following a leave of absence, it was too late to switch
majors without extending her time at Swarthmore. Instead, she took as many botany courses as she could during that year. While earning a master’s in horticulture at
New Mexico State University and a doctorate in plant and
soil science at the University of Tennessee, Lohr realized
she had brought psychology into her work after all with
her interest in how plants affect
humans.
In a subsequent study, Lohr and colleague Caroline
Pearson-Mims, a research technologist at Washington
State, found that the presence of plants could also ease
pain. Subjects—asked to leave their hands in ice water
until it was uncomfortable—were able to do so longer
when they were in a room with plants compared to when
they were in a plantless room or a room with colorful
non-plant objects.
Concerned with increasing worldwide urbanization and
reduced childhood contact with nature, Lohr and PearsonMims asked 2,004 adults in the 50 largest cities in mainland
United States about their exposure to trees as children and
what they thought of trees as adults. The survey yielded evidence that it is critical to have trees in cities so that kids have
opportunities to interact with them. “People have innately
positive responses when looking at trees—they feel happier
and more relaxed in the environment,” Lohr explains, “and
the response is magnified when the tree is green and has a
spreading form.”
“Other peoples’ studies have astounded me,” Lohr says.
“They have proven that the cognitive function of elementary
school kids increases when plants are present and that violence among impoverished kids is reduced when plants are
around their homes.”
In her landscape and environmental horticulture classes,
Lohr incorporates details about the positive effects of plants
on humans. “When it is exam time and my students are
stressed out,” Lohr says, “I tell them to go hug a tree. On
exam days, I bring a plant to class to ease their stress.”
Last year, Lohr was selected to be a member of WSU’s
President’s Teaching Academy—an initiative to advance
scholarship about teaching and learning. According to Chuck
Munson, chair of the academy, she was chosen for her outstanding work as a teacher and educational scholar. “The
proudest moment of my career,” she says, “was when the students learned of my selection to the academy and applauded
me.”
Lohr was the Scott Arboretum’s first intern, and today, as a
member of the WSU arboretum and wildlife center implementation committee, she is working to bring an arboretum
to that university.
“Plants humanize our surroundings,” Lohr says. “They
make us better, more civil people.”
—Susan Cousins Breen
City View
AN OPEN-MINDED PERSPECTIVE
GUIDES KAIROS SHEN ’87 IN PLANNING
BOSTON’S ARCHITECTURAL FUTURE.
It’s dusk as Kairos Shen ’87 takes in a panoramic view of
Boston’s harbor. “I can see the Custom House Tower, the airport, the new Rose Kennedy Greenway parks, the steeples of
the North End, the Bunker Hill Monument, and the spires on
the Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge. It’s a spectacular
view,” he says.
The view from the ninth and top floor of Boston’s City
Hall comes gratis with his job as chief planner for the city.
Shen was appointed to the position in January 2008 by
Mayor Thomas Menino. Shen is also director of planning for
the Boston Redevelopment Authority, where he has worked
for 15 years and been director for seven.
Shen, who obtained a master’s in architecture from MIT,
says he doesn’t have a single vision for the city’s future buildings: “Any great city has to embody multiple visions in terms
of architectural style and expression. That’s how you get richness. We’re lucky [in Boston] because of the way the land and
districts were developed. Historically, there were predominant ways of building, with predominant use of materials
and heights that give a consistent fabric. Brick provides a
backdrop here with more contemporary materials offset
against that backdrop. I don’t think you can say, ‘this is what
buildings ought to look like,’ and apply them. A principle I
abide by is to be open-minded,” says Shen, who was born in
Hong Kong to parents of Chinese ancestry and received U.S.
citizenship in 2003.
Although always careful to ensure that his personal taste
in architecture does not affect his job to approve, deny, or ask
for changes to a proposal, he does let his preferences show in
the office furniture. An avid chair collector, he brought in
a Charles Eames chair and a Hans Wegner chair.
“Our job in the planning office is to make sure a
proposal for a building acknowledges and respects its place
within the larger urban fabric and supports and contributes to the city’s urban life and character,” says Shen,
sitting in his Aeron desk chair that was made by Herman
Miller and designed by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf.
“My colleagues and I have developed a set of principles
that seem to work pretty well. A colleague of mine can
start a design and development review process, and I can
join in later and be following the same themes my colleagues pursued,” says Shen, who was a lead planner of the
South Boston Waterfront, the Boston Convention and
Exhibition Center, the preservation and additions to Fenway Park, and Harvard’s new Boston campus.
Shen says an average day’s work consists of a plethora of
meetings inside City Hall with developers, planners, architects, and community activists; numerous phone conversations; and almost daily meetings with Mayor Menino in his
fifth-floor office. About twice a week, Shen attends community meetings to listen to citizens’ comments on upcoming
plans. He says he prefers these face-to-face interactions, waiting until around 6 p.m. to answer e-mails or review drawings.
He tries to leave the office for home by 8 p.m.
He shares that home with wife Christine Pilcavage, an
international development and public health adviser. They
married last June at the Saarinen Chapel on the MIT campus.
“We planned the wedding together. I designed the wedding
invitation, which included an abstract drawing I created of
the Harry Bertoia sculpture behind the altar in the MIT
chapel,” he says.
To take a break from his job, Shen spends time working on
a summer home in New Hampshire, which he and Christine
share with Mike Miele ’87, Shen’s freshman roommate, and
his family. Shen and Miele maintain a strong friendship.
When Shen walks the streets of Boston, he reminds himself that each of the structures around him is an artifact. “You
can learn something about the culture, the building process,
the client, and the architect, even if you only encountered the
building, and never saw the drawings or learned how it was
built. Some buildings deliberately negate or reject their role
in the city, others embrace it,” Shen says. “But to know that
this artifact was constructed and built according to principles
that were documented in drawings, makes architecture very
objective. There are many objective criteria you can use to
evaluate architecture as good or bad.
“If people criticize a decision I make on behalf of the public, instead of hearing people say, ‘Mr. Shen is just exercising
his opinions,’ I prefer to hear, ‘Mr. Shen is exercising his judgment that is based on a body of knowledge.’”
—Audree Penner
When Calamity Strikes...
ENGINEER NICHOLAS LEHMANN ’97 SPENDS MUCH OF HIS LIFE
AT DISASTER SCENES.
Just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade
Center, Nicholas Lehmann was there to provide on-site engineering support as contractors began to move mountains of
debris. Shortly after a steel cooling tower collapsed in Milford, Conn., he was on hand to figure out why it came crashing down, killing two workers. And when a parking garage
wall collapsed in Philadelphia last fall, Lehmann was soon on
the scene to determine what caused it to fail and how the wall
should be rebuilt.
“It’s never good if we are working on your building,” quips
Lehmann, 33, “because it generally means that something
bad has happened.”
For Lehmann, diagnosing what causes a building to collapse or figuring out how to shore up a troubled structure lies
at the heart of his engineering practice. These are the types of
projects he has worked on since joining Wiss, Janney, Elstner
Associates (WJE) in 1998, after graduating from Cornell University with a master’s degree in structural engineering.
Lehmann lives in Maple Shade, N.J., with his wife Erika
Krick ’98, a veterinary oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and works from WJE’s office in Princeton, N.J. An
enthusiastic weekend autocross racer, he says he enjoys the
challenges his profession provides: “No two structural problems are the same. One day, I might be working on a suspended scaffold platform, investigating the travertine marble
façade panels of the Solow Building in New York City; the
next day, I could be looking at the condition of a concrete
building after a fire, the next investigating decay in a wood
building or looking at hurricane damage to a brick structure.”
After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Lehmann flew
to Louisiana to analyze the storm’s destruction, representing his firm, which had contracts both with insurance
companies and property owners. For the insurance companies, Lehmann was charged with determining if the
damage wrought by Katrina on certain buildings was
caused by wind or flooding. Many policies covered only
wind damage.
For one property owner, Lehmann investigated whether
the concrete foundation for a housing project had survived the onslaught. The concrete was sound, and the
project moved forward.
Joseph Khan ’97, one of Lehmann’s college friends, says
that Lehmann’s work is a good fit for a guy who likes to solve
problems. “He’s good at figuring out who messed up to make
sure it doesn’t happen again,” says Khan, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Lehmann credits Swarthmore’s engineering program for
providing a solid, broad-based look at the field during his
undergraduate studies. He says that the program’s emphasis
on lab work in each engineering course helped him develop a
knack for technical writing, which is essential in his job.
“Our primary work product is a written report,” says
Lehmann. “Technical writing is not something you just pick
up. You have to be taught.”
Sometimes, Lehmann arrives on a job before a calamity
strikes, such as last fall, when his firm was hired by a New Jersey municipality to analyze the structural condition of a 70year-old, 110-foot–high water tower. Town officials were
worried about the rust, and one engineering firm, citing the
deteriorating steel and concrete foundation, had recommended tearing it down and building a new one, at the cost
of more than $1 million.
Lehmann’s firm was hired to provide a second opinion.
Bringing in a boom-lift, he was able to get up close to the
tank so he could scrape away the rust to assess the damage.
He used an ultrasonic thickness gauge to determine to what
extent the steel had corroded and also analyzed the cracks in
the concrete foundation.
His findings pleased the town fathers. The tower was
deemed structurally sound. Lehmann recommended a few
repairs and regular maintenance, thereby saving taxpayers
more than $700,000. “The corrosion looked bad from the
ground but was actually minimal,” Lehmann says. “And it
turned out that the foundation cracks were only superficial.”
—David McKay Wilson
Alumni Achievements
Eugene Lang ’38
has been named Citizen of the Year by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) in honor of his lifelong commitment to civic participation. “Eugene Lang is a shining example of what an individual citizen
can do to strengthen our country,” NCoC Chairman Michael Weiser said. “The son of immigrant parents
who came of age during the Great Depression, he became an extraordinarily successful businessman—and
he shared much of his success by ensuring that countless others were given an opportunity to succeed.” A
philanthropist, industrialist, and generous supporter of higher education, Lang created the now nationwide
I Have a Dream Program in 1981, which has guided many thousands of lower-income students through
their K–12 years with an assured college opportunity after high school graduation. More recently, he
founded Project Pericles, which encourages colleges and universities to teach social responsibility and participatory citizenship and in which Swarthmore and 19 other colleges play an active role. In 1996, Lang was
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton and, in 1990, he was designated as one of President George
H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light.”
Deborah Hacker Oakley ’58
was recognized by the University of Michigan (UM) with the establishment of the Deborah H. Oakley Professor of Nursing Chair for her work in women’s health research. Oakley, who retired as professor emerita
in 2002, served as interim director of the Healthy Asian Americans Project and continues to lead research
projects dealing with early detection of cancers. A UM faculty member for 25 years, Oakley was a major
contributor to the improvement of the quality of undergraduate research at the university. She worked
with colleagues to introduce more accurate measurement methods into the study of oral contraceptive use
and the study of maternity care. She also made a persuasive case for more sophisticated analytic techniques
in the field. Last year, Oakley made her ninth trip to China to complete a clinical trial of breast self-exam
education, the only screening method currently feasible for women in China.
Kenneth Turan ’67
recently received the 2008 Alumni Award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Turan is a film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and director
of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide and
served as the Times’ book review editor. Turan teaches film reviewing and nonfiction writing at the University of Southern California and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center. The author’s most recent books are Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made and Never
Coming to a Theater Near You. He is also the co-author of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty
Duke. Turan’s latest book Free For All, an oral history of Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare
Festival, is scheduled to be published in September.
William Ehrhart ’73,
a former Marine and award-winning poet and memoirist whose work has been strongly influenced by his
13-month tour of duty during the Vietnam War, recently received the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA)
Excellence in the Arts Award. VVA President John Rowan first came across Ehrhart’s work in the 1972 anthology Winning Hearts and Minds. “Since then,” says Rowan, “he has edited two exceptional volumes of
Vietnam veteran poetry, has produced three first-rate memoirs, and continues to write, much of which is
derived from his experiences fighting in Vietnam.” Last summer, Ehrhart was the featured poet in River
Poets Quarterly. His most recent books include Sleeping with the Dead; The Madness of It All: Essays on
War, Literature, and American Life; and Beautiful Wreckage: New & Selected Poems. Since 2002, he has
taught English and history at the Haverford School.
Alumni Achievements
Patricia Dilley ‘73
recently received the Rockefeller Foundation Innovation Award for her tireless work and innovative policy
proposals to strengthen Social Security for vulnerable groups. “She has spent a lifetime—as a congressional
staffer, a private practitioner, and an academic—immersed in Social Security and pensions,” Alicia Munnell,
professor and chair in management science at Boston College says. “If anybody can design workable policy
options to help vulnerable groups, she can.” A professor at the University of Florida’s Fredric G. Levin College of Law, Dilley has served on the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Social Security, the Committee on Ways and Means, and with the Social Security Administration. Her proposal
“Restoring Old Age Income Security for Low Wage Workers” was recognized by the National Academy of
Social Insur- ance as part of an initiative to generate social security options. She has also worked in private
practice, taught tax law at the University of Washington School of Law, Leiden University in the Netherlands,
and the Seattle University School of Law.
Susan Perkins Weston ’81
received the Vision Award from the Kentucky Association of School Councils (KASC) last fall. Weston, who
was executive director of KASC for 13 years, was honored for her years of service to education reform. An
attorney and education policy expert, Weston’s analysis of test score data identified some of Kentucky’s
earliest examples of high poverty, high-performance schools and has encouraged continuing attention to
achievement gap issues. The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence has published three of her
works as citizens’ guides to school-based decision-making, school budgets, and state assessment and accountability. Currently, she is an independent consultant working on Kentucky education issues, including
achievement and school finances. Weston has also worked for the Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate and the United States Department of Education.
Peter Vishton ’91
recently received a William and Mary College Alumni Fellowship Award, which recognizes outstanding
young faculty members. An associate professor of psychology, Vishton does his research in an unusual
laboratory—a former hospital, a block off campus, where he and his students perform magic tricks for
infants. Using colorful, handmade boxes and cylinders, he explores how young children use information
about the size, shape, and identity of objects as they plan and implement behaviors. His findings provide
a better understanding of how perception and action control develop over the first years of life. Vishton
also served as director of the National Science Foundation’s Developmental and Learning Sciences
Program.
Jeffrey Sugg ‘95
recently shared a 2008 Obie Award for set and projection design and a 2008 Louise Lortel Award for best
scenic design for the critically acclaimed new musical The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island with collaborator
Jim Findlay. A New York-based artist, designer, and technical adviser, Sugg also received a 2007 Bessie
Award for co-design of Must Don’t Whip Um. An early collaborator with the Pig Iron Theater Company in
Philadelphia, he designed sets and lighting for several of their early works. More recently, Sugg has collaborated with Findlay and Cynthia Hopkins (his wife and a renowned musician/performance artist in her
own right) in their company ACCINOSCO. They have twice been in residence at the College through the
Swarthmore Project in Theater and have recently returned from a European tour with Must Don’t Whip
Um. He has also worked with Moisés Kaufman, Laurie Anderson, and the Wooster Group. In 2005, he
taught the Theater Department’s first class in media and technology design.
q+a
HER PASSIONS ARE VOLLEYBALL AND TEACHING;
her philosophy—to maximize all opportunities. Harleigh Leach Chwastyk was just 24
and completing graduate studies at Smith
College when she was named head coach of
Swarthmore’s women’s volleyball team in
2002. While earning a master’s degree in
exercise and sports studies, she was also a
teaching fellow and assistant coach at Smith.
In 2005, Chwastyk, a regal six-feet tall,
became director of Swarthmore’s physical
education program. That year, she led the
volleyball team to its first-ever Centennial
Conference playoff victory. In the last seven
years, she has coached 11 all-conference and
20 all-conference academic selections.
From the sweltering final days of summer
through late fall, Chwastyk coaches the Garnet players; in the spring—she recruits and
coaches weekly youth camps and the nontraditional spring season. During the summer,
she runs the NIKE Volleyball Camp at
Swarthmore and is a head court coach for
the Cape Cod Volleyball Camp.
Chwastyk teaches physical education
classes, including Introduction to Orienteering. Students learn to read a compass and
map and by the end of the semester, they are
tramping through Crum Woods, reading
coordinates to find hidden markers.
Chwastyk has supervised Kids Night Out,
a program she started with Eric Wagner, the
men’s soccer coach. It provides local parents
with free time one Friday night a month—
and raises extra funds for College teams.
Chwastyk and her team also raise money
for breast cancer research by “Digging for a
Cure.” Chwastyk pitched the fundraiser to
other Centennial Conference volleyball
coaches three years ago. Players collect
pledges and donations and each team selects
one match in October in which to count
their “digs”—when a player passes the ball
that has been attacked by the opposition. In
the off season, Coach Chwastyk is often on
the court herself, playing competitive volleyball in the adult division of U.S.A. Volleyball.
Despite her busy schedule, Chwastyk recognizes that “it’s important to find a balance
in my life.” On May 24, she moved closer to
that goal when she married David, a six-foot,
six-inch former baseball player. The birth of
their first child in April should bring a whole
new kind of balance to her life.
80
It’s All About Volleyball
HARLEIGH LEACH CHWASTYK
By Susan Cousins Breen
swarthmore college bulletin
for two of my passions—playing volleyball and
contributing to an important cause for all
women. The day is special because women of all
ages and walks of life, including some cancer
survivors, participate—and I get to compete
with my volleyball friends in a sport we love.
We walk away knowing that we’ve contributed
to a worthwhile cause—the Connecticut Breast
Health Initiative—while competing at a high
level.
What is your guilty pleasure?
Ice cream and chocolate—two indulgences that
are great motivators to be active and fit and that
are so much easier to excuse now that I’m
regnant.
Women’s volleyball coach Harleigh Chwastyk
recently completed her seventh season as head
coach at Swarthmore, where she also directs the
physical education program. Chwastyk makes an
annual trip to her high school in upstate New York
to hone the skills of varsity and JV players.
Describe yourself in three words.
Organized. Passionate. Dedicated.
LEFT AND ABOVE: ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS; TOP: AURORA IMAGING
What’s your relationship with your players?
As a young head coach, I knew it was important
to establish the coach/player boundary, but I’m
still there for my players. I emphasize pride in
being a female athlete, and it is important to me
to know my players not just as athletes but as
people too. I’m part of their campus family—
they trust me and know they can talk to me.
january 2009
How did you become involved in fundraising for
breast cancer research?
During sophomore year, my college [Trinity
College] coach asked our volleyball team to
participate in a memorial volleyball tournament that she was hosting in honor of former
teammate Cathy D’Apice. Cathy was a fierce
competitor and was only 30 when she lost her
battle with breast cancer. Since 1998, I’ve played
in that tournament with different teams and
also coached teams who were participating. I
took the Swarthmore team in 2003.
Why is this event so important to you?
In a nutshell, the tournament provides an outlet
What makes you laugh?
My team and my family. This year’s eight players know how to have fun while working hard.
Life is so much better when you’re smiling or
laughing.
Were you a tomboy growing up?
Actually, I wasn’t. Although I was athletic—
thanks to my mother who inspired my brother
Kyle [Leach, Swarthmore’s director of sports
information] and me to play sports—I liked
being a girl. I was in high school when my
mother remarked that I swaggered like a jock; I
was shocked because I never thought of myself
as an athlete.
What would I be surprised to know about you?
That I love the outdoors. I like camping, hiking,
canoeing, and backpacking. My husband, Dave,
was speechless the first time he saw me whip a
tent into shape. Kyle always says, “If you ever
want to get lost in the woods, take Harleigh
with you.”
How did you and your husband, Dave, meet?
At the Irish Pub, a bar in Rittenhouse Square.
That’s also where Dave proposed to me. It was
the middle of Friday night happy hour and he
got down on one knee, with the ring in a shot
glass, and asked me to marry him.
How do you fit Dave into your schedule?
Dave is an athlete, too, and grew up with a dad
who is also a coach, so he understands my commitment to volleyball and my players. He’s one
of the team’s biggest fans and helps keep me
grounded. !
Let Swarthmore Help You Sleep at Night
MONROE BELL LOVES SWARTHMORE COLLEGE—
AND HE’S NEVER BEEN THERE
Monroe’s wife, Peggy Fraser Bell ’53, loved her alma mater.
And for the love of Peggy, Monroe has funded no fewer than
six Swarthmore charitable gift annuities. “It’s an easy way to
increase your retirement income,” he says, “and best of all, you
know what your guaranteed income will be for life.”
In fact, Monroe thinks so highly of gift annuities that he’s
become a self-confessed “fanatic” on the subject. “I promote
them as much as I can,” he says. “If you believe in Swarthmore,
if you want to benefit from your own resources and benefit the
College, consider gift annuities. I did, and I couldn’t be happier
with the outcome.”
In today’s turbulent
economic times, Swarthmore College
can offer you peace of mind.
Monroe Bell with his favorite
photo of his wife, Peggy ’53.
By establishing a Swarthmore Charitable Gift Annuity, you can
support the important educational mission of the College and,
at the same time, receive fixed-income payments for life. Best
of all, you can rest easy knowing that your payments are
secure, backed by the assets of the College.
Back in 1943, retired President Frank Adyelotte established
Swarthmore’s first gift annuity. Since then, generations of
alumni have slept well at night, knowing that the College has
never missed making an annuity payment.
For more information about how to create a Swarthmore
Charitable Gift Annuity, contact the Office of Gift Planning
toll free at (866) 526-4438 or by e-mail at giftplanning@swarthmore.edu.
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2009-01-01
The Swarthmore College Bulletin is the official alumni magazine of the college. It evolved from the Garnet Letter, a newsletter published by the Alumni Association beginning in 1935. After World War II, college staff assumed responsibility for the periodical, and in 1952 it was renamed the Swarthmore College Bulletin. (The renaming apparently had more to do with postal regulations than an editorial decision. Since 1902, the College had been calling all of its mailed periodicals the Swarthmore College Bulletin, with each volume spanning an academic year and typically including a course catalog issue and an annual report issue, with a varying number of other special issues.)
The first editor of the Swarthmore College Bulletin alumni issue was Kathryn “Kay” Bassett ’35. After a few years, Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49 was appointed editor and held the position for 36 years, during which she reshaped the mission of the magazine from focusing narrowly on Swarthmore College to reporting broadly on the college's impact on the world at large. Gillespie currently appears on the masthead as Editor Emerita.
Today, the quarterly Swarthmore College Bulletin is an award-winning alumni magazine sent to all alumni, parents, faculty, staff, friends of the College, and members of the senior class. This searchable collection spans every issue from 1935 to the present.
Swarthmore College
2009-01-01
62 pages
reformatted digital
The class notes section of The Bulletin has been extracted in this collection to protect the privacy of alumni. To view the complete version of The Bulletin, contact Friends Historical Library.