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American Magazine: November 2016

In this issue, delve into the Scandal-ous life of Judy Smith, meet ESPN’s new public editor, reflect on a decade of transformation under President Neil Kerwin, and learn more about autism—the fastest growing developmental disorder in the United States. Hop on the Metro to Capitol South and get to know a few of AU’s 1,068 Seattle transplants.

In this issue, delve into the Scandal-ous life of Judy Smith, meet ESPN’s new public editor, reflect on a decade of transformation under President Neil Kerwin, and learn more about autism—the fastest growing developmental disorder in the United States. Hop on the Metro to Capitol South and get to know a few of AU’s 1,068 Seattle transplants.

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MEET WASHINGTON’S<br />

ULTIMATE FIXER<br />

p. 26<br />

ESPN’S PUBLIC EDITOR<br />

DOESN’T PULL THEM<br />

p. 34<br />

REFLECTING ON THE<br />

KERWIN YEARS<br />

p. 28<br />

UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


An AU insider’s<br />

perspective on next page


On Lonnie Bunch’s first day as the founding director of the<br />

Smithsonian’s NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN<br />

AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE in 2005, a<br />

security officer didn’t recognize him, and refused to give him<br />

a key to his office.<br />

Eventually, Bunch borrowed a crowbar from a maintenance<br />

man and broke in.<br />

“At that moment, I realized that no one was really<br />

prepared for this endeavor, not the Smithsonian, not the<br />

<strong>American</strong> public, and maybe not even me,” he wrote in<br />

Smithsonian magazine. More than a decade later, everyone<br />

was ready when the museum opened on September 24.<br />

THE SMITHSONIAN’S 19TH INSTITUTION<br />

is housed in a 400,000-square-foot building in which more<br />

than 35,000 artifacts, ranging from Emmett Till’s casket<br />

to Chuck Berry’s red Cadillac, are displayed. For Bunch,<br />

shepherding the museum from concept to reality has been<br />

the ACCOMPLISHMENT OF A LIFETIME.<br />

“Today, a dream too long deferred is a dream no longer,”<br />

he said at the dedication. “What a grand and glorious day to<br />

open a museum that will not just tell of a people’s journey,<br />

but also of the nation’s story.”<br />

Read more about the National Museum of African <strong>American</strong><br />

History and Culture in the March 2017 issue of <strong>American</strong>.<br />

COVER: MARGARET KIMBALL<br />

BUILDING AND BUNCH: PHOTOS BYJAHI CHIKWENDIU/<br />

THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES<br />

18<br />

Life on the<br />

autism spectrum<br />

24<br />

Sketching out<br />

a career as a<br />

cartoonist<br />

26<br />

Scandal-ous look at<br />

crisis guru Judy Smith<br />

28<br />

A decade of<br />

transformation<br />

under President<br />

Neil Kerwin


AMERICAN<br />

<strong>American</strong> University magazine<br />

Vol. 67, No. 2<br />

MANAGING EDITOR<br />

Adrienne Frank, SPA/MS ’08<br />

STAFF WRITER<br />

Mike Unger<br />

Lonnie Bunch<br />

CAS/BA ’74<br />

CAS/MA ’76<br />

34 1 POV<br />

ESPN’s public<br />

editor doesn’t pull<br />

any punches<br />

ART DIRECTOR<br />

Maria Jackson<br />

COPY EDITOR<br />

Rachel Feingold<br />

PHOTOGRAPHER<br />

Jeffrey Watts<br />

CLASS NOTES<br />

Traci Crockett<br />

VICE PRESIDENT,<br />

COMMUNICATIONS<br />

Teresa Flannery<br />

4 4400 Mass Ave<br />

Ideas, people, perspectives<br />

16 Metrocentered<br />

ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT,<br />

CREATIVE SERVICES<br />

Kevin Grasty<br />

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,<br />

CONTENT STRATEGY<br />

Laura Garner<br />

36 Your <strong>American</strong><br />

Connect, engage, reminisce<br />

<strong>American</strong> is published three<br />

times a year by <strong>American</strong><br />

University. With a circulation<br />

of 130,000, <strong>American</strong> is sent<br />

to alumni and other members<br />

of the university community.<br />

Copyright©<strong>2016</strong>.<br />

An equal opportunity, affirmative<br />

action university. UP17-002<br />

For information regarding the<br />

accreditation and state licensing<br />

of <strong>American</strong> University, please<br />

visit american.edu/academics.<br />

A mother’s love<br />

It’s a sticky August afternoon and I’m sipping iced tea with<br />

Glen Finland, CAS/MFA ’02, at a café near campus. Although<br />

we just met, the conversation flows as if we are old friends—<br />

or war buddies. Glen and I share a bond that seems to melt<br />

away the awkwardness that usually comes with meeting<br />

someone new. We both have a child with autism.<br />

In 2009, Glen wrote a piece for the Washington Post<br />

<strong>Magazine</strong> about teaching her now 29-year-old son David<br />

to traverse the DC Metro system. Three years later, she<br />

published Next Stop: An Autistic Son Grows Up, which was<br />

optioned for a film last summer.<br />

The book—heart-wrenching yet hopeful, humorous and<br />

honest—is about much more than crisscrossing the city by<br />

subway. “Autism is never the story about a single child,”<br />

Glen says. “It’s about the entire family who loves him.”<br />

Last fall, my four-year-old son Owen was diagnosed with<br />

autism. One in 68 children is on the spectrum; yet when<br />

Owen was diagnosed, I didn’t know anyone who shared our<br />

experience. The world beyond our door felt very lonely.<br />

I felt compelled to put pen to paper. That’s why I asked<br />

Glen to meet me. Did you have any reservations, I ask now,<br />

about sharing David’s story—your family’s story—so publicly?<br />

“Parents are aching to share their stories and doing<br />

so humanizes those who live on the spectrum,” she says.<br />

“Teaching a stranger to appreciate your kid the way you do<br />

is a beautiful thing. If you have the opportunity to do that<br />

for someone you love—you do it.”<br />

Fast Company recently featured a story about a Microsoft<br />

program aimed at hiring autistic coders. (Up to 80 percent<br />

of autistic adults are unemployed; much of Glen’s book<br />

centers on David’s struggle to find a job that will afford<br />

him independence and the dignity that comes with having<br />

a purpose in life.) Microsoft’s initiative is the brainchild<br />

of executives who have kids on the spectrum. It’s good for<br />

the bottom line, of course, but it’s also activism of a sort.<br />

Just as writing is for Glen and me.<br />

I want you to know about my son Owen, and the quirks,<br />

struggles, and gifts that make him—and the 3 million other<br />

<strong>American</strong>s on the spectrum—uniquely human. And I want<br />

those who have been touched by autism, the fastest growing<br />

developmental disorder in the United States, to know<br />

they’re not alone.<br />

That is my mission, and it’s a beautiful thing, indeed.<br />

Adrienne Frank<br />

Managing Editor<br />

Send story ideas to afrank@american.edu.


national stage<br />

“MY NAME IS SARAH MCBRIDE,<br />

AND I AM A PROUD<br />

TRANSGENDER AMERICAN.”<br />

With those 12 words, McBride,<br />

SPA/BA ’13, made history, becoming<br />

the first openly transgender<br />

speaker at a major political party<br />

convention. She delivered her<br />

remarks on the final day of the<br />

Democratic National Convention<br />

(DNC) in Philadelphia—just hours<br />

before another woman made<br />

history of her own.<br />

“Despite our progress, so much<br />

work remains,” said McBride, national<br />

press secretary for the Human Rights<br />

Campaign. “Will we be a nation where<br />

there’s only one way to love, one way<br />

to look, one way to live? Or, will we be<br />

a nation where everyone has the<br />

freedom to live openly and equally,<br />

a nation that’s stronger together?”<br />

In her four minutes at the podium,<br />

McBride, 25, advocated for the<br />

Equality Act, a bill that would amend<br />

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban<br />

discrimination on the basis of sexual<br />

orientation, gender identity, and sex<br />

in housing, employment, and public<br />

accommodations. Thirty states lack<br />

laws protecting LGBT people from<br />

employment discrimination.<br />

Among those watching at home<br />

was a seven-year-old trans girl, whose<br />

mother emailed McBride. “It was lifechanging<br />

for her to see a beautiful,<br />

accomplished, intelligent role model<br />

with whom she can identify,” the note<br />

read. “I’m so grateful that she was<br />

given such an important moment at<br />

such a young age.”<br />

McBride met with the red-headed<br />

girl in mid-August, posting a picture<br />

of the two of them on Instagram with<br />

the hashtag, #girlslikeus.<br />

Party faithful<br />

McBride wasn’t the only AU<br />

Eagle who graced the convention<br />

stage. Speaker of the House<br />

Paul Ryan (R–WI) and actress<br />

America Ferrara—both alumni<br />

of the Washington Semester<br />

Program—spoke at the<br />

Republican and Democratic<br />

conventions, respectively.<br />

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser,<br />

SPA/MPP ’00, cast five votes for<br />

Bernie Sanders and 39 votes<br />

for Hillary Clinton in the City<br />

of Brotherly Love, and Jelani<br />

Freeman, CAS/MA ’07, spoke at<br />

the DNC about growing up in<br />

foster care.<br />

PHOTO BY AP PHOTO/PAUL SANCYA<br />

4 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


expert<br />

3 MINUTES ON . . . Presidential Pardons<br />

Jeffrey Crouch<br />

Professor, School of Professional and Extended Studies<br />

Author, The Presidential Pardon Power<br />

Pardons, reprieves, and<br />

commutations are all forms of<br />

clemency.<br />

Article II,<br />

Section II, Clause I of the<br />

Constitution says that the<br />

president has the “power<br />

to grant reprieves and<br />

pardons for offenses<br />

against the United States, except<br />

in cases of impeachment.” The<br />

idea is that under a system of<br />

laws, there should be a<br />

way to forgive<br />

violations of those laws.<br />

Clemency is kind of a<br />

kingly power.<br />

The framers felt like<br />

somebody in the federal<br />

government should have that<br />

ability to forgive federal crimes.<br />

They debated who it should be.<br />

They talked about sharing the<br />

being vested in one<br />

person, so he could be<br />

held responsible by the<br />

electorate.<br />

George<br />

Washington<br />

first used the clemency<br />

power; his most high-profile<br />

pardons came after the<br />

Whiskey Rebellion.<br />

He referenced the personal<br />

circumstances<br />

of the two<br />

individuals he<br />

pardoned, and the societal<br />

reasons for the pardons.<br />

From FDR through Jimmy<br />

Carter, presidents had a clemency<br />

approval percentage—pardons<br />

and commutations divided by<br />

the number of applications—of<br />

about 25 percent.<br />

Ronald Reagan was at about 12<br />

Some of the<br />

difference has to<br />

do with the<br />

number of<br />

applications received.<br />

George H. W. Bush had less than<br />

1,500, Clinton had almost 7,500,<br />

George W. Bush had 11,000, and<br />

Obama has more than 29,000<br />

petitions for commutations alone,<br />

plus about 3,000 for pardons.<br />

In recent years, clemency isn’t<br />

that popular with the public, in<br />

part because of abuses of<br />

the power.<br />

The first example<br />

that comes to mind is<br />

the Iran-Contra pardons by<br />

George H. W. Bush. He had lost<br />

his reelection bid, and there<br />

was a chance that Casper<br />

Weinberger was going<br />

to be retried and might call<br />

Bush to testify. With<br />

Weinberger’s pardon,<br />

in his last hours as<br />

president, among them<br />

one to Marc Rich, a fugitive<br />

living in Switzerland. His<br />

ex-wife was campaigning to get<br />

him a pardon, a<br />

campaign that<br />

apparently involved<br />

a donation to the Clinton<br />

Presidential Library.<br />

The president is often in a<br />

situation where he needs the<br />

approval of other branches of<br />

government. If he wants to enter<br />

a treaty he’s got to<br />

get the Senate to<br />

ratify it. He’s got to<br />

get Congress to<br />

declare war but clemency enables<br />

the president to check the<br />

decisions of the federal<br />

judiciary. This is a fairly<br />

unique ability.<br />

Although the framers had<br />

misgivings about a king, this is<br />

percent, George H. W. Bush at 5<br />

Bush avoided potential<br />

a potent power they<br />

percent, Bill Clinton at 6 percent,<br />

embarrassment.<br />

thought the president should<br />

clemency power between the<br />

George W. Bush at 1.8 percent,<br />

Clinton gave a bunch of<br />

have regardless<br />

president and the Senate, but<br />

and Barack Obama, so far, is<br />

pardons and<br />

of its potential<br />

they settled on the idea of it<br />

at 2.6 percent.<br />

commutations<br />

for abuse.<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 5


The AU bookstore has gone<br />

bookless.<br />

Starting this fall, all course<br />

materials—including textbooks—<br />

are only available online at<br />

Shop<strong>American</strong>U.com. Students<br />

can purchase new, used, or<br />

digital textbooks, or rent books<br />

for a semester, saving up to 80<br />

percent. Books are delivered to<br />

the campus store in the Mary<br />

Graydon Center for pick-up.<br />

AU is among the first<br />

universities to move from a<br />

brick-and-mortar model to<br />

an entirely e-storefront. “We<br />

believe this is the future of the<br />

campus store,” says Charles<br />

Smith, director of Auxiliary<br />

Services. “And AU is one of the<br />

universities leading the charge.”<br />

The store’s upper level<br />

remains packed with spirit<br />

wear and school supplies, while<br />

the lower level—once home to<br />

textbooks—will be used for the<br />

new University Club and student<br />

event space.<br />

Students will save up to $1,000 on transit this year with the<br />

new University Pass (U-Pass), a first-of-its-kind collaboration<br />

between AU and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit<br />

Authority (WMATA).<br />

For a flat fee of $130 per semester—or about $1 per day—<br />

undergrads, grad students, and law students can enjoy unlimited<br />

rides on Metrorail and Metrobus through May 2017.<br />

Students voted to adopt the U-Pass in spring <strong>2016</strong>. AU is the<br />

only area school to partner with WMATA for the pilot program.<br />

More than 200 colleges and universities in Atlanta, Chicago,<br />

Philadelphia, and Los Angeles have teamed up with 20 transit<br />

systems nationwide to offer their students similar programs.<br />

“We structured the program similar to other models across<br />

the country,” says Tracey Foster, WMATA director of customer<br />

service, sales, and fare media. “We hope students will use Metro<br />

to take advantage of all that the city has to offer.”<br />

SENATORIAL SELFIES<br />

On the heels of a heated Congressional hearing with Wells Fargo executives in late<br />

September, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) visited AU to discuss pressures on the<br />

middle class. A former professor, Warren challenged students to join movements<br />

for change and reach out to their representatives. She didn’t leave until every<br />

student who wanted a picture with her got one.<br />

RISING FROM THE RANKS<br />

AU landed at No. 74 on U.S. News and World Report’s 2017 list of top<br />

national universities, released in September. AU has jumped 25 spots,<br />

from No. 99, in the past 13 years. The Washington College of Law<br />

checked in at No. 78 among US law schools.<br />

6 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


news<br />

FIRST LADIES PHOTO: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES AIRLIE HOUSE PHOTO: WOLFRAM BURNER<br />

Since Martha Washington first<br />

knit socks for Revolutionary War<br />

soldiers, America’s first ladies<br />

have always supported military<br />

troops and their families.<br />

First Lady Michelle Obama<br />

and former First Lady Laura<br />

Bush discussed their work on<br />

behalf of US service members,<br />

veterans, and their families<br />

during a September conference<br />

at the National Archives,<br />

cosponsored by AU. “America’s<br />

First Ladies: In Service to Our<br />

Nation,” part of AU’s Legacies of<br />

America’s First Ladies Initiative,<br />

was moderated by ABC News<br />

journalist Bob Woodruff, who<br />

suffered a serious head injury 10<br />

years ago while embedded with<br />

troops in Iraq.<br />

“I love shining a spotlight<br />

on first ladies and their work.<br />

They have been engaged in<br />

very meaningful things and had<br />

to balance a public life with a<br />

private life,” says conference<br />

chair Anita McBride, executive in<br />

residence at the School of Public<br />

Affairs. “The panel [showed] the<br />

continuity and the thread that<br />

binds all of them together. They<br />

feel the responsibility and the<br />

challenge to do right by the men<br />

and women who serve.”<br />

Obama reflected on the<br />

“sobering experience” of visiting<br />

wounded patients at military<br />

hospitals. “That’s something that<br />

a commander in chief thinks<br />

about before they pop off about<br />

going to war, because when<br />

you’ve spent time on a base and<br />

you know these men and women<br />

and you know their families you<br />

don’t just talk about war like<br />

there are no implications.”<br />

The historic Airlie Center—<br />

a meeting and conference<br />

destination in Warrenton,<br />

Virginia, dubbed “an island of<br />

thought” by LIFE magazine—<br />

has been gifted to AU by the<br />

Airlie board of directors.<br />

Nestled 50 miles west of DC, the 300-acre property includes the<br />

Airlie house and a village of guest rooms and meeting facilities. For<br />

more than 50 years, global leaders, heads of state, diplomats,<br />

Bush, whose time at 1600<br />

Pennsylvania Avenue spanned<br />

the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,<br />

said the troops were always on<br />

her mind.<br />

“You worry in the White House<br />

when you know that there are<br />

troops in harm’s way, and you<br />

think about them every single<br />

night,” she said. “And there,<br />

where you’re in the lap of<br />

luxury, really—beautiful house<br />

where your sheets are changed<br />

every single day—you think<br />

when you get in bed about our<br />

troops laying out on the ground<br />

somewhere.”<br />

and activists have convened at Airlie for conferences and programs<br />

dedicated to social progress, education, public health, and<br />

environmental research. The facility hosted the NAACP Legal<br />

Defense Fund’s first annual conference in 1962 and was the place<br />

where, in 1969, Senator Gaylord Nelson made public his concept<br />

of Earth Day.<br />

In recent years, Airlie has focused on becoming a destination for<br />

personal travel.<br />

“The university is honored to have been selected for this<br />

wonderful gift,” President Neil Kerwin says. “It is our intent to<br />

carry on the very impressive and important legacy of Airlie, while<br />

leveraging this marvelous facility for <strong>American</strong> University’s<br />

academic initiatives.”<br />

NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH<br />

KEEPING IT CLASSY<br />

More than half of black and Latino residents in the DC area’s most diverse neighborhoods fear that<br />

they or their loved ones will be arrested or questioned by the police, according to a new<br />

study by SPA’s Metropolitan Policy Center. The first-of-its-kind survey of 1,200 households<br />

“provides a detailed snapshot of the social realities and inequalities that exist within the region,”<br />

says center director Derek Hyra.<br />

AU is No. 16 on classy.org’s list of most innovative social<br />

entrepreneurship programs. Classy, an online fundraising<br />

platform for social impact organizations, praised Kogod’s<br />

certificate in entrepreneurship and SIS’s master’s in<br />

social enterprise. AU is the top DC school on the list.<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 7


syllabus<br />

JUSTICE, LAW, AND<br />

CRIMINOLOGY 496<br />

The Public Defender<br />

The Sixth Amendment ensures the<br />

right to counsel in criminal cases<br />

regardless of a person’s ability<br />

to pay.<br />

“But what does that mean?”<br />

asks Michelle Engert, scholar in<br />

residence at the School of Public<br />

Affairs (SPA). “Some people will say,<br />

‘why should taxpayers provide for<br />

a Cadillac level of defense?’ Many<br />

think defendants simply deserve<br />

a Ford. That gets into issues of<br />

economic inequality, race, and<br />

class in terms of who can afford<br />

the Cadillac and whether or not we<br />

should all be entitled to the same<br />

effective assistance of counsel.”<br />

That, and Engert’s experience as<br />

a state and federal public defender,<br />

is the impetus for the SPA class,<br />

which explores the unusual roles,<br />

responsibilities, and dilemmas<br />

faced by attorneys representing the<br />

accused. The course begins with a<br />

focus on landmark Supreme Court<br />

decisions and the development of<br />

public defender systems over the<br />

last 50 years.<br />

Engert also explores<br />

misconceptions about appointed<br />

counsel. “People think public<br />

defenders aren’t good attorneys,<br />

that they’re inexperienced, or<br />

don’t care about their clients,”<br />

she says. “But the reality is, you<br />

can have the best, most caring<br />

public defender in the world, but<br />

if that attorney has 400 other<br />

cases, there’s only so much time<br />

available to give to each client.<br />

“The criminal justice system<br />

should deliver just results to<br />

everyone equally, regardless of<br />

their ability to pay—and it doesn’t.”<br />

ILLUSTRATION BY JAMES STEINBERG<br />

8 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


mastery<br />

2014<br />

ILLUSTRATION BY PETER HOEY<br />

1996<br />

Certified in scuba. “I<br />

WAS SWIMMING<br />

BEFORE I CAN<br />

REMEMBER<br />

WALKING. SCUBA<br />

SEEMED LIKE THE<br />

NATURAL THING<br />

TO DO.”<br />

1999<br />

During a brief hiatus from<br />

college, worked a series of<br />

odd jobs, including as an<br />

industrial janitor cleaning<br />

up coolant from machines<br />

finishing exhaust manifolds.<br />

Became motivated to return<br />

to school.<br />

1989<br />

The law firm where his<br />

father practiced purchased<br />

a VHS camera. When it<br />

wasn’t being used at work,<br />

he’d bring it home. “WE<br />

WENT FOR A BOAT<br />

RIDE IN FLORIDA;<br />

I NARRATED IT<br />

AS THOUGH I WAS<br />

ROBIN LEACH.”<br />

David Ruck, SOC/MFA ’13, has shot films on<br />

land and underwater—and one of his movies<br />

has been seen in outer space. His documentary,<br />

I Want to be an Astronaut, premiered 285<br />

miles above Earth, where it was screened for<br />

astronauts aboard the International Space<br />

Station. Now a videographer for the National<br />

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<br />

(NOAA), Ruck, 36, often dons scuba gear and<br />

captures footage in lakes, bays, and oceans.<br />

There’s nowhere he won’t go to get the shot.<br />

2001<br />

Finished Flowers of<br />

War, a film he made<br />

with a friend that<br />

captured a World<br />

War II reenactment.<br />

2003<br />

Hired by the Lake Michigan<br />

Foundation to make a<br />

film about the history of<br />

environmental abuses by the<br />

Hooker Chemical Company.<br />

Film is still used in area<br />

schools to teach kids about<br />

conservation.<br />

2004<br />

Graduated from Grand<br />

Valley State University with<br />

a bachelor’s in film and<br />

video production.<br />

2005<br />

Traveled to Nepal for<br />

three months with his<br />

friend, Tulsi Bhandari,<br />

to make a documentary<br />

about the country’s civil<br />

war. “We went from the<br />

Maoist-controlled parts to<br />

areas that were controlled<br />

by the government,<br />

masquerading as a tourist<br />

and his guide.”<br />

2011<br />

Had an “ah-ha” moment<br />

while listening to Neil<br />

deGrasse Tyson discuss<br />

Congress slashing funds<br />

for the James Webb<br />

telescope. “WE WERE<br />

CANCELING THE<br />

SHUTTLE PROGRAM<br />

AND STRUGGLING<br />

TO FUND NEW<br />

SPACE ENDEAVORS:<br />

WHAT IMPACT<br />

WOULD THIS HAVE<br />

ON YOUNG PEOPLE?<br />

WOULD KIDS<br />

STILL WANT TO BE<br />

ASTRONAUTS?”<br />

2006<br />

Released Requiem for<br />

a Stream, a film about a<br />

group of citizens fighting a<br />

sand mining company that<br />

wanted to dump wastewater<br />

into Lake Michigan.<br />

Completed I Want to be<br />

an Astronaut, and began<br />

Facebook-messaging<br />

astronauts aboard the<br />

International Space Station.<br />

Got a reply at 2 a.m. from<br />

Rick Mastracchio that said,<br />

“Hey David, I watched the<br />

trailer, would love to see<br />

the whole film.” Days later<br />

received an email from<br />

Johnson Space Center<br />

stating that the crew<br />

requested a copy of the<br />

film be beamed to space.<br />

Joined NOAA as<br />

videographer for the<br />

Office of National Marine<br />

Sanctuaries. Became<br />

certified as a NOAA<br />

diver. “WE’VE GOT<br />

14 SITES THAT<br />

PROTECT CULTURAL<br />

RESOURCES LIKE<br />

SHIPWRECKS, AND<br />

ENVIRONMENTAL<br />

RESOURCES LIKE<br />

WHALE HABITATS.<br />

MY JOB IS TO<br />

TRAVEL TO THESE<br />

SITES AND TELL<br />

STORIES ABOUT THE<br />

WORK PEOPLE DO<br />

THERE.”<br />

<strong>2016</strong><br />

Released Three Miles from<br />

Safety: The Story of the USS<br />

Conestoga, documenting<br />

the discovery of a US Navy<br />

tugboat that sank in the early<br />

twentieth century. “WHAT<br />

I’M DOING NOW IS<br />

AN HONOR AND A<br />

PRIVILEGE. I THINK<br />

I’M SUPPOSED TO BE<br />

HERE FOR A WHILE,<br />

TO MAKE AN IMPACT.”<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 9


play<br />

One day Shannon Scovel hopes<br />

to carve a career writing this<br />

kind of story. But for now, the<br />

senior swimmer is content being<br />

its subject.<br />

“It’s so neat to be interviewed<br />

by another journalist,” she says,<br />

seeming genuinely tickled. Her<br />

warmth and enthusiasm are two<br />

traits that led her teammates<br />

to elect her a cocaptain of AU’s<br />

swim team, and the eagerness<br />

with which she’s approaching<br />

this new situation—answering<br />

questions instead of asking<br />

them—offers a clue as to why this<br />

21-year-old already has a Sports<br />

Illustrated byline on her résumé.<br />

Scovel, SOC/BA ’17, carries<br />

both athletics and journalism<br />

in her blood. Her father, Curt,<br />

wrestled at the University of<br />

Maryland, where her mother,<br />

Kathryn, was a gymnast—and a<br />

journalism major. Scovel wanted<br />

to emulate them both.<br />

“I went into high school with a<br />

goal of swimming in college,” she<br />

says. “I was never the standout,<br />

but I swam distance and I knew<br />

that was my place. I wanted a<br />

school where I could contribute.”<br />

For the Cary, North Carolina,<br />

native, that school was AU. During<br />

the 2013–14 season she clocked<br />

17:45.45 in the 1,650-meter<br />

freestyle at the George Mason<br />

Invitational, the ninth-best<br />

time in AU history. Last year<br />

she recorded three season-best<br />

times at the Patriot League<br />

Championships. But much of<br />

her focus was elsewhere.<br />

As editor in chief of the Eagle,<br />

Scovel helped oversee about 75<br />

writers. She read every article<br />

posted on the paper’s website (up<br />

to five a day), devoting 20 hours per<br />

week to the job. One of her biggest<br />

challenges was working on a story<br />

about sexual assault on campus.<br />

“It’s always tough when you’re<br />

writing about college students that<br />

you go to class with, or things that<br />

are happening in the community<br />

that you’re a part of,” she says.<br />

“That was really touchy, and we<br />

had to be careful and sensitive<br />

with both sides. I’m really proud<br />

of the work the staff did.”<br />

In the summer, Scovel<br />

worked in New York as an intern<br />

at the legendary SI. Her timing<br />

was fortuitous: in advance of<br />

the Rio Olympics, she published<br />

stories previewing the women’s<br />

field hockey competition and<br />

decoding the mysteries of the<br />

modern pentathlon.<br />

This year, she’s planning to host<br />

the Eagle’s first sports podcast, and<br />

after graduating she’ll apply for<br />

sports writing jobs or look into a<br />

master’s program.<br />

“Sports is such a huge part of<br />

our culture, and I think it’s neat<br />

that we can use sports as a way to<br />

connect with the people around<br />

us and build a community,” the<br />

budding reporter says during<br />

her brief stint as an interviewee.<br />

“I find the writing process<br />

to be exhilarating, and I love<br />

interviewing athletes to learn<br />

more about their experiences. The<br />

whole process from start to finish<br />

energizes and challenges me. I<br />

love the emotion that comes with<br />

sport, the triumph associated with<br />

a win and the disappointment in<br />

a loss. Sports can bring out the<br />

best in people, and it’s cool to<br />

share those moments with others<br />

through my writing.”<br />

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY JEFF WATTS<br />

WOMEN HIT THE HARDWOOD<br />

MEN TIP-OFF, TOO<br />

Lauren Crisler led AU in points last season, and this year the senior hopes<br />

to score often in early road trips to Penn State (December 18) and Michigan<br />

(December 22). AU opens Patriot League play December 30 at Loyola in<br />

Baltimore, and concludes the regular season March 1 at Navy. Senior Day is<br />

February 25 at Bender Arena.<br />

Sophomore star Delante Jones and the Eagles start the season <strong>November</strong> 11<br />

with a game at Maryland. Home highlights include Military Appreciation Night<br />

January 25 against Navy and Phil Bender District Day January 29 versus<br />

Colgate. Senior Day is February 19, when AU hosts Holy Cross.<br />

10 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


news<br />

Four decades after the death<br />

penalty became legal again in the<br />

United States, the issue remains<br />

as polarizing as ever. School<br />

of Communication professors<br />

Richard Stack and Maggie<br />

Burnette Stogner are staunch<br />

opponents of capital punishment,<br />

but they’ve taken a decidedly<br />

nonjudgmental approach to<br />

examining it in their forthcoming<br />

documentary, In the Executioner’s<br />

Shadow, which explores how our<br />

decisions about the death penalty<br />

define who we are as individuals,<br />

as a society, and as a country.<br />

“We’ve tried very hard to make<br />

this a balanced piece so that a<br />

vast range of perspectives are<br />

represented,” Stack says. “We’d<br />

like the public to begin talking<br />

about the death penalty in deeper,<br />

more meaningful ways, and we’d<br />

like to get people getting beyond<br />

their differences and talking about<br />

some common ground.”<br />

The film follows three main<br />

characters whose beliefs and<br />

experiences vary widely. Vicki<br />

and Sylvester Schieber’s daughter,<br />

Shannon, was raped and murdered<br />

when she was 23, yet they opposed<br />

the death penalty for her killer.<br />

For years, it was Jerry Givens’s<br />

job to carry out death sentences.<br />

As Virginia’s executioner, he<br />

ended the lives of 62 men<br />

before he resigned and began<br />

advocating for the abolition of<br />

capital punishment. This summer,<br />

Stogner filmed Givens in the nowdefunct,<br />

crumbling old Eastern<br />

State Penitentiary in Philadelphia,<br />

capturing strong images she thinks<br />

will impact audiences this subject<br />

normally doesn’t reach.<br />

“It’s the perfect metaphor for a<br />

decaying, nonfunctioning criminal<br />

justice system,” she says. “Putting<br />

him in that situation is visually<br />

powerful and engaging. It’s also<br />

a metaphor for what haunts<br />

him every day, which is that he<br />

came very close—within days—of<br />

executing an inmate who was later<br />

found to be innocent.”<br />

The final protagonist is Karen<br />

Brassard, who was wounded in the<br />

2013 Boston Marathon bombing.<br />

She struggled with what would<br />

constitute justice for the man who<br />

carried out the terrorist attack.<br />

“We’d like the<br />

public to begin<br />

talking about the<br />

death penalty<br />

in deeper, more<br />

meaningful ways.”<br />

-Richard Stack<br />

“She let us into her thought<br />

process as it unfolded over<br />

the years,” Stack says. “As<br />

she wrestled with it, she very<br />

thoughtfully explored a lot of<br />

issues around what it really<br />

means to want the death penalty.”<br />

The collaboration, which has<br />

also included many graduate<br />

students, started in 2013. In<br />

addition to the film, Stack and<br />

Stogner are developing a suite<br />

of materials about the death<br />

penalty that they hope can be<br />

used to reach wider audiences<br />

and stimulate conversations in<br />

classrooms or discussion groups.<br />

It’s a timely issue. Twenty<br />

states have now outlawed the<br />

death penalty. If that number<br />

reaches 26, opponents may<br />

attempt to take a case to the<br />

Supreme Court, arguing that the<br />

punishment is not only cruel, but<br />

unusual as well.<br />

“That is the heart and soul of<br />

what this is about,” Stogner says.<br />

“What is justice?”<br />

In recent months, the role of university<br />

endowments has come under renewed<br />

scrutiny. Some believe that as nonprofits<br />

that enjoy tax-exempt status, institutions of<br />

higher education should be required to spend<br />

more of their endowments on improvements<br />

like reducing student debt and making<br />

college more affordable for low-income<br />

students. US Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) supports<br />

legislation that would penalize institutions<br />

with large endowments that do not spend<br />

enough on student aid.<br />

AU’s $600 million endowment is<br />

comprised primarily of gifts that have been<br />

designated for specific purposes—and cannot<br />

legally be used for anything else.<br />

“Our spending policy is 5 percent of the<br />

endowment value, based on a rolling threeyear<br />

average,” says Doug Kudravetz, AU’s<br />

CFO and vice president and treasurer. “We<br />

are required to spend it based on restrictions<br />

imposed by the donors, primarily on<br />

scholarships, fellowships, and faculty chairs.”<br />

Endowments are intended to provide<br />

a long-term economic buffer, says<br />

Terry Flannery, AU’s vice president of<br />

communication.<br />

“A strong endowment roughly equal to<br />

the annual operating budget is important for<br />

bond ratings, so the university can borrow<br />

money or issue bonds for important projects<br />

and pay the debt back over time,” she says.<br />

“We have reduced student debt and increased<br />

affordability through other means.”<br />

While AU’s endowment has increased<br />

113 percent since 2005 and is now about<br />

the size of its operating budget, some of<br />

its competitors have endowments many<br />

times larger than their operating budgets,<br />

Kudravetz says.<br />

“[Ours] does not yet have the value or<br />

flexibility of some of the nation’s wealthiest<br />

institutions to contribute to operating<br />

resources in a meaningful way,” he says.<br />

“For many years AU has been primarily a<br />

tuition-driven institution and will continue<br />

to be so in the near term. But with careful<br />

investment and more ambitious fundraising,<br />

we will ensure that AU will be less dependent<br />

on tuition alone in the long term.”<br />

BROOKINGS BOUND<br />

RESEARCH WITHOUT BORDERS<br />

SPA’s Bradley Hardy has been awarded the Brookings Institution’s Okun-Model Fellowship for<br />

the <strong>2016</strong>–2017 academic year. The prestigious fellowship—typically given to academics with two<br />

to six years of experience—will enable Hardy to build relationships with Brookings scholars<br />

researching poverty, social policy, and economic instability. “I’m looking forward to working with<br />

such talented economic scholars on issues that matter to the <strong>American</strong> people,” he says.<br />

SIS and the Center for Latin <strong>American</strong> and Latino Studies have launched<br />

the Robert A. Pastor North America Research Initiative, named for the late<br />

scholar. AU will recruit six to nine academics from Canada, Mexico, and<br />

the United States, who will convene twice a year to share research and<br />

brainstorm promising new directions for policy, advocacy, and scholarship.<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 11


WRITER AS<br />

RUBEN CASTANEDA CHRONICLES A DARK<br />

CHAPTER IN DC’S HISTORY—AND HIS OWN<br />

BY ADRIENNE FRANK<br />

IN 2015, WASHINGTON, DC, CLOCKED 119 HOMICIDES—a 54 percent increase<br />

over the previous year. Although the spike left city officials wringing their hands, the<br />

number was still significantly less than in the early ’90s, when the nation’s capital<br />

was also known as the murder capital.<br />

For five consecutive years starting in 1989, homicides topped 400 in DC, often<br />

teetering toward 500. The years-long killing spree coincided with another epidemic<br />

sweeping the city: crack cocaine.<br />

As a Washington Post crime reporter, Ruben Castaneda chronicled the violence<br />

and drugs that ravaged pockets of the District, even as he succumbed to it. He was<br />

a crack addict, scoring on the same stretch of S Street Northwest by day that he<br />

covered by night for the paper.<br />

Unlike so many Washingtonians in the early ’90s, however, Castaneda not only<br />

lived to tell his story, but to write about it.<br />

AU’S CLASS OF 2020 WEREN’T EVEN A TWINKLE IN THEIR PARENTS’ EYES<br />

when Castaneda was getting high between bylines. And the DC they will call home for<br />

the next four years may as well be on another planet compared to the gritty city that<br />

greeted Castaneda when he moved from Los Angeles in 1989.<br />

Excerpt from<br />

S Street Rising:<br />

Crack, Murder,<br />

and Redemption<br />

in D.C.<br />

by Ruben Castaneda<br />

In the wake of the Barry<br />

bust, many people had<br />

wondered: Knowing that<br />

the feds were watching him,<br />

how could the mayor have put<br />

himself in that situation?<br />

I knew how. An addict<br />

doesn’t weigh risks and<br />

rewards the way other people<br />

do. When the drug of choice<br />

is offered, an active addict is<br />

powerless to resist. Taking<br />

the drug is as necessary as<br />

breathing. I became a regular<br />

drinker when I joined the<br />

Herald Examiner. Then I met<br />

Raven and took up crack.<br />

During those first months on<br />

the drug, my mind became<br />

more alert, and I had more<br />

energy than ever. It was a<br />

blast—until it wasn’t.<br />

My tolerance for alcohol and<br />

crack increased—slowly at first,<br />

then exponentially. By the time<br />

Marion Barry was arrested,<br />

I was on the downward slope<br />

of my alcoholism and drug<br />

addiction. I needed more<br />

drinks to get buzzed. I needed<br />

more crack to achieve not quite<br />

the same high.<br />

Nonaddicts don’t understand<br />

the deep sense of denial that’s<br />

an integral part of being a<br />

junkie. Barry surrounded<br />

himself with sycophants<br />

who enabled his addiction.<br />

I convinced myself that I<br />

was fine because I was doing<br />

my job well. But in fact, my<br />

carefully compartmentalized<br />

double life was collapsing.<br />

Three weeks after<br />

receiving my Donnygram<br />

[note from Post publisher<br />

Don Graham], in February<br />

1990, I struggled to stay<br />

awake near the end of an<br />

unusually quiet Friday-night/<br />

Saturday-morning shift. As<br />

I leaned back in my chair,<br />

David Lindsey, the weekendnight<br />

city editor, sat at his<br />

desk ten feet away and aimed<br />

a remote at the TV suspended<br />

from the newsroom ceiling.<br />

He channel surfed and settled<br />

on a comedy show. The<br />

police scanners on both our<br />

desks were as quiet as big<br />

paperweights. Maybe it was<br />

the weather. Several inches of<br />

snow had fallen earlier in the<br />

week, and it was a brutally<br />

cold night.<br />

A little before 2:00 A.M., a<br />

familiar screech blared from<br />

the scanners. A woman’s<br />

dispassionate voice recited,<br />

“Attention. Units paged. Third<br />

District units at the scene of<br />

a shooting, the corner of 7th<br />

and S Streets Northwest.”<br />

The location got my attention.<br />

I leaned in, waiting for the<br />

12 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


WITNESS<br />

That’s exactly why John Hyman, director of the College Writing Program, and<br />

his colleagues in the College of Arts and Sciences chose Castaneda’s book, S Street<br />

Rising: Crack, Murder, and Redemption in D.C., as this year’s Writer as Witness<br />

selection: the book weaves the story of Castaneda’s addiction with that of a city in<br />

crisis. Now in its 19th year, Writer as Witness requires all incoming freshmen to read<br />

a “community text” over the summer, which is incorporated into college writing<br />

classes, and allows students the chance to hear from the author after the start<br />

of classes in September.<br />

“DC is the students’ new hometown, but the city is so much more than AU’s little<br />

corner of northwest,” Hyman says. “If they’re having lunch at a café on U Street, we want<br />

them to understand what that neighborhood was like just a quarter-century ago.<br />

“This shared experience also provides a common language, a shared vocabulary<br />

for students,” Hyman continues. “We hope that the conversations about this book will<br />

linger beyond our classrooms.”<br />

In addition to offering a window into a dark chapter in DC’s history and the life of<br />

an addict (Castaneda got clean in 1991), the book also serves as an example of wellresearched,<br />

meticulously-reported, thoughtfully-crafted prose—the kind of writing to<br />

which students should aspire.<br />

When Castaneda, who retired from the Post in 2011, came to campus in September,<br />

he offered tips to the budding journalists and aspiring novelists in the crowd, along<br />

with those who just strive to get an “A” on their English papers. “Do the work; tell the<br />

truth; be resilient; be brave; cultivate friendships with a wide array of people; and<br />

don’t ever, ever give up.”<br />

Words to write by, words to live by.<br />

John Hyman and some of his fellow professors are already reviewing<br />

selections for next year’s Writer as Witness program. “We read the<br />

books and talk about what they say about writing and research,<br />

eventually whittling the list down to four or five,” he says. “It’s terrific<br />

fun—it’s the air that we breathe.”<br />

While Hyman and company plow through the contenders for 2017,<br />

here are the previous years’ selections:<br />

2015<br />

Chasing Chaos: My<br />

Decade In and Out of<br />

Humanitarian Aid<br />

by Jessica Alexander<br />

2014<br />

The Influencing<br />

Machine: Brooke<br />

Gladstone on the Media<br />

by Brooke Gladstone<br />

2013<br />

Notes from No Man’s Land<br />

by Eula Biss<br />

2012<br />

The End of Country<br />

by Seamus McGraw<br />

2011<br />

The Good Soldiers<br />

by David Finkel<br />

2010<br />

The Moral Underground:<br />

How Ordinary <strong>American</strong>s<br />

Subvert an Unfair Economy<br />

by Lisa Dodson<br />

2009<br />

True Enough:<br />

Learning to Live in<br />

a Post-Fact Society<br />

by Farhad Manjoo<br />

2008<br />

The Devil’s Highway<br />

by Luis Alberto Urrea<br />

2007<br />

The Ponds of<br />

Kalambayi<br />

by Mike Tidwell<br />

2006<br />

Love in the<br />

Driest Season<br />

by Neely Tucker<br />

2005<br />

Fragments of Grace<br />

by Pamela Constable<br />

2004<br />

Newjack<br />

by Ted Conover<br />

2003<br />

First They Killed<br />

My Father<br />

by Loung Ung<br />

2002<br />

Savage Inequalities<br />

by Jonathan Kozol<br />

2001<br />

Bad Land<br />

by Jonathan Raban<br />

2000<br />

Almost a Woman<br />

by Esmeralda<br />

Santiago<br />

1999<br />

My Own Country<br />

by Abraham<br />

Verghese<br />

1998<br />

There Are No<br />

Children Here<br />

by Alex Kotlowitz<br />

dispatcher to provide further<br />

details. None came.<br />

David shrugged. We could<br />

slam stories into the same<br />

day’s paper as late as 2:00<br />

A.M. Whatever this was, it was<br />

too late to get the story into<br />

Saturday’s paper.<br />

“Up to you,” David said as<br />

he glanced at the newsroom<br />

clock.<br />

Something in my gut told<br />

me this was worth a ride. And<br />

I wasn’t too worried about<br />

being recognized. The S Street<br />

slingers knew my Escort, but<br />

they’d never seen me in the<br />

company car, a Chevy Caprice.<br />

The dealers had probably<br />

scattered the moment the<br />

cops showed up anyway. If it<br />

looked dicey, I could simply<br />

drive past, come back to the<br />

office, and work the phones.<br />

“I’ll check it out,” I said.<br />

Less than ten minutes later,<br />

as I had dozens of times with<br />

Champagne riding shotgun,<br />

I turned left on Rhode Island<br />

Avenue and approached the<br />

corner of 7th and S. As soon<br />

as I made the turn, I saw four<br />

marked squad cars and an<br />

unmarked detective’s sedan<br />

parked directly in front of<br />

John’s Place. The streets were<br />

clean, but banks of snow lined<br />

the curbs on both sides. There<br />

were no slingers or spectators<br />

in sight.<br />

Sirens filled the air.<br />

Ambulances and more squad<br />

cars roared onto the scene.<br />

A patrol cop broke out yellow<br />

crime-scene tape and attached<br />

one end to a light pole near<br />

the club. He was taping off the<br />

entire corner.<br />

A friendly lieutenant was<br />

standing by one of the squad<br />

cars.<br />

“How many down?” I asked.<br />

He gestured with his<br />

fingers: six victims.<br />

Six people shot? Hello,<br />

front page.<br />

I called David. Work as long<br />

as it takes, he said. This would<br />

be for the Sunday paper. I<br />

stayed at the scene until 5:00<br />

A.M., interviewing street cops<br />

and detectives, watching as<br />

workers from the medical<br />

examiner’s office carried two<br />

bodies from the club.<br />

After a few hours of sleep,<br />

I went back to the office and<br />

double-teamed the story with<br />

another reporter. Three men<br />

had been killed inside the club,<br />

and a fourth had died on the<br />

way to the hospital. The other<br />

two victims would probably<br />

survive, a white shirt said.<br />

We wrote it up, and I stayed<br />

in the newsroom through my<br />

Saturday-night shift. At about<br />

1:00 A.M. Sunday, a news aide<br />

dropped a copy of the early<br />

edition on my desk.<br />

Finally, there it was: my<br />

first page 1 byline.<br />

I made a little victory fist.<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 13


globetrotting<br />

DURING HIS PLAYING DAYS,<br />

GURMAT SAHNI DIDN’T HAVE A<br />

MILLION-DOLLAR ARM, and<br />

though he was a solid contact hitter,<br />

he lacked power. But he always<br />

possessed the one quality common<br />

to the grittiest baseball players from<br />

around the world: a love for the game.<br />

It’s this passion that prompted<br />

Sahni, SIS/MA ’17, to start Grand Slam<br />

Baseball, a business focused on<br />

growing America’s pastime in his<br />

native India. With youth programs in<br />

10 schools in New Delhi, construction<br />

of a 1,500-seat field of dreams in the<br />

center of the city scheduled for<br />

completion soon, and plans for a<br />

modest professional league and<br />

more academies throughout the<br />

country, the organization is thriving.<br />

About 1,000 kids are enrolled in Grand<br />

Slam programs—a 400 percent jump<br />

in the four years since it started.<br />

Sahni, 25, started playing the<br />

“obscure” sport—it’s far overshadowed<br />

by cricket, soccer, and even basketball<br />

in India—at the age of 8. He was<br />

introduced to it by an <strong>American</strong><br />

neighbor who competed in a little<br />

league sponsored by the US Embassy.<br />

“Every Indian kid is influenced by<br />

Western culture,” Sahni says. “Playing<br />

baseball was my unique way of saying,<br />

‘Hey, I’m cool.’”<br />

With Major League contests starting<br />

at 4 a.m. in New Delhi, he didn’t get to<br />

catch a whole lot of Yankees games<br />

(he’s wearing a New York hat in the<br />

photo), but like every little slugger, he<br />

dreamt of a career in the big leagues.<br />

Those hopes were dashed one fastball<br />

at a time when he visited an academy<br />

in Florida run by the Colorado Rockies<br />

hitting coach. There, he realized the<br />

caliber of competition he had faced<br />

growing up was nothing compared to<br />

the commitment of time and effort<br />

<strong>American</strong>s put into the sport.<br />

Now, he’s determined to change<br />

that. When he and his partner founded<br />

Grand Slam in 2012, they took over<br />

management of the embassy’s little<br />

league. He’s been focused on acquiring<br />

top equipment, training coaches, and<br />

improving infrastructure so the<br />

sport can grow in popularity.<br />

“We’re not going to reach a<br />

billion people, but I do think in<br />

the next five years we’ll be in all<br />

the major cities in India,” he<br />

says. “My main goal is to have<br />

a national network of youth<br />

leagues, a small pro league, and<br />

at least a few players playing<br />

internationally.”<br />

Powerful plans from a lighthitting<br />

first baseman.<br />

“For me baseball brings back all<br />

the happy memories associated<br />

with my childhood and the<br />

valuable lessons that I learned<br />

from my teammates and coaches.<br />

Every day at Grand Slam, I can put<br />

myself in the shoes of my players<br />

and see how my work is shaping<br />

their lives.”<br />

14 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


wonk<br />

<strong>American</strong> asks four wonks<br />

to weigh in on a single topic.<br />

THIS ISSUE: GROWTH<br />

ANDREA BONIOR<br />

CAS/MA ’02<br />

CAS/PHD ’04<br />

MIKE<br />

MASTROTA<br />

LEON TOLKSDORF<br />

KOGOD/BSBA ’16<br />

KOGOD/MS ’17<br />

MARK<br />

SCHAEFER<br />

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TRACI DABERKO<br />

Growth often is thought of as<br />

wholly positive, but I also help<br />

people stop the growth of<br />

something—typically negative<br />

emotions like resentment.<br />

Resentment corrodes<br />

relationships, and usually<br />

originates with feelings that<br />

are tough to deal with: anger,<br />

disappointment, or envy. You<br />

might be tempted to ignore those<br />

feelings, like your hurt over a<br />

chronically late partner or a<br />

colleague’s undeserved promotion.<br />

But avoiding and stuffing down<br />

the feelings grows the resentment.<br />

It helps to be more mindful of<br />

your thoughts and allow yourself<br />

to feel what you feel, even when it<br />

is difficult, scary, or embarrassing.<br />

You’ll move on much more quickly<br />

if you face feelings honestly;<br />

bottling them up makes them grow<br />

more powerful. Avoid creating an<br />

emotional pressure cooker. When<br />

you face your feelings, then you<br />

can choose how to deal with them<br />

in a much healthier way.<br />

Bonior is a clinical psychologist and<br />

“Baggage Check” columnist for the<br />

Washington Post Express.<br />

Any time you’re talking about a<br />

landscape, it’s an ever-changing<br />

environment. Plants are a<br />

reflection of that environment.<br />

Our climate in Washington, DC,<br />

is nice in that you can watch a<br />

plant change and evolve. Every<br />

year it gets larger. Trees grow,<br />

and things that are under them<br />

grow as it becomes more shady.<br />

You can actually observe<br />

the different stages of plant<br />

growth here on campus. One of<br />

the nice things about our campus<br />

is the stately oak trees that line<br />

the quad. They’ve certainly<br />

grown to a mature condition,<br />

which really says a lot about the<br />

university. It says the university’s<br />

been here a long time, it’s<br />

grounded, it’s elegant.<br />

You can see a tree that’s over<br />

100 years old on the quad next<br />

to a tree that’s 10 or 15 years old.<br />

I think students are starting to<br />

connect how the university is a<br />

steward of the land, planting for<br />

future generations.<br />

Mastrota is AU’s landscape architect.<br />

I’m six-foot-six. Starting in<br />

elementary school, I’ve always<br />

been taller than most of my<br />

classmates. I grew constantly, it<br />

wasn’t like I grew a ton over one<br />

summer. In the beginning when I<br />

was in elementary school I didn’t<br />

like it too much because all of<br />

my friends were one height and I<br />

was just the tall guy that always<br />

stood out. When you grow up<br />

and stick out one way or another,<br />

it’s not the best.<br />

But then as I became better<br />

at basketball I started to value it<br />

more. I could dunk when I was<br />

14. I guess I stopped growing<br />

about three years ago, so at this<br />

point there are definitely taller<br />

people on the team.<br />

Being asked over and over<br />

again, “How tall are you?” gets<br />

annoying, but you get used to it.<br />

You hear lines like, “What’s the<br />

view like up there?” It doesn’t<br />

really bother me, though. At this<br />

point I’m perfectly fine with my<br />

height. I wouldn’t want it any<br />

other way.<br />

Tolksdorf is a forward on the men’s<br />

basketball team.<br />

People in my profession talk about<br />

spiritual growth all the time, but<br />

rarely is it defined. Unlike other<br />

kinds of growth, there is little<br />

objective measure.<br />

My earliest spirituality was<br />

handed down through parents<br />

and pastors, distilled into simple<br />

nuggets that I could handle. God<br />

is all powerful. If you’re good you<br />

go to heaven when you die. But as<br />

I got older, the mantle of my<br />

childhood faith no longer fit.<br />

Encounters with people of<br />

different religions, an honest<br />

appreciation for the teachings of<br />

science, and a thoughtful look at<br />

the suffering and injustice in the<br />

world made it clear that the faith<br />

of my childhood had to grow.<br />

As adults, we have to forsake<br />

easy answers and become more<br />

comfortable with mystery, leave<br />

behind certainty in favor of doubt,<br />

and deemphasize belief in favor<br />

of faith. While that growth may<br />

cost us something in terms of<br />

simplicity or certainty, what we<br />

gain is so much more meaningful.<br />

Schaefer is AU’s new university chaplain—<br />

the 10th person to hold the post.<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 15


Dhara Nayyar, SPA/BA ’18<br />

Legislative intern, Office of<br />

Sen. Charles E. Schumer ( D-NY)<br />

Teri Cross Davis, CAS/MFA ’04<br />

Poetry coordinator, Folger Shakespeare Library<br />

José Morales, SPA/BA ’13<br />

Executive assistant to the<br />

executive director, Democratic<br />

Congressional Campaign Committee<br />

16 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


Eric Heigis, SPA/BA ’16<br />

Intern, Office of Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA)<br />

An urban playground. A laboratory for learning. A professional hub.<br />

A vibrant collection of neighborhoods—and neighbors. Washington’s<br />

got it all. And for our alumni, students, and faculty, Metro is their<br />

ticket to ride, connect, and explore AU’s backyard.


ILLUSTRATION BY MARGARET KIMBALL<br />

My son Owen is lanky, with a shock of<br />

sandy blond hair and big blue eyes that sparkle<br />

when he giggles or talks about firetrucks—both<br />

of which he does a lot. He eats like a bird, but<br />

devours books. At 18 months old, Owen knew<br />

more than 100 words (among them: cactus<br />

and coffee) and by two, he was speaking in full,<br />

descriptive sentences. “The pile driver digs<br />

the foundation,” he said one afternoon as we<br />

walked past a construction site. I had to Google<br />

it—he was right.<br />

Owen’s immensely curious and affectionate,<br />

constantly peppering me with questions and<br />

showering me with kisses. “Mommy, who built<br />

me? What am I made of?” “Mommy, I love you.<br />

You’re my girl.”<br />

My only child—born four years ago on<br />

my birthday—is imaginative, witty, smart,<br />

and spirited.<br />

He also has autism.<br />

Didn’t see that coming? Neither did I.<br />

Although his vocabulary was<br />

exploding in 2014, Owen was doing more<br />

screaming than talking at daycare. Clueless,<br />

my husband Sam and I chalked it up to the<br />

terrible twos. “Kids act out at this age,” I<br />

said to the teacher. It was as much a question<br />

as a statement.<br />

As he got older, the screaming got shriller<br />

and more frequent. Even the most benign<br />

question—Do you want milk?—was met with<br />

shrieks so piercing that they made other<br />

kids cry. On our walks home from school,<br />

I gently reminded Owen that his outbursts<br />

upset people. Logically, he understood this.<br />

“Ms. Nancy is a nice lady,” he would say of<br />

his teacher. “I don’t want her to be sad.” But<br />

in those moments of frustration, logic was<br />

overridden by an explosive irrationality that<br />

made me want to scream.<br />

Most days Owen refused to participate<br />

in circle time and had neither a want nor a<br />

willingness to interact with other children. At<br />

drop-off the kids swarmed us and squealed<br />

hellos to “Owie.” We had to instruct Owen,<br />

our little wordsmith, to say “good morning”<br />

in return—a greeting he mumbled while<br />

clutching our legs and staring at the floor.<br />

In working on this story, I found a photo<br />

his teacher sent us in August 2015. A group<br />

of 10 kids is seated on the carpet, holding<br />

cardboard tubes up to their mouths—a<br />

symphony of homemade horns. Owen,<br />

meanwhile, is standing along the back wall,<br />

holding the tube by his side and looking off in<br />

the distance, emotionless.<br />

How could you not know? I ask myself now.<br />

What’s obvious now wasn’t then. We<br />

assumed that, like me, Owen was simply an<br />

introvert who took a while to warm up to<br />

others. He’s more of a one-on-one kid, we<br />

told ourselves. He prefers the company of<br />

adults. But as the screaming worsened and<br />

the teachers’ complaints became more<br />

urgent, so did the feeling in my gut that<br />

something was wrong.<br />

In summer 2015 I called Owen’s doctor,<br />

who referred us to a developmental<br />

pediatrician with more than 40 years of<br />

experience. “Don’t be alarmed,” she said,<br />

“but he might throw out the ‘a-word.’”<br />

It was clear that something was going on.<br />

But autism? No.<br />

Owen wasn’t just verbal, he was a gifted<br />

communicator—a “little professor,” as one<br />

of his teachers called him. I always knew<br />

that boys were more likely than girls to be<br />

diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder<br />

(ASD)—4.5 times more likely, in fact—and<br />

remember feeling relieved when Owen<br />

started talking, as I thought that alone meant<br />

we’d skirted the “a-word.” He looked us in<br />

the eye when he spoke and was incredibly<br />

affectionate. He could even crack a joke.<br />

I was all for figuring out what was<br />

going on with Owen. It’s simply that what<br />

I knew about autism—or thought I knew<br />

about autism—seemed incongruent with<br />

his strengths and challenges. I had known<br />

people with severe autism and Asperger<br />

syndrome. My son bore little resemblance<br />

to them.<br />

I was nervous for our 90-minute evaluation<br />

with the developmental pediatrician, but his<br />

warm, grandfatherly demeanor put me at ease,<br />

as did his first question: what do you love most<br />

about your son? While we talked, the doctor<br />

kept one eye on Owen, quietly observing how<br />

he played with a variety of toys and how he<br />

interacted with me.<br />

“Does he do that often?” he inquired<br />

when Owen asked me—three or four times,<br />

rapid fire—to identify a firetruck on the rug.<br />

I admitted that yes, he did. “He’s clearly<br />

a bright young boy. He knows that’s a<br />

firetruck, but he’s caught in a loop.” (This is<br />

called perseverating, and despite hundreds<br />

of hours of therapy, it’s something Owen<br />

still does. The only way to stop the loop is<br />

to misidentify the object—call a firetruck a<br />

police car—or to say, “I don’t know Owen,<br />

why don’t you tell me?”)<br />

The doctor also expressed concerns about<br />

Owen’s strong-willed behaviors, difficulty<br />

with transitions, social anxiety, emotional<br />

outbursts, and inability to interact with peers.<br />

“These are some indicators that might suggest<br />

mild ASD,” he said. An official diagnosis<br />

would follow a battery of observations,<br />

appointments, and questionnaires. But the<br />

message was clear: brace yourself.<br />

In the parking lot 10 minutes later, I strapped<br />

Owen in the car, closed the door, and cried.<br />

Autism is a group of complex bioneurological<br />

disorders characterized by<br />

difficulties in social interaction, verbal and<br />

nonverbal communication, and repetitive<br />

behaviors. Previously, autism disorders<br />

including Asperger’s were distinct diagnoses;<br />

in May 2013, they all merged under the vast<br />

umbrella of ASD.<br />

“I remember feeling relieved<br />

when Owen started talking,<br />

as I thought that alone meant<br />

we’d skirted the ‘a-word.’”<br />

ASD is the fastest growing developmental<br />

disorder in the United States, affecting more<br />

than 3 million <strong>American</strong>s and 73.5 million<br />

people worldwide. According to the Centers<br />

for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),<br />

1 in 68 children is on the spectrum, up from 1 in<br />

88 in 2008 and 1 in 150 in 2002.<br />

When it comes to their symptoms, no<br />

two people are alike. Up to 25 percent are<br />

nonverbal; some rock, flap, or spin; others<br />

can’t make eye contact or respond to their<br />

names; and half engage in aggressive<br />

behaviors. Many boast unusual interests—in<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 19


escalators or ceiling fans, for example—and<br />

have difficulty sleeping and eating. Although<br />

40 percent of those with ASD have average<br />

to above-average intelligence and some are<br />

gifted mathematicians or musicians, Dustin<br />

Hoffman’s autistic savant in the 1988 movie<br />

Rain Man is the exception, not the rule.<br />

“The neural story for autism is<br />

extraordinarily complex,” says psychology<br />

professor Catherine Stoodley, principal<br />

investigator for AU’s Developmental<br />

Neuroscience Lab. “More differences exist<br />

between autistic brains than between<br />

[neurotypical] ones.” However, the<br />

cerebellum—located at the base of the brain<br />

and home to half of its neurons—shows<br />

remarkably consistent signs of abnormality<br />

among those on the spectrum.<br />

The cerebellum plays an important role in<br />

motor control, movement-related functions,<br />

and cognitive functions, including social<br />

cognition and language—which is the focus<br />

of Stoodley’s research, funded by a three-year<br />

grant from the National Institutes of Health.<br />

“The goal is to better understand how the<br />

[autistic] brain is working so we can capitalize<br />

on strengths and improve the parts that aren’t<br />

functioning as well,” Stoodley says. But “there<br />

are no easy answers, no quick answers,” given<br />

autism’s broad spectrum. “If you look at the<br />

population we’re studying, IQs might range<br />

from 120 down to 70 or lower. Behaviors<br />

are so different and so complex, they can be<br />

difficult to unravel.”<br />

Debate over autism’s growing prevalence<br />

is akin to the chicken-and-egg argument.<br />

Many believe that a broader definition of<br />

ASD and more finely-tuned diagnostic efforts<br />

have helped to identify more people on the<br />

spectrum. However, as the CDC states on its<br />

website, “a true increase in the number of<br />

people with ASD cannot be ruled out.”<br />

There is no cure and no known cause,<br />

although DNA plays a big role. Nongenetic<br />

or environmental factors that influence<br />

early brain development don’t cause ASD by<br />

themselves, but they can increase a child’s<br />

risk of autism. Advanced parental age is a risk<br />

factor, as are prematurity and low birth weight.<br />

Kids are often diagnosed with autism<br />

at three or four years old, which is around<br />

the same time they receive immunizations.<br />

But correlation is not causation. “At Autism<br />

Speaks, we still receive questions regarding<br />

vaccines, but as an organization dedicated<br />

first and foremost to science and research,<br />

we go off of the research, which clearly shows<br />

vaccines don’t cause autism,” says Marley<br />

Rave, SPA/MPA ’13, national director of major<br />

giving at the nonprofit’s DC office. The CDC<br />

and World Health Organization have also<br />

dismissed any causal relationship between<br />

immunizations and ASD.<br />

Wandering is a major safety concern within<br />

the ASD community. According to Rave, 50<br />

percent of kids with ASD (my son included)<br />

wander, bolt, or elope—a rate nearly four<br />

times that of neurotypical youngsters. More<br />

than one-third of children with ASD are never<br />

or rarely able to communicate their name,<br />

address, or phone number, according to the<br />

National Autism Association. Many are fearful<br />

of police and emergency workers, who often<br />

lack the training to effectively identify and<br />

communicate with people on the spectrum.<br />

We saw this play out (literally, on cell phone<br />

video) in North Miami, Florida, in July, when<br />

police shot a behavioral therapist who was<br />

trying to calm his 27-year-old autistic client.<br />

The young man had wandered from his<br />

assisted living facility and was sitting in the<br />

middle of the street, clutching a toy truck, and<br />

screaming at his therapist to “shut up,” which<br />

officers took as a threat. Police admitted they<br />

made a mistake by shooting the therapist—they<br />

were aiming for the autistic man.<br />

“If your child was just diagnosed, you<br />

might need some time to get used to the idea.<br />

Take a few days. Cry, moan, scream, bitch,<br />

blame your spouse’s family—do whatever you<br />

need to for a little while. A very little while.<br />

Then roll up your sleeves and get to work.”<br />

When I got to this line in Lynn Kern Koegel<br />

and Claire LaZebnik’s Overcoming Autism, I<br />

laughed out loud. Just a few nights before, Sam<br />

and I had angrily shaken the branches of one<br />

another’s family trees. It was a relief to know<br />

the need to point fingers is completely normal.<br />

Autism had inserted itself into our lives<br />

overnight. It was surreal, discombobulating,<br />

and exhausting. It was all we could talk about,<br />

all I could think about. On particularly bad<br />

days, I would slip into the bathroom at work<br />

for a quick cry. I have always looked at my<br />

child and thought: He will be successful, he<br />

will love and be loved, he will be happy. Those<br />

three letters—A-S-D—rocked my foundation.<br />

Fall 2015 was a whirlwind of appointments.<br />

In addition to seeing doctors through our<br />

insurance provider, Owen was evaluated by<br />

Child Find and referred to Developmental<br />

Education Services for Children (DESC) in<br />

Montgomery County, Maryland, where we live.<br />

The process was incredibly illuminating. We<br />

learned that Owen has sensory processing issues<br />

(he gets overwhelmed and anxious in a loud<br />

restaurant or in a chaotic classroom) and poor<br />

gross and fine motor skills, which is common<br />

among kids with ASD. We also discovered that<br />

Owen’s severe gastrointestinal problems, which<br />

began plaguing him at three months old, were<br />

probably the earliest sign of autism.<br />

The DESC evaluation gave us our first<br />

real glimpse of Owen’s days at school. “Owen<br />

sometimes stopped playing and looked lost<br />

in thought as he played with the fringe on his<br />

blanket,” the psychologist wrote.<br />

My heart ached. But when the official<br />

diagnosis of ASD came on October 22, 2015,<br />

there were no tears—there was only relief and<br />

an overwhelming sense of determination to do<br />

everything in my power to help my son. “This<br />

is the low point,” the doctor told Sam and me.<br />

“It will only get better from here.”<br />

When Tracey Staley, Kogod/BSBA ’84,<br />

learned of her son Jeff’s diagnosis in 2000,<br />

her first thought was: what’s Asperger’s?<br />

Staley was working at a tech company at<br />

the time of six-year-old Jeff’s diagnosis and<br />

began reading up on Asperger’s, a highfunctioning<br />

form of autism first identified by<br />

Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger in 1944.<br />

“I realized, ‘Hey, I know a lot of people like<br />

this,’” she says. “There was a sense of relief<br />

that we finally knew what was going on.”<br />

A gifted little boy who loved trains, Jeff<br />

developed normally, but Staley and her husband<br />

Mike noticed that he would get overwhelmed by<br />

loud noises. Once in first grade, Jeff disappeared<br />

from the cafeteria; panicked teachers later<br />

found him in the classroom, enjoying his lunch<br />

in blissful silence.<br />

Jeff’s tendency to be literal attracted<br />

bullies who teased him about “ants in the<br />

pants” or, worse yet, “liar, liar, pants on<br />

fire.” (According to the National Autism<br />

Association, 65 percent of autistic kids are<br />

bullied by their peers.) Eventually, things<br />

began to even out when Jeff, who was also<br />

diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder<br />

(ADD), enrolled in a program for Asperger’s<br />

students in third grade.<br />

Good teachers and a principal who “got<br />

it” made all the difference, as did the right<br />

20 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


psychologist and cocktail of medications. “I’m<br />

now confident that he will have a successful<br />

life,” says Staley, who sits on the boards<br />

of the Autism Society of America and the<br />

Autism Society of Pittsburgh, where she and<br />

Mike live. “But I don’t know that I could’ve<br />

said that a few years ago.”<br />

Although the Staleys always knew their<br />

son was smart, they weren’t sure if college<br />

was in the cards. Of those with a disability,<br />

people on the spectrum are the least likely to<br />

attend college, according to a study published<br />

in the June 2012 issue of Pediatrics journal.<br />

Only one-third go to college, with the majority<br />

of them (81 percent) matriculating to a fouryear<br />

institution from community college.<br />

Jeff defied the statistics. The 23-year-old<br />

is now an information technology major at<br />

Marshall University’s College Program for<br />

Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder,<br />

which offers support around academics, social<br />

skills, and independent living. If students<br />

miss class, their grad student mentors come<br />

knocking; if they ask too many questions in<br />

class, they might be given a per-lecture-limit.<br />

Marshall’s program, established just 14<br />

years ago, is the oldest of its kind on a US<br />

college campus.<br />

people; I never thought he’d be able to do<br />

that,” Staley says. “It was a reminder that you<br />

always have to look for opportunities for your<br />

child to shine.”<br />

The doctor was half right when he<br />

told us things would get better. They would,<br />

but not immediately.<br />

An official diagnosis of ASD meant we<br />

could begin pursuing Applied Behavior<br />

Analysis (ABA) therapy. We also had an<br />

Individualized Education Program (IEP) in<br />

place with Montgomery County that entitled<br />

Owen to weekly sessions with occupational<br />

and physical therapists and a special educator.<br />

The only problem: None of the services<br />

would kick in until January <strong>2016</strong> and Owen’s<br />

daycare situation was growing more volatile<br />

by the day.<br />

He screamed in the morning when he<br />

realized it was a school day. He screamed when<br />

I dropped him off. He screamed at daycare—so<br />

much so that I was certain we were going to be<br />

asked to leave. I started using the back door so<br />

I could stay out of the director’s line of sight.<br />

She had already told us that four parents had<br />

complained about Owen’s outbursts; that made<br />

“It’s like getting oxygen on the airplane:<br />

you have to put your mask on first<br />

before you can help your kid. If you pass<br />

out, you’re no good to your child.”<br />

Now a junior at the West Virginia school,<br />

Jeff is thriving. Even his struggles are<br />

victories of a sort. “He discovered a social<br />

life,” laughs Staley. “That got the best of him<br />

for a while.” Still Staley, who works in human<br />

resources, worries about the budding video<br />

game designer. Can he sell himself in an<br />

interview? Can he stay focused when work,<br />

inevitably, becomes a grind? “In life—and at<br />

work, especially—you don’t always get to do<br />

things that you love.”<br />

Despite Staley’s worries, she’s learned<br />

never to underestimate her son.<br />

Last year, the Autism Society invited Jeff<br />

to speak at its annual conference in New<br />

Orleans, alongside NeuroTribes author Steve<br />

Silberman. “He spoke in front of 150 or 200<br />

—clinical psychologist Darren Sush<br />

me feel even more alienated from the other<br />

moms and dads, who looked at us with a mix<br />

of disdain and pity.<br />

When I picked him up, I would get a full<br />

report of Owen’s misdeeds from both the<br />

teachers and the kids, which was particularly<br />

brutal. (“Owie made me cry today.”) As an<br />

editor, I always begin my critique of a writer’s<br />

work by pointing out something positive; I<br />

was desperate for someone at Owen’s school<br />

to do the same. Yes, I need to hear about the<br />

outbursts. But can you also tell me about that<br />

awesome Lego tower he erected? Or how he<br />

puffed with pride when you asked him to be<br />

line leader?<br />

The last three months of 2015 were among<br />

the hardest of my life. All three of us were<br />

stressed; our unhappiness was palpable. A<br />

doctor once told Sam and me that it’s not<br />

Owen who is challenging. Rather, we are<br />

challenged as parents to adapt, to accept our<br />

son for everything he is and everything he<br />

might never be. At the time, though, I felt<br />

challenged just to get through the day.<br />

According to Los Angeles-based clinical<br />

psychologist Darren Sush, CAS/BA ’01,<br />

CAS/MA ’03, parenting a special needs<br />

child exacerbates everyday stresses. “Being<br />

a parent in and of itself is difficult. But the<br />

instruction manual for parents of kids with<br />

autism is completely different. Unfortunately,<br />

those challenges are often pushed to the side<br />

because there’s no time, there’s no money,<br />

there’s a guilt that comes with taking a<br />

moment for yourself.”<br />

A 2014 study by researchers at the<br />

University of Illinois found that 32 percent<br />

of mothers of children on the spectrum<br />

experienced moderate to severe levels of<br />

depression, compared to 18 percent of women<br />

with neurotypical youngsters. The trend holds<br />

true for fathers of kids with ASD, as well.<br />

“If parents are feeling a bit depressed,<br />

they’re less likely to participate in their<br />

kids’ lives, and that impacts the children’s<br />

progress,” says Sush, who went into private<br />

practice in 2013, working exclusively with<br />

parents of autistic children. “It’s like getting<br />

oxygen on the airplane: you have to put your<br />

mask on first before you can help your kid. If<br />

you pass out, you’re no good to your child.”<br />

Resentful, lost, lonely, sad. That’s<br />

how Owen’s diagnosis made me feel. It<br />

wasn’t until I met Kelly Israel, WCL/JD ’15,<br />

that I got some idea of what Owen might be<br />

experiencing.<br />

Israel, 27, was diagnosed with Asperger’s<br />

when she was about Owen’s age. A whipsmart<br />

little girl who lost herself in books, it<br />

was Israel’s “tempestuous emotions” that<br />

set her apart from the other children in her<br />

kindergarten class. Social anxiety led to tears,<br />

which led to outbursts that didn’t taper off<br />

until she was in her mid-20s.<br />

“When you have trouble controlling<br />

your emotions, it’s a constant battle against<br />

exhaustion,” Israel tells me over lunch near<br />

the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN)<br />

in downtown DC, where she works as a<br />

policy analyst. “Low-level anxiety follows me<br />

wherever I go.”<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 21


I understand that awful feeling more than<br />

Israel knows. I wrestled with postpartum<br />

anxiety and debilitating panic attacks after<br />

Owen was born. For months, I could feel the<br />

anxiety coursing through my body. It was<br />

just as Israel describes: constantly teetering<br />

between willing the anxiety away and spiraling,<br />

helplessly, toward it.<br />

The difference is, my struggles were<br />

fleeting. “I’ve had to practice that control every<br />

day for 27 years,” Israel says.<br />

I glance around the busy restaurant and<br />

ask Israel if anything about the present<br />

environment is making her anxious.<br />

“I can hear half of every conversation, I<br />

hear music. I have tactile sensitivity so these<br />

clothes are uncomfortable,” she says, tugging at<br />

her black blazer. “And the tails from the lights<br />

are distracting.”<br />

It wasn’t until she enrolled at the<br />

Washington College of Law that Israel says<br />

she “learned to gain rigid control over my<br />

emotions. Lawyers have to be unflappable—<br />

that training helped a lot.” Law school, which<br />

marked the first academic challenge of her<br />

life, also forced Israel to confront her difficulty<br />

with interpersonal communication.<br />

“I can write any legal brief, no problem.<br />

But I wasn’t sure about the heavy social<br />

aspects of law school. I built up such fear<br />

about working with people directly, but I<br />

had to overcome it in order to be an effective<br />

advocate,” says Israel, who participated in<br />

WCL’s Disability Rights Law Clinic.<br />

In ASAN, a nonprofit created in 2006 by<br />

and for people on the spectrum, Israel has<br />

found a supportive group of (more) likeminded<br />

colleagues—and a mission. “We seek<br />

to make the voice of autistic people heard in<br />

the halls of power . . . and to create a world<br />

where there’s more than one kind of ‘normal.’”<br />

I ask Israel about her proudest<br />

accomplishment.<br />

“My life,” she says. “People with disabilities<br />

are born into a world where the deck is stacked<br />

against them. We are discriminated against and<br />

marginalized from social and public life. Being a<br />

bar-certified attorney, working for an advocacy<br />

organization with a mission I care about, having<br />

wonderful friends and loving family, living well<br />

and on my own—I’m very proud of that.”<br />

Owen began ABA therapy in January<br />

<strong>2016</strong>. The first morning that we arrived at<br />

school to see a therapist waiting for us, I knew<br />

ABA was the best thing we could have done<br />

for him (and for ourselves). For six months, it<br />

had felt like we were throwing our son into the<br />

deep end of a pool. Now, he had an advocate, a<br />

guide by his side for 25 hours a week.<br />

The first successful use of ABA methods<br />

for children with autism was in 1967; today, it’s<br />

the most recommended, scientifically-proven<br />

treatment for kids on the spectrum. ABA is an<br />

intensive, structured, and data-driven program.<br />

Therapists help children practice a skill, then<br />

reward correct responses and positive behavior<br />

and redirect or ignore undesirable behavior.<br />

For example, now that Owen has learned to<br />

refuse politely, he is praised—and his request<br />

honored—when he says “no thank you” but<br />

ignored when he screams “no!”<br />

Once a month I meet with Owen’s clinical<br />

coordinator, who goes through charts and<br />

graphs documenting his progress around<br />

everything from sharing and following<br />

instructions to hand washing, classroom<br />

participation, and temper tantrums. A spike<br />

in the chart indicates a bad day—but spikes<br />

are fewer and farther between these days.<br />

I used to fret that Owen’s behavior would<br />

inhibit his ability to learn; those worries<br />

aren’t completely assuaged, but they are<br />

lessened. Through ABA, Owen has learned<br />

to ask for space instead of screaming or<br />

hitting (although hitting remains a concern);<br />

he’s starting to hold short conversations<br />

about topics other than firetrucks; he’s not<br />

only joining circle time, he’s participating;<br />

ABA is incredibly effective but it can also<br />

be expensive. Even if it’s covered by private<br />

health insurance, which isn’t a given (coverage<br />

depends on the laws of the state in which<br />

the policy is written; Maryland requires ABA<br />

benefits, for example, while DC does not),<br />

families still have to contend with expensive<br />

copays or coinsurance and deductibles. Daily<br />

copays can add up to $700 a month.<br />

According to Marley Rave of Autism Speaks,<br />

the disorder costs families $60,000 per year in<br />

medical care, special education, lost parental<br />

productivity, and more. (Last year, costs<br />

topped $268 billion in the United States alone.)<br />

However, a 2012 study by researchers at the<br />

University of Pennsylvania found that the cost<br />

of intensive early intervention like ABA “more<br />

than pays for itself in terms of reduced needs<br />

for therapy and educational support by the<br />

time a child reaches high school.”<br />

Says Rave: “I’ve had the opportunity in<br />

this job to meet so many different families<br />

and parents who are doing the best they can,<br />

but they deserve to have an easier road. It’s<br />

our responsibility to help parents give their<br />

kids the best quality of life possible, without<br />

bankrupting them.”<br />

It’s early August and I’m at a café in<br />

Tenleytown, waiting on Sean (not his real<br />

name), an AU student who’s agreed to talk to<br />

me about his ASD diagnosis. I have no idea<br />

what to expect—how much he’ll want to share,<br />

“Owen might not have been the<br />

child I expected, but I thank my<br />

lucky stars that he’s the one I got.”<br />

and he’s practicing calming strategies when<br />

he gets upset. The yellow blanket that he<br />

used to drag around like Linus from Peanuts<br />

is now gone.<br />

I’m in awe of his therapists: two wonderful,<br />

20-something young women who don’t yet<br />

have kids themselves, but know how to reach<br />

my child in ways that Sam and I never could.<br />

They are warm, kind, and infinitely patient—<br />

but I know it’s Owen who’s doing the heavy<br />

lifting. He will never be completely at ease in<br />

social situations, but he’s learning how to<br />

navigate them. I never forget all the hard work<br />

behind every data point on his charts.<br />

or how much he’ll trust a person he just met<br />

with his story.<br />

Sean describes years of psychologists<br />

layering one diagnosis on top of another, until<br />

they settled on a combination that best describes<br />

his nuanced symptoms: ADD, Asperger’s, and<br />

executive function disorder, which hinders<br />

his ability to manage time, switch focus, and<br />

organize. In high school, he also wrestled with<br />

depression and suicidal thoughts.<br />

When he enrolled at AU, Sean, disclosed his<br />

diagnoses to the Academic Support and Access<br />

Center, entitling him to legally-mandated<br />

accommodations, including extra time for<br />

22 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


exams, which he can take in a separate room.<br />

Still, challenges remain. Weekly reading and<br />

reflection exercises that might take the average<br />

student 2 hours take him 10 to 20. He has lots<br />

of thoughts—brilliant ones, in fact—but getting<br />

them on paper can be excruciatingly difficult.<br />

He works best from the quiet comfort of<br />

home—an apartment near AU—so he misses<br />

out on the socializing that often happens in<br />

study groups. “I think people respect what I<br />

have to say and I often stimulate conversations<br />

in the classroom, but [students] see me as<br />

nothing more than a walking book.”<br />

Sean’s ASD diagnosis reveals itself mostly<br />

in his social struggles. He’s resigned himself<br />

to the fact that he may never marry and says<br />

his diagnosis functions as a shield of sorts. He<br />

relates better to older people and says his social<br />

life in DC is “nonexistent.” He tells me all of this<br />

matter-of-factly. It’s not meant to elicit pity.<br />

In the 90 minutes we spend together,<br />

I’m struck not so much by Sean’s social<br />

awkwardness, but by his thoughtfulness and<br />

intellectual curiosity. He tells me that, through<br />

academics, he hopes to find his place in a<br />

society in which he’s not entirely comfortable.<br />

“Living in a world that is mostly made of<br />

people without ASD is challenging,” he says.<br />

“Humans are social animals, which makes<br />

me wonder if I am incomplete or less human<br />

than others.”<br />

You know that’s not true, I tell him.<br />

“Yes, I suppose that’s only one aspect to our<br />

humanity.”<br />

As Sean and I walk out of the café, I shake<br />

his hand and tell him how much I enjoyed our<br />

conversation. I see a bit of my son in him—but<br />

more than that, I see a smart, interesting young<br />

man worth knowing.<br />

“Call me if you ever need anything,” I say.<br />

A single word in Australian sociologist<br />

Judy Singer’s 1988 thesis—neurodiversity—<br />

would eventually spark a dramatic paradigm<br />

shift. Instead of seeing autism, dyslexia,<br />

dyspraxia, and other developmental disorders<br />

as diseases, Singer said we should view them<br />

simply as variations in human wiring. It was<br />

a revolutionary idea, put forth by the mother<br />

of a child with Asperger’s, who’s on the<br />

spectrum herself.<br />

“I was interested in the liberatory, activist<br />

aspects of it—to do for neurologically different<br />

people what feminism and gay rights had<br />

done for their constituencies,” Singer told<br />

journalist Andrew Solomon in a 2008 New<br />

York magazine article. Much like neologisms<br />

such as biodiversity or cultural diversity,<br />

neurodiversity highlights the ways in which<br />

society is made richer by people who think,<br />

learn, and communicate differently—all while<br />

demanding supports to help those people<br />

succeed in school, at work, and in life.<br />

Admittedly, it can be difficult to wrap your<br />

brain around the idea of neurodiversity (no<br />

pun intended). If you’re a parent, your view<br />

likely depends on where your child falls on<br />

the spectrum. As Thinking in Pictures author<br />

Temple Grandin said in Solomon’s New York<br />

piece: “Autism is a continuum from genius to<br />

extremely handicapped. If you got rid of all<br />

the autism genetics, you’d get rid of scientists,<br />

musicians, mathematicians . . . The problem<br />

is, you talk to parents with a low-functioning<br />

kid, who’ve got a teenager who still goes to the<br />

bathroom in his pants and who’s biting himself<br />

all the time. . . His life is miserable. It would be<br />

nice if you could prevent the most severe forms<br />

of nonverbal autism.”<br />

I don’t believe that Owen’s high-functioning<br />

autism is something to be cured. My son is<br />

not deficient, he is different. Even before his<br />

diagnosis, we noticed that Owen assembles<br />

his wooden train track in a long, winding<br />

line. Most everyone else would put it in a circle<br />

or oval, to ensure the track connects. Is Owen<br />

wrong? No. And it makes me wonder: what<br />

else will he see differently? And might that<br />

someday benefit society? Who knows what the<br />

unique wiring in autism might inspire.<br />

While I celebrate my son’s beautiful mind,<br />

however, I don’t celebrate the flip side of his<br />

diagnosis: the challenges that make his life, and<br />

the lives of millions of others on the spectrum,<br />

more difficult.<br />

I know some parents will never hear the<br />

words “I love you” pass their children’s lips.<br />

Others—40 percent, according to the National<br />

Autism Association—don’t get a full night’s<br />

sleep because they fear their kids will wander<br />

from the house. Those on the spectrum are<br />

chronically unemployed and underemployed.<br />

Bullying, depression, and seclusion are also<br />

concerns. Some autistic kids self-harm or lash<br />

out violently; others suffer from comorbid<br />

conditions like epilepsy or persistent viral<br />

infections; and some will never live on their<br />

own. Many parents fear what will become of<br />

their autistic adult children when they die:<br />

Who will care for them? Who will love them?<br />

I am keenly aware that many children and<br />

adults with ASD are profoundly impaired and<br />

that Owen is among the luckiest of the unlucky.<br />

In many ways, we don’t fit in with children<br />

with severe autism and their families whose<br />

experiences—while technically under the<br />

shared umbrella of ASD—are vastly different<br />

from ours. And neither do we fit in among<br />

Owen’s neurotypical peers and their families.<br />

My son isn’t the face of autism, but he is a<br />

face of autism. And as my new friend Sean so<br />

eloquently says: “just because it’s easier doesn’t<br />

mean it’s easy.”<br />

In 1993, autism rights advocate Jim<br />

Sinclair penned an open letter to parents of<br />

autistic children titled “Don’t Mourn for Us.”<br />

He writes: “You didn’t lose a child to autism.<br />

You lost a child because the child you waited<br />

for never came into existence . . . Grieve if<br />

you must, for your own lost dreams. But don’t<br />

mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And<br />

we’re here waiting for you.”<br />

I’ve accepted that we may never have<br />

a picture of our son with Santa Claus. I’ve<br />

discovered that hand dryers and metal<br />

detectors can be terrifying, and that wiggle<br />

pads, fidgets, and timers are lifesavers. I know<br />

that shirts must be adorned with a firetruck<br />

and that grilled cheese is on the menu six<br />

nights out of seven. I’ve embraced the fleet<br />

of Matchbox cars that meticulously lines our<br />

windowsill. I know that when my son asks<br />

to be picked up and whispers “I’m done,” his<br />

social anxiety is kicking in. And I realize that<br />

he hits me more than anyone else because he<br />

trusts me more than anyone else.<br />

Over the course of the last year I’ve<br />

practiced patience and empathy like never<br />

before, and I’ve learned to forgive myself when<br />

I fail. I’ve learned that it takes a village, and<br />

I’m humbled by and grateful for ours. Most<br />

important, I’ve learned that life doesn’t always<br />

turn out like you think it will. Owen might not<br />

have been the child I expected, but I thank my<br />

lucky stars that he’s the one I got.<br />

Last year we spent the holidays in my<br />

native Arizona. We were driving at dusk along<br />

a stretch of Interstate 10 that cuts through a<br />

swath of the Sonoran Desert, which was aglow<br />

in regal purples, golden yellows, and fiery reds.<br />

It was a sunset worthy of a postcard.<br />

Suddenly, a little voice chirped from the<br />

backseat: “mama, who paints the mountains?”<br />

I don’t love my curious, quirky son in spite<br />

of his autism—I love him more because of it.<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 23


PHOTOS BY AMANDA STEVENSON LUPKE<br />

Nick Galifianakis does not draw for<br />

the money. In the world of cartoonists, he is<br />

actually quite famous, not to mention widely<br />

published, but he doesn’t draw for the fame,<br />

either. He doesn’t draw for the plaudits. He<br />

doesn’t even necessarily draw with a hope or<br />

care about what kind of response he might get.<br />

Rather, says the School of Communication<br />

(SOC) alumnus, he draws because, even if he<br />

was doing something else for a living—if he was<br />

a doctor, as he once planned to be, or a teacher<br />

or a lawyer—he would still be drawing. Because<br />

he simply can’t imagine not drawing.<br />

“That’s not to say that I always wanted to<br />

be a professional, but I knew even when I was<br />

little that I could draw what I saw, and I also<br />

realized others couldn’t. As a kid in Durham,<br />

North Carolina, I would decorate neighbors’<br />

driveways,” says Galifianakis, whose family<br />

later moved to Falls Church, Virginia. “And<br />

they must have been tickled by my murals<br />

because they would avoid parking on their<br />

driveways until the rain washed off the<br />

colored chalk drawings.”<br />

A few decades later, that hasn’t changed.<br />

One of the most acclaimed and talented<br />

cartoonists of his time, Galifianakis has for the<br />

past 20 years served as the editorial cartoonist<br />

(and editor, advisor, and sounding board) for<br />

Carolyn Hax’s hugely popular Washington Post<br />

advice column, “Tell Me About It.” It’s a role<br />

that has not only given Galifianakis a massive<br />

stage on which to showcase his talent—the<br />

daily column is syndicated in more than 200<br />

newspapers nationwide—but also one that has<br />

allowed him to stretch his legs creatively in a<br />

way that few other cartoonists have.<br />

Plenty of cartoonists are tasked with<br />

commenting on the world of politics;<br />

Galifianakis, in working alongside the prolific<br />

(and highly opinionated) Hax, has a daily<br />

opportunity to commentate on life. His work<br />

is alternately sophisticated and light-hearted,<br />

sorrowful and whimsical, tragic and comic—<br />

perfect accompaniment, in other words, for<br />

a column that helps readers deal with issues<br />

that hit on universal themes.<br />

“I was doing political cartoons, and<br />

eventually became bored with politics,” says<br />

Galifianakis, who before landing the job at<br />

the Post worked as an editorial cartoonist for<br />

USA Today. “But relationship dynamics always<br />

appealed to me. I was drawn to and excited by<br />

the opportunity to comment on things we’ve all<br />

been struggling with since we lived in caves.”<br />

Indeed, though Hax’s column tackles<br />

any number of topics—from addiction to<br />

family problems to financial issues and so<br />

much more—it is, at its heart, mostly about<br />

relationships: the good ones, the bad ones, the<br />

lasting ones, and the ones that fail. And perhaps<br />

it’s true that the duo’s commentaries resonate<br />

so strongly with readers specifically because<br />

these two longtime collaborators have endured<br />

their own relationship struggles; married in<br />

1994, three years before the column debuted<br />

in the Post, the couple split in 2002.<br />

Galifianakis and Hax shared the news of<br />

their separation in a live chat. She took some<br />

heat from readers when it was revealed (in<br />

the pages of the Washington Post, no less) that<br />

she was pregnant with twins, and engaged to<br />

a childhood friend one year later. “Carolyn<br />

and I had been separated for quite a long time<br />

prior to our announcement so there was no<br />

romantic overlap with her new husband,” says<br />

Galifianakis, who’s close with Carolyn’s three<br />

sons and husband Kenny.<br />

The criticism was withering, but Hax took<br />

it in stride—as did Galifianakis. Their marriage<br />

was not meant to last, they both agreed. But<br />

their professional relationship was. Hax would<br />

continue to pen the column, and Galifianakis<br />

would continue to illustrate it—and edit, too.<br />

Just as he had from the very beginning.<br />

The pair’s process, as they’ve described it,<br />

is a true collaboration. Hax starts by choosing<br />

the questions (out of the countless number<br />

she receives) she thinks might be the most<br />

interesting to her readers, and then writes her<br />

24 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


NICK GALIFIANAKIS<br />

SKETCHES OUT<br />

A CAREER AS A<br />

CELEBRATED<br />

WASHINGTON POST<br />

CARTOONIST<br />

BY TIM HYLAND<br />

responses. At that point, she shares a draft with<br />

Galifianakis, who essentially sees it as his job to<br />

make sure that Hax sounds like Hax—and not<br />

any other run-of-the-mill advice columnist.<br />

As Hax once explained to WAMU’s Kojo<br />

Nnamdi: “[Nick is] actually an excellent<br />

editor in that he knows my voice so well and<br />

he knows my writing so well that he knows<br />

when I could do better and he says, ‘You<br />

know, this is flat.’ ‘This doesn’t work.’ ‘This<br />

joke isn’t funny.’ ‘Why are you using that word<br />

here?’ Or, ‘You’re completely ignoring this<br />

perspective.’ I mean, he reads for all elements<br />

of the piece.”<br />

Although some may marvel at the pair’s<br />

ability to work together despite their past,<br />

Galifianakis says their collaboration continues<br />

to succeed for two reasons: First, they remain<br />

good friends and second, they have enormous<br />

professional and artistic respect for each<br />

other. Indeed, his praise for his ex-wife is<br />

effusive. He describes her as brilliant, witty,<br />

and hilarious—the perfect advice columnist, in<br />

other words, for a decidedly imperfect world.<br />

“I believe that advice columnists fall<br />

into three categories: There is Carolyn Hax,<br />

there are those who want to be Carolyn Hax,<br />

and then there are those who are lying,” he<br />

says. “She’s just head and shoulders above<br />

everyone else.”<br />

After starting college at the University of<br />

North Carolina with sights set on a career in<br />

medicine, Galifianakis later enrolled at AU,<br />

where SOC professor emeritus Glenn Harnden<br />

recognized his talent and artistic sensibilities,<br />

and recommended that Galifianakis consider<br />

studying film. Later he trained under longtime<br />

SOC professor John Douglass and wrote his<br />

first-ever screenplay. But his big break came<br />

when Harnden helped him land an internship<br />

with a DC production company headed up<br />

by Phyllis Ward. “Everything was new and<br />

exciting and different. Crafting and telling<br />

a story really played to my sensibilities,”<br />

Galifianakis recalls.<br />

The internship also spurred him to take<br />

risks in pursuit of a career in the arts. One day,<br />

during a production meeting, Ward mentioned<br />

that she was looking for an animator to help<br />

produce work for a short animated sequence<br />

in her film. She asked her staff if anyone knew<br />

somebody who could handle the job. “And I<br />

said—it was a complete lie, of course—‘Yes,<br />

I animate!’” Galifianakis says.<br />

He spent the summer learning the ins and<br />

outs of old school, hand-drawn animation.<br />

Later, feeling increasingly confident not only<br />

in his talent but in what he had to say about<br />

the world around him, Galifianakis started<br />

drawing and submitting editorial cartoons<br />

to papers throughout the Southeast. It didn’t<br />

take long before he started getting published.<br />

He landed a job as an editorial cartoonist with<br />

USA Today in 1992 and was later working on<br />

a freelance basis when the Post approached<br />

Hax, by then his wife and a Post copy editor,<br />

about starting an advice column. The Post also<br />

wanted her husband to illustrate it. Although<br />

the original idea was to have Galifianakis<br />

simply create themed icons to run with the<br />

piece, he instead sketched something directly<br />

related to that first column.<br />

And just like that, he became the column’s<br />

standing artist.<br />

The rest, of course, is history. Galifianakis’s<br />

time with the Post has given him a huge<br />

audience, helped make him one of the most<br />

recognized cartoonists in the country, and<br />

served as the platform on which he published<br />

his first book, If You Loved Me, You’d Think<br />

This Was Cute: Uncomfortable True Cartoons<br />

About You. He doesn’t take his success for<br />

granted. And he truly loves his job.<br />

“I do this because I can’t not do this,” he<br />

says. “When I was drawing on my neighbor’s<br />

driveway as a kid, I wasn’t really thinking<br />

about what they were going to say about that<br />

mural. And that’s still largely true today. I do<br />

this work for an audience of one.”<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 25


JUDY SMITH IS<br />

WASHINGTON’S ULTIMATE FIXER<br />

BY MIKE UNGER<br />

PHOTO BY VINCENT RICARDEL<br />

My phone starts buzzing a few minutes<br />

after Judy Smith was supposed to call<br />

for our scheduled interview.<br />

“Hello,” she says in a warm-yetprofessional,<br />

calm-yet-pressed voice. “Can<br />

I call you back in a few hours? I’m having<br />

a crisis at work.”<br />

Of course she is. But, to paraphrase<br />

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Smith’s idea of a crisis is<br />

not like yours or mine. Crises are the currency<br />

in which she deals, and they’ve made her<br />

fabulously successful and increasingly<br />

famous. In turn, she’s provided her clients—<br />

a Who’s Who of they-shouldn’t-have-donethat—with<br />

opportunities for a second act<br />

following some very public problems.<br />

That her words are spoken without<br />

a hint of irony demonstrates why she’s<br />

become so entrenched in the milieu of<br />

<strong>American</strong> celebrity gone bad. The access<br />

to society’s boldest names, the hit network<br />

television show based on her career: it’s<br />

all secondary to Smith. Her primary goal<br />

has remained simple: What’s the client’s<br />

objective, and how can I help them<br />

achieve it?<br />

Smith, WCL/JD ’86, is Washington’s<br />

ultimate fixer. Her name has become<br />

synonymous with the field of crisis<br />

communications, a pressure cooker brand<br />

of PR designed to protect (or salvage) an<br />

individual’s or corporation’s reputation.<br />

When a politician or noted athlete or actor<br />

gets caught with their hand in the cookie<br />

jar, they call Smith. She’s also become<br />

linked to her small screen alter ego Olivia<br />

Pope, the no nonsense, problem-solving,<br />

heroine of ABC’s Scandal.<br />

In our conversation, Smith is measured<br />

and reserved when discussing her<br />

work—much of which aims to mitigate<br />

transgressions much more serious than<br />

tawdry trysts—and guarded when speaking<br />

about herself. You’d never know her job is to<br />

parachute into the most stressful of media<br />

feeding frenzies or the stickiest of legal jams<br />

and align herself with the person squarely in<br />

everyone’s sights.<br />

You’d never know that you were speaking<br />

to a true gladiator.<br />

Smith was born and raised in the nation’s<br />

capital, the second youngest of five<br />

children. Much of her hard-nosed work ethic<br />

comes from the example set by her parents.<br />

Her father drove a truck by day and a cab at<br />

night, while her mother worked as a secretary<br />

from nine to five before heading out to clean<br />

office buildings. Occasionally, Smith would<br />

tag along.<br />

After leaving the city to earn a bachelor’s<br />

degree in public relations from Boston<br />

University, she felt the pull of home.<br />

26 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


“Somebody told me that I argued well, so<br />

I should try law school,” she says. “It really<br />

wasn’t a compliment, but I took it as one.”<br />

At Washington College of Law, Smith<br />

became the first female African <strong>American</strong><br />

executive editor of the law review, clerked<br />

for a judge, and worked in bankruptcy court.<br />

Her first major job after earning her law<br />

degree was as associate counsel and deputy<br />

director of public information in the office<br />

of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh,<br />

who was investigating the Iran-Contra<br />

Affair. It was not the last affair she’d have<br />

to navigate on behalf of others.<br />

In 1991, Smith was appointed special<br />

assistant and deputy press secretary to<br />

President George H. W. Bush. The girl from<br />

northeast Washington had reached 1600<br />

Pennsylvania Avenue.<br />

“What the White House did was help<br />

sharpen my skills,” she says. “You are, in a lot<br />

of ways, in the center of what goes on in the<br />

world. Things move so quickly. If someone<br />

is practicing crisis communications in the<br />

corporate setting, you have time to plan, to<br />

prepare. But at the White House there is<br />

something happening every minute of every<br />

single day that you have to comment on,<br />

that you have to respond to, that you have to<br />

think about the messaging. You have to do<br />

that at an incredible speed with precision.”<br />

Smith worked in communications at NBC<br />

and was a partner at several Washington<br />

firms before striking out on her own. She<br />

steadily built a roster of clients, but didn’t<br />

truly burst into the public consciousness<br />

until a former White House intern<br />

retained her in 1998. Smith helped Monica<br />

Lewinsky choose a legal team, and crafted<br />

a communications plan designed to protect<br />

her from the onslaught of media coverage<br />

in the wake of special prosecutor Kenneth<br />

Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton.<br />

“We tried to portray her as a young<br />

woman at a certain point in her life,<br />

vulnerable and exposed to certain things,”<br />

Smith told the Los Angeles Times in a 2012<br />

profile. “Our goal was to get an agreement<br />

and make sure she didn’t have to go to jail.”<br />

That was her client’s objective, and she<br />

achieved it, in large part, by employing<br />

another of her governing principles.<br />

“One of my golden rules is that you should<br />

tell the truth in a crisis,” she says. “You need<br />

to have message discipline in a crisis, you<br />

need to be very clear about what the facts<br />

“ONE THING<br />

ABOUT MY WORK,<br />

JUST LIKE ON<br />

THE SHOW, THERE’S<br />

NO SHORTAGE<br />

OF CRISES . . . YOU<br />

DON’T GET BORED.”<br />

-JUDY SMITH<br />

are, and there needs to be leadership through<br />

a crisis with a level of clarity.”<br />

Over the years Smith’s provided just that<br />

for A-listers including actor Wesley Snipes,<br />

football star Michael Vick, Jesse Jackson<br />

Jr., and a host of others. She compiled her<br />

experiences and philosophies into a book,<br />

Good Self, Bad Self: Transforming Your Worst<br />

Qualities Into Your Biggest Assets, which<br />

led to a meeting with television producer<br />

Shonda Rhimes, of Grey’s Anatomy fame.<br />

What was scheduled to be a quick meet-andgreet<br />

turned into a three-hour conversation.<br />

“I was fascinated by a world in which<br />

someone swoops in on the worst day of a<br />

person’s life and takes over,” Rhimes told<br />

the LA Times. “I love the notion of a fixer.<br />

And I’m always in love with the idea that<br />

everyone has dirty little secrets, even the<br />

powerful, even our heroes.”<br />

Scandal debuted in 2012 with an episode<br />

in which a woman who says she’s been<br />

sleeping with the president shows up at<br />

Pope’s office. The steely, self-assured Pope<br />

is skeptical of the woman’s claim until she<br />

reveals that the married commander in chief<br />

called her “sweet baby,” the same term he<br />

used for another of his on-again, off-again<br />

lovers . . . Olivia Pope. Cue the dramatic<br />

music. And we’re off.<br />

The show is a fast-moving, only-in-DC<br />

soap opera on steroids in which the term<br />

“fix it” is uttered frequently and everyone<br />

walks and talks with constant urgency.<br />

Fans, who like Pope and her associates call<br />

themselves “gladiators,” can’t get enough. It<br />

has more than 1 million followers on Twitter<br />

and has received the Peabody Award for<br />

Excellence in Television. Smith serves as coexecutive<br />

producer, reading all the scripts.<br />

“When Judy and I first met, she said,<br />

‘Call me anytime, here are my numbers, any<br />

questions you have,’” Kerry Washington, who<br />

plays Pope, says in a promotional video. “But<br />

now when the phone rings she goes, ‘What<br />

Kerry?’ because I call her constantly and<br />

email her every day with questions. I want<br />

to make sure I’m getting inside the strategic<br />

mind of a crisis expert.”<br />

In January, the show returns for its sixth<br />

season, and its popularity—along with her<br />

book—have thrust the normally reticent<br />

Smith into the spotlight.<br />

“One thing about my work, just like on the<br />

show, there’s no shortage of crises,” she says.<br />

“It’s not for folks that are not committed to<br />

the cause, because it’s always 24/7. You don’t<br />

get bored.”<br />

Smith now is recognized as a celebrity<br />

in her own right. On talk shows, at parties,<br />

on the street—invariably she’s asked the<br />

same question.<br />

“No, I haven’t had an affair with the<br />

president,” she says, laughing.<br />

But if you have, Judy Smith just may be<br />

able to help.<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 27


28 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


By Mike Unger and Adrienne Frank


President Neil Kerwin requested that <strong>American</strong>’s coverage of his retirement in May 2017 not focus solely on what he’s done, but rather, what we’ve<br />

accomplished together as a community. On October 19, we gathered more than 130 faculty, staff, alumni, and students from all corners of AU to celebrate<br />

a decade of transformation under Kerwin’s leadership. When AU’s 14th president approached Hurst Hall, the crowd broke into cheers for “our all-<br />

<strong>American</strong>” and the woman he calls his “partner in all this”—wife Ann. “IT HAS BEEN AN ABSOLUTE PRIVILEGE TO WORK WITH<br />

THE KERWINS OVER THE LAST DECADE,” says Patricia Oltmann, alumni career programs coordinator, Office of Development and Alumni<br />

Relations. “[THEY] HAVE MADE AU A TRULY GREAT UNIVERSITY.” Adds James Proctor, construction coordinator, Office of<br />

Finance and Treasurer: “THANK YOU DR. KERWIN FOR LEADING US ON THIS WONDERFUL JOURNEY.”<br />

MOST PEOPLE ATTEND A SCHOOL, WORK A JOB, LIVE IN A TOWN.<br />

Neil Kerwin owns degrees from three universities, has held a variety<br />

of academic positions, and has resided in several cities along the East<br />

Coast and abroad.<br />

But at his core, he is of <strong>American</strong> University.<br />

The school’s 14th president, Kerwin, SPA/BA ’71, will retire in late<br />

spring after 12 transformational years in the role. He first arrived on<br />

campus in 1967 as an 18-year-old from Waterbury, Connecticut.<br />

“Neither of my parents went to college. I felt that if I was really<br />

going to test myself, I needed to [leave home],” he says. “I had one<br />

cousin who had been to college, and said if I got into college in<br />

Washington I could live with them and basically babysit their kids for<br />

room and board. I got into <strong>American</strong>, I got [financial aid], and with the<br />

money and the housing that was provided by my family, I was able to<br />

come. I never looked back.”<br />

It was here that he met his wife, Ann, CAS/BA ’71, at a party when<br />

they were undergrads. A generation later one of their two sons, Michael,<br />

also met his wife at AU. In between Kerwin served as a professor, dean<br />

of the School of Public Affairs, provost, and ultimately, president.<br />

During his years at the helm, he helped dramatically reshape AU.<br />

National scholarships have increased 72 percent since 2009, while<br />

student debt has decreased 21 percent during the same period. Since<br />

2005, 14 buildings have been built or renovated (construction on some<br />

is ongoing). AU’s endowment has increased 113 percent since 2005,<br />

while need-based financial aid has more than doubled since 2010.<br />

The <strong>2016</strong> admit rate—26 percent—was an all-time low.<br />

“That’s unheard of,” Provost Scott Bass says.<br />

It seems that regardless of the metric, Kerwin has presided over its<br />

improvement with quiet confidence and a wry sense of humor.<br />

“Neil has moved the university forward in dozens of ways,” says<br />

Jeff Sine, SIS/BA ’76, a member of the board of trustees who chaired<br />

the presidential search committee that recommended Kerwin for the<br />

job. “In terms of scholarship, the quality of the faculty, the quality of<br />

the students, our service mission, our diversity mission, the financial<br />

position of the university, our reputation. It creates a virtuous cycle.”<br />

When his alarm goes off on June 1 (or will it?), Kerwin knows he’ll<br />

be waking up to a different life.<br />

“You realize that you’re in a marathon that’s never going to end,”<br />

he says. “This is really all about the journey, it’s not about an endpoint.<br />

You simply try to deploy your time and effort in ways that add value to<br />

the others who really on a day-to-day basis are running this institution:<br />

the faculty, the staff, the students, the alumni, and a lot of friends we<br />

have who are willing to get involved. I begin every day with a list of<br />

things I want to accomplish. It gets to be sort of a contest to determine<br />

how many I can actually get to.”<br />

After more than four decades at AU, he’s crossed off a whole lot.<br />

30 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


Kerwin took over as interim president<br />

in 2005 amid a scandal surrounding the<br />

former president.<br />

JEFF SINE, BOARD OF TRUSTEES<br />

“Certainly the university at that point needed<br />

a steady hand and needed someone who<br />

was competent. We also wanted someone<br />

of unquestioned integrity. His integrity is<br />

unchallenged. He insisted that everyone,<br />

starting with him, focus on the job at hand,<br />

which is educating students and creating<br />

knowledge. Neil just kept looking forward and<br />

insisting that everyone rededicate themselves<br />

to that.”<br />

ANTHONY AHRENS, PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR<br />

OF THE PSYCHOLOGY MASTER’S PROGRAM<br />

“I think he did a great job of listening and<br />

being calm at a time when it would have been<br />

very easy to be anything but. Neil had been a<br />

faculty member before being a dean and being<br />

a provost, so he really had deep roots at the<br />

university and with the faculty. With as many<br />

of us knowing him as we did, I think that by<br />

itself built a certain amount of trust.”<br />

KERWIN<br />

“I felt that the best service I could provide the<br />

institution at that time was for the institution<br />

itself to return as quickly as possible to focus<br />

on the core mission.”<br />

In 2007, Kerwin was appointed president. A<br />

public announcement was made at the Abramson<br />

Family Recital Hall in the Katzen Arts Center.<br />

KERWIN<br />

“A lot of people from the community were<br />

there, and I had the opportunity to speak to<br />

them about what I thought was necessary<br />

right out of the gate. It was to develop a new<br />

plan for the university, and approach the<br />

planning in a way that we hadn’t in the past.<br />

That was a much more broadly based, bottomup<br />

type of process. The strategic plan provides<br />

the foundation for the work we do here.”<br />

SINE<br />

“He knows AU as only an insider could. We<br />

felt like we really wanted someone who would<br />

not have a learning curve, who would be<br />

ready to start immediately because we had<br />

been without a tiller for a while. We needed<br />

someone to take a grip and lead immediately,<br />

and he did that.”<br />

AMERICAN<br />

UNIVERSITY’S<br />

DECADE of<br />

TRANSFORMATION<br />

#74<br />

ON U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT ’S 2017<br />

LIST OF BEST NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES<br />

(up from #86 in 2007)<br />

44%<br />

INCREASE IN<br />

FULL-TIME FACULTY<br />

since 2005<br />

9<br />

TRUMAN SCHOLARS<br />

since 2007<br />

48<br />

FULBRIGHT SCHOLARS<br />

since 2012<br />

78%<br />

INCREASE IN<br />

FRESHMAN MINORITY ENROLLMENT<br />

(from 18% in 2007 to 32% in 2015)<br />

40<br />

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION<br />

GRANTS AWARDED<br />

since 2008<br />

BRIAN KEANE, SOC-SPA/BA ’89, AU ALUMNI<br />

BOARD PRESIDENT, 2006—2010<br />

“He was the perfect candidate at the right<br />

time. His demeanor and persona were exactly<br />

what was needed. Early on in his presidency<br />

at what might have been his first board of<br />

trustees meeting, there was a break and he<br />

was looking out the window. I said, ‘It’s a<br />

beautiful looking campus,’ and he said, ‘Yes,<br />

and we gotta put our heads together to figure<br />

out how to make it even better.’ It wasn’t a<br />

throwaway line—he’s always thinking about<br />

how to make this campus better.”<br />

Kerwin allowed staff the leeway to make<br />

their own decisions.<br />

TERRY FLANNERY, VICE PRESIDENT<br />

FOR COMMUNICATION<br />

“One of the things that I have most<br />

appreciated about working with Neil is the<br />

freedom and professional respect he extends<br />

to those around him. Once you’ve earned his<br />

trust, he gives you the latitude to do what you<br />

think is best and the support to see it through.<br />

We’ve made some pretty bold moves<br />

to elevate the university’s visibility and<br />

reputation. When I told him I wanted to take<br />

AU’s KNOW/WONK campaign into a Major<br />

League Baseball stadium, he could have<br />

told me I was nuts. He didn’t. He listened<br />

carefully to the case we made for an exclusive<br />

sponsorship with the Washington Nationals.<br />

He saw the potential that came with doing<br />

something nontraditional and the power<br />

of being the only university in front of that<br />

audience. Still, it required a leap of faith that<br />

we knew what we were doing. In the end,<br />

it’s been one of the most effective decisions<br />

we’ve made to promote AU in DC and around<br />

the nation.<br />

His support is not a free pass. He’s tracked<br />

the outcomes every step of the way and<br />

expected us to demonstrate the return on our<br />

investment.”<br />

SCOTT BASS, PROVOST<br />

“The president has really allowed people to<br />

exercise judgment and freedom in taking on<br />

difficult challenges. He’s always counseled<br />

and advised, but he has never said ‘Don’t<br />

do that.’ He has mentioned that some of the<br />

challenges I’ve taken on were going to be<br />

difficult, but he’s been steadfastly supportive<br />

once I’ve embarked on it. You need that.”<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 31


SHARON ALSTON, VICE PROVOST FOR<br />

UNDERGRADUATE ENROLLMENT<br />

“I can only speak for us in the office of<br />

enrollment: we are motivated by the<br />

confidence he’s expressed in us, his<br />

recognition of the work we’ve done, and<br />

the respect he’s shown for our knowledge.<br />

When someone trusts you and respects<br />

you, you never, ever want to let him down.”<br />

SINE<br />

“He’s not one of these inspirational, messianic<br />

leaders—that’s not Neil’s style. He leads by<br />

example.”<br />

AHRENS<br />

“Neil is not a micromanager. He has done<br />

very well at identifying a team to work for the<br />

university and then giving them a lot of room<br />

to run with that. That’s been a big contribution.<br />

That’s set us up to be in a position where we<br />

could expand the number of faculty, we could<br />

start to expand aid to people who were coming<br />

from Pell-eligible backgrounds, we could<br />

recruit better undergraduates.”<br />

KERWIN<br />

“We’re blessed with people throughout<br />

the organization that share a common vision<br />

for academic quality and know the influence<br />

that comes with that academic quality in<br />

the communities beyond the campus that<br />

depend on us: the city, the nation, and<br />

the world.”<br />

Kerwin and his wife, Ann, recently celebrated<br />

their 44th wedding anniversary. She has played<br />

an important role advocating for the arts and<br />

the arboretum on campus.<br />

MIKE MASTROTA, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT<br />

“The Kerwins both have the unique<br />

perspective of having been here so long that<br />

they’ve seen the transformation of the campus<br />

and the way it looks. The arboretum is now 13<br />

years old. I’d say in the last five or six years,<br />

with their support and help, it’s really taken<br />

off as far as some of the donations that we’ve<br />

gotten and its connection with academics on<br />

campus. A lot of people now come to AU just<br />

to see the arboretum.”<br />

14<br />

AU BUILDINGS RENOVATED, COMPLETED,<br />

OR UNDER CONSTRUCTION<br />

since 2005<br />

48%<br />

INCREASE IN<br />

OVERALL CAMPUS SQUARE FOOTAGE<br />

since 2005<br />

#1<br />

FOR PRESIDENTIAL MANAGEMENT<br />

FELLOWSHIP FINALISTS<br />

IN 2015 AND <strong>2016</strong><br />

100%<br />

INCREASE IN<br />

PELL GRANTS AWARDED<br />

TO INCOMING FRESHMEN<br />

since 2007<br />

89%<br />

OF UNDERGRADS<br />

HAD INTERNSHIPS IN 2015<br />

(up 13% since 2005)<br />

132,656<br />

STUDENT VOLUNTEER<br />

SERVICE HOURS IN 2015<br />

(up 51% since 2005)<br />

75%<br />

MORE SPACE FOR<br />

WCL ON ITS NEW TENLEY CAMPUS<br />

ANN KERWIN<br />

“Environment has always been important to<br />

me. I think that subconsciously it creeps into<br />

everybody’s lives and their psyches. Walking<br />

across campus, what you see, the peace and the<br />

calm that it reflects, it’s beautiful. At the Katzen<br />

you can look out the window and see straight<br />

down the quad to the library. It’s amazing.”<br />

KERWIN<br />

“I’ve had a partner in all this. Ann really<br />

deserves an immense amount of credit for<br />

what she’s done. She’s been very active in the<br />

arboretum, very active with the library, with<br />

the arts, primarily with the museum. What I<br />

hope is that people acknowledge the hours and<br />

time that Ann’s put in. She spends an awful lot<br />

of time supporting the work of the institution.”<br />

In 2014, the Middle States Commission on<br />

Higher Education reaccredited AU.<br />

SINE<br />

“I’ve been told that in the parlance of those<br />

reports, which are usually quite dry and<br />

academic in their language, that it really read<br />

like a valentine to AU. That was a very strong<br />

source of validation, but the validation comes<br />

in so many different ways.”<br />

KERWIN<br />

“I took immense pride in it because of what<br />

peers had to say about where the institution<br />

now stood in higher ed and how a group of<br />

critical outsiders evaluated our work. We’re<br />

not perfect by any means—there’s still a lot<br />

to be done. But I feel there’s an awful lot that<br />

people can take pride in, and should.”<br />

BASS<br />

“AU’s different than it was when I arrived (in<br />

2008). Every measure, from the Middle States<br />

review to our Carnegie research classification,<br />

it’s a different institution. The hiring of<br />

faculty, the expectations of scholarship and<br />

performance, merit awards for our students—<br />

in every respect it’s a different place.”<br />

KEANE<br />

“This university today has a personality that<br />

it simply didn’t have when I was there. Now<br />

it’s a nationally-recognized university of<br />

proportions we couldn’t fathom when I was<br />

there. I couldn’t get into AU today.”<br />

32 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


A lifelong basketball fan, Kerwin tried out<br />

for the team as a freshman, and frequently is<br />

in the stands for men’s and women’s games.<br />

When the men’s team won the Patriot League<br />

Tournament in 2007 to earn its first-ever<br />

berth in the NCAA Tournament, he took part<br />

in the postgame celebration.<br />

KERWIN<br />

“I still have the picture of them allowing me<br />

to cut down a part of the net at that Lafayette<br />

game. It’s in my office at the house. It was<br />

tremendously gratifying to see that happen<br />

because I know how long people worked to<br />

make it happen. The game that we played<br />

against Tennessee was in Birmingham,<br />

Alabama. They gave Tennessee a real scare.<br />

The kids performed tremendously.”<br />

EMILY YU, SPA/BA ’13, 2012–2013<br />

STUDENT GOVERNMENT PRESIDENT<br />

“One of my funniest memories was a free<br />

throw shooting contest. I ended up winning,<br />

and he was very gracious and would make<br />

jokes about that all the time.”<br />

MIKE BRENNAN, HEAD COACH OF AU’S<br />

MEN’S BASKETBALL TEAM<br />

“He’s been very supportive. When you’re<br />

talking to recruits, or doing your job on<br />

a daily basis, just to know that the very<br />

top person at the school cares about what<br />

you’re doing and wants to see you do well, it<br />

gives you an extra sense of pride. He’s very<br />

attached to the institution. He has genuine<br />

affection for the place and pride in AU. It<br />

definitely comes across whenever you talk<br />

to him about it.”<br />

Kerwin’s legacy will be cemented in the new<br />

buildings, diverse and high-achieving students,<br />

and leading faculty at AU.<br />

BASS<br />

“I think AU has gone from an institution<br />

that had enormous potential to a place that’s<br />

realized and now is able to take the next<br />

step. I think he’ll be looked at as someone<br />

who has committed his entire career to<br />

seeing this institution move forward, and has<br />

accomplished that.”<br />

SINE, CHAIR OF THE CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL<br />

SEARCH COMMITTEE<br />

“I’ve had the opportunity to talk to<br />

prospective leaders of AU and to recruit<br />

people who we’re seeking to get into our<br />

presidential hiring process. The awareness<br />

of what has been accomplished under Neil’s<br />

leadership, and the momentum that the<br />

school has, is very high. It’s gratifying that<br />

when you talk to senior leadership at some<br />

of the best schools in the country, they’re<br />

very aware of what is going on at AU, and<br />

very aware of the impact that Neil has had on<br />

the trajectory of the institution. I think the<br />

university owes Neil a tremendous debt of<br />

gratitude for leading the university out of a<br />

very rough patch and into what I think is its<br />

golden age.”<br />

ALSTON<br />

“He was approachable and there was an<br />

element of humility about him. He was very<br />

straightforward. I will miss his accessibility<br />

and the way he would listen. I think I’m really<br />

just going to miss the person. I mean this<br />

in the best possible way—he never seemed<br />

presidential to me. He seemed like a colleague.”<br />

CANDICE NELSON, GOVERNMENT PROFESSOR<br />

“I think because he’d seen AU from so many<br />

different perspectives, he was able to get AU<br />

to look at itself in lots of different ways.”<br />

KEANE<br />

“I don’t know how we’re going to replace his<br />

passion. Of course, we will, but it will be a big<br />

hole to fill. Ann Kerwin will be sorely missed,<br />

too. They’ve been a team from day one. The<br />

work that she’s done to elevate AU has been<br />

really phenomenal. She just loves this school<br />

too. I think his legacy will be [apparent] in 50<br />

years when we have leaders who transform<br />

the country based on the university he<br />

[helped] create.”<br />

KERWIN, WHO PLANS TO RETURN TO THE FACULTY<br />

AT THE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS<br />

“I’m going to miss the day-to-day interactions<br />

with absolutely wonderful colleagues. There’s<br />

not a spot on campus that hasn’t been a part<br />

of my life. I took a chemistry class in Beeghly<br />

for god’s sake. There are memories in every<br />

building. You’re a lucky person when you can<br />

say that. I love the place for what it did for<br />

me—it gave me an opportunity that I never<br />

would have had anyplace else.”<br />

81%<br />

GRADUATION RATE IN 2015<br />

(up 16% since 2005)<br />

10<br />

ONLINE<br />

MASTER’S DEGREES LAUNCHED<br />

since 2013<br />

52%<br />

REDUCTION IN<br />

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS<br />

since 2005<br />

23<br />

ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICANS<br />

since 2005<br />

178%<br />

INCREASE IN<br />

ALUMNI PARTICIPATION<br />

since 2011<br />

$300<br />

MILLION<br />

IN GIFTS RAISED<br />

since 2005<br />

(a third since 2013)<br />

113%<br />

INCREASE IN<br />

UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT<br />

since 2005<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 33


PARDON THE<br />

EXAMINATION<br />

As ESPN’s public editor, Jim Brady focuses his<br />

journalistic eye on the “worldwide leader”<br />

By Mike Unger<br />

Who says sports fans are irrational? Take<br />

foxboro1212. That’s the online handle<br />

of (presumably) a guy who commented<br />

on a <strong>November</strong> 2015 Barstool Sports story<br />

announcing the hiring of ESPN’s latest public<br />

editor, Jim Brady—a man who does not hide<br />

his love for the, shall we say, less prosperous<br />

of New York’s two NFL teams.<br />

“Being a Jets fan won’t affect his judgement?<br />

You’re a f*#@ing Jets fan, how good could your<br />

judgement be in the first place?”<br />

Deep thoughts like that one from a New<br />

England Patriots backer (the Jets’ rival plays<br />

its home games in Foxboro, Massachusetts)<br />

pass for nuanced commentary in the world<br />

of sports opinion these days. Brady, SOC/BA<br />

’89, who has the thick skin and bristly sense<br />

of humor of a native Long Islander, laughs<br />

off such typed tirades from partisan trolls<br />

because he knows that as the chief internal<br />

media critic of the global sports behemoth,<br />

his work must be slightly more . . . refined.<br />

“Rabid sports fandom and journalism<br />

are not always a good fit,” Brady says. “One<br />

requires you to ignore anything that doesn’t fit<br />

your narrative, and the other one is all about<br />

making sure you can prove what it is that you<br />

write. Some fans are blind to reality, but a lot<br />

of emails I get are really smart assessments of<br />

ESPN’s coverage. I feel better about the average<br />

sports fan than when I started the job.”<br />

As ESPN’s sixth public editor since it<br />

created the position in 2005, Brady is charged<br />

with critiquing and analyzing the company’s<br />

programming and news coverage on its<br />

television networks and digital, print, and audio<br />

platforms. He’s paid by the company to write<br />

columns, produce podcasts, and interact with<br />

readers on social media, and he does so without<br />

any interference from its executives. ESPN<br />

employees are “encouraged” to cooperate with<br />

him, but they’re not obligated to.<br />

It’s a Ruthian task.<br />

The role of ombudsman was established<br />

in 1809 in Sweden to handle citizens’<br />

complaints about the government, according<br />

to the cleverly-acronymed Organization of<br />

News Ombudsmen (ONO). The first newspaper<br />

ombudsman in the United States began working<br />

for Louisville’s Courier-Journal in 1967. The<br />

position gained prominence when the New<br />

York Times added one to its staff following the<br />

Jayson Blair scandal in 2003, but its popularity<br />

has declined as the newspaper industry has<br />

shrunk. Numbers are hard to nail down, but<br />

ILLUSTRATION BY JERRY NEUMANN


Esther Enkin, ONO’s president and ombudsman<br />

for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,<br />

estimates there are about 140 worldwide.<br />

Employing an ombudsman “signals to your<br />

audience that you recognize you have amazing<br />

power, and that there is no mechanism for<br />

accountability, so you create this mechanism,”<br />

says Kelly McBride, vice president and<br />

ethicist at the Poynter Institute, a journalism<br />

think tank. When a panel of faculty from the<br />

organization served as ESPN’s public editor<br />

from 2011 to 2012, she headed it.<br />

“The thing about being the ombudsman for<br />

ESPN is they have so many lines of business,<br />

and so much of what they do is controversial,”<br />

McBride says. “You have to be thinking about<br />

it and consuming it all the time. The other<br />

challenge is it’s a contract position, as opposed<br />

to someone in residence. It’s very hard from<br />

a distance to develop the relationships and<br />

sources that you need to be effective. Given<br />

those restrictions the challenge is to select the<br />

right topic. I think Jim’s very good at sorting<br />

through everything and picking interesting<br />

topics. He’s got a really sharp mind.”<br />

Always a rabid sports nut, Brady dreamt<br />

of a career as a sportswriter. When the Post<br />

hired him to be a part-time one in 1987 (he<br />

was a sophomore at AU), he quickly realized<br />

that his romantic notion of the job was way off<br />

base. Working nights and weekends, groveling<br />

for interviews with disinterested players,<br />

watching games alongside grumpy reporters<br />

in the hushed press box while fans cheered<br />

in the stands was hardly glamorous. The last<br />

straw came in Baltimore, where an Oriole’s<br />

sweaty jock strap nearly decapitated him.<br />

“It whizzed right by my head,” he says,<br />

chuckling. “I was told someone was trying to<br />

throw it in the bin in the middle of the locker<br />

room, but they missed by five or six feet. If<br />

you’re throwing a jock strap into a bin every<br />

night for six months, I doubt you miss by<br />

six feet.”<br />

After eight years at the Post, Brady began<br />

sensing that the media landscape was shifting.<br />

He jumped to the digital world, working for<br />

companies including AOL before becoming<br />

executive editor of WashingtonPost.com<br />

in 2004. There he instituted cutting edge<br />

features like comments and blogs that<br />

aggravated traditionalists on the paper’s print<br />

side but grew page views. When he left in<br />

2009 to join TBD.com, WashingtonPost.com<br />

was among the most visited news destinations<br />

in the country.<br />

In 2014, Brady used a sizable chunk of his<br />

own coin ($500,000, according to Philadelphia<br />

magazine), to start Spirited Media, a mobilefocused<br />

local news company that owns and<br />

operates sites in Philadelphia (BillyPenn.com)<br />

and Pittsburgh (TheIncline.com). Its target<br />

is the 40-and-under demographic, which he<br />

believes is being ignored by traditional media.<br />

“They want news on their phone, and they<br />

want to go somewhere they can get everything<br />

in one place,” he says. “They want things to be<br />

simple, they don’t want to fight through four<br />

pop-up ads and an auto-play.”<br />

Like any new venture, let alone a dot.com<br />

one, success is far from guaranteed, but sitting<br />

in the living room of his Great Falls, Virginia,<br />

home in July, Brady seems confident about<br />

the future. His affinity for jeans, which he’s<br />

wearing, will likely be one of three character<br />

quirks mentioned in his eulogy, along with his<br />

love for Diet Coke, which he’s sipping steadily<br />

from a Shaquille O’Neal-sized Double Gulp<br />

cup. The third? The Jets, of course.<br />

“Being a Jets fan won’t<br />

affect his judgement?<br />

You’re a f*#@ing Jets<br />

fan, how good could your<br />

judgement be in the<br />

first place?”-@foxboro1212<br />

Brady attended every home game from 1974<br />

to 1985, and fall Sundays are still sacred,<br />

reserved for watching Gang Green with his<br />

dad and graying beagles, Hank and Fred. This<br />

almost evangelical devotion to sports is why,<br />

despite running a startup, he couldn’t pass up<br />

the public editor gig when ESPN offered him<br />

the 18-month post last year.<br />

“I pitched doing the job a little bit<br />

differently, which was getting away from the<br />

daily police blotter kind of stuff. I wanted to<br />

get the readers into it more,” says Brady, who<br />

started Twitter and Facebook accounts for<br />

the public editor. “I’m fascinated by ESPN.<br />

They have these massive contracts with these<br />

leagues at the same time they have to cover<br />

them. That’s the inherent conflict they deal<br />

with every day, and that’s part of what I’m<br />

trying to get at.”<br />

Of the topics he’s covered, none has<br />

received more attention than the network’s<br />

handling of Deflategate, the almost farcical<br />

Patriots football-deflating scandal that resulted<br />

in a four-game suspension for golden boy<br />

quarterback Tom Brady.<br />

“Inside ESPN, its Deflategate missteps are<br />

viewed as isolated incidents coming out of<br />

different departments on different platforms,”<br />

he wrote. “Outside ESPN, these missteps are<br />

viewed by many as part of a concerted effort<br />

to assist the NFL in impugning the Patriots.<br />

The difference between the two positions<br />

is that while the network’s critics have been<br />

consistently loud and persistent, ESPN has<br />

been largely silent. This strategy, in my view,<br />

has served the network poorly.”<br />

Despite taking the network to task for some<br />

unfair treatment of the franchise, he received<br />

plenty of vitriolic feedback, much of it from New<br />

England fans. This is the dilemma of the job.<br />

“If you write anything too nice about<br />

ESPN all the readers think you’re a shill,<br />

and if you write anything that’s too critical<br />

people inside of ESPN will get annoyed with<br />

you. So what?” Brady says. “Some people<br />

don’t quite understand the general concept.<br />

If you’re an EMT in Boston and some guy’s<br />

having a heart attack on a street corner<br />

wearing a Jets jersey, you don’t say, ‘Screw<br />

that guy.’ You save his life because you’re an<br />

EMT. My job is to evaluate the journalism; it<br />

is not even the vaguest of problems in my life<br />

to separate my Jets fandom.”<br />

The irony of the fact that he shares a<br />

surname with the dimple-chinned Pats<br />

quarterback (who owns a 27-7 record as a<br />

starter against the Jets) is not lost on Brady. He<br />

implicitly understands the passion sports can<br />

elicit. So does his living room wall, which bears<br />

a permanent crack from a losing encounter<br />

with his fist following a heartbreaking Jets loss<br />

(aren’t they all?) in 2009.<br />

Violent outbursts are a thing of the past,<br />

says Brady, who swears he’s mild mannered<br />

in all other facets of his life. As the journalistic<br />

watchdog of the self-proclaimed “worldwide<br />

leader,” Brady is keenly aware of the weight of<br />

his words.<br />

“Even a company the size of ESPN is going<br />

to be in trouble if it doesn’t listen to what its<br />

consumers want and note how they react to<br />

the brand,” he says “I think [the public editor]<br />

plays a valuable role as long as you go into it<br />

knowing you’re never going to make everybody<br />

happy. I spent most of my high school life not<br />

being popular, so I’m used to it.”<br />

Pretty heady stuff. For a Jets fan.<br />

FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 35


It’s a common joke among Washingtonians: what’s the official bird of DC? The<br />

crane, of course. The heavy machinery that dominates the skyline in many<br />

corners of the city is the inspiration for second-year MFA student Zarina<br />

Zuparkhodjaeva’s latest work. “I’m very interested in the invasion of space<br />

in an urban setting,” says the Columbia Heights resident, who hand-drew<br />

more than 20 cranes for the piece. The painting is still under construction in<br />

Zuparkhodjaeva’s colorful, second-floor studio in the Katzen Arts Center.


1950s<br />

Martin Ries, CAS/BA ’50, has<br />

released new works of art in <strong>2016</strong>.<br />

martinries.com<br />

1960s<br />

Mark Lando, SOC/BA ’65, wrote<br />

a guide to winning strategies at<br />

the track, Game Plan for Signers,<br />

which has been featured on the<br />

TVG Network.<br />

Georgia Beth Smith Thompson,<br />

CAS/MA ’67, received an<br />

honorary doctorate in community<br />

service from Southern Utah<br />

University in 2015. She served her<br />

professional career at SUU in<br />

various student affairs<br />

assignments, including vice<br />

president.<br />

Abraham Peck, SIS/BA ’68, SIS/<br />

MA ’70, was awarded a doctor<br />

of letters—the highest degree<br />

given by a British university—by<br />

the University of East Anglia,<br />

Norwich, England, in July <strong>2016</strong>.<br />

1970s<br />

Deborah Weinstein, CAS/BA ’70,<br />

received the Legal Intelligencer’s<br />

<strong>2016</strong> Lifetime Achievement<br />

Award. She is among 25<br />

Pennsylvania lawyers who have<br />

been recognized for their work.<br />

David Sacks, SPA/BA ’71, a<br />

probate and family court judge in<br />

Springfield, Massachusetts, has<br />

been named chair of the Trial<br />

Court’s Standing Committee on<br />

Dispute Resolution.<br />

Steve Krevalin, CAS/BA ’73,<br />

was named to Best Lawyers in<br />

America 2017. He received the<br />

honor for family law for the fifth<br />

consecutive year.<br />

Clarence Edwards, SPA/BS ’74,<br />

wrote an online article for<br />

Harvard Law School’s Charles<br />

Hamilton Houston lnstitute for<br />

Race and Justice in July <strong>2016</strong>.<br />

Michael DeCandio, SPA/BS ’75,<br />

an attorney with Marshall<br />

Dennehey Warner Coleman &<br />

Goggin, is among the <strong>2016</strong> Florida<br />

Super Lawyers. He has tried<br />

almost 100 cases to verdict.<br />

Robert Sandler, SPA/BA ’75,<br />

was selected by his peers for<br />

inclusion in the Best<br />

Lawyers in America<br />

2017.<br />

Bruce Taylor,<br />

Kogod/BSBA ’75,<br />

was named to the<br />

board of<br />

Kongsberg<br />

Automotive ASA.<br />

James Brett, SPA/<br />

MPA ’76, has been<br />

appointed by Massachusetts<br />

Governor Charlie Baker to<br />

serve on the Disabled Persons<br />

Protection Commission. He is<br />

also chairman of the Governor’s<br />

Commission for People with<br />

Intellectual Disabilities.<br />

Helene Solomon, SOC/MA ’77,<br />

CEO and cofounder of Solomon<br />

McCown, received Banker &<br />

Tradesman’s Women of Fire<br />

Award, which honors female<br />

leaders in the finance, insurance,<br />

and real estate sectors.<br />

Steve Winter, SOC/BA ’77, is<br />

president and owner of Brotman-<br />

Winter-Fried, a premiere sports<br />

marketing and event management<br />

agency in McLean, Virginia.<br />

1980s<br />

KNOW<br />

ABOUT UPCOMING<br />

EVENTS. VISIT<br />

AMERICAN.EDU/<br />

ALUMNI/EVENTS.<br />

Shirley Neely Ezell McCulloch,<br />

SON/BS ’80, has been selected as<br />

volunteer for Global Seed Peace<br />

Corps to serve in Swaziland,<br />

Africa. She will teach midwifery<br />

at the Southern African Nazarene<br />

University.<br />

David Smith, SPA/BA ’82,<br />

published Peace Jobs: A<br />

Student’s Guide to<br />

Starting a Career<br />

Working for<br />

Peace. He is<br />

a consultant<br />

who works<br />

with colleges<br />

and universities<br />

to promote<br />

peace and conflict<br />

resolution education.<br />

davidjsmithconsulting.com<br />

John Bell, CAS/ME ’83, is<br />

celebrating the 20th anniversary<br />

of his charity, Transitions<br />

Foundation of Guatemala. The<br />

organization just completed a<br />

$1.3 million capital campaign<br />

and constructed a new facility<br />

for manufacturing wheelchairs<br />

and prosthetic limbs, as well as<br />

housing outreach programs for<br />

the disabled.<br />

Larry Chloupek, Kogod/<br />

BSBA ’83, retired from the<br />

National Institutes of Health as<br />

a management liaison director.<br />

He spent 33 years in the federal<br />

government. He and his wife<br />

Jenn retired to Scottsdale,<br />

Arizona.<br />

Leah Devlin, CAS/BA ’83, is<br />

a mystery writer and marine<br />

biologist whose Woods Hole<br />

Mysteries are based on her<br />

career at the Marine Biological<br />

Laboratory in Woods Hole,<br />

Massachusetts. Her third and<br />

latest mystery is The Bends.<br />

The Chesapeake Tugboat<br />

Murders, her upcoming series<br />

about pirates ancient and<br />

modern, is based on her life on<br />

a small tugboat on the upper<br />

Chesapeake. leahdevlin.com<br />

Wendy Strip, SIS/BA ’83, was<br />

named director of advancement<br />

at Detroit Country Day School<br />

with campuses in Bloomfield<br />

Hills and Beverly Hills,<br />

Michigan. She is responsible for<br />

development, alumni relations,<br />

marketing and communications,<br />

and enrollment.<br />

Kenneth Cutshaw, WCL/LLM ’87,<br />

was promoted to president and<br />

CEO at Garden City Group. He<br />

previously served as the president<br />

and chief legal officer for Quiznos<br />

and chairman and CEO of global<br />

advisory group GNG.<br />

AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 37


class notes<br />

Q. HOW MANY US PRESIDENTS HAVE VISITED<br />

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY?<br />

A. It’s only five miles (as the eagle flies) from the archivist’s office to the<br />

Oval Office, so it’s no surprise that so many commanders in chief have<br />

decided to drop by our campus for a visit. AU has hosted eight sitting<br />

presidents (Wilson, both Roosevelts, Harding, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Clinton,<br />

and Obama), one vice president who became president (Coolidge), and two<br />

former presidents (Ford and Carter).<br />

President Barack Obama has made the most visits to AU, with four.<br />

A new exhibit in Bender Library—on display through Inauguration Day<br />

2017—features photos from these significant moments in AU history,<br />

along with audio clips from five presidential speeches.<br />

EMAIL QUESTIONS for AU history wonk Susan McElrath<br />

to magazine@american.edu.<br />

K. David Harrison, SIS/BA ’88,<br />

was appointed associate provost<br />

of Swarthmore College, where he<br />

is also a professor of linguistics.<br />

Carol Leary, CAS/PhD ’88,<br />

released her first book, Achieving<br />

the Dream: A How-To Guide for<br />

Adult Women Seeking a College<br />

Degree. She is president of Bay<br />

Path University.<br />

Susan Shelby, SIS/BA ’88, received<br />

the SMPS Boston Marketing<br />

Professional of the Year Award.<br />

Andrew Friedlander, WCL/<br />

JD ’89, received the <strong>2016</strong> Chair’s<br />

Award at Charles E. Smith Life<br />

Communities’ 106th annual<br />

meeting in May. He was honored<br />

for his role in establishing the<br />

ElderSAFE Center to safeguard<br />

seniors from abuse.<br />

1990s<br />

David Bisbee, Kogod/BS ’90, and<br />

Carolina Peguero, SIS/BA ’09,<br />

SIS/MA ’11, are two proud AU<br />

Eagles currently posted at the<br />

WTO in Geneva.<br />

Christian DeJohn, SPA/BA ’91,<br />

United States Army<br />

veteran, will publish<br />

For Want of A Gun:<br />

The Sherman Tank<br />

Scandal of World<br />

War II in January<br />

2017. The book,<br />

featuring more<br />

than 500 new and<br />

archival images from<br />

museums in the United<br />

States and Europe, is based on<br />

15 years of research and exposes a<br />

little-known scandal of World<br />

War II.<br />

Thomas Ryan, SPA/BA ’91,<br />

author of Spies, Scouts, and<br />

Secrets in the Gettysburg<br />

Campaign, won the Robert E.<br />

Lee Civil War Round Table of<br />

Central New Jersey’s prestigious<br />

<strong>2016</strong> Bachelder-Coddington<br />

Literary Award.<br />

Jeff Carey, CAS/BS ’94, is<br />

among the <strong>2016</strong> Rubys Artist<br />

Project grantees in performing<br />

and media arts.<br />

Adam Jacobson, SOC/BA ’94,<br />

has been appointed editor in<br />

chief of Streamline Publishing’s<br />

Radio + Television Business<br />

Report, an online business-tobusiness<br />

publication. He will<br />

continue to serve as publisher of<br />

the Hispanic Market Overview,<br />

an annual marketing and<br />

UPDATE<br />

YOUR CONTACT<br />

INFORMATION AT<br />

ALUMNIASSOCIATION.<br />

AMERICAN.EDU/<br />

UPDATEINFO.<br />

advertising industry report<br />

distributed through the Fort<br />

Lauderdale-based Adam R.<br />

Jacobson Consultancy.<br />

Rich Rosen, Kogod/BSBA ’94,<br />

is founder of Cornerstone Search,<br />

provider of executive and<br />

sale recruiting for software<br />

companies, which just celebrated<br />

20 years in business. He<br />

recently was inducted<br />

into the Pinnacle<br />

Society, a<br />

consortium of<br />

the most elite<br />

recruiters in the<br />

placement<br />

industry.<br />

Jean Manes, SPA/<br />

MPA ’96, was confirmed<br />

as US Ambassador to El<br />

Salvador. She is a career member<br />

of the Foreign Service.<br />

Patrick Krill, SPA/BA ’97,<br />

WCL/ML ’03, launched Krill<br />

Strategies, a behavioral health<br />

consulting firm exclusively<br />

for the legal profession, after<br />

serving as director of the Legal<br />

Professionals Program at the<br />

Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.<br />

prkrill.com<br />

Staci Garner, SPA/BA ’99, and<br />

her husband, Andrew French,<br />

welcomed their daughter Fiona<br />

Jean Louise on September 9, 2015.<br />

2000s<br />

Paul Haberman, SPA/BA ’00,<br />

opened a law firm following 10<br />

years of practice at other law<br />

firms in the New York area.<br />

paulhabermanlaw.com<br />

CONNECT<br />

alumniassociation.<br />

american.edu<br />

FOLLOW<br />

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LIKE<br />

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<strong>American</strong>UAlum<br />

38 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


Mary Elizabeth “Betsy”<br />

Kennedy, CAS/MS ’00, assisted<br />

in the development and<br />

enhancement of a proprietary<br />

clinical key indicator dashboard<br />

for the pediatric intensive care<br />

unit at Children’s National<br />

Medical Center in Washington,<br />

DC. A study based on the<br />

dashboard appears in the<br />

September 2015 issue of the Joint<br />

Commission Journal on Quality<br />

and Patient Safety.<br />

Ken Biberaj, SPA/BA ’02, and<br />

wife Valerie welcomed son Grant<br />

on July 28, <strong>2016</strong>. Grant joins big<br />

brother Hudson.<br />

Deborah Horwitz, CAS/BA ’04,<br />

launched PreparedPA.com, a prephysician<br />

assistant student advice<br />

and support services site.<br />

Alisa Jorgine Otten, Kogod/<br />

BSBA ’04, and Lucas Tyler Otten<br />

welcomed their second child,<br />

Grace Jorgine, on July 25, <strong>2016</strong>.<br />

Luisa Reyes, SIS/BS ’06, Kogod/<br />

MA ’11, was this year named<br />

to Alexandria’s 40 Under 40<br />

by the Alexandria Chamber of<br />

Commerce.<br />

Adam Cordover, WCL/JD ’07,<br />

SIS/MA ’08, has been contracted<br />

by the <strong>American</strong> Bar Association<br />

to coauthor a book on building a<br />

successful collaborative family<br />

law practice.<br />

Monique Earl, SPA/MPA ’07,<br />

was named Los Angeles<br />

Department of Transportation<br />

assistant general manager.<br />

Jessica Kean, SPA/BA ’07,<br />

a mother of two and child<br />

advocate, is running for the Iowa<br />

State House to represent District<br />

58, which includes Jackson,<br />

Jones, and Dubuque Counties<br />

in eastern Iowa.<br />

BRITTANY STEWART, SIS/BA ’11,<br />

KOGOD/MS ’15 + LILLIE ROSEN,<br />

SIS/BA ’09, SIS/MA ’10<br />

Lillie Rosen and Brittany Stewart have what the doctor ordered: AN APPLE A DAY—or a pear,<br />

or a tomato. The two are colleagues at the food-focused nonprofit DC Greens, whose FRUIT AND<br />

VEGETABLE PRESCRIPTION PROGRAM provides fresh, local produce to patients with<br />

diet-related illnesses. “It’s an actual physical prescription,” Rosen says. Participants bring the Rx to the<br />

“FARMACY” at their local farmers’ market and receive $10 of produce a week for each member of<br />

their family. HUNDREDS OF RECIPIENTS HAVE LOST WEIGHT, but more importantly,<br />

they’ve started coming back for regular checkups. As Rosen, the group’s food access director, puts<br />

it, “they’re getting a literal carrot to come and see their health care provider.” Stewart, the volunteer<br />

coordinator, recruits locals to run the Produce Plus program, which also provides farmers’ market<br />

vouchers to people in need. It’s an ENTHUSIASTIC CORPS OF VOLUNTEERS. “Most want<br />

to get involved in food access and food sustainability issues, and don’t really know how to,” she says.<br />

Produce Plus was created to keep farmers’ markets accessible to everyone in the surrounding<br />

community, and there are 50 PARTICIPATING MARKETS ACROSS ALL EIGHT<br />

WARDS. Stewart also cultivates volunteers for K Street Farm, a three-quarter-acre plot at the<br />

intersection of K Street and New Jersey Avenue. The farm provides job training, and produces<br />

vegetables, fruits, eggs, and honey to supplement the food raised and sold at schools across the city.<br />

The school garden markets are “A BAKE SALE, BUT WITH FRESH PRODUCE, and the<br />

kids run the markets themselves,” she says. The two colleagues hope these and other DC Greens<br />

initiatives will reduce some of the disparities in the nation’s capital. “I grew up in the DC area and just<br />

wanted to have an IMPACT IN THE CITY I LIVED IN,” says Rosen. Stewart sees food as the<br />

natural place to connect: “we all have to eat.”<br />

AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 39


AU’S STAKE IN . .<br />

IF SEATTLE WERE A<br />

WOMAN, she’d likely be<br />

sipping an <strong>American</strong>o (the city<br />

has 15 coffee shops per 10,000<br />

people), and quite possibly be<br />

nose-deep in a novel (it boasts<br />

more libraries and bookstores<br />

per capita than any other city).<br />

Her iPhone would probably<br />

have plenty of Ray Charles,<br />

Jimi Hendrix, and Pearl Jam,<br />

one-time Seattleites, all. Not even<br />

the gloomy weather (Seattle is<br />

enveloped in clouds 294 days a<br />

year) can dampen the rapidly<br />

growing city’s reputation as a<br />

truly cool place to be.<br />

A timber town-turned-tech<br />

hub, Seattle is home to Amazon,<br />

Microsoft, Starbucks, the Space<br />

Needle, and the country’s longest<br />

continuously running farmers’<br />

market. Nestled 100 miles south<br />

of Canada between Lake<br />

Washington and the saltwater<br />

Puget Sound, it’s the largest city<br />

in the Pacific Northwest with<br />

684,000 residents. The Emerald<br />

City is green in every sense of the<br />

word: More people bike to work<br />

than in any other similarly-sized<br />

US city, and 90 percent of the<br />

area’s electricity is produced<br />

using hydropower.<br />

What besides a taste for<br />

salmon and an affinity for<br />

flannel do Seattleites share?<br />

The insider’s knowledge of<br />

the other Washington, gained<br />

while studying at AU. Get to<br />

know a few of our 1,068 Seattle<br />

transplants here.<br />

LEIGH MORGAN, SPA/MSOD ’97<br />

COO, BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION<br />

Working for one of the world’s richest<br />

couples has been exceptionally enriching<br />

for Leigh Morgan in much more than the<br />

monetary sense of the word.<br />

“It’s an incredible privilege to know<br />

that we’re helping build a world where<br />

every person has the opportunity to live<br />

a healthy, productive life,” says the chief<br />

operating officer of the Bill and Melinda<br />

Gates Foundation. “That’s our North Star.<br />

It’s an easy thing to get excited about and<br />

to work really hard on behalf of.”<br />

With an endowment of roughly $40<br />

billion, the foundation is the largest of its<br />

kind on earth. Last year it handed out $4.2<br />

billion in grants to organizations working<br />

toward one of its four core missions:<br />

ensuring children survive and thrive;<br />

empowering the poorest, especially<br />

women and girls, to transform their<br />

lives; combating infectious diseases that<br />

particularly affect the poor; and inspiring<br />

people to take action to change the world.<br />

A native of the Pacific Northwest,<br />

Morgan attended Duke University as an<br />

undergraduate, where she played point<br />

guard for the basketball team. She worked<br />

in government, biotech, and academia<br />

before the Gates Foundation came calling<br />

in 2014.<br />

“Bill and Melinda are remarkable human<br />

beings and remarkable leaders,” she says.<br />

“They set a high bar for us, and their<br />

consistency and values inspire us every day.<br />

We want to ensure that we have a culture<br />

and working practices that enable us to<br />

reach our fullest potential. Doing so, we<br />

think we’ll have an even greater impact in<br />

the world.”<br />

Hard to image that’s possible, but like her<br />

bosses, Morgan believes that with hard work<br />

and determination, almost anything is.<br />

PH0TOS BY ANIL KAPAHI<br />

THE SIREN’S SONG<br />

Next time you’re in the Emerald City, make a pilgrimage to java giant<br />

Starbucks’s original store on First and Pike, across from Seattle’s historic<br />

Pike Place Market. The store, which inspired Starbucks’s signature Pike Place<br />

roast, opened in 1971. Today, Starbucks has 23,000 coffee shops around the<br />

globe—including 50 in its hometown.<br />

FRESH AIR, NO CARES<br />

Despite the frequent drizzle, Seattle is the perfect place to explore<br />

the great outdoors. Residents enjoy cycling, hiking, skiing,<br />

snowboarding, kayaking, sailing, rock climbing, and swimming.<br />

The city also has the 10th best park system in the country,<br />

according to the Trust for Public Land.<br />

40 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


where we are<br />

. SEATTLE<br />

HENDRIX PHOTO BY HENRY DILTZ/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES<br />

WESLEY SCHAUBLE,<br />

CAS/MFA ’04<br />

USER EXPERIENCE ART DIRECTOR, AMAZON<br />

Working for Amazon is “like living in a small town but<br />

knowing all of the shopkeepers,” says Wesley Schauble.<br />

Schauble designs for Fire TV, Echo, and other<br />

digital products—as he puts it, “anything Amazon<br />

creates that has a power button.”<br />

Unlike the typical buildings across Amazon’s South<br />

Lake Union campus, his office is a converted laundry<br />

from the early 1900s. “They gutted the entire building<br />

and created an agency-like feel,” he says. Under 14-foot<br />

ceilings with light pouring down from clerestory<br />

windows, the designers are all on the same floor,<br />

without barriers between them.<br />

But there are barriers to the outside world. This former<br />

laundry is a highly restricted site where the company’s<br />

future is unfolding. Teams here are busy ironing out the<br />

details of confidential products still in development.<br />

“Unfortunately I can’t say too much about what I do<br />

because it gives a lot away,” Schauble says, adding that<br />

“it’s so fascinating to be in a front row seat, seeing<br />

something about to happen for a company of this size.<br />

I feel incredibly honored to be a part of this.”<br />

During a career that has taken Schauble from DC to<br />

Boulder to San Francisco, he has contributed to projects<br />

ranging from designing wakeboards to hand-sketching<br />

all the branding for a pizza chain, with a client list that<br />

includes both the staid Brookings Institution and global<br />

super group U2.<br />

He says moving to Seattle, where he met his wife<br />

and where his son was born, was the best decision he’s<br />

ever made. Biking, hiking, and skiing in the dense green<br />

forests of the Pacific Northwest reminds this Hickory,<br />

North Carolina, native of The Land Before Time. “It’s<br />

the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived.”<br />

ONE FOR THE BOOKS<br />

More than 2 million bookworms flock to the Seattle Central Library on<br />

Fourth Avenue every year. Eleven stories tall, the stunning steel and glass<br />

building—No. 108 on the <strong>American</strong> Institute of Architects’ list of the best US<br />

structures—is packed with nearly 1.5 million books. Be sure to check out the<br />

tenth floor reading room, which boasts views of picturesque Elliott Bay.<br />

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?<br />

Located on the Seattle Center campus adjacent to the Space Needle, the EMP Museum (formerly<br />

the Experience Music Project) is a celebration of contemporary pop culture. Exhibits include<br />

tributes to Jimi Hendrix, Star Trek, and Nirvana, the Seattle trio whose groundbreaking Nevermind<br />

was released 25 years ago this fall. Launched in 2000 by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, EMP<br />

was designed by Frank Gehry, who was inspired by the shapes of electric guitars.<br />

AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 41


JAKE HAELEN<br />

SOC/BA ’07<br />

Jake Haelen GREW UP IN THE KITCHEN of his family’s<br />

Middletown, New York, restaurant. “I’ve been passionate about food<br />

my whole life,” says Haelen, who produces cooking and baking<br />

competitions for FOOD NETWORK AND COOKING<br />

CHANNEL. “Now I’m lucky for it to be my job.” Some of his<br />

favorite projects are focused as much around family as they are<br />

around food. For Kids Baking Championship, Haelen sifts through<br />

casting videos looking for youngsters with a standout personality<br />

and top-notch skills. But technique and passion are just part of the<br />

RECIPE FOR A SUCCESSFUL SEASON. Haelen wants<br />

“the skilled kids, but also the entertaining kids, because we are<br />

making television.” Haelen’s kitchen stages have also tested plenty<br />

of adults. CLASH OF THE GRANDMAS, premiering in<br />

<strong>November</strong>, features super-skilled matriarchs who battle it out for a<br />

$10,000 prize. Haelen’s own grandmother taught him to appreciate<br />

the hard work that goes into a family meal. “I have few memories<br />

of her not in the kitchen,” he says. On HOMEMADE PASTA<br />

NIGHTS in his own kitchen, Haelen’s toddler son is at the counter,<br />

SQUEEZING DOUGH AND THROWING FLOUR. “Not<br />

all that helpful,” he admits, but he’s glad to see that early interest<br />

and a willingness to eat just about anything. “I lucked out.”<br />

42 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong><br />

Laura Petravage, CAS/BA ’07,<br />

completed her doctor of musical<br />

arts degree in choral conducting<br />

at George Mason University. This<br />

fall, she is teaching at Millersville<br />

University in Lancaster,<br />

Pennsylvania, where she<br />

is also completing<br />

post-doctoral work<br />

in the Kodaly<br />

method and<br />

music education.<br />

Stephen Lawson,<br />

Kogod/MS ’09,<br />

was promoted<br />

to partner at Baker<br />

Tilly. He specializes<br />

in providing transactional tax<br />

planning, compliance, and<br />

business advisory services to<br />

companies and their owners.<br />

David Teslicko, SIS/BA ’09,<br />

WCL/JD ’12, married Diana Pak,<br />

WCL/JD ’12, on May 28, <strong>2016</strong>, in<br />

North Beach, Maryland.<br />

2010s<br />

Ashley Peppler Charnetski, SIS/<br />

BA ’10, joined Whitfield & Eddy<br />

Law as an associate attorney in<br />

the firm’s estates, wills, and trusts<br />

group. She will also represent<br />

clients in business matters and<br />

real estate transactions.<br />

Trace Dominguez, SOC/BA ’10,<br />

appears on Discovery Digital<br />

Networks’ flagship show DNews.<br />

President Obama hosted the TV<br />

spinoff, Science Presents DNews,<br />

earlier this year.<br />

Steven Cetel, CAS/BA ’12,<br />

received a doctor of osteopathic<br />

medicine degree from Philadelphia<br />

College of Osteopathic Medicine<br />

in June. He is continuing his<br />

medical training in internal<br />

medicine at Christiana Care in<br />

Newark, Delaware.<br />

KEEP<br />

YOUR FRIENDS IN<br />

THE LOOP. SEND<br />

YOUR UPDATES TO<br />

CLASSNOTES@<br />

AMERICAN.EDU.<br />

Jimmy Fagan Jr., SPA–CAS/<br />

BA ’12, is a candidate for the<br />

Pennsylvania House of<br />

Representatives in the 151st<br />

legislative district.<br />

Scott Silvester, SOC/<br />

MA ’14, is a television<br />

producer in New<br />

Jersey. He and his<br />

team have a new<br />

music television<br />

show: Mixtape<br />

Nation.<br />

Amberly Alene<br />

Ellis, SOC/MFA ’15,<br />

is among the <strong>2016</strong><br />

Rubys Artist Project grantees<br />

in performing and media arts.<br />

Alison Venable, SIS/BA ’15,<br />

began a 10-month term of<br />

national service in FEMA<br />

Corps, an AmeriCorps National<br />

Civilian Community Corps<br />

program. She will assist citizens<br />

and communities that have<br />

been impacted by disasters,<br />

and provide administrative and<br />

logistical support to the nation’s<br />

emergency management system.<br />

Mitchell Zeller, SIS/BA ’15, was<br />

a recipient of this year’s Arthur S.<br />

Flemming Award, which honors<br />

federal government leaders with<br />

between 3 and 15 years of service.<br />

IN MEMORIAM<br />

Robert Hoffman, CAS/BA ’49,<br />

July 16, <strong>2016</strong>, Kings Park, New York<br />

Lloyd McKinley Alston Sr.,<br />

Kogod/MBA ’64, January 31, <strong>2016</strong>,<br />

Baltimore, Maryland<br />

Gary Lande, WCL/JD ’64, September 23,<br />

2015, Encino, California<br />

Mortimer Dittenhofer, Kogod/PhD ’74,<br />

March 4, <strong>2016</strong>, Silver Spring, Maryland<br />

Douglas Dugan, SPA/BS ’81,<br />

July 18, <strong>2016</strong>, Scottsdale, Arizona<br />

PHOTO BY NICK PARISSE


vision + planning = legacy<br />

DONOR NAME<br />

Like many young people before her and scores after, Ruth<br />

Meixner-Bird<br />

Text<br />

moved to Washington, DC, in the 1950s with sights<br />

set on a career in the federal government. Armed with a master’s<br />

in political science from the University of Wisconsin, she landed a<br />

position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Soon after her arrival<br />

in DC, however, Meixner-Bird began taking graduate classes in<br />

painting and art criticism at <strong>American</strong> University—a move that<br />

would spark a colorful career change.<br />

“The study of art can open up new attitudes,” says Meixner-<br />

Bird, pictured above in an MFA studio in the Katzen Arts<br />

Center. “I felt enriched by my experience at AU and was<br />

inspired to go into teaching.” Her newfound profession as an<br />

arts educator included positions at AU, the Corcoran School<br />

of Design, and Montgomery College, where she taught painting<br />

for nearly three decades.<br />

A dedicated supporter of AU, Meixner-Bird included the<br />

university in her charitable estate plans as a way to nurture<br />

generations of students to come. Her future gift will create<br />

an endowed, fully-funded scholarship for students pursuing<br />

a master’s in fine arts at AU’s College of Arts and Sciences.<br />

“Investing in people and education is my legacy,” she says.<br />

Now an award-winning abstract painter, Meixner-Bird<br />

exhibits her work in galleries across the DC area, including<br />

a recent show at the Arts Club of Washington. She hopes<br />

her investment in AU students will inspire them to follow<br />

their creative passions, both as artists and teachers.<br />

FOR INFORMATION INFORMATION ON HOW ON HOW YOUR YOUR VISION VISION AND AND CHARITABLE CHARITABLE ESTATE ESTATE PLANNING PLANNING can can create create a legacy a legacy at <strong>American</strong> at <strong>American</strong> University, University, contact<br />

contact Seth Seth Speyer, Speyer, executive director director of planned of planned giving, giving, at 202-885-5914 at 202-885-3411 or or speyer@american.edu, or visit or visit american.edu/plannedgiving.<br />

AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 43


memories<br />

LET’S TALK<br />

bylines and headlines.<br />

Share your Eagle<br />

stories:<br />

email magazine@<br />

american.edu.<br />

1925<br />

The student-run <strong>American</strong> Eagle (it would<br />

be another 40 years before the paper<br />

shortened its masthead), published its<br />

inaugural newspaper on <strong>November</strong> 20.<br />

“Getting out a first issue is no ‘cinch,’ as all<br />

the staff can tell you,” read a front-page<br />

notice, soliciting both readers and writers.<br />

The four-page broadsheet featured hardhitting<br />

pieces about the University Choral<br />

Society and the student body elections,<br />

and a humor column called “The Eagle<br />

Eye,” which advised female dorm-dwellers<br />

that “despite fits of homesickness, copious<br />

weeping may not be indulged in.”<br />

1963<br />

One day after the assassination of<br />

President John F. Kennedy, the Eagle<br />

published a special edition commemorating<br />

his life and impact. Under a bold, frontpage<br />

headline that read, simply, “SILENCE,”<br />

the paper reported that “On campus<br />

everything halted. Cars were surrounded<br />

by tense clusters of students listening to<br />

staccato news flashes. Students were still<br />

and stunned.” Eagle staffers delivered the<br />

paper and a condolence letter wrapped<br />

in a black ribbon to a White House guard,<br />

who gave it to Kennedy press secretary<br />

Pierre Salinger.<br />

1964<br />

The paper published the first of what<br />

would become an annual tradition: the<br />

Bald Eagle, an April Fools’ issue packed<br />

with fabulously fabricated features<br />

about campus happenings and world<br />

affairs. In 1964, staffers wrote about a<br />

tuition cut, a new beer-friendly policy,<br />

and AU’s second-place finish in a surfing<br />

tournament. Over the years, April 1<br />

issues have been published under such<br />

pun-derful names as the Ego, Beagle,<br />

and Bagel and in 1986, normally neurotic<br />

editors took the joke a step further,<br />

listing the dateline as March 32.<br />

1975<br />

The Eagle commemorated its 50th<br />

anniversary with a four-page special<br />

section showcasing all 24 incarnations<br />

of its masthead, a sampling of its most<br />

colorful headlines (“Permits outnumber<br />

sparking spaces,” and “Trustees: They<br />

came, they saw, they left”) and a roundup<br />

of the most outlandish classified ads.<br />

Twenty-six years later, the Eagle—boasting<br />

yet another nameplate—celebrated its<br />

diamond anniversary (albeit belatedly) by<br />

launching an online edition. Today, all 91<br />

years of Eagle issues have been digitized<br />

and are available on the library website.<br />

44 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


top picks<br />

ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR CALLERY<br />

As a senior on his high school<br />

football team, John<br />

Fitzpatrick, SOC/BA ’06,<br />

weighed a waifish 125<br />

pounds. It’s no wonder, then,<br />

that his pigskin career ended<br />

when he got to college. Still,<br />

Fitzpatrick craved contact, so he<br />

< Average NFL player 6’3”<br />

competed on AU’s rugby club<br />

team and played the sport into<br />

his late 20s, when he tore his<br />

ACL during a touch rugby game.<br />

A marketing manager for the<br />

National Football League<br />

Players Association,<br />

Fitzpatrick has attended the last<br />

five Super Bowls, and he routinely<br />

rubs shoulders with the NFL’s<br />

biggest and brightest stars—as<br />

well as its smallest ones.<br />

“When you shake hands with<br />

some of these guys, they’re so<br />

strong they almost crush<br />

your hand. Anytime you meet<br />

an offensive lineman you’re like,<br />

wow, this guy is massive,” says<br />

Fitzpatrick, who stands five foot<br />

nine inches tall and has bulked<br />

up to 155 pounds. “Then you<br />

meet some other guys and you<br />

think, this guy’s not<br />

much bigger than me,<br />

I can’t believe he’s in the NFL.”<br />

FITZPATRICK’S FAVORITE<br />

PLAYERS SIX FEET OR<br />

UNDER (from tallest to shortest)<br />

1. DREW BREES<br />

Despite standing “only” six feet tall, Brees<br />

has excelled as a quarterback at every<br />

level. In college he was a prolific passer,<br />

but draft experts felt he was too small to<br />

play the position in the NFL. One Super<br />

Bowl win and multiple Pro Bowls later, he’s<br />

proved his doubters wrong.<br />

2. NATE EBNER<br />

The six-foot Ebner played rugby in<br />

college, walked onto the Ohio State<br />

football team, and ended up becoming<br />

a special teams stud for the Patriots.<br />

3. DON BEEBE<br />

At five foot eleven, Beebe makes this list<br />

because of one memorable play; in Super<br />

Bowl XXVII, he chased down Leon Lett<br />

and knocked the football out of his hands<br />

before Lett crossed the goal line. Beebe’s<br />

Bills were hopelessly behind, but his effort<br />

demonstrates why you never give up.<br />

4. DOUG FLUTIE<br />

Among the smallest quarterbacks<br />

ever, the five-foot-ten Flutie had many<br />

memorable moments, including his<br />

legendary 1984 Hail Mary touchdown<br />

pass in college and his drop kick extra<br />

point for New England Patriots in 2006.<br />

5. ANTONIO BROWN<br />

He’s demonstrated that you don’t have<br />

to be big to excel as a wide receiver.<br />

Taken in the sixth round of the NFL draft,<br />

the five-foot-ten Brown has tormented<br />

defenses.<br />

6. DARRELL GREEN<br />

At five foot nine, this two-time Super<br />

Bowl champion and member of the Hall<br />

of Fame was one of the fastest players<br />

in the game for nearly 20 seasons.<br />

7. STEVE SMITH<br />

He’s just plain fun to watch. Always<br />

known for being a fierce competitor,<br />

Smith’s had a very productive career<br />

catching passes across the middle,<br />

despite being five foot nine.<br />

8. BARRY SANDERS<br />

One of the most elusive runners in NFL<br />

history, the five-foot-eight Sanders<br />

averaged more than 1,500 yards a season.<br />

9. DANNY WOODHEAD<br />

One of the top Division II players in college,<br />

Woodhead went undrafted in 2008, largely<br />

because he’s five foot eight. He signed<br />

with the Jets and has contributed for the<br />

Patriots and Chargers.<br />

10. DARREN SPROLES<br />

One of the smallest players in the NFL,<br />

the five-foot-six Sproles specializes in<br />

catching passes out of the backfield.<br />

6 feet<br />

< Average man 5’10”<br />

5 feet<br />

AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 45


Founded amid the Cold War, AU’s<br />

School of International Service (SIS)<br />

has always been committed to serving<br />

the global community and working<br />

towards world peace. Nearly 60 years<br />

later, SIS remains stalwart in its mission<br />

and a leader among schools of its kind.<br />

Recognizing that a lack of knowledge<br />

about the Muslim world is a barrier to<br />

peace, SIS is more determined than<br />

ever to incubate ideas and support<br />

scholarship that better informs policy<br />

making, sparks dialogue, and fosters<br />

greater understanding of Islam, one<br />

of the world’s largest religions.<br />

Ever since President Dwight D. Eisenhower<br />

broke ground on AU’s School of<br />

International Service in 1957, its faculty,<br />

students, and alumni have embodied his<br />

charge to “wage peace.”<br />

Today, the school is strengthening its focus<br />

on the Muslim world with this same mission<br />

in mind. The vast and expanding Muslim<br />

population combined with the complex cultural<br />

and geopolitical climate call for thoughtful<br />

policy and deep international discourse.<br />

SIS has been cultivating powerhouse<br />

faculty, students, and alumni whose work<br />

connects the historical context with the<br />

current state of Islam. Among the school’s<br />

resources devoted to the study of the Muslim<br />

world are two endowed chairs: Ambassador<br />

Akbar Ahmed holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair<br />

in Islamic Studies, a post created in 1981 amid<br />

rising concern that greater Muslim-Western<br />

understanding was needed. Ahmed is joined<br />

on the faculty by Elizabeth Thompson, SIS’s<br />

newly appointed Mohamed Said Farsi Chair<br />

in Islamic Peace.<br />

Yet even with deep global expertise and<br />

international recognition, the school is not<br />

satisfied with the status quo.<br />

“We hope to do three things,” Dean James<br />

Goldgeier says. “Add faculty conducting<br />

research on other countries and regions with<br />

large Muslim populations, such as Indonesia<br />

and Iran; produce policy-relevant academic<br />

research that informs decision makers in<br />

Washington and internationally; and expose<br />

our students to a broad historical and current<br />

understanding of Islam.”<br />

Ahmed—who, according to the BBC, is “the<br />

world’s leading authority on contemporary<br />

Islam”—stresses that this is a critical time for<br />

increased study.<br />

46 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


giving<br />

“So much of the debate today, internally<br />

and externally, is about Islam,” he says.<br />

The fastest growing religion in the world,<br />

according to the Pew Research Center,<br />

“Islam will always be in the news. You<br />

have a billion and a half people.” Ahmed<br />

has devoted his decades-long career to<br />

fostering a deeper understanding of Islam’s<br />

complex historical and cultural roots<br />

among westerners—and vice versa. That<br />

understanding will become even more<br />

critical, with the world’s Muslim population<br />

projected to eclipse that of Christians<br />

by 2070.<br />

Promoting mutual understanding, he<br />

says “is the job of the scholar.”<br />

SIS is especially well positioned to respond<br />

to the public’s growing need to understand<br />

the Muslim world, an understanding that<br />

requires diverse perspectives, Goldgeier says.<br />

“SIS is a very unique school in housing such a<br />

wide variety of academic disciplines without<br />

creating separate departments.”<br />

For years, SIS faculty members have<br />

worked to foster understanding about the<br />

place of Islam in the United States and Europe<br />

through books, film, articles, and op-eds. With<br />

greater resources supporting these experts,<br />

AU’s reach will be amplified, encouraging<br />

critical dialogue and informing policies that<br />

will shape the future of our world.<br />

“At SIS we take great pride in the work<br />

our faculty members do to produce<br />

transformational research and train the next<br />

generation of leaders,” Goldgeier says.<br />

The School of International Service’s<br />

mission to wage peace remains more relevant<br />

than ever. AU is committed to seeing that its<br />

scholars have the resources necessary to grow<br />

and evolve with the ever-changing climate of<br />

an increasingly global society.<br />

FOR INFORMATION on how you can<br />

support the study of the Muslim world, contact<br />

Kristie Cole, SIS chief development officer, at<br />

202-885-1631 or kcole@american.edu.<br />

Elizabeth Thompson, one of the country’s preeminent<br />

historians of the modern Middle East, is the new<br />

Mohamed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace in the School<br />

of International Service. Thompson will continue the<br />

mission of her predecessor, renowned professor<br />

Abdul Aziz Said—who held the post from 1996 until his<br />

retirement last year—of working to promote global peace<br />

through scholarship and policymaking.<br />

The chair was established by AU trustee Hani M. S.<br />

Farsi, SIS/BA ’92, through the London-based Mohamed<br />

S. Farsi Foundation in honor of his father, an architect<br />

and devoted civil servant. The chair, which promotes the<br />

study of Islam and peace, is the first endowed university<br />

chair of its kind in the United States.<br />

A former journalist with degrees from Columbia and<br />

Harvard, Thompson is a scholar of political movements,<br />

democratization, and international intervention in the<br />

Middle East. “I have long sought to bring my scholarly<br />

research to bear on public discourse and policy making<br />

and I thought Washington, DC, would be the perfect<br />

place to engage in that,” says Thompson, who came to<br />

AU this fall from the University of Virginia.<br />

She’s authored two books—Justice Interrupted: The<br />

Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle<br />

East and Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal<br />

Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon—and<br />

is now working on a third, tentatively titled After<br />

Lawrence: Woodrow Wilson and the Promise of Arab<br />

Democracy, about the establishment of a democratic<br />

Arab government in Damascus in 1920.<br />

“Students help me<br />

see things from<br />

a new perspective.”<br />

—Elizabeth Thompson<br />

Thompson describes the book—the first English work<br />

to focus on the Syrian constitutional congress of 1920—as<br />

“the missing sequel” to the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.<br />

The project, which includes a movie inspired by the book,<br />

was kick-started by a grant last year from the Carnegie<br />

Corporation of New York. She is one of 32 such grant<br />

recipients who comprise the inaugural class of Andrew<br />

Carnegie Fellows.<br />

Thompson also looks forward to engaging with young<br />

scholars in the classroom. “Students help me see things<br />

from a new perspective,” she says. And vice versa.<br />

“I’ve received notes from students saying how my course<br />

changed the way they view the world and inspired them to<br />

make the world a better place. That’s so gratifying.”<br />

AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 47


must haves<br />

6<br />

2<br />

4<br />

8<br />

10<br />

1<br />

7<br />

11<br />

3<br />

5<br />

9<br />

*Founders, Lost Sock Roasters (lostsockroasters.com)<br />

1. We saw a creative community taking<br />

shape in DC and recognized the need<br />

for a local roaster. We both love coffee<br />

and in 2015, we launched Lost Sock out<br />

of a warehouse in Brightwood Park.<br />

2. We have an eclectic collection of<br />

mugs. Friends bring us mugs from<br />

their travels. Each one tells a story.<br />

3. Coffee loses 60 percent of its aroma<br />

just 15 minutes after grinding,<br />

resulting in a more muted, stale cup.<br />

We grind our beans immediately<br />

before brewing. This Hario Skerton<br />

hand grinder is perfect for grinding<br />

on the go.<br />

4. Precision is key in brewing and<br />

roasting coffee. We use this Hario Pour<br />

Over scale for each cup to achieve the<br />

desired coffee-to-water ratio.<br />

5. The AeroPress is a great brewing tool<br />

for portability and convenience. It<br />

makes a quick and clean cup of coffee.<br />

6. We’re never without coffee or a camera.<br />

We’re a start-up and we’ve realized how<br />

fast everything happens—that’s why it’s<br />

important to document our progress.<br />

Follow our journey on Instagram<br />

(@lostsockcoffee).<br />

7. As the market for specialty coffee<br />

grows, so does the competition. We<br />

continually read to stay up-to-date<br />

with industry trends and learn as<br />

much as we can to develop our craft.<br />

8. Coffee cupping is like wine tasting,<br />

it tells you what the beans have to<br />

offer, flavor-wise. We roast 12 pounds<br />

at a time, 6 to 18 batches a day. We<br />

“cup” throughout the process to<br />

ensure quality.<br />

9. The trier—a small tool that’s part of<br />

the roaster—represents the “art” of<br />

roasting. It helps us make tweaks based<br />

on what the coffee looks and smells like.<br />

10. Our roaster is equipped with<br />

thermocouples that send four different<br />

temperature readings to the laptop. We<br />

adjust based on the readings—that’s<br />

the “science” behind roasting.<br />

11. Right now, we both work part-time jobs.<br />

We carry Baron Fig pocket planners to<br />

help organize our days and to jot down<br />

ideas on the run.<br />

48 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2016</strong>


YOU’RE INVITED TO TALK POLITICS AND CELEBRATE THE 58TH<br />

PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURATION WITH FELLOW AU ALUMNI<br />

Thursday, January 19, 2017<br />

6 to 9 p.m.<br />

Washington College of Law<br />

ALUMNIASSOCIATION.AMERICAN.EDU/INAUGURATION2017


NON-PROFIT ORG<br />

US POSTAGE PAID<br />

BURLINGTON, VT 05401<br />

WASHINGTON, DC 20016-8002<br />

PERMIT NO. 604<br />

Address Service Requested<br />

For information regarding the<br />

accreditation and state licensing of<br />

<strong>American</strong> University, please visit<br />

american.edu/academics.<br />

Hung Lin’s Jui Jin Shan (Old Gold Mountain) was displayed this fall at<br />

the <strong>American</strong> University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center as part of the<br />

Daughter of China, Resident Alien exhibition.<br />

• It’s made of 225,000 fortune cookies from My Lucky Fortune near Baltimore.<br />

• They came unwrapped and without fortunes, although a few fortunes<br />

slipped through.<br />

• It took seven people two weeks to create the mountain of cookies. Total<br />

installation time was three weeks.<br />

• The railroad tracks are from the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore.<br />

• The work clocks in at 6,750,000 calories. Based on a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet,<br />

it would take one person nine years and three months to eat all the cookies.<br />

• It weighs 3,968 pounds—as much as a Ford Taurus.<br />

• The work contains 1,984 pounds of sugar.<br />

DEconstructed<br />

There are few things more <strong>American</strong> than Chinese fortune cookies. The prescient<br />

treats first appeared at San Francisco’s Japanese Tea Garden in the 1890s, and<br />

actually were flops when they were introduced in China a century later.<br />

Today, more than 3 billion cookies are made each year. California-based Passport<br />

Food Group makes 25 million annually.<br />

“If you’re an Asian food company, you have to do fortune cookies,” says Rodney<br />

Naylor, SIS/BA ’84, Passport’s vice president of sales and marketing. “When I bring<br />

customers into the plant, they all want to see how fortune cookies are made.”<br />

First, a mixture of flour, sugar, vanilla, and sesame seed oil is shaped into silver<br />

dollar-sized pancakes. It’s then folded before a machine inserts the fortune (prior to<br />

the cookie being folded a final time). Ah yes, the fortune. Where do those bite-sized<br />

words of wisdom come from, anyway? At Passport, from the minds of its employees.<br />

The company maintains a database of more than 1,800 fortunes that were written by<br />

everyone from machinists to accountants.<br />

“To me, a fortune cookie is a minute of happiness for a customer,” Naylor says.<br />

“It’s one of the last free gifts you get anymore. It’s like the Cracker Jack prize—you<br />

know there’s one in every box.”<br />

Or, when it comes to Chinese food, one in every carryout bag.<br />

We’re looking for the wisest, wittiest, or wackiest fortune cookie<br />

message. Send us your 12-words-or-less nugget of knowledge, and<br />

we’ll pick our favorite and send the winner a $50 gift certificate<br />

to a Chinese restaurant of their choice. Email fortune to magazine@american.edu or<br />

tweet us at @AU_<strong>American</strong>Mag by December 16.

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