Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
PINT-SIZED POP DIVA<br />
SHAPES D.C. ARTS SCENE<br />
p. 18<br />
KNICKKNACKS<br />
THAT INSPIRE<br />
p. 22<br />
NFL RETIREE SCORES<br />
UNDER ARMOUR GIG<br />
p. 26<br />
UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE MONTH 2012<br />
SIX NEW AMERICANS<br />
SHARE STORIES<br />
OF CITIZENSHIP<br />
p. 26
An AU insider’s<br />
perspective on next page
AMERICAN<br />
<strong>American</strong> University magazine<br />
Vol. 64, No. 2<br />
VICE PRESIDENT,<br />
COMMUNICATIONS<br />
Teresa Flannery<br />
ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT,<br />
CREATIVE SERVICES<br />
Kevin Grasty<br />
PREVIOUS PAGE: OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO<br />
Six months into her job as WHITE HOUSE PRESS<br />
ASSISTANT—the third post she’s held at 1600<br />
Pennsylvania Avenue—Hannah Hankins still has to PINCH<br />
HERSELF. “This is why I came to AU: a school with a<br />
tradition of public service, just miles from the seats of<br />
power,” says the native Minnesotan, one of five AU alumni<br />
in the communications office.<br />
Though the hours are long (14-hour shifts aren’t unusual)<br />
and the work is demanding (army crawling on the ground<br />
to wrangle photojournalists while President Barack Obama<br />
delivers a speech is also surprisingly common), she thrives<br />
on the 0-TO-60 PACE.<br />
Hankins, who interned at the White House her<br />
senior year, taking 8:40 p.m. classes to finish her public<br />
communications degree, also relishes being A WITNESS<br />
TO HISTORY. “There are moments every week when I<br />
think, ‘I can’t believe I’m here to see this.’”<br />
18<br />
Meet CAS alumna<br />
Alice Denney: doyenne<br />
of D.C. art<br />
22<br />
Professors share<br />
objects that arouse<br />
their intellectual<br />
curiosity<br />
26<br />
Six who decided<br />
permanent residency<br />
wasn’t enough<br />
32<br />
Ryan Kuehl, Kogod ’07,<br />
goes from locker room<br />
to boardroom<br />
1 POV<br />
4 4400 Mass Ave<br />
Ideas, people, perspectives<br />
Hannah Hankins,<br />
SOC/BA ’11<br />
16 Metrocentered<br />
SENIOR EDITOR<br />
Adrienne Frank, SPA/MS ’08<br />
ASSOCIATE EDITORS<br />
Suzanne Bechamps<br />
Mariel Davis<br />
Ali Kahn<br />
WRITERS<br />
Mariel Davis<br />
Lee Fleming<br />
Adrienne Frank<br />
Ali Kahn<br />
Mike Unger<br />
ART DIRECTOR<br />
Maria Jackson<br />
WORK STUDY<br />
Tiffany Wong, SOC/BA ’14<br />
PHOTOGRAPHER<br />
Jeffrey Watts<br />
CLASS NOTES<br />
Traci Crockett<br />
34 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 118,000, <strong>American</strong> is sent<br />
to alumni and other members<br />
of the university community.<br />
Copyright©<strong>2013</strong>.<br />
An equal opportunity,<br />
affirmative action university.<br />
UP 14-002<br />
For information regarding the<br />
accreditation and state licensing<br />
of <strong>American</strong> University, please<br />
visit american.edu/academics<br />
Frankly Speaking<br />
I always knew I wanted to work in magazines.<br />
At the tender age of 8, I “published” my first magazine,<br />
Frankly Speaking, for my family. The kelly green cover<br />
featured a hand-drawn T-Rex with the headline: “All<br />
about dinosaurs.” I was a one-girl shop, serving as<br />
writer, editor, illustrator, and marketing exec, hawking<br />
subscriptions to my grandma, parents, and friends.<br />
I spent hours at the kitchen table tapping away on my<br />
mom’s old typewriter, penning missives about family<br />
trips to Disneyland, my new baby brother, and Beverly<br />
Cleary’s latest book. I relished the smell of pages hot off<br />
the Xerox machine, collating and stapling each issue<br />
with great care and pride. My Little Ponies and Care<br />
Bears were fine. But this? This was fun.<br />
Years later, it’s still fun. Working on <strong>American</strong><br />
magazine is the greatest and most enjoyable creative<br />
challenge I’ve ever known. One of the best parts of the<br />
job (besides the fact that I now leave illustrations to the<br />
professionals) is meeting engaging alumni who invite<br />
us, as writers, editors, designers, and photographers,<br />
and you, the reader, into their world. It’s a thrill and a<br />
privilege to share their stories.<br />
This issue, you’ll meet Dullah Hassan, one of six new<br />
<strong>American</strong>s writer Mike Unger profiles in our cover<br />
story. The freshman, who’s currently pursuing his<br />
<strong>American</strong> citizenship, didn’t receive a formal education<br />
until he was 11—seven years after his family fled Taliban<br />
ruled Afghanistan. Dullah’s story is heart-wrenching<br />
and inspiring; he truly represents the best of AU.<br />
We take you inside the White House briefing room,<br />
where alumna Hannah Hankins’s job is the envy of<br />
political wonks across D.C., and to Under Armour’s<br />
sprawling Baltimore campus, where alumnus and<br />
former NFL player Ryan Kuehl shares a sneak peek at<br />
the athletic apparel you’ll be sporting next year. We also<br />
introduce you to nine fascinating professors, who detail<br />
the objects that inspire and guide their research, from<br />
social impact gaming to agricultural biodiversity.<br />
While there are no stories about dinosaurs to be<br />
found, I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as<br />
we’ve enjoyed creating it.<br />
Adrienne Frank<br />
Senior editor<br />
Send story ideas to afrank@american.edu.
syllabus<br />
expert<br />
GOVERNMENT 326<br />
History of the Conservative<br />
Movement: 1945–Present<br />
What are conservatives—Reagan,<br />
Ryan, Cheney, and Cruz—trying<br />
to conserve?<br />
That’s the question Christopher<br />
Malagisi, SPA/BA ’03, poses to<br />
budding political scientists in his<br />
popular course that examines<br />
the philosophical and political<br />
underpinnings of the conservative<br />
movement, which rose to<br />
prominence after World War II.<br />
“It’s no mystery that most AU<br />
students lean left,” says Malagisi,<br />
president and founder of the Young<br />
Conservatives Coalition. “I like to<br />
play devil’s advocate,” leading to<br />
lively debates around William F.<br />
Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, Russell<br />
Kirk, and other conservative minds.<br />
“It’s important to understand<br />
all sides of the political argument.”<br />
Next on<br />
the agenda<br />
GOVERNMENT 531<br />
Watergate: A Constitutional Crisis<br />
Longtime White House reporter<br />
Don Fulsom, who penned a 2012<br />
book about Nixon’s presidency,<br />
brings to life a crucial chapter in<br />
history for students born decades<br />
after the scandal rocked D.C.<br />
HISTORY 288<br />
Oliver Stone’s America<br />
Peter Kuznick’s course, which<br />
explores Kennedy, the Vietnam<br />
War, Watergate, and 9/11, raises<br />
questions about artistic license<br />
and the shaping of popular<br />
historical consciousness.<br />
3 MINUTES ON . . . The Minimum Wage<br />
David Kautter<br />
Managing director, Kogod Tax Center and<br />
executive in residence, Department of Accounting<br />
and Taxation, Kogod School of Business<br />
The minimum wage was enacted<br />
in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor<br />
Standards Act. It<br />
was 25 cents.<br />
Congress tried to<br />
enact one once before, but it was<br />
ruled unconstitutional in the<br />
early ’30s.<br />
Its primary<br />
purpose was<br />
to prevent<br />
employers from taking<br />
advantage of employees.<br />
Over time, other arguments<br />
have been made, including<br />
fairness. Some say<br />
it’s not fair for people<br />
who work hard<br />
to not get paid at<br />
least a “reasonable amount” of<br />
money. Another argument is<br />
redistribution:<br />
essentially, if the employees don’t<br />
get the money it will go to the<br />
business owners in the form<br />
of higher<br />
profits.<br />
A critical question<br />
has always been whether by<br />
increasing the federal minimum<br />
wage, which must be done by<br />
Congress, you raise the cost<br />
of labor,<br />
so that<br />
employers<br />
can afford less labor. Therefore<br />
businesses just don’t hire as<br />
many people because they can’t<br />
make enough money at the<br />
higher rate.<br />
The idea of a living<br />
wage—a higher minimum<br />
wage instituted by states,<br />
counties, or cities—emerged as a<br />
major issue in the late<br />
’90s. The highest at the moment<br />
is in San Francisco. The issue<br />
there is that the minimum wage<br />
is not what<br />
most would<br />
consider a<br />
living wage,<br />
and so while it sets<br />
a floor on what employers can<br />
pay, it’s not enough to live on.<br />
One of the challenges<br />
with the debate in Washington,<br />
D.C., has been that<br />
it has focused on a<br />
particular segment<br />
of employers—like Walmart—as<br />
opposed to all employers. The key<br />
challenge for cities in particular is<br />
that businesses can move out to<br />
the suburbs,<br />
where they can<br />
keep the same<br />
customers and pay less in wages.<br />
In the District, I think the<br />
weakness in the debate was that<br />
they picked out a piece in the<br />
market, so-called “big box<br />
retailers.” If it’s good<br />
policy, isn’t it good for everybody?<br />
If you can’t afford a wage of that<br />
magnitude in your city, then<br />
you’re probably better off not<br />
having a living wage policy.<br />
It’s estimated that only about<br />
50 percent of people earning<br />
minimum wage are part of<br />
families that<br />
make less<br />
than<br />
$40,000<br />
a year. The<br />
other half are<br />
teenagers or spouses, people<br />
who have other earners in the<br />
household making well above<br />
the minimum wage.<br />
When the minimum wage goes<br />
up, who pays? It can<br />
either be the owner of the<br />
business through smaller profits,<br />
or it can be added to<br />
the cost of the<br />
service or the good.<br />
The other issue<br />
with raising the wage is that<br />
people earning minimum wage<br />
tend to consume almost<br />
every dollar they make.<br />
What that’s going to do is create<br />
more demand in the market. You<br />
just hope that it doesn’t get so<br />
active that it<br />
doesn’t have an<br />
adverse impact on<br />
inflation.<br />
It’s a fascinating<br />
issue on which<br />
there are generally not a lot of<br />
crystal clear answers. It comes<br />
down more to philosophy than<br />
hard economics.<br />
4 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 5
news<br />
Harvest Home—a costeffective,<br />
energy-efficient<br />
dwelling designed by Team<br />
Capitol D.C., comprising 100<br />
students and faculty from AU,<br />
Catholic University, and George<br />
Washington University—took<br />
home seventh place at the U.S.<br />
Department of Energy’s Solar<br />
Decathlon, October 3–13 in<br />
Irvine, California.<br />
The biennial competition<br />
challenged 16 collegiate teams<br />
from around the world to design,<br />
build, and operate solarpowered<br />
houses. AU handled<br />
communications, filming<br />
construction, blogging, building<br />
a website, and pitching the story<br />
to media. The D.C. team finished<br />
fifth in the communications<br />
AU ON THE ASCENT<br />
competition, one of 10 areas in<br />
which teams were ranked.<br />
Relying on a solar thermal<br />
system, Harvest Home features<br />
a flat plate collector to heat the<br />
hot water supply. The roof is<br />
designed to send rainwater<br />
into a rainwater barrel, which<br />
will be used to irrigate the<br />
landscape. Many of the<br />
construction materials were<br />
salvaged from buildings slated<br />
for demolition, and the flooring<br />
was taken from a nineteenthcentury<br />
church. Since the team<br />
will donate the house to the<br />
nonprofit Wounded Warrior<br />
Homes, the structure boasts a<br />
bathroom and bedroom that are<br />
compliant with the <strong>American</strong>s<br />
with Disabilities Act.<br />
“Going from rendering to<br />
reality, it’s astonishing what these<br />
kids and faculties have done,” says<br />
SOC faculty advisor Larry Engel.<br />
AU landed at no. 75—up two spots from last year—on the U.S. News<br />
and World Report’s 2014 list of top national universities, released in<br />
September. In the last decade, AU has leapt 24 spots, from no. 99.<br />
The Washington College of Law is among the best law schools in the<br />
country, according to BusinessInsider.com. WCL checks in at no. 23 on<br />
the list, released last month.<br />
The business and technology website asked 400 <strong>American</strong> legal<br />
professionals to select 10 law schools that best prepare students for a<br />
legal career. Criteria included diversity and need-based scholarships,<br />
“which are essential for a top-notch legal education,” says dean<br />
Claudio Grossman.<br />
In other numbers, Hispanic Business named WCL the top law school<br />
in the country for Hispanics. Ranked no. 2 last year, WCL seized the top<br />
spot from the University of Texas at Austin.<br />
“It’s an especially remarkable achievement that WCL is ranked no.<br />
1 for Latino students in the nation, when we are not located in a region<br />
known for its large Latino population—like southern California, Texas,<br />
or South Florida,” says Tony Varona, associate dean for faculty and<br />
academic affairs.<br />
The publication’s <strong>2013</strong> diversity report ranks law schools based on<br />
enrollment, faculty, reputation, retention rate, and ability to recruit,<br />
support, and mentor Hispanic students.<br />
Hispanics make up 15.6 percent of WCL’s student body and 13.5<br />
percent of the full-time faculty.<br />
ROAD RACING, FUNDRAISING<br />
Forget dialing for dollars. AU’s Methodist chaplain Mark Schaefer cycled for<br />
cash, pedaling from D.C. to Chicago to raise $5,000 for fellowship activities and<br />
student service projects. The 800-mile trek took 10 days, including a pair of pit<br />
stops for flat tires.<br />
PHOTO BY JASON FLAKES/U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY SOLAR DECATHLON<br />
Jeffrey Harris, whose<br />
groundbreaking research on<br />
conflicts of interest between<br />
traders and regulators led to<br />
a major restructuring of the<br />
NASDAQ in the mid-’90s, is the<br />
inaugural Gary D. Cohn Goldman<br />
Sachs Endowed Chair in<br />
Finance. The chair was created<br />
by Cohn, Kogod/BSBA ’82, and<br />
Goldman Sachs, where Cohn<br />
serves as president and COO.<br />
Former chief economist at<br />
the U.S. Commodity Futures<br />
Trading Commission, Harris’s<br />
current research focuses on<br />
trading networks and how<br />
market rule changes affect<br />
trading behavior.<br />
TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL<br />
“I like to be hands-on when I<br />
teach and involve my students in<br />
as much of my research as I can,”<br />
says Harris. “By pushing their<br />
boundaries, I think students are<br />
better prepared for life beyond<br />
the classroom.”<br />
The endowed chair isn’t<br />
the only headline coming<br />
out of Kogod: the school has<br />
redesigned its full-time MBA.<br />
The new 49-credit program<br />
includes a study abroad<br />
experience and two signature<br />
courses, Business at the<br />
Private and Public Intersection<br />
and Management in the<br />
International Economy. Teams<br />
of students will also work with<br />
a faculty advisor on a consulting<br />
project for a real-world client.<br />
Kogod will welcome its first<br />
cohort in fall 2014.<br />
Two years ago, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia entered<br />
Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The famed cultural institution was teetering<br />
on the brink of ruin, but thanks to the William Penn Foundation, the<br />
orchestra is enjoying a renewal.<br />
The foundation, which funds research that fosters creativity<br />
and enhances civic life, has tapped AU arts management professor<br />
Andrew Taylor to lead a three-year investigation into how three<br />
Philadelphia arts organizations, including the orchestra, can diversify<br />
their audiences and expand their financial capacity. Taylor, who came<br />
to CAS last year from the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at<br />
the Wisconsin School of Business, will work with international arts<br />
consultant Adrian Ellis, former executive director of jazz at Lincoln<br />
Center, on the $350,000 research project.<br />
“Capitalizing Change in the Performing Arts” will also look at Opera<br />
Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Ballet.<br />
The Sierra Club named AU the nation’s ninth “coolest school.” The<br />
environmental organization praised AU’s sustainability efforts, including<br />
its commitment to carbon neutrality by 2020, a new campus-wide<br />
composting program, and “a contraption called the Vegawatt,” which<br />
turns cooking oil into electricity.<br />
The job offer came a day after Mike Brown, SOC/BA ’13, collected<br />
his diploma.<br />
As soon as he arrived home in New York, the film and media arts<br />
major raced back to Baltimore, the host city of the Emmy-winning House<br />
of Cards, where he would work as an assistant to casting director and<br />
CAS alumna Kimberly Skyrme. Within a few hours, Brown was rubbing<br />
elbows with Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, and director David Fincher.<br />
Set in Washington, D.C., but filmed in neighboring Maryland, the<br />
Netflix original series explores power and corruption at the highest<br />
levels of government. Each 13-episode season debuts in its entirety<br />
exclusively on Netlfix; season two hits the Web in February.<br />
A budding writer and director, Brown interned in the show’s casting<br />
office as an SOC student. He says working with actors has given him a<br />
new insight into the filming process.<br />
“There are so many different actors who walk through our doors.<br />
Sixty people will come in one day, and all 60 will interpret the lines a<br />
little differently,” says Brown, who also works as a lighting and camera<br />
stand-in for several actors.<br />
Though he’s not spilling any secrets about season two—will Spacey’s<br />
conniving (and murderous) Sen. Frank Underwood land the vice<br />
presidency?—Brown says it’s been a thrill working on set.<br />
“What you see on camera almost mirrors what is behind it. It’s<br />
so political and fast and cutthroat.”<br />
LGBT LEADER<br />
AU is the first university in the District—and one of only three<br />
dozen in the United States—to offer extended health benefits<br />
to transgender students. The new policy covers up to $500,000<br />
of surgical costs related to transitioning—all without raising<br />
premiums more than a few pennies.<br />
6 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 7
mastery<br />
community<br />
Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers:<br />
The Story of Success offers a formula<br />
for success—being born at the right<br />
place and time and investing at least<br />
10,000 hours in pursuit of your<br />
goal. It’s about being focused and<br />
impassioned and pursing a dream.<br />
Meet one of AU’s outliers: musician<br />
in residence Yuliya Gorenman.<br />
1975 Father gave<br />
her a score of Beethoven<br />
Piano Sonatas to<br />
commemorate her<br />
first recital.<br />
1968 Born in<br />
Odessa, Ukraine, to an<br />
economics professor<br />
father and a musician<br />
mother. Grew up in<br />
Kazakhstan.<br />
1990 Arrived in San Francisco the<br />
night of Super Bowl XXIV with $314 in<br />
hand. Began English classes; recited<br />
“Old MacDonald Had a Farm” alongside<br />
Buddhist monks and Afghan refugees.<br />
1990–1992 Took<br />
lessons—two times more<br />
than she paid for—with<br />
Nathan Schwartz at the San<br />
Francisco Conservatory.<br />
1997 Began teaching at AU<br />
and giving private lessons at her<br />
Silver Spring home.<br />
1971 Slept on top of<br />
the piano while her sister<br />
and mother played. “I felt<br />
the vibrations through my<br />
entire body.”<br />
1980 Gave first 90-minute<br />
recital. “I was scared to death.<br />
I tell my students, ‘the first<br />
thousand times it’s hard, but it<br />
gets easier.’”<br />
1993 Enrolled at the<br />
Peabody Conservatory and<br />
worked with Leon Fleisher.<br />
2009 Founded<br />
MiClaire Records and<br />
joined the Recording<br />
Academy.<br />
1975 Began<br />
studying piano with<br />
mother Svetlana.<br />
Played “a sad song<br />
about a wounded<br />
Cuban communist”<br />
by ear—the first hint<br />
of her perfect pitch.<br />
1986–1989 After attending<br />
St. Petersburg Conservatory, the<br />
Berlin Wall fell and “Soviet rule as<br />
I knew it disintegrated.”<br />
1990 Won $400 in a<br />
competition and earned<br />
$100 playing show tunes<br />
for a sorority fashion<br />
show at UC–Berkley. “I<br />
was supposed to be a<br />
pedicurist or a nurse—<br />
then I discovered I could<br />
make a living off music.”<br />
2001–2003 Recorded all<br />
the Beethoven Piano Concerti and<br />
the Triple Concerto live with the<br />
Bavarian Chamber Orchestra.<br />
“I can count on one hand the<br />
number of times that’s been done.”<br />
1975 Accepted to the Special<br />
Music School for Gifted Children<br />
in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and began<br />
taking six lessons per week.<br />
1989 Family fled Kazakhstan,<br />
traveling through Slovakia, Austria,<br />
and Italy en route to the U.S. After<br />
hearing her play Bach on the organ,<br />
an Austrian priest gave her the key to<br />
the church to practice. “That saved<br />
me. We had no country, but that piece<br />
of my identity remained.”<br />
1995 Placed fourth, earning her<br />
laureate, at the monthlong Queen<br />
Elisabeth Competition, broadcast<br />
live across Europe. Competed as “a<br />
person without a country.” Weeks<br />
later, became a U.S. citizen.<br />
2007–2011<br />
Performed all 32 sonatas<br />
at AU’s Katzen Arts<br />
Center. “The last note<br />
ended very quietly—I<br />
didn’t want to share that<br />
moment with anyone.”<br />
2007 Adopted Michael and Claire—born one week<br />
apart—from Guatemala. “Everyone told me my career<br />
was over.” Decided to perform the complete cycle of<br />
Beethoven Piano Sonatas: “It’s like climbing Everest<br />
backwards in high heels.”<br />
2011–<strong>2013</strong> Launched the Gorenman<br />
Piano Project, exploring works by Bach, Chopin,<br />
and others. Performed first concert days after<br />
mother’s death. “I still hear her in every note.”<br />
DONALD CURTIS DOESN’T<br />
HAVE A SECOND TO<br />
SPARE. As a master’s student<br />
in SOC’s public communication<br />
program, the full-time operations<br />
and program coordinator for the<br />
Center for Community Engagement<br />
and Service, staff advisor for the<br />
Black Student Association and other<br />
campus clubs, and father of twomonth-old<br />
Isaiah with fiancee,<br />
Lisa Coleman, WCL ’11, his calendar<br />
is perpetually double booked.<br />
Yet Curtis, 32, always has time for<br />
one of his kings. The founder of the<br />
Alexandria Kings Basketball<br />
Association, a youth organization<br />
that uses hoops as a tool to enhance<br />
the athletic, academic, and social<br />
awareness of the 8- to 17-year-olds it<br />
serves, Curtis coaches his kids on<br />
the nuances of b-ball and life.<br />
Driving hard<br />
Raised in a single-parent home<br />
in Landover, Maryland, Curtis<br />
struggled in high school before<br />
basketball motivated him to raise<br />
his attendance and grades. After<br />
college, he saw what the sport<br />
did for his brother, for whom the<br />
support of coaches and teammates<br />
provided a path to higher education.<br />
He wants to provide that same<br />
direction for the hundreds of<br />
northern Virginia youth whom his<br />
nonprofit serves. More than 95<br />
percent of participants enroll in<br />
college, he says.<br />
“Somebody invested a lot of<br />
time and belief in me, and I’ve seen<br />
it work for me and other people,”<br />
he says. “When parents call me and<br />
say ‘I can’t get through to my son,<br />
can you help me?’ I feel like ‘Wow,<br />
this is where I was meant to be.’”<br />
8 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 9
play<br />
news<br />
The legions of<br />
people who walk<br />
through the main<br />
hall into Bender<br />
Arena each year<br />
are welcomed by<br />
the smiling faces<br />
of the best student-athletes and<br />
coaches in <strong>American</strong> University<br />
history. Sixty-seven plaques hang<br />
on the two walls, immortalizing<br />
the members of the Stafford H.<br />
“Pop” Cassell Hall of Fame.<br />
The hall was established<br />
nearly 45 years ago, and over<br />
time it’s grown to be the most<br />
visible reminder on campus of the<br />
Eagles’ storied athletic past.<br />
“You want to recognize those<br />
people and thank them for their<br />
contributions and the sacrifices<br />
they made to the university,”<br />
says renowned sports journalist<br />
David Aldridge, SOC/BA ’87. “It is<br />
always gratifying when you walk<br />
into Bender and see all the names<br />
on the wall. I recognize many of<br />
them and I know what they went<br />
through to achieve at AU. People<br />
really have to give of themselves<br />
to achieve here. Luckily we have<br />
people with terrific character and<br />
work ethic who make the best of<br />
their situations.”<br />
Aldridge serves as emcee<br />
of the annual Hall of Fame<br />
induction festivities, next slated<br />
for February 22. The inductees<br />
will be the late James Monkman<br />
’71 (men’s golf ) and Avery John<br />
’99 (men’s soccer).<br />
“All the past Hall of Famers<br />
come back,” says Jack Cassell,<br />
Pop’s son and a member of the<br />
AU Board of Trustees and the<br />
Hall of Fame committee. “It’s<br />
neat to hear the stories about<br />
their time at AU. It’s not always<br />
about what they gave AU; they’re<br />
actually thanking AU for what<br />
it gave them.”<br />
Anyone can nominate a<br />
student-athlete for the hall.<br />
After the athletics department<br />
vets candidates, the committee<br />
of 12 votes for two or three<br />
for induction.<br />
“They need to be among the<br />
top athletes of their era,” Cassell<br />
says. “We also judge the integrity<br />
of the athletes. Because the<br />
events are really nice and we have<br />
such a prominent hall here that<br />
athletes walk by every day, people<br />
are aspiring to it now.”<br />
Below are 40 of the 67 plagues on the wall<br />
in Bender. To see all the inductees go to<br />
aueagles.edu.<br />
Good news: student loan debt<br />
at AU is at a five-year low. The<br />
Class of 2012 graduated with<br />
8 percent less debt than the<br />
previous class—and 15 percent<br />
less than the Class of 2009.<br />
Nearly half of the Class of 2012<br />
graduated debt-free.<br />
The dip in loan debt is<br />
credited to moderate tuition<br />
increases at or near the rate of<br />
inflation; a financial literacy<br />
campaign (american.edu/<br />
collegeaffordability), which<br />
helps students understand<br />
the long-term impact of loan<br />
choices; and increased financial<br />
aid efforts. Last year, AU<br />
provided $75 million in aid.<br />
In 2010, AU was named<br />
among schools with the highest<br />
student loan debt—the result<br />
of a few students who took out<br />
high-interest private loans,<br />
skewing the data. AU is now<br />
more judicious about referring<br />
students to private loans, which<br />
don’t require the same scrutiny<br />
as federal loans. Fewer students<br />
are now taking on private loans.<br />
“We have a responsibility to<br />
ensure that students have the<br />
knowledge and tools to navigate<br />
their finances while in school<br />
and beyond,” says Brian Lee<br />
Sang, director of financial aid.<br />
“AU has made positive progress<br />
toward reducing the debt<br />
burden of our graduates.”<br />
Internet governance. The phrase<br />
conjures an image of whitehaired<br />
men in dark suits sitting<br />
around an oval table in a stuffy,<br />
charmless conference room<br />
deciding what people can and<br />
cannot access online.<br />
The picture, in this case,<br />
couldn’t be further from the<br />
truth. Google it—no one person,<br />
government, or company runs the<br />
Internet. Better yet, read School of<br />
Communication professor Laura<br />
“When a<br />
government<br />
wants to<br />
control or<br />
regulate some<br />
aspect of<br />
behavior online,<br />
they can’t do<br />
it directly.<br />
They have to<br />
go through an<br />
information<br />
intermediary,<br />
a private<br />
company.<br />
This raises<br />
questions about<br />
accountability<br />
and the<br />
obligations<br />
that are being<br />
placed on<br />
private entities.”<br />
DeNardis’s new book, The Global<br />
War for Internet Governance.<br />
“There’s a mosaic of control,<br />
a constantly shifting balance of<br />
powers between democratically<br />
elected governments, intergovernmental<br />
forces, private<br />
industry, and the public,” says<br />
DeNardis, an expert on the many<br />
entanglements of the web. “When<br />
that balance of power exists, there<br />
can be democratic collaboration<br />
and transparency.”<br />
In her fourth book on the<br />
subject, DeNardis explores the<br />
positives and pitfalls of a rapidly<br />
changing process that increasingly<br />
relies on private companies rather<br />
than nation-states.<br />
“Governance is set through<br />
some government policies but also<br />
through the policies of private<br />
companies like Google, Twitter,<br />
AT&T, and Verizon,” she says.<br />
“When a government wants to<br />
control or regulate some aspect<br />
of behavior online, they can’t do it<br />
directly. They have to go through<br />
an information intermediary,<br />
a private company. This raises<br />
questions about accountability<br />
and the obligations that are being<br />
placed on private entities.”<br />
When users sign up for sites<br />
like Gmail or Facebook, they<br />
must agree to terms that no one,<br />
DeNardis says, actually reads.<br />
“They explain what our privacy<br />
rights are,” she says. “What<br />
information we’re accessing and<br />
who we’re talking to at any given<br />
moment. What are the limits to<br />
this? Should I be able to say, ‘I<br />
don’t want to be tracked?’”<br />
The bottom line, DeNardis<br />
says, is that the democratic public<br />
sphere that has always been<br />
critical to culture, individual<br />
identity, and communication no<br />
longer exists merely in the real<br />
world—it’s moved online.<br />
“Conflicts of Internet<br />
governance on a global level<br />
are the spaces where political<br />
and economic power is being<br />
determined in the twentyfirst<br />
century.”<br />
A SPIKE IN WINNING<br />
MOVIN’ ON UP<br />
GANGLAND GRANT<br />
70 YEARS OF GOOD AD-VICE<br />
Senior Juliana Crum racked up backto-back<br />
Patriot League Player of the<br />
Week honors while leading the women’s<br />
volleyball team to three-straight<br />
conference victories to start the season.<br />
Megan Gebbia, AU’s new women’s basketball coach,<br />
is used to winning. As an assistant for the past<br />
10 seasons at Marist College, she was a major part<br />
of eight straight, and nine overall, Metro Atlantic<br />
Athletic Conference championship teams.<br />
“I am extremely excited about getting my first head<br />
coaching position at AU,” she says. “This is an exciting<br />
time to be a part of the AU community, and I look<br />
forward to the challenges that lie ahead.”<br />
The National Institute of Justice has awarded a $671,000 grant to SPA’s<br />
Edward Maguire and the Center for Latin <strong>American</strong> and Latino Studies to<br />
examine the local and transnational structure of the MS-13 gang. The<br />
two-year project will help law enforcement understand the evolution of the<br />
violent gang, which has a heavy presence in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.<br />
Smokey the Bear and Rosie the Riveter are just a few of the familiar faces<br />
who appear in SOC professor Wendy Melillo’s new book, How McGruff and<br />
the Crying Indian Changed America: A History of Iconic Ad Council Campaigns.<br />
The book examines the efficacy and impact of more than 400 public service<br />
announcements since 1942.<br />
10 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 11
tobacco used as<br />
“country money” in the<br />
colonies. jamestown<br />
settlers pay for their<br />
wives’ passage with<br />
120 lbs. of tobacco.<br />
DATE: 1619<br />
<strong>American</strong> Indians, who<br />
hadbeen using tobacco in<br />
religious practices and as<br />
a pain killer since 1 BC,<br />
give Christopher Columbus<br />
dried tobacco leaves.<br />
DATE: 1492<br />
ADRIENNE FRANK<br />
Tobacco helps finance<br />
the <strong>American</strong> Revolution.<br />
Benjamin Franklin<br />
offers the French<br />
5 million lbs. of Virginia<br />
tobacco as loan collateral.<br />
DATE: 1776<br />
-<br />
Civil War soldiers receive<br />
tobacco with their rations.<br />
During Sherman' s march ,<br />
Union soldiers, now<br />
hooked on the mild, sweet<br />
tobacco of the south,<br />
raid warehouses for some<br />
chew on the way home.<br />
HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE<br />
GREAT AMERICAN SMOKEOUT?<br />
In August, AU became the first smoke- and tobacco-free<br />
campus in Washington, joining nearly 800 colleges and<br />
universities across the country where the use of chew,<br />
cloves, cigars, and cigarettes has gone up in, well, smoke.<br />
It’s no shock that AU—long committed to the health<br />
and well-being of students, faculty, and staff—snuffed<br />
out tobacco. What might surprise you is that bans like<br />
AU’s are nothing new.<br />
CASH CROP<br />
Nearly four centuries ago in 1632, the Massachusetts<br />
Bay Colony banned smoking in public, citing moral,<br />
not health, concerns. (It would be another 150 years<br />
before scientists and physicians began reporting on<br />
the deleterious effects of smoking.) Other cities and<br />
colonies, worried about fire danger and claims that<br />
smoking led to drunkenness, followed. In 1639, Governor<br />
Williem Kieft beat Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the<br />
punch by 364 years, banning smoking across New<br />
Amsterdam, which later became New York.<br />
While some thought smoking a drag, there was<br />
no denying tobacco’s economic importance. Tobacco<br />
was used as a monetary standard—literally a cash<br />
crop—across the colonies. Years later, it bankrolled the<br />
<strong>American</strong> Revolution (“If you can’t send money, send<br />
tobacco,” General George Washington implored his<br />
countrymen) and the Civil War after that. It served as<br />
“life insurance” for Lewis and Clark as they explored<br />
the northwest, and it birthed what is today a $35 billion<br />
per year industry.<br />
Lucy loved cigarettes (the 1950s sitcom was<br />
sponsored by Phillip Morris), and America’s arbiter of<br />
etiquette, Emily Post, politely deferred to smokers,<br />
writing in 1940 that “those who smoke outnumber those<br />
who do not by a hundred to one, [so nonsmokers] must<br />
learn to adapt.” (Post’s numbers were a bit off: only<br />
40 percent of adults smoked.) And those anti-tobacco<br />
laws? They were overturned by the early 1900s. States<br />
steered clear of the issue until California enacted a ban<br />
in 1995, thus sparking a new wave of legislation. Today,<br />
28 states and D.C. prohibit smoking in enclosed public<br />
spaces, including bars and restaurants.<br />
Like the contradictions of the cigarette—a source<br />
of pleasure and pain, commonplace yet controversial,<br />
a moneymaker and a heartbreaker—America has<br />
always had a love-hate relationship with tobacco.<br />
IT’S TOASTED<br />
The Industrial Revolution gave rise to two industries<br />
that have since become inextricably linked: tobacco<br />
companies that could, for the first time, distribute<br />
their products en mass across the country, and<br />
advertising agencies, charged with marketing tobacco<br />
to national audiences.<br />
In 1895, Thomas Edison’s company produced the first<br />
motion picture commercial: an ad for Admiral cigarettes.<br />
Over the next two decades, Camels and Lucky Strike,<br />
which boasted the slogan “It’s toasted” (just like every<br />
other cigarette), became household names. In 1921, R. J.<br />
Reynolds spent $8 million to launch its new tagline: “I’d<br />
walk a mile for a Camel.”<br />
In 1933, advertisers scored their biggest coup yet.<br />
“After careful consideration of the extent to which<br />
cigarettes were used by physicians in practice,” the<br />
Journal of the <strong>American</strong> Medical Association published its<br />
first cigarette ad, a practice that continued for 20 years.<br />
The mid-twentieth century saw the birth of the<br />
Marlboro man (a Texas ranch hand named Carl Bradley<br />
who actually smoked Kools) and the “More doctors<br />
smoke Camels” campaign. The Beatles’s debut on the<br />
Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 featured an ad for Kent<br />
Micronite Filter. It was removed in a 2004 DVD of the<br />
show and replaced with a Pillsbury spot.<br />
Although publications like Good Housekeeping<br />
refused to run cigarette ads, tobacco companies’<br />
advertising budgets ballooned. Today, companies spend<br />
$8.8 billion—or $24 million a day—on marketing.<br />
FASHIONABLE POISON<br />
Isaac Adler was the first physician to suggest a strong<br />
link between smoking and cancer. The year was 1901.<br />
Over the next century, scientific evidence inventorying<br />
the dangers of smoking mounted. Strangely enough,<br />
consumption of what the New York Anti-Tobacco Society<br />
termed a “fashionable poison” also grew.<br />
Annual consumption peaked at 640 billion<br />
cigarettes in 1981—the same year the Federal Trade<br />
Commission concluded that warning labels on<br />
cigarettes, instituted in 1965, had little effect on public<br />
knowledge and attitudes about smoking. Lung cancer,<br />
once the rarest of diseases (there were only 140<br />
documented cases in 1889), is today the most common<br />
cancer worldwide, accounting for 1.3 million deaths<br />
annually, according to the <strong>American</strong> Lung Association.<br />
The last few decades of the twentieth century<br />
marked a sea change: the Defense Department stopped<br />
distributing cigarettes in C-rations; the <strong>American</strong><br />
Cancer Society launched the Great <strong>American</strong> Smokeout;<br />
the Food and Drug Administration approved nicotine<br />
gum as a smoking cessation aid; Congress banned<br />
smoking on all flights; and cigarette taxes skyrocketed.<br />
Even Mr. Potato Head kicked the habit in 1986 when, at<br />
the behest of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, Hasbro<br />
pulled the pipe from among the spud’s accessories.<br />
According to the <strong>American</strong> Cancer Society,<br />
consumption stands at 19 percent—down from 42<br />
percent in 1965. (Despite the dip, the United States<br />
continues to be among the world’s leading producers<br />
of tobacco leaves.) More and more <strong>American</strong>s are<br />
struggling to quit. About 1.3 million kick the habit each<br />
year, including President Barack Obama, who finally<br />
beat his 30-year addiction in 2011.<br />
Will bans like AU’s, which have enjoyed a<br />
renaissance in the last few decades, help even more<br />
<strong>American</strong>s join the ranks of nonsmokers? Of course,<br />
that’s the hope, but as Mark Twain famously quipped:<br />
“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world.<br />
I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.”<br />
So goes our love-hate relationship with tobacco.<br />
TV ads for cigarettes are<br />
pulled off the airwaves on<br />
January 2 (to allow networks<br />
one last cash windfall during<br />
New Year’s Day football<br />
games). Cigarettes are still<br />
the most heavily advertised<br />
product, after automobiles.<br />
DATE: 1971<br />
Fearing it will lead children<br />
to smoke, baseball great Honus<br />
Wagner orders his photo removed<br />
from the <strong>American</strong> Tobacco<br />
Company’s cigarette packs, making<br />
his card the most valuable of all<br />
time (worth $500,000).<br />
R. J. Reynolds introduces<br />
Camel, the f irst pre-blended,<br />
packaged cigarette, in<br />
packs of 20. Twenty<br />
years later, R. J. Reynolds<br />
introduces 10-pack<br />
cartons.<br />
R. J. Reynolds begins its<br />
“ more doctors smoke<br />
Camels” ad campaign, which<br />
runs for eight years.<br />
CBS airs the first TV<br />
report linking cigarettes<br />
with lung cancer. For the<br />
first time ever, Edward<br />
R. Murrow is not seen<br />
smoking. (He died of<br />
lung cancer in 1965.)<br />
DATE: 1864 DATE: 1909<br />
DATE: 1913 DATE: 1946 DATE: 1955<br />
THE SURGEON GENERAL’S<br />
WARNING (CAUTION:<br />
CIGARETTE SMOKING MAY<br />
BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR<br />
HEALTH) APPEARS ON<br />
PACKAGING.<br />
DATE: 1965<br />
12 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 13
wonk<br />
on campus<br />
Q. Why are we so fascinated by vampires? What do<br />
vampire narratives reveal about us and our society?<br />
A. This is the question I ask my students at the end<br />
of the class. What we can say is that vampire stories are<br />
prominent in times of great change. This is when people<br />
come up with a vampire. It’s escapist, but it gives them the<br />
chance to deal with their fears.<br />
The vampire is a foil on which we can project all of our<br />
fears as a culture. It’s like a blank space: the vampire is<br />
fictional, so it’s safe to think about our fears in a fictional<br />
fantasy world. In the last 200 years, the vampire served to<br />
negotiate fears of immigration or of women who wanted<br />
the right to vote, so the vampire came in and killed only<br />
strong women. Fears of urbanization, industrialization—<br />
the vampire would stand in for all of these things. Every<br />
generation took the vampire as a signifier for another fear.<br />
And I think this is how it perpetuated itself as a story.<br />
The idea of blood as the carrier of life was an<br />
invention of English-language vampire stories of the early<br />
nineteenth century. Later the heart was considered the<br />
life force—so we had monsters who ate the heart. Today<br />
zombies eat brains. This is because our culture determines<br />
death according to brain activity, so now the brain is the<br />
carrier of life force. The vampire, of course, is feeding off<br />
the life force. So blood is actually old-fashioned in that<br />
regard—but it has survived in the narratives because blood<br />
continues to signify other key concepts, such as race,<br />
nationalism, and disease in today’s society.<br />
KATHARINA VESTER<br />
Department of History professor<br />
and director of the <strong>American</strong><br />
Studies Program, College of Arts<br />
and Sciences<br />
The vampire<br />
gives us unique<br />
access to the<br />
past, allows us to<br />
look at our fears<br />
as if through<br />
a magnifying<br />
glass and to<br />
understand<br />
something about<br />
a culture in a way<br />
that we cannot<br />
get through<br />
historical<br />
documents.<br />
EMMY-AWARD WINNING<br />
newsman Anderson Cooper is AU’s<br />
<strong>2013</strong> Wonk of the Year. The CNN<br />
journalist collected the award at a<br />
packed Bender Arena, October 19,<br />
during All-<strong>American</strong> Weekend.<br />
Lauded for his reporting from<br />
some of the most perilous places<br />
on the planet—Egypt and Syria<br />
among them—Cooper, 46, garnered<br />
widespread praise for his emotional,<br />
hard-hitting coverage of Hurricane<br />
Katrina in 2005, which helped CNN<br />
land a prestigious Peabody Award.<br />
Cooper, whose brother<br />
committed suicide in 1988, says<br />
he empathizes with other people’s<br />
suffering. “I wanted to be around<br />
other people who spoke the<br />
language of loss. I found when<br />
I went to wars, when I went to<br />
places where terrible things were<br />
happening, life felt very real there<br />
and very precious,” says Cooper<br />
“You can’t stop suffering. You can’t<br />
stop terrible things from happening,<br />
but you can bear witness.”<br />
Celebrating<br />
changemakers<br />
Honored by the Kennedy Political<br />
Union (KPU), which marks its 45th<br />
anniversary this year, Cooper<br />
is AU’s second Wonk of the Year.<br />
President Bill Clinton collected the<br />
inaugural trophy in 2012.<br />
KPU created the award to<br />
recognize a well-known individual<br />
who represents the embodiment<br />
of a wonk: someone smart,<br />
passionate, focused, and engaged<br />
who creates meaningful change in<br />
the world.<br />
14 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 15
STOP<br />
NUMBER<br />
LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 17
BY LEE FLEMING<br />
Alice Denney<br />
She had artist Claes Oldenburg<br />
as a temporary tenant in her<br />
basement. She turned a derelict<br />
opera house in downtown<br />
D.C. into a mecca for artists,<br />
curators, and collectors from<br />
around the world. And in the<br />
process, she almost single-handedly created a<br />
contemporary art scene in the nation’s capital.<br />
At 91, Alice Denney, the pint-sized powerhouse<br />
whom many call the doyenne of Washington<br />
art, remains a force to be reckoned with.<br />
Distinguished by signature giant sunglasses<br />
and striking headpieces—from a striped<br />
Cat in the Hat-inspired creation by couture<br />
milliner Philip Treacy to a crocheted beer-can<br />
number—Denney is still scouring galleries,<br />
museum exhibitions, performance spaces, art<br />
fairs, and artists’ studios in search of the new<br />
and the provocative.<br />
“I just liked talking to the artists,” she says<br />
about how and why she got into the art world.<br />
“That got me interested in doing things.”<br />
Denney has never been one to hesitate to<br />
engage people or experiences. Even as a child<br />
in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, she would enlist<br />
available talent to her projects. Gene Kelly was<br />
an 18-year-old counselor at the camp near her<br />
family’s summer cabin when Denney, then 12,<br />
saw him dance. “He was good, so I asked if he’d<br />
like to be in one of my shows”—referring to the<br />
productions she would mount with local kids.<br />
“He said yes, and he came to our house and had<br />
a great time, so he kept coming back.”<br />
While a student at Duke, Denney took<br />
art history courses, which she loved. But her<br />
passion really developed when, as a young<br />
bride, she and friends would visit New York<br />
galleries and hang out at the fabled Cedar<br />
Tavern in Greenwich Village, where Willem<br />
de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and<br />
other abstract expressionist artists held court.<br />
“It was so exciting hearing them talk about<br />
their ideas,” she says. By the time Denney and<br />
her late husband George moved to Washington<br />
in the 1950s, she was hooked on the New<br />
York movements that were transforming<br />
contemporary art.<br />
DENNEY’S<br />
EXPERIENCES<br />
WITH THE AU FINE<br />
ARTS FACULTY<br />
HAD A MAJOR<br />
IMPACT ON HER<br />
EARLIEST EFFORTS<br />
George had been recruited to work for then<br />
secretary of state Dean Acheson. That left<br />
Denney with time on her hands to explore<br />
the D.C. art scene. “There really was<br />
nothing,” she says. Culture, as it existed in<br />
Washington, consisted of staid museums<br />
whose collections stopped dead at the<br />
post-war period, a few music societies, and<br />
the mainstream Broadway shows that came<br />
through the old National Theatre. “We may<br />
as well have been in a time capsule,”<br />
says Denney.<br />
She set out to change all that. Along the way,<br />
she developed a reputation for her ability to<br />
recognize talent in emerging artists and her<br />
fearlessness to promote the new, the different,<br />
and the challenging. The late Walter Hopps,<br />
founding director of Houston’s Menil<br />
Collection and former curator of twentiethcentury<br />
<strong>American</strong> art at Washington’s National<br />
Collection of Fine Arts (now the Smithsonian<br />
<strong>American</strong> Art Museum), and himself no slouch<br />
when it came to discovering new talent, once<br />
called her “the best eye in the business.”<br />
Jack Rasmussen, director of the <strong>American</strong><br />
University Museum at the Katzen Arts<br />
Center, counts Denney among his earliest<br />
art world mentors. “She told me, ‘Look<br />
for artists you don’t understand. If art by<br />
definition is something that didn’t exist<br />
before, then if you immediately get something,<br />
it probably isn’t art.’”<br />
Denney’s experiences with the fine arts<br />
faculty at AU had a major impact on her early<br />
efforts. Their work on exhibit at the Corcoran<br />
Biennial and at Franz Bader Bookstore and<br />
Gallery sparked her interest in what was<br />
happening at the university. In 1955 she signed<br />
up for a life drawing course taught by Ben “Joe”<br />
Summerford. “The course put me in touch<br />
with artists like Alma Thomas [noted African<br />
<strong>American</strong> abstractionist] and especially the AU<br />
faculty, who were really serious and trying new<br />
things,” she says.<br />
It became clear that Washington artists<br />
needed a place devoted to showing their art.<br />
“They wanted a professional gallery. So I said,<br />
why not start one?”<br />
LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 19
ALICE DENNEY<br />
ON COLLECTING<br />
“MY ADVICE would be to look at a lot of art. If you look at a lot of art in<br />
museums and galleries and studios, and you see what you’ve never quite seen before, pay<br />
attention. When I first saw Barney [Barnett] Newman’s work, I thought, ‘This is nothing.’<br />
But there’s something about it that makes you take a second look. I remember seeing<br />
Howard Mehring’s white-on-white painting. I had not seen anything like it, so I invited him<br />
to be part of Jefferson Place [Gallery]. Ken [Kenneth Noland] also was struggling about<br />
where to take his work, so I brought him into Jefferson Place too. I even bought his blue<br />
circle painting with orange for $200—which I eventually sold. Later that same painting<br />
became part of the Andy Williams collection and recently went at auction for $2 million.<br />
But back then, no one would buy Ken’s work or Jasper Johns’s or a lot of people who are<br />
big names today.<br />
“KNOWING the artists is really a big part of it. For example, I bought a<br />
little [Robert] Rauschenberg that was sitting in Leo Castelli’s bathtub in the bathroom<br />
of his gallery at 477 East 77th Street, his early gallery before he moved to SoHo.<br />
Who knew we’d all become such good friends? But we did. So always try to meet the<br />
artists. Get a sense of their integrity, their spirit, their seriousness. And go to every<br />
show you can. Do this, then go home, and if there’s something you really remember,<br />
it’s something you should try.<br />
“IT’S A GOOD IDEA to find artists when they are young, before<br />
they’ve made it, and follow them. If you’re starting out but don’t have a lot of money,<br />
get to know the artists and the dealers who can point you in interesting directions.<br />
Really, it can be a full-time job.”<br />
A<br />
group of artists ponied<br />
up $100 each to join; for<br />
$200, Denney rented a big,<br />
second-story space at the<br />
corner of Jefferson Place and<br />
Connecticut Avenue, NW. In<br />
fall 1957, the Jefferson Place<br />
Gallery opened with a roster that included AU<br />
fine arts faculty—painters Helene McKinsey<br />
Herzbrun, Ben “Joe” Summerford, and<br />
Robert Gates, and sculptor William Howard<br />
Calfee—and local painters Mary Orwen, Shelby<br />
Shackelford, and Kenneth Noland.<br />
“We got loads of publicity,” Denney says.<br />
“It was so new, this idea of a gallery that<br />
wasn’t also selling jewelry or books.” The buzz<br />
attracted a young reporter named Tom Wolfe,<br />
who became a regular at Jefferson Place. “He<br />
was bored in D.C.,” Denney remembers. “He<br />
said this was the only place in the city where<br />
there was any excitement.”<br />
Despite the many people who came to look<br />
at the “contemporary stuff” by artists from<br />
Washington, New York, and the West Coast,<br />
few actually bought anything. “I practically<br />
had to beat people up,” she says, “to get them to<br />
pay $125 for a Jasper Johns drawing that today<br />
would go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”<br />
Denney and her friends were ready for<br />
a cultural sea change. That change came in<br />
<strong>November</strong> 1960 with the election of John F.<br />
Kennedy as president. “He and Jackie actually<br />
seemed to have some interest in the arts,” says<br />
Denney. The Kennedys imbued the capital<br />
with a new spirit, inspiring Denney and friends<br />
to talk seriously about starting a world-class<br />
institution focused on modern art.<br />
In 1962 the Washington Gallery of Modern<br />
Art, backed by a high-profile board and an<br />
energetic staff, made its debut with a Franz<br />
“HE [TOM WOLFE]<br />
SAID THIS WAS<br />
THE ONLY<br />
PLACE IN THE<br />
CITY WHERE<br />
THERE WAS ANY<br />
EXCITEMENT.”<br />
Kline retrospective, the first ever, honoring the<br />
artist who had died the previous spring at the<br />
age of 51. The show and the gallery, which was<br />
located in a spacious, renovated town house<br />
just off Dupont Circle and conveniently down<br />
the street from the Jockey Club, got lots of<br />
press—in all the right places. “It was a great<br />
start,” says Denney, who was then assistant<br />
director. “But the question was, would we be<br />
able to maintain this high level?”<br />
The answer was a resounding yes, the<br />
proof in a major exhibition titled The Popular<br />
Image, which opened in 1963. A multi-venue<br />
showcase for pop art, Denney brought together<br />
a lineup of impressive but not yet famous<br />
artists that included Jim Dine, Andy Warhol,<br />
Tom Wesselman, Claes Oldenburg, Robert<br />
Rauschenberg, John Cage, Jasper Johns,<br />
George Brecht, and James Rosenquist.<br />
Oldenburg held a happening at a dry<br />
cleaning place on P Street, NW. New York’s<br />
experimental Judson Dance Theater—a<br />
collective of dancers, composers, and visual<br />
artists based in the Village—performed at<br />
the America on Wheels roller skating rink in<br />
Adams Morgan, showcasing dance pioneers<br />
Steve Paxton, Carolyn Brown, Yvonne Rainier,<br />
and David Gordon. And Rauschenberg<br />
made history with the premiere of his iconic<br />
performance piece, Pelican, which was created<br />
for that space and in which the artist skated<br />
around with an open parachute on his back,<br />
an homage to the Wright brothers.<br />
“The art press loved us,” Denney<br />
remembers. But the mainstream media,<br />
including Time and Newsweek, ran pages<br />
mocking the new art, the show, and<br />
Washington’s deluded effort to be hip. On<br />
the other hand, international art impresario<br />
Pontus Hultén, then director of Sweden’s<br />
modern art museum, Moderna Museet, was<br />
so impressed, he told a reporter that it was<br />
“the best and most important assemblage of<br />
pop art that I have ever seen.”<br />
Having brought pop to D.C.,<br />
Denney moved on to the<br />
international stage, serving<br />
as vice commissioner (to<br />
New York’s Jewish Museum<br />
director Alan Solomon’s<br />
commissioner) for the<br />
<strong>American</strong> contingent at the 1964 Venice<br />
Biennale. “We stayed at the old <strong>American</strong><br />
consulate,” she says, on the Grand Canal near<br />
collector Peggy Guggenheim’s pink palazzo.<br />
“At first Peggy didn’t think much of me<br />
or what we were doing, but after a few<br />
parties we ended up as friends. We’d<br />
sunbathe on the terrace with all this art<br />
around, and she’d have her dogs running<br />
all over and cocktails constantly coming.<br />
It was something else.”<br />
Despite the art world politics,<br />
Rauschenberg took the overall grand<br />
prize, a first for an <strong>American</strong>. But to qualify<br />
and meet the judging rules, his work had<br />
to be moved from the ancillary <strong>American</strong><br />
gallery to the official <strong>American</strong> pavilion.<br />
“The only way to do this in the time we<br />
had, basically overnight, was to ferry the<br />
paintings over,” Denney says. Time magazine,<br />
in its coverage of the <strong>American</strong> win, featured<br />
a picture of Denney resolutely holding a<br />
Rauschenberg painting in a U.S. Navy launch<br />
motoring down the Grand Canal to the<br />
exhibition grounds.<br />
On her return to<br />
Washington, Denney<br />
was determined not to<br />
let the momentum die.<br />
She started her own<br />
Private Arts Foundation<br />
(PAF) and, in 1966, put<br />
on a citywide Now Festival, attracting such<br />
emerging talent as Andy Warhol and the<br />
Velvet Underground. “Just to show you how<br />
much people wanted to be part of it, I put<br />
Andy and the Velvet Underground up in the<br />
old Cairo Hotel over by Dupont Circle,” she<br />
says. “The only payment Andy asked for was<br />
four new tires for the car—to get them all<br />
back to New York when they were done.”<br />
PAF enabled Denney to continue offering<br />
grants to artists and to bring theatre and<br />
performance artists to the capital. But<br />
finding space was a challenge. So in 1974,<br />
she founded the Washington Project for the<br />
Arts in an old opera house on G Street, NW.<br />
It quickly became a mecca for those, from<br />
curators to collectors, who were hungry for<br />
the new. Pegboard covered the walls (“Much<br />
easier to hang things that way,” she insists)<br />
but that didn’t deter the artists, who knew<br />
that the WPA could launch careers.<br />
But by 1979, Denney was restless. It was<br />
time to hand the WPA over to others. For her<br />
almost last hurrah, she decided to bring punk<br />
to a decidedly unpunky Washington. “People<br />
thought we were crazy for doing the Punk<br />
Festival. We had fashion, we had the artist<br />
“THE ONLY<br />
PAYMENT ANDY<br />
[WARHOL] ASKED<br />
FOR WAS FOUR<br />
NEW TIRES FOR<br />
THE CAR, TO GET<br />
THEM ALL BACK TO<br />
NEW YORK WHEN<br />
THEY WERE DONE.”<br />
known as Peanut Butter, we had all the<br />
people you’re hearing about again today.” She<br />
pauses. “Look, the Metropolitan Museum<br />
had that huge punk-themed opening earlier<br />
this year—and a lot of the artists who were in<br />
our Punk Festival were in theirs!”<br />
After leaving the WPA, Denney continued<br />
to look at everything, everywhere. And she<br />
still took the time to curate: an Ed Kelly<br />
retrospective at Georgetown’s Museum of<br />
Contemporary Art, a compelling exhibit in<br />
which artists interpreted fashion for Gallery<br />
K, and Good Things Come in Small Packages:<br />
The Collection of Elisabeth French at the<br />
<strong>American</strong> University Museum in 2010.<br />
The latter highlighted Washingtonian<br />
French’s longstanding commitment to<br />
support young, local artists. “People need<br />
to know you can put together a collection<br />
without a lot of money or a lot of space to<br />
put it in,” says Denney.<br />
Two years ago, Denney’s impact on<br />
contemporary art was recognized at the<br />
30th anniversary gala of ArtTable Inc.,<br />
a nonprofit that supports and celebrates<br />
women in the arts. The event, held at the<br />
Museum of Modern Art in New York,<br />
honored a group that included Alanna<br />
Heiss, a major figure in the alternative space<br />
movement who founded P.S. 1 Contemporary<br />
Art Center and the Clocktower Gallery;<br />
artists Miriam Schapiro and Faith Ringgold;<br />
New York Times arts critic Roberta Smith;<br />
and the Guerrilla Girls, an underground<br />
activist artist group.<br />
“What great company,” Denney says.<br />
I still can’t believe I was up there on stage<br />
with them.”<br />
20 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 21
Naden Krogan<br />
Biology, CAS<br />
Todd Prono<br />
Finance and Real Estate, Kogod<br />
Jessica Waters<br />
Justice, Law and Society, SPA<br />
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRIS WORMELL<br />
As a youngster in Saskatchewan, Naden<br />
Krogan spent summers on the family farm<br />
studying crops. It was there, in Canada’s<br />
prairie province, that the seeds of intellectual<br />
curiosity were planted. “And I haven’t left<br />
the lab since,” he says.<br />
Most developmental biologists study<br />
animals, but Krogan’s research on the<br />
formation of patterns in multicellular<br />
organisms centers on plants. He uses “model<br />
organisms” like Physcomitrella patens—moss,<br />
which shares genetic and physiological<br />
processes with vascular plants—to understand<br />
more complicated models of life.<br />
“One of the most fascinating questions in<br />
biology is how a complex organism, with all<br />
its intricate patterns, develops from a single<br />
cell,” says Krogan, who began working with<br />
Physcomitrella patens as a biology major at the<br />
University of Regina, Saskatchewan. Lessons<br />
learned from the moss, a tuft of which is the<br />
size of a nickel, can help scientists tackle<br />
everything from global hunger to cancer.<br />
“What we learn from this very simple plant<br />
is fundamental to all organisms,” says Krogan,<br />
who keeps petri dishes of the small but mighty<br />
moss in his AU lab. “I continue to be amazed<br />
by its power.”<br />
His current research focuses on another<br />
model organism: Arabidopsis, a small,<br />
flowering plant closely related to broccoli and<br />
mustard—and the first plant to have its entire<br />
genome sequenced. “If we can manipulate the<br />
genes, we can produce more and bigger fruit<br />
that are more easily harvested.<br />
“We can’t bring crops into the lab, but what<br />
we learn in the lab can be applied to crops.”<br />
Long before he made his first pilgrimage<br />
to Arturo Di Modica’s Charging Bull in his<br />
early 20s, Todd Prono was inspired by what<br />
the iconic bronze sculpture symbolizes:<br />
aggressive financial optimism. The 7,100-pound<br />
bull, which stands proud in Bowling Green<br />
Park, just off Wall Street in lower Manhattan,<br />
represents “a raging market, which has the<br />
implication of a future price path and, by<br />
extension, the variability of prices.”<br />
“That intrigues me,” says the quant<br />
wonk, who came to AU this semester from<br />
the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the<br />
Commodity Futures Trading Commission.<br />
Prono’s fascination with finance began<br />
when he picked up the Wall Street Journal<br />
as a teenager, dabbling in the markets before<br />
heading off to Cornell to study economics.<br />
Today, he’s analyzing something more complex<br />
than the Journal’s stock charts.<br />
The regulator-turned-academic’s research<br />
centers on asset pricing models that are used<br />
by banks, brokerages, and insurance firms to<br />
infer the price of a stock, bond, or derivative.<br />
Prono also works to decipher volatility—the<br />
amount of uncertainty or risk in an asset’s<br />
value—and is developing new models to<br />
estimate volatility, testing their accuracy<br />
through simulated experiments and with<br />
real financial data.<br />
His research informs risk management<br />
practices at financial firms, which seek to<br />
protect their balance sheets against severe<br />
losses that occur in times of financial distress.<br />
“The simple tradeoff between risk and<br />
return—and how we think about managing it—<br />
is compelling,” he says.<br />
For years, Jessica Waters, SPA/BA ’98, WCL/<br />
JD ’03, was an attorney moonlighting as<br />
an adjunct professor. She logged 80 hours<br />
a week at WilmerHale law firm, where<br />
she specialized in criminal defense and<br />
reproductive rights litigation, and taught one<br />
class a week at the Washington College of<br />
Law. “I loved those three hours,” she says.<br />
“I knew it was time for a change.”<br />
Waters joined SPA in 2008, bringing the<br />
courtroom gusto to her classroom. Law, she<br />
tells her students, is more than process and<br />
theory: “We talk about law in the abstract, but<br />
it’s all about people.”<br />
“When someone comes to a lawyer, they’re<br />
in the worst place of their life. That’s a huge<br />
responsibility.”<br />
A reminder of that awesome responsibility<br />
hangs over her desk: a baby quilt for her now<br />
six-year-old son, Finn, made by the mother of<br />
an Iraq War veteran, whom Waters defended<br />
in a federal murder case. The case dragged<br />
on for years, and Waters became close with<br />
the family. “I was touched that she thought<br />
enough of me to do that.”<br />
As director of SPA’s new Politics, Policy,<br />
and Law Scholars Program—a rigorous<br />
three-year bachelor’s degree, which<br />
welcomed its first cohort of 20 students in<br />
August—she reminds students, many of<br />
whom have their sights set on law school,<br />
that even the most monumental cases<br />
started small.<br />
“Look at Tinker vs. Des Moines: three<br />
kids just wanted to protest the Vietnam War,<br />
and that became one of the seminal cases for<br />
student rights in schools.”<br />
LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 23
Andrew Lih,<br />
Journalism, SOC<br />
Chapurukha Kusimba<br />
Anthropology, CAS<br />
Lindsay Grace<br />
Film and Media Arts, SOC<br />
Jane Palmer<br />
Public Administration and Policy, SPA<br />
Michael Bader<br />
Sociology, CAS<br />
Garrett Graddy<br />
Global Environmental Politics, SIS<br />
For decades there was Britannica—then<br />
came Wikipedia. The original social media,<br />
the e-encyclopedia written by anonymous<br />
volunteers, debuted in 2001. Today, it’s the<br />
fifth-most visited website in the world.<br />
It gripped new media pioneer Andrew Lih,<br />
who became the first professor to use Wikipedia<br />
in the classroom a decade ago. He also penned<br />
the preeminent history of the site: The Wikipedia<br />
Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created<br />
the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia.<br />
But he says the number of contributors<br />
has declined since 2007, as the “low-hanging<br />
fruit” has been plucked. “Wikipedia is the sum<br />
of all human knowledge—there’s a natural<br />
cap. There are 4.3 million (English) articles<br />
about elephants and Exxon. The next 4 million<br />
articles won’t be so easy to write.”<br />
One way to ensure Wikipedia doesn’t go the<br />
way of MySpace is by encouraging contributors<br />
to post video to existing articles. (Currently, only<br />
0.1 percent of entries include video.) With laptop<br />
sales dipping and desktop sales plummeting,<br />
Lih predicts people will do that on phablets:<br />
keyboardless computer-phone hybrids, with<br />
six-inch screens perfect for “clicking, browsing,<br />
tapping, shooting, and snapping.” Phablets are<br />
all the rage in Asia, and Lih says <strong>American</strong>s will<br />
soon adopt the technology en masse. “In the<br />
future, people will own just one device.”<br />
Another big opportunity: partnering with<br />
GLAM communities (galleries, libraries,<br />
archives, and museums)—the focus of Lih’s<br />
latest research. “More people learn about items<br />
in a museum’s collection from Wikipedia than<br />
from the museum itself. The Smithsonian just<br />
hired its first Wikipedian in residence.”<br />
Chapurukha Kusimba made a discovery in<br />
his native Kenya this spring that garnered<br />
headlines around the globe: a 600-year-old<br />
Chinese coin minted during the Ming Dynasty.<br />
Unearthed by Kusimba, then curator of African<br />
archaeology and ethnology at Chicago’s Field<br />
Museum of Natural History, on the island of<br />
Manda, the rare coin proves that trade existed<br />
between China and eastern Africa before<br />
European explorers even set sail.<br />
“Trade serves as a way to break down<br />
boundaries that separate communities,”<br />
says AU’s new anthropology chair. Artifacts<br />
like the coin offer insights into everything<br />
from migration to the establishment of<br />
diaspora communities.<br />
As a youngster in Africa—dubbed the<br />
cradle of humankind—Kusimba wanted to be<br />
an anthropologist. “<strong>American</strong> kids want to be<br />
paleontologists and study dinosaurs,” he says.<br />
“African children want to be anthropologists.”<br />
A former research scientist at the National<br />
Museums of Kenya (where he hopes to<br />
establish a field school for AU students),<br />
Kusimba’s investigation of ancient trade<br />
networks frequently takes him to east Africa.<br />
During a 2010 trip, he commissioned an artist<br />
in Ambositra, Madagascar, to carve him an<br />
intricate wood port from a 300-year-old tree,<br />
felled by a Canadian mining company to build<br />
a road. The beautiful piece holds images that<br />
chronicle the island nation’s cultural identity<br />
and tells the story of its 18 ethnic groups<br />
“The artist is trying to come to terms with<br />
the history of his nation during a time of great<br />
turmoil. But despite these differences, he’s<br />
saying ‘we are one.’ That’s so inspiring to me.”<br />
Most six-year-old boys aspire to be firefighters,<br />
astronauts, pro baseball players—but Lindsay<br />
Grace wasn’t most boys. After using his first<br />
computer at school in 1982, he rushed home<br />
and excitedly declared: “This is what I want<br />
to do.”<br />
Soon after, the Massachusetts native began<br />
designing and developing games on his Laser<br />
128. At the tender age of 10, he released his<br />
first game, Super Mystery House, on a 5.25-<br />
inch floppy disc, under the label Mindtoggle.<br />
“I graphed each image on graph paper and<br />
drew each scene in code,” recalls Grace. The<br />
choose-your-own-adventure game “wasn’t<br />
very good,” he admits, “but the programmerartist<br />
was still in middle school.”<br />
Today, Grace—recruited by AU to shape a<br />
new gaming initiative within SOC and CAS—<br />
is a renowned gaming guru. He founded the<br />
Persuasive Play Lab at Miami University, and<br />
his game, Wait, was inducted into the Game<br />
for Change hall of fame this year, as one of<br />
the five best games for social impact in the<br />
last 10 years.<br />
Grace likens social impact gaming to cherryflavored<br />
medicine: entertainment with an<br />
informational twist. The goal is “to construct<br />
educational experiences that help people see<br />
things in a new light. It’s about ‘aha’ moments.”<br />
AU’s new social impact gaming graduate<br />
program, slated for a fall 2014 launch, will<br />
train students to not only produce games but<br />
to evaluate them. That, says Grace, is what<br />
makes AU’s offering unusual.<br />
“It’s a lot of fun to make games, but are<br />
they effective? At the moment, no one’s<br />
evaluating them. There’s a huge opportunity.”<br />
The task: create a family tree, using figurines,<br />
toys, and animals to represent each person.<br />
The 12-year-old Chicago boy—a survivor of<br />
sexual abuse, with whom Jane Palmer worked<br />
for nine months—selected for himself a turtle.<br />
“He felt he had to have a tough exterior, but<br />
he wanted to work on coming out of his shell,”<br />
says Palmer, SPA/PhD ’13. It was then that she<br />
began to understand the needs of survivors<br />
often overlooked by advocates and academics.<br />
Palmer researches the ways in which<br />
survivors of abuse—who, like that boy,<br />
“aren’t normally part of the conversation”—<br />
seek help. While working on her doctorate<br />
in justice, law and society, Palmer held a<br />
National Institute of Justice fellowship,<br />
where she worked on a study of violence<br />
against <strong>American</strong> Indian and native Alaskan<br />
women. “The study’s design had to be<br />
respectful of cultural norms,” she explains.<br />
“In some tribal communities, it’s abusive<br />
to cut a woman’s hair so it was imperative<br />
to include questions about that tactic.”<br />
The former social worker and nonprofit<br />
director’s dissertation focused on another<br />
overlooked population: bystanders. Palmer<br />
examined the role of bystanders in situations<br />
of sexual assault and dating violence<br />
on college campuses. She’s continuing<br />
that research today, evaluating bystander<br />
programs at three universities.<br />
“My research captures new ways of<br />
understanding and preventing violence. I have<br />
faith that when we see something that’s not<br />
right, we want to do something. It’s about a<br />
mass of people—it’s bigger than individual<br />
offenders and individual victims.”<br />
Michael Bader recalls driving through D.C.<br />
as a child and being struck at the sight of<br />
razor wire. Only 20 miles separated his<br />
native Derwood, Maryland, and southeast<br />
Washington, but the budding urban<br />
sociologist was rattled by what he saw.<br />
“Our lives were completely different, and<br />
our chances were completely different. That<br />
had a big influence [on me],” Bader says.<br />
His fascination with the urban environment,<br />
including a boyhood obsession with SimCity,<br />
led him to Rice University, where he studied<br />
architecture. But his interests soon broadened<br />
beyond buildings to the ways in which city<br />
dwellers navigate the built environment.<br />
“I began to wonder how social and racial<br />
inequality are perpetuated in cities,” says<br />
Bader, a member of AU’s Center on Health,<br />
Risk, and Society, an interdisciplinary<br />
community of scholars that looks beyond<br />
biomedical technology to examine the social<br />
dimensions of health.<br />
Bader, who coauthored a study this summer<br />
on retail investment as a barometer for teenage<br />
obesity, has two projects in the works: an<br />
examination of the ethnic and racial turnover<br />
of neighborhoods in New York City, Chicago,<br />
Houston, and Los Angeles from 1970 to 2010,<br />
funded by the National Science Foundation;<br />
and the Google Street View Project, which<br />
assesses neighborhood walkability and<br />
disorder. The latter is funded by a $250,000<br />
grant from the National Institutes of Health.<br />
Though he’s come a long way from<br />
SimCity, Bader says one of the lessons learned<br />
from the computer game still applies to his<br />
work today: “space matters.”<br />
The granddaughter of a Kentucky grower,<br />
Garrett Graddy grew up on the family farm but<br />
never had much interest in the family business.<br />
“Then I started traveling and discovered<br />
that the plight of the small-scale farmer was<br />
both personally and intellectually intriguing.”<br />
High in the Andes—3,000 miles from home—<br />
“I discovered my research question.”<br />
A cultural geographer and political<br />
ecologist, Graddy’s research on agricultural<br />
biodiversity conservation has taken her across<br />
the Americas. This year, she published a<br />
pair of journal articles about her work with<br />
six indigenous Peruvian potato farming<br />
communities, who have repatriated 1,000<br />
native varieties of their crop in hopes of<br />
adapting to—and surviving—climate change.<br />
Graddy’s research on the seed banking<br />
system that’s helping farmers in Parque<br />
de la Papa (Potato Park) diversify their<br />
crops figures prominently in the book she’s<br />
penning on the politics of agricultural<br />
biodiversity conservation. It highlights the<br />
genetic erosion of crops around the globe,<br />
the history of conservation measures, and the<br />
seed-saving movement, which is taking root<br />
in the United States.<br />
To cultivate a crop base that’s adaptive and<br />
diverse, the seed-saving movement encourages<br />
farmers to use open-pollinated, heirloom<br />
seeds—passed down from generations—rather<br />
than seeds from a store.<br />
“A grower with a beloved seed variety will<br />
trade it with her neighbor,” says Graddy. “On<br />
the ground, agricultural biodiversity looks like<br />
heirloom seeds. They’re beautiful and packed<br />
with cultural memory and indigenous identity.”<br />
24 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 25
BY MIKE UNGER<br />
PUSHED BY THEIR HEARTS, THEIR HEADS, OR THEIR WALLETS,<br />
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE EACH YEAR BECOME U.S. CITIZENS.<br />
HERE ARE A FEW OF THEIR AMERICAN STORIES.<br />
26 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong>
“IT’S HIGHLY<br />
EMOTIONAL.<br />
MANY TIMES<br />
PEOPLE CRY AT<br />
NATURALIZATION<br />
PROCEDURES.<br />
ARE THEY CRYING<br />
BECAUSE THEY’RE<br />
SO HAPPY TO BE<br />
AMERICANS? FOR<br />
MANY I THINK<br />
THAT’S TRUE. ARE<br />
THEY CRYING<br />
BECAUSE THEY’RE<br />
LEAVING SOMETHING<br />
BEHIND AND CUTTING<br />
THEMSELVES OFF<br />
FROM A DIMENSION<br />
OF THEIR FORMER<br />
LIFE? IT IS A VERY<br />
IMPORTANT MOMENT<br />
OF TRANSITION.”<br />
—ALAN KRAUT,<br />
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY<br />
“I’M ALWAYS<br />
GOING TO BE AN<br />
AFGHAN, BUT<br />
I’M ALSO AN<br />
AMERICAN NOW.”<br />
Eleven-year-old Mohammadulla Hassan’s<br />
days were spent in the manner of men.<br />
Inside the cramped two-room apartment<br />
he shared with his parents, five of his seven<br />
siblings, and another family in Islamabad,<br />
Pakistan, he’d be jostled awake by 7 a.m.,<br />
then head to work. At the local bizarre he<br />
sold plastic bags for two rupees each (turning<br />
a one rupee profit) to shoppers buying fruits<br />
and vegetables. As day turned to dusk, he’d<br />
scour the city collecting scraps of cardboard,<br />
which he then flipped to recyclers for three<br />
rupees per pound. Often, he didn’t return<br />
home until 9 at night.<br />
He had never been enrolled in a school,<br />
knew no English, and although he could<br />
speak Farsi, could not read or write it.<br />
His clan is Afghan and Shiite Muslims,<br />
refugees who were forced to flee their<br />
homeland in the late ’90s to escape the Taliban.<br />
Across the border, life was safer but no easier.<br />
“We didn’t have any future,” Hassan, now<br />
19, says. “Education was always important<br />
to my parents. We weren’t able to get that in<br />
Pakistan. My parents knew that if we moved<br />
back to Afghanistan, it would be the same<br />
thing. To come to the United States, there<br />
would be opportunities for a better life.”<br />
Dullah, as his friends call him, is<br />
recounting this on a bench in front of the<br />
Mary Graydon Center on a sunny early<br />
September day. Behind him on the quad,<br />
students lounge on blankets, soaking up sun<br />
and laughing with their friends. Frisbees,<br />
not bullets, fly through the air. That he could<br />
blend into this idyllic setting—a few weeks<br />
earlier he arrived at AU to begin his freshman<br />
year—is a proposition he or any other rational<br />
person would have found unthinkable just<br />
eight years ago.<br />
Only in America, as the cliché goes. For<br />
millions of immigrants who make their way<br />
to this country in pursuit of the same thing<br />
the Hassans were chasing—“a better life”—the<br />
phrase has deep meaning.<br />
Hassan has a full plate these days. He’s<br />
adjusting to the nuances of dorm cohabitation,<br />
diving into Financial Accounting class (he wants<br />
to become an economist), and trying to find time<br />
to play soccer. But these activities, all important<br />
ones to an undergrad, have taken a back seat to<br />
another: pursuing <strong>American</strong> citizenship.<br />
Pushed by their hearts, their heads, or<br />
their wallets, hundreds of thousands of<br />
people each year become U.S. citizens. Their<br />
motivations range from patriotic to pragmatic.<br />
Like the country they’re becoming a part<br />
of, new <strong>American</strong>s are a complex, diverse<br />
group with a wide spectrum of pasts, present<br />
circumstances, and futures.<br />
Naturalization is not a quick process.<br />
Applicants must be permanent residents for<br />
at least five years; undergo a background<br />
check; prove they can speak, read, and write<br />
English; and pass a civics test before they earn<br />
the right to raise their right hand and take the<br />
oath of Allegiance.<br />
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely<br />
and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance<br />
and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate,<br />
state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have<br />
heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will<br />
support and defend the Constitution and laws<br />
of the United States of America against all<br />
enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear<br />
true faith and allegiance to the same; that I<br />
will bear arms on behalf of the United States<br />
when required by the law; that I will perform<br />
noncombatant service in the armed forces of the<br />
United States when required by the law; that I<br />
will perform work of national importance under<br />
civilian direction when required by the law; and<br />
that I take this obligation freely without any<br />
mental reservation or purpose of evasion;<br />
so help me God.”<br />
Those words are not taken lightly by<br />
the men and women who say them, even if<br />
many are allowed by their native nations to<br />
maintain dual citizenship.<br />
“To seal your relationship with a society<br />
in a legal bond, the same way you do when<br />
you step before a judge and marry someone,<br />
that’s a very powerful experience,” says<br />
history professor Alan Kraut, an expert in<br />
immigration. “It’s highly emotional. Many<br />
times people cry at naturalization procedures.<br />
Are they crying because they’re so happy to be<br />
<strong>American</strong>s? For many I think that’s true. Are<br />
they crying because they’re leaving something<br />
behind and cutting themselves off from a<br />
dimension of their former life? It is a very<br />
important moment of transition. It’s not quite<br />
religious conversion, but if you measure the<br />
emotion in the room, it could almost be.”<br />
Hassan isn’t sure how he’ll react when he<br />
trades his green card for an <strong>American</strong><br />
passport. He’ll have to wait a little longer<br />
to find out. His naturalization interview,<br />
originally scheduled for October 10, was<br />
delayed due to the government shutdown.<br />
Considering what he’s been through,<br />
a little partisan bickering is nothing more<br />
than a minor annoyance to him, like a pesky<br />
gnat. In Afghanistan, 24 members of his<br />
extended family—all men—were killed before<br />
his father took four-year-old Dullah and the<br />
rest of the family to Pakistan. There he was<br />
unwelcome at Pakistani public schools due<br />
to his ethnicity and unable to afford private<br />
schooling. So work it was.<br />
Miraculously, he does not look back<br />
at that period of time as particularly harsh<br />
or unpleasant.<br />
“I never feel sorry, I never regret it, I<br />
never say ‘why’ or ‘I wish,’” he says. “I enjoy<br />
those memories because, although some<br />
kids I’m friends with now, when they were<br />
kids they went to school and Disney World,<br />
I might have had just as much fun working<br />
hard and flying kites, playing marbles. I was<br />
conditioned to that living style.”<br />
The family applied for refugee status in<br />
the United States and was set to go. Then<br />
9/11. Four more years, filled with 14-hour<br />
work days and nights spent sleeping on the<br />
floor, passed before Refugee Resettlement and<br />
Immigration Services of Atlanta (RISA) was<br />
able to process them.<br />
“I DON’T FEEL<br />
LIKE A VISITOR<br />
HERE.”<br />
Not a g’day goes by<br />
in which Chris Tudge<br />
doesn’t think about<br />
his native Australia.<br />
“You don’t get<br />
adjusted,” says the<br />
biology professor,<br />
who’s leaning back in<br />
his Hurst Hall office<br />
desk chair, sporting<br />
shorts and a casual<br />
blue short-sleeved<br />
shirt. “People ask<br />
me all the time,<br />
‘What do you miss<br />
about Australia?’<br />
My answer’s always<br />
‘everything, especially<br />
family.’ I think about<br />
Australia in some capacity all the time, whether<br />
it’s looking out the window and comparing the<br />
weather to my hometown or thinking, ‘I should<br />
have called my mother last night.’”<br />
Yet Tudge isn’t exactly homesick. In one sense,<br />
Takoma Park, Maryland, the Washington suburb<br />
where he lives with his wife, Karen, and their<br />
two daughters, now is his home. Tudge came to<br />
the U.S. in 1995 for a one-year postdoc program<br />
at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural<br />
History. While there he met his soon-to-be bride,<br />
an archaeologist, at a Friday-night social function<br />
at the museum.<br />
When Tudge returned to Australia for another<br />
postdoc appointment, Karen joined him five<br />
months later. They were married in his hometown<br />
of Brisbane before she returned to the U.S.<br />
The first year of their marriage was spent a<br />
world apart.<br />
Practical reasons caused the couple to choose<br />
the U.S. over Australia as their permanent residence.<br />
“She had a federal government position, which<br />
is nothing to sneeze at, and we wanted to adopt<br />
kids,” he says. “The <strong>American</strong> system is way faster<br />
and cheaper than the Australian system.”<br />
So on Christmas Eve, 1998, Tudge returned to<br />
America. They did adopt those children—Laura is<br />
12, Hannah, 10—and settled into a lovely life in D.C.<br />
In 2002, Tudge decided to become a U.S. citizen<br />
primarily for convenience.<br />
“I heard about a job at the Smithsonian as<br />
a research fellow,” he says. “I found out I was<br />
ineligible because I wasn’t a citizen, so I decided I<br />
would start the process of applying.”<br />
In 2005, Tudge added an <strong>American</strong> passport<br />
to his Australian and United Kingdom ones (the<br />
son of British parents, he’s actually a tri-national).<br />
While that federal job never materialized, he loves<br />
Washington and the life he’s created.<br />
“I don’t feel like a visitor here,” he says, “but<br />
when I talk about home, I talk about Australia.”<br />
“I VIVIDLY<br />
REMEMBER<br />
THE DAY, I RAN<br />
TO HIM AND<br />
SAID ‘ARE WE<br />
CITIZENS YET?’”<br />
Seven years<br />
separated the two<br />
embraces.<br />
Pallavi Kumar<br />
doesn’t remember<br />
the first. It was March<br />
of 1973, and she was<br />
just nine months old.<br />
Born to parents of<br />
Indian decent (neither<br />
of whom grew up in<br />
India), Kumar, SOC/<br />
SPA/BA ’94, had just<br />
arrived at Pittsburgh<br />
International Airport<br />
when her father,<br />
Jitendra, first laid<br />
eyes on her.<br />
“Holding her in my<br />
arms,” he says, his<br />
voice cracking, “was an amazing feeling.”<br />
Jitendra was a Ugandan citizen when President<br />
Idi Amin expelled all Asians from the country in<br />
1972. His wife, Bharti, had returned to India to give<br />
birth to Pallavi. Suddenly a refugee, he headed to<br />
Pittsburgh, home to a brother-in-law he had never<br />
met. He quickly landed a job in pharmaceutical<br />
sales—“I was lucky,” he says—and arranged for his<br />
now larger family to come to Pennsylvania.<br />
“He bought his first house within a year of<br />
moving here, then we got a bigger house in a better<br />
school district when we went into grade school,”<br />
says Kumar, a School of Communication professor.<br />
“He sent my sister to the University of Pennsylvania,<br />
he sent me to AU. My dad came to this country with<br />
$20. He was living the <strong>American</strong> dream.”<br />
In 1980, Pallavi became a U.S. citizen when her<br />
father did. “I vividly remember the day,” she says.<br />
“I got out of school and wore a pretty dress. I knew<br />
that my dad had been practicing the test, and I knew<br />
that if he passed that meant we were part of this<br />
country. He was in a black suit, and when he came<br />
out I ran to him and said, ‘Are we citizens yet?’ He<br />
picked me up, hugged me, and said, ‘Yes we are.’”<br />
“My colleagues gave me an <strong>American</strong> flag,”<br />
Jitendra says from Florida, where he’s retired. “I<br />
thought, ‘Now I have a country.’ It’s been a great life. I<br />
worked hard for 40 years, put the kids through college<br />
and watched their careers grow. Nowhere else in the<br />
world can you do what you can do in this country.”<br />
28 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 29
“I HAVE<br />
GROWN<br />
INCREDIBLY<br />
LOYAL TO<br />
AMERICA. I<br />
FELT I HAD<br />
JOINED<br />
SOMETHING<br />
HUGE.”<br />
In 1972, Chris Palmer<br />
found lasting love.<br />
Twice.<br />
A British national<br />
born in Hong Kong, the<br />
then 26-year-old had<br />
just traveled across<br />
the pond to Cambridge,<br />
Massachusetts, to<br />
study at Harvard’s<br />
Kennedy School of<br />
Government.<br />
“I was going there<br />
for a year to have<br />
the time of my life,”<br />
he says. “That was<br />
the plan.”<br />
On the first day of<br />
orientation, he spotted<br />
a beautiful woman<br />
with an open seat next<br />
to her.<br />
“I remember I wore<br />
this bright green<br />
suit and purple shirt and tie,” he says. “I thought<br />
I looked good. There weren’t many seats left, so I sat<br />
down next to her and said hi. She turned out to be<br />
my wife.”<br />
Palmer would have moved anywhere to be with<br />
Gail, to whom he’s been married for 38 years. But<br />
he didn’t want to move anywhere—he’d fallen for<br />
her country too.<br />
“The typical <strong>American</strong> is driven by ambition and<br />
audacious goals, revels in a buoyant optimism and<br />
practicality, doesn’t care about class or who your<br />
parents are, applauds hard work and entrepreneurial<br />
zeal, lauds the self-made person, relentlessly<br />
pursues constant self-improvement, and is fearless<br />
when it comes to new and noble challenges,” the<br />
School of Communication professor says. “I love all<br />
those notions and wanted to live in a country where<br />
those values mean something. I wanted to stay here<br />
for the rest of my life.”<br />
Palmer worked on Capitol Hill and in the Carter<br />
administration, never paying much mind to his<br />
nationality, until he learned he was ineligible for a<br />
high-level position in the Environmental Protection<br />
Agency because he wasn’t a citizen.<br />
“I thought about it for a few minutes and said to<br />
myself, ‘I’m happy to be <strong>American</strong>,’” he recalls.<br />
So he pursued citizenship, ultimately taking the<br />
naturalization oath of allegiance in Baltimore in 1981.<br />
“It was very poignant,” he says. “I’ve read a<br />
lot about <strong>American</strong> history. I love reading about<br />
the founding fathers and Abe Lincoln. George<br />
Washington strikes me as one of the greatest<br />
men that’s ever lived. All this was going through<br />
my mind as I took that oath.”<br />
More than three decades later, Palmer<br />
thinks of himself as “a very proud <strong>American</strong> of<br />
British heritage.”<br />
“Even now it makes me emotional,” he says.<br />
“I have grown incredibly loyal to America. I felt<br />
I had joined something huge, and I had thrown<br />
my lot in to a country that I think is the greatest<br />
country in the world.”<br />
Jazmynn walked into<br />
the federal building<br />
in downtown Detroit a<br />
Canadian, and walked<br />
out an <strong>American</strong>.<br />
She also walked in<br />
a Bigelow and walked<br />
out a Croskey.<br />
The 19-year-old<br />
freshman’s journey to<br />
citizenship was every<br />
bit as much about her<br />
familial identity as her<br />
“I FELT LIKE nationality. The daughter<br />
I REALLY<br />
of a European father she<br />
ACCOMPLISHED never met, she grew up<br />
SOMETHING. in Brampton, a suburb of<br />
I CAN GO<br />
Toronto, before moving<br />
ANYWHERE to Michigan at age<br />
AND SAY,<br />
seven when her mother,<br />
‘I’M AN<br />
Andrea, met and married<br />
AMERICAN.’” her stepfather, David<br />
Croskey.<br />
“My grandparents are from Guyana, and my<br />
brothers were born in America,” she says. “We’re a<br />
nice big, blended family.”<br />
Before heading off to college, Croskey, SIS ’17,<br />
wanted to make official the country she calls home<br />
as well as take the last name of the only father<br />
she’s ever known. In August, just a week before she<br />
came to AU, she became a U.S. citizen and changed<br />
her name.<br />
“I was the youngest person at the ceremony,<br />
and that was something the judge and the<br />
clerks noticed,” Croskey says. “I felt like I really<br />
accomplished something. I can go anywhere and<br />
say, ‘I’m an <strong>American</strong>.’”<br />
“I felt proud for her, I felt proud for our entire<br />
family,” says her mother, Andrea, who also became<br />
a citizen. “It’s nice to feel that our family is<br />
connected through citizenship.”<br />
“Coming to America was important<br />
because I could see a future for us here,” says<br />
Hassan’s father, Mohammad. He doesn’t speak<br />
English, so his son translates his emails. “I<br />
imagined life in America as peaceful, with no<br />
fear of danger and with job opportunities.<br />
I never thought we would be living in America<br />
until we got on the plane to come here.”<br />
They were set up in a three-room<br />
apartment in public housing in the rough<br />
Atlanta suburb of Clarkston, Georgia. Thrown<br />
into a fifth-grade classroom, Hassan simply<br />
sat quietly and watched.<br />
“For me it was pretty bad,” he says. “I didn’t<br />
speak the language—I didn’t even know my<br />
ABCs. I was bullied every single day. I couldn’t<br />
go outside [our house]. I saw with my own eyes<br />
people getting shot. Our neighbor to our left<br />
was killed. Two bullets came into our house.”<br />
He had made it to the world’s bastion<br />
of democracy, only to discover that cruelty<br />
knows no nationality.<br />
The turning point came when Hassan<br />
joined the Fugees Family, a soccer team<br />
for refugee children. He was a shy, quiet,<br />
wayward soul when Luma Mefleh spotted him<br />
on a playground.<br />
“One of his classmates was playing on my<br />
team, and he was watching me,” says Mufleh,<br />
the team’s coach. “I asked him if he wanted to<br />
join, and he got this big grin on his face.”<br />
Having never played organized sports<br />
before, Hassan struggled on the field. But<br />
his development - both on it and in the<br />
classroom - was striking. He began making<br />
friends and transferred to a private school<br />
run by the Fugees, a nonprofit that includes a<br />
variety of organized soccer programs, afterschool<br />
tutoring, the private academy, and an<br />
academic enrichment summer camp.<br />
“He had a work ethic that put a lot of his<br />
teammates to shame, and it started to pay off,”<br />
Mufleh says. “It wasn’t just on the field, it was<br />
academically. He was with other refugee kids<br />
with similar backgrounds, not a lot of formal<br />
education. But academically he was much<br />
further ahead. In eighth grade we had him<br />
sign up for an algebra class online through the<br />
University of Nebraska. The other kids could<br />
barely do their multiplication. He went from a<br />
kid who couldn’t speak, make eye contact, or<br />
carry on a conversation to one who was a lot<br />
more confident, a lot more secure.”<br />
Hassan’s father found work as a mechanic<br />
and was able to move the family to a nicer<br />
house in a safer suburb an hour away. In ninth<br />
grade, he enrolled in the prestigious Atlanta<br />
International School, relying on scholarships<br />
to cover his tuition.<br />
“With education, one can not only resolve<br />
one’s own problems but work toward helping<br />
others and resolving other’s problems,” his<br />
father says. “With education one becomes<br />
aware of the world.”<br />
Hassan focused on college from the outset,<br />
taking International Baccalaureate classes in<br />
subjects like English and biology.<br />
“My older brother and older sister never<br />
got to go to college,” says Hassan, who has<br />
younger siblings studying at universities<br />
in Atlanta and Iran. “I always knew that I<br />
wanted to be something on my own.”<br />
“ I THINK CITIZENSHIP,<br />
IN A COUNTRY OF GREAT<br />
DIVERSITY SUCH AS<br />
OURS, IS AN IMPORTANT<br />
ELEMENT OF COHESIVENESS.<br />
IT SAYS THAT LEGALLY,<br />
WHATEVER YOUR RELIGION,<br />
WHATEVER YOUR RACE,<br />
WHATEVER YOUR ETHNIC<br />
ORIGINS, YOU ARE NOW<br />
A PERMANENT MEMBER<br />
OF THIS SOCIETY WITH<br />
ALL OF THE RIGHTS<br />
THAT A PERSON WHO<br />
WAS BORN HERE HAS.”<br />
—ALAN KRAUT<br />
As is the case for many immigrants,<br />
scraping together $680 for the<br />
citizenship application fee was an immense<br />
hardship for Hassan. Of the estimated 13.3<br />
million green card holders in the United<br />
States in 2012, about 8.8 million were<br />
eligible for citizenship. Yet the most ever<br />
naturalizations in one year was 1.05 million<br />
in 2008, according to the federal government.<br />
The hefty price is perhaps one reason why.<br />
This summer RISA helped him arrange to<br />
cover the fee. The average lag time from filing<br />
to oath is five months, but the dysfunction<br />
in Washington means that Hassan’s will be<br />
even longer. He’s not worried about the test.<br />
Candidates must demonstrate aptitude in<br />
English by reading one of three sentences<br />
correctly and writing one of three correctly.<br />
That won’t be a problem for Hassan, whose<br />
English is impeccable. He picked it up in<br />
the first six months he was here, in part by<br />
watching TV and talking to friends.<br />
Candidates also must correctly answer 6<br />
of 10 civics questions selected from a pool<br />
of 100. (Kraut was one of the historians<br />
involved in revising the history portion<br />
of the test, an experience he describes as<br />
“fascinating and political.”) Hassan should<br />
ace that portion without breaking a sweat.<br />
He’s now lived in the United States for<br />
almost as long as he’s lived outside it.<br />
“In a society that is homogeneous, in<br />
which everyone comes from similar ethnic<br />
backgrounds, similar religious backgrounds,<br />
similar racial profiles, and can trace their<br />
roots back deep into the country’s history,<br />
perhaps citizenship wouldn’t be so important,”<br />
says Kraut, who’s working on his latest book,<br />
Forget Your Past: Negotiating Identity,<br />
Becoming <strong>American</strong>. “But I think citizenship,<br />
in a country of great diversity such as ours, is<br />
an important element of cohesiveness. It says<br />
that legally, whatever your religion, whatever<br />
your race, whatever your ethnic origins, you<br />
are now a permanent member of this society<br />
with all of the rights that a person who was<br />
born here has. Naturalization then becomes<br />
terribly important.”<br />
As it is to Hassan. When the conversation<br />
shifts to his impending citizenship, a smile<br />
sweeps over his gentle face.<br />
“I love this country,” he says. “Although<br />
there were some bad experiences and<br />
sometimes I didn’t feel welcome, that’s<br />
a part of everywhere. You go to Afghanistan,<br />
and in some parts you might feel hated. In<br />
some parts loved. But I love [the United<br />
States]. It’s given me a lot. I never would have<br />
been able to go to a regular school.<br />
“I want to become a citizen so I can<br />
go back to my village, because the vague<br />
memory I have of there is like a drawing.<br />
The mountains, the river, the farm, I still<br />
have the connection. I was born there,<br />
my extended family is there. I’m always<br />
going to be an Afghan, but I’m also an<br />
<strong>American</strong> now.”<br />
“ IN THAT<br />
MOMENT<br />
YOU’RE<br />
OVERCOME<br />
BY A SENSE OF<br />
TREMEDOUS<br />
PRIDE.”<br />
Denied.<br />
The word felt like a<br />
punch to Fanta Aw’s<br />
gut. While planning<br />
a trip to visit to her<br />
native Mali, she was<br />
refused a transit visa<br />
by France.<br />
Aw, Kogod/BSBA<br />
’90, SPA/MPA ’94, CAS/<br />
PhD ’11, had moved<br />
from the small African<br />
nation to the U.S.<br />
in the 1970s, when<br />
her father worked<br />
for the World Bank.<br />
France’s decision not<br />
to allow her into the<br />
country might have<br />
been minute on a<br />
geopolitical scale,<br />
but it came to hold<br />
immense consequence<br />
to Aw. It started her<br />
on the path to <strong>American</strong> citizenship.<br />
“I was struck that being born in a certain part<br />
of the world created an obstacle for me,” says Aw,<br />
assistant vice president of Campus Life and director<br />
of International Student and Scholar Services. “The<br />
freedom of movement is very important to me.<br />
[<strong>American</strong> citizenship] was the only way I felt I could<br />
regain my sense of empowerment.”<br />
Along with securing an <strong>American</strong> passport,<br />
earning the right to vote was critically important to<br />
her. Soon after becoming a citizen in 2008, she cast<br />
hers for president. Years later, Aw still remembers the<br />
emotion of her naturalization ceremony in Baltimore.<br />
“Each person there had a story and a journey,”<br />
she says. “Whether it was a refugee who left<br />
everything behind to start all over; whether it was<br />
the person with an entrepreneurial spirit who saw<br />
infinite potential in America; or whether it was,<br />
in my case, the journey of someone who came to<br />
this country as a student, gained an education,<br />
and I thought I could give back to this society. As<br />
we were standing there, I think each person was<br />
playing in their own mind what their journey had<br />
been. In that moment you’re overcome by a sense<br />
of tremendous pride.”<br />
Aw, who retained her Mali citizenship as well,<br />
considers herself an <strong>American</strong> of African descent,<br />
not an African <strong>American</strong>.<br />
“A lot of times you kind of romanticize in<br />
your own mind what all of this means,” she says.<br />
“Citizenship is socially constructed. We make it up.<br />
And in making it up we build our own stories, and<br />
pretty grandiose narratives about what it is. I think<br />
for anyone who makes that decision, they see the<br />
glass as three-quarters full.<br />
30 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 31
or a man who once made his living<br />
looking backwards—through his<br />
legs—Ryan Kuehl always has been<br />
intently focused on the future.<br />
In the hierarchy of professional athletic<br />
glamour, long snappers—football players<br />
who specialize in snapping the ball on punts,<br />
field goals, and extra point attempts—rank<br />
somewhere near middle relief pitchers in<br />
baseball or members of the pit crew in auto<br />
racing. Although they’re an important cog<br />
on a successful team, they toil largely in<br />
anonymity. If you see a fan wearing a long<br />
snapper’s jersey at a game, you can safely<br />
assume they’re a relative. McDonald’s has yet<br />
to sign one to hawk Big Macs.<br />
Over the course of a 12-year NFL career,<br />
during which he played for four teams,<br />
including the Super Bowl XLII champion<br />
New York Giants, Kuehl intrinsically<br />
understood the realities of his position. He<br />
knew he lacked the earning power or dreamy<br />
dimpled chin of Tom Brady; he realized that if<br />
he was fortunate enough<br />
to retire from pro ball<br />
before the league chewed<br />
him up and spit him out,<br />
he couldn’t rely on his<br />
name, banked millions,<br />
or a supermodel wife<br />
for his livelihood. So for<br />
seven long springs after<br />
each season ended, while<br />
his teammates lounged<br />
on a beach or teed up a Titleist, Kuehl,<br />
Kogod/MBA ’07, dragged his battered and<br />
bruised body straight from the locker room to<br />
classrooms at AU.<br />
“I remember very distinctly years when<br />
we would lose a playoff game in January, have<br />
“I REMEMBER VERY<br />
DISTINCTLY YEARS<br />
WHEN WE WOULD LOSE<br />
A PLAYOFF GAME IN<br />
JANUARY, HAVE FINAL<br />
MEETINGS ON MONDAY<br />
WITH THE TEAM, AND I<br />
HAD CLASS TUESDAY<br />
IN D.C.”<br />
final meetings on Monday with the team,<br />
and I had class Tuesday in D.C.,” says the<br />
Washington-area native. “I would literally<br />
walk in limping. Forty-eight<br />
hours ago I was fighting for<br />
my life on the field, and now<br />
I’m sitting here in class.”<br />
Kuehl, 41, is perched<br />
at a high-top table in the<br />
Hungry and Humble Café,<br />
on the Baltimore campus of<br />
Under Armour. He joined<br />
the upstart athletic apparel<br />
company in 2008 and now<br />
serves as its senior director of sports marketing<br />
for professional sports. As the leader of a group<br />
of 15, he’s charged with forming partnerships<br />
with athletes, teams, and leagues.<br />
“Essentially what we do is provide the<br />
vehicles for our brand marketers and our<br />
storytellers to sell product and elevate the<br />
brand,” he says, sounding very much like<br />
a man who paid attention in class—and at<br />
home. Kuehl’s father, Philip, was a business<br />
professor at the University of Maryland.<br />
“He felt football was a great get-in-thedoor<br />
thing, but when people are looking to<br />
hire somebody, they’re looking to see your<br />
value,” Kuehl says. “There are 1,800 active NFL<br />
players, and we’ve got 8,000 to 9,000 retired<br />
players around the country. That’s a pretty<br />
select group, but you want real select? Get your<br />
degree, show people outside of the sport that<br />
this guy is serious about being a contributor.<br />
Education is a long-term investment that<br />
shows people you’re committed to learning,<br />
you’re committed to applying yourself, you’re<br />
committed to improving yourself. Those<br />
are things that, in my opinion, leaders of<br />
companies are interested in.”<br />
Growing up, Kuehl wasn’t a Tiger- or<br />
LeBron-like prodigy, but he did possess<br />
two attributes that can’t be coached: size<br />
and desire. As a high school freshman, the<br />
205-pound Kuehl began playing running back,<br />
and by the time he graduated, he was a 6-foot-<br />
4-inch, 225-pound defensive lineman.<br />
It wasn’t until after his junior year at<br />
the University of Virginia that Kuehl began<br />
thinking about the NFL. Although he went<br />
undrafted, he clawed his way onto the San<br />
Francisco 49ers practice squad following<br />
an impressive training camp. Kuehl was no<br />
dummy; he knew his spot on a NFL roster<br />
always would be precarious at<br />
best. Somehow he had to set<br />
himself apart. Long snapping,<br />
which he picked up in college,<br />
was his differentiator.<br />
“You realize quickly that<br />
in football there’s a reason<br />
the average career is three<br />
years long,” he says. “They’re<br />
constantly bringing in players that are younger<br />
and healthier. As my skills on defense started<br />
to deteriorate—I wasn’t that good to begin with<br />
from a professional perspective—snapping kept<br />
me in the league. I probably would have had a<br />
five-year career instead of 12.”<br />
After five surgeries and a string of sixfigure<br />
minimum contracts (and at least one<br />
significantly meatier one), Kuehl retired in<br />
2008. Armed with his MBA, he was prepared.<br />
“A lot of guys will open a bar with their<br />
name on it, or they’ll do camps,” Kuehl says of<br />
20- and 30-something NFL retirees. “That’s all<br />
fleeting. At the end of the day, unless you’re a<br />
Hall of Fame-level player, when you retire no<br />
one cares. That’s not a negative statement—<br />
that’s reality. Education is the thing that’s going<br />
to pay off in the long run. Yeah, you may not<br />
have a bar that you can take your friends to.<br />
That’s fine—most bars fail.”<br />
During the spring and summer, Kuehl<br />
would supplement his studies and workouts by<br />
shadowing business leaders.<br />
“I made it my mission to make sure I was<br />
constantly building relationships in the offseason,”<br />
he says. “Everyone thinks athletes get<br />
their asses kissed all the time, so I’d flip that. I’d<br />
say, ‘I’d love to come down to your office and<br />
take you to lunch.’ I picked five or six people<br />
and developed deep relationships with them.”<br />
One was Kevin Plank, Under Armour’s<br />
founder and CEO, whom he met at a sports<br />
business symposium in 2003.<br />
“The ability to project beyond one’s playing<br />
career can be a rare trait among athletes.<br />
Beginning with our earliest conversations,<br />
Ryan displayed a genuine curiosity in<br />
understanding the business side of sports<br />
marketing and athlete management,” Planks<br />
says. “He continued to follow our company’s<br />
progress and to educate himself about our<br />
newest products and innovations. There<br />
was an authentic thirst for knowledge and<br />
information that really struck me. The<br />
underlying implication was that Ryan was<br />
deeply committed to building a successful life<br />
for himself after football, and he was starting to<br />
outline that roadmap for<br />
“<br />
AT THE END OF<br />
THE DAY, UNLESS<br />
YOU’RE A HALL OF<br />
FAME–LEVEL PLAYER,<br />
WHEN YOU RETIRE<br />
NO ONE CARES.”<br />
his next career.”<br />
Gary Ford, one of<br />
his professors at Kogod,<br />
also isn’t surprised by<br />
Kuehl’s success in the<br />
corporate world.<br />
“Any athlete has to<br />
be committed to their<br />
sport and spend a lot of time practicing and<br />
suffering,” he says. “I think that discipline,<br />
and the experience of working with others for<br />
a common good, helps in business. Once he<br />
started [at Kogod], he wasn’t going to give up,<br />
because he doesn’t quit.”<br />
Kuehl’s office, located near Plank’s in the<br />
restored former Proctor and Gamble complex<br />
on the south Baltimore waterfront, is sparsely<br />
decorated. Pictures of Baltimore Ravens’ greats<br />
Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs hang above a<br />
dry-erase board. A pink cleat autographed by<br />
members of the Kansas City Royals, for whom<br />
Under Armour designed the special Mother’s<br />
Day shoe, and a photo from the Michael Phelps<br />
Foundation Golf Classic sit on a cabinet, along<br />
with other mementos. In a corner stands a<br />
life-sized cardboard cutout of him in his Giants<br />
uniform that his Under Armour team had made<br />
as a gag gift for his 40th birthday.<br />
It’s one of the only reminders of his old life<br />
that he keeps around. Even his Super Bowl ring<br />
sits in the T-shirt drawer of his dresser at home,<br />
its 1.5 carats of sparkly, white diamonds rarely<br />
seeing the light of day. To Kuehl it represents<br />
the past, not the future, and that’s a direction in<br />
which he doesn’t waste time looking.<br />
“I’m proud of my career, but I don’t think<br />
about playing anymore,” he says. “We’re<br />
chasing some very aggressive goals at Under<br />
Armour. There’s no time to think about<br />
anything but the present.”<br />
32 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong> LET’S TALK #AMERICANMAG 33
Rosy Tamam, SPA/BA ’15, (center); mom<br />
Lana Tamam; and sisters Lillian Elgayar, 9,<br />
and Jasmine Elgayar, 10, share a hug during<br />
All-<strong>American</strong> Weekend, October 19.<br />
1960s<br />
Jeffery King, SPA/BA ’64,<br />
published a new book,<br />
Kill-Crazy Gang:<br />
The Crimes of<br />
the Lewis-Jones<br />
Gang, about the<br />
violent Lewis-<br />
Jones gang of<br />
the 1910s.<br />
Stephen<br />
Morton, CAS/<br />
MA ’64, was inducted<br />
into the Bowling Green State<br />
University Athletic Hall of<br />
Fame as a member of the 1959<br />
National Small College Football<br />
Championship team.<br />
Connie Morella, CAS/MA ’67,<br />
president of the U.S. Association<br />
of Former Members of Congress,<br />
received the Knight Commander’s<br />
Cross of the Order of Merit from<br />
the Federal Republic of Germany.<br />
The award is Germany’s highest<br />
honor. She received the award<br />
for her commitment to fostering<br />
dialogue and better understanding<br />
between the United States and<br />
Germany.<br />
Dennis Grubb, SIS/MA ’68,<br />
former alumni board member,<br />
participated in the June 17<br />
ceremony for the transportation<br />
of the John F. Kennedy Eternal<br />
Flame to Ireland. The event<br />
commemorated the 50th<br />
anniversary of Kennedy’s visit to<br />
Ireland. Grubb attended AU after<br />
serving in the first Peace Corps<br />
contingent to Colombia in 1961.<br />
UPDATE<br />
YOUR EMAIL<br />
ADDRESS AT<br />
AMERICAN.EDU/<br />
ALUMNI.<br />
Abraham J. Peck, SIS/BA<br />
’68, SIS/MA ’70, coauthored a<br />
historical memoir, Unwanted<br />
Legacies: Sharing the Burden<br />
of the Post-Genocide<br />
Generations.<br />
References to<br />
Peck’s time at<br />
AU during the<br />
tumultuous<br />
1960s are<br />
included in the<br />
book.<br />
Pamela Elliott,<br />
CAS/BA ’69, published<br />
a clinical text, I Got<br />
the Leftovers: Case Study of<br />
Traumatic Brain Injury.<br />
-1969-<br />
TIME<br />
CAPSULES<br />
TOP TUNE<br />
“Sugar Sugar,” The Archies<br />
TOP GROSSING FLICK<br />
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid<br />
IN THE NEWS<br />
The United States, Soviet Union, and<br />
100 other countries sign the nuclear<br />
nonproliferation treaty; Apollo 11<br />
astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz<br />
Aldrin become the first men to walk on<br />
the moon; Janis Joplin, the Who, and Jimi<br />
Hendrix perform at Woodstock<br />
FROM THE AU ARCHIVES<br />
The Kay Spiritual Life Center hosts<br />
a workshop on draft alternatives:<br />
“deferments, conscientious objection,<br />
emigration (Canada and Sweden),<br />
resistance, and jail.”<br />
1970s<br />
Demetrios Pulas, SPA/BA<br />
’70, former Federal Energy<br />
Regulatory Commission senior<br />
enforcement attorney, joined the<br />
energy regulation team of Husch<br />
Blackwell LLP.<br />
Theodore “Ted” Simon, Kogod/<br />
BS ’71, has been installed as<br />
president-elect of the National<br />
Association of Criminal Defense<br />
Lawyers.<br />
Jeffrey Citron, Kogod/BSBA ’72,<br />
comanaging partner of Davidoff<br />
Hutcher & Citron LLP, was<br />
named “best attorney” by the<br />
New York Enterprise Report.<br />
Citron was selected from more<br />
than 80 nominees.<br />
Patrick Hagan, WCL/JD ’75,<br />
was selected Philadelphia’s<br />
Patent Lawyer of the Year <strong>2013</strong><br />
in a peer-review survey by the<br />
editorial board of Best Lawyers.<br />
He specializes in pharmaceutical<br />
patent law at Dann, Dorfmann,<br />
Herrell & Skillman.<br />
Jay Lenrow, WCL/JD ’77, was<br />
elected as a member of the Johns<br />
Hopkins University Board of<br />
Trustees.<br />
Susan Ellis Wild, SPA/BA ’78,<br />
was named among the top 50<br />
female lawyers in Pennsylvania<br />
on the list of <strong>2013</strong> Pennsylvania<br />
Super Lawyers. Wild’s practice<br />
focuses on the defense of<br />
healthcare practitioners and<br />
hospitals as well as personal<br />
injury defense, civil rights claims,<br />
and employment matters.<br />
Jeff Baxt, SOC/BA ’79, was<br />
interviewed by Rep Radio, an East<br />
Coast podcast network, on his<br />
start as an actor.<br />
-1975-<br />
TIME<br />
CAPSULES<br />
TOP TUNE<br />
“Love Will Keep Us Together,”<br />
The Captain and Tennille<br />
TOP GROSSING FLICK<br />
Jaws<br />
IN THE NEWS<br />
Vietnam War ends after nearly 20 years<br />
of fighting; President Gerald Ford escapes<br />
two assassination attempts within 17 days;<br />
Saturday Night Live debuts on NBC<br />
FROM THE AU ARCHIVES<br />
More than a dozen disgruntled former<br />
Student Confederation leaders—frustrated<br />
with campus politics—form the Rooster<br />
Club. The only grounds for expulsion:<br />
“reinstatement in one’s former post.”<br />
1980s<br />
Simon Carmel, CAS/MA<br />
’80, CAS/PhD ’87, published<br />
a 400-page book, Invisible<br />
Magic: Biographies of 112 Deaf<br />
Magicians from 28 Countries. In<br />
2008, he published Silent Magic:<br />
Biographies of 59 Deaf Magicians<br />
in the United States from the<br />
Nineteenth to Twenty-First<br />
Centuries.<br />
AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 35
class notes<br />
thank you<br />
David Smith, SPA/BA ’82,<br />
published a book with the United<br />
States Institute of Peace Press.<br />
Peacebuilding in Community<br />
Colleges: A Teaching Resource<br />
includes contributions by 23<br />
community college professionals,<br />
arguing that community colleges<br />
are well suited to strengthening<br />
global education and teaching<br />
conflict resolution skills.<br />
Sylvia Lamar, WCL/JD ’83, was<br />
appointed to the First Judicial<br />
District Court of New Mexico<br />
by Gov. Susana Martinez. Her<br />
appointment was featured in<br />
the Santa Fe New Mexican.<br />
keepjudgelamar@gmail.com<br />
Robert Surrette, CAS/MA ’83,<br />
published an article in Prime<br />
Time Cape Cod. “Lean on Her: A<br />
Hand to Hold for Children and<br />
Special Victims of Crime” profiles<br />
Deborah Thompson, victim<br />
services coordinator for the<br />
Dennis Police Department.<br />
Mike O’Brien, SOC/BA ’84, had a<br />
book published by the University<br />
Press of Mississippi. We Shall<br />
Not Be Moved: The Jackson<br />
Woolworth’s Sit-In and the<br />
-1981-<br />
TIME<br />
CAPSULES<br />
TOP TUNE<br />
“Bette Davis Eyes,” Kim Carnes<br />
TOP GROSSING FLICK<br />
Raiders of the Lost Ark<br />
IN THE NEWS<br />
Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the<br />
first female Supreme Court justice;<br />
52 hostages held in Tehran since 1979<br />
are released; John Hinckley Jr. shoots<br />
President Ronald Reagan in the lung,<br />
wounding three others<br />
AT THE HELM<br />
Don McEachin was 1981–1982 Student<br />
Confederation president; he’s now a<br />
Democratic member of the Virginia<br />
Senate, representing the Ninth District.<br />
Movement It Inspired is the story<br />
of the 1963 movement that shifted<br />
the racial status quo in Jackson,<br />
Mississippi.<br />
Oliver Chamberlain, CAS/MA<br />
’85, published Landscapes and<br />
Writings of Harold Caparn, on<br />
I learned my first trick from my<br />
father, who showed me how to<br />
‘remove my thumb’ by twisting<br />
my fingers. It was a way for him to<br />
communicate with me. I’ve been<br />
doing magic all of my life, and I’m<br />
still learning a new trick every<br />
week—sometimes every day.”<br />
—Simon Carmel, CAS/MA ’80, CAS/PhD ’87, on how<br />
magic helped his father connect with his deaf son<br />
the landscape architect of the<br />
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 1912–<br />
1945. Chamberlain is retired as<br />
executive director of the Center<br />
for the Arts at the University<br />
of Massachusetts–Lowell.<br />
ochamberlain2@verizon.net<br />
Donald Leka, SIS/BA ’86,<br />
Kogod/MBA ’97, and Claire<br />
Leka, SOC/BA ’91, SOC/MA<br />
’94, published a book, Cloud<br />
Computing: The Glide OS Story,<br />
Solving the Cross-Platform Puzzle.<br />
The book tells the story of Glide,<br />
an operating system that allows<br />
users greater control over their<br />
personal data across multiple<br />
computing platforms.<br />
Nicholas Malone,<br />
Kogod/BSBA<br />
’87, was named<br />
CFO of the<br />
Year by the<br />
Boston Business<br />
Journal.<br />
Malone is CFO<br />
of Wayfair.com, a<br />
retail site for home<br />
furnishings and decor.<br />
Peter A. Quinter, WCL/JD ’89,<br />
chair of GrayRobinson’s Customs<br />
and International Trade Law<br />
Group, was appointed liaison of<br />
the <strong>American</strong> Bar Association<br />
Section of International Law to<br />
the Florida Bar.<br />
1990s<br />
Stephanie Bloom, WCL/JD ’90,<br />
and her company, Bloom and<br />
Grow, Inc., launched A Place to<br />
Grow, an interactive children’s<br />
reading and learning app for<br />
iPad and iPhone inspired by<br />
her award-winning children’s<br />
picture book. appstore.com/<br />
bloomandgrowinc<br />
VIEW<br />
CLASS NOTES<br />
PHOTOS ONLINE AT<br />
PINTEREST.COM/<br />
AMERICANMAG.<br />
David Heller, SOC/BA ’90, wrote<br />
Facing Ted Williams, published<br />
by Sports Publishing. The book<br />
received favorable reviews from<br />
the Boston Globe, ESPN.com, the<br />
New York Journal of Books, and<br />
the Library Journal.<br />
Jeraline Shields, SPA/MSHR<br />
’91, received a PhD in human<br />
and organizational development<br />
from Fielding Graduate<br />
University in July.<br />
Juan Nolla, SPA/BA ’93, was<br />
widowed on April 24, after<br />
his wife, Margarita Medina-<br />
Feliciano, passed away in Ponce,<br />
Puerto Rico.<br />
Lawrence Polsky, SPA/<br />
MSHR ’93, published<br />
his third book,<br />
Rapid Retooling:<br />
Developing<br />
World-Class<br />
Organizations<br />
in a Rapidly<br />
Changing World.<br />
Saima Huq, SOC/<br />
BA ’95, played Cobweb<br />
in Cheeky Monkey Theatre<br />
Company’s production of A<br />
Midsummer Night’s Dream. The<br />
show took place at the <strong>American</strong><br />
Theatre of Actors in midtown<br />
Manhattan. Her other roles were<br />
Tom Snout the Tinker and Wall.<br />
Gretchen Bylow, SIS/MA ’97,<br />
cochaired a charity benefit<br />
for the Boys and Girls Club of<br />
Greenwich, Connecticut, to raise<br />
$650,000 for youth programs.<br />
The benefit was themed “From<br />
Greenwich with Love—007 Bond<br />
with the Club.”<br />
Jehan Harney, SOC/MA ’97,<br />
celebrated the national premiere<br />
of her film, The Lost Dream. The<br />
film was broadcasted as part<br />
of the World Channel’s Global<br />
Voices series.<br />
ILLUSTRATION BY BRUCE MORSER<br />
If not for the generosity of an alumnus<br />
who first walked the campus half a century before, senior Kyung Eun Kim<br />
would’ve had to leave <strong>American</strong> University and the United States altogether.<br />
The psychology major, known to friends as Daisy, came to Atlanta from<br />
her native South Korea—by way of China—when she was 16. A bubbly<br />
student who has her sights set on medical school, Kim has lived apart from<br />
her parents for six years. She relies on scholarships, including the Barnard<br />
Scholarship—established by John Fiske Barnard, Kogod/MBA ’59, in memory<br />
of his late wife, Lovelle—to finance her AU education.<br />
“My dad gathers and resells recyclable car parts in Japan, but his<br />
business was devastated by the tsunami in 2011. Without the Barnard<br />
Scholarship, it would’ve been impossible for me to stay here,” Kim says.<br />
As beneficial as the Barnard Scholarship—awarded annually to a<br />
psychology major—is, it’s not Barnard’s only gift to the university. The<br />
longtime federal employee, who passed away in July following a battle with<br />
cancer, first established a charitable gift annuity in 1995. Inspired by<br />
psychology professor James Gray, with whom the Barnards took classes, he<br />
then made provisions for a future scholarship through his estate plans. After<br />
consulting financial and legal advisors, however, he realized that by making<br />
a current gift of appreciated stock, he could eliminate capital gains taxes<br />
and enjoy the benefits of the gift during his lifetime.<br />
“I never missed that stock,” Barnard said a few months before his passing,<br />
“but I’ve had the pleasure of meeting wonderful young scholarship recipients<br />
every year. They have shown genuine appreciation for the assistance, but it is<br />
I who am grateful; our meetings have made a difference in my life.”<br />
Kim, who says Barnard and his wife, Jan Anderson, not only welcomed<br />
her into their home but into their family, is inspired by the alum’s warmth<br />
and legacy of philanthropy.<br />
“The Barnards made a huge difference in my life. I can’t wait to pay<br />
it forward.”<br />
FOR INFORMATION ON CHARITABLE ESTATE DONATIONS, VISIT AMERICAN.EDU/PLANNEDGIVING<br />
36 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong><br />
AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 37
giving<br />
GIFTS TO THE UNIVERSITY create a legacy of philanthropy<br />
that changes the life of our institution forever.<br />
The gleaming new Cassell Hall opened its doors at the beginning<br />
of this semester to its first group of residents. Alumni who come<br />
to campus will be surprised, if not shocked, to see it there. It used<br />
to be a parking lot, and now there’s an eight-story building that<br />
will change lives for generations of AU students to come.<br />
Cassell Hall is important because it’s the first residence hall at AU<br />
named for philanthropy. It provides a resource that was badly<br />
needed, but it also gives a lot of joy to the donor. To me, working<br />
with people who give is about enabling their joy in giving. That’s<br />
what we want philanthropy to be—joyful giving.<br />
Other great philanthropic legacies at AU include the Kogod<br />
School of Business, Katzen Arts Center, Kay Spiritual Life Center,<br />
Greenberg Theatre, spaces named by the Abramson family, and<br />
the Susan Carmel Lehrman Chair of Russian History and Culture.<br />
BY LIMITING TUITION increases<br />
and increasing financial aid for the<br />
next two years, AU is working to help<br />
students reduce debt levels. Donorfunded<br />
scholarships support hundreds<br />
of students each year.<br />
THIS FALL, 80 new faculty members<br />
joined the ranks of AU’s world-class<br />
scholars, including 23 tenured or tenuretrack<br />
professors. The new lineup<br />
includes number-crunching economists,<br />
neuroscientists, video game designers,<br />
and a museum curator.<br />
Higher education<br />
in America was<br />
created to provide<br />
opportunity, and<br />
that opportunity<br />
continues in<br />
every gift.<br />
There are other ways to create a legacy. Higher education<br />
in America was created to provide opportunity, and that<br />
opportunity continues in every gift. Gifts in support of<br />
scholarships enable students to come to AU who otherwise<br />
might not be in school anywhere. Our excellent student-faculty<br />
ratio means that all students are affected personally by our<br />
faculty. That makes the legacy of philanthropy through<br />
investment in faculty significant and lasting.<br />
Faculty are the skeleton of the institution—they hold the meat<br />
on the bones. To attract and retain the best and the brightest<br />
scholars in all the disciplines, we need support for faculty. That<br />
assures that we have brilliant people who spend the balance of<br />
their careers here.<br />
We know that the best donors are engaged in multiple aspects of<br />
the institution’s life, and we also know that the best volunteers<br />
are also donors. So it’s important for us to have our alumni step<br />
up and participate in giving at whatever level they can.<br />
No matter how much you give, you are contributing to a legacy<br />
built by a community of Eagles.<br />
OUR STUDENT-ATHLETES<br />
RETURNED to campus to find<br />
updated locker rooms and dedicated<br />
space for each sport. Cassell Hall,<br />
with its Stafford H. Cassell Jr. Fitness<br />
Center, provides an unsurpassed living<br />
environment and doubles the campus’s<br />
fitness center space.<br />
JEFFREY HARRIS JOINED<br />
KOGOD’S FACULTY this fall as a<br />
tenured professor. His position, the Gary<br />
D. Cohn Goldman Sachs Chair in Finance,<br />
was created through the generosity of<br />
Cohn, Kogod/BSBA ’82, and Goldman<br />
Sachs, where Cohn is president and COO.<br />
AU’S AMBITIOUS CAMPUS<br />
PLAN guides the university’s growth<br />
over the next decade. In addition to<br />
Cassell and Nebraska Halls, it includes<br />
the renovation of the historic McKinley<br />
Building, a new home for WAMU, and the<br />
relocation of the Washington College of<br />
Law to the Tenley Campus.<br />
Sincerely,<br />
Thomas J. Minar, PhD<br />
Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations<br />
A NEW EAST CAMPUS, including<br />
three residence halls, administrative<br />
offices, and a welcome center, will rise<br />
across from main campus, on the corner<br />
of Nebraska and New Mexico Avenues.<br />
AU will break ground in summer 2014.<br />
ILLUSTRATION BY BRUCE MORSER<br />
38 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong><br />
AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 39
class notes<br />
teamwork<br />
Tablets and smart<br />
phones can be<br />
wonderful teaching<br />
tools, but they’re<br />
not substitutes for<br />
person-to-person<br />
sharing and learning.<br />
There is something<br />
very special about<br />
children reading<br />
with adults and with<br />
other children.”<br />
—Stephanie Bloom, WCL/JD ’90,<br />
on her interactive children’s book<br />
app, A Place to Grow<br />
Loretta Hobbs, SPA/MSOD ’97,<br />
received a PhD in human and<br />
organizational development from<br />
Fielding Graduate University<br />
in July.<br />
Patrick Krill, SPA/BA ’97,<br />
WCL/LLM ’03, was appointed<br />
director of the Legal Professionals<br />
Program at the Hazelden<br />
Foundation. Hazelden is one<br />
of the world’s largest and most<br />
respected private, not-for-profit<br />
alcohol and drug addiction<br />
treatment centers with locations<br />
across the United States.<br />
Stacy Posillico, SPA/BA ’98,<br />
received a master’s degree in<br />
library science from St. John’s<br />
University in January. She is<br />
now a law librarian at the Touro<br />
Law Center Gould Law Library<br />
in Central Islip, New York. In<br />
2011, Stacy and her husband, Joe,<br />
welcomed a daughter, Elizabeth<br />
Margaret.<br />
Damon Seils, CAS/MA ’99, was<br />
elected to the Board of Aldermen<br />
in Carrboro, North Carolina.<br />
Daniel J. Vukelich, Esq., SPA/<br />
BA ’99, WCL/JD ’05, president of<br />
the Association of Medical Device<br />
Reprocessors, was awarded the<br />
Certified Association<br />
Executive (CAE)<br />
credential by the<br />
<strong>American</strong> Society<br />
of Association<br />
Executives.<br />
The CAE is<br />
the highest<br />
professional<br />
credential in the<br />
association industry.<br />
Kendee Yamaguchi, SPA/<br />
BA ’99, left her cabinet position<br />
working for the governor of<br />
Washington to accept a position<br />
in the senior management team<br />
for the Washington State attorney<br />
general. She is now the assistant<br />
attorney general and director<br />
of policy, legislative affairs, and<br />
external relations.<br />
-1995-<br />
TIME<br />
CAPSULES<br />
TOP TUNE<br />
“Gangsta’s Paradise,” Coolio<br />
TOP GROSSING FLICK<br />
Die Hard with a Vengeance<br />
IN THE NEWS<br />
Los Angeles jury finds O. J. Simpson not<br />
guilty of murder; 168 die in the terrorist<br />
bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal<br />
Building in Oklahoma City<br />
AT THE HELM<br />
Mark Sylvia was 1995–1996 Student<br />
Confederation president; he’s now<br />
commissioner of the Massachusetts<br />
Department of Energy Resources.<br />
2000s<br />
KEEP<br />
YOUR FRIENDS<br />
IN THE LOOP.<br />
SEND YOUR UPDATES<br />
TO CLASSNOTES@<br />
AMERICAN.EDU.<br />
Seth Darmstadter, SPA/BA ’00,<br />
was named a partner at Meckler<br />
Bulger Tilson Marick & Pearson<br />
LLP in Chicago, where he was<br />
most recently an associate.<br />
Sharon Foster,<br />
SOC/MA ’02,<br />
participated<br />
in a “Justice<br />
for Trayvon<br />
Vigil” held in<br />
Washington,<br />
D.C., on July 20.<br />
Toby McChesney,<br />
SPA/BA ’02, was<br />
elected to the board of<br />
directors for the Graduate<br />
Management Admissions<br />
Council. He is the youngest<br />
member of the board.<br />
Kelly Costello, CAS/BA ’03,<br />
overturned his insurance denial<br />
for receiving transgender-related<br />
health-care coverage. This case<br />
in Colorado may affect other<br />
policies regarding access to<br />
transgender inclusive healthcare.<br />
Brian Levin, SOC/MA ’04, is<br />
making his feature film debut<br />
as a writer on the upcoming<br />
comedy Flock of Dudes. The film,<br />
featuring an all-star cast, is slated<br />
for release in the spring of 2014.<br />
Alisa Wohlfarth Otten, Kogod/<br />
BSBA ’04, and Lucas Otten<br />
welcomed their first child, Tyler<br />
David Otten, on June 26, <strong>2013</strong>.<br />
Jacqueline Fortier, SPA/BA<br />
’06, received her JD from Touro<br />
College of Law in 2009. She is now<br />
admitted to practice in Florida,<br />
Georgia, and the District of<br />
Columbia. Fortier joined the law<br />
offices of Garnett Harrison, PC, as<br />
an associate attorney in May <strong>2013</strong>.<br />
Rebekah Moan, SOC/BA ’06,<br />
wrote and published a book<br />
called Just a Girl from Kansas,<br />
a memoir about what happens<br />
when you have the courage to<br />
pursue your dreams.<br />
-2006-<br />
TIME<br />
CAPSULES<br />
TOP TUNE<br />
“Bad Day,” Daniel Powter<br />
TOP GROSSING FLICK<br />
Pirates of the Caribbean:<br />
Dead Man’s Chest<br />
IN THE NEWS<br />
Saddam Hussein convicted of crimes<br />
against humanity and hanged in Baghdad;<br />
lobbyist Jack Abramoff sentenced to six<br />
years in prison for fraud; International<br />
Astronomical Union redefines the solar<br />
system, revoking Pluto’s status as a planet<br />
AT THE HELM<br />
Kyle Taylor was 2005–2006 Student<br />
Government president; now he’s chief of<br />
staff and campaign director for British<br />
Parliament member Simon Hughes.<br />
Bethany Lynn Corey, CAS/BA<br />
’07, was awarded the <strong>2013</strong> Ann<br />
Shaw Fellowship by TYA USA. It<br />
will fund continuing research in<br />
theater for the young, conducted<br />
in collaboration with Patch<br />
Theatre Company of Adelaide,<br />
Australia, and will provide<br />
resources for a tricultural artistic<br />
collaboration in Singapore. She<br />
received her MFA in drama and<br />
theater for youth and communities<br />
from the University of Texas at<br />
Austin in May <strong>2013</strong>.<br />
Benjamin Lamson, SOC/BA ’07,<br />
received the Wall Street Journal’s<br />
Start Up of the Year award for his<br />
company, WeDidIt.<br />
WEDDING RESEARCH INTERESTS<br />
Ghazal Nadi, SPA/PhD candidate + Tofigh Maboudi, SPA/PhD candidate<br />
LOVE BLOSSOMED in their hometown of Ahvaz, Iran, about 500 miles outside of Tehran. THEY GOT MARRIED two<br />
years ago; after she came to the United States to earn her master’s degree in political science, he arrived at AU to begin his<br />
doctoral studies. A year later, she joined him in Washington. SHARED PASSION: While his focus is on the interaction<br />
between citizens and elites during constitution making and hers tends toward budget policies, they presented a paper together<br />
in May on the struggle over Egypt’s constitution. “WE ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER when we work together,” Maboudi<br />
says. “Sometimes she’s tired, so I work on it, and she sees me, so she gets energy. AND THE OTHER WAY AROUND.”<br />
The couple adores living in Washington. “We’ve been to New York, Chicago, Philly, and I lived in Detroit,” Nadi says. “Every<br />
time we went [somewhere] I was like, ‘I want to go back home to D.C.’ We love everything that D.C. has to offer.” A UNIQUE<br />
PERSPECTIVE: “I feel like both sides are blinded by their political relations,” Nadi says of U.S.-Iranian relations, “so they<br />
depict the people and the culture in a way where you think the other side is hostile. Now that we have access to both sides, we<br />
know it’s not like that. WE LOVE AMERICANS.”<br />
40 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong><br />
AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 41
class notes<br />
memories<br />
Emily Goldberg, SIS/BA ’08, SIS/<br />
MA ’09, and Jason Knox, SPA/BA<br />
’08, were married on January 5.<br />
Several other members of the AU<br />
community were in attendance.<br />
Joseph Vidulich, SPA/BA ’08,<br />
was named vice president of<br />
government relations for the<br />
Fairfax County Chamber of<br />
Commerce. He is a seasoned<br />
government relations professional<br />
with public policy experience<br />
in the business and technology<br />
sectors. He serves as the<br />
chamber’s lead legislative liaison<br />
and lobbyist before the Fairfax<br />
County Board of Supervisors, the<br />
Virginia General Assembly, and<br />
the governor’s office.<br />
2010s<br />
Viachaslau Bortnik, SPA/MPA<br />
’10, became the first Belarusian<br />
man to enter a same-sex marriage<br />
in the United States.<br />
Alexandra Loken, SIS/BA ’10,<br />
founded Loken Creative, a causebased<br />
marketing firm in Austin,<br />
Texas.<br />
Walakewon Blegay, WCL/<br />
JD ’11, was appointed to the<br />
Prince George’s County Human<br />
Relations Commission and<br />
the Maryland Governor’s<br />
Task Force on the Study of<br />
Economic Development and<br />
Apprenticeships.<br />
Dean Carter, CAS/BA ’47,<br />
May 2, <strong>2013</strong>, Blacksburg,<br />
Virginia<br />
John Krupin, Kogod/BS ’50,<br />
December 12, 2012, New York,<br />
New York<br />
I had teenagers who couldn’t string<br />
together a sentence in English.<br />
By the end of the year I had them<br />
writing a paragraph or two in a<br />
language that was foreign to them<br />
nine months earlier.”<br />
—Andrea Finuccio, SIS/BA ’11, on helping students at Miami<br />
Edison Senior High School in Little Haiti master English<br />
Andrea Finuccio, SIS/BA ’11,<br />
following AU’s tradition of<br />
service, spent a year with City<br />
Year, an AmeriCorps program.<br />
Jessica Williams, SIS/MA ’11,<br />
was named vice president<br />
of public relations at C. Fox<br />
Communications. Prior to joining<br />
C. Fox, she worked at the Pew<br />
Charitable Trusts with the fiscal<br />
and economic policy project<br />
teams on communications and<br />
media outreach.<br />
Dianne Winter, CAS/MA ’11, has<br />
joined the staff of Caffé Lena’s<br />
landmark Saratoga music venue<br />
as associate director.<br />
Brenton Fuchs, Kogod/BSBA ’12,<br />
was awarded the Learning Ally<br />
Mary P. Oenslager Scholastic<br />
Achievement Award for academic<br />
excellence, outstanding leadership,<br />
and service to others on April 27<br />
at a National Achievement<br />
Awards Gala at the Newseum in<br />
Washington, D.C. Fuchs celebrated<br />
Merrill Ewing, Kogod/MBA ’59,<br />
March 31, <strong>2013</strong>, Salisbury,<br />
Maryland<br />
Petra Kahn, SIS/BA ’71, July 18,<br />
<strong>2013</strong>, McLean, Virginia<br />
his award with his parents,<br />
Deborah Daddio, WCL/JD ’79,<br />
and Kurt Fuchs and friends Bruce<br />
McDonald, WCL/JD ’79, and<br />
Gulnara Bekieva.<br />
Emily Roseman, SOC/BA ’12,<br />
wrote a book, The Diploma<br />
Diaries, published by Sourcebook.<br />
The book relays advice for<br />
young professionals entering<br />
postgraduate life.<br />
James Wexler, Kogod/BSBA ’75,<br />
April 18, <strong>2013</strong>, Lake Worth, Florida<br />
Antoinette Tomasek, CAS/BA ’02,<br />
June 29, <strong>2013</strong>, Haiti<br />
To update your address<br />
EMAIL<br />
alumupdate@american.edu<br />
VISIT<br />
american.edu/alumni/connected<br />
WRITE<br />
Office of Alumni Relations<br />
<strong>American</strong> University<br />
4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW<br />
Washington, DC 20016-8002<br />
Meghan Aberle, SPA/BA ’04,<br />
July 30, <strong>2013</strong>, Bogota,<br />
Colombia<br />
Ashley Rose Stumbaugh,<br />
Kogod/BSBA ’12, and Robert<br />
Maisano, SPA/BA ’13, reached<br />
the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro<br />
early on Saturday, June 8.<br />
They have plans to continue<br />
to climb and to reach all of the<br />
Seven Summits before their<br />
30th birthdays.<br />
Meet David Schain ’60, dapper deejay.<br />
“The photo was taken in 1958 when<br />
I was working on a regular basis<br />
at WAMU. I was also pledging Phi<br />
Ep, and you can see the pledge pin<br />
in the photograph,” writes Schain,<br />
who attended AU on the GI Bill. The<br />
communications grad enjoyed success<br />
in the real estate and video production<br />
industries before pursuing a career as<br />
a model and spokesman. Recently the<br />
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, resident<br />
“spent six days in Barbados doing a<br />
modeling shoot as a grandfather for<br />
an upscale hotel chain. I had to work<br />
15 to 16 minutes a day; hard work, but<br />
somebody had to do it.”<br />
FACULTY<br />
Alfred B. Chaet, July 23, <strong>2013</strong>,<br />
Maitland, Florida<br />
RECOGNIZE<br />
these students settling<br />
into Anderson Hall during<br />
the late ‘60s? Reveal their<br />
identities at magazine@<br />
american.edu.<br />
Excerpts from the Eagle archives<br />
at theeagleonline.com/archives<br />
1938<br />
The men have the “ham house”—short for Hamilton<br />
House (named for brothers Franklin and John, both<br />
former AU chancellors)—so the Eagle calls for a catchy<br />
moniker for the women’s residence hall. “We ought<br />
to have something with ‘umph,’ something clever.”<br />
Suggestions include “the hennery,” “the roost,” and,<br />
simply, “the umph.”<br />
1966<br />
Giving new meaning to “spring fling,” McDowell Hall’s<br />
feisty, female inhabitants toss their panties to a crowd<br />
of male students gathered outside on a warm March<br />
evening. Colorful underwear float out the windows to<br />
chants of “We want silk!” before head resident Estelle<br />
Kelsey breaks up the fun, dousing the panty raiders with<br />
water and calling campus police.<br />
1975<br />
After a string of sofa heists, the Residence Hall<br />
Association addresses the pressing problem of stolen<br />
lounge furniture. Students are fined $10 for the first<br />
offense and $15 for the second. A third offense results in<br />
suspension from the dorms. Resident advisors’ “illegal<br />
and intrusive” searches for hot furniture leave students<br />
feeling cold.<br />
<strong>2013</strong><br />
Once a parking lot, Cassell Hall, an eight-story structure<br />
(with a sprawling, 8,000-square-foot fitness center)<br />
nestled on the northwest corner of campus, opens<br />
its doors to 360 upperclassmen. Across Mass. Ave., a<br />
three-story addition to Nebraska Hall offers apartmentstyle<br />
housing for another 150 students. The structures<br />
are AU’s first new residence halls since Centennial Hall<br />
opened in 1986.<br />
WERE YOU A PANTY RAIDER<br />
OR A RESIDENT OF THE ROOST?<br />
Share your stories of life in Leonard,<br />
Letts, and AU’s other residence halls:<br />
email magazine@american.edu.<br />
42 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong><br />
AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 43
where we are<br />
teamwork<br />
AU’S REACH<br />
CROSSES OVER<br />
LAND AND SEA<br />
to Puerto Rico, a Caribbean gem with a<br />
centuries-long mash-up of Spanish, African,<br />
and Taino Indian traditions and home to<br />
some 250 alums. They crunch numbers,<br />
inspire students, interpret the law, and<br />
attract customers.<br />
What do these Eagles all share, besides<br />
prizing the Puerto Rican–concocted piña<br />
colada and the island’s symbol of pride,<br />
the coquí, a tiny indigenous tree frog? An<br />
insider’s edge on Washington, gained while<br />
studying at AU.<br />
AU was in Puerto Rico earlier this month,<br />
when Raina Lenney, assistant vice president,<br />
alumni relations, hosted a reception for<br />
alumni living in the U.S. territory. Learn<br />
more about the Puerto Rico alumni chapter’s<br />
upcoming events at american.edu/alumni.<br />
LUZ DELIZ-CRUZ, WCL/LLM ’06<br />
LEGAL ADVISOR<br />
PUERTO RICO PUBLIC BUILDINGS AUTHORITY<br />
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO<br />
On a tropical island like Puerto Rico, visitors and residents<br />
revel in the year-round sunshine. But schools have to shield<br />
students from its harmful byproducts—heat and humidity—<br />
that can breed mold and lead to respiratory problems.<br />
Air conditioning, the go-to choice for decades, is pricey to<br />
install, run, and maintain. Short of reverting to the practices<br />
of the island’s first settlers, the Spaniards, whose high<br />
ceilings used the power of the wind to keep them cool and<br />
dry, the government has begun to tap into, rather than fight,<br />
the elements when building new schools.<br />
“They want to use wind and sunlight in a more natural<br />
way,” says Puerto Rico native Luz Deliz-Cruz, a legal<br />
advisor with the Puerto Rico Public Buildings Authority,<br />
which constructs and maintains mostly schools but also<br />
courts, hospitals, and other government buildings. “Right<br />
now we have only two green schools, and we are using the<br />
wind, using the sunlight. But we are looking to save energy,<br />
because in Puerto Rico energy is very expensive. We are<br />
trying to change the old system we had from the 1970s.”<br />
MARTHA HERMILLA, SOC/BA ’91<br />
SENIOR DIRECTOR OF MARKETING<br />
DEVELOPERS DIVERSIFIED REALTY (DDR)<br />
BAYAMÓN, PUERTO RICO<br />
“Puerto Ricans love to shop,” says Martha Hermilla, who,<br />
born to Cuban parents, grew up on the island and now<br />
oversees marketing for 15 shopping centers in Puerto<br />
Rico for retail investor DDR. They see outings to the mall,<br />
she says, as social and cultural events—perhaps the way<br />
previous generations would have gone to town squares, or,<br />
as they are known in the Latin <strong>American</strong> tradition, plazas,<br />
strolling arm in arm, greeting neighbors, and shopping in<br />
surrounding stores.<br />
This past spring, families across Puerto Rico turned out<br />
to the malls in droves, with some 450 kids raring for the<br />
chance to paint with world-renowned pop artist Romero<br />
Britto. Britto, whose work vibrates with the intense colors<br />
of the tropics, partnered with each child to produce a<br />
canvas. Says Hermilla, “Small children got exposure to the<br />
arts . . . and they might never have gotten it.”<br />
SHANGHAI EXPRESS<br />
Kyle Long, Kogod/BSBA ’07 + Jamie Barys, SOC/BA ’07<br />
Roasted starfish, stewed crawfish, and deep-fried water snakes BUTCHERED TO ORDER. Exotic eats are all in a day’s work<br />
for Long and Barys, founders of UNTOUR SHANGHAI, a company that caters to foodies and adventure seekers from around<br />
the globe. “After seeing typical ‘follow the flag’ tours, we knew we wanted to showcase a part of the city most tourists don’t have<br />
access to,” Long says. Though they also offer jogging sightseeing tours and cultural outings, culinary tours—RATED NO. 1 IN<br />
SHANGHAI by travel website TripAdvisor—make up the bulk of their business. Guests include tourists, expats, and locals who<br />
want to tickle their tastebuds at Shanghai’s famous night markets and mom-and-pop noodle shops. ON THE MENU: Yunnanstyle,<br />
deep-fried insect platter, which includes honeybees, bamboo worms, and dragonflies (“the wings tend to get stuck in your<br />
throat,” warns Long). Chief eating officer Barys and chief running officer Long studied abroad together in Beijing during their<br />
junior year at AU. They vowed to return—and in 2010, they launched UnTour. FAVORITE DESTINATION: “Whenever we’re<br />
away from Shanghai for too long, we crave spicy peanut sesame noodles at Wei Xiang Zhai,” says Barys, a former dining writer.<br />
“That’s our first stop back.”<br />
44 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong><br />
AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 45
vision + planning = legacy<br />
top picks<br />
For Washington College of<br />
Law alumna Dorothy Toth<br />
Beasley, a legal career meant<br />
continuing a family tradition.<br />
Beasley, a senior judge for the<br />
State of Georgia, says part-time<br />
work and financial assistance<br />
provided by the Grace Markel<br />
Daish Scholarship were<br />
integral in kick-starting her 50-<br />
year career as an attorney,<br />
judge, and mediator.<br />
She established the Stephen<br />
and Beatrice Dodd Toth<br />
Endowed Scholarship Fund to<br />
honor her parents and support<br />
WCL students interested in<br />
public service. The Atlanta<br />
resident enjoys meeting Toth<br />
Scholarship recipients:<br />
“students with big plans who<br />
will make a difference<br />
through service and whose<br />
aspirations and enthusiasm<br />
are energizing.”<br />
We are grateful to Beasley,<br />
who hopes the Toth<br />
Scholarship will cover an<br />
increasingly significant<br />
portion of recipients’ legal<br />
education costs. In addition<br />
to generous annual gifts that<br />
enhance the scholarship’s<br />
impact, Beasley has named<br />
WCL among the beneficiaries<br />
of her estate. “By supporting<br />
students’ legal education, we<br />
can equip them with the<br />
knowledge to pursue their<br />
passions,” she says.<br />
For information on how your<br />
vision and charitable estate<br />
planning can create a legacy at<br />
<strong>American</strong> University, contact<br />
Seth Speyer, director of planned<br />
giving, at 202-885-5914 or<br />
speyer@american.edu, or visit<br />
american.edu/plannedgiving.<br />
PHOTO BY LAURA HERRING<br />
John Simson’s 40-year<br />
career in the music industry has<br />
had its share of high notes.<br />
The singer-songwriter<br />
turned copyright lawyer<br />
managed five-time Grammy<br />
winner Mary Chapin Carpenter,<br />
while racking up an Emmy nod<br />
of his own for the PBS special<br />
<strong>American</strong> Roots Music. A member<br />
of the Library of Congress<br />
National Recording Preservation<br />
Board, Simson served as executive<br />
director of SoundExchange, a<br />
Washington-based nonprofit that<br />
collects and distributes artists’<br />
royalties, until 2010.<br />
Now the music wonk has<br />
a new gig: director of<br />
Kogod’s business of<br />
entertainment program,<br />
which welcomed its first crop<br />
of undergrads this fall. The only<br />
bachelor’s degree of its kind in<br />
D.C., the program gives budding<br />
entertainment execs a strong<br />
foundation in accounting, finance,<br />
marketing, and information<br />
technology and allows them to<br />
choose from specializations such<br />
as audio technology and film.<br />
Simson’s most influential<br />
recording artists of the<br />
past 50 years:<br />
1.<br />
SAM COOKE—The first singer-songwriter of<br />
the modern pop era, Sam wrote a catalog<br />
of hits, broke down racial barriers, and<br />
sang sweeter than any bird.<br />
2.<br />
THE BEATLES—John and Paul’s rivalry,<br />
each pushing the other in the best way<br />
possible, created some of the most<br />
memorable songs ever.<br />
3.<br />
BOB DYLAN—The poet and subterranean<br />
leader of the ’60s, Bob’s written more great<br />
songs than anyone and influenced the<br />
growth of the singer-songwriter aesthetic.<br />
4.<br />
ARETHA FRANKLIN—The Queen of Soul<br />
had a voice that could raise goose bumps.<br />
The classics are too many to mention, but<br />
“Think” took it to another level.<br />
5.<br />
STEVIE WONDER—The blind 12-year-old<br />
harmonica player grew up in front of us. His<br />
body of work may have a few sappy tunes,<br />
but the bulk and breadth are arresting.<br />
6.<br />
THE WHO—They invented the “power trio.”<br />
When they played “My Generation” in 1967<br />
and destroyed their instruments during the<br />
finale, it was like nothing I’d ever seen.<br />
7.<br />
BRIAN WILSON—Brian’s creations were<br />
mini-symphonies of layered confection.<br />
“God Only Knows” may be the greatest pop<br />
single of all time.<br />
8.<br />
BOB MARLEY—The voice is gorgeous and<br />
rich, the writing is evocative and political.<br />
He expanded the possibilities of commercial<br />
music and embodied the “island” sound.<br />
9.<br />
MICHAEL JACKSON—Michael’s dancing and<br />
visual approach crowned him King of Pop.<br />
10.<br />
KURT COBAIN—Every now and then, rock<br />
’n’ roll got stale and needed a kick in the<br />
butt. Nirvana did that for a new generation.<br />
1<br />
2<br />
3<br />
4<br />
5<br />
6<br />
7<br />
8<br />
9<br />
10<br />
46 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong><br />
AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 47
must haves<br />
4<br />
9<br />
1<br />
10<br />
5<br />
6<br />
7<br />
FACEBOOK<br />
facebook.com/americanualum<br />
LINKEDIN<br />
<strong>American</strong> University Alumni<br />
2 3<br />
8<br />
TWITTER<br />
@americanualum<br />
STORIFY<br />
storify.com/americanualum<br />
*SPA alumnus, Buzzfeed legal editor covering LGBT issues<br />
FLICKR<br />
flickr.com/americanualum<br />
ONLINE COMMUNITY<br />
alumniassociation.american.edu<br />
1. Supreme Court briefs are printed in<br />
the press room as soon as decisions<br />
come out. These are the four biggest<br />
cases from the past term, including<br />
the case challenging the Defense of<br />
Marriage Act.<br />
2. I live on Starbucks venti iced coffee<br />
with sugar-free vanilla.<br />
3. I’ve had my Sony digital voice<br />
recorder for three years. If I’m at a<br />
press conference, I can throw it on<br />
the podium and still use my iPhone to<br />
Tweet and take pictures.<br />
4. One of the rules I learned at the<br />
conventions was “ABC: always be<br />
charging.” I’m never without my<br />
iPhone 4S and Mophie backup battery.<br />
5. This Buzzfeed notebook is almost too<br />
nice to write in.<br />
6. I always wear a tie at the Supreme<br />
Court and the White House. When I’m<br />
on Up with Steve Kornacki on MSNBC,<br />
they encourage you to be casual, but<br />
I can’t get over what my mother’s<br />
reaction would be if she saw me on<br />
national TV without a tie. I also carry<br />
a spare pair of glasses; they once<br />
snapped right in the middle, so I had<br />
to do Last Word without glasses.<br />
7. I worked for Metro Weekly from 2009<br />
to 2012. They started my career.<br />
Buzzfeed gave us the iPad Mini as a<br />
present the first month the website<br />
got 40 million unique views.<br />
8. My 13-inch MacBook Air travels well<br />
and has a good battery life. The<br />
Verizon MiFi allows journalists to<br />
write more than five sentences with<br />
their thumbs on a phone.<br />
9. I have subway cards from D.C.<br />
and New York, where Buzzfeed’s<br />
headquartered. I go to Boston just<br />
because it’s Boston.<br />
1 0 . Twitter and modern journalism are<br />
inextricably intertwined. I got this<br />
button from the Twitter booth at one<br />
of the national political conventions<br />
(from which I’ve kept all my press<br />
credentials) last fall. I have over 21,000<br />
Twitter followers (@chrisgeidner).<br />
PHOTO BY MACEY FORONDA/BUZZFEED<br />
48 AMERICAN MAGAZINE NOVEMBER <strong>2013</strong>
NON-PROFIT ORG<br />
US POSTAGE PAID<br />
BURLINGTON, VT 05401<br />
WASHINGTON, DC 20016-8002<br />
Address Service Requested<br />
PERMIT NO. 604<br />
For information regarding the<br />
accreditation and state licensing of<br />
<strong>American</strong> University, please visit<br />
american.edu/academics.<br />
THE CHALLENGE<br />
Rachel Sullivan Robinson’s syllabus looks intimidating—think z-scores and regressions—<br />
but the School of International Service professor’s aim is simple: to help students “be<br />
informed consumers and producers of statistical knowledge.” Most of the data wonks in<br />
Robinson’s 600-level statistics and methods class nailed this exam question. Where does<br />
your knowledge of measures of central tendency fall on a normal distribution curve?<br />
THE QUESTION<br />
This chart shows the distribution of the Polity score for 151<br />
countries. The Polity score is a measure of democracy: a score<br />
of 20 is a complete democracy, a score of 0 is a complete<br />
autocracy, and a score in the middle is a system in transition.<br />
POLITY COMBINED 20-POINT SCORE, RECODED TO A POSITIVE SCALE<br />
Go fact to fact<br />
WITH AU’S PEOPLE IN THE KNOW AT<br />
AMERICANWONKS.COM/QUIZZES.<br />
1. What is the mode?<br />
2. What is the median?<br />
3. If you remove the two complete autocracies, will it make the mean smaller or larger?<br />
4. If you remove the two complete autocracies, what will the value of the median be?<br />
Data from systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm<br />
The details Submit the correct answer to magazine@american.edu by December<br />
31 to be entered to win a six-month subscription to Politics and Prose Bookstore’s<br />
Book-a-Month Gift Program.<br />
Congratulations to Christopher Byrne, SIS/MA ’91, who aced last issue’s final exam.