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a transformative presidency
swarthmore
swarthmore college
bulletin | april 2009
campus view
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
A slant of sun on a
copper dome, a purple
beech, and a wave of
Blue Wonder (Nepeta
racemosa). But it’s no
wonder at all—just
spring at Swarthmore.
parlor talk
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
I’LL NEVER FORGET
THE SATURDAY IN
DECEMBER 2000
when the Board
of Managers
decided to end
Swarthmore’s
football program.
A colleague called
from campus and
said, “You’d better
get up here.” That
evening, I covered a protest on the steps of Parrish Hall
and saw Coach Pete Alvanos weeping as he
stood at the microphone.
The next day, President Alfred H. Bloom
and Provost Jennie Keith (who chaired the
Athletics Review Committee that brought
the recommendation to the Board) had
planned a private meeting with student athletes to break the news. But because word
I remember thinking, “This could be
the beginning of the end of Al’s
presidency.” I was dead wrong;
there was so much more to
accomplish in the eight-and-a-half
years that remained.
had already spread on campus—and
beyond—the private session became a raucous public circus in the Tarble Pavilion with
hundreds of people, TV cameras, and angry
shouting from players and their families.
This was not the sort of discourse that
Bloom had in mind and, in the end, he left
grim-faced and shaken. I remember thinking, “This could be the beginning of the end
of Al’s presidency.” I was dead wrong; there
was so much more to accomplish in the
eight-and-a-half years that remained.
During his second year as president, I
wrote a profile of Al that summed up his
qualities in four ways: connection, community, change, and the life of the mind.
(“The Essential Alfred H. Bloom,” May
1993 Bulletin)
About connection, I wrote: “For the gregarious, voluble 47-year-old president, connections are easily made and come in many
different forms. There are intellectual, professional, and social connections, but most
important for Bloom are the personal ones.
He seems to make them with everyone.”
Regarding community: “For Bloom, community doesn’t end at the edge of campus.
The College’s ever-widening circles include
Chester and Philadelphia and, ultimately,
America and the world. Bloom’s idea of community is diverse, multiracial, and multicultural. It works hard to embrace those who
have been outside society’s mainstream.”
About change: “Bloom is committed to
developing in Swarthmore students the ability to be ‘thoughtful, sensitive agents of social
change.’ He wants the College’s graduates to
... ‘put their intellectual skills to the task of
bringing about a better world, no matter
what career path they choose.’”
And the life of the mind: “Ultimately, he
suggests, it is ideas, not skills, that will move
society forward.... He is an intellectual, a
man for whom learning and the exchange of
ideas are among the principal joys of life.”
These essentials have remained remarkably constant throughout his presidency—
and most likely since he joined the faculty 36
years ago as an assistant professor of linguistics. By almost any measure, he has had a
remarkably successful presidency—“A Transformative Presidency,” as Lawrence Schall ’75
writes (p. 26). We congratulate Al and wish
him every future success as he takes on the
new challenge of leading a new New York
University campus in Abu Dhabi. No one
seems better qualified for this task.
In fact, at the close of my 1993 interview
with Al, I asked about his intellectual interests. What would he be doing if he had the
time? His reply: “Learning Arabic.”
—Jeffrey Lott
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
staff photographer
Eleftherios Kostans
desktop publishing specialist
Audree Penner
publications intern
Katie Becker ’10
administrative assistant
Janice Merrill-Rossi
editor emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
contacting swarthmore college
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Or e-mail: alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.
The Swarthmore College Bulletin
(ISSN 0888-2126), of which this is volume
CVI, number 4, is published in August, October, January, April, and July by Swarthmore
College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA
19081-1390. Periodicals postage paid at
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changes to Swarthmore College Bulletin, 500
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©2009 Swarthmore College. Printed in U.S.A.
ON THE COVER: Alfred H. Bloom will leave office on June 30 after 18 years as Swarthmore’s president.
Story on page 26. Photograph by Eleftherios Kostans.
2
swarthmore college bulletin
in this issue
features
34
36
22: Skyscrapers and Emptiness
Polish theater director Michal Zadara ’99
uses his art to preserve the intellectual
traditions of Polish-Jewish culture.
By Eli Epstein-Deutsch ’10
26: A Transformative Presidency
Alfred H. Bloom’s vision for Swarthmore
is anchored in the College’s core values—
rigorous academics and social
responsibility.
By Lawrence Schall ’75
26
36: Strong Voices, Strong Minds,
Strong Spirits
At 15, the Chester Children’s Chorus
is much more than a singing group.
By Jeffrey Lott
22
34
april 2009
34: Word Domination
Dorothea Lisa Gillim ’86 inspires
eloquence and laughter with WordGirl.
By Katie Becker ’10
3
in this issue
departments
profiles
5: LETTERS
Readers voice their opinions.
48: Heat from the Earth
Sam Ashelman ’37 wants to produce factorybuilt houses that will be heated geothermally.
By Elizabeth Redden ’05
20: FACULTY
EXPERT
License to
Imagine
The tree of history is nourished
by dreams and
stories as well as
by facts.
By Timothy Burke
20
43: CONNECTIONS
Alumni are encouraged to ratify a new slate
of Alumni Council members.
80
64: Sailboat Racing—Fun But Serious
Business
“ ... hours of incredible boredom, interrupted by moments of stark terror.”
By Susan Cousins Breen
57: IN MEMORIAM
Farewell to cherished friends and classmates
60: BOOKS + ARTS
The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and
Adventure in the 25 Years After 50
By Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot ’66
Reviewed by Jennie Keith
76: Maternal Health Matters.
Ann Starrs ’84 founded an organization in
which women help women.
By Michael Lott
68: IN MY LIFE
On and Off the Paternoster
By Jeffrey Scheuer ’75
80: Q + A
Rebel Energy: George Lakey
By Carol Brévart-Demm
46: CLASS NOTES
Alumni share their news and activities.
JIM GRAHAM
Rebecca Chopp Watch Rebecca Chopp
address College community members in
Eldridge Commons after being named
President-designate by the College’s Board
of Managers on Feb. 21.
media.swarthmore.edu/video/?p=157
Talking Sustainability Listen as Mark Alan Hughes ’81 discusses his work as Philadelphia’s first sustainability director
and its use as a model for Swarthmore’s green profile.
media.swarthmore.edu/featured_events/?p=58
A Scandal in Bohemia Watch Nathalie Anderson, professor
of English literature and librettist, and Tom Whitman ‘82,
associate professor of music and composer, discuss their
new opera. media.swarthmore.edu/video/?p=151
4
K at i e Be ck e r ’1 0 , an honors psychology major with a
minor in French, is an intern in the Publications Office. She spent the fall 2008
semester studying in Grenoble, France, and intends to
return there after graduation to teach English for a
year. The Delaware native
plans to pursue a career in
clinical psychology with the
goal of becoming a cognitive therapist. “Word Domination” is Becker’s first
article for the Bulletin.
CLAY GOVIER
Swarthmore Colle ge Bullet in on the Web: This issue and
more than 10 years of archives are at
www.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
On the site, you will also find:
contributors
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
on the web
64
El i za be th R e dde n ’ 0 5 is a
reporter with InsideHigherEd.com in Washington,
D.C., where she writes
primarily on matters of international education and
religion. Last August, she
covered the 2008 Democratic National Convention
in Denver. An honors English literature major and
psychology minor, she
spends much of her free
time writing and reading
nonfiction, in all its many
forms.
LELAND HOLDER
7: COLLECTION
Fumata bianca! Swarthmore has its first
woman president! Read about her and the
latest news of the world she’ll be entering.
L a wr e nce S cha l l ’ 75 , president of Oglethorpe University since July 2005, spent
14 years serving his alma
mater—as associate vice
president; vice president for
facilities and services; and,
finally, vice president for
administration. A former
civil rights lawyer, Schall
holds a J.D. and an Ed.D
from the University of
Pennsylvania, where he
served as co-director of the
Executive Doctorate Program in Higher Education.
swarthmore college bulletin
letters
cernable and knowable force in the world.
Intelligent men and women throughout
history have debated these questions, from
Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and David Hume
to Elizabeth Anscombe and Richard Rorty,
but during my years at Swarthmore, no faculty member publicly offered radical alternatives to what most students and faculty
members took for granted. Having such professors would give Swarthmore students the
kind of experience that those at Amherst and
Princeton have: a taste of real philosophical
and metaphysical diversity, which only deepens one’s education.
Nathaniel Peters ’07
New York
A WELCOME CHANGE
NOBODY IS “PRO-ABORTION”
I am writing in response to the article, “A
Mind on the Right” (January Bulletin), which
profiled conservative academic Robert
George ’77. I don’t care how smart, well-educated, or well-credentialed someone is, anyone who can say “the most extreme proabortion legislator” is either being intentionally misleading or just doesn’t get it. No one
is pro-abortion. They are pro-choice. That
means not that they think abortion is a good
thing, but that they believe that the decision
whether or not to bear a child should be
made in private between a woman and her
doctor—and not by the government.
Judy Fletcher ’72
Bronx, N.Y.
SWARTHMORE’S LACUNA
It was interesting to hear Robert George talk
about how much his students learned when
he co-taught a course with Cornel West.
Sadly, Swarthmore deprives its students of
such an experience, because no professor
publicly espouses a reasoned philosophy as
different from the status quo as George’s.
This remains a lacuna that the College
should fill with men and women who will
force students to question the beliefs and
presuppositions that form the skeleton of
everything else they believe—to question not
just assumptions of race, privilege, and sexuality, but whether truth really is relative,
whether there are natural laws written in the
universe, or whether matter is the only disapril 2009
I could identify very well with your succinct
story about Robert George’s journey from
liberal to conservative, a journey that surprisingly started at Swarthmore and continued later. I also arrived at Swarthmore full of
liberal sentiments imparted to me by highschool teachers, pastors, and friends.
Through study and a deeper discovery of
Christianity, I converted to Catholicism in
graduate school and later entered a Cistercian monastery after earning a doctorate.
Today, I am happy to be a monk, teaching
church history to seminarians. The story
about George inspired me, first because of
his intellectual prowess, but even more
because he is able to communicate the conservative intellectual tradition to today’s
college students in a compelling way. Thanks
for a welcome change in story topics.
Volker Schachenmayr ’91
Heiligenkreuz, Austria
NO MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVE
My daughter attends Swarthmore, and it’s
clear that the bent of the College is towards a
liberal view of politics. The Swarthmore College Bulletin has every right to slant in any
political direction the College chooses, but if
“A Mind on the Right” was intended to
somehow balance the liberal politics of the
publication, it did not succeed.
Paul Wachter ’97 is a skilled wordsmith,
but his opinions show through, especially
when he writes that “following Barack
Obama’s landslide and rampant infighting
within the Republican ranks, the future of
Professor George comes off as an
intelligent and charming man, but
he’s not what you’d call a mainstream
conservative. In fact, his views seem
to come out of deep “right field.”
I haven’t heard natural law talked
about since I attended Notre Dame
35 years ago.
conservatism in this country is uncertain.”
Obama received just 53 percent of the vote
(hardly a landslide), and there was far more
“infighting” between Obama and Hillary
Clinton than among Republicans.
Professor George comes off as an intelligent and charming man, but he’s not what
you’d call a mainstream conservative. In fact,
his views seem to come out of deep “right
field.” I haven’t heard natural law talked
about since I attended Notre Dame 35 years
ago. Still, I would have liked a more lucid justification for George’s views on natural law.
But Wachter tells us, “It’s impossible to give
these issues and George’s views a fair hearing
in such limited space”—just before a very
long paragraph on George’s ideas about sex. I
assure you that most conservatives—and
Catholics—would strongly disagree with
George’s medieval views of sex.
The net effect of the article was to paint
conservatives as a wacky fringe element of
society. Hardly balanced.
Dan Baker
Effort of the Poconos, Pa.
UNEXAMINED ASSUMPTIONS
I never thought much of natural law. It supposedly undergirds ethical systems with selfevident truths. For example, stealing is
wrong, according to natural law, because it is
inherently destructive of personal or community relations. This is presumably more
elemental than saying that stealing is wrong
because it is against custom, statutory law, or
divine command.
Natural law usually involves unexamined
5
letters
assumptions. For instance, we may use natural law to condemn white men for stealing
Native American land, without questioning
whether the taking was theft when the Indians did not think of land as property. Similarly, when the Cheyenne Indians took one
another’s horses without asking, it was theft
in white men’s eyes but, at worst, an inconvenience in the Cheyenne worldview. Stealing an enemy’s horses or weapons may actually benefit one’s community. If this is too
tribal a definition of “community”—if the
ideal community includes all tribes, the
whole human race—why doesn’t it include
other species, too? We steal from bees all the
time and think well of the business. Natural
law diction needs to be deconstructed, even
though deconstruction undermines natural
law’s appeal.
Another problem is that natural law usually does not come from nature. For example, nature depends upon theft, as any mosquito will tell you. Natural law ought to be
called “rational law,” but, in this case, tradition trumps rationality.
Natural law looks innocent on the surface,
but it always turns out to be in the service of
one predetermined ideology or another,
whether it be animal rights, Indian rights,
property rights, civil liberty, monarchy, or
Roman Catholicism. In Professor George’s
case, it is evidently the last. Catholicism
makes use of natural law to support established doctrine, not to challenge it. The
Church uses natural law to oppose contraceptives and abortion but not to oppose
regional or global overpopulation.
Richard Frost ’51
Santa Fe, N.M.
THE COBBS LEGEND
Only someone from the Class of 1982 (Amy
Singer, “Letters,” January Bulletin) might be
horrified or bemused that men weren’t
allowed in women’s dorm rooms after 9 p.m.
From 1959 to 1963 at least, it was only from
2 to 6 on Sundays and the door had to be
open—six inches it was said—although that
may have been a joke that turned into a tradition, as was the supposed requirement of
“at least three feet on the floor.” Those “do it
twice” lines were attributed to Dean Cobbs
so often that I almost believe, thinking back
40–50 years, that she actually said them to
6
Dean Cobbs was ever the constant
reminder of politeness, courtesy, and
appropriate behavior for a maturing
female person. It was important for
this Northerner to have met an educated Southern lady.
me when I raised the question as a member
of the College Judiciary Committee. In any
case, it was one of her signature lines, and it’s
intriguing to know that it existed as far back
as 1952. She invariably had a touch of the
decorously but sympathetically ribald when
we discussed the various malfeasances of students and what to do about them—a refreshing contrast to the harder line always taken
by William Prentice ’37, then dean of men.
Leo Braudy ’63
Los Angeles
P.S. “Susie P.” was a nickname for Dean
Cobbs that derived from the 1957 Dale
Hawkins song Susie Q, covered by the Everly
Brothers and (after our time) by the Rolling
Stones.
MESSY ON THE INSIDE
The late John Lewis ’67 told me the following
anecdote. He was called into Dean Cobbs’
office for a little chat because he had been
neglecting his studies. As she put him on academic probation, she said, “John, you had a
beard last semester. It is my observation that
people who are messy on the outside are
messy on the inside.” Somehow this quote, as
written, seems flat. Dean Cobbs’s Southern
drawl isn’t there. (“It is mah obsuhvation...”)
When I moved to Virginia in 1973, I kept
meeting people who sounded just like her
and it transported me right back to my
college years.
Elizabeth Probasco Kutchai ’66
Charlottesville, Va.
DOING IT AGAIN
Although I attended Swarthmore six years
after Amy Singer’s mother, perhaps I can
shed some light: 1. “A soft Southern drawl”
was indeed Dean Cobbs’s natural voice. 2.
The rule then was very distinctly no visiting,
period, except for occasional, very limited
weekend open-house days, when the door
had to be open and all parties needed to have
at least one foot on the floor. (I was told
things were a little looser in the Mary Lyons
dorms.) Regarding curfews and sign-in times
for women, as I heard it, the student in question asked Susan Cobbs, “Dean Cobbs, why
do we have to sign in by midnight? I mean, if
we want to do anything, we’ll have done it by
then.” To which, according to what I heard,
Cobbs drawled, “Honey, we’re not tryin’ to
stop you from doin’ it. We’re trying to stop
you from doin’ it again.”
Robert Freedman ’58
New York
AND AGAIN!
When I was a student, men were allowed to
visit women’s dorms only on Sunday until, as
I remember, 6 p.m., and the door of the
room visited had to be open. A delegation
went to Susan Cobbs to request an extension
of visiting hours until 6:30 p.m. and argued,
What could we do between 6 and 6:30 that
we couldn’t do before six?
“Well,” Dean Cobbs was said to have
drawled, “you could do it again.”
Jacqueline Lapidus ’62
Brighton, Mass.
THE CONSTANT REMINDER
Dean Cobbs was ever the constant reminder
of politeness, courtesy, and appropriate
behavior for a maturing female person. In
Singer’s letter, I noted the use of “nothin’” to
approximate her Southern accent. She was
educated and would never have said “nothin’”—it was just hard to hear the final g
through her cultured Southern accent.
It was important for this Northerner to
have met an educated Southern lady. I held
on to my cultural biases for many more years
but can appreciate that experience better
now that I am in the South.
Sally Vexler Klein ’62
Gainesville, Fla.
P.S. I read and re-read Singer’s letter. It took a
minute or two to realize what was wrong. I
remember her as Susan Cobbs, not Cobb. So
does my Halcyon.
So does the whole wide world—except the
editors of the Bulletin, who regret the error.
swarthmore college bulletin
letters
assumptions. For instance, we may use natural law to condemn white men for stealing
Native American land, without questioning
whether the taking was theft when the Indians did not think of land as property. Similarly, when the Cheyenne Indians took one
another’s horses without asking, it was theft
in white men’s eyes but, at worst, an inconvenience in the Cheyenne worldview. Stealing an enemy’s horses or weapons may actually benefit one’s community. If this is too
tribal a definition of “community”—if the
ideal community includes all tribes, the
whole human race—why doesn’t it include
other species, too? We steal from bees all the
time and think well of the business. Natural
law diction needs to be deconstructed, even
though deconstruction undermines natural
law’s appeal.
Another problem is that natural law usually does not come from nature. For example, nature depends upon theft, as any mosquito will tell you. Natural law ought to be
called “rational law,” but, in this case, tradition trumps rationality.
Natural law looks innocent on the surface,
but it always turns out to be in the service of
one predetermined ideology or another,
whether it be animal rights, Indian rights,
property rights, civil liberty, monarchy, or
Roman Catholicism. In Professor George’s
case, it is evidently the last. Catholicism
makes use of natural law to support established doctrine, not to challenge it. The
Church uses natural law to oppose contraceptives and abortion but not to oppose
regional or global overpopulation.
Richard Frost ’51
Santa Fe, N.M.
THE COBBS LEGEND
Only someone from the Class of 1982 (Amy
Singer, “Letters,” January Bulletin) might be
horrified or bemused that men weren’t
allowed in women’s dorm rooms after 9 p.m.
From 1959 to 1963 at least, it was only from
2 to 6 on Sundays and the door had to be
open—six inches it was said—although that
may have been a joke that turned into a tradition, as was the supposed requirement of
“at least three feet on the floor.” Those “do it
twice” lines were attributed to Dean Cobbs
so often that I almost believe, thinking back
40–50 years, that she actually said them to
6
Dean Cobbs was ever the constant
reminder of politeness, courtesy, and
appropriate behavior for a maturing
female person. It was important for
this Northerner to have met an educated Southern lady.
me when I raised the question as a member
of the College Judiciary Committee. In any
case, it was one of her signature lines, and it’s
intriguing to know that it existed as far back
as 1952. She invariably had a touch of the
decorously but sympathetically ribald when
we discussed the various malfeasances of students and what to do about them—a refreshing contrast to the harder line always taken
by William Prentice ’37, then dean of men.
Leo Braudy ’63
Los Angeles
P.S. “Susie P.” was a nickname for Dean
Cobbs that derived from the 1957 Dale
Hawkins song Susie Q, covered by the Everly
Brothers and (after our time) by the Rolling
Stones.
MESSY ON THE INSIDE
The late John Lewis ’67 told me the following
anecdote. He was called into Dean Cobbs’
office for a little chat because he had been
neglecting his studies. As she put him on academic probation, she said, “John, you had a
beard last semester. It is my observation that
people who are messy on the outside are
messy on the inside.” Somehow this quote, as
written, seems flat. Dean Cobbs’s Southern
drawl isn’t there. (“It is mah obsuhvation...”)
When I moved to Virginia in 1973, I kept
meeting people who sounded just like her
and it transported me right back to my
college years.
Elizabeth Probasco Kutchai ’66
Charlottesville, Va.
DOING IT AGAIN
Although I attended Swarthmore six years
after Amy Singer’s mother, perhaps I can
shed some light: 1. “A soft Southern drawl”
was indeed Dean Cobbs’s natural voice. 2.
The rule then was very distinctly no visiting,
period, except for occasional, very limited
weekend open-house days, when the door
had to be open and all parties needed to have
at least one foot on the floor. (I was told
things were a little looser in the Mary Lyons
dorms.) Regarding curfews and sign-in times
for women, as I heard it, the student in question asked Susan Cobbs, “Dean Cobbs, why
do we have to sign in by midnight? I mean, if
we want to do anything, we’ll have done it by
then.” To which, according to what I heard,
Cobbs drawled, “Honey, we’re not tryin’ to
stop you from doin’ it. We’re trying to stop
you from doin’ it again.”
Robert Freedman ’58
New York
AND AGAIN!
When I was a student, men were allowed to
visit women’s dorms only on Sunday until, as
I remember, 6 p.m., and the door of the
room visited had to be open. A delegation
went to Susan Cobbs to request an extension
of visiting hours until 6:30 p.m. and argued,
What could we do between 6 and 6:30 that
we couldn’t do before six?
“Well,” Dean Cobbs was said to have
drawled, “you could do it again.”
Jacqueline Lapidus ’62
Brighton, Mass.
THE CONSTANT REMINDER
Dean Cobbs was ever the constant reminder
of politeness, courtesy, and appropriate
behavior for a maturing female person. In
Singer’s letter, I noted the use of “nothin’” to
approximate her Southern accent. She was
educated and would never have said “nothin’”—it was just hard to hear the final g
through her cultured Southern accent.
It was important for this Northerner to
have met an educated Southern lady. I held
on to my cultural biases for many more years
but can appreciate that experience better
now that I am in the South.
Sally Vexler Klein ’62
Gainesville, Fla.
P.S. I read and re-read Singer’s letter. It took a
minute or two to realize what was wrong. I
remember her as Susan Cobbs, not Cobb. So
does my Halcyon.
So does the whole wide world—except the
editors of the Bulletin, who regret the error.
swarthmore college bulletin
collection
The Final
Interview
REBECCA CHOPP WILL
BECOME SWARTHMORE’S
14TH PRESIDENT.
JIM GRAHAM
On Saturday, Feb. 21, at about 10:30 a.m.,
Rebecca Chopp, president of Colgate University, chatted amicably with Swarthmore’s President Alfred H. Bloom in the Kohlberg Hall
faculty lounge. As the choice of the Presidential Search Committee, Chopp was about to
meet the entire Board of Managers for the first
time. She seemed cool and relaxed as she
talked with Bloom, his wife Peggi, and other
members of President Bloom’s senior staff.
Her husband, Fred Thibodeau, stood a few
feet away, introducing himself to Jim Bock ’90,
dean of admissions; Stephen Bayer, vice president for development and alumni relations;
and others.
A few minutes after the Blooms departed
for Courtney Smith House, Board Chair Barbara Mather ’65 came to escort Chopp to the
nearby Scheuer Room, where the Board sat in
near silence. As she entered the room, Chopp
april 2009
got a quick smile and handshake from Neil
Grabois ’57, who served as Colgate’s president
from 1988 to 1999. Chopp then sat down
between Mather and Tom Spock ’78, chair of
the Presidential Search Committee, on one
side of a large square of tables.
This was the final interview of the final
candidate after months of searching, vetting,
and deep conversations about who would be
Swarthmore’s next president.
Introducing Chopp, Mather called her
“clearly, far and away our best choice both
because of her experience and values.” Then
Chopp made a brief statement before taking
questions from the Managers.
“As a scholar of higher education,” she
began, “I keep a special folder that I call ‘The
Heart of the Liberal Arts.’ Inside are a small
number of essays and speeches that have
struck me over the years, that sum up the lib-
eral arts. Most come from people like John
Dewey or Maxine Green. But one essay that’s
been in that folder for several years now is
titled ‘The Meaning of Swarthmore.’ (See the
Bulletin Web site for this essay.) It’s just four
or five pages, with some important phrases in
bold, like ‘the quest for knowledge,’ ‘a lifelong
learning community,’ and ‘a tradition of excellence.’ Those phrases dance through my mind
as I sit here. I am so excited to join this community because of your values, because of that
tradition of excellence.
“One of my avocations is the study of the
abolition movement, and one of my great
heroes is Lucretia Mott, who can arguably be
called the founder of women’s activism in the
United States. To know that she was also
among the founders of Swarthmore gives me
great joy, and I join you with a commitment
to having a deliberative and diverse communi7
collection
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JIM GRAHAM
ty—something that is more important than
ever in this new global century.
“In an essay in Daedalus a few years ago,”
Chopp concluded with a nod to Eugene
Lang ’38, “Gene Lang wrote that the philosophy of the liberal arts and the philosophy of
democracy are deeply intertwined and that it
is the responsibility of liberal arts colleges to
continue the long tradition of educating
people who will assume leadership in democratic societies. Our world is going through
lots of changes right now, and it’s so important for Swarthmore to continue this
mission.”
Mather then opened the floor for questions from the Managers, one of whom
asked Chopp, “What is the most surprising
thing you have learned about Swarthmore?”
“In many ways,” she replied, “it has fit my
own dreams and hopes, but even though I
knew it would be true, your clear practices of
thorough, deep deliberation and thinking far
exceeded any expectations I had. You know,
Mr. Lang is a really hard questioner!”
With that, the Managers went into executive session to reach a decision on Swarthmore’s new president. Chopp stood with several members of the search committee who
were not Managers in the sunny corridor
overlooking the Isabelle Bennett Cosby ’28
Courtyard for what seemed like an eternity
but was, in reality, just a few minutes.
Applause emanated from behind the doors
of the Scheuer Room, the door swung open,
and Swarthmore’s 14th president entered to
a warm welcome.
—Jeffrey Lott
Breadth and Depth
HOW THE SEARCH COMMITTEE FOUND REBECCA CHOPP.
In an interview with the Bulletin on Feb. 24, three days after the Board of Managers selected
Rebecca Chopp as the College’s 14th president, search committee chair Thomas Spock ’78
described the applicant pool as “broad and deep.” Swarthmore’s presidency attracted many applicants. Here’s how the choice was made.
Bulletin: How were the members of the search committee chosen?
Spock: [Board Chair] Barbara Mather [’65] consulted with other Managers and looked at historical precedent before deciding on the composition of the committee. She settled on four
Managers (in addition to herself), three faculty members, two students, one other alumnus,
and one member of the College staff. Barbara appointed the Board members and the staff
and alumni representatives. The Committee on Faculty Procedures selected the three faculty
members—one from each of the academic divisions—and the students were appointed by
the Student Council.
Were they expected to represent their own constituencies?
The Board’s charge to the committee stipulated that although we wanted representatives from
all major College constituencies, these members were not appointed to advocate the interests
of their own constituent groups but rather to consider the interests of the entire College community. They did that without fail. In fact, all of the committee members performed
admirably and put an enormous amount of effort into the search. We became an extremely
tight-knit group, able to trust each other implicitly while feeling free to express our honest
opinions.
Why did the search committee observe such strict confidentiality?
At Swarthmore, it’s in our nature to get input from as many people as possible, and every
committee member chafed under the need to keep our work so confidential. The idea of an
open process, with a parade of candidates making public appearances, is very attractive in
theory. But in reality, the candidate pool we wanted did not allow for that. You cannot attract
high-profile candidates if it’s known that they are pursuing a new job. None of the strongest
candidates in our pool would have applied had we not promised confidentiality throughout
the process.
President-designate Rebecca Chopp addresses members of the College community on Feb. 21,
the day she was selected by the Board of Managers to be Swarthmore’s next president.
8
swarthmore college bulletin
Can you describe the pool of candidates? Was there sufficient diversity?
We had applications from more than a dozen sitting presidents of other institutions. There
were provosts and deans from the biggest-name colleges and research universities in the
country. It was very gratifying that Swarthmore was attracting this caliber of people. From
the very beginning, we did everything possible to make sure we had a very diverse pool. In
this we were successful enough that we felt we had the luxury of sitting back and deciding on
the best person without worrying about race, gender, or ethnicity.
How did you narrow the field?
In October and November, we thoroughly discussed about 90 applications from the bestqualified candidates, eventually identifying about a dozen whom we wanted to interview in
person. And for two days in December, the entire committee conducted 90-minute interviews
with each. We then made a lengthy series of reference calls. We talked with board chairs, faculty members, students, colleagues—anyone who could tell us more about how they worked
and were regarded in their institutions. We ended up with three finalists, each of whom we
felt was fully qualified to be Swarthmore’s next president.
Were the finalists seen by anyone outside the search committee?
At this critical point, we knew we needed input from other members of the College community. Each finalist met for 90 minutes with a panel of 13 faculty members and for an hour
with a group of 10 students. Members of the search committee observed these meetings and
thoroughly debriefed the panelists. The final three also met members of the president’s senior
staff, who were in turn debriefed by the committee. By the end of this process, each finalist
had met with about 45 members of the College community.
When did it appear that you had reached consensus about Rebecca Chopp?
After all of these meetings with members of the community, the search committee met one
last time with each of the three finalists, then began to deliberate. We had three very strong
candidates, each of whom would have made a great president. But it didn’t take long to reach
a consensus that we had someone special in Dr. Chopp.
—Jeffrey Lott
Rebecca Chopp at a Glance
• Selected as Swarthmore’s 14th president,
Feb. 21, 2009
• Will take office July 1
• First woman to hold the job
Career
• President, Colgate University, 2002–2009
• Dean, Yale Divinity School, 2001–2002
• Provost and Executive Vice President
for Academic Affairs, Emory University,
1997–2001
• Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs,
Candler School of Theology, Emory
University, 1993–1997
• Professor of Theology, Emory University,
1986–1997
• Professor, University of Chicago Divinity
School, 1982–1986
• Ordained by the United Methodist Church,
1977
april 2009
Education
• Ph.D., University of Chicago Divinity School,
1983
• M.Div., St. Paul School of Theology, 1977
• B.A., Kansas Wesleyan University, 1974
Books
• Saving Work: Feminist Practices of Theological Education
• The Power to Speak: Feminism, Language,
God
• The Praxis of Suffering: An Interpretation
of Liberation and Political Theologies
Personal
• Born Salina, Kan. Age 57
• Married to Fred Thibodeau, a former
fundraiser in higher education and also an
ordained Methodist minister who has served
a parish in Hamilton, N.Y.
Chopp has been president of Colgate University
since 2002. She and her husband, Fred Thibodeau,
met the faculty and staff and some students at an
informal reception.
He plans to retire in June 2009.
• Children: Chopp’s son Nate is 32.
Thibodeau has two sons, Matt (35) and
Mike (30).
• Chopp is an avid reader of “fiction, philosophy, history, and biographies.” She loves to
hike and works out “at least six days a week.”
Her guilty pleasures: an occasional Hostess
Snowball and ice cream.
• Thibodeau plans to become involved in a
church in the Swarthmore community.
Chopp is looking forward to visiting the
Friends Meeting House on campus.
To learn more about President-designate Chopp
and watch her first public address on campus,
visit www.swarthmore.edu/newpresident.
9
collection
At its February meeting, Swarthmore’s
Board of Managers usually approves the
College’s budget for the upcoming fiscal
year that begins on July 1. But this year, the
Board decided to consider the 2009–2010
budget in phases.
On Feb. 21, the Board made decisions on
student charges, enrollment, financial aid,
and capital projects. It deferred decisions on
the remainder of the budget, including
compensation and departmental budgets,
until its May meeting.
According to Vice President for Finance
and Treasurer Suzanne Welsh, the Managers
wanted to have “as much information as
possible about the economy and its impact
on the endowment, students’ and families’
financial situations, and our donors’ ability
to give” before finalizing next year’s budget.
Student charges for the academic year
2009–2010 will rise 3.76 percent—the lowest increase in 10 years. Total charges for
tuition, student activities, room, and board
will be $49,600. The Board reaffirmed its
2007 decision to give “loan-free” financial
aid awards to all aided students. Suggested
summer earnings and term-time work components of financial aid awards will remain
the same as the current fiscal year.
The target for on-campus enrollment
will be 1,406 students, an increase of 16.
The target for the entering Class of 2013
will be 390 students. The College also
expects to accept 27 transfer students in the
upper classes, mostly sophomores.
The Board approved a significant reduction in capital spending for facilities projects over the next three years. In 2009–2010,
facilities projects are expected to be $3.3
million, more than a $5 million reduction
from the current fiscal year.
“Because the endowment continues to
pay for the largest portion of the budget,”
Welsh said, “the decline in the value of the
endowment necessitates a decline in the
dollars available to support the budget. Even
10
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
Board Postpones
Key Budget
Decisions
with reductions in the budget and capital
spending, the endowment spending rate
will increase to a level of slightly under 6
percent—the highest spending rate in the
College’s history. Because of our conservative endowment spending policy, the Board
is willing to have a higher spending rate for
the short term while we see how this economic crisis unfolds and develop carefully
thought-out plans to respond.”
In May, the Board will approve salaries
and noncompensation department budgets,
which together account for more than 80
percent of the College’s budget. “Salary
freezes for faculty and staff are under strong
consideration,” Welsh said. “We will also
seek savings in noncompensation budgets
wherever possible.”
—Jeffrey Lott
FOCUSING ON THE CLAY
There’s nothing quite so elemental as a
lump of wet clay—or so magical as seeing
skilled hands turn that spinning lump into a
beautiful vessel. Doug Herren, studio technician for the Art Department, is a teacher of
this magic, which a dozen students in this
spring’s class The Potter’s Wheel variously
describe as “very physical,” “a little stressful,”
and “a pretty steep learning curve.” The first
assignment, just completed, was to make four
six-inch tall cylinders and four cups with
handles. Today’s task is to make a bowl.
Potters call working on the wheel “throwing,” and Herren, who demonstrates technique at the beginning of each class, says,
“Learning to throw is hard. You need to build
up dexterity and strength. It’s all about getting hands-on in the very first class.” For nine
years, he taught part time at Rowan University and is happy to be full-time at Swarthmore, where he works primarily in the clay
studio but also supports other Art Department faculty and students with their projects.
He’s serving as a visiting assistant professor
this year because Professor of Studio Art Syd
Carpenter is on leave.
swarthmore college bulletin
IS
DIANE MATT
green power
TOWN GREEN
HORTICULTURAL CREATIVITY
HARVESTS REWARDS
The Potter’s Wheel is the first art course
for Ben Hopkins ’09, a history major and
economics minor now in his last semester
at Swarthmore. He calls it “a nice way to
relieve stress—to blank out and become
thoughtless for a couple hours.” Then he’s
off to multivariable calculus or advanced
econometrics.
The studio is open 24 hours a day. That
suits many students, who like to come in
late at night, turn up some music, and
throw. “It’s relaxing compared to my other
classes, but I was a little nervous,” says Alexis Hickman ’11. “I had never taken a course
like this before—even in high school.
Everything I throw is a little uneven.”
Senior psychobiology major Juliana
Macri found the wheel particularly daunting. “The first time was disastrous,” she
says. But as she learns, she says, her mind
“gets really focused on the clay and what it’s
doing. I’m a perfectionist, so I spend a lot of
time trying to make things perfectly
smooth and circular. This is something I
should probably stop doing—sometimes
things that aren’t perfect are more
interesting.”
—Jeffrey Lott
april 2009
Claire Sawyers, the creative force behind the
astonishing achievements of the Scott
Arboretum in the last two decades, has
received dual recognition for her work. The
2008 Zone V Horticulture Commendation
from the Garden Club of America acknowledges Sawyers’s “dedication and excellence
in furthering the education and enjoyment
of people everywhere in the growing and
displaying of plants.” The 2009 Professional
Award from the American Horticultural
Society’s Great American Gardens Awards
Committee recognizes Sawyers as “a public
garden administrator whose achievements
during the course of her career have cultivated widespread interest in horticulture
and made a difference in the landscape
around us.”
“Claire has led the Scott Arboretum into
a revitalized, and invigorated era,” says Alice
Hamilton Farley, landscape architect and
president of the Wissahickon (Pa.) Garden
Club. “She has created a place where the
average homeowner and beginning gardener can go and see a place of beauty and,
also, come away with ideas that they can
bring to their own gardens.”
—Susan Cousins Breen
The Borough of Swarthmore was honored
by the Environmental Protection Agency
in January with a 12th-place ranking
among green-power communities nationwide. Of the top 19 communities earning
a place on the list, Swarthmore was the
only town so recognized east of the Mississippi River—other towns in the top 12
are located in California, Washington,
Utah, and Colorado.
With a long history of environmentally
responsible behavior, the Ville boasts an
unusually high number of residents who
have signed up for wind power provided
by energy supplier PECO at a slightly
higher monthly rate. Many others have
opted for solar energy. And, of course, the
borough’s most important green-power
customer, the College, positively impacts
the borough’s environmental record by its
own considerable renewable energy
consumption.
GOWN GREEN
In fall 2008, Earthlust, the College’s longstanding student environmental group,
was invited to join the Environmental
Protection Agency’s Green Power Partnership, in recognition of its efforts to promote the use of green energy on campus.
The Green Power Partnership comprises a
wide variety of organizations nationwide,
including a growing number of colleges
and universities as well as Fortune 500
companies and local, state, and federal
government agencies.
In a Dec. 21 e-mail message to Maurice
Eldridge ’61, the College’s vice president
for college and community relations and
executive assistant to the president, Earthlust member William Zein Nakhoda ’12
wrote: “The partnership will help publicize our current green energy initiatives
and provide resources to improve our
environmental performance. We are very
excited about the recognition Swarthmore
will receive for its sustainability as well as
the opportunities to improve.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
11
collection
Imagine a scenario where U.S. domestic
policy is defined less by profit, consumerism,
accumulation of wealth, and self-interest
than by a desire for general well-being.
Sound utopian? Maybe. Yet according to
Barry Schwartz, Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, the
idea is by no means far-fetched. In fact, it’s
one he’s been mulling over for quite a
while—ever since he read an article by Martin Seligman, director of the University of
Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center,
and Ed Diener, a professor of psychology at
the University of Illinois and world expert on
studies of well-being.
“They suggested that we need some kind
of measure to replace, or at least counterbalance, the current measures of gross domestic
product (GDP)—a measure of gross national
well-being,” Schwartz says.
Although wealth has a considerable
impact on life satisfaction, its effect begins to
diminish after a certain point, Schwartz says.
Yet U.S. economic policy and the American
psyche are both tuned to devote a tremendous amount of time and effort into increasing per capita wealth. The two main reasons
for this, Schwartz explains, are that people
can use money to buy whatever makes them
happy, so it becomes a kind of proxy for
everything else; moreover, money can easily
be measured, whereas the measure of wellbeing is more difficult to define.
“My take on this,” says Schwartz, “is that
GDP is not only inadequate, but that policies
aimed at increasing per capita wealth may be
implemented yet are counterproductive
because they get in the way of other things
that really do make people happy, more satisfied, and able to lead more meaningful lives.”
And it’s now, in a time of economic crisis,
that Schwartz believes that psychology could
be at least as useful as economics in figuring
out how to reduce the fear, anxiety, and distrust that have grown in Americans today
and foster a more contented society, in which
striving for monetary profit is countered,
maybe even diminished, by altruism and
12
TRAVIS LAMPE
An Index
of Well-Being
desire to do the right thing.
“Fear, anxiety, and distrust are all psychological states,” Schwartz says. “These are not
easy problems to solve, but when the solutions come, they’re not going to come from
economists. It became quite clear to me, not
only that we ought to be worrying about
well-being in general but that we need to be
listening to psychologists—to solve even economic problems. How do you get people to
spend more? To save more? How do people
track their wealth? Make spending and saving choices? When and why do they feel
secure or insecure? We know a lot about that,
and it could influence the way in which policy is shaped to promote savings or spending
or whatever needs to be promoted.”
Moving beyond the national economy,
Schwartz considered President Barack
Obama’s domestic policy objectives on energy, education, and health care and realized
that invariably questions arise for which psychology can provide meaningful answers.
“A Council of Psychological Advisors
would have something useful to say about
every single domestic issue that President
Obama seems to think about,” Schwartz says.
Schwartz envisions a group of six or seven
experts in all the main areas of policy—a
“stable of psychologists” on call to add their
expertise to whatever problem is currently
on the table. He is cautiously optimistic
about the proposal, particularly because he
recognizes in the new president someone
who is willing to listen to new ideas.
“President Obama’s mind is already open
and prepared for the sorts of things I think
psychologists could contribute to,” Schwartz
says.
And Washington is already nibbling. After
publishing an article about his thoughts in
the Philadelphia Inquirer and in a blog he
keeps on the Psychology Today Web site,
Schwartz received a message in early February from a staff member at the Center for
American Progress—a liberal think tank
dedicated to developing ideas to help shape
policy—inviting him to expand upon his
ideas.
“We’ll see what transpires, but it’s more
response than I expected to get,” Schwartz
says.
You can find Barry Schwartz’s Psychology
Today blog at
www.swarthmore.edu/x17560.xml.
HOW PSYCHOLOGY DRIVES
THE ECONOMY
Who could possibly imagine that the outcome of a soccer tournament could have an
swarthmore college bulletin
april 2009
MEANINGFUL STAT
ISTI
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
effect on economic perceptions? Sounds
wacky? Not according to Assistant Professor
of Economics David Huffman, an expert in
the relatively new field of behavioral and
experimental economics.
In a 2006 paper, Huffman and three fellow economists showed that the outcome of
the FIFA World Cup, held in Germany that
year, systematically affected “individual perceptions about economic prospects, both on
a personal and economy-wide level.”
Using the international soccer tournament as a natural experiment, the group
conducted interviews, soliciting opinions on
economic expectation from 3,231 Germans.
Each interviewee was contacted once before
the tournament began and again after each
of the seven matches in which the German
team competed. The results indicated that
“the unexpectedly good performance of the
German soccer team [seeded 19th before the
tournament and finishing in third place]
improved both economic perceptions and
expectations.”
The authors concluded that their data
implied strongly that “much of the economic
action is driven by psychology.” In 2007,
Huffman, as co-author of another paper,
wrote that the inability of economic models
to accurately predict important aspects of
the labor market is attributable to their failure to take emotion into consideration.
Huffman has incorporated his ideas into
two courses this year: the fall semester seminar Behavioral Economics and the spring
semester course Experimental Economics.
He says that although he’s interested in
human psychology for its own sake, as an
economist he remains primarily focused on
economic decision-making and understanding how markets work, using psychology to
help further that understanding.
Putting his scholarship to work in the
classroom, Huffman invites students to participate in hands-on research in the area of
decision-making and risk-taking. “We offer
different safe or risky options, involving real
money, and try to see how willing someone
is to take a risk and why or why not,” he says.
“The hallmark of an economic experiment, as opposed to a psychology experiment, is that we use money. We’re maybe too
much obsessed with money or having
money be involved, partly because it makes it
more like a real economic decision. The
amounts are not gigantic, but it is real
money.”
Huffman’s research reveals intriguing
relationships between risk taking and personal traits. For instance, people who are
taller are more willing to take risks. “It’s well
known from previous research that taller
people tend to earn higher wages,” says Huffman, “and one explanation has always been
that height fosters self-confidence. Perhaps
the greater risk tolerance of tall people also
reflects this confidence effect. Of course
there are always exceptions, like Napoleon.…”
Hired in 2008 to add his expertise in the
up-and-coming field to the College’s course
offerings, Huffman says: “There’s even a bit
of backlash against the field now, which
means it’s being taken relatively seriously. It’s a
neat field—and, I think, a ‘hot’ one right now.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
For more information on David Huffman and
his research, visit
www.swarthmore.edu/x16527.xml.
CS
In January, Associa
te Professor of Statistics Steve Wang wa
s recognized by
the American Statisti
cal Association
(ASA) for national
excellence in statistics education. Acco
rding to the ASA:
“Steve has an extraor
dinary ability to
make statistics mea
ningful and relevant to his students
and to general
public audiences. H
is use of examples
and information fro
m popular culture
is one of the hallmar
ks of his teaching.
Recognizing that stu
dents have different learning styles,
he incorporates
multiple modes of
instruction on any
given topic into his
courses, including
words, formulas, an
d hands-on experiences. His student
s routinely describe his classes as
a transformative
experience.”
He is currently work
ing on discovering the cause or ca
uses of the endPermian extinction
, the most severe
mass extinction in
the history of life.
Last year, The New
York Times
reported on Wang’s
innovative study
of Major League ba
seball managers.
He also garnered in
ternational attention for a study that
predicted that
most of the world’s
dinosaurs have yet
to be unearthed an
d that 75 percent of
them will be discov
ered within the
next 60 to 100 year
s.
—Alisa Giardinelli
and Carol Brévart-D
emm
13
collection
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
At a building owned by Widener University, a new college-access center
will provide Delaware County, Pa.,
residents with counseling, mentoring, tutoring, and other resources.
Cynthia Jetter ’74, a longtime community activist (below), worked to
open the center in February.
One-Stop Access to
Higher Education
Joyful anticipation filled the air as represenatives from six Delaware County colleges and universities and the community
gathered on Jan. 27 to launch the College
Access Center (CAC) of Delaware County—
a one-stop facility in Chester, Pa. According
to Cynthia Jetter ‘74, director of community
partnerships and planning for Swarthmore’s
Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility and the driving force behind the Center—its mission is to address the educational
needs of county residents.
The center, which is supported by volunteers from the founding institutions and the
community, opened its doors for business on
Feb. 2 in a building owned by Widener University. It provides free services to students
beginning in sixth grade and continuing
through their senior year of high school and
to adults wishing to pursue or complete a
college degree. County residents have access
to a computer lab and resource room for
researching higher education opportunities,
and guidance is available for completing
online applications and financial aid forms.
14
The center is the first initiative of
the Chester Higher Education Council (CHEC), a new nonprofit organization formed by the presidents of
Cheyney University, Delaware
County Community College, Neumann College, Penn
State–Brandywine, Widener University, and Swarthmore. The first year of operation is bolstered by a $100,000 grant from
the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Jetter spoke with emotion to the crowd
gathered for the ribbon cutting: “I bear witness to the fact that access to information
gives access to opportunity. That is why I
want these children to feel that they’re entitled to a better education.”
According to President Alfred H. Bloom,
who serves as CHEC treasurer, the Council
anticipates that the center will serve 1,000
youth and adults in its first year through
school-based programs, community workshops held at the center, and at neighborhood sites. “The center will form partnerships with the 15 school districts in Delaware
County,” Bloom says.
Jetter expects College staff, faculty, and
students to serve as tutors, mentors, and
educational program leaders. Currently, she
has commitments from the Writing Associates Program to conduct writing workshops,
the National Society of Black Engineers to
hold SAT prep sessions, multilingual Swarthmore students to work with young students
for whom English is not their first language,
and the Financial Aid Office to assist with
workshops on scholarships and grants.
“This is a great day,” said Widener President James Harris III, CHEC chairperson,
“because what is going to happen in this
house over the next few decades is a dream
come true. The universities coordinated their
efforts through the Chester Higher Education Council, but it was Cynthia Jetter—the
heart and soul of this project—who charged
forward and made the access center possible.”
—Susan Cousins Breen
swarthmore college bulletin
DEER CULL DELAYED
A planned deer cull in the College’s Crum Woods did not
occur this winter due to a policy
change in Pennsylvania Game
Commission (PGC) regulations
that was proposed after the Borough of Swarthmore and adjoining Nether Providence Township
applied on behalf of the College
for a cull permit. If approved, the
new policy will grant landowners
culling and controlled hunting
rights without the sponsorship
of a local municipality.
On the advice of the PGC, the
College has since re-applied, as a
landowner—independent of the
municipalities—for a cull permit. It decided against the suggested option of a controlled
hunt, which would be open to
the public by special permit, and
maintains its stance that a cull by
sharpshooters is the most effective way to manage the deer
overpopulation that is threatening the ecosystem of the Crum.
In a Jan. 27 interview with the
Daily Gazette’s Lauren Stokes ’09,
Director of Grounds Jeff Jabco
said he believed the delay would
give the College a chance to
strengthen parts of its proposal.
“I’m meeting with some folks
from the Game Commission
soon…. I’d like to walk the area
with them; it will make them
more familiar with what we’re
dealing.”
If the application is approved,
the College would proceed with
the cull next winter.
—Carol Brévart-Demm
Committed to
Community Engagement
Swarthmore has been recognized as a leader in community engagement by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching for having “institutionalized community
engagement in its identity, culture, and commitments.” In the
course of a close examination of how widely the College’s service
learning courses are offered, the foundation also sought information about specific community partnerships such as the
Chester Children’s Chorus, Chester Children’s Gamelan Project,
Crum Creek Watershed Partnership, and College Advancement
Program.
Joy Charlton, executive director of the College’s Lang Center
for Civic and Social Responsibility, says: “The Carnegie classification recognizes Swarthmore’s heritage and commitment to
social responsibility, the resources it has invested, and the exceptional creativity and energetic responses of students, faculty,
administration, and alumni to community issues and needs, as
they’ve found them. Swarthmore is particularly well-known for
its signature programs now housed in the Lang Center and how
our students are encouraged to think in big ways.”
Happy
Birthday,
DearDarwin
COLIN PURRINGTON
About 100 celebrants dined on bananas
or banana cake, and many had their pictures taken with a life-size cutout of
Charles Darwin on Feb. 12, the 200th anniversary of the great scientist’s birth.
The Darwin Day celebration included evolution-themed temporary tattoos; “pin
the beak on the sparrow;” and a rousing
chorus of “Happy Birthday, Dear Darwin”
led by Colin Purrington, associate professor of biology, who organized the event.
Why bananas and banana cake? “All primates love bananas,” Purrington says.
Showing some love for the father of
evolutionary science are professors Amy
Cheng Vollmer (left) and Sara Hiebert
Burch ’79.
april 2009
15
collection
HALIE ANDERSON
COURTESY OF NAT
”I loved this workshop,” says
Nathalie Anderson. “I hope many
more folks from the faculty and staff
will take advantage of it, because
these glimpses into people’s lives and
hearts are so very intriguing, so very
moving.”
The Age-old Art of
Storytelling Goes Digital
Recently, Professor of English Literature Nathalie Anderson shared a piece of
very personal information via a poem she
wrote and an old photo album that
belonged to her mother. One photo shows
Anderson’s mother and the shadow of the
man she was going out with during World
War II—a pilot stationed in the Pacific,
“before she met my father,” Anderson says.
The poem focuses on the man’s shadow.
“ … his shape an arrow arrowing, a missile fixed, so phallic/ you’d laugh too: her
shoulder with leafy shade corsaged;/ the
edge of the bridge darkening his dark, a
scarfing;/ her coat swayed at the hem from
the thought of the thrust of him,” Anderson
writes.
Together, poem and photos tell a story,
each enlivening the other. Using software
and a microphone, Anderson captured her
story digitally for viewing on the Internet—
as a participant in a digital storytelling
workshop, the third on campus facilitated
by Chief Information Technology Officer
Gayle Barton.
16
After listening to a
conference speaker talk about digital storytelling workshops in 2001,
Barton—at the time still director of
institutional technology at Williams College—says, “I was so taken by what he was
saying and what he was doing—I really did
feel a bit as if I’d drunk the Kool-Aid.”
Barton invited Joe Lambert, who founded the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS)
in Berkeley, Calif., in 1994, to hold a threeday workshop at Williams College, during
which participants compiled an original
script based on a personal experience, then
recorded the script to produce the voiceover for a video created with photos or
other fitting images.
The success of the Williams workshop
encouraged Barton, who came to Swarthmore in 2007, to initiate a similar event at
the College last June. Since then, two further workshops have taken place, with a
total attendance of 29, comprising 14 faculty and 16 staff, one of whom attended
twice. At the end of the workshop, participants shared their final products and celebrated each others’ stories.
The workshops began with a group session during which all participants discussed
their story ideas and brainstormed ways to
present them.
Web Multimedia Specialist Nathan
Stazewski said: “I was a little hesitant about the whole storytelling
aspect, being much more interested in learning tips and tricks for
Final Cut, the video editing software we used in the workshop and
which I recently started using to
edit videos for my job. The group was really
helpful in pulling out the most interesting
parts of a story. My original piece was a little long, but the facilitators were wonderful
in showing me how to determine the true
meat of the story. I’ve found the process to
be very helpful as I create videos for my
job.”
Some academic departments now use
digital storytelling as a teaching tool. Associate Professor of French Carina Yervasi
and lecturer in Spanish Joan Friedman have
both had students compile digital stories.
As well as enhancing the opportunities
for creative academic learning, Barton
believes that digital storytelling technology
can also help people become more comfortable using technology and encourage
them to think about different forms of
communication.
“What makes it really exciting for me,
though,” says Barton, “is that I see it as a
tremendous community builder. You can sit
in a room with eight or 10 people, whom
you may have met but don’t know well, and
you go through this workshop together and
learn something about each other, some
story they have that’s important enough for
them to want to spend three days on it—
and you get to know them.”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
swarthmore college bulletin
During the first weeks of the spring
semester, the bulletin board for international
students in the main hall of Parrish was festooned with colored notes containing tributes and messages of gratitude to beloved
International Student Adviser Gloria Evans,
aged 81, whose unexpected Dec. 25 death
due to complications from knee surgery
saddened campus community members.
Evans was “awesome”; “always hip and
modern”; “our mom away from home”; “elegant, gracious, and full of warmth,” the students wrote. She went “far beyond her role as
adviser” and had “a smile that lit up [her]
face, even when I knew [she] was tired,” to
quote but few.
Obtaining a Ph.D. from Stanford University, Evans came to Swarthmore in 1957 as
an assistant professor of psychology. She
remained at the College for more than 50
years, serving as a faculty member, testing
and guidance consultant, and ultimately
adviser to international students and visiting
scholars. While at Swarthmore, she met her
husband, the late physician Philip Evans
’48—for whom the College’s Evans Scholarship is named—and also served on the advising team for Evans Scholars during their
years at Swarthmore.
As international student adviser, Evans, an
enthusiastic traveler, especially to Europe,
went to great lengths to ensure that foreign
students felt comfortable at the College. She
taught an English for Foreign Students
course, served on a Foreign Students Committee, and counseled international students
on immigration and visa issues as well as
other aspects of living and studying in a foreign country. She initiated a three-day program of activities specifically for international students—that preceded the regular threeday freshman orientation—to help them
adjust to life in the United States.
During their orientation, Evans met each
foreign student and any relatives who
accompanied them to Swarthmore. She
became an invaluable resource and friend to
the students throughout their college lives.
For those who came to the College without
april 2009
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
“Gloria Was
Awesome!”
many of the typical student necessities, too
heavy or bulky to transport by air, she facilitated shopping expeditions to Target and
other nearby stores.
“Thank you, Gloria, for everything,”
Michael Xu ’11, president of the campus
international student club, wrote on the
notice board. “We will all miss you!”
—Carol Brévart-Demm
Popular international student adviser Gloria Evans
died suddenly on Dec. 25. During her long tenure at
the College, Evans went to tremendous lengths to
help foreign students adjust both culturally and
physically to life in the United States. Not only did
she initiate a special orientation period for international students but she also went out of her way to
organize shopping excursions to local stores, enabling them to obtain everyday items they were unable to bring with them from their homes.
ONWARD AND UPWARD
The Board of Managers approved the promotion of five members of the faculty from
associate to full professor: Biologist Sara Hiebert Burch ’78 studies hypometabolic states
in small birds and mammals. Linguist Ted Fernald is a semanticist interested in, among
other topics, all things to do with Navajo syntax and semantics. English literature scholar
Nora Johnson specializes in the Renaissance, particularly Shakespeare and theater history,
also teaching courses on Milton, comedy, 20th-century lesbian fiction, and other topics.
Organic chemist Paul Rablen’s laboratory research focuses on fundamental questions
about the relationship between structure, stability, and reactivity in organic compounds,
and on the mechanistic pathways of organic reactions. Film-and-media–studies scholar
Patricia White is a graduate of Yale’s first class of film studies majors and author or editor
of three books on cinema—with one in progress on global women filmmakers.
Two faculty members were promoted from assistant to associate professor: Physicist
Catherine Crouch, whose research explores the technique of microphotoluminescence,
was promoted to associate professor of physics with continuous tenure. Psychologist Jane
Gillham, whose major research and clinical interests include clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and education, was promoted, in a nontenured position, from assistant to associate professor of psychology.
—Carol Brévart-Demm
17
Showers of Medals for
Garnet Swimmers
Men’s swimming (second at CC Championships) Senior Douglas Gilchrist-Scott collected seven medals at the Conference
Championship meet, breaking a 12-year-old
Conference and championship meet record
(along with his own school mark) with a
46.48 time during the preliminaries of the
100-yard freestyle. He went on to earn a
bronze medal in the event, clocking in at
47.20 during the finals. Gilchrist-Scott also
set a school record in the 50-yard backstroke
(24.66) as the lead leg in the silver-medal
200-yard medley and another new mark in
the 50-yard freestyle (21.39), earning bronze
medals in the 50-yard free and the 100-yard
backstroke. Gilchrist-Scott also played an
important role on the Swarthmore relay
squads, which brought home three silver
medals and one bronze. His anchor leg in the
400-yard medley relay capped a schoolrecord performance (3:32.02) that included
teammates Santiago Lombo ’11, Sterling Satterfield ’11, and Sam Bullard-Sisken ’12.
Gilchrist-Scott led off the 200-medley relay
squad of Satterfield, Bullard-Sisken and
freshman Tim Brevart, and he was part of
the school-record–breaking 400-yard
freestyle relay team—along with Michael
18
Ahn ’10, Neil Palmer ’12, and Brévart—that
earned a silver medal. The aforementioned
200-yard free relay team—with the quartet of
Gilchrist-Scott, Brévart, Lance Liu ’12, and
Ahn—also medaled, collecting a bronze.
Long distance freestyler Stephen Shymon ’09
brought home a pair of gold medals, winning the 500-yard freestyle and breaking the
his own school record in a time of 4:41.03
and then swimming to a seemingly effortless
victory in the 1,650-yard freestyle (16:31.72).
The dynamite breaststroke duo of Liu and
Satterfield posted new College records, both
achieving NCAA B-cut times (times that
don’t automatically but may qualify for participation at the national championship), in
the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke events,
respectively. Liu collected a silver medal in
the 100-yards, posting 58.30 (a school
record), and Satterfield earned a bronze with
a post of 59.04. Satterfield swam 2:07.46 in
the 200-yard breaststroke preliminaries and
then lowered the time (2:06.98) in the finals,
earning a silver medal.
Women’s swimming (third at CC Championships) Junior Anne Miller earned a spot in
the 2009 NCAA Division III swimming and
diving championships for the third straight
year, to be held this year at the University of
Minnesota in Minneapolis on March 18–21,
hosted by Macalester College. Miller led the
KYLE LEACH
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
collection
women’s team to a third-place finish, earning
NCAA provisional qualifying times in the
100-yard butterfly (57.95) and the 200-yard
butterfly (2:06.26). Those two performances
earned her silver medals. Sophomore
Stephanie Su picked up her first gold medal
in the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of
2:30.29. Chelsea Brett ’11 won a silver medal
in the 200-yard freestyle (1:56.34), and junswarthmore college bulletin
and doubles titles at the Pennsylvania State
Open, combining with teammate Maithili
Parikh ’11 to create one of the most formidable badminton duos in the nation. They
reached the semifinals of the women’s doubles tournament in the Mid-Atlantic Classic
before falling to top-seeded Daphne Chang
and Mingzi Zhang.
breaking the school record in the mile run at
the E.C.A.C. Division III Championships on
March 7, recording a time of 4:59.54—the
eighth-best in all of Division III. Freshman
hurdler Kenyetta Givans missed a gold medal
in the 55-meter event at the Conference
Championships by two one-hundreths of a
second. Her time of 8.575 broke the school
record of 8.71 set by Catherine Lane in 1997.
The women’s distance medley relay team of
Nyika Corbett ’10, Givans, Natalie Stone ’09,
and Mullarkey earned a bronze medal at the
Conference Championships. Senior Dan
Hodson joined Mullarkey in being named
Conference Co-Indoor Track-and-Field Athlete of the Week on Jan. 13 after winning the
mile at the Delaware Winter Invitational.
—Kyle Leach
Clockwise from top left:
Garnet male swimming captain Douglas Gilchrist Scott (third from front) won seven medals at the
Centennial Conference Championships and broke
five records
Kathryn Stockbower was one of 42 players in the
country to be named a finalist for the 2009 State
Farm Coaches’ All-America Basketball Team.
Kim Kramer won three consecutive singles and doubles titles at the Pennsylvania State Open. Placing
13th in the National Women’s Singles rankings, she
was invited by USA Badminton to travel to Iran as
part of a goodwill venture in January.
ior Casey Osborn took home a bronze in the
200-yard butterfly, swimming a time of
2:11.55 (her fastest of the season)
Badminton (4-4) Kim Kramer ’10, 13th in
the national women’s singles rankings, was
invited by USA Badminton to travel to Iran
as part of a good-will venture in January.
Kramer has secured three consecutive singles
april 2009
Women’s basketball (13-12, 10-8 CC) Sophomore forward Kathryn Stockbower, one of
42 players in the country to be named a
finalist for the 2009 State Farm Coaches’ AllAmerica Basketball Team, led the Centennial
Conference in scoring (17.7 points per game)
and rebounding (13.6 per game), and was
named the Conference Player of the Year. A
unanimous First-Team selection, Stockbower
tied the conference mark (and broke the
school mark set by Nancy Rosenbaum ’96)
with 24 rebounds at McDaniel. She also
broke a conference record by hitting double
figures in scoring for 47 consecutive games,
receiving five Player of the Week honors.
Garnet senior captain Melissa Grigsby joined
Stockbower on the All-Centennial team,
earning honorable mention after handing
out 3.7 assists per game (top-10 in the Conference) while making 88.4 percent of her
free throws. Grigsby made a stirring exit on
Senior Night at Tarble Pavilion, scoring a
career-high 22 points in a win over Washington.
Indoor track-and-field (women 7th, men
9th at CC Championships) Senior Caitlin
Mullarkey became the fourth female in
Swarthmore history to earn All-America for
indoor track-and-field, finishing fifth in the
mile run at the NCAA Division III indoor
championships in Terre Haute, Ind.
Mullarkey qualified for the national meet by
JAKE MROZEWSKI ’11, COURTESY OF THE DAILY GAZETTE
AURORA IMAGING
Men’s basketball (3-21, 2-15 CC) The Garnet
finished the 2008–2009 season looking
strong. They posted victories over Conference playoff teams Gettysburg (an NCAA
Tournament participant) and Washington
College in the final month of the season.
Swarthmore senior forward Raul Ordoñez
led the squad with 12.7 points and 8.3
rebounds per game, (third in the Centennial)
tying the program record with 22 drawn
charges.
En G a rd e !
In February, Swarthmore hosted the Southern Atlantic Conference Fencing Championship at the
Lamb Miller Field House. Teams from 13 institutions
from New York to Florida participated. In the largest
of four regional tournaments leading to the U.S. Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs Championships, the Swarthmore female and male teams
established themselves as a force to be reckoned
with. Several competitors from both teams (including the Garnet’s Andrew Zimmerman ’11, above
right, taking on an épee opponent from Virginia
Tech) won individual medals, with the Swarthmore
women garnering the gold medal and the men the
silver, resulting in a second place finish overall. The
2009 SAC marked the first time that the Swarthmore
squad had hosted a major collegiate fencing tournament. Plans are afoot to host the national tournament in 2010.
19
faculty expert
License
to
Imagine
THE TREE OF HISTORY IS
NOURISHED BY DREAMS AND
STORIES AS WELL AS BY FACTS.
GEORGE WIDMAN
By Timothy Burke,
professor of history
LAST YEAR, THE PHILADELPHIA CITY COUNCIL
passed a bill requiring the licensing of tour
guides in the historic area of the city. The
legislation created a requirement for guides
to be periodically tested on their historical
knowledge. Some of the debate around the
legislation was predictably concerned with
the size and prerogatives of government and
the cost of additional bureaucracy. I found
myself more concerned with the proposition
that what we want from tour guides is a
testable adherence to concrete historical
facts. Perhaps perversely for a professional
historian, I think that a few tall tales and
imaginative shadings from the guides at
Philadelphia’s historic sites are not only
inevitable but a potentially positive part of
the ongoing creative renewal of historical
knowledge.
To start with, I’m skeptical about what
20
this test ought to test for. Think of a fact
about Philadelphia in the colonial era. That
Benjamin Franklin lived in a house now
marked by a sculpture at Franklin Court?
Certainly. That George Washington kept
slaves at his presidential home when
Philadelphia was the capital of the United
States? Absolutely. That colonial Philadelphia
was a part of a larger Atlantic political economy that was crucially shaped by slavery
throughout the Americas? Very much a fact.
That the lives of ordinary residents of late
colonial Philadelphia was considerably different from the lives of Franklin and other
members of the city’s elite? Certainly as well.
I’m not suggesting that your average tour
guide, clip-clopping around Independence
Hall in a horse-drawn buggy, should offer a
lecture on mid–18th-century social history.
It’s just that if we want guides or other
swarthmore college bulletin
people to know “facts,” that, in and of itself,
doesn’t tell us much about which facts matter or which facts are appropriate to what
context. There are a lot of facts, after all.
Periodically, civic and political groups
issue the results of surveys that suggest the
American public is ignorant about history.
It’s often implied that this is an accelerating
trend, but this is very difficult to say, both
because such tests haven’t been standardized
across a long time span and because those
results that have been reported don’t really
typically demonstrate progressively greater
ignorance in recent years. At the least, if a
lack of knowledge about dates, facts, and
events is a continuous condition in modern
American life, it begs a question about
whether there are any meaningful consequences to such ignorance. Perhaps Henry
Ford was right, and in a country known for
reinvention, history is bunk. More pointedly,
perhaps the 19th-century French intellectual
Ernst Renan was right when he observed that
nations need history but that they generally
need to get it wrong, so as to forget aspects of
the past that would call into question the
unity or coherence of the nation-state.
However, I think there’s plenty of evidence that Americans do care about history,
often passionately so, and that when historical concerns rise to the surface, they often
demonstrate a deep and complex understanding of the American past that rests both
on the formal knowledge of historians and
on the memories of communities, families,
and individuals. This can very much include
the signature events and names of American
history, as the commercial success of Ken
Burns’ series The Civil War or a number of
recently published biographies of the Founding Fathers suggests.
Public history, as in museum exhibits,
monuments, and memorials, can be a particularly intense focal point for this kind of
engagement. We care a lot about how the
Smithsonian exhibits the history of the
atomic bomb or about how to mark the Vietnam War in Washington. We care about
how—or whether—to make a gigantic statue
of the Native American leader Crazy Horse
and about which buildings and places
deserve preservation because of their links to
the past. And when people care, they care
about getting it right in a more expansive and
april 2009
vital way than a simple inventory of the facts.
It’s often true that such public representations of the past contain factual inaccuracies
or that they mythologize and misremember
aspects of history. But not all inaccuracies are
created equal. Historian Richard Slotkin
argues in his 2002 essay “Fiction for the Purposes of History” that part of the professional training of historians should be writing
historical fiction because such work opens
up other kinds of truth through other voices
and modes of representation. When we build
memorials, visit historical sites, visit museums, stage reenactments, or travel somewhere to see and experience the past, we’re
trying to do something similar to what the
best historical fiction does—to bring history
inside our hearts and lives, to think in a new
way about its meanings.
I once had a conversation with another
historian who pointed out that Cape Coast
Castle in Ghana was relatively unimportant
in the history of the Atlantic slave trade—
that far greater numbers of slaves were transported from other sites in West and Equatorial Africa. He conceded that at many of
these other sites, there is little physical evidence today of that history and that other
sites would be relatively inaccessible to contemporary travelers. Thus, Cape Coast Castle
has become an important stop for African
American tourists on trips to West Africa, a
solemn opportunity to think about the history of enslavement. Slaves were held in Cape
Coast Castle: it was a part of that world. The
feel and look of that building today is an
important portal into that history, a chance
to make visible a history that is otherwise so
deeply embedded in the modern world. A
narrow vision of historical fact shouldn’t bar
the way to that opportunity.
Slotkin argues that historical fiction lets
us access the power of history that resides in
its mythic or poetic resonances with the
present. It lets us create new myths or challenge old ones. When we set out to understand what we are and what we might yet be,
we draw on the stories, characters, and lessons that the past provides. When we decide
what we honor or despise, fear or treasure,
we often turn to history. I once went hiking
with family along a hilly back road near
Death Valley in California. We came upon a
short, abandoned mineshaft that was some-
where between 60 and 100 years old, apparently dug with hand tools by no more than a
few individuals. That mineshaft, hundreds of
miles from any settlement or community, is
likely the only trace of the men and labor
and dreams spent in that lonely, desolate
place. If I wanted to say anything vividly
individual about that history—as opposed to
something systematic and abstract—I would
need an imagination that goes beyond the
kind of facts that could compose a concrete
test for tour guides.
However we call upon history, it still
requires careful study, is still constrained by
the factual substance of the past. History isn’t
just any damn thing we please. Some of what
we imagine through history is wrong because
it so grossly or wildly misrepresents the truth
of the past. Expert knowledge about the past
is still important; it provides substance that
everyone can use to flesh out memory and
imagination. There are things we don’t know
about the past and things we can’t know, and
everyone should recognize those boundaries.
Of course, a perfectly truthful representation of some aspects of human history can
also be used in service to a repellant vision.
For example, a racist could be rigorously factual in a description of past massacres of
Native Americans and then argue that
because this “solved” the problem of Native
Americans, this is exactly what the government should continue to do now with nonwhites. What’s wrong here is not the command of facts, it’s the ethics of it. Some of
the dreams and myths we make with history
are inherently bad not because they misrepresent the past, but because they are morally
odious.
If a guide to historic Philadelphia
adamantly denied that there were any slaves
in Washington’s house or claimed that
Franklin was having a love affair with Queen
Ranavalona III of Madagascar (born after
Franklin’s death), that guide would be malicious in the first case and silly in the second.
But a guide who offers more plausible if
slightly embellished tales of Franklin’s
romantic escapades or other mythic shadings
of the lives and times of 18th-century
Philadelphians isn’t doing anything that we
should call to heel. The tree of history is
nourished by dreams and stories as well as by
facts. !
21
sk y sc r a per s
Zadara (far right) in
action as director of The
Index by Tadeusz Rozewicz
at the Wspolczesny Teatr
in Wroclaw.
On one of his recent productions, The Dismissal of
the Greek Envoys (inset),
by Jan Kochanowski,
Zadara was assisted by
Joseph Borkowski ’08, a
participant in Swarthmore’s Department of Theater’s Semester in Poland
Program.
COURTESY OF STARY TEATR
© TOMASZ GZELL/PAP/C
ORBIS
Although he does not have any Jewish ancestry he is aware of, Zadara sees Jewish-Polish culture
Preserving its intellectual traditions is among the tasks he sets himself as a theater director.
COURTESY OF TEA
TR
22
WSPOLCZESNY
swarthmore college bulletin
an d e m pt ine ss
—which once stood on the brink of annihilation—as part of his heritage.
POLISH THEATER DIRECTOR
MICHAL ZADARA ’99 USES HIS
ART TO PRESERVE THE
INTELLECTUAL TRADITIONS OF
POLISH-JEWISH CULTURE.
GETTY IMAGES
By Eli Epstein-Deutsch ’10
“Skyscrapers and emptiness,” says Polish
theater director Michal Zadara ’99, as he sits
across the table from me, smoking a slim cigarette and gesturing pointedly at the Warsaw
skyline outside the cafe window. I think I
understand what he means. There is a disconcerting sense of unoccupied space at the
heart of the city, amidst all the bombastic
Stalinist architecture and modern glass hotels
strewn awkwardly around the train station.
But when Zadara starts to speak about Bat
Yam-Tykocin, his most recent play, it appears
that he means the words in another sense as
well.
“A huge void was left after the extermination of the immense Jewish community that
was here before the Second World War,” he
says. “And Poland had the largest Jewish
community in Europe before the creation of
Israel—three million people, that was 10 percent of the population. A half-million lived
in Warsaw alone.”
The struggle of Poles grappling with the
absence of their country’s once deeply rooted
Jewish civilization is the subject of Bat YamTykocin, which is actually a pair of plays—
one by Polish playwright Pawel Demirski and
the other by Israeli playwright and director
Yael Ronen—that were commissioned by the
National Theater of Israel as part of the 2008
april 2009
Year of Polish Culture in Israel. Although
conceived and rehearsed separately, the plays
offer complementary takes on the complex,
ambivalent relationship between Poland and
Israel in the last half century.
Ronen’s play follows an Israeli family
from Bat Yam visiting Eastern European concentration camps, Warsaw, and their father’s
Polish hometown of Tykocin, whose Jewish
population was decimated during the Shoa;
Demirski’s work centers on a “nice old lady”
in the same Polish town who is about to
receive a Righteous Among the Nations
award—Israel’s honor for Gentiles across
Europe who saved Jews during the Shoa
without asking for recompense. Yet as the
ceremony is being arranged, a crew of ambitious journalists from Warsaw, who, in
Zadara’s words, are “somewhat obsessed with
Polish-Jewish history,” discover that the
woman could not possibly have done what
she claimed, and they travel to the town to
expose her as a fraud.
This scenario of deception and pettiness
does not credit any of its characters with a
great deal of nobility; through a darker subtext of pathology and greed, it captures some
of the fixation among certain Poles with Jewish culture and its loss. And this is a phenomenon that can come as a shock to Israelis,
who have not thought of Poland as a Jewish
land for a long time. And perhaps it’s why
Bat Yam-Tykocin has such power in both
Israel and Poland.
“Poland used to be a taboo topic for Jews
in Israel,” Zadara says. “The [Zionists] who
left Europe before the war were building a
new kind of Jew—a muscle Jew, as they
called it. And after the war, Shoa survivors
were—in a way—terribly ashamed of what
the Shoa had done to them, so they distanced
themselves from the Diaspora. Later, Shoa
discourse was codified within certain boundaries, and sympathy for the old country certainly does not fall within those boundaries.
In my opinion, the Shoa has taken the place
of prewar Zionism as the foundational myth
of Israel, and Poland exists within that myth
purely as the site of Jewish extermination.”
Zadara had just started work on Demirski’s script when I spoke with him last summer, but he was already thinking broadly
about the issues at stake in the production.
For him, it’s a chance to communicate to
Israeli audiences the impulse that inspired
scholars in Lublin to construct a scale model
of the city in its former Jewish incarnation,
that urge that leads non-Jewish musicians in
Krakow to maintain an energetic Klezmer
scene there. Clarinets howl though the lofts
23
24
COURTESY OF
STARY
ZADARA’S THINKING ABOUT
HIS HOMELAND developed
critically while he was at
Swarthmore, where he
began his theater education under Professor
Allen Kuharski. An
ocean’s distance provided
him with new perspectives. A moment early in
his undergraduate career
proved particularly
influential. He and a
newly minted group of
friends were sitting in
his off-campus apartment discussing literature, or China. Sudden-
TEATR
ZADARA WAS AWARDED THE 2008
PASSPORT AWARD IN THEATER BY THE
WEEKLY MAGAZINE POLITYKA, ROUGHLY POLAND’S EQUIVALENT OF A
PULITZER PRIZE. IN APRIL OF THE SAME
YEAR, HE WAS THE FEATURED ARTIST OF
THE BIANNUAL WARSAW THEATER
MEETINGS FESTIVAL, A SHOWCASE OF
THE BEST PRODUCTIONS OF THE YEAR
IN POLAND. THE FESTIVAL PROGRAM
INCLUDED SEVEN PRODUCTIONS
DIRECTED BY ZADARA FROM ALL OVER
THE COUNTRY, INCLUDING WARSAW’S
NATIONAL THEATER. IN JANUARY 2010,
ZADARA IS SCHEDULED TO MAKE HIS
OPERATIC DEBUT AT WARSAW’S
NATIONAL OPERA, DIRECTING GREEK
COMPOSER IANNIS XENAKIS’S RARELY
STAGED ORESTEIA.
Since his graduation from the
State Academy of Theater in
Krakow, Zadara ‘s star has risen
rapidly. With their visually compelling, anti-naturalistic atmosphere, his recent productions,
including Ifigenia and The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys
(below) have earned him comparisons to Krystian Lupa, Poland’s
most renowned contemporary
director.
Right: Zadara with Tadeusz
Rosewicz, the most important
Polish living playwright and
author of The Index.
ly, it dawned on them that—although they
came from different religious backgrounds
and from cities as far apart as Sacramento
and Jerusalem—they all shared EasternEuropean descent.
This was an uncanny revelation for
Zadara: “This thing you have is somehow
larger than you, and it controls you. Even
after the Holocaust, even after the emigration to America, there is something about
Eastern Europe that stays with you no matter
what history has done to you.”
Around the same time, former Professor
of Religion Nathaniel Deutsch introduced
him to the fiction of Bruno Schulz, an early
20th-century fabulist of Galician small-town
life who has been compared to Marc Chagall
and Franz Kafka. “Schulz was clearly a brilliant Polish writer; he wrote some of the
most beautiful works written in the Polish
language. But he’s also clearly a Jewish
COURTESY OF TEATR WSPOLCZESNY, WROCLAW
of Kazimierz, the ancient Jewish quarter that
remains intact despite the fact that most its
residents were deported and killed.
In Zadara’s eyes, the Poles’ desire to preserve, to fill the void, is an urgent necessity.
The surviving Jewish community, further
depleted by emigration and old age, is simply
no match for the sheer volume of remains it
has inherited, the quantity of history to be
catalogued, preserved, and restored. And naturally, not all Polish Jews—especially the
younger generation—want or are able to
spend their lives tending this massive landscape of cultural ruins.
“The only thing we can do,” Zadara says,
“is to say, okay, these are our ruins. They
aren’t somebody else’s ruins. They shouldn’t
just be shipped off to Israel.”
Although he does not have any Jewish
ancestry (as far as he is aware of), Zadara
sees Jewish-Polish culture—which once
stood on the brink of annihilation—as part
of his heritage. Preserving its intellectual traditions is among the tasks he sets himself as a
theater director, and he has many peers in
architecture, literature, and film who feel the
same way.
There are “right-wing, nationalist elements” for whom Polish culture means
Catholicism and ethnic homogeneity, he
concedes. But Zadara takes a longer view. His
sense of national identity harkens back to the
time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and
the Polish-Lithuanian Union, when Poland
was “the most tolerant and ethnically diverse
state in Europe.”
writer,” says Zadara. “When you
look at Poland from however
many miles away, you see Poland
as a whole. You don’t see a difference between who was Jewish or
who was not Jewish. That didn’t
make any sense to me.”
Zadara’s interest in multi-ethnic
Polish history—and Judaism in particular—would have a decisive effect
on his directing career.
After completing a double major in
theater and political science, Zadara
did a brief stint at a New York softswarthmore college bulletin
DESIGN: STUDIO TEMEPROWKA; PERMISSION 0F INSTYTUT TEATRALNY, WARSAW
BARTLOMIEJ
SOWA/COURTE
SY
OF TEATR WS
POLCZESNY,
WROCLAW
ware company while collaborating with an
indie drama company before heading back to
Europe, where he believed the state-subsidized and well-attended theater scene to be
more fecund. He applied to a highly competitive directing program at the State Academy
of Theater in Krakow and, to his shock, didn’t even get an invitation for an interview. He
was sure that his application, an annotated
play-script, demonstrated his complete technical proficiency in all aspects of directing.
He couldn’t imagine what had happened.
Having pursued his education abroad,
Zadara had failed to anticipate the divide
between theatrical cultures in the United
States and his home country. The technocratic American theater, he says, views
ensembles as well-oiled machines run by
skilled specialists; whereas in Poland, technique is a secondary issue, while performance is most important. In a Polish production, the members of the company sit
around for weeks in rehearsal and talk
about how the material resonates with
them, he says with a touch of irony. The
dean of the Academy had told Zadara that
his fellow deans wouldn’t even consider
him for the program, because he hadn’t
given them any insight into his emotional
being.
Zadara spent the next year living in
Warsaw, assisting the director Krzysztof
Warlikowski. During that time, he read a
great deal about the events in the city
during World War II, in particular the
uprising in the Jewish ghetto. Right there
in the city center, where Zadara and I are sitting, the Germans had liquidated the underground bunkers with Jewish resistance fighters inside them. The incomplete crop of
postwar buildings we were looking at had
been built right on top of the corpses.
Zadara says that this fact developed into
an “unhealthy obsession” for him: “I stopped
being able to communicate with normal people. People would say, ‘What’s up?’ and I
would say, ‘Actually, I just read today that on
this corner there was this massacre and on
this corner, this burned and that burned.’”
The next year he applied again to the
Academy. This time, he chose The Visit by
Friedrich Dürrenmatt for a script—a play
about past crimes that come back to haunt a
well-to-do young man. In his notes, Zadara
connected the material to his own ghostly
april 2009
In fall 2008, the world premiere of Bat Yam-Tykocin
(above) took place, co-produced by the Polish Wroclawski Teatr Wspolczesny and the Habimah National
Theatre of Israel. Michal Zadara directed Polish playwright Pavel Demirski’s Tykocin; Bat-Yam was written
and directed by Israeli playwright/director Yael
Ronen. The plays, which may stand alone or be
shown together, were commissioned by the National
Theatre of Israel as part of the 2008 Year of Polish
Culture in Israel. During production of Bat YamTykocin, Louis Jargow ’10, an honors theater major,
worked as Zadara’s sound designer and assistant director. Jargow is currently writing a thesis on Zadara's work based on his semester of collaboration
with and observation of Zadara’s work in Poland and
Israel.
Top: A poster created for the 2008 Warsaw Meetings
Festival, for which Michal Zadara was the featured
director.
reckonings and to recent revelations of Polish pogroms in the 1940s. This time, he got
into the program, one of four admitted from
among 600 applicants.
Since his graduation from the State Academy, Zadara’s star has risen rapidly. With
their visually compelling, anti-naturalistic
atmosphere, his recent productions, including Ifigenia and The Dismissal of the Greek
Envoys, have earned him comparisons to
Krystian Lupa, Poland’s most renowned contemporary director. Although he resists this
connection, he says that he and Lupa share a
“rejection of all style and technique” and an
embrace of theater based
“completely
on issues.”
His dramatic credo
is neoBrechtian; he
believes in
taking the
process of
alienation to
the extreme.
“At every
moment, [the
audience]
should have to
ask themselves,
‘What am I
watching?’ and
never have the
possibility of emotionally immersing themselves in the experience. The self-awareness generated by this
continual estrangement—Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt—allows the viewer to produce
his or her own thoughts and reactions to the
issues, rather than being fed ideas and images
from the stage.
Asked about how he reconciles his antistylistic philosophy with the perceived aestheticism of his work, Zadara refers to a lecture by philosopher Karl Popper, who said
that the making of a new scientific discovery
always has the quality of a strange beauty.
For Zadara, good theater is always a new
discovery. !
Eli Epstein-Deutsch is pursuing a self-designed
major in modernistic studies and is a cofounder
of the student magazine The Night Cafe.
25
26
swarthmore college bulletin
A
transformative
presidency
Alfred H. Bloom’s vision for Swarthmore is anchored
in the College’s core values—rigorous academics and
social responsibility. His success in articulating and
advancing those values has been unprecedented in
the College’s history.
By Lawrence Schall ’75
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS/IAN BRADSHAW (CLOTHIER)
The most transformative presidencies in higher
education have belonged to those whose tenure lasts
far beyond the current eight-and-a-half–year average
for college and university chief executives. Think of
presidents such as Charles Eliot, who led Harvard
from 1869 to 1909, building it into a modern university. Or Robert Maynard Hutchins, who served
as president and chancellor of the University of
Chicago from 1929 until 1951, introducing controversial reforms while making Chicago a great
center of liberal learning.
Upon his departure from Swarthmore this
summer, President Alfred H. Bloom will have
served the College just one year less than any
president in its history. (Frank Aydelotte and
Joseph Swain each served 19 years.) Future
historians of Swarthmore College will surely
see his 18-year tenure as a time of instituapril 2009
27
Early in his presidency, Bloom outlined the qualities that he believed made the College unique:
“maintaining the highest academic standard and sustaining a faculty that combines dedication to
teaching with dedication to intellectual and artistic advance” and “building a connection between
IAN BRADSHAW
intellectual skills and the responsibility to use them to shape a more just and humane world.”
tional transformation—when the College’s core values
were challenged and recalibrated. Given the length of his
association with the College—which included 12 years on
the faculty and a stint as associate provost before moving
to Pitzer College in 1986 as vice president for academic
affairs—it’s not surprising that a multitude of changes
have occurred. The more interesting question is: What is
it about Al Bloom and his presidency that allowed it to
thrive for almost two decades?
To understand some of the reasons for his success, one
needs to look back much farther than 1991, when Bloom
returned from Pitzer to assume Swarthmore’s presidency.
It helps to understand that Swarthmore College grew
out of an American civil war of sorts. Not the War
Between the States but rather an ideological and cultural
divide among the Quakers. The Great Separation of 1827,
in the most simple terms, was a controversy between liberal and conservative Quakers—although the reality was
far more complex.
The conservative Orthodox branch of the Society of
Friends consisted of founders of Swarthmore’s neighbor
to the west, Haverford College. They represented the
urban Quakers, the elders, the more educated and
wealthy, and those wishing to impose a doctrinal authority. The liberal branch, the Hicksites, was responsible for
founding Swarthmore. They were, as a group, antiauthoritarian—an irregular collection of younger, less
urbane Quakers.
28
This legacy should come as no surprise to most
Swarthmoreans; we remain an irregular bunch that loves
to debate and challenge authority every chance we get. It
also should come as no surprise, then, that since its origins, Swarthmore’s history has been full of debate, challenge, and spirited disagreement.
Swarthmore’s first president, Edward Parrish, was
removed from office in 1871 as a result of a Board split
over the issue of how progressive the College ought to be.
It is remarkable how many of Swarthmore’s subsequent
presidents have wrestled with similar issues. Frank Aydelotte, who, it’s often said, was the College’s pivotal president, was aggressively attacked by many alumni throughout his 19-year presidency, yet he prevailed to manifest his
vision in a multitude of ways.
In his 2008 Commencement address, President Bloom
points to two core traditions of the College that echo
Aydelotte’s vision and are fundamentally responsible for
Swarthmore’s unmatched educational legacy: the Honors
Program and the Quaker tradition.
The importance of our Quaker tradition is obvious.
Writing in 1986, James Michener ’29 speculated on how
Swarthmore had escaped weaknesses that troubled many
other schools: “I suspect the reason lies in the nature of
Quakerism. It is not dictatorial. It is not frightened of
change. It encourages individual choice. And it has a sturdy appreciation of the society in which it functions.”
But Al Bloom’s inclusion of the Honors Program on
his short list of Swarthmore’s core traditions may be more
unexpected. Although those who have remained very
close to the College during his tenure will understand the
central position honors held in his agenda, Al Bloom is
likely to be remembered more for promoting diversity,
multiculturalism, ethical intelligence, and social responsibility—and, by some, for ending 122 years of football—
than as the president who saved and revived the intellectual principles and academic experience of honors. Yet
focusing on Swarthmore’s Quaker values and the Honors
Program is fundamental in understanding the vigor of the
Bloom presidency.
Seventy-five years ago, when President Aydelotte introduced the idea of honors to members of the faculty in
private conversations in their homes along Whittier Place,
he believed that this program alone might transform the
swarthmore college bulletin
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
nature of intellectual life at the College.
Reflecting upon Michener’s statement, it is hard not to
Aydelotte’s ideal of honors was based upon the wisnotice that the characteristics he cites as central to the
dom of allowing individuals freedom of choice—specifiideals of Quakerism also define Al Bloom’s approach to
cally, the choice to excel. He had a clear and accurate
change—and point to the reasons he has been so able to
view of society outside the College walls; he understood
bring it about. He is never dictatorial, promotes individthere was a need—and tremendous demand—for the
ual choice, and has an almost unmatched understanding
vision he brought.
of the world in which Swarthmore exists. As noted by
As a member of the first Rhodes Scholar class, Aydeformer Provost Jennie Keith, Al always models the behavlotte came to Swarthmore with the mission of creating an
iors he encourages in others, engagement at the highest
Oxford-style Honors Program in America. He chose
intellectual level with the ethical dimension constantly in
Swarthmore in large part because of its Quaker heritage,
mind: “Right down to decisions about paper versus Stybelieving that it would be an amenable and welcoming
rofoam cups in the snack bar, he presents these issues to
place to implement his ideas. Aydelotte and the faculty
students as intellectual problems and encourages them to
became true partners in this mission. He not only
reach their ethical positions after applying their brain
embraced the idea of change, he was an agent of change
power to thorough research and analysis.” (It turns out
for Swarthmore.
that Styrofoam is better for the environment.)
Along with the Honors Program came the outlawing
of hazing, the abolition of sororities, and the removal of
big-time football schools such as the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton from Swarthmore’s schedule.
Complaints flowed from alumni about “new” admissions
policies that refused to take into account the “broader
qualities of manhood.” The chair of the Board of Managers, Charles Jenkins, reported he had received a complaint that half of the boys in the freshman class wore
glasses!
In 1928, Aydelotte wrote to Jenkins that the real issue
was whether the Board would allow him to pursue his
vision for the College. He recognized that Swarthmore
might choose a more conventional type of education in
which intellectual values were not as strongly emphasized. If that was the decision of the Board, Aydelotte
offered his resignation. He left for Egypt for several
months while a small group of Managers
deliberated his fate.
Among other issues, there was the
Bloom, like Frank Aydelotte, came to the College with a mission.
question of whether the College would
continue a tradition of powerhouse
And like Aydelotte, he faced concerns from those who were
football that had reigned since the late
19th century—or would it fully
convinced that the ways of the past were working just fine.
embrace the Honors Program that
Aydelotte had introduced? Ultimately,
the Board voted to support Aydelotte,
and he remained president for another
12 years with a faculty and student body that had been
The job of president is an almost impossible one;
transformed. Swarthmore did indeed turn out to be a
there is far too little time to do everything you want to
good place to test his ideals, although a welcoming envido, and there are far too many constituents to keep
ronment clearly took a bit longer to establish.
happy. In fact, the longer one holds such a job, the more
time one has to make enemies. The only way to cope is to
AL BLOOM, LIKE AYDELOTTE, CAME TO THE COLLEGE WITH A
love what you do, day after day, year after year. AmazingMISSION. By 1996, he had transformed the student body
ly, even after 18 years, Al Bloom clearly still loves what he
so that it represented the full range of diversity in Ameridoes. One manager jokes that Al has even persuaded the
ca and across the world. Like Aydelotte, he faced concerns
faculty that a president can serve a useful purpose.
from those who were convinced that the ways of the past
The Blooms’ passionate engagement is most exuberwere working just fine.
antly displayed around the dinner table. Craig
april 2009
29
BOB KRIST
Williamson, the Swarthmore chair and professor of English Literature, uses the Yiddish word haimisch to
describe the experience of breaking bread with the
Blooms—informal, familiar, and having the characteristics of a happy home. Having sat in a university president’s chair for almost four years, I can’t begin to tell you
how important it is to display conviviality and joy in
one’s position.
Rachel Merz, the Walter Kemp Professor of Natural
Sciences, shared with me her personal experience with
President Bloom during his first year: “He has this
unstoppable enthusiasm, pride, and optimism about
Swarthmore that I honestly thought was a masterful
show—how could anyone be that enthusiastic about anything? But, in these 18 years, I have never seen any sign
that he didn’t completely believe what he was saying.
Moreover, he manages to be convincing in a way that
helped me (and others) feel pride and ownership in this
grand venture.”
Although Al and I often agreed about fundamental
decisions facing the College, we did not see eye-to-eye on
every issue. I recall in particular one conversation early in
my work at the College. “Larry,” Al said in his quiet and
understated way, “It would be great if you could find
ways to say ‘yes’ a whole lot more than you say ‘no.’” I
keep that lesson in mind—although I suspect I continue
to say ‘no’ far more than he had in mind.
Board Chair Barbara Mather ’65 writes as way of
explanation: “It is constantly amazing the way Al insists
30
on emphasizing the positive. He just cannot bear to be
anything other than relentlessly positive.” To my mind,
that’s a gift.
Of course, the timing of Bloom’s presidency has not
hurt his ability to answer affirmatively. Saying yes to
plenty of great ideas has been possible at Swarthmore for
the last 18 years in part because of the economic prosperity of the time. Yet, there is also no question that Al’s ability to keep Swarthmore prosperous through year after
year of record admissions and infrastructure improvement can be attributed to his equally remarkable gift for
fundraising. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine
the last two decades at Swarthmore without the Blooms.
Their influence has been that profound.
IN 2002, WHILE WRITING MY DOCTORAL DISSERTATION, I
interviewed several managers who had served on the
committee that brought Al Bloom back to Swarthmore
from the job of vice president at Pitzer College, where he
had served for five years.
I asked them whether they understood what they were
getting when they chose Al. For example, had diversity
and multiculturalism come up in his interviews? Did
they appreciate the fact that he would arrive at Swarthmore with an agenda for real change? To a person, none
had truly anticipated what Al Bloom had in mind for
Swarthmore. Of course, they recalled that every candidate talked about the importance of diversity in higher
education, among students and faculty alike. But did
swarthmore college bulletin
In 2002, I asked members of the search committee whether they understood what they were getting
when they chose Al 13 years before. Had diversity and multiculturalism come up in his interviews? Did
they appreciate the fact that he would arrive at Swarthmore with an agenda for real change? None
had truly anticipated what Al Bloom had in mind for Swarthmore.
these managers actually believe that Al Bloom meant what
he said when he talked about changing the face of Swarthmore? Did they imagine a Chinese dragon prancing across
the stage at his inauguration? Did they see what was coming? No, no, and no.
AL REFLECTED ON HIS FIRST FEW YEARS AS PRESIDENT during
my hours-long interview with him seven years ago. Of
course, he meant what he said during his interviews; he
arrived in the summer of 1991 deeply committed to an
agenda of change. And, like Aydelotte, he “chose” Swarthmore because he knew it had the Quaker capacity for
institutional self-reflection and change.
Al had a vision for the College that was different than
the Swarthmore of my generation and eras before. Central
to that vision was altering the makeup of the student population. Since the late 1960s, the College had been committed to diversifying its student body and its faculty but
had achieved only modest success in meeting those goals.
After a few years in office, seeing the status quo continue
despite his exhortations, Al decided to change most of our
traditional practices in the Admissions Office. In fall 1996,
after he brought in a new dean of admissions who
changed the face of the admissions staff, the number of
African-American and Latino students in the entering
Class of 2000 jumped from 26 to 94—an astonishing 400
percent increase.
This revolutionary shift in admissions was wrenching
and difficult. Internally, it required a change in leadership
and the loss of a beloved employee. In the community, the
Class of 2000 drew a huge amount of attention, some of it
frankly negative. Even before these students arrived,
members of the faculty branded the class a problem. As it
turned out, however, the class did quite well at Swarthmore, graduating more than 92 percent of matriculants
within five years—slightly greater than the average graduation rate for the previous 10 classes, which was 90.9
percent.
But this was just the beginning of a new student demographic for Swarthmore; today, the proportion of students
of color in an average entering class has grown from
around 15 percent to nearly 40 percent. At times, Al
Bloom has been criticized for not confronting hard issues,
but in this instance one can see his true mettle. Like Aydeapril 2009
lotte, he is one of the most persistent people I know, with
a stubborn streak that comes from a deep commitment to
his ideals. When he feels passionately about something,
one should never bet against him. In pushing for a community characterized by inclusion, Al not only led a controversial change in admissions policy, but his presidency
survived it.
It’s impossible to mention Al’s long tenure at Swarthmore without raising the issue of football. In some ways it
is unimaginable that Al Bloom’s presidency might be
defined, even in part, by athletics. By his own admission,
Al’s love of sport came to him late in life. Yet, the decision
to end more than a century of football at the College was
historic and, in my opinion, would have felled most
presidents.
Why, then, did it not take Al down? In my view, the
answer lies in his staking out a position based on clearlydefined and articulated principles. Were these issues about
which people could differ? Absolutely. But, even when
opponents of the decision got caustic and personal, Al
Bloom stuck with his ideas and ideals. He believed very
strongly that, at a college the size of Swarthmore, it was
not appropriate to recruit and maintain a team of 60 to 80
male students to play football. I don’t say this to stir up
old emotions. I was an athlete at the College, and most of
my friends were athletes—many of them on the football
team. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t “belong” at
Swarthmore. There are, however, thousands of students
each year who could fit in at the College, yet each class has
just 375 places—and just 180 men. The question became
not whether an individual applicant might belong, but
how should Swarthmore best select the small group that
would matriculate?
The group that was most vocal—and sought to bring
an end to Bloom’s presidency over this issue—argued that
the decision to end football indicated that Swarthmore
had arrived at a new mission and vision for the College
community.
“A real college has a football team,” one partisan wrote.
I would argue that it was precisely this image (which President Courtney Smith once referred to as a movie image
of collegiate life) that President Bloom was fighting. The
Swarthmore that presidents Aydelotte, Smith, and Bloom
wanted to mold was as far from this image as imaginable.
31
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
In some ways, the opponents of the football
decision were exactly right. The Swarthmore of
2000 was a different place from the one it had
been 10 years before—and certainly 50 or 100
years before. Al Bloom was intent on making it
different, and for this he paid a tremendous personal toll. Larry Shane, chair of the Board of
Managers, who stood beside Al through the
entire episode, has shared that he was personally
devastated by the attacks by alumni and was
always amazed that Al remained eager and open
to reconciliation throughout the controversy.
Yet, as time has passed, despite the degree of
turmoil it created, the wisdom of the decision is
clear. This was a defining moment for the Col-
“A real college has a football team,” one partisan wrote.
I would argue that it was precisely this image (which President Courtney Smith once referred to as a movie image of
collegiate life) that President Bloom was fighting. The
Swarthmore that presidents Aydelotte, Smith, and Bloom
wanted to mold was as far from this image as imaginable.
lege—a moment when the president took an unpopular
stance while making clear the primacy of Swarthmore’s
intellectual mission. Some continue to take issue with this
emphasis, but I believe what makes Swarthmore so distinctive is its being unafraid to own this brand in American higher education—and indeed to revel in it. And for
nearly 18 years, Al Bloom has been the team captain for
the ideal of intellectual mission.
(At the same time, however, the wisdom of ending
football has born fruit in the steady revitalization of the
athletics program. For example, last fall, the men’s soccer
team reached the third round of the NCAA Division III
championships for the first time since 1974—a team that
I played on.)
AL HAS ALSO SHOWN HIMSELF TO BE A SUPERB ADMINISTRATOR.
When he met resistance to his multicultural agenda, he
instead moved to reconceive and restore Aydelotte’s Honors Program, which was in danger of fading away as the
centerpiece of a Swarthmore education.
By the early 1990s, the Honors Program was attracting
just a small fraction of the student body. Al did not want
32
this signature program to wither away, and he worked
with Jennie Keith and a faculty committee chaired by
Craig Williamson to revive honors. While preserving the
essential elements of the program—acceptance into honors by the faculty, independent study in both a major and
minor subject during the junior and senior year, and rigorous written and oral examination by leading outside
scholars in the field—the faculty recognized that their
best students needed more flexibility and choice within
honors. Some students desired to spend all or part of their
junior year abroad. Other students wanted to be able to
prepare for honors with performances, exhibits, and field
work instead of the traditional theses and papers. Al
worked quietly behind the scenes to help shape a proposal
for “new honors” that would pass muster with the faculty.
Implemented in 1997, today’s Honors Program includes
all departments and disciplines at the College and once
again attracts more than a third of the student body.
With this success behind him, Al was able to return to
more difficult parts of his agenda and find increasing success there. The entrance of the Class of 2000 was the signal moment for changing the complexion of the student
body, but Al also kept on with the slower, more challenging task of diversifying the faculty and staff. In anticipation of a significant number of faculty retirements in the
decade ahead, he and Keith worked with departments to
open up some of those tenured positions sooner, then
encouraged the hiring of women and minorities who
were just starting their academic careers. The MellonMays fellowship program and other new foundationfunded positions also helped diversify the faculty—and
the curriculum. Al was behind the introduction of Chinese and Japanese language study, and later—well before
it became essential—Arabic.
Soon after Al became president, he outlined for the
Board the qualities that he believed made the College
unique. He began with “maintaining the highest academic
standard and sustaining a faculty that combines dedicaswarthmore college bulletin
This consistent vision was again articulated in his 2008
Commencement address:
Swarthmore graduates persist in imagining a world
that will offer security, nutrition, health care, education, respect, personal freedoms, political participation, and opportunity to everyone. They persist in
applying their exacting and creative habits of mind
not only to their professional success, but also to better understand how that more ideal world can be
built. They persist in judging leadership, policy, and
action in light of the most comprehensive understanding they can assemble and in terms of how that
leadership, policy, and action will not only affect their
own communities and nations, but impede or hasten
the realization of that better world. And across whatever careers they pursue, Swarthmore graduates persist in striving to align the manner and purposes of
their own lives with contributing to the knowledge,
the beauty, the health, the productivity, the justice,
the inclusion, the environmental responsibility, and
the resolution of conflict that will create that more
humane world.
This is Al’s vision for the college—and it has been since
day one. At times, he had to slow down and let others
catch up. At certain moments, he had to steel himself for
the criticism and just take it. Al is an optimist to his core,
and he always believed that a well-reasoned argument
would, in the end, win out. He is a wonderful friend to
many, and those friends—on the faculty and on the
board—often came forward and stood at his side when
times were tough. Finally, it matters that Al’s vision was
the right one for Swarthmore in 1990 and, I believe,
remains the right one today. Al Bloom has been an
extraordinary leader of an extraordinary institution. Both
he and we have been very fortunate indeed. !
Lawrence Schall has been president of Oglethorpe University
in Atlanta since 2005. He graduated from Swarthmore with
honors, majoring in history. After earning a J.D. degree from
the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1978, Schall
practiced as a trial attorney, specializing in civil rights litigation with a focus on children’s rights and public assistance
issues. In 1990, he returned to Swarthmore and served in
management for 15 years, leaving as vice president for
administration. He was awarded a Ph.D. in higher education administration from the University of Pennsylvania in
2003.
PHILLIP STERN ‘84
tion to teaching with dedication to intellectual and artistic
advance.” Also on his short list was “building a connection
between intellectual skills and the responsibility to use
them to shape a more just and humane world.” If one
tried to summarize Al Bloom’s vision in just a few words,
you would be hard-pressed to do better than he did at the
start of his presidency. And therein lies the answer to the
question: How did Al Bloom manage to survive—and
thrive—for 18 years? He came to Swarthmore with a clear
vision and never wavered. He not only articulated more
clearly than anyone had before a vision of what Swarthmore could be, but he lived it in every relationship with
faculty, students, staff, alumni, and friends.
This was a defining moment for the
College—a moment when the president took an unpopular stance while making clear the primacy
of Swarthmore’s intellectual mission. Some continue to take issue with this emphasis, but I believe
what makes Swarthmore so distinctive is its being unafraid to own this brand in American higher
education—and indeed to revel in it.
april 2009
33
Becky Botsford seems to live the average life of a 10-year-old
girl. She has moderately clueless parents, an annoying younger brother, a pet monkey, and a secret. When trouble arises, Becky becomes
WordGirl, a superhero with super strength, super speed, and a super
vocabulary. Whether she’s out saving the city from a rat-brained villain’s nefarious plot to steal the cheese supply or at home helping her
father complete a crossword puzzle, Becky is the star of WordGirl, an
educational children’s show on PBS, and the brainchild of Dorothea
Lisa Gillim ’86.
As a student at Swarthmore, Gillim didn’t expect to be creating
and producing cartoons for a living, but now she is trying to develop
“work that redeems the medium.” And people are taking notice. Only
in its second season, WordGirl has won an Emmy award for Outstanding Writing in Animation, a Television Critics Association
award for Outstanding Achievement in Children’s Programming, and
a Parents Choice award. This fall, Scholastic, owner of Soup2Nuts,
the production company where Gillim works, released a series of
WordGirl books—and WordGirl merchandise debuts this spring.
Gillim has high hopes for future seasons, including a movie in
season three. Despite her success, her path to television, cartoons, and WordGirl has been anything but straight.
Growing up in Rochester, N.Y., Gillim’s family placed a high
value on reading. “[My father] would recite poetry
at the dinner table,” she recalls, “which
now seems completely absurd to
me but at the time seemed normal.” Gillim’s favorite child-
DOROTHEA LISA GILLIM ’86 INSPIRES
ELOQUENCE AND LAUGHTER
WITH WORDGIRL.
“I felt like such a loser
in my Swarthmore
days,” Gillim says. “It
was a real struggle for
me personally that I
wasn’t as successful as
my peers were. I’m all
about the late
bloomers.”
By Katie Becker ’10
34
swarthmore college bulletin
hood cartoons were shows such as The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Electric Company, and Looney Tunes, which
she now credits for her own desire to create programming
that is “first and foremost” funny but also includes
educational content. She developed a love of words in
this environment, and, in ninth grade, Gillim even
asked her parents for a dictionary for Christmas.
Gillim’s love of words did not translate easily into a clear
career choice once she started college. “Before I entered
Swarthmore,” Gillim says, “I wanted to be—in no particular
order—a genetic scientist, a news anchor, a violinist, and a linguist.” Being in school did not help her make a decision about
her future, and the lack of a career path became a source of great
discomfort for Gillim. An Honors Program dropout, she transferred
to UC–Berkeley in the fall semester of her junior year but returned to
Swarthmore when she realized she wasn’t learning there. She recalls
that she had “a really tough time” at Swarthmore because of the
pressure she felt to go into academia.
Gillim faced similar confusion about her plans after graduation.
She was hired as a fifth-grade teacher in Philadelphia but, after three
years, was unsatisfied with the impact she was having and unsure of
where to go from there. “So I did what any self-respecting Swarthmore graduate would do—I went to graduate school,” she says.
Gillim earned a master’s degree from Harvard in what she calls “a
very expensive career-exploration program.” Still, she didn’t think of
television as a career path and spent the next three years as a freelance writer in the field of educational media.
With rent due and a desire to expand her culinary options beyond
macaroni and cheese, Gillim called Tom Snyder ’72 to ask for a job.
He is the founder of Tom Snyder Productions, an educational software company whose programs Gillim had used when she taught
fifth grade. “I remember reading the [software] box and Tom’s bio
and thinking we have all this in common because we both went to
Swarthmore and the little private schools where we taught were like
sister schools. I called him up, and it just so happened that the project
manager was going on maternity leave, so he hired me practically on
the spot,” Gillim says.
Gillim disliked developing software and “was really bad at it,” but
she learned to edit audio around the time when the animation division of the company, which would become Soup2Nuts, was producing the popular Comedy Central series Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist. Once she became involved with that show, her career “basically
paralleled the growth of the company,” she says.
Gillim has been with Soup2Nuts for 14 years. After working on
Dr. Katz, she produced the company’s second show, Science Court,
and created and produced a show called Hey Monie! “I’m all about
the late bloomers,” Gillim says of the time it took her to find the best
fit in a career. Challenged in recent years to do a show about literacy,
Gillim returned to her love of words for inspiration. “I thought,
wouldn’t it be cool if eloquence were a super power just like super
speed or super strength? Because to me, eloquence is kind of a super
power,” she says.
With the premise of an eloquent super hero, Gillim also wanted
“to create a character that had never been on television before.” She
created a superhero named WordGirl, a.k.a. Becky Botsford, to counteract the relative lack of female superheroes in the media, and their
“sexed-up” image when they do appear—and because of her desire to
april 2009
“Wouldn’t it be
cool if eloquence were a
super power just like super
speed or super strength?
Because to me, eloquence
is kind of a
super power.”
create a character that would
be “empowering for girls.”
Gillim also wanted
WordGirl to be a
character to whom all
kids could relate, so,
“We made her what I
call ethnically ambiguous, she
looks like she could belong to
many cultures, even though
she’s from the planet Lexicon.”
The show centers on the adventures of WordGirl
and her monkey sidekick, Captain Huggy Face, as they combat the
various villains in their town and hide WordGirl’s secret identity.
WordGirl first appeared on PBS in November 2006 as a series of twominute shorts; the series premiered as a 30-minute program in fall
2007. Each episode highlights two words, which are cued by a friendly voice at the beginning telling viewers to listen for words such as
“stampede” and “accelerate.” The writers and voice actors on the
show are “A-caliber comedy,” according to Gillim, including Jeffrey
Tambor of Arrested Development, Chris Parnell of Saturday Night
Live, and Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants.
People of all ages find WordGirl funny, and that’s exactly what
Gillim intended.
“I wanted to do the SpongeBob SquarePants of PBS, I wanted to do
a show that would appeal to 3-year-olds and 83-year-olds. And it’s
happening,” Gillim says. She has been receiving letters from people of
all ages who are enjoying the show. One 15-year-old girl wrote Gillim
to thank her “for creating a kid’s show that she doesn’t hate to watch
with her younger sister.” She hopes that college students will discover
the show as well. “When I was in college, we used to watch Pee-Wee’s
Playhouse on Saturday morning, and we would call it the hangover
hour,” Gillim says.
The success of the show can be attributed to Gillim’s funnycomes-first approach. “I didn’t want the learning to be heavy-handed,” Gillim says. “I have a motto: Vocabulary is not a plot point.” The
creation of each episode reflects this motto, because the words come
“almost last,” according to Gillim, when the writers put together an
outline for the show. They focus first on thinking of a situation that
will be really funny, then they start to think about the words that
would be well suited to repeated use in the storyline, “ideally in a
really funny way,” she says. Gillim hopes that the show will inspire
kids to learn more about language while helping them to “feel cool
learning new words and feel smart for using them,” she says.
Finding her path may have taken a while, but now that she has,
Gillim views work as a “joy.” When asked about where she sees WordGirl going in the future, Gillim replies with a deadpan, “World domination, really.” With the bevy of WordGirl products on the way, world
domination may not be far off. Most importantly, Gillim looks forward to many more seasons because “We have a lot more stories to
tell.” !
Editor’s note: Since this article was written, Dorothea Gillim has moved
to Boston to join the WBGH children’s programming team as an executive producer.
35
Strong Voices
Strong Minds
Strong Spirits
LEFT: GEORGE WIDMAN/ABOVE AND RIGHT: ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
“When I first came to Swarthmore, I thought
I was just passing through,” says John Alston,
in a reflective mood as he looks back on 15
years as founding director of the Chester
Children’s Chorus (CCC) and 18 as a member of the College’s Music and Dance
Department. “I thought I would be here for a
year or two and, then, I’d go on to become a
famous choral director,” he says, adding
wryly, “though there is no such thing.”
Alston has found fame among the children of Chester, the most impoverished city
in Pennsylvania. He’s become a pied piper of
music, education, and opportunity to 100
boys and girls who currently comprise the
CCC—and now to nearly 200 more children
in grades pre-K through second at the
Chester Upland School of the Arts, which
36
The CCC’s Summer Learning
Program includes science taught
by Swarthmore faculty members,
African dance and drumming,
a reading program, and more.
opened in September 2008. (Look for an
article about the first year of this exciting
new school in a future Bulletin.)
The CCC began in 1994 as the Chester
Boys’ Choir, with seven boys. Having sung in
the Newark (N.J.) Boys Chorus as a youth,
Alston wanted to create a similar experience
for boys in Chester, so he went to the Columbus Elementary School looking for boys who
liked to sing. On Saturday mornings, he
drove a borrowed College van to Chester to
pick them up at their homes and bring them
to campus.
The chorus expanded slowly at first, with
a few new boys joining each year after auditions of second graders from Chester elementary schools. A summer day camp on
campus was added, giving Alston and the
boys more time together and opening up
more learning opportunities, such as a reading program staffed by volunteers who
worked one-on-one with the children. Alston
taught them chess and karate, then took
them outside for roughhouse games of kickball in the Scott Amphitheater or pick-up
swarthmore college bulletin
At 15, the Chester Children’s Chorus
is much more than a singing group.
By Jeffrey Lott
baseball on the former rugby field. After an
article about the fledgling chorus appeared in
the Philadelphia Inquirer, an anonymous
check for $50,000 arrived, immediately raising Alston’s sights.
All along, some boys had been showing up
with siblings, including some sisters; they
hung out at the rehearsals and, of course,
learned the music. The boys’ choir went coed around 1999 and finally changed its name
to the Chester Children’s Chorus a few years
later. By 2001, the chorus had grown big
enough that Andrea Hoff Knox ’64 was hired
as a part-time managing director, handling
logistics, doing publicity, and trying to raise
more money. (The College contributes space
and allows Alston to teach a reduced course
load in exchange for foregoing sabbaticals,
april 2009
which he wouldn’t have time for anyway.)
“When I arrived,” Knox says, “there was
enough money on hand to run the chorus
for the next year.” Increased publicity led to
greater visibility, which led to support from
hundreds of individuals, an unexpected
$32,000 bequest, and finally to ongoing
foundation grants. During the past two years,
Knox says, two individuals have contributed
$100,000 each. “If someone wants to top
that,” she smiles, “we stand ready to pick up
the check.” Last year, Knox became the CCC’s
director of development and Anjali GallupDiáz was named executive director.
With 100 singers and an annual budget of
nearly $500,000—much of which goes into a
six-week Summer Learning Program that
now includes a pioneering science program
Director John Alston, associate professor of
music at the College (above), created a community of strivers and seekers in the Chester
Children’s Chorus, which he founded with
seven boys in 1994. The chorus now numbers
100 boys and girls from second grade through
high school.
Kaya Banton and Jazmin Sarinana (center)
sing during the chorus’s winter concert in
December 2008. More than 1,500 people
attended the event at First Pentecostal Holy
Church, the largest auditorium in Chester.
taught by Swarthmore faculty members,
African dance and drumming instruction, an
expanded reading program, and a host of
other educational and artistic activities—
today’s CCC seems a far cry from seven boys
37
LEFT: ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS/RIGHT:GEORGE WIDMAN
in a borrowed van. They sing an impressive
repertoire that includes Renaissance madrigals, Stevie Wonder and Beatles covers, and
original gospel songs that Alston writes.
Some of the original boys have gone on to
college. One, now a college senior, returned
to the chorus as a summer staff member in
2008. But not everyone is a success story.
His voice choking, Alston tells of one
original chorus member who was later in jail
for two and a half years: “He was dealing
drugs and went on one of his meth rampages, and he shot somebody. I didn’t find
out about it for two years, and then he wrote
me a letter. He let me know what had happened and that he was still in jail. He’s out
now, and I’m still very, very close to him, but
it’s such a mess. You spend time—you spend
time with children who love you so selflessly,
and then what can you do except give that
back in return?”
And give it in greater measure.
This year, the CCC plans to hire a fulltime assistant music director who will work
with the youngest singers in the training
chorus. (There’s also a Junior Choir on the
way to the Concert Choir. All three groups
perform at each of the CCC’s three annual
concerts.) Having an assistant will give
Alston more time to work with children 11
38
years old and up—including a new elite
Chamber Choir that debuted last fall.
The new assistant director will also create
the curriculum for another ambitious initiative, the Sing to Learn Partnership. Its goal:
“To provide classroom music instruction to
more than 300 kindergarten and first-grade
students in the Chester Upland School District starting in September 2009.” The initiative will integrate music instruction into the
regular curriculum, building on well-established research that shows how music learning is a distinct form of intellectual activity—and that children often learn more effectively when they employ multiple types of
intelligence.
The chorus plans to add 25 more children
by 2011, offering musically gifted singers in
third grade or above the opportunity for
long-term musical training—plus all of the
other social and educational benefits that
come with chorus membership.
On a Saturday morning outside the Lang
Music Building, two yellow school buses and
a couple of white vans bearing the CCC logo
disgorge dozens of laughing, excited children. The Training Chorus arrives first, and
each week the ritual is the same. A roll of
paper towels goes around the steeply banked
seats of the Presser Room, each child taking
“You spend time—” Alston says,
“you spend time with children
who love you so selflessly, and
then what can you do except give
that back in return?”
One of Alston’s songs says:
“We’ve got a long way to go,
We’ve got a long way to go,
But we’ll get there,
We’ll get there,
We’ll get there
With you.”
swarthmore college bulletin
one sheet. Bags of Pepperidge Farms cinnamon swirl bread are passed around, then
plastic cups. (Alston always conducts a meal
before he conducts music.) He and GallupDiáz move among the children, pouring cups
of orange juice—Tropicana, no pulp—and
engaging each child in a short personal conversation. These children are respected and
they give respect back; they are loved, and
they love in return. Soon Alston steps to the
grand piano, plays a couple of chords, and
the pure joy of singing starts anew.
IN HIS OWN WORDS
What kept you from “just passing through?”
The work was good. I didn’t know where to
go next, so I stayed here and grew up a bit.
When I came, I was such a kid. I had a lot to
learn, and I grew up at Swarthmore. And
then I was lucky enough to be able to take a
little bit of wisdom out to Chester. It’s just a
little bit, but I learned it here.
What sort of wisdom?
Knowing that there are more important
things in life than polishing your own craft.
It took me seven years working with the children’s chorus before I really understood what
I was doing and what my purpose was—trying to take care of as many folks as you can
in your lifetime. I couldn’t have said that 17
years ago, when I showed up at Swarthmore.
When Al Bloom first used the term “ethical
intelligence,” I had some sense of what that
meant, but it didn’t really mean anything
here [taps his chest]. I hadn’t read enough
about history or thought enough about justice. I showed up with pretty good music
skills, but I didn’t have the other stuff. I
couldn’t talk politics; I couldn’t talk history. I
had a very narrow education. So I started
reading. And the more I read about and
became familiar with American history, with
how things got to be this way, the more I
understood what it was that I was supposed
to do.
And what are you supposed to do?
We can make it possible for every child in
Chester to have a wonderfully productive
life, to have the same opportunities as kids in
the Wallingford/Strath Haven school district;
to have 10,000 opportunities; to have all the
adults that surround them tell them thousands of times that they’re beautiful, that
they’re awesome, that they can learn things.
I’d like children in Chester to wonder about
abstract ideas, to learn a foreign language, to
be curious about the rest of the world.
I dream about that stuff. I didn’t have a lot
of that when I was growing up. And coming
to Swarthmore, I saw what happens when
kids have parents who are equipped to give
their children this kind of education. It’s not
just a question of money; it’s what you value.
LEFT: JEFF
REY LOTT
/RIGHT:ST
EVEN GOLD
BLATT ’67
Sixty percent of children who join remain
with the chorus for five years or more—
and many continue through high-school
graduation. Several have gone on to college
or other post-secondary education. Older chorus members such as Nkenge Daniels (far left),
who joined as a second-grader and recently
finished high school, become admired mentors
for the younger kids. The modest ambitions of
the original chorus have grown over time. An
early choir (lower right), performed in the
Swarthmore Friends Meetinghouse, ca. 1997.
JOHN ALSTON
april 2009
39
“Why do people gather together
and sing? Because we crave
community. Because we want
to celebrate the things that we
believe are beautiful. Because
when we sing as a group,
we become more powerful.
Can you imagine the civil rights
era without music?”
not working. The oldest boys, I can talk to
them very directly: If you guys don’t grow up
and become superheroes, then nobody’s
going to be able to change your community,
because you’re the guys who need to put on
your superhero capes and go out and
become doctors and lawyers so that you can
come back and make things right. It has to
begin there.
What would “making things right” look like
in Chester?
Per capita income in Chester is $13,000. The
average median household income is less
than $25,000. The high-school dropout rate
is more than 50 percent. When 90 percent of
the high school graduates in Chester are
going to college, when every family is making
more than a living wage—that’s what it
would look like.
There should not be this many poor people living in a city so close to a place like
Swarthmore. How is it justice that right here
in Swarthmore there’s this [college] that is
one of the most exclusive and powerful and
influential and difficult to get into? How is it
justice that there is so much here and three
miles down the road there is so little? What
allows that to happen? I understand that capitalism, like justice, is blind, but still. Isn’t
there some way that we can have some of this
goodness and some of this sweetness just
move down the road?
But if everybody in Swarthmore, everybody connected to the College, and everybody who lives in this town—if everybody
did everything that they could to take care of
everybody close by who needed help, we
LEFT: ELEF
THERIOS KO
STANS/
RIGHT: JEFF
RE
Y LOTT
What was your idea behind the boys’ choir?
I grew up in northern New Jersey, and for
two years I was in the Newark Boys’ Chorus.
We rehearsed three hours a day, six days a
week. I learned to read music, and we had a
separate hour of musicianship and sightreading. So I was doing four hours of music
a day when I was 11 years old. By the time I
was in the seventh grade, I knew I wanted to
be a professional musician.
I was a little selfish when I started the
chorus. It was very much John-driven, and it
took a while for me to get beyond that. I wasn’t paying attention to the kids. The idea of
training a professional boys’ chorus was ill
informed, shall we say. All I imagined early
on was creating something that sounded
beautiful. That was the mission, to create
something that sounded beautiful.
These kids have taught me a lot. Now, I
want them to have the opportunity to develop into powerful beings, and while I hope
that most of them will remain music-lovers
and some of them will embrace classical
music, what I really dream about for these
kids is that they can go out and change the
world. And that’s the truth.
If this program doesn’t do that, then it’s
40
swarthmore college bulletin
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
could solve it. There are smart people who
live in this town. There are smart people who
work at this College, and I am so appreciative
for everyone’s help, but there is so much
more. We are holding so much back; there
are people who just aren’t giving it up. They
just keep it. For what? How many millions of
dollars do you need? Seriously. You don’t.
You need to give it away. You don’t need to
give it away mindlessly. It needs to have purpose, of course. But we have purpose.
At the last concert, I asked the adults to be
the people that they want their children to
be. We’re constantly telling our children,
“You have to learn to share.” And we say
these things all the time: “You know, you
can’t fight. You have to find a way to get
along.” But then we grow up and become
Before a concert, says sixth-grader Kenan
Hilyard, “I feel nervous, excited, happy, sad,
mad, embarrassed—and a bunch of other
feelings all at once.” Yet a standing
ovation, says high-school senior Jabree
Reaves, “makes you feel like you want to
do the whole show over again. You just don’t
want to leave.”
The Chester Children’s Chorus aims to expand membership by 25 musically gifted children by 2011. In fall 2009, it’s implementing
an initiative that will marry music to learning
in kindergarten and first-grade across the
Chester-Upland School District. The Sing to
Learn Partnership will teach music for its own
sake—and use songs to reinforce classroom
lessons, a concept known as arts integration.
It’s now well established that music is a distinct form of intellectual activity and that
children learn more effectively when they
employ multiple types of intelligence.
april 2009
adults, and sometimes we share, but mostly
we don’t. Or our idea of family is very, very
limited, and we forget to practice what we
preach all the time—you know, big things
like “love your neighbor,” which is hard to
do, but it’s not impossible.
What’s your idea of family?
I can’t say that I have an idea, because my
brother and my mother and I spent so little
time together growing up, so I’m just happy
being around anybody that I love, and especially the children. I think you just need to go
out and find as many people as you can to
love and start to take care of them, as much
as they need, give as much as you can. And
the truth is, I’m not there yet. But these kids
will help me get there.
The motto of the Chester Children’s Chorus is
“We use music to build strong voices, strong
minds, strong spirits.” How does choral music
accomplish these goals?
Why do people gather together and sing?
Because we crave community. Because we
want to celebrate the things that we believe
are beautiful. Because when we sing as a
group, we become more powerful. Can you
imagine the civil rights era without music?
Slaves would have survived without music,
but music made it possible for part of their
culture to flourish, and for part of their history to survive forever. That history will be
with us forever, because people will always
sing spirituals. They will always be with us.
A lot of the music that I write for the chorus embraces the kids’ musical traditions. I
didn’t understand that when I first started
working with them. I had this fantasy that we
would be singing Bach cantatas—that I’d be
bringing the gospel of Johann Sebastian Bach
to the kids. What was I thinking? I didn’t
know any better. I didn’t know anything
about Chester; I didn’t know anything about
what these kids needed. But when I began to
pay attention to what they were telling me,
the signals they were giving me, I began writing music that embraced ideas of social justice and change and compassion and sharing.
You also have to give them a groove that
they understand. So I spend a few hours
every week listening to their radio stations; I
listen to the tempo, to the grooves that they
like, to the hooks that they like, and I try to
imitate that stuff in the gospel music that I
write for them. I call it gospel music, and
they think it’s gospel music, but it’s not typical praise music. It’s music about justice.
But almost anything will work with children if it’s done lovingly and thoughtfully. If
you have that combination of love and nuttiness to be around children, then they will
want to be around you.
Voices, minds, spirits...
Voices. Well, their voices get stronger. They
learn to sing in dozens of languages. They
explore the whole world musically. That’s the
easy part. Engaging minds—I try not to run
a typical rehearsal, where I sing, they sing
back. I try to ask the children what they’re
singing about. We talk about text. We talk
about context. It’s rarely planned. I don’t
come in with the lecture of the day, but if
kids have questions and want to know
things, then we try to talk about it. The kids
don’t have a lot of practice discussing big
ideas in front of each other. We also need to
learn to do that. Some of them need to develop into fabulous public speakers, so that they
can be advocates for their community.
Are you teaching a kind of discipline—
or self-discipline?
I try not to use the word “discipline.” The
idea of just being able to do something
whether you like it or not is useful, but I
think it’s the wrong way to look at it.
Mostly, when children are moving in a
different direction from the group, it’s
because they need something. Rarely are
children at fault. Somebody older than they
are—somebody in charge—created that
situation for them. So a Training Chorus
41
“We tell our children, ‘You have
to learn to share. You can’t fight.
You have to find a way to get along.’
Then we grow up and become
adults, and sometimes we share—
but mostly we don’t.”
What’s the relationship between the chorus
and the Chester Upland School of the Arts?
They’re separate organizations, but the big
idea is the same—to help as many children as
possible. In the last five years, again as I
began to pay more attention to the children
and to understand what the chorus really
should be, I was always a bit disheartened
and sad when I would talk to them about
what they had done in school and heard
their lack of excitement, their lack of wonder
about the day’s lessons. I thought, you’ve
Ja’Quay Lundy and Jabree Reaves (below,
with Alston) are among several chorus members
who study music theory after weekly chorus
rehearsals. Lundy wrote a school paper about
Alston: “[My teacher] said, if you had to pick
one person in the world that was a hero and
an inspiration, who would it be? I picked John.
His songs are so beautiful—it’s beautiful how
he can share that with the world.”
been in school for six hours; you should be
able to tell me something. There should be
something wonderful that you like. I wasn’t
quite sure what that something was, so that’s
when we started dreaming about building a
school, about five years ago in earnest, and
then four years ago we started doing
research, and three years ago we got very
serious about fundraising, and here we are, a
school later.
Are you a religious person?
I don’t have a standard religious practice, but
I think very deeply about God, and I’m sure
that I was put on this planet to do this work
with these children. I am sure that is how
we are all supposed to do God’s work,
through helping others. Jesus spent so much
time talking about that, and he spent so little
time talking about the stuff that we often
fight about. And here we are, 2,000 years
later, still learning to love our neighbors as
ourselves. We just cannot figure that out.
And so I’m going to sing about it and talk
about it and ask folks for money so that we
can spread that word until I can’t do it anymore. That’s the truth.
Amen. !
LEFT: JEFF
REY LOTT
/RIGHT: JO
NATHAN HO
DGSON
rehearsal is never about the group. It’s always
about 16 little kids. The older kids become,
the more demanding I am.
You have to listen to the kids. If you’re
rehearsing a piece of music with 25 kids, and
20 of them aren’t paying attention, they are
clearly telling you that the piece is not for
them. I tried to teach the “Hallelujah Chorus” four years ago. I sang a line and asked
them to sing it back, and they sang halfheartedly. I sang it again, and again they sang
it back half-heartedly. I remember being so
disappointed. I asked them, “Do you guys
like this? This is one of the greatest pieces
ever written—Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’
And they said no, it’s boring, it just keeps
saying the same thing over and over again.
They weren’t ready for it, and there was
nothing I could do to make them ready for
that piece—but I brought it back last year,
when they were ready. This time they loved
it. They absolutely loved it—and the audience gave them a standing ovation.
42
swarthmore college bulletin
connections
SWARTHMORE TRAVELS 2009
There are still two opportunities to take part
in Swarthmore’s Alumni College Abroad
program during 2009.
This summer, you can discover the best of
Switzerland in the good company of Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Paul Rablen on a unique alpine walking
adventure from July 25 to Aug. 2. On this
trip, you will enjoy the consummate views,
fine accommodations, and delectable food
and wine for which Switzerland is renowned.
Your days will be spent exploring the beautiful countryside and spectacular mountains
on easy-to-moderate hikes and via rides on
funiculars, gondolas, and cog railways.
This fall, travel to Bordeaux and the Dordogne. From Sept. 29 to Oct. 9, you will
explore the treasures of Bordeaux, pro-
claimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site in
2007, as well as the picturesque and enchanting region of the Dordogne, where you will
experience the authentic flavor of southwestern France. You will spend seven nights in
the medieval towns of Sarlat-le-Canéda and
Rocamadour; view prehistoric cave art at
Lascaux II; tread in the footsteps of Richard
the Lionheart at Beynac; and savor the rustic
flavors of Périgord’s culinary delights. Associate Professor of French Carina Yervasi will
lead you through Sarlat’s 14th-century cobblestone streets, into delightful cafes, and
around a traditional open-air market. This
trip is co-sponsored by Dartmouth College
and also features Dartmouth’s Professor
Emeritus James Heffernan, who will join Yervasi in lecturing on the region’s diverse artistic impact on film and literature.
For more information, please call (800) 789-9738, or e-mail alumni_travel@swarthmore.edu.
april 2009
HOPE AND COURAGE
ALUMNI COLLEGE
JUNE 22–25
It’s difficult to imagine a better time for
Swarthmoreans to gather to discuss
hope and courage. Three faculty lecturers—economist Amanda Bayer, political
scientist Ben Berger, and Russian language and literature professor Sibelan
Forrester— will explore topics in their
areas of expertise. Registration materials—including course descriptions and
reading lists—will be mailed in mid-April.
You may also e-mail alumni@swarthmore.edu or call (610) 328-8402 for
more information. Please join us for what
promises to be an exciting week!
43
connections
Zone B: N.J., N.Y.
Alumni Council Presents
Candidates for Ratification
This spring, for the first time, new members of the Swarthmore
Alumni Council will be approved as a slate rather than elected as
individuals. As reported in the July 2008 Bulletin, the Council ratified
the new selection method at its spring 2008 meeting. Last fall, the
Council nominating committee reviewed candidates for 14 upcoming vacancies and chose a set of candidates and alternates. The final
candidates agreed to serve 3-year terms, after which the slate was
approved by the nominating committee and ratified by the full
Council.
The Council now asks alumni to ratify this slate of candidates by
Friday, May 22. Alumni may do this by either returning the postcard
inserted on p. 47 of the magazine or by going online to
www.swarthmore.edu/council.xml. This Web site has full profiles of
each of the candidates on the slate. To complete the process online,
alumni will need to log into the Swarthmore Online Community.
Those who are not yet registered will need their Swarthmore ID
number, located above their name on the mailing label of this magazine.
Alumni are also encouraged to suggest candidates for consideration on next year’s slate. In selecting new members, the nominating
committee considers factors such as geographic location, class year, a
demonstrated interest in the College through volunteer service, participation in College-sponsored activities, and a consistent record of
giving as well as volunteer participation in other organizations.
Alumni may nominate a candidate (including themselves) on the
postcard, online, or at any time by e-mailing alumni@swarthmore.edu. Nominations received by Oct. 1 of a given year will be
considered for the following year’s slate.
Zone A: Del., Pa.
Deborah Smith Dempsey ’57
Philadelphia, Pa.
Department head, English
(retired)
Springside School
44
Joshua Farber ’02
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Attorney
Meyer Unkovic & Scott
Danielle Moss Lee ’90
New York City
President & CEO
Harlem Educational Activities
Fund
Steven Charles Kyle ’77
Lansing, N.Y.
Professor of applied economics
Cornell University
Zone C: Conn., Maine, Mass., N.H., R.I., Vt.
Nina Paynter ’97
Jamaica Plain, Mass.
Instructor in medicine
Brigham & Women’s Hospital
and Harvard Medical School
Albert J.“Sandy” Williams III ’62
Woods Hole, Mass.
Scientist emeritus
Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution
Zone D: D.C., Md., Va.
Emily Aubrey ’89
Baltimore, Md.
Self-employed childbirth
instructor and freelance
musician
Rohit Malhotra ’95
Charlottesville, Va.
Physician
University of Virginia Health
Sciences Center
swarthmore college bulletin
Zone F: Ala., Ark., Fla., Ga., Ky., La., Miss., N.C., S.C.,
Tenn., territories, dependencies, and international
Michael Fields ’69
Atlanta, Ga.
News director
Public Broadcasting of
Atlanta/WABE-FM
re.edu >>> miss late night conversations? join the ...
Lynda Yankaskas ’99
Richmond, Ind.
Visiting assistant professor
of history
Earlham College
Swarthmore’s Online Community
connects you to what you loved about your
Swarthmore experience—people who share your interests,
engaged discussions, and fun things to do.
Here are some of the things you can do through the OLC:
• Connect with friends through discussion groups
• Establish a Swarthmore permanent email address
• Search for other alumni in your career field
• Invite fellow alumni to events
• Share your resume on your personal profile
• Update your contact information
The OLC also provides opportunities for alumni to communicate
with current students as they explore career paths.
Connect today at olc.swarthmore.edu.
house? update your contact information at olc.swarthmo
Richard Wilson ’73
Green Bay, Wis.
Accountant
Episcopal Diocese of
Fond du Lac
wonder what your old friends are up to? reconnect at olc
.swarthmore.edu >>> mail still going to your mom’s
Zone E: Ill., Ind., Iowa, Kan., Mich., Minn., Mo., Neb.,
N.D., Ohio, Okla., S.D., Texas, W.Va., Wis.
Carol Church Holm-Hansen ’76
Vollen, Norway
Senior scientist, Norwegian
Institute of Public Health, Div.
of Infectious Disease Control
Zone G—Alaska, Ariz., Calif., Colo., Hawaii, Idaho,
Mont., Nev., N.M., Ore., Utah, Wash., Wyo.
Linda Bovard ’72
Eugene, Ore.
President and consultant
Bovard Consulting LLC
april 2009
David Ko ’92
San Mateo, Calif.
Dir. of special projects, Pillsbury
Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP
Herrin Hopper ’98 and Jennifer Klein ’98 (above) ran the Disneyland Half
Marathon in Anaheim, Calif., last September. They showed their Swarthmore
pride by customizing their race gear to say “See Swatties Run” on the front, and
“Fear the Phoenix” on the back. We want to know where you have been showing
off your Swarthmore gear. As you travel the world for business or pleasure, snap
a photo of yourself in your stylish Swarthmore duds and it may land here in a
future issue of the Bulletin. Send digital photos to alumni@swarthmore.edu.
Please note who is in the picture and where it was taken. (P.S.: You can order
Swat gear at www.bookstore.swarthmore.edu.)
45
Alumni Profile
ELIZABETH REDDEN
cisely how he described his work operating Coolfont, a
center for RE+Creation, not recreation, in another interview with me, seven years before.
“I’m reluctant to quit right now because I think we
can take a step toward a better world, by doing these factory and geothermal combinations,” Ashelman says.
Ashelman wants to construct the houses in alreadyestablished factories and hopes he can interest Wal-Mart
in marketing and ultimately sponsoring communities of
1,000-, 1,155-, and 1,430-square foot prefabricated
homes. They would be affordable homes—in the
$200,000-and-under range, he hopes. “I think the big
market is not for the expensive houses today. It’s going to
be for the small houses.”
“If we are successful at getting Wal-Mart to help us
sell these and then recruit some smart Swarthmore graduates to sell these houses to ordinary people, we’ll have a
good money-making machine here,” he says.
He needs a few good people first. “I need a good
sales manager. I need a good account- ing department, you
see. I need a good group of people who can put the house
together,” he says.
Carr Everbach, a professor of engineering and chair of
Swarthmore’s sustainability committee, first met Ashelman at
last year’s Jonathan R. Lax ’71 Conference on Entrepreneurship, which focused on “The Business of Sustainability.”
“I endorse the philosophy; I think, practically, it could
work,” says Everbach. “He’s catching the zeitgeist of our time,
which is sustainability.”
“I’m not going to resign my position at Swarthmore and
join this company and see if it works out,” Everbach continues, but he has, per Ashelman’s request, been on the lookout
for good graduates to send his way.
On this January day, Liz Sutton—Ashelman’s secretary of
five months—prepares lunch: thick New England clam chowder and grilled cheese sandwiches. Afterwards, we drive to see
a four-bedroom, 3 1⁄2-bathroom, just-completed demonstration house, the third that Ashelman has built to be
fueled by ground-source heat pumps. The three-story cedar
house gleams with plenty of windows and sits on a wooded,
two-acre lot in Berkeley Springs; it is newly on the market.
“Live in the house of the future, today,” boasts a flyer.
“And here’s the dance floor,” Ashelman says, as we descend
the stairs into a large room with a shimmering hardwood
floor that, indeed, invites a dance. The house’s heat surfaces
from five holes drilled 160 feet into the earth. Five pipes
snake into the house, a “no CO2” zone.
Ashelman is 95 today; by the time you read this, he will
have turned 96. As we leave the home behind, he tells me he
planted 75 arborvitae to block the view of the closest house
uphill. And 100 daffodils too.
—Elizabeth Redden ’05
Heat from the Earth
SAM ASHELMAN ’37 WANTS TO
PRODUCE FACTORY-BUILT HOUSES
THAT WILL BE HEATED GEOTHERMALLY.
Temperatures linger in the teens when I visit Sam Ashelman
at his home in Berkeley Springs, W.Va. Powder speckles unforgiving ground, but deep inside the frozen earth flows
Ashelman’s source of warmth.
The whole mountainous landscape visible from his living
room used to belong to Ashelman, composing Coolfont Resort, a 1,300-acre wilderness retreat he long owned and
which he sold in 2005. A prostate problem had confined him
to the hospital for eight months. “My family gave up on me,
almost, but I fooled them and got better,” he says.
Since then, a new business idea has kept him busy. If I
were to write an honest article, he tells me, this is what I
would write: “Sam has some ideas about merging factorybuilt houses with heat coming from inside the earth. He’s
looking for some good people to do that, and he’s looking to
bring some additional capital into the business.”
Ashelman is motivated by principle and by profit. On the
latter point, the businessman says: “If you make the money,
you can give it away.” On the former, he is preoccupied by
carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, and sees geothermal heating as part of the solution. In discussing the possibility that leaking heart valves could compel him to cut
work way back, he recites a phrase—“working toward a better world”—he’s used to characterize his life’s work. It’s pre-
Alumni Profile
JOSH JONES
head—that’s nautical jargon for a kitchen and a bathroom with a door, hanging lockers, and a navigation station.
Assisted by a crew of eight, the Boweses annually participate in about 15 events, most involving multiple races.
They plot their course on a GPS system and track the
competition with a satellite phone.
The first race the Boweses entered with their 15,000 lb.
vessel was an eye-opener. “We learned, too late, that the
Annapolis racers were professional sailors,” Arlene says.
“For example, third place in a three-hour race might
mean you were 30 seconds behind the winner.”
Since then, they’ve always placed in the upper third of
their fleet and brought home their share of trophies, with
Stephen at the helm, and Arlene working as pitcrew, a
central position from which she assists in raising and
lowering sails. “Since I don’t weigh much compared to the
rugby players who race with us, I can haul sails or fetch
Snickers bars from below deck without upsetting the boat’s
trim, “ she says.
The couple usually races off Annapolis, Md., but has also
participated in Block Island (R.I.) and Key West (Fla.) Race
Weeks. Twice, they have competed in the Bermuda Ocean
Race, 750 nautical miles and three to seven days from Annapolis. During a 2004 race on the Chesapeake Bay, the Apparition was caught in the tail end of Hurricane Ivan. “With
the wind at 40 knots, six-foot seas, and the boat traveling at a
recording-breaking 13 knots, we were flying,” Arlene recalls.
“Then we heard a loud snap. We duct taped the 17-foot broken aluminum boom and headed back. It took four nauseating hours to return to dock, a trip that had taken an hour
going south.”
Before the sailors can revel in the thrill of racing, the boat
must be maintained and stocked. “Sailboat racing is a fun but
serious business,” says Arlene. The sails are Kevlar or carbon
fiber and need to be replaced every three or four years. Hightech lines (ropes) are routinely replaced since they carry huge
loads, and the electronics require periodic maintenance. The
boat’s hull must be kept clean and smooth for speed,” Arlene
says. Food, water, safety gear, spare parts, tools, and medical
supplies must be on board. Before their first race to Bermuda,
the couple became emergency medical technicians and completed safety-at-sea courses.
When the winds lessen in late summer, Stephen takes a
13-foot Laser out on the
Occoquan River, which feeds into the Potomac River; Arlene
often skims quietly across the same waters in her 33 lb. kayak.
“We have found over the years what it means to be a team,
a group stronger as a whole than individually, ” Arlene says.
“The synergy applies to our professional lives as well as our
racing experiences.”
—Susan Cousins Breen
Sailboat Racing—Fun
But Serious Business
“... HOURS OF INCREDIBLE BOREDOM,
INTERRUPTED BY MOMENTS OF
STARK TERROR.”
There’s a saying that “sailboat racing is hours of incredible
boredom, interrupted by moments of stark terror.” Despite
this assessment of the sport, Arlene Dannenberg Bowes ’72 is
undeterred.
The Philadelphia native is competitive and enjoys a challenge. As a Swarthmore freshman, she helped classmates deliver a Dickerson 35 ketch from Philadelphia to Cape May,
during which they were caught up in a squall near the mouth
of the Delaware Bay. In 1973, she encountered
another kind of challenge when she entered the School of
Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) at
a time when only one percent of American dentists were
women.
Bowes is now on the faculty at the school where she
earned her dental degree 30 years ago. Since moving to
Clifton, Va., she travels to Penn weekly. She also serves as a
dental officer with the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS),
which she joined in 1976, periodically helping on Native
American reservations or with natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. Her first USPHS assignment after Penn was as
a dental officer at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy
(USMMA) in Kings Point, N.Y. There, she met her husband
Stephen Bowes, a marine engineer
and sailor.
Today, the couple races the Apparition, a Frers 41 sloop,
which they purchased 10 years ago. The racer-cruiser, designed two decades ago by Germán Frers, an Argentine design group, has eight berths, a galley and enclosed
FAMILY CARE INTERNATIONAL
Alumni Profile
Maternal Health Matters
ANN STARRS ’84 FOUNDED AN
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
IN WHICH WOMEN HELP WOMEN.
Ann Starrs hopes that someday she will lose her job. Why?
That would mean that her work as president of Family Care
International (FCI) is no longer needed. “Ultimately, as with
any development work, you’re really trying to work yourself
out of a job,” she says, adding wryly, “I don’t think that’s
going to happen anytime too soon.”
Family Care International (www.family-careintl.org) is an
international nonprofit dedicated to improving women’s
health during pregnancy and childbirth in the developing
world. With maternal mortality rates in Africa ranging from
100 to 500 times higher than those in Western countries like
the United States, Starrs has much to do.
Starrs was motivated to co-found FCI
in 1987 when the World Health Organization released a
global estimate of how many women die annually from pregnancy and childbirth complications—a number
never discussed until then, Starr says.
That number? Half a million—“one woman dying every
minute from the complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
And 99 percent of those deaths occur in the developing
world.” In the face of this, with only two employees, FCI was
born. Today, it has a New York office, field offices in five
African countries and two in Latin America, and program activities in 12 more countries.
Some of Starr’s early work was in Uganda, helping a coalition of local women’s groups organize a community education program for safer motherhood.
“I went out there and worked with them to design a fairly
small (about a half-million dollar) project to recruit and
train women in the community to be pregnancy monitors—
to identify pregnant women in the community and educate
them about risk factors during their pregnancy,” she says.
“The midwifery, providing the actual health care, is the responsibility of the government. But usage was very low, so we
were trying to get women—and, in particular, men—to understand the importance of good care during pregnancy, especially the importance of giving birth in a health facility,
with a skilled attendant present.”
Her time working abroad, Starrs says, has broadened her
perspective on international work. “It’s humbling to be aware
that you can design these projects, but implementation can
be very challenging, much more complicated than you necessarily envision.”
Although Starrs still travels for FCI, much of her travel
these days is devoted to fund-raising, networking, attending
conferences, and making presentations. “As head of the organization, I don’t get to do as much of what I call the ‘fun
stuff ’—really seeing the projects on the ground,” she says.
Her networking pays off, though. FCI works with the
United Nations and its affiliated agencies, the World Health
Organization, and other nonprofit groups. Starrs hopes that
her organization can serve as a coordinating bridge between
maternal health advocacy and groups helping with related
health issues in developing countries.
For example, she bemoans the fact that maternal health is
often passed over in favor of an emphasis on childhood
health. Not wishing to downplay childhood health initiatives,
she adds, “I have two myself—children are important.” Still,
she argues that maternal and childhood health shouldn’t be
seen—or funded—as discrete issues. “There’s a link, obviously, between mothers and children. You’d be surprised how
often the UN agencies and others can ignore that link.”
Similarly, Starrs wants to bring family-planning advocacy
into a broader discussion of maternal health. “We’re really
trying to bring the weight of both the maternal health community and the reproductive and family planning community together to advocate together for funding and attention
to these issues,” she says.
Despite ever-present discouraging statistics about maternal mortality and difficulty fundraising in a worsening economic climate, Starrs remains hopeful. “I think there’s a lot of
momentum around this issue right now... I think there’s
going to be significant progress in this area over the next five
to six years.” She also hopes Family Care International will
grow—to an extent.
“One of my dreams, or hopes, is that we could expand and
start some programs in Asia. I don’t want FCI to become
huge. I’d hate to run an organization where I don’t know
everybody in it by name. But we’re doing really good work,
and I’d love to be able to do more of it in places where we can
really make a difference.”
—Michael Lott
books + arts
Over 50? Welcome to the Age of Curiosity, Courage, and Passion
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot ’66, The Third
Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25
Years After 50, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
2009
The Third Chapter reminds me of conversations I have savored at Swarthmore. Like
those, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s book invites
new thinking about complex human issues,
shares deep reflections about personal experience, invokes the findings of scholarly
research, and applies intelligent analysis—all
with graceful turns of phrase—concluding
with a few suggestions on how to save the
world.
The foundation of the book is a series of
conversations the author shared with 40 individuals who are in the stage of life she calls the
Third Chapter—the 25 Years After 50.
Lawrence-Lightfoot spent two years traveling
the United States, interviewing men and
women in their 50s, 60s, and 70s who have
entered this new life stage with curiosity, courage, and passion. Her
book tells their stories, often in their own voices, offering interpretations of their experiences with reference to literature and developmental psychology as well as to sociological studies of aging and the
life course. We hear the stories of individuals such as a corporate
lawyer who becomes engaged with a community garden, a successful
businesswoman whose Third Chapter takes her to Kosovo to work
with children suffering the effects of war, a journalist and newspaper
executive who begins to learn to play jazz piano at age 60, and the
director of a major nonprofit who resigns to enter divinity school.
There are many reasons to rcommend this book not only to readers who are in their own Third Chapter but also to those who are in
earlier installments of their life stories. Lawrence-Lightfoot is correct
that a stage of life between work and death is very new in human history. Adventuresome and creative individuals like those she interviewed are bringing to that new stage meanings that will shape the
expectations and the experiences of all who will write their own
Third Chapters in the future.
The author is a talented listener who draws from her interview
partners not only accounts of their accomplishments but also of the
journeys that preceded them. Like classic quest stories, these narratives recount fears, hesitations, obstacles, vulnerabilities, and ghosts
from the past that must be recognized and overcome before the liberations and opportunities of a new life stage can be perceived and
enjoyed. Among the greatest challenges described are the constraints
that norms and stereotypes about aging place on living life to the full
at any age. Lawrence-Lightfoot writes, “[this book] challenges the
still-prevailing and anachronistic images of aging by documenting
and revealing the ways in which the years between 50 and 75 may, in
fact, be the most transformative and generative time in our lives....”
Even a book as abundant and rewarding as The Third Chapter can60
not include everything without adding many
more chapters of its own. We do not hear from
individuals who are poor, or learn about the
life course in other cultures, or see the ways
that age peers in retirement communities may
foster the creative adventures Lawrence-Lightfoot recounts. The author herself points out
that the people she interviews all enjoy privileged status. They are comfortable (or more)
economically and have both educational and
occupational backgrounds that provide access
to many resources and relationships that
enhance their ability to take risks and be creative in a new stage of life. From my perspective as an anthropologist/gerontologist, I noted
that although many of the individuals
Lawrence-Lightfoot interviewed described
their life transitions as “ethnographic” or
“anthropological” excursions into unfamiliar
territory, the author does not place her work
in cross-cultural perspective. Doing this would
not undermine her conclusions, but enhance
them. The constraints of a strictly staged life course, with chronological markers at every sharply defined boundary, seem even more arbitrary if compared with cultures without these stages. From this point
of view, the book title’s definition of Third Chapter as the “25 years
after 50” is both a fitting reminder of American views about aging
and somewhat at odds with the author’s admiration of individuals
who have transcended chronologically defined expectations.
Lawrence-Lightfoot and the people she talks with focus mainly on
individuals and the support they receive from significant people in
their lives. Her reference to retirement communities contrasts the
“segregation, isolation, and recreation” of early versions to the
“yearning for lives of active engagement, purposefulness, and new
learning” older people want now. My own research in retirement
communities persuades me that they are very often the settings for
just the kind of freedom from the constraint of age norms and
opportunity for new learning that Lawrence-Lightfoot admires.
Like any good Swarthmorean, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot uses what
she has learned as the basis for proposals about how to make the
world a better place: We need to transform the parameters of our
educational system to encompass lifelong learning and to reduce generational segregation. We need to innovate in the structure of work
lives to increase opportunities for re-inventing ourselves, resting, and
re-balancing work, love, family, community, and play. We need to
open channels for the motivation and talent many Americans want to
use in service to others during their Third Chapter.
Lawrence-Lightfoot’s book offers inspiration, guidance, and
encouragement for fuller appreciation of the full lifespan to readers
of any age.
—Jennie Keith
Centennial Professor Emerita
of Anthropology and Provost Emerita
swarthmore college bulletin
Jacqueline Carey ’77, It’s a
Crime, Ballantine Books, 2008.
This novel portrays the dire costs
of today’s corporate culture of
runaway greed in a fractured
landscape filled with CEOsturned-robber barons, privileged
lives punctured by wretched
excess, and personal relationships put to the ultimate test.
Carl Abbott ’66, How Cities Won the
West, University of New Mexico Press,
2008. From the Gulf of Alaska to the
Mississippi River and from the binational metropolis of San Diego-Tijuana to the Prairie Province capitals
of Canada, the author explores the
complex urban history of western
Canada and the United States.
Peter Cohan ’79, You Can’t Order
Change: Lessons From Jim McNerney’s Turnaround at Boeing,
Portfolio, 2008. The author
explores what sets the Boeing
CEO apart from other CEOs.
Dean Baker ’80, Plunder and
Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the
Bubble Economy, PoliPointPress,
LLC, 2009. The author chronicles
the growth and collapse of the
stock and housing bubbles that
he foresaw.
Kristin (Sims) Levine ’97, The Best
Bad Luck I Ever Had, G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 2009. In this historical novel,
set in 1917 Alabama and inspired by
the author’s family history, a friendship between a white farm boy and an
African American city girl sends ripples through a rural town.
Jan (Burgess) Chozen Bays ’66,
Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship
With Food, Shambhala Publications
Inc., 2009. This book offers suggestions on how focusing on the tastes,
smells, thoughts, and feelings that
arise at mealtimes can help people
with eating disorders and other food
issues. (CD included)
APRIL
2009
William Cohen ’85, Embodied:
Victorian Literature and the Senses, University of Minnesota
Press, 2009. The author considers the meaning of sensory
encounters in works by a variety
of Victorian authors.
Theodor Nelson ’59, Geeks Bearing Gifts: How the Computer
World Got This Way, Mindful
Press, 2008. The inventor of
“hypertext,” who anticipated and
inspired the World Wide Web,
takes a look at computer history
in a series of short, punchy chapters.
Osha Neumann ’61, Up Against
the Wall Motherf**cker, Seven
Stories Press, 2008. The founding
member of the ’60s anarchist
group Motherfuckers, Neumann
chronicles their activities, exploring the meaning of past rebellions for current rebels.
trained their people and built
their cultures in different ways,
leading to strikingly different
levels of success in today’s uncertain economic times.
Christine Shepardson ’94, AntiJudaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem’s Hymns in FourthCentury Syria, The Catholic University of America Press, 2008.
This book investigates the antiJewish and anti-Judaizing rhetoric of Ephrem, a fourth-century
poet and theologian from eastern Roman Syria.
Irene Silverblatt ’70 and Helene
Silverblatt ’70 (co-editors and
co-translators), Harvest of Blossoms: Poems From a Life Cut
Short, by Selma MeerbaumEisinger, Northwestern University Press, 2008. A first English
translation of these insightful
poems brings to life a teenage
Holocaust victim who moves
readers with the riveting honesty
and courage of her verses.
Amy Singer ’82, Charity in
Islamic Societies, Cambridge University Press, 2008. The author
demonstrates how historical circumstances, social status, gender,
age, and other factors interacted
with religious ideals to create a
rich variety of charitable practices, from the beginnings of
Islam to the present day.
Alexandra Michel and Stanton
Wortham ’85, Bullish on Uncertainty: How Organizational Cultures Transform Participants,
Cambridge University Press,
2009. This work shows how two
successful investment banks
Richard Osterweil ’74 (star), Painting
the Town: There is an Art to Party
Crashing, Behar and Sackner, Padded
Cell Pictures, 2008. The hit documentary features struggling painter,
party-crasher, cabbie, and raconteur
Osterweil, as he shares his outrageous
efforts to experience how the other
half lives.
Gillian Rogell ’68, At the Heart of
Chamber Music: A Guide for the Player,
the Coach—and the Music Lover, Musicalchemy, 2008. This first-of-its-kind
chamber music DVD, featuring the
Jupiter Quartet and Paul Katz, founding cellist of the Cleveland String
Quartet, is aimed at helping young
professional string players become
good chamber music coaches.
61
Alumni Achievements
Robert Browning ’34,
a former member of the Swarthmore College Board of Managers, died on Jan. 22 at age 96. Browning
worked for General Electric for 10 years, and then, was one of the original 10 partners of the consulting
firm now known as Booz Allen Hamilton, where he remained until his retirement in 1968. Fulfilling a lifelong dream of owning a farm, Browning then moved from Philadelphia to North Pomfret, Vt. He was an active member of each community in which he lived, during his time in Pennsylvania and in his later life in
Vermont. He served as a board member for many institutions, including Germantown [Pa.] Hospital, the
Pomfret [Vt.] Planning Commission, and the Ottauquechee [Vt.] Health Center. Browning’s greatest pride
in his lengthy service career was being chairman of the Swarthmore Board of Managers and the Vermont
Land Trust.
Ruth Wolf Page ’42
recently published a compilation of servicepersons’ experiences during World War II with three other residents of the Wake Robin Continuing Care Retirement Community in Shelburne, Vt. The quartet spent almost three years fact-checking, editing, and collecting photos of the authors in uniform during the 1940s
for the book Our Great War. An astounding 65 Wake Robin residents contributed their wartime tales to the
collection. The book contains stories from the U.S., Atlantic, and Pacific services, Europe, the Far East, and
even a piece by a soldier who was present for a full day of trials in Japan following the war—he observed
Hidelei Tojo, Emperor Hirohito, and all the famous Japanese admirals in the courtroom. The volume also
includes a medical section with stories by doctors, nurses, and aides, members of the Navy and Marines,
and even an admiral and provides a glimpse into what often were residents’ unshared memories. According
to Page: “Many of the stories had never been told before—even to family members—because the memories
were in many cases too bloody and horrendous. But 60 years later, they felt able to write the details of their experiences.”
Daniel Beshers ‘49
was awarded the Zener Medal at the International Conference on Internal Friction and Mechanical Spectroscopy in Perugia, Italy, last summer. The award recognizes a lifetime of measuring and explaining evidence of atomic motion inside crystalline solids, particularly in ferromagnetic materials. A member of the
Columbia University faculty since 1957, Beshers, professor emeritus of metallurgy at Columbia’s Henry
Krumb School of Mines, is a special lecturer in the materials science and engineering program in the department of applied physics and applied mathematics at the university. His career has focused mainly on
internal friction; particularly noteworthy are studies which established the detailed path of the diffusion of
carbon atoms in iron, others which revealed the law of breakaway of dislocations from surrounding impurities, and others which gave new insights into the nature of ferromagnetic hysteresis. Beshers is a life member of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society and ASM International—The Materials Information
Society—and a member of Sigma Xi. He has also received the Education Award from the New York
chapter of ASM.
Alumni Achievements
Mark Risk ’78
was elected and installed as a fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers last September. The
College, established in 1995, recognizes lawyers for demonstrating through sustained performance, high
professional qualifications and ethical standards as well as character, integrity, and leadership. Risk practices in New York City, principally representing individuals in employment disputes. He edits and contributes to Labor and Employment Law, the quarterly newsletter of the American Bar Association’s Section
of Labor and Employment Law. He teaches in advocacy skills programs for the National Institute for Trial
Advocacy and is on the adjunct faculty at Hofstra University Law School. A frequent speaker on employment law topics, he is on the advisory board of the NYU Law Center for Labor and Employment Law.
Scott Cowger ’82
was named to the sixth annual Mainebiz Next List for alternative energy efforts at his inn and conference
center in Hallowell, Maine (MapleBb.com). Each year, Mainebiz, a business news publication, selects a
group of 10 innovative business leaders for inclusion on their Next List. Cowger, co-owner of the Maple
Hill Farm Bed and Breakfast Inn and Conference Center, invested in alternative energy five years ago with
his partner, Vince Hannan. The results thus far are a 10-kilowatt wind turbine, 126 photovoltaic panels,
and 202 vacuum tubes for solar hot water that collectively save Cowger $1,000 a month in electricity costs,
reduce the inn’s oil consumption by 20 percent, and produce about half of the facility’s energy. The Maine
Department of Environmental Protection awarded the first “Environmental Leader” Green Lodging Inn
Certification to Maple Hill Farm in 2005. Cowger expounds the importance of embracing social responsibility in the midst of success, “We need to make a personal commitment to protecting the environment and
improving it, because humans have devastated it for some time.”
Amy McBride Barker ’92
was honored with the Governor’s Award of Excellence in Humanities Education from the Missouri Humanities Council (MHC) in October. The Council celebrates those who have contributed to the appreciation of
history, literature, and the culture of Missouri. Nominated by the community, Barker is the Advanced
Placement English literature and composition teacher at Kirkwood [Mo.] High School, where she has been
inspiring students to “learn what it means to be human” through literature for 12 years. Kirkwood High
School Principal Dave Holley says, “Amy Barker is one of the most enthusiastic and passionate teachers we
have, and she’s one of the teachers that every kid wants to have.” Barker’s students attest to her passion and
energy in the classroom; through that passion and energy, she communicates a love of reading and an unreserved willingness to dive into literature analysis. The executive director of the MHC calls Barker “an incredible gift to her students and to humanities education in Missouri.”
Pablo Reid Mitchell ’92
was recently named a Class of 2008 Emerging Scholar by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. The magazine, dedicated to providing information about higher education in the context of educating a growing
number of minority students, selects a group of 10 scholars under the age of 40 for their annual list.
Mitchell’s first book Coyote Nation: Sexuality, Race, and Conquest in Modernizing New Mexico, 18801920 received the 2007 Ray Allen Billington prize from the Organization of American Historians for the
best book in American frontier history. He is an associate professor of history at Oberlin College, where he
also mentors Mellon-Mays undergraduate fellows. He is currently working on a new book, West of Sex:
The Making of Latino America, 1900-1930, which continues his exploration of Latino sexuality. After its
completion, he plans to write a history of American people of mixed ancestry.
in my life
On and
Off
the
Paternoster
THE PATERNOSTER IS THE MOST
EXISTENTIAL OF CONTRAPTIONS.
IN THEORY, YOU COULD STAY ON
IT FOREVER.
By Jeffrey Scheuer ’75
Illustration by Nancy Harrison
68
RECENTLY, WHILE IN MY BASEMENT DIGGING
through old shopping bags full of philosophy
books, I came across a flaky brown paperback titled Moral Philosophy: A Program of
Study for Honors Students. Published for the
Swarthmore College Philosophy Department
in the 1940s, it was an 81-page outline for a
16-week seminar—replete with potential
honors exam questions. A remnant of my
father’s signature from 60 years ago was visible on its heavily chipped front cover.
The book is a casual family heirloom,
passed to me during my own Swarthmore
years. My father, Walter Scheuer ’44—like my
mother, Marge Pearlman Scheuer ’48—had
been an honors economics major with an
interest in philosophy. I will turn it over to
my son, who is currently studying philosophy at Reed College.
Moral philosophy wasn’t exactly on my
front burner when I arrived at Swarthmore
in fall 1971. I’d entertained vague notions of
becoming a writer and considered majoring
in history. In that first semester, I enrolled in
Paul Beik’s Modern Europe. The kindly Professor Beik encouraged me to continue in
Clio’s direction. The following spring, I was
less impressive in Bernard Smith’s Later
Medieval Europe, chosen mainly to test
Smith’s reputation as a great and demanding
teacher. He was one.
That same semester, I sampled Hans
Oberdiek’s Philosophy 1 and was hooked
from the first assignment—Descartes’ First
Meditation. Something in it about a ball of
wax intrigued me, and I liked the sound of
Cogito, ergo sum, even though I had doubts
about the actual doctrine. By the end of the
term, philosophy had become my major, and
during my next three years at Swarthmore, I
thought, therefore I was. (Now, I consider it
a good day if I think at all, having long ago
abandoned any hope of confirming my
existence.)
I was a good enough student, no more.
After an intellectually lackluster high-school
career, reading philosophy pried open my
mind and filled it with questions. Nearly
everything I learned of any importance was
learned at Swarthmore—especially in those
philosophy courses and seminars. Nothing
else compares.
Eventually, I became aware of the Philosophy Department’s distinguished history. The
names that echoed through Trotter and the
old Parrish Annex, where the department
was housed in those days, included Roderick
Firth, Monroe Beardsley, Maurice Mandelbaum, and Brand Blanshard. By the 1970s,
Oberdiek, Hugh Lacey, Richard Schuldenfrei,
and Charles Raff formed a small but very
able crew. There was also a steady trickle of
visiting professors, cannily selected to show
off the superiority of Swarthmore’s department.
During sophomore year, I came to equate
great moral questions with the taste of strong
black tea, which emerged from Gil Stott’s
picnic basket at 4 p.m., when we met for
swarthmore college bulletin
ethics class in his Parrish Hall office. There, I
first made contact with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and other great works of
moral philosophy. I was one of the hundreds
of students whom Gil befriended over the
decades.
Schuldenfrei’s epistemology course introduced me to the genius of David Hume, John
Dewey, and C.I. Lewis, among others. From
Richie, I acquired a good example of inductive reasoning: A man falls off the Empire
State Building and, as he passes the 50th
floor, he observes, “So far, so good.”
During my final semester, in spring 1975,
the elegant mysteries of Kant were revealed
—or, at least, some of them—in Oberdiek’s
attic study. The special honors seminar on
Kant included five philosophy majors, Hans,
and Professor Ken Sharpe from political science.
This is how, in my last months at the College, I came to read much of Kant’s Critique
Despite all of this deep thought, an academic career wasn’t in my future: I’d failed to
persuade myself that philosophy was my calling. So, after a year of writing and research, I
enrolled at the London School of Economics
(LSE) to study political theory.
Though significantly less rigorous than
Swarthmore, the LSE course wasn’t bad. The
main seminar was led by an icon of conservative British political theory, Michael
Oakeshott, a man given to dismissing any
statement he disagreed with as “rubbish.”
(This was a critical posture to which Swarthmore hadn’t exposed me.)
In addition to being in London, the LSE
had another singular feature that Swarthmore had lacked—a sort of elevator, known
as a “paternoster,” that had no door and
never stopped.
The paternoster, still found across Europe,
is the most existential of contraptions. You
hop on and off at just the right moment to
The only drawback to studying philosophy has been a certain beclouded
incapacity to see the world as it really is. This debility isn’t a function of age;
I noticed it as soon as I descended from the Olympus of Oberdiek’s attic.
of Pure Reason—along with James Joyce’s
Ulysses (in David Cowden’s seminar The
Modern Novel) and a dozen or so other
works by Joyce, Henry James, Joseph Conrad,
and Virginia Woolf—while plotting my
future and preparing for honors exams.
I enjoyed it, exams and all. The highlight
was an oral exam on Kant with Lewis White
Beck, a leading Kant scholar and translator.
As a convergence of inquiring minds and
great books, that Kant seminar was the
apotheosis of the Honors Program—the
unrecorded high point in the history of
learning at Swarthmore College. Not of
genius, but of learning.
Within the dense labyrinth of the Kantian
critiques, I found a compelling way of concerting mind and nature. There are other
great ideas in Kant, but above all, he pointed
the way toward the modern synthesis of reason and experience as building blocks of
knowledge. By the end of that semester, I
couldn’t exactly sight-read Kant’s symphony,
but I could at least hum it.
april 2009
avoid death or dismemberment. In theory,
you could stay on it forever. When your moving platform reaches the top floor, it shifts to
the down shaft and begins its descent. At
bottom, it shifts again, returning to the top,
ad infinitum. Not a bad metaphor for studying philosophy, come to think of it.
SOME YEARS AFTER LONDON, AND A BRIEF FORAY
into journalism, I became a philosophy graduate student at Columbia. One of the attractions was the legendary Sidney Morgenbesser, who had previously taught at Swarthmore—well before my time. I did well at
Columbia but still felt out of place in the
world of academe.
My final wake-up call came when I went
to see Morgenbesser about a paper that he’d
returned with a grade of A-minus but without comment. I stopped by his office hoping
to talk it over and maybe learn something.
He received me icily, assuming, as I later realized, that I’d come to argue my grade.
Grade grubbing was another thing
Swarthmore hadn’t prepared me for. I had
never discussed a grade with any Swarthmore professor. What was there to discuss?
When it dawned on me that Columbia—and
most of the academic world—was different, I
returned to writing.
I RECENTLY TAUGHT A COURSE ON MEDIA AND
political ideology at New York University and
found it challenging and stimulating. But I
didn’t have the feeling that I’d missed my
calling. My father had pronounced scholarship a “saintly profession,” but I found this
judgment to be unsettling and, at times,
quite wide of the mark. And I really wasn’t
interested in sainthood.
Looking back, the only drawback to
studying philosophy has been a certain
beclouded incapacity to perceive the world
as it really is—apart from the conceptual
and normative frameworks that philosophy
imbues even in nimbler minds than mine.
This debility isn’t a function of age; I
noticed it as soon as I descended from the
Olympus of Oberdiek’s attic. It was probably
triggered the moment I opened Tillman’s
Introduction to Philosophy and discovered
Descartes’ First Meditation. We may never
glimpse Kant’s “Ding an sich”; but if you can
pump gas without your mind drifting to the
question of synthetic a priori truth, you’re
ahead of me.
Nonetheless, philosophy is an excellent
foundation for many careers, including law,
politics, business, film theory, bartending,
and most kinds of teaching or writing. I’ve
found it indispensable for a species of quasiacademic nonfiction, which is not currently
in much demand. But struggling to see
things exactly as they are (if they are exactly
anything), has its rewards. Hopping on and
off the paternoster of pure thought, I may
not have done philosophy much good; but
it’s one way of getting to the next higher
level. !
New York writer Jeffrey Scheuer ’75 is author of
The Sound Bite Society: How Television
Helps the Right and Hurts the Left (Routledge, 2001) and The Big Picture: Why
Democracies Need Journalistic Excellence
(Routledge, 2007). For more information on
Scheuer, visit his Web site at www.jscheuer.com.
See a paternoster in action by finding this article at media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin.
69
q+a
A couple of hours after Barack Obama
had been sworn into office seemed to be a
more-than-appropriate time to be interviewing George Lakey, a lifelong activist for
peace and conflict resolution and civil rights
through nonviolent means. Lakey is currently in his third year as Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change and
Peace and Conflict Studies. “Today is really
quite a day,” he said, beaming.
Lakey, 71, spoke of his father, a former
slate miner, who had passed away two days
earlier at age 95. During the 1952 presidential campaign, in a moment of wishful thinking, Lakey’s father had sparked a fierce argument during lunch with his workmates by
expressing regret that Ralph Bunche, undersecretary general to the United Nations and
highest African American public official in
the country, was not running for president.
He would have liked to vote for Bunche.
“He was the only one who took that side,”
Lakey said. “That was then, and this is now.
My dad was so on my mind as I watched the
swearing-in this morning.”
Lakey, a Quaker, was active as a campaigner and organizer in the civil rights
movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. He co-founded the Movement for a
New Society, initiated the Philadelphia Jobs
With Peace Campaign, and created and
organized the Campaign to Stop the B-1
Bomber and Promote Peace Conversion. He
founded and served as executive director of
Training for Change, a Philadelphia organization that stands up for justice, peace, the
environment, and nonviolent change. He has
led more than 1,500 training workshops on
five continents for groups including homeless people, therapists, prisoners, West Virginia coal miners, Mohawk Indians, lesbians
and gays in Russia, and many more.
He is the author of seven books, including
A Manual for Direct Action—known as the
“Bible” of direct action by southern civil
rights activists of the 1960s.
In 2008, he received the Martin Luther
King Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. Previously, he was also honored by the Bread and Roses Community
Fund with the Paul Robeson Award for
Social Justice as well as the national Giraffe
Award for “sticking his neck out for the
public good.”
80
Rebel Energy
GEORGE LAKEY IS
UNSTOPPABLE IN HIS QUEST
FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE.
By Carol Brévart-Demm
swarthmore college bulletin
COURTESY OF GEORGE LAKEY
Which five words best describe you?
Rebel, visionary, curious, warm-hearted
Who is your most-admired political figure?
That would have to be Dr. King or Gandhi. It
depends what I need. If I need the American
context, it’s King; if I need a more cosmopolitan
figure, it’s Gandhi.
ELEFTHERIOS KOSTANS
In 1990, Lakey (above, third
from right) was smuggled into
Burma under the guns of the
Burmese dictatorship to assist
student freedom fighters, who,
although also soldiers, took a
course on nonviolent struggle
against the dictatorship. Living
in the dorm of a “jungle university” that the students had organized within a guerilla
encampment in the Burmese
jungle, Lakey and his Quaker
colleague Michael Beer (second
from right) received two meals a
day and slept on bamboo mats
next to a bomb shelter.
april 2009
How do you choose your issues?
I ask myself the question, “What does social
change need right now?” and tune into the current moment in history to find a need that isn’t
being met. Then, I ask, “If I jump into that, is
there a way that I can make it work with my own
personal growth agenda, my own journey toward
enlightenment?” And I can always find issues out
there that are also here, inside me. It’s not hard
to find one. I’ll never be without an issue.
Have you ever been in a situation, in which, in retrospect, you might have acted differently?
I was once working with an international peacekeeping organization in the mountains of Thailand, training people to enter areas of conflict
and function as peacekeepers. It was an extremely dangerous mission, and the participants were
anxious about whether they’d survive. But I didn’t take their anxiety into account. I took the
kinds of chances I’d usually take—I’m a risk
taker, that’s the nature of my temperament. Even
though the participants didn’t learn all they
should have learned during the training, they
became so bonded that their bonding carried
them through the assignment.
What are the essential components for effecting
nonviolent change?
We have to figure out how to apply the power of
nonviolent action to very varied situations. What
works in civil rights doesn’t necessarily work in
national defense. What works for national
defense doesn’t necessarily apply to terrorism. I
believe that a lot of the issues that puzzle us present ripe opportunities for considering how to
apply nonviolent action. But it always needs to
be done with imagination and humility, rather
than a simple-minded transfer of the techniques
from one situation to another. We discuss this in
the class I’m currently teaching on Nonviolent
Responses to Terrorism.
What are your plans for the future?
I’d love to make a dent in the issue of class during the next 20 years or so. For all the strides
we’ve made over the years, especially around race
and gender, U.S. culture remains fairly clueless
about problems of class. Whether rich, middle
class, or poor, everyone is hurt by a class society,
but only a few people know what’s really hurting
them.
How do you enjoy spending leisure time?
I love to play piano for Broadway sing-alongs—
in living rooms filled with people singing the
golden oldies of Broadway. I also walk in the
Crum for exercise with my iPod playing classical
music and sometimes folk, jazz, or Broadway
songs for company.
Do you have any notable habits?
I take an 18-minute nap every afternoon on my
office floor. I’m a vegetarian. As a great-grandfather, I enjoy romping with three little boys, ages
5, 4, and 2. They can romp longer than I can.
How about a favorite book?
There are a bunch, but one that leaps out is The
Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus
Golas—a wonderful book! It basically says you
don’t have to go to a cave in the Himalayas and
starve yourself to find enlightenment. It’s also
available to the “lazy” man—and, presumably,
woman.
What are you currently writing about?
I’m writing a book on Norway as an example of
a society that used to have a very harsh class
structure—with overriding poverty, and so on—
but that has gone way beyond the United States
in terms of cleaning that up and addressing class.
I’ve taken research trips to Norway, studying the
Norwegians as a kind of convenient, small laboratory to show that people can roll up their
sleeves and tackle class.
Have you considered writing an autobiography?
I am writing a memoir, and, although I’ve always
kept journals, I thought I’d start with what’s in
my head, and then use the journals later. Three
years after I started, it’s still coming out of my
head. My writing coach said that’s to be expected. He said, “You may find that the more you
excavate, the more becomes available.” !
Editor’s note: To listen to or download a transcription of George Lakey’s lecture “Post-election Reflection: Where Do We Go From Here”? visit http://
media.swarthmore.edu/faculty_lectures/?cat=76.
ALUMNI WEEKEND
JUNE 5–7
We’re
saving you a seat!
Classes ending in a “4” or “9”
and the Class of 2007 are
celebrating reunions, but
everyone is invited! Make
plans now to return to campus
for Alumni Weekend 2009. Find
up-to-date information and
register on-line at
alumniweekend.swarthmore.edu
Questions?
E-mail the Alumni Office at
alumni@swarthmore.edu,
or call (610) 328-8402.
“HOPE AND COURAGE”
ALUMNI COLLEGE
JUNE 22–25
Clockwise from top left:
Amanda Bayer,
Associate Professor of Economics
Benjamin Berger, Assistant
Professor of Political Science
Sibelan Forrester,
Professor of Russian
It’s difficult to imagine a better time for Swarthmoreans to gather to
discuss hope and courage. Under the leadership of three faculty
lecturers, participants in Alumni College 2009 will explore topics in
politics, Russian literature, and economics. Outside of class, they
will engage in small group discussions of the course topics, hear
from current students involved in summer research and community
engagement projects, gaze at the stars through the new telescope
atop the Science Center, and much more. For alumni with families,
high school-aged children are welcome to participate and child care
for children from 4 to 14 will be provided. The dormitories are airconditioned, as are the dining hall and classrooms.
Registration materials—including course descriptions and
reading lists—will be mailed in mid-April. Please join your classmates for what promises to be an exciting week on campus!
Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2009-04-01
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
2009-04-01
60 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.