Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin 2015-09-01

FALL 2015

VOLUME

FREEDOM
FIGHTER%
SPEAK OUT

in this issue

A r t and N ature
T hus A llied
Treasures beyond the
horticultural abound on
Swarthmore’s campus, j
E lizab eth Voj

FEATURES

Fostering Openness
and Collaboration
Valerie Smith steps into
her role as 15th president o f
Swarthmore.
by Elizabeth Redden ’05

Editor’s Column
Letters
Community Voices
Rewind
Books
Global Thinking

C O M M O N GOOD

WEB
EXCLUSIVES
A WARM SWARTHMORE
WELCOME
Watch video and view photo galleries
from President Valerie Smith’s
early October inauguration: bulletin.
swarthmore.edu

A FAREWELL TO DHARME
Read Laura Markowitz ’8 5 ’s
memories of her cherished former
professor Gunapala Dharmasiri:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu

Freedom Fighters
’60s civil-rights activists
reflect on past dangers,
ponder present challenges.
by Carrie Compton

Stories of
Swarthmore
Liberal Arts
Lives
Jo Lynne Johnson ’72
Daniel Perelstein ’10

CLASS NOTES

Pioneers o f the
Internet
David Clark ’66 and Stephen
W olff ’57 helped shape the
world’s most shapeless
community.
by Dana Mackenzie ’79

CHECK THE MAP
Take a virtual tour of the campus
with Swarthmore’s new interactive
aerial map: bulletin.swarthmore.edu

GATEWAY TO THE MOVEMENT
Watch Judy Richardson ’66, H’I2 ac­
cept her honorary degree and discuss
how Swarthmore guided her life of
activism: bulietin.swarthmore.edu

OF CANVAS AND CAMPUS
Public Safety officer and painter
Kathy Agostinelli finds artistic
inspiration in abundance on campus:
bulletin.swarthmore.edu

ON THE COVER:
Photo of President Valerie Smith by
Laurence Kesterson

Alumni News,
Events, and Profiles
fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

1

E D ITO R ’S C O LU M N

PEOPLE AND PLACES

by

CAROL
BREVART-DEMM
Acting Editor

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE BULLETIN

THIS FALL ISSUE o f the Bulletin intro­
duces Swarthmore’s new president Valerie
Smith—author, scholar, wearer o f a whole
array o f beautiful, colored scarves, and
admirer o f our stunning campus. Often seen
out and about, Val is making herself at home
here, acquainting herself with people and
places and welcoming all to get to know her.
Speaking o f places, this issue also high­
lights the whereabouts o f campus artworks,
outdoor sculptures that often go unno­
ticed due to their unexpected locations.
Swarthmore freedom fighters from the ’60s,
whose unexpected locations were often jail
cells, tell o f their experiences, loud and clear,
while two Internet pioneers give shape to
the shapeless.
The stories o f a multitalented sound
engineer, a sewer o f dresses for ice-skat­
ing champions, the keeper o f a Japanese
ancestral garden, a group o f summer biology
researchers seeking out overheated plant
cells, and much more await in these pages to
entertain and surprise.

Acting Editor
Carol Brevart-Demm
Acting Associate Editor and
Class Notes Editor
Carrie Compton
Designer
Phillip Stern ’84
Photographer
Laurence Kesterson
Editorial Assistants
Katy Santa Maria
Kelly Smemo ’16
Editor Emerita
Maralyn Orbison Gillespie ’49
Website: bulletin.swarthmore.edu
Email: bulletin@swarthmore.edu
Telephone: 610-328-8435
Facebook: www.facebook.com/
SwarthmoreBulletin
We welcome letters on subjects covered
in the magazine. We reserve the right to
edit letters for length, clarity, and style.
Views expressed in this magazine do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of the
editors or the official views or policies of
the College.
Letters and story ideas may be sent
to bulletin@swarthmore.edu.
Address changes may be sent to
alumnirecords@swarthmore.edu.

H a lc y o n

Daze
As the former editor in
chief of the Halcyon ’92,
I read “The Then And
Now Of The Yearbook”
with great interest.
I’m not exactly sure
why I wanted to edit the
book in the first place,
but I can vividly recall
the hours spent putting
it together and the ded­
icated team that made
it happen. W e were de­
veloping film by the bag,
laying out sections by
hand on paper, and fu­
riously writing copy to
give the book some life.
The most challenging

part of the journey was
that the 1992 book was
already in a budgetary
crisis before it even got
off the ground. To fill
the gap, we worked with
our local photographer
to stage formal pic­
tures (which would be
sold to parents) in ex­
change for free film pro­
cessing. The only catch
was ensuring that we
got enough students to
sit for very un-Swarthmore formal pictures.
W e put in place a rule
that said if you didn’t
sit for a formal picture,
you could not have an
informal picture page
with your friends. After
the controversy rose to
the pages of The Phoe­

nix and the dust set­
tled (and a few students
ended up with wigs in
their formal pictures),
more than 9 2 percent
of the graduating stu­
dents were in the for­
mal shots. The proud
parents bought the pic­
tures, we got out of
a hole, and the book
turned out great. The
hours put in by the staff
really made it some­
thing special.
It has to be pret­
ty good since I was still
getting asked for copies
of it as recently as five
years a g o ...’
-M IC H A E L
COSTONIS ’92,
Spring House, Pa.

The Swarthmore College Bulletin (ISSN
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CXIII, number I, is published in October,
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2

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

f a l l 2 0 i5

HEARD ON C A M PU S

As we take to the courts and fields
this year, train for the coming con­
tests, work on our skill, strength and
stamina, let us pause ... remember
... and be inspired by the lifework of
our departed colleague and sports­
man, Jerry Kohlberg ’46.

A REALIZATION REMEMBERED
Reading the article about the course that was
offered on the sit-in in Courtney Smith’s office
reminded me o f a course I took as a political sci­
ence major in the late ’50s or early ’60s. Although
most details are fuzzy at this point, I recall that it
was offered by a young assistant professor named
James Guyot and required that we conduct sur­
veys o f residents o f the Borough o f Swarthmore
about housing discrimination, a major topic at
the time. Swarthmore housing was segregated,
though I don’t think it was because legislation
required it. As I remember it, our task was to dis­
cover what residents thought o f living in a com ­
munity in which not all residents looked alike.
Given the times, the focus was on race, but we
included questions about religious and other eth­
nic groups and nationalities as well. We went in
pairs, and I recall—this memory is vivid—sitting
on the front porch o f a brick house with the owner
who told us that it was only natural that peo­
ple would want to live with others who were like
them. So he was not apologetic about the discrim­
ination in Swarthmore. That particular comment
was about Jews, and I remember being stunned
by it but resisted the temptation to tell him that I
was Jewish. In some small way, that experience
made it at least a little clearer what blacks must
have felt like when they were denied the ability to
move into neighborhoods they wanted.
-S T E V E DAVIDSON ’61, Brookline, Mass.

LIBERAL
ARTS
LEGACY
I am Mary “Molly” W hitford Streit ’3 9 . 1am
in “assisted living.” I
don’t have a computer
or even a typewriter so
apologize in advance for
my handwriting.
Having just gone
through the spring Bul­
letin, I am reminded of
some of my experiences
at Swarthmore.
I especially want
to speak in favor of a

liberal arts (not sci­
ence-based) educa­
tion. I graduated at 2 0
as a member of Phi Beta
Kappa, but not with hon­
ors. Instead of the spe­
cialized honors program,
I preferred the wider
choice of courses. I have
never regretted this.
Some subjects were
required. For my sci­
ence, I chose botany
rather than chemistry
or physics. For a sport I
tried archery, but when
the modern dance group
formed I was happy to
be in it.
W ith three younger
sisters headed for col­
lege (including Ann ’4 2)

—Mike Mullan, tennis coach and friend of
Jerry Kohlberg, July 7

It's M ove-In Day! What a beautiful
sunny day to welcom e the Class o f 2019.
The weather is half the battle. Parents are
happy. Students are happy.
—Patricia Maloney, Dir. of Summer Programs & Space Use Coordinator,
Aug. 25

Genes and DNA have become
like LEGOS. You can type a few,
copy and paste a genetic se­
quence into a program and play
around with it. LEGOs and biolo­
gy. Really, really fun! Very cool!
—Maxine Annoh ’18, summer biology researcher,
July 14

I could not have gone
without a scholarship.
I missed a lot of Satur­
day afternoon football
games because I was
keeping the dean’s of­
fice open. In my senior
year I was privileged
to work in the new au­
dio-lingual system; we
had a special machine
to record the students’
use of a foreign lan­
guage at the beginning
and end of the year.
In order to get a
teaching certificate, I
had to go to a summer
program at another col­
lege to do my practice
teaching. I made a ca­
reer of teaching high

school French and Span­
ish for 2 0 years. When
I retired, my husband
and I set up a school
(Wesley College) in Gre­
nada under the auspic­
es of the Board of Global
Ministries of the M eth­
odist Church.
Swarthmore’s repu1tation was widespread. I
applied only to Columbia
University for my M.A.,
and was quickly accept­
ed. After that I replaced
a Swarthmore alum at
UCLA as a teaching as­
sistant while I did fur­
ther graduate work.
Perhaps the most im­
portant change I have
noticed on the campus

fall

is the new diversity. I am
especially happy to wel­
come Valerie Smith.
Another change is
valuable for the “Quak­
er matchbox”; privacy is
no longer available only
in the fraternities. (Years
ago I used to “listen to the
news” in a day student’s
car. Another possibility
was to “take a walk” end­
ing up in the press box on
the athletics field.)
I could ramble on, but
all the best to today’s
Swarthmore students
(and faculty).
- M A R Y “MOLLY”
W HITFORD
STREIT ’39,
Jupiter, Fla.

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

3

C O M M U N IT Y VOICES

WAR AND LIBERAL ARTS
Dominic Tierney touts the liberal arts in today’s turbulent world
removed from foreign crises. But the
S A B R I T , it’s some­
College is undergoing a profound pro­
what nerve-wracking
cess o f internationalization. More stu­
to move to a country
dents are studying and working abroad,
like the United States,
and creating projects like War News
which celebrates win­
Radio and the Genocide Intervention
ning in all things, and
Network. The College endowment, like
then publish a book titled The Right
all investment portfolios, rises and falls
Way to Lose a War. At the heart o f the
based on international events.
book is a call for a liberal arts foreign
Demand for courses in international
policy—which embraces self-criticism
relations is booming. I’m no longer sur­
and empathy and is informed by a wide
prised to discuss coun­
range o f disciplines includ­
tries like Libya, Ukraine,
by
ing political science, history,
or Afghanistan in class and
psychology, economics, and
find that students have trav­
cultural studies.
eled there. I’m fortunate
It’s become fashionable to
indeed to be able to collab­
see the liberal arts as a lux­
orate with such knowledge­
ury in a global competitive
able and curious students in
economy, to be sacrificed
my research (as the long list
in favor o f more practi­
o f students acknowledged in my publi­
cal forms o f education. But the grow­
cations attests). W hen I present draft
ing impact o f international issues on
chapters and articles in my classes,
American lives—from the Greek debt
oftentimes, I receive more useful feed­
crisis to the Iraq War—shows how thè
back than at professional conferences.
liberal arts have never been more valu­
Not only are the liberal arts criti­
able. To thrive in a globalized world,
cal for students; the liberal arts are
students need an interdisciplinary edu­
also vital in American foreign policy.
cation that encourages critical thinking
Consider what happens when U.S. offi­
and cultural awareness, and recognizes
cials neglect the liberal arts in decision­
the connections between many differ­
making. In Iraq, we made two critical
ent disciplines.
errors. The first was to invade the coun­
Wander around the bucolic gardens
try at all—driven by a mistaken view
o f Swarthmore, and you may feel far

DOMINIC
TIERNEY

Political Scientist

“A liberal arts foreign policy...
embraces self-criticism
and empathy.”
4

Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

o f the Iraqi threat and ignorance about
the wider ripple effects o f war. The sec­
ond mistake was to invade with no plan
to win the peace and too few troops to
stabilize the country. There was a dan­
gerous absence o f critical thinking and
debate, combined with illusions about
the culture and history o f Iraq and the
region.
Slowly—too slowly—Washington
embraced a broader and more informed
military policy. The “surge” strategy
that helped pull Iraq back from the
cliff edge in 2007 emphasized cultural
awareness and winning Iraqi hearts and
minds. General David Petraeus said that
soldiers are not just warriors; they must
also be social workers, engineers, and
teachers. One U.S. colonel I interviewed
gave histories o f Iraq to his troops and
instructed them to act respectfully
toward the local people. He told me that
we must understand the complexities o f
tribal and ethnic competition and war’s
“human dimension.” You might call it
the liberal arts way o f war.
It’s here that Swarthmore students
can play a profound role, by transferring
their liberal arts training to interna­
tional nonprofits, business, diplomacy,
and the military, and ultimately helping
the United States pursue a more effec­
tive foreign polic^
In a complex and globalized world,
the liberal arts are not a luxury—they’re
a necessity. ©
-D O M IN IC TIERNEY is an associ­
ate professor o f political science.

REWIND: SWARTHMORE IN A ROX
Four years of Swarthmore found in Alaska
in Alaska and found them on a trip back
FOR THE AMAZINGLY LOW
there last year. In that box was my tran­
price o f $83.06,1 recently had a
sition from somewhat-intimidated
Swarthmore education delivered
Swarthmore rookie in 1975 to confi­
to my door.
dent student on the path to graduation
It came by mail, in a reused brown
in 1979.
cardboard box about the size o f a foot­
Early on, I knew where I
stool—surprisingly small,
by
wanted to focus my course
given all that was inside.
work, but Swarthmore had
The box had 16 colored
a distribution requirement
’79
folders fat with course mate­
that forced us to take a few
rials—syllabi, handouts,
courses outside our com fort zone.
handwritten notes on the readings, blue
I had no idea what I was talking about
books from midterms and final exams,
in my first paper for Art History I, a
along with 16 notebooks full o f surpris­
look at Rubens’ Prometheus Bound in
ingly legible class notes. Also inside
the Philadelphia Museum o f Art. It was
were thick notebook binders for six
a challenging assignment that I still
honors seminars, with tabs separat­
remember, having been told from the
ing each week’s materials, including all
start to analyze a painting, with only
those seminar papers we had to write.
skeletal guidance. I was lost in that
I’d lost track o f my Swarthmore
freshman
French literature seminar—
papers somewhere during my 30 years

MATTZENCEY

I tracked down English translations o f
our readings and rejoiced when we were
told we could write our paper in English.
Thank goodness for the pass-fail
option we had that first year. I eventu­
ally hit my stride with courses in poli.
sci., economics, and philosophy but not
before scoring a C-minus on my pub­
lic-finance term paper, which the prof
described as “often confused.”
I remember how much my writing
hand hurt after a class trying to keep up
with lectures from history professor Bob
“Machine Gun” DuPlessis, who fired
bullets o f knowledge at us faster than
mere mortal ears could absorb. I filled 87
pages o f a notebook for that class.
The box is full o f information I’ve
never used and had long forgotten.
After taking linear algebra, I never once
inverted a matrix. In intro to meteorol­
ogy, a notorious gut course, I must have
learned what the “adiabatic lapse rate”
is, but don’t ask me to explain it now.
O f course, a Swarthmore education is
not a mere body o f knowledge that fits
into a box. Swarthmore taught me to
think critically, evaluate evidence, and
write clearly—perfect training for the
career I had in journalism.
I got the grounding I needed to spend
more than two decades writing about
politics, economics, and history. Many
o f the challenges I studied long ago—
econom ic prosperity, inequality, energy
costs, protecting the environment, jus­
tice in the courts—are still with us.
In writing for work, I often felt like I
was writing a seminar paper but with
a few key differences: The end product
was typically shorter, more readable,
done on a quicker turnaround. Most
important, I was getting paid to do it.
I’ve often had dreams that, as
a mature adult, I have enrolled at
Swarthmore again, seeking a second
college degree. Even though in real life I
eventually graduated with highest hon­
ors, in my dream, I’m always running
hard to keep up academically. I mas­
tered the body o f knowledge in that box
once, but in the dream, I’m left wonder­
ing if I could do it again. ©
Matt Zencey ’79, recently retired as deputy opinion
editor of Penn Live and The Patriot-News in Harris­
burg, Pa., lives in West Chester, Pa.

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

5

BOOKS

THE SEOUL OF NEW YORK
“Commuters give the city its tidal
restlessness, natives give it solidity
and continuity, but the settlers give it
passion.”
—E. B. White, as cited in Re Jane
by Peter Sch m idt
Garnet, this is a good novel. Like coming o f age stories?
Patricia Park ’03’s Re Jane focuses on a 20-something orphan
who has a thing or two to learn about self-esteem, her obli­
gations to family, and what she really wants. W e learn key
Korean terms for understanding character and destiny, yet
Re Jane also smartly engages with the classic English novel
o f education Jane Eyre. (No knowledge o f Bronte required
to enjoy, except you’ll miss inside jokes like the “Lowood”
and “madwoman in the attic” references.) Seeking contem­
porary urban fiction? This one celebrates Queens, Brooklyn,
and Seoul, a city reinventing itself even more intensely than
New York. Lit and pop references abound—Korean soaps, Star
Wars, Friends, the 2002 Seoul/Tokyo W orld Cup, and m o r e all set to the urban rhythms o f grunge and neon, daily grind
and giddy possibility, blackouts and fireworks.
Jane Re (the American version o f her name) grew up in
Queens following the death o f her white father and Korean
mother. She graduates from college and right before 9/11 tries
unsuccessfully to land a job in the World Trade Center with a
fancy finance firm. She has to settle for being a stock clerk in
Food, a tiny Flushing store with a comically generic name run
by the strong-willed Uncle Sang who raised her. Jane wants
more, yet feels guilty for being ungrateful. Coming-of-age nov­
els typically depict a struggle between obligation to others and
the protagonist’s desire to strike out independently. Along the
way Jane confronts other binary choices, including Korean
versus American, good daughter versus bad, how to define
failure versus success. Yet Park’s narrative undoes either/or
thinking. Jane’s family history turns out to be more complex
than she knew, transforming her sense o f the past and how
she envisions her Korean and American identities. The novel’s
ending also deliciously reworks Jane E yre, updating both the
meaning o f inheritance and the famous line, “Reader, I mar­
ried him.”
Jane needs both Korean and English to tell her story:
Nunchi, for example, the obligation “to read a situation and
anticipate how you were expected to behave,” thus demon­
strating “good family education” in Confucian values. There’s
also its contrast, tap-tap-hae, a feeling o f constriction caused
by all those responsibilities. Jane’s English is hip and poly­
phonic, but it invokes the U.S. past as it recasts the immigrant
story. The Puritans sharply distinguished between license
(excessive selfishness) and true liberty, and the Constitution

Swarthmore College Bulletin / fall

2015

A

N

O

V

E

L

PATRICIA PARK
^ PATRICIA PARK ’03, Re Jane, Pamela Dorman Books, 2015,352 pp.

links individual rights to the necessary checks and balances
o f the social contract. Finding the balance between rights
and obligations is a key theme o f Jane E yre and much fic­
tion. Indeed, one o f our best novelists, Gish Jen, argues in
Tiger W riting: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent S elfthat
American culture is drowning in self-centered narcissism and
needs to turn both to Asian traditions and to fiction to redis­
cover the counterbalancing values o f interdependence and
empathy. Jane Re could be Exhibit A.
Swarthmore grads have recently made quite a splash in con­
temporary fiction. Many o f you know o f a novelist named
Franzen, but let me mention a few others: Emily Chenoweth
{Hello Goodbye, sweet-sad like the Beatles tune); Adam
Haslett {Union A tlantic, channeling Puritan voices to critique
finance capitalism); and Maya Lang {The Sixteenth o f June,
which wittily sneaks sentences from Joyce’s Ulysses into a
sparkling comedy-of-manners). Reader, these too are worth
your time! ©
—PETER SCHMIDT is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor o f
English Literature.

Living, Shambhala
Publications, 2015,
209 pp. Humorous and
informative, this book
for the eco-curious
advises on compost­
ing comfortably and
having fun at the same
time.

HOT
TYPE
New books
published by
Swarthmore
graduates

DISINHERITED

News Media and the
Psychedelic E xperi­
ence, University of
Illinois Press, 2015,
246 pp. Following
LSD’s journey from
Brylcreem and soap to
incense and pepper­
mints, Siff reveals
how news exposure
glorified the drug as a
treatment for mental
illness and built its
reputation as a key to
the unconscious mind.

A

Edward Wallach ’54,
Esther Eisenberg, Isabel
Green, and Stacey Scheib,

Raghu Karnad ’05

Farthest Afield: An
Indian Story o f the
Second World War,
William Collins, 2015,
300 pp. A young family
is swept up in the vio­
lence o f India’s war, in
which the largest vol­
unteer army in history
fought for the British
Empire even as its
countrymen fought to
be free o f it.

Christopher Lukas ’56

Carrying a Torch And
Other Tales o f Lust,
Love, and Loss, Chris­
topher Lukas, 2014,
223 pp. The author,
who is also a televi­
sion writer and direc­
tor, offers an array o f
tales in which moods,
genres, and fantasies
are laid bare.

A
Diana Furchtgott-Roth ’79

Disinherited: How
Washington Is Betray­
ing America's Young,
Encounter Books,
2015,152 pp. Using
personal stories, the
author portrays how
U.S. government pol­
icy is biased against
young people, dimin­
ishing their chances o f
professional success.

Okumura, O’Connor’s
translation fills a gap
in the English-lan­
guage availability
o f a 20th-century
Japanese Zen master’s
teachings.

A
Jennifer Besanceney
Latham ’94

Scarlett Undercover,
Little, Brown and Co.,
2015,310 pp. This de­
but novel tells the story
o f a teenager’s adven­
ture as an investigator
o f what seems like
suicide until it begins
to look like murder.

A

Tom Owen-Towle '63

Self: Caring for Our
Best Gift, Flaming
Chalice Press, 2015,
313 pp. According to
the author, a parish
minister, nurturing
the whole self is allimportant. He treats
self-care zones in sep­
arate chapters, adding
quotes and questions
for reflection and
discussion.

Susan Signe Morrison ’81

John Pollock '64

Grendel’s Mother: The
Saga o f the WyrdWife, Top Hat Books,
2015,226 pp. One o f
world literature’s most
fascinating monsters,
Grendel’s mother,
Brimhild, is brought
to life in this story o f a
misunderstood queen,
peace-loving, cul­
tured, victim o f sexual
and political betrayal,
bog dweller, seer,
healer, and mother o f a
monster-child.

Journalism and
Human Rights: How
Demographics Drive
Media Coverage,
Routledge, 2015,165
pp. This book offers
the first collection o f
original research to
explore links between
demographics and
media coverage o f
emerging human
rights issues.

Gregory Gebhart ’76

Favorite Bible Passag­
es, Gregory Howard
Gebhart Inc., 2015,
275 pp. Using texts
from the King James
version o f the Bible,
Gebhart shares his
favorite text passages.

A
Rebecca Louie ’99

Compost City: Practi­
cal Composting KnowHow for Small-Space

Kodo Sawaki,
Tonen Andrews
O’Connor ’54, tr.

Commentary on the
Song o f Awaken­
ing, MerwinAsia,
2015,365 pp. With a
Foreword by Shohaku

A

Hysterectomy,
Exploring Your
Options, Second Edi­
tion, Johns Hopkins
University Press,
2015,222 pp. Four
gynecologists explain
reasons for need­
ing the procedure,
possible alternative
measures, techniques
used, details on the
surgery, postoperative
recovery, and more.

Other media

Phillip Kloekner ’81

E xotic Variations, Ra­
ven Recordings, 2014.
Performing on Rice
University’s Fisk-Ro­
sales Organ, Kloeckner plays ancient and
modern compositions
by composers Louis
Vierne and Samuel
Scheidt as well as six
variations on a Hugue­
not psalm.

Stephen Siff ’94

Acid Hype: American

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

7

GLOBAL T H IN K IN G

A SWARTHMORE’ FÜR ALL
At Swarthmore, Josef Joffe ’65 found the ‘epitome of an education’
by C arol B revart-D em m

"BEINGAT SWARTHMORE in the
’60s was a wondrous privilege,” says
Josef Joffe ’65, H’02, editor o f the
German weekly Die Zeit, author, con­
sulting professor o f political science at
StanfordUniversity, and unremitting
intellectual.
“These years marked the high point
o f liberal arts in the United States,”
Joffe recalls. “Swarthmore was the High
Church o f the creed. Liberal arts as an
indispensable body o f knowledge—the
epitome o f an education—has since
been fading in the American academy.
“But I still make an intellectual liv­
ing off what I learned then in philoso­
phy, economics, psychology, art history
and literature—fields outside my hon­
ors political science major.”
A master’s at Johns Hopkins and d oc­
torate in government at Harvard fol­
lowed. The then-editor o f D ie Zeit,
visiting Harvard, urged Joffe to try jour­
nalism. After six years as a political
writer and senior editor for that news­
paper, he moved to Munich as opin­
ion-page editor o f the Süddeutsche
Zeitung. Fifteen years later, he returned
to Hamburg as executive editor-inchief o f D ie Zeit.
As an established journalist, Joffe,
with other like-minded scholars,
had long dreamed o f bringing back
the “artes liberales” to their source—
Europe. In 1999, they created the
European College o f Liberal Arts
(ECLA) in Berlin. It attracted students
worldwide, and at the first degree
ceremony, former Swarthmore presi­
dent Alfred Bloom uttered the ultimate
compliment: “I would admit one-third
o f these students to our college sight
unseen.” Later, ECLA ran afoul o f
funding problems and the rigidities o f
Germany’s state-run university system.
After two changes in ownership, ECLA

8

Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

became Bard College Berlin.
“I still believe that anybody should
have his or her Swarthmore: a broadbased grounding in the arts and sci­
ences, philosophy and literature, social
science and history—as opposed to the
one-discipline training prevailing in
Europe since the war,” Joffe says.
“But I had an inkling early on that we
were entering the Age o f Journalism—
the quick essay, the punchy column,”
Joffe says. “The attention span o f even
the most intelligent reader has been
shrinking—to 800 words, 3,000 maxi­
mum. Compare this to the three to five
years it takes to write a book, which
only some professional colleagues will
read.”
“Besides,” he adds, “punditry is much
more fun. Get a finite number o f facts
and tie them together in such a way that
you don’t lose your reader after the first
paragraph. It’s like a quick high, and
then you proceed to something else to
galvanize your curiosity.”
In 2005, with Zbigniew Brezinski,
Eliot Cohen, and Francis Fukuyama,
Joffe co-created The Am erican Interest,
a bimonthly magazine that, he says,
“would explain the world to America
and America to the world” and com ­
prises topics that “demand more than
800 words but avoid the tedium o f a
400-page academic treatise.”
Happily “blaming” Swarthmore for
his academic orientation, Joffe recalls:
“It sounds kitschy, but Swarthmore

JOSEF JOFFE ’65, H 05
Journalist, professor,
intellectual
is where I became addicted to a much
bigger high than punditry: the kick o f
crystal-clear thinking and intellectual
exertion, the allure o f ideas, the plea­
sure o f a hard-driving debate. I suspect
that kids today, even at Stanford, are
less interested in ideas than in how to
get there fastest and most efficiently.”
A resident o f Germany and the U.S.,
pursuing two professions, Joffe sees life
as more than a bowl o f cherries.
“It’s both cherries and pits,” he says.
“The sweet part is the constant stimula­
tion o f changing vantage points, absorb­
ing ideas and experiences in one place
that are missing in the other—multiculturalism at its best.
“The downside is foregoing on one
side o f the ocean what you treasure on
the other. But I’m not complaining. The
pit, after all, is the smallest part o f the
cherry.” ©

“L ife... is both cherries and pits.”

SHARING SUCCESS AND STORIES OF SWARTHMORE

common good
INAUGURATION
WEEKEND

Videos of Friday’s arts
performances and
Saturday’s symposium
and ceremony are
online.
+ WATCH

bit.ly/Smithlnauguration
INQUIRING MINDS

Prior to her inaugura­
tion, President Valerie
Smith answered a vari­
ety of questions
from students.
+ WATCH

bit.ly/StudentsAskVal
BEARS REPEATING

Faculty and staff
members from across
campus share their best
advice with the Class
of 2019.

§
ffi

+ WATCH

i

bit.ly/AdviceFor20l9

g

WEB EXCLUSIVE

M uses in the
House
For campus security officer
Kathy Agostinelli, painting
is a passion
by Carol B révart-D em m

VISITORS TO THE Benjamin West House can’t
miss the imposing oil painting on the wall by
the entrance door. It shows Hemingway, Public
Safety’s cat for 17 years and possibly a direct
descendent o f Ben West’s cat, Grimalkin. John
Donne’s line “For W hom the Bell Tolls,” which
Ernest Hemingway borrowed for his famous
book, hangs ominously over the scene.
An artist since childhood, Kathy Agostinelli is
also author and illustrator o f children’s book The
Legend o f the M otley Giraffes.
+ see
edu.

p a in t in g s b y k a t h y AT:

fall

bulletin.swarthmore.

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

9

A Good and Generous Man
HEN JERRY KOHLBERG
’46, H’86, member emeritus o f
the Board o f Managers, passed
away on Martha’s Vineyard
July 30, the College lost one o f
its most loyal supporters.
“I frequently sought out Jerry’s advice on
the many issues the College faced,” says Neil
Austrian, Board chair from 1989 to 1996. “He
possessed a quiet dignity and a great sense o f
humor, coupled with a twinkle in his eye that
invited the conversation to continue.”
In a 2004 essay in The M eaning o f
Swarthmore, Kohlberg wrote that his first visit
to the Quaker Meetinghouse on campus left an
indelible impression.
“Friends stood up for what they believed and
had a straightforward approach to others, always
leaving room for understanding and forgiveThanks to the GI Bill,
Kohlberg earned an MBA
from Harvard Business School
and an LL.M. from Columbia
University School o f Law. Later,
he established the Fund for
Veterans’ Education.
After serving as senior part­
ner at Bear, Stearns & Co.,
Kohlberg co-founded Kohlberg
Kravis Roberts and Co., an
investment firm that pioneered
the leveraged buyout, establish­
ing dominance o f the buyout
industry and inspiring the 1990
bestseller Barbarians at the
Gate: The Fall ofRJR Nabisco.
In 1987, Kohlberg left the
firm, tired o f the “overpow­
ering greed” pervading busi­
ness life. Preferring “deals
where reason still prevails,” he
formed the private equity firm
Kohlberg & Co. with son Jim in

Kohlberg’s “biggest kick”
came from a Career Services
program to help students
prepare for jobs in business.
Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

Mount Kisco, N.Y.
Kohlberg retired in 1994 to focus on his
philanthropy, including campaign finance
reform, education o f military veterans, and other
education and health initiatives.
At Swarthmore, honoring his roommate
and friend, he established the Philip Evans
[’48] Scholar Program to empower students to
becom e critical thinkers and engaged, compas­
sionate world citizens. Thirty years later, more
than 100 Evans scholars have made their mark
globally. Currently, 22 scholars from 16 states
attend Swarthmore.
Kohlberg’s impact on campus is omnipresent,
though understated—in keeping with his wishes.
In 1996, Kohlberg Hall provided a new home to
four academic departments and the College’s
first coffee bar. A year later, Trotter Hall, one
o f the College’s oldest academic buildings, was
transformed by a new central atrium and lounge
areas for the history, political science, and clas­
sics departments, while basement seminar
rooms became light-filled teaching and learn­
ing spaces. In 2000, the Mullan Tennis Center
opened. It comprised three tennis courts with
championship-caliber surfaces, lighting, and an
above-court viewing area.
Kohlberg spearheaded the renovation o f
Parrish Hall, from the repair and strengthening
o f its slate roof to new safety and energy-efficient
air-handling systems.
His support to students interested in careers
in business and entrepreneurship included the
Educating Socially Responsible Leaders Program.
Kohlberg’s “biggest kick,” he says, came from
a Career Services program to help students pre­
pare for jobs in business, particularly, the “Career
Closet,” which loans students suits for interviews.
Serving on the Board from 1972 to 1983, then
1989 to 1994 when he became a member emer­
itus, Kohlberg received an honorary doctor o f
laws degree in 1986.
Kohlberg once described Swarthmore as “an
oasis o f civility” and the place where he learned
“the rewards o f serious scholarship and the plea­
sures to be derived from lifelong learning.” ©
+ f o r t h e f u l l t e x t o f t h e l e t t e r Valerie Smith
wrote to honor Kohlberg’s memory, see: bit.ly/
kohlbergletter
+ KOHLBERG FOUNDATION NAMED SIX INSTITUTIONS

where donations can be made meant to honor
Kohlberg’s memory, including Swarthmore. For more
information, please see: bit.ly/kohlbergdonation

1.Arabidopsis thaliana plant. 2. Lab technician Christina Rabeler, student Maxine Annoh
’18, and Nick Kaplinski are hard at work in the lab. 3. A heat-shocked A. thaliana root, where red
indicates cell walls and green the sub-cellular localization o f a small heat-shock protein.

WHEN CELLS
OVERHEAT
A group o f biology
students investigate
cellular thermostats
and more
by Carol B révart-D em m

On a hot, mid-July day, Associate Professor
of Biology Nick Kaplinsky and four of his
five students (Rachel Boone ’17, the fifth,
was unavailable) are at work in a ground
floor lab in the Martin Biology Building, try­
ing to understand the ways that plants re­
spond to high temperatures.
“When organisms get too hot, they’re un­
happy and their unhappiness has a molec­
ular and cellular basis,” says Kaplinsky.
“W e’re trying to understand how cells sense
high temperature.”
The project focuses on I) understanding
how cells fix damage from overheating; and
2) understanding the nature of a cellular
thermometer or cellular thermostat.
Kaplinsky uses the example of cooking
an egg to illustrate what happens when the
proteins in cells become overheated.
“Everyone has seen an egg white turn
from transparent to opaque when heated,”
he says. “W hat you’re seeing are the pro­
teins in the egg white misfolding. When they
misfold, they become opaque. We found this
happening in plants, too.”

Because protein misfolding is a hallmark
of many degenerative diseases such as Alz­
heimer’s, diabetes II, and Parkinson’s dis­
ease as well as playing an important role in
probably all cancers, the students’ research
is being funded by the National Institutes
of Health.
Stephanie Wey ’16 has worked with Ka­
plinsky for the past three years. Using very
simple flowering plants that grow quickly
and have a high quality genome sequence,
she’s working on a mutagenesis screen in
Arabidopsis thaliana, a type of mustard
plant. “It’s the model organism used for this
research,” Wey says. “I study the genes that
underlie the heat-stress response.”
Leela Breitman ’17 is enjoying her first
experience of summer science, also investi­
gating the A. thaliana heat shock response
at higher temperatures.
“I’m looking at different proteins that are
expressed at different levels in a mutant of
A. thaliana to see if or how the mutant a f­
fects the plant’s heat-shock response.”
David Tian ’17 is using luciferase (the bioluminescent enzyme from fireflies) to study
protein misfolding. “I’ve been doing a lot of
site-directed mutagenesis to create new luciferases. The mutations create increasing­
ly destabilized versions of luciferase and
cause destabilization of fluorescence—a
marker of protein misfolding,” he says.
Maxine Annoh ’18 is studying the adaxial-abaxial (top-bottom) polarity in plants,
investigating how plants know what kind of
organs are designated for the upper surface
and for the underside of the leaves.
“Nick has been studying the BOBBERI
gene, which has been identified as having
developed mental function. Two other, re­
lated genes (ASI and AS2) are known to
control development and the adaxial-abaxial polarity. My main question is, ‘If we mu­
tate the BOBBERI gene, will ASI and A S2
still be able to interact physically?”’
“The students drive the research in my
lab, doing real discovery science,” says Ka­
plinsky. “Their projects involve questions
that haven’t been asked before, using tech­
niques that we’re developing in the lab.”
The students receive no academic cred­
it for their summer research, but they learn
what it’s like to be a scientist—how it feels
to venture into the unknown and answer
questions that haven’t been answered.
“It’s rewarding and exciting to watch the
students master these pretty esoteric skills
and discover new details about life at a mo­
lecular level,” Kaplinsky says. G

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

11

Four standout student-athletes,
a beloved coach, and one of the
College’s most decorated teams will
be honored with induction into the
Garnet Athletics Hall of Fame Oct.
2 3 during Garnet Weekend.
The Class of 2015 includes:
1. SHEPARD “SHEP” DAVIDSON
’8 6, a five-time All-American for the
men’s tennis team during one of the
program’s most successful runs.

2. KRISTEN ENGLISH ’01, a
standout for the Garnet in field
hockey, basketball, and lacrosse
and one of the only Swarthmore
athletes to earn All-America status
in multiple sports.
3. ERNIE PRUDENTE, a beloved
coach and administrator with more
than 3 0 years of service to the
College.
4. JESSICA HEIMBACH RAYMOND
’5 6, a versatile, multisport athlete
who earned 12 varsity letters in field
hockey, basketball, and lacrosse.
5. JAM ES “J IM ” REILLY ’5 0 was
one of the most prolific scorers
in Swarthmore College men’s
basketball history and an NBA draft
pick of the Minneapolis Lakers.

Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

6. THE 1905 M EN ’S LACROSSE
TEAM, which claimed the
Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association
(ILA) national championship for the
second consecutive year and finished
the campaign with a 7-1 record.
—Roy Greim ’14

A STEADY
CLIMB
WHEN ROBIN CARPENTER T4’s name was
called with the rest o f the Bachelor o f Arts recip­
ients at Commencement 2014, he was on a bicy­
cle 19 miles away in Philadelphia, preparing for
the annual Philly International Cycling Race. He
didn’t win the race, but he won the hearts o f the
crowd by wearing his graduation cap at the start­
ing line.
Now an emerging American cycling star,
Carpenter is living his dream as a professional
cyclist with the world-class Hincapie Racing
Team.
“It’s a great life,” says Carpenter, who has relo­
cated to San Diego to>train full time.
It’s been a steady rise in the world o f cycling
for Carpenter, who began riding with his father
at age 10. He was amateur racing when he
arrived at the College in 2011.
Steadily improving as an amateur, Carpenter
earned a spot on the Cannondale-Garmin U-23
developmental team and signed his first profes­
sional contract at the end o f his freshman year.
Carpenter had harbored no intentions o f
becoming a pro cyclist.
“When I was looking at colleges, I rode on a
local club team for fun,” he says. “I just wanted to
go to the best college that I could get in to. That
was Swarthmore.”
Balancing a rigorous training schedule with
the demands o f Swarthmore, Carpenter finished
his coursework in three and a half years to focus
on cycling,
These days, Carpenter spends almost all o f his
time on his bike training in the California sun,
typically covering 100 to 110 miles in a single day.

Cycling fever began for Carpenter at age 10, when he rode Philadelphia’s West River
Drive with his father on weekends.

“It’s a pretty regular work day,” he says.
Carpenter’s dedicated training has paid oif. He
is excelling on the domestic circuit. In August
2014, he battled treacherous weather conditions
in the Rocky Mountains to win Stage 2 o f the
USA Pro Challenge—his career highlight so far.
In 2015, he won the sprint competition o f Philly
Cycling Classic, whose most famous feature—
the Manayunk Wall climb—takes place just a few
blocks from where he grew up.
“Cycling is a fickle profession, but I plan to
do it as long as I enjoy it and can make a living
from it.” ©
-M A R K A N S K IS

“When I was looking at colleges, I rode on a
local club team for fun. I just wanted to go to
the best college that I could get in to. That
was Swarthmore.”
—Robin Carpenter ’14

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

13

Farewell to a Good Friend
The College community was shocked and saddened to hear o f the July 14
death o f Alan Berkowitz, Susan W. Lippincott Professor o f Modern and
Classical Languages and professor o f Chinese.
Berkowitz, who was 65, had traveled to Mainland China and Taiwan
in late May with his colleague and friend Haili Kong, professor and
chair o f the Department o f Foreign Languages and Literature, leading 15
Swarthmore students in an exploration o f tea culture, on which Berkowitz
was an expert.
Visitors to his office on the third floor o f Kohlberg Hall were typically
greeted with an invitation to join him and chat over a cup o f tea served from
a beautiful ceramic pot into delicate pottery cups.
At the College since 1989, Berkowitz was a popular teacher and mentor.
President Valerie Smith wrote in a message to the campus community: “As
the sole professor o f Chinese, [Alan] exercised wise leadership and worked
tirelessly to make the fledgling section into a vibrant program and became
its first tenured professor.” Chinese is now the second-largest program in the
department o f modern languages after Spanish.
His colleague Associate Professor o f Japanese W ill Gardner said: “Alan
exemplified the liberal arts spirit in engaging with his students in a very
sincere and personal way.” His devotion to his students was reciprocated,
according to professor o f German Hans-Jakob Werlen. “The respect and
love his students had for Alan found expression in their devoted attach­
ment to him for many, many years after graduation,” Werlen said. ©
-C A R O L BREVART-DEMM

“Alan exemplified the liberal arts spirit in engaging
with his students in a very sincere and personal way.”
— Will Gardner

CHANGESHORIZONTAL,
VERTICAL,
INTELLECTUAL,
GASTRONOMICAL
The transform ation
o f tow n and gown is
m oving apace
by Carol B réva rt-D em m

14

Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

For the last couple of months, motorists
driving north or south along Chester Road
past the College have been experiencing
quite a change in how they travel through
the Ville of Swarthmore at the edge of the
College campus. Approaching the railroad
underpass, they soon encounter a round­
about, which joins a relocated Field House
Lane, Rutgers Avenue, and the center of the
Ville. The new intersection provides a clear­
er and safer means of navigating between
the College, the borough’s business district,
and the SEPTA regional train station. Ac­
cording to Jan Semler, director of capital
planning and project management, the cen­
ter of the intersection, which in the past
provided a convenient snow storage area,
will become a green oasis when trees and
shrubs are planted this fall.
Completion of the roundabout has al­
lowed progress to proceed on erection of
the latest addition to the College campus,
slated to open in time for Commencement

2016. The Inn at Swarthmore will have 4 0
guest rooms and suites and three meeting
rooms. The Broad Table Tavern will provide
a variety of dining experiences, including
an outdoor terrace for seasonal dining. The
reimagined College bookstore will open as
the Swarthmore Campus and Communi­
ty Store, with more space, better visibility,
and expanded offerings of fair trade and lo­
cally and regionally produced items, in addi­
tion to textbooks, mass-market books, and
the quirky general merchandise for which
the store is known. Semler noted that the
genesis of the project, bringing together the
College and the Ville, has carried through
the design of the project and is reflected
in the names of the inn, the restaurant and
the store. The entire project is designed
to provide an inclusive, convivial environ­
ment for gown and town: faculty, staff, stu­
dents, families of current and prospective
students, visitors, Board members, vaca­
tioners—everyone. ©

LEARNING CURVE

f
L

JUST BEINS
WHAT SHE IS
From securities analysis to hidden temples, Joya Tanaka Konishi ’68 is still
on her evolutionary path.

In McCabe Library, political science major
Joya Tanaka Konishi ’6 8 came across a book on the
modernization of Japan. She saw in it a photo of her
great-great-uncle, Toshimichi Okubo, who was one of
the leaders of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The child
of a diplomat, Konishi grew up abroad, and “I became
interested in my roots,” she says. She returned to
Tokyo after graduation.

b y H e id i H o rm e l

In the 1980s, the financial “Big Bang” of the West
spread to Japan. By nature, Konishi likes to pursue
new horizons and opened the door to opportunity. She
found securities analysis to be intellectually creative,
because it tells a story of a company in numbers and
evaluates its investment value. She also traveled
extensively on overseas business trips.

Konishi didn’t plan every turn in her life, but she did
develop a new perspective as she moved forward.
“By 2 0 0 0 , 1was fully satisfied with my professional
achievements, so I retired,” she says.

“Enchanting hidden temples
and sculptures in rural
communities... seem to
speak silently of their
mysterious history.”

Konishi’s involvement in art and nature was revived
in retirement, like “rediscovering an old friend.” She
goes on field trips to remote regions in Japan in her
studies of ancient Buddhist sculpture. “Particularly
enchanting are hidden temples and sculptures in
rural communities. They seem to speak silently of
their mysterious history.” In her Tokyo home, she
cares for her ancestral garden, which “is my way to
express gratitude to my ancestors.”
Konishi’s various activities are linked by “a passion
to explore and to integrate in my mind what inspires
me. This may be why I often feel that in almost each
phase of my life, the current is the best I have seen so
far. I enjoy just being what I am.”

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

15

ROBERT CIANFLONE/GETTY IMAGES

Jason Brown strikes a dramatic pose during
day two o f the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, wear­
ing the pants Jo Lynne Johnson ’72 tailored.

LIBERAL ARTS LIVES

SEAMSTRESS OF
CHAMPIONS
JO LYNNE JOHNSON 72
Seamstress

16

Swarthmore College Bulletin / fall

2015

Jo Lynne Johnson 7 2
wields needle and thread
for skaters
by H eidi H orm el

“PROFESSIONAL” VOLUNTEER Jo
Lynne Johnson ’72 has helped out with
everything from PTA to pants tailor­
ing for championship ice skater Jason
Brown.
A psychology major with minors in
sociology and biology, Johnson’s life as
a volunteer started in her daughter’s
elementary school, where she ran a
computer lab and fundraising auctions.
She says, “Whatever needed to be
done, I rolled up my sleeves and said
‘Let’s do it.’”
Hours o f volunteering later, to get
a free pass for her ice-skating daugh­
ter, who wanted to watch the national
championships in Providence, R.I., in
1995, Johnson signed up to help. When
the organizers noticed her sewing
skills, her “job ” was set. “There aren’t
many o f us sewers out there anymore,”
says Johnson, who learned her skills
before she was a teen, sewing her own
clothing to fit her long-armed and longwaisted body.
At the 2014 U.S. National Figure
Skating Championships, she and oth­
ers helped Brown, the U.S. champion
in 2015, by refitting his pants, which
were “too big and riding too low.”
Trouble with a costume can ruin a skat­
er’s focus. Brown had a phenomenal
showing on the ice, and Johnson likes
to think that fixing his pants helped.
She’d never considered taking her sew­
ing into the work world but eventually
started Genuines by Jo Lynne, a small
business that created skating costumes.
After her daughter left for college,
Johnson worked at Starbucks and went
through its management program. But
when her husband, whom she met on
a post-Swarthmore 4-H international
exchange program to Nepal, retired
early, she left the coffee behind to
becom e a volunteer English teacher in
southeast Asia.
At home in New Hampshire, the cou­
ple enjoys travel, although Johnson is
emphatic that she’ll continue to bring
her needle, thread, and sewing skills to
skating championships in the Boston
area. ©

LIBERAL ARTS LIVES

Sound engineer, musician, artist, actor: Dan Perelstein ’ 10 wears many hats.

Dan Perelstein '10
translates visual to
aurai in city theaters
b y C a rol B rév art-D em m

An honors double major in music and en­
gineering at Swarthmore, New York City
native Dan Perelstein aspired to be an ac­
oustician. But after a theater course in his
first semester, he was inspired by the Phila­
delphia theater scene.
More theater classes as a sophomore
led Perelstein to Nick Kourtides in the Lang
Performing Arts Center office, who de­
signed sound for student performances.
“Nick asked me to help him hang some
speakers and paid me for it,” Perelstein
says. “It turned out that Nick was one of the
most prominent sound designers in Phila­
delphia. I worked with him whenever pos­
sible.”
Learning from Kourtides, Perelstein
found himself in demand as a sound design­
er and later as a composer.
“In my last two or three years at Swarth­
more, I designed pretty much everything.
And because the department often brought
in guest artists from the city, I made lots of
connections.” The city’s Wilma Theater be­
came a home for many of Perelstein’s most
creative works.
“The design and sound come from the
script, picking up where the spoken word
leaves off,” he says.

To help him translate the visual elements
of a work into sound, Perelstein obtained a
$ 1 0 ,0 0 0 grant from the Pennsylvania Acad­
emy of Fine Arts.
He immersed himself in the study of art
and learned a lot.
“Now, I engage with my visual collabo­
rators in a completely different way—and
I make art as a hobby,” he says. W hatev­
er a play or musical might need in terms of
sound or music, I’ve done it.”
Perelstein is a 13-time nominee and twotime recipient of the coveted Barrymore
Award.
“People want to know why I got into
sound design. It’s just what I do best. It’s a
calling,” he says.
And for the coming academic year, Wash­
ington College has called him for the second
time to teach a sound design course. ©

DAN PERELSTEIN 10
Sound Designer

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

17

President Valerie ‘’VaF Smith enjoys a few moments on Magill Walk,
the sight that captivated her on her first visit to campus. *

LAURENCE (CESTERSON

African-American literature, culture, and film and photogra­
phy. She said the best advice she has received is “to have the
courage to bring my full humanity to any role in which I find
myself.”
Smith stepped into her new role July 1, replacing interim
president and (from 2001-2011) former provost Constance
Cain Hungerford, who has returned to her position on the fac­
ulty as the Mari S. Michener Professor o f Art History.

EFORE VALERIE SMITH
entered the presidential
search she thought she should
see Swarthmore’s campus. She
drove to the college on a Saturday in early November—Garnet
Weekend, it happened to be—to take a tour and sit in on an
admissions information session incognito. W hen she arrived,
she asked a passing student to show her the way to Parrish
Hall. It was a gray, rainy day, but her first sight o f Parrish Beach
from above stunned her still.
“The expanse o f green framed by overhanging trees took my
breath away,” Smith says.
“As somebody who has spent an inordinate amount o f time
on different college campuses, both ones at which I’ve worked
and ones I’ve visited, I thought it was one o f the most beautiful
sights I had ever seen.”
Smith, a noted scholar o f African-American literature
and culture and former dean o f the college at Princeton
University, was selected as Swarthmore’s 15th presi­
dent based on the unanimous vote o f the College’s Board o f
Managers in February. She is an alumna o f a liberal arts col­
lege—Bates College, in Maine—and a native o f Brooklyn, N.Y..
Smith holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University o f
Virginia, and is the author o f three books, editor or co-editor
o f seven others, and writer o f dozens o f articles and essays on

20

Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

In an interview in her Parrish Hall office in her second full
week on campus in early July, Smith described what drew her
to Swarthmore. “I have long admired Swarthmore as a place
that values academic rigor, where faculty are well-known to
be dedicated teachers as well as highly-regarded scholars, and
where students and alumni are committed to using their edu­
cation to benefit the common good,” she said. “I was also inter­
ested in Swarthmore because o f its location. It is obviously
a beautiful campus that invites contemplation and medita­
tion, and yet it’s in a region that is complex and rich with pos­
sibilities. On the one hand, we’re near a small city like Chester
that faces persistent challenges; on the other hand, we’re
near Philadelphia, a major city with extraordinary cultural
resources that faces its own challenges.”
Smith said that one o f her priorities for the presidency is
to “reach out to alumni and find ways to engage them more
deeply with the College.” Other priorities include “building
and strengthening relationships between the college and the
surrounding area, supporting curricular innovation, fostering
an increasingly diverse and inclusive community, and, as we
expand and diversify the student body, ensuring that we invest
sufficiently in facilities and student services so that we can
retain the defining features o f a Swarthmore education.

§
«
B
§

“Like all liberal arts colleges, we have to continue to make a
compelling case for the value o f our educational model,” Smith
said o f the challenges ahead. “We need to continue to be inten­
tional, persistent, and creative in our approach to recruiting
students, staff, and faculty from a broad range o f backgrounds
and from different geographical locations—and then along
with that we need to ensure that we have a climate on cam­
pus that equips all members o f our community to thrive while
here. Recruitment is not enough. We must also create an inclu­
sive community. We need to ensurS'that we have the resources
to sustain our generous financial aid program. And certainly
we need to invest adequately in the faculty so they can remain
leaders in their fields, both as teachers and scholars.”
Tenured in 1986 at Princeton, Smith left in 1989 to assume
an associate professorship in English at the University o f
California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Asked how she entered
higher education administration, Smith replied, “In a nutshell,
I followed my curiosity.” Her first administrative responsibility
was to serve as vice chair o f the graduate program in English at
UCLA; subsequently, she chaired the interdepartmental pro­
gram in African-American studies there.
“I was recruited to return to Princeton, in order to chair
the program in African-American studies, so I thought o f
myself as someone who chaired interdisciplinary academic
units. Subsequently, Princeton decided that it was time to
expand African-American studies from a program into a cen­
ter and infused it with resources, enabling my colleagues and
me to grow the faculty, institute a postdoc program and a dis­
tinguished visiting scholars program, and expand the cur­
riculum.” A new building housed the center, creating vibrant
community space to support its programming.

THE BEST ADVICE
[SMITH] HAS RECEIVED
IS 1 0 HAVE THE
COURAGE TO BRING
MY FULL HUMANITY TO
ANY ROLE IN WHICH I
FIND MYSELF.”

^ Whether socializing with campus community members during the spring welcome event, or chatting with a prospective parent on Magill Walk,
President Smith appears to feel comfortable wherever she happens to be.

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

21

[PRINCETON’S]
CULTURE OF
17248521

ALSO FOSTERED
INNOVATION,
CREATIVITY,
AND EFFICIENCY
THAT EXPERIENCE
WILL SERVE ME
WELL AS PRESIDENT
OF SWARTHMORE.

Smith was invited to apply for the deanship o f the college
in 2001, overseeing all areas o f undergraduate academic life
including the curriculum, the residential college system, study
abroad, undergraduate research, and the admissions and finan­
cial aid offices.
“I found it to be fascinating work,” Smith said. “One o f the
things I loved about being dean is that it helped me to under­
stand the multifaceted nature o f the university,” she continued.
“I grew to appreciate both the complex pressures upon and the
opportunities available to students and faculty and to under­
stand the work o f staff better.”
Smith’s position as dean at Princeton prepared her well for
the Swarthmore presidency. “In that role I encouraged my col­
leagues to seek opportunities to collaborate with academic and
other administrative departments across the university. That
culture o f collaboration enhanced our ability to serve our stu­
dents well, to meet their needs, and to better serve the uni­
versity as a whole. That culture o f collaboration also fostered
innovation, creativity, and efficiency. That experience, per­
haps above everything else, will serve me well as president o f
Swarthmore.”
“During my first year I’ll continue to immerse myself in the
Swarthmore community both on and off campus and get to
know the college well. I’ll revisit the strategic plan [published
in 2011] to evaluate our progress to date and establish a time­
line for further implementation. I also want to foster the cul­
ture o f openness and collaboration that has been such an
important part o f Swarthmore’s history, and will continue to
play an essential role in our future together.” ©
+ WATCH INAUGURATION WEEKEND PERFORMANCES AND
ceremony

AT:

bit.Iy/Smithlnauguration

-VALERIE SMITH

President Smith at work in her Parrish Hall office.

22

Swarthmore College Bulletin / fall

2015

A Prolific Literary and Cultural Scholar
j S A SCHOLAR, Smith
“The limits o f each position reveal
cloak oneself (or the nation) in the
has written exten­
the need for a discourse that can con­
mantle o f ‘post-race’ also betrays an
sively on Africandemn the violence and misogyny o f the
eagerness, i f not a desperation, to run
American literature
crime, and censure the crime as well as
from the history and the current state o f
and culture. Her first
the criminal, without either falling back
racial formations in the nation. Those
book, S elf-D iscovery
on racist language or pre-judging those
who cling to the notion o f ‘post-race’
and A uthority in A fro-A m erican
who might well be innocent. What is
fail to distinguish between racism on
Narrative (Harvard University
Press,is a discourse attuned to the rac­
needed
the one hand and, on the other hand,
1987), traces the influence o f ism
slave
nar­
that
surrounds the case, the misog­
discursive practices that acknowledge,
ratives on selected 20th century texts
yny that enabled it, and the connections
analyze, and resist the mechanisms
by black writers and, as she writes
between the two. What is needed is a
through which processes o f racializain the book’s introduction, “the vari­
critique that acknowledges the compet­
tion are enacted,” Smith writes.
ety o f ways in which the idea o f lit­
ing claims o f race and gender,” Smith
“Throughout my career I’ve been
eracy is used within the tradition o f
writes.
interested in how literary and cul­
Afro-American letters.” In this book,
Smith’s third and most recent book,
tural forms and texts are shaped by pro­
she argues that slave narrators and
Toni M orrison: W riting the Moral
cesses o f historical and social change,”
the protagonist-narrators o f selected
Imagination (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011),
Smith said. “I’m always thinking about
20th-century novels by Africanis a critical introduction to M orrison’s
the relationship between texts and their
American writers “affirm and legitimize
works. Smith writes that Morrison
social and cultural contexts.”
their psychological autonomy by telling
seeks in her fiction for “ways o f writ­
Smith is also the co-editor, with
the stories o f their own lives.”
ing about race without reproducing the
Henry Louis Gates Jr., o f the third edi­
Her second book, N ot Just Race, N ot
tropes o f racism.
tion o f The Norton Anthology o f African
Just Gender: Black Fem inist Readings
“Morrison’s insistence throughout
Am erican Literature, published in 2014.
(Routledge, 1998), explores “what it
her career that our comm on human­
She has two books in progress. The
means,” as Smith writes o f her proj­
ity can be found in the specificity o f
first is an interdisciplinary essay col­
ect, “to read at the intersections o f con­
our individual and cultural differ­
lection she co-edited with Adrienne
structions o f race, gender, class, and
ences seems strikingly prescient from
Brown, Race and Real Estate, due out
sexuality. Each chapter focuses on a
the vantage point o f the second decade
from Oxford University Press this fall.
site that might seem to engage one cat­
o f the 21st century”—when, Smith
The second is a book she’s been working
egory o f experience—race, class, sex, or
writes, many have proclaimed a new
on for a while. It is, Smith said, “a study
gender—over and above the others. In
“era o f post-racialism” in the wake o f
o f the ways in which the memory o f the
each instance, I explore how the osten­
President Barack Obama’s election.
civil rights movement has been invoked
sible dominance o f one category masks
“Not only is it naïve to assume that
in contemporary cultural forms, includ­
both the operation o f the others and the
the election o f an African-American
ing fiction, theater, and film”—and how,
interconnections among them.”
president would mean the end o f rac­
she said, “that memory acquires mean­
For example, in a chapter about a
ism when so many markers o f racial
ing in the context o f changing race rela­
famous 1989 case in which a group o f
inequality still exist, but the urge to
tions in this country.” ©
black and Puerto Rican teenagers were
accused o f raping and assaulting a white
“Throughout my career I’ve been interested in how
female jogger in Central Park, Smith
makes the argument that the main­
literary and cultural forms and texts are shaped by
stream media “racialized the language
processes of historical and social change. I’m al­
by which the crime was censured,” while
ways
thinking about the relationship between texts
the black press “denied the serious­
and their social and cultural contexts.”
ness o f the crime in order to critique the
ways in which the young men were rep­
resented and handled in the press and in
the judiciary system.”

n

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

A LIFE OF LEARNING

Baby Val enjoys a merry-go-round ride with her mother at Prospect Park, Brooklyn
(top); Val with her father, then a graduate student at Fordham University; Val, a gradu­
ate student herself.

“I try to lead a balanced life. As
much as possible, I try to make
time for family and friends, my
spiritual life, my scholarly life,
and athletic activity.”
Swarthmore College Bulletin /

fall

2015

Smith is the child of two educators. Her
father, W. Reeves Smith, is a retired pro­
fessor of biology at Long Island University,
and her mother, Josephine Smith, is a re­
tired New York City public school teacher.
“My brother, sister, and I were, and continue
to be, voracious readers,” Smith said of her
childhood. “We were encouraged to appre­
ciate the cultural resources around us both
in Brooklyn and in Manhattan. Our family
spent a lot of time in museums and concerts
and libraries.
“My mother always loved to walk,” Smith
continued. “W e would explore Brooklyn
neighborhoods on foot, and we would also
ride subways or elevated trains, just to see
what was at the other end of the line. My
childhood was infused with a love of litera­
ture and of culture, and a deep appreciation
of urban space.”
Smith grew up attending Concord Bap­
tist Church of Christ in Brooklyn. The pas­
tor, the late Rev. Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, was
a legendary orator. His wife, the late Lau­
ra Scott Taylor, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate
of Oberlin College and the founding princi­
pal of Concord Elementary School, was one
of Smith’s earliest mentors. Concord culti­
vated in Smith a love of learning, especially
her love of language. There she developed a
spiritual life that continues to sustain her.
“It has always been important for me to
feel that my life has a higher purpose and
that my work is a calling,” she said. “I was
raised in a progressive faith tradition that
celebrated our diverse talents and taught
the importance of resisting oppressive
forces. That tradition inspired me to listen
to and for the voices of the disempowered,
to value generosity of spirit, and to try to
attribute the highest and the best motives
to others.”
Outside of work, Smith enjoys spending
time with friends, reading, walking and hik­
ing, attending theater and movies, travel,
yoga, Pilates, and healthy, simple cooking
(roasted okra is something of a signa­
ture dish). Asked what she wants people to
know about her outside of her job, Smith re­
plied, “Even though I don’t always succeed
at it, I try to lead a balanced life. As much as
possible, I try to make time for family and
friends, my spiritual life, my scholarly life,
and athletic activity.” ©

’60s civil-rights activists reflect on past dangers, ponder present challenges
by Carrie C om pton

USAN PRESTON
Martin ’63 lay on a
thin jail cot mattress
and ran her hands
across her belly. She
understood for the
first time how noticeable her pregnancy
had become. She was 21 and had grad­
uated just a month earlier. Save for the
rare moments when it was quiet enough
to tap on a pipe in her cell and whis­
per to the women caged adjacent to
her in the “colored” cell, she was alone.
Arrested together, they were jailed
separately after the white men in an

26

Swarthmore College Bulletin /

fall

2015

integrated group—her then-husband
Hugh Martin ’61 included—decided
to “liberate” the “colored” bathrooms
and drinking fountains during a ferry
ride from Plaquemine, La.—where the
Martins were registering black voters—
to New Orleans. Because the ferry cap­
tain had turned inland and radioed for
the local sheriff, she wasn’t even sure
what town they were in and had no
idea if the Congress for Racial Equality
(CORE) did, either.
Shortly after that arrest Hugh was
incarcerated again. He anxiously lis­
tened for another kind o f tapping: His

fellow white-male inmates were bend­
ing their spoons into knuckle rings—
which they intended to use on him.
Thankfully, CORE was quick to bail out
its activists.
The Martins were just two o f many
1960s graduates who risked their lives
to bring justice and equality to a nation
in turmoil. Following are some o f their
stories, made perhaps even more poi­
gnant today when this nation’s racial
divisions are still glaringly apparent.
During the same summer that found
the Martins behind bars, Mimi Feingold

«fV HOUttt

State troopers stand
by as demonstrators
kneel and pray after
their protest march
was halted at Selma,
Ala., March 10,1965.

Real ’63 sat huddled in a jail cell in Port
Allen, La., clutching a pencil she’d pil­
fered from her jailor and a roll o f toilet
paper. Years o f civil rights work while at
Swarthmore had familiarized Real with
imprisonment.
After spending the night in a horse
stall at the Iberville Parish fairgrounds
(the local jails were clogged with activ­
ists), Real began to write: “I have never
seen such hell and such terror as we
witnessed in Plaquemine Sunday eve­
ning.” Her adrenaline-fueled account
describes a peaceful demonstration
turned violent after the federal mar­
shal and local police joined forces with
white supremacist vigilantes to sup­
press a peaceful protest. Demonstrators
panicked when confronted by mounted
police clenching cattle prods. The pro­
testers scattered, but most made their
way to the town’s black church, only to
be met with tear-gas canisters flung at
them through stained glass. Vigilantes
ransacked homes searching the black
neighborhoods for James Farmer,
director o f CORE, who was leading the
night’s protest.
Real’s letter, smuggled out o f jail in
the hem o f her dress and now housed in
the W isconsin State Historical Society,
goes on, “I f they had a [cattle] prodder
they used it.... They pulled down one
girl’s pants and prodded her between
her legs.”
Later that year, Judy Richardson
’66, H’12, who is black, found herself in
“the hole” —a cell with no cot or water,
just a drain on the floor—after a sit-in.
Her Atlanta jailors had opened the w in­
dow and the December winds whistled
in around her thin coat. A few months
later, she’d be jailed again, but this
time kicking and screaming, in spite
o f the strict nonviolent imperative o f
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC). Richardson,
thanks in part to her 90-word-per-minute typing, was working as the secretary
for SNCC Executive Secretary James
Forman. It was one o f the few times she
showed her anger in the face o f overt
white oppression.
“Growing up in Tarrytown, N.Y.,
there were a lot o f little slights, but I
always assumed they were individual,”
says Richardson. “[Segregationists]
saying, ‘You can’t com e through these

Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

doors because you’re black,’ really put a
name on it. It was white supremacy.”
OPPRESSIVE CONFORM ITY

Swarthmore in the early ’60s is regu­
larly described as a m ecca o f progres­
sive thought. “M y parents were victims
o f McCarthyism, so I grew up with a
consciousness that was, probably, out o f
step with most o f America,” Real says.
“I wanted to go to a college where polit­
ical ideas were open.” Right away, she
joined the Swarthmore Political Action
Committee (SPAC).
“All political action on or o ff campus
was out o f SPAC,” says Real. “We were
pushing the envelope.”
Richardson, who came to Swarthmore
in 1962 as one o f “eight or nine” AfricanAmerican students, still recalls the
passion for social justice evident in
Real during the first SPAC meeting
Richardson attended. From that first
meeting, Richardson soon would help
organize the all-black college cafete­
ria staff, protest de facto segregation in
nearby Chester, Pa., and sit in against
Jim Crow laws in Cambridge, Md.
“The student sit-ins really galva­
nized us,” says Real, who spent 40 days
in a Mississippi prison in the sum­
mer o f 1961 for her participation in
The Freedom Rides, a CORE initia­
tive to test the federally mandated inte­
gration o f bus depots across the South.
“This was a time o f such oppressive

I HAVE NEVER SI
AND TERROR AS
IN PLAQUEMINE
I FEINGOLD R EA L’63

Judy Richardson ’66, H’12, center, sitting in at the Toddle House in 1963 with fellow members o f SNCC in Atlanta.

conformity; then here was this blast
o f students who just went against the
power structure and endured all o f
these horrible things, like having food
thrown at them and being beaten and
jailed.”
‘WE W ILL A L L GO OK HONGER STRIKES’

Meg Hodgkin Lippert ’64, who had jour­
neyed to Somerville, in Fayette County,
Tenn., during her spring break to help
build a black community center, was
another SPAC activist down South in
summer 1963. A practicing Quaker, she
also worked with the American Friends
Service Committee. Fayette County
was one o f only two in the state with a

majority black population among its
9,000 residents. Despite that major­
ity, in 1960 only 17 African-Americans
were registered to vote.
Lippert steeled herself for the worst:
"... going without food for two days last
week just to see what it was like,” she
wrote in a letter to Tom Webb ’66 in
mid-July. “If we get imprisoned, we will
all go on hunger strikes.”
Lippert stayed with Quaker activ­
ists from Ohio, Art and Carolyn Emery,
and their two small children, in a tiny
sharecroppers’ cabin on “negro” -operated land several miles outside o f
Somerville. Lippert’s letters detail how
she farmed in the morning and helped

register voters in the afternoon before
driving the day’s harvest to a supermar­
ket in Memphis.
One day, Art was forced off the road
by a band o f white locals and arrested
for reckless driving. That night, “a
group o f whites surrounded our shack
and shone their lights into our windows
saying to get out,” Lippert recalls. “We
wanted to stay; we wanted to fight, but
the longer we stayed, the longer they’d
keep Art in jail.”
Lippert continues, her voice cracking
with emotion, “W e left that day, and it
was devastating to Carolyn and me. We
had tried to do something good, and we
failed.... We failed.”

fall

2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

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30

In summer 1964, Bob Moses, the tall and
bespectacled leader o f SNCC’s voter reg­
istration effort in Mississippi, started
the daily Mississippi Freedom Summer
orientation the same way: by stand­
ing, slowly striding to a chalkboard, and
writing, “The three are still missing.” By
this time, Richardson had moved with
SNCC’s national office to Greenwood,

Miss., and remembers Moses as partic­
ularly stricken by the late June disap­
pearance o f the three CORE workers.
Their gunshot-riddled bodies were dis­
covered 44 days later, their deaths
attributed to the Ku Klux Klan and local
law enforcement.
Richardson’s diary, featured in the
anthology Hands on the Freedom Plow:
Personal Accounts hy Women in SNCC,
chillingly reflects the daily worry over
the missing young men.
June 20: Three kids—M ickey
Schwerner, James Chaney, and
Andy Goodman lost after arrest in
Philadelphia, M iss. No publicity.
June 21: Kids still not found.
June 22: Guys still lost.
June 23: Still lost.
June 25: Still not found. President
makes another inane statem ent about
inability to send federal marshals to pro­
tect those working in M iss.
Richardson, who had been shot at a
couple o f times during her work in the
South, continues, “The disappearance
and murder o f Chaney, Goodman, and
Schwerner had profoundly changed
things for me. [It] forced me to realize
that my amazing friends/family/colleagues really could die here.”

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The Martins had gone north about
a month before Real penned the toi­
let-paper letter, but Hugh was keen to
return south the next summer. This
time he wanted to go to Mississippi
to work on the CORE project “where
three civil rights workers [James
Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and
Michael Schwerner] were murdered,”
says Susan. “Our baby was born in
January, and I had a recurring night­
mare that we were under attack in a big
house in Mississippi, and I couldn’t find
a safe place for her.”
Hugh was diagnosed with cancer in
spring 1964, and the couple, who have
since divorced, relocated to California
to begin a “transformative and healing
lifestyle,” says Hugh. The move ended
their role in voter registration.

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NOTHING, NOTHING CHANGES.’’
-JU D Y RICHARDSON’66 H’I2

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Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

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Mimi Feingold Real’s toilet paper letter is housed in the Wisconsin State Historical Society,
and, according to Real, is so cherished that a facsimile hangs in the director’s office.

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l also voted to send
m unofficial observtomorrow and Sunicerning the creation
committee in order

AS THE Phoenix went to press,
reports that NSAers Paul Potter
and Tom Hayden had been badly
beaten in McComb, Miss. (See
Council story, cols. 1,2), received
full and startling confirmation.
The story, as it now emerges, is as
follows: Potter and Hayden went to
McComb simply to report the sit-in
demonstrations then in progress.
They found that the 116 high school
demonstrators had been asked to sign
an affadavit to the dffect that they
wouldn’t participate in further dem­
onstrations. But when 90 of the stu­
dents refused to sign^ they were told
that their grades would be reduced
by ten per cent and that, if they re-

Friday, October 13, 1961

Feingold Convicted in Jackson;
Sentenced to 4 Months, $200
THE HINDS COUNTY RECORDERS Court in Jackson, Mississippi,
found Miriam Feingold guilty as charged of breach of the peace on
October 10. A jury of 12 white men delivered the verdict after seven
minutes of deliberation. Judge Moore sentenced the defendent to
four months on the county farm and a $200 fine. Since Mimi ap­
pealed her case to the state court, however, she will not serve this
sentence now.
The case of the State of Mississippi
vs. Miriam Feingold was argued in
full before a jury. The jury, accepted
without objections by Attorney R.
Jess Brown, the^lawyer lo r the de­
fense, included men only (Women
cannot serve on juries in Mississippi).
In examining the jury, A tt’y .brown
askea each memner ii ne had any pre-

he had. Then he asked if they had any
definite opinions as to the innocence
or guilt o f the defendent, to which
they answered no. They agreed they
would give the defendent a fair, hon­
est, and unprejudiced hearing.
The state called only two witnesses,
both o f whom the defense cross-exam­
ined. The first witness, Police Capt 1

1. The Phoenix gives top billing to one o f Mimi Feingold Real ’63’s many incarcerations
endured in the name o f desegregation. 2. Real’s H alcyon photo ran alongside a quote: “With all
beings and all things we shall be relatives.” —Sioux Indians. 3. Susan Preston Martin ’63 sought
entry into civil rights work through classmate Real. Susan and former husband Hugh ’61 gave
Real a ride to Louisiana for their summer 1963 voter registration work.

NEC ES SAR Y BUT NOT SUFFICIENT

The disappearance o f three CORE
activists has been credited as the
motivation behind President Lyndon
Johnson’s Civil Rights Act o f 1964,
which outlawed racial, religious,
and gender discrimination nation­
wide. After the march from Selma to
Montgomery, Ala., Johnson would sign
the Voting Rights Act o f 1965, effec­
tively forcing the segregationist states
to remove all barriers to the ballot
box for minorities; but in Mississippi,
Richardson watched as the Jim Crow
South did what it could to resist the law.
“If there was a federal registrar in the
community, you could get black peo­
ple registered. I f there wasn’t one, the

racist folks running the voter registra­
tion wouldn’t let more than a trickle
through,” Richardson says. By the time
the Voting Rights Act arrived, she had
worked in the field for SNCC for three
years, electing to remain down South
rather than return to Swarthmore after
her freshman year.
Real was to begin an American his­
tory master’s at the University o f
W isconsin-M adison in fall 1963, but
she deferred for a year to stay in East
Feliciana Parish, La., where she’d
braved incarceration and a 6-foot cross
set ablaze in front o f her shack. When
the registration site closed, she turned
to helping the black community orga­
nize and deal with white retaliation

against those who’d attempted to reg­
ister. In summer 1966, Real returned to
Louisiana from Madison, Wis., to col­
lect ephemera from the tumultuous
era for the W isconsin State Historical
Society’s civil rights collection and
found a very changed way o f life.
“There were already political divi­
sions in the black community,” says
Real. “It was like, aha! They’ve joined
the 20th century! Here were people
exercising their right to vote and doing
all the things that go along with that. It
was so heartening.”
T H E G REAT HOPE

Now in the 21st century, an apparent
backtracking in progress dismays some
Swarthmoreans who put their lives on
the line for voting rights. Richardson
had always dismissed the conspiratorial
musings o f friends from her SNCC days
about the Voting Rights Act being put
asunder. But in 2013, the United States
Supreme Court dismantled crucial sec­
tions o f the 1965 act.
“After the blood and the lives that
were lost fighting for this basic right,
I thought they wouldn’t dare overturn
this. Ha!” Richardson says. “They gut­
ted it. They gutted it.”
“That the Supreme Court could say
that these provisions were outdated
just blew me away,” Real remarks. “The
fact is, there are all kinds o f ways the
Deep South is still preventing minori­
ties from voting.”
Richardson, who continue work­
ing on civil rights as a historian, writer,
teacher and documentary filmmaker,
has also closely watched recent nation­
wide incidents o f police brutality
against blacks.
“There is a cumulative effect even on
white society,” she says. “This may not
be your mother’s racism, but it’s racism,
and if you do nothing, nothing changes.
“That’s why young people are the great
hope,” Richardson continues. “Some
older activists will say, ‘We are passing
the baton to the next generation.’ I say,
‘No. We are going with them—with the
baton—hand in hand.’ ” ©
+ w a t c h Judy Richardson reflect on her
time at Swarthmore in a speech to the
Class of 2012: bit.ly/HearJudyRichardson

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2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

31

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Treasures beyond the horticultural
abound on Swarthmore’s campus
by E lizab eth Vogdes
Shortly after Parrish Hall opened its doors on rolling
farmland in 1869, nearby Philadelphia was busy enhanc­
ing its fledgling Fairmount Park with statuary.
Nearly a century later, Swarthmore began acquiring its
own outdoor sculptures, coinciding with a resurgence o f
interest in the subject in Philadelphia. As the city passed
a landmark law requiring a percentage o f building bud­
gets to support public art, large-scale, abstract sculptures
proliferated.
So it’s appropriate that today, the sharp-eyed traveler
arriving at Swarthmore on the train from Philadelphia
immediately encounters one such sculpture. Slide Rock, a
monumental bent-steel piece reminiscent o f the nearby
tracks, was given to the College in 1988. Ringed by trees,
it often serves as a secret climbing structure for delighted
children.
Proceeding up Magill Walk, the visitor passes three
more sculptures o f varying visibility before spotting a
white beacon on the hill, the welcoming and well-loved
Adirondack Chair.
Have some fun searching campus for the artistic trea­
sures shown on these pages. Chances are you’ll make at
least one or two new discoveries, hiding in plain sight.

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2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

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2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

1. URN
Harry Bertoia (Italian-American, 1915-1978)
This small, flat bronze sculpture, suggestive of a fu­
nerary urn, almost disappears into the stone wall
against which it is set. Creator Harry Bertoia was
prolific in many media, including painting, drawing,
monoprints, and metalwork. He enjoyed a very suc­
cessful career in midcentury modern furniture de­
sign, working with Charles Eames on bent plywood
chairs and the Knoll Co., for which he designed an
eponymous iconic wire furniture collection, continu­
ously produced since 1952. Later, Bertoia focused on
three-dimensional artwork, including sounding sculp­
tures and architectural installations, producing many
pieces in his Pennsylvania studio that are now found
in museums nationwide.
Urn was donated to the College at the suggestion
of Phillip A. Bruno, an art dealer whose support in­
cludes an endowment for Swarthmore’s permanent
art collection.
2. LANDSCAPE WALL
Massey Burke ’0 0 (American, b. 1978)
This project highlights strong environmental interest
on campus. Designed and built by Massey Burke in
conjunction with members of a College art class and
other campus community members, it is constructed
of materials recycled from the Scott Arboretum.
3. BACK FROM RIO
Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
Alexander Calder is most famous for his moving
sculptures. His enormous Philadelphia Museum of
Art mobile is symbolically located third in line down
the city’s Parkway from his father’s Logan Circle
fountains and his grandfather’s iconic William Penn
statue atop City Hall.
Swarthmore’s own Calder stabile-mobile was moved
to its current location after refurbishment to improve
views from all angles of its naturally changing design.
4. GARNET
Robert Murray (Canadian, b. 1936)
In 1966, Donald Lippincott, son of an alumni match­
box couple, became the first American steel fabri­
cator to deal exclusively with large-scale sculpture,
working with such well-known artists as Louise Nevelson and Claes Oldenburg. Sculptor Robert Murray,
another of Lippincott’s clients, is recognized for his
large, bent, colorful steel pieces.

VIEW THE NEW ONLINE
CAMPUS MAP:
swarthmore.edu/campusmap
for locations o f biddings, park­
ing, artworks, and other points
o f interest.

Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

5. ADIRONDACK CHAIR (aka “The Big Chair”)
Jake Beckman ’0 4 (American, b. 1982)
This much-loved, whimsical sculpture is the only
portable one on campus. Perhaps due to the
strongly interactive nature of the “Big Chair,” many
are surprised to learn that it is a piece of artwork.

A sense of the unexpected characterizes this 2 0 0 2
piece of oversized stealth art, rolled out during exam
week to the delight of the general population.
Jake Beckman, whose career as a sculptor and
teacher is still informed by his scientific interests
and manipulation of scale, also built a wall clock in
the Science Center, constructed partly of pipes and
called Flow of Time.
6. THACKURDEEN MEMORIAL
Kurt Wulfmeyer (American, b. 1969) in collaboration
with the Thackurdeen family
Swarthmore’s most recent piece of outdoor sculp­
ture, a memorial to Ravi Thackurdeen ’14, was dedi­
cated in June 2015 and given by his family. The result
of close collaboration between the artist/fabricator
and the Thackurdeens, the 5-foot-diameter sphere is
intended to “glow from the inside,” as the family re­
quested. It is made of bronze plate cut in the shape of
actual botanical samples that Ravi had enjoyed col­
lecting for a course.
7. SAPPHO
Alekos Kyriakos (Greek, b. 1937)
Mysterious, hollow Sappho is the College’s only an­
thropomorphic sculpture. Both this piece and the
Calder arrived on campus in 1967, when Sappho was
installed near the then recently-built dining hall. She
was donated by Nicholas K. Braun ’39, whose pro­
ficiency in six languages included classical Greek.
Though holding advanced degrees in law and history,
he made his fortune in high-end women’s handbags.
This Sappho is an enlarged version of its Ath­
ens-trained sculptor’s original model, an accommoda­
tion that was made to fit the current campus site.
8. RED STEELROOT
Steve Tobin (American, b. 1957)
This spidery sprig of red pops up in the courtyard of
Alice Paul, echoed by crimson walls in the stairwell of
David Kemp Hall.
Maverick sculptor Steven Tobin has been explor­
ing the visual idea of roots and their many metaphors
for years. Tobin’s most famous bronze is his self-fi­
nanced Trinity Root, an enormous copy of the roots
of a tree that protected New York’s historic St. Paul’s
church during the devastation of 9/11. Swarthmore’s
own “root” iteration was donated anonymously to the
College by a member of Scott Associates in 2010.
9. SLIDE ROCK
David Stromeyer (American, b. 1946)
Sculptor David Stromeyer loves the malleability of
steel, which is contrasted in this sculpture with the
natural form of rock, found in abundance on his large
northern Vermont property. He recently opened a
free art park at his studio, siting many of his color­
ful large-scale sculptures in open meadows. Slide
Rock was created in 1978 and given to the College by
art patron Margaret Burden, whose own father was a
successful sculptor, producing many representational
statues of famous American historical figures. G
Clockwise from top: Slide Rock, Landscape Wall, Urn, Backfrom Rio.
+

s e e t h e e n t ir e c o l l e c t io n a t

swarthmore.edu

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2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

NE
BELIEVE
IN ROUGH
CONSENSUS
AND RUNNING
CODE/

R IG HT O N /
THAT'S THE
QUAKER
WAV.

David Clark ’66 and
Stephen Wolff ’57 helped
shape the world’s most
shapeless community
by D ana M acken zie ’ 79

THE INTERNET IS UNIQUE among
human creations in many ways. There’s
only one o f it. It had many inven­
tors, rather than just one. We per­
ceive it more as a community than as a
thing. But unlike most communities, it
charges no admission fee, collects no
taxes, imposes no rules, and has no vis­
ible authority. You can use it to learn,
to laugh, to chat, to buy; or you can use
it to spam, to flame, to steal, to spy. The
Internet doesn’t care. It exists only to
pass messages, not to pass judgment.
What isn’t so widely known is that
the Internet acquired its free-for-all
nature by design. Its founders wanted
no barriers to access, with minimal
intervention by software in the middle
and maximal autonomy for the users
at the end. Two o f these anonymous
architects, David Clark ’66 and Stephen
W olff ’57, were named to the Internet
Hall o f Fame in 2013. At a meeting in
1992, Clark summed up the Internet’s
governing philosophy: “W e reject: kings,
presidents, and voting. We believe in:
rough consensus and running code.” It’s
a remarkable statement, combining the
Quaker philosophy o f consensus with
the engineering philosophy that what­
ever works, wins.
W olff and Clark started work on the
Internet before there was an Internet.
W olff began at the Army Ballistic
Research Laboratories (BRL) in
Aberdeen, Md. As one o f 30 hubs on
the ARPANET, the precursor to the
Internet, Aberdeen was supposed to
upgrade its software on New Year’s
Eve 1980—but with a week to go, they
weren’t ready. The problem was thrown
into W olff’s lap, and he asked com ­
puter scientist Mike Muuss to help.
Muuss declared the existing software
to be “junk,” and reprogrammed the
whole hub in a marathon session. “We
made the changeover an hour before
midnight,” W olff says. “Mike called it
the BRL Unix Networking System, or
BUNS for short.” W hen he was done, he
emailed W olff’s supervisor: “BRL put
its BUNS online.”

The anecdote says a lot about the
early days o f networking. Computers
were not designed to communicate
with one another. The software to do
so had to be put together from scratch.
Vint Cerf o f Stanford and Robert Kahn
o f the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) had a vision
for linking them, which they called the
Transmission Control Protocol and the
Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). They pub­
lished the first specifications for TCP/
IP in 1974, but it was a long way from a
working Internet.
W hile W olff was saving BRL’s buns,
Clark was a postdoc at MIT, turning
Cerf and Kahn’s vision into a reality.
“Several o f us were writing the Internet
Protocol,” he says. Each version ran on
a different brand o f computer—one for
IBMs, one for PDPs, and so on. It took
six years to get all the computers work­
ing together.
Then, in 1981, with TCP/IP finally
up and running, the Internet reached
its first great transition: Its leader left.
“Vint was the intellectual leader and
was also in charge o f the money, who
corralled us both by force o f his charac­
ter and by threat o f defunding,” Clark
says. No one person could replace Cerf,
but for awhile two people did: Clark
as the visionary and W olff (a few years
later) as the source o f funds.
Cerf anointed Clark as the ch ief pro­
tocol architect o f the Internet, a title he
held from 1981 to 1989 and no one has
held since. His successors are called
chairs o f the Internet Architecture
Board (LAB). Clark imparted the
Internet’s ethos and design principles
to newcomers. W hen engineers came
to the IAB with new ideas, he and the
other board members could usually tell
what would work and what wouldn’t.
Meanwhile, in 1985, W olff arrived at
the National Science Foundation (NSF)
on the cusp o f three great changes.

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2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

39

DARPA was about to end its support
o f the ARPANET. At the same time,
academic researchers were eager to
get connected. Finally, the NSF wanted
to hook its five brand-new supercom­
puter centers to the ARPANET back­
bone. Instead, the high-speed links
connecting San Diego, Urbana, Cornell,
Pittsburgh and Princeton universi­
ties became the new backbone o f the
NSFNet. This network bridged the
gap from the Internet’s infancy to its
maturity.
As program manager at NSF, W olff

coaxed the Internet out o f its aca­
demic shell. Although the NSF could
fund the backbone, it couldn’t fund
all the regional networks, jrl told them
that they should go out and get com ­
mercial customers,” W olff says. He
helped persuade Congress—which had
funded NSFNet as an academic proj­
ect—to allow commercial traffic on the
backbone. The rest was history. With
the advent o f the World W ide Web and
commercial browsers, telecommuni­
cation companies suddenly became
eager to build new networks and hook

“SWARTHMORE ABSOLUTELY
SAVED ME, NOT DECAUSE
OF ANY SPECIFIC THING I
LEARNED THERE, RUT
DECAUSE OF THE MINDSET
THAT IT’S GOOD TO TALK
WITH PEOPLE WHO
AREN’T LIKE YOU.’’
-D A V ID CLARK '66

40

Swarthmore College Bulletin / f a l l 2015

up to the Internet. The commercial
Internet was such a runaway hit that
W olff closed the NSFNet down in 1995,
his last year there. He believed it was no
longer needed—and being dependent on
government funding, it was better for
the Internet not to rely on it.
Both W olff and Clark remain very
active in Internet affairs. W olff is the
principal scientist for Internet2, a con ­
sortium founded in 1995 that manages
a new academic backbone like NSFNet
(only much, much faster). “Internet2
has more than 250 academic institu­
tions as members,” W olff says. “Every
country at this point has an academic
network like Internet2,” he adds, “and
all are interconnected in a global archi­
tecture to support research and higher
education.”
Clark is still at MIT, where he has
been employed as either a student,
postdoc, or research scientist for the
last 49 years. He has won two Test o f
Time Awards from the Association for
Computing Machinery. In one o f his
Test o f Time papers, written in 2002,
Clark introduced the term “tussle” to
describe the interactions on today’s
Internet: tussles between service pro­
viders and users; companies and hack­
ers; governments and cryptographers.
This year, Google and China engaged in
a very public tussle over security certif­
icates. The solutions do not lie in engi­
neering alone—they involve economics,
politics, and diplomacy. The best thing
that technicians can do, according to
Clark, is enable the tussle to play out
without bringing down the Internet.
“I’ve made this transition in the
2000s from a technical person into a
multidisciplinary person. I have econ­
omists and political scientists work­
ing with me,” Clark says. “Swarthmore
absolutely saved me, not because o f
any specific thing I learned there, but
because o f the mindset that it’s good to
talk with people who aren’t like you.” ©

mmmuum

“Representing the
American people
is an honor and
privilege,” according
to Barks-Ruggles
(left). “We get to
make a difference in
people’s lives every
day,” including on
education, health,
security, and human
rights.

THE ROAD TO RWANDA
Erica Barks-Ruggles ’89 takes on diplomatic
challenges in sub-Saharan Africa
by Sherri Kimmel
THE PERPETUALLY TROUBLED
sub-Saharan country o f Burundi was in
political chaos yet again this spring. By
mid-May, more than 25,000 refugees had
surged over the border, into Rwanda.
In the thick o f it was U.S. Ambassa­
dor to Rwanda Erica Barks-Ruggles ’89.
The new, large refugee camp she visited
was then receiving a daily influx o f
3,000 Burundians. “Most were severely
malnourished,” she says. “They’d been
walking for days, and all they had were
the clothes on their backs and what they
could carry on their heads.”
Working closely with the Rwandan
government, the United Nations, the
World Health Organization, and five
American NGOs, the U.S. Department
o f State and USAID helped ensure their
safety and provided proper shelter, food,
clothing, sanitation, and medical care,

Barks-Ruggles explains.
“The U.S. in the first few weeks
contributed $10.7 million to help on the
Rwandan side of the border,” she says. “I
say thank you to the American taxpay­
ers who enable us to do these things so
people can be safe, healthy, and live a
dignified existence until their country is
stable, and they are able to return.”
Visiting a refugee camp is not unusual
for Barks-Ruggles, who began her threeyear tour o f duty as President Obama’s
personal representative to Rwanda in
January. On another day, Barks-Ruggles,
who leads a staff o f 95 Americans and
200 Rwandans, might attend four meet­
ings and a dinner.
Her ambassadorship is the culmi­
nation o f 23 years as a career foreignservice officer. Past posts include South
Africa, India, and Norway.

Living in a nation where 11 million
people are packed into a space the size
o f Maryland can be a bit disconcerting
for a woman from rural Minnesota who
was an honors major in marine biology,
English literature minor, and varsity
swimmer at Swarthmore. “Now I’m
never not in sight o f people,” she says.
Joining Barks-Ruggles in the embassy
in Kigali is her “diplodog” —a Labrador
retriever she adopted from a Virginia
animal rescue—and her husband Taylor
Ruggles, a foreign-service officer work­
ing to increase clean energy in sub-Saha­
ran Africa.
The couple first encountered Africa
in 1991, when they backpacked across
the continent. “Africa is a place where
people are so enormously generous,
even though they have so little,” she says.
“We realized then that we were entitled
Americans—we had won the lottery—and
asked ourselves, ‘What can we do to give
back? We’re going to do something that
matters more than just earning money.’ ”
While the challenges in Rwanda
remain daunting, including malaria, mal­
nutrition, and HIV/AIDS, the country
has worked to rebuild following the 1994
genocide that killed 800,000 to 1 million
people. Part o f the ambassador’s role is to
bring in American business partners to
spur development.
One recent partner is the American
water-treatment company Culligan,
which “signed a multimillion-dollar
deal to provide clean water to the people
o f Kigali at a good price,” she says. It’s
a “big win” not only for the Rwandans
employed by Culligan but American en­
gineers who receive contracts and orders
from Rwanda, creating jobs on both sides
o f the Atlantic.
Barks-Ruggles, who is only the
second American woman ambassador
to Rwanda, proudly remarks that the
country has “the highest representation
o f women in its parliament in the world.”
Being a woman leader in a tradition­
ally patriarchal country has turned out
to be a surprising advantage for her.
“Women will open up to me in a way that
they won’t with men,” Barks-Ruggles
notes. “This expands my ability to do
diplomacy and meet a greater number of
people.” G

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2015 / Swarthmore College Bulletin

63

describe it, to very devout students with
a regular prayer practice, and everyone
in between.
W h at kinds o f events do you plan to
bring people together?

Interfaith activities are probably the
largest facet o f my work: interreligious
dialogue, storytelling, text study, fellow­
ship and dinners, speakers around var­
ious issues, but also intrafaith dialogue,
bringing people from within the same
faith tradition together. We sometimes
disagree, so we’re trying to work harder
on that area—especially in Christian
life, our largest religious group—but
we’re also working with the Jewish and
Muslim communities on this. I’m also in­
volved in diversity training, teaching stu­
dents, staff, and faculty about religious
diversity and religious literacy. Religion
is also a component o f wellness, so I’ve
worked with the wellness coordinator,
CAPS, admissions, and dining services
around food issues as well as with the
premed adviser and premed students
who are hospice volunteers.
H ow does Sw arthm ore’s Quaker
heritage influence your w ork?
H ow has your job changed in the last
decade?

PRIEST,
ADVISER,
FRIEND
JOYCE TOMPKINS came to Swarthmore as a part-time Protestant campus
minister in 2004, employed not by the
College but by Partners in Ministry. Now,
she’s not only full-time religious adviser
to the campus Protestant community
but adviser to just about everyone on just
about anything. She’s also a priest at the
town’s Trinity Episcopal Church. Any­
one needing to feel uplifted should read
her online Spiritual Reflections, which
include titles such as “Lessons From
Trees,” “Free the Chairs,” “A Brooklyn
Story,” and “Whoever is Not Against Us
is For Us.” Recently, she sat down for a
chat with acting editor o f the Bulletin
Carol Brevart-Demm.

Swarthmore College Bulletin / fall

2015

Initially, I was a part-time campus
minister for a small group o f students
identifying mainly as Protestants. I loved
that work because there was a vacu­
um there. There was nobody to make
decisions—no staff, no program—so I just
started to make it up. And the students
are so bright, so passionate about what
they do. They care so much about the
world. I have such a sense o f hopefulness
working with them. I feel very lucky.
W h ich aspects o f your w ork do you
find m ost rew arding?

The interfaith work has probably been
the most rewarding. This is a fertile
place for that because o f its Quaker
heritage. Also, students at this age are
just very interested in exploring lots o f
different possibilities. They’re so bright
and thoughtful. I believe that my task
isn’t just about working with students
who happen to identify as religious but
rather about everyone’s spirituality,
which is a huge spectrum—from people
who might not even use that word to

Quakerism is so quiet and behind the
scenes here, but, implicitly, it’s part o f
everything we do. I’m very drawn to
some o f the practices o f the Quakers—
the silence, the Collection. I’ve worked to
find ways to raise up the Quaker values
for the College in more explicit ways, be­
cause I feel it’s a part o f Swarthmore that
isn’t sufficiently explored. It grows on
you over time. It seeps into your bones.
Do you feel supported in your role at
Sw arthm ore?

In recent years, I’ve felt encouraged
about the increase in support for
religious life on campus, thanks largely
to Liliana Rodriguez, former associate
dean o f diversity, inclusion, and com­
munity development, and my two lovely
colleagues for the last two years, Jewish
adviser Kelilah Miller and Muslim stu­
dent adviser Ailya Vajid. The work we’ve
done has borne much fruit, and I think
the campus at large is better for it. It’s
like being a farmer, planting seeds, wait­
ing for them to come up, then suddenly
they do. It feels like that—a lot o f good
growth. ©

MOMENT IN TIME
... Schlepping with style and
panache and drenched in
sunshine, Sun Park ’16 helps
first-year students settle into
the campus community.

Periodical Po stage
P A ID
Ph ilad elph ia, P A
a n d A dd ition al
S W

A R T H

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O R E

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‘In the classroom, we learn how
to dissect and analyze issues.
But my Rubin Scholars mentor
has taught me the ‘strategic
ropes’—how to make my educa­
tion relevant in the world. W hen I
come up against something, he’ll
give me three pathways to con­
sider, offering practical insight
and wisdom that will stay with
me forever.” Isabella Smull ’ 16

Gifts to the Richard Rubin
Scholar Mentoring program
make life-changing experiences
possible.

M ailin g O ffic e s